Takes a ninja to beat a ninja. (The one play-through I’ve completed was as a monk. It’s fun!)
Only one person needs to make it to the portal. If you have someone with Dimension Door or Misty Step you should be able to bypass them with little difficulty.
Unfortunately, they have a scripted surprise round, which sucks.
I agree that the fights where there’s a high chance one of your characters dies before they move are not well designed.
The camp Gith fight isn’t one I thought was terribly frustrating. The house of grief fight is significantly worse, with the caveat that if you have the right aoe spells, use daylight, and use the chokepoint it’s pretty easy.
I tried to fight the first time then I misty stepped it the second time. The next ninja fight pissed me off but it was late at night and now I’m away for a wedding so I haven’t tried again
Okay so I feel like I am missing something obvious but I don’t see how I can access the inventory of the characters who are not in my party. The new patch added this feature but how?
Lower left-hand corner there is now a button when you are in camp. Click it to bring up the camp characters not currently in your party. They’ll come up one at a time in their own box and you can click on the portraits at the top of the box to switch between them. You can hit the inventory or tab key to bring up your inventory screens of your current party like normal and then swap between them. It’s still a little cumbersome, but it is a real improvement.
Interesting little footnote to this.
Jaheira is in my camp. She does not show up as an option for accessing inventory in camp.
Which makes me wonder since I was looking something up about the kid you meet when you first arrive at Rivington who joins your camp and got spoilered about
That any one in your camp, including the kid, can really be Orin in disguise when she infiltrates your camp. I wonder if it’s going to turn out that Jaheira is right now already Orin in disguise which is why she isn’t an option for the camp inventory selection. Or maybe it’s just a bug.
I made it past the ninjas. It took awhile. Then one time the Emperor was actually useful and stunned everyone long enough for me to get in a shot or two.
I just finished the House of Grief and I agree it is a seriously tough battle if fought straight up. My last attempt flipped it to easy mode, however…
Summary
I kept my party at the top of the stairs and early-triggered the fight with a lone minion (elemental) attacking the nearest guards to avoid all of the dialogue and losing initiative. I then laid a wall of thorns down the stairway, topped with an insect swarm at the bottom, and backed my casters way up the stairs out of range so that their concentration would never get broken. Other AoE spells would work similarly. The enemies mostly killed themselves trying to get up the stairs, with only light mopping up remaining.
The only caveat about aoe spells are that some of them get cancelled out by darkness. Blade barrier on the other hand is basically cheating.
I had a really hard time with that fight also. I finally won because I did something (I am still not sure what) that negated the Darkness which made it much more fair and I could win. I also did bottle neck them as best I could but not to that extent.
The daylight spell?
Last time I did House of Loss, it was the same ambush the stairwell tactic with Spiked Growth and Cloudkill instead of Insect Swarm. Worked a treat though.
Game Awards are over and BG3 walked away with
- Players’ Voice (Player’s Choice selection)
- Best Multiplayer Game
- Best RPG
- Best Community Support
- Best Performance (Neil Newbon/Astarion)
- Game of the Year
Maybe no surprise that Baldur’s Gate 3 won Game of the Year at the annual Game Awards show.
While not a surprise I will say 2023 has been an exceptional year for computer games with many worthy contenders. It says a lot about how good BG3 is to stand above strong competitors who, any other time, may well have won the award.
Congrats to Larian and Sven Vincke. This game will be high water mark for a long time I think.
ETA: Love that Sven wore his signature armor to the show. That’s a guy I’d like to know.
I just want to say that when I played Dragon Age: Origins many years ago, I handled combat the way you described that. I had a party full of magic folks with AOE spells and other magical attacks and I also controlled the enemy’s ability to get to me. (Usually I’d put a rune of repulsion in a door so they couldn’t get out.) Every battle was about making a death trap for the enemy. It was so fun!
But the player’s character in BG3 doesn’t have a voice actor!
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Oh!
Just finished my second playthrough where I was absolutely powergaming it. Final group was:
- Tav - Paladin / Sorcerer: smites! (probably the weakest character even though he got the best gear)
- Astarion - Gloomstalker / Thief / Fighter: Probably the most overall damage. Always goes first and leads with 3 attacks. With a bit of luck can probably kill every enemy in the game in 1 turn. (should be assassin instead of thief probably)
- Karlach - Berzerker / Thief / Fighter: Throw build
- Gale - Wizard / Cleric / Sorcerer: Cleric for guaranteed max damage with lightning. In the endgame I could cast 4x chain lightning per short rest. (probably should drop sorcerer for lvl 10 in wizard)
Honestly made fights too easy to be interesting I’m very curious about the legendary additions to boss fights on honor mode, but I need a break from this game.
That this is a thing is awesome.
There are multiple weapons that return to you after you throw them, but I fell in love with the build by picking up enemies and throwing them into each other or off heights.
Now that’s what I’m talking about. 
“I bet you miss your friend down there, go give him a hug, Stinky!”