Baldur's Gate 3's third patch just dropped and it's over 20,000 words big—fixing small holes, thieving skeletons, and counterspelling a nuke
Baldur's Gate 3's latest patch—the third in two months—is out right now, and it's a doozy.
The two big headliners are things we knew about already, but just in case you missed them—Baldur's Gate 3 is now on Mac, and there's also now a magic mirror in your camp that'll let you change your custom Tav's appearance.
These are both pretty huge inclusions which'd be worthy of a patch on their own, but Larian being Larian, the patch notes for bug fixes, combat tweaks, writing changes, and more are still big enough to break the Steam page. Guys, I know you've got a fancy 24-hour setup with teams in multiple time zones, but I really hope you're getting some sleep.
It'd be impossible for me to summarise everything on this list in a timely fashion. Out of curiosity, I dumped the whole thing into a Word document, and there's over 23,000 words of notes, which is half a small novel. But the main inclusions are fixes to cinematics, combat bugs, VFX changes, UI tweaks, animations, level design, art assets, and oh dear this list is getting rather long, isn't it? The whole game. They just patched the whole game. Again. In two months.
One big quality of life buff that leapt out at me is the following: "NPCs will no longer run away from anything but the Dark Urge Slayer form to improve interactivity and flow." I've yet to hop in and test this, but I'd assume they're referring to NPCs running away from your pets, whether furry or skeletal, and getting themselves killed. This is something players have had to mod out before, so that's a huge plus.
There've also been numerous tweaks to the game's performance. While a lot of those improvements have been geared towards "stabilising 30 FPS on Quality Mode" for console players, us PC gamers should be reaping the rewards of them, too. This'll hopefully help Act 3 in particular, as one of the bullet points is specifically geared towards "performance in dense crowds."
Then there's patching up the holes in Baldur's Gate 3's sprawling web of story beats. Gale's romance has once more been nerfed, as they've increased the "approval threshold" for him—meaning you'll need to woo him some more before he starts trying to show you his magic tricks. There's also the throwaway line of "Shadowheart will now remember if you broke up with her." I know the girl has memory problems, but that's extreme.
Again, there's too many fixes to go over comprehensively, so here's some of my favourite notes from the patch:
- "Fixed Shadowheart going blonde when equipping a hat."
- "Fixed a bug where companions temporarily leaving the party (e.g. being sent to prison) would forget their partnership history and act unusually cold towards you."
- "The Narrator no longer thinks you're a mind flayer when you're not."
- "During your date with Karlach, Tender Henk will no longer walk away to reveal another Tender Henk standing behind him. Staring."
- "Summoned zombies and skeletons will no longer be able to pick up loot and disappear with it when dismissed."
- "Fixed some small holes in Act I that weren't letting tiny characters through them."
- "Added some missing Boo squeaks."
- "Gale's Netherese Orb Blast can no longer be Counterspelled." Author's note: I had no idea you could do this.
- "The camp statue of your character can no longer be disarmed."
- "You can no longer interrupt the ogre and bugbear's night of passion by trying to trade with them or attack them through a door."
- "Improved the death poses of rats."
Again, I'm just staggered at the dedication Larian Studios has been showing here. I've been musing about whether or not Patch 3 might be smaller, now that we're further out from the game's release, but I clearly had nothing to worry about. Pelor forbid Larian pump the breaks a little bit, and give me some notes I can fully summarise without having to break them up into chapters.