Baldur’s Gate III Community Update #11 – Inspiration, Freedom & Pacifism

With the launch of the third early access patch for Baldur’s Gate III, we get a new Community Update that goes over the new features, lists some stats, and shares the complete patch notes. Thanks to this patch, non-combat encounters now grant experience, companions are more agreeable, cantrips no longer create elemental surfaces, and so on.

Here’s Swen Vincke with a quick overview of the big new features:

And here’s an excerpt from the update:

The road less travelled is now rewarding…

Our games have always been about rewarding creativity and exploration, but some people were disappointed with the lack of experience rewards for pacifism, and creative solutions that utilize the road less travelled. Patch 3 introduces rewards for avoiding combat situations, whether in dialogue or through exploration and environmental puzzle solving. Now, all you pacifists will be able to carve out a journey more true to your character’s identity. Or, it’ll just offer more options for specific circumstances.

Neat Factoid: 56% of players avoided combat with the Goblin Rooftop Ambush. Now those players will be properly rewarded without needing to kill the Goblins anyway.

Companions will now feel more… companionable

On the topic of behaviour, we’ve certainly noticed your companions were perhaps a little negative at times. We’ve taken steps to move away from frequent nitpicking, so that they’ll start focusing more on the bigger picture. Companions will now be more tolerant. Not nitpicking about every single little thing they don’t like but rather focusing on the things they do like while still maintaining their personality and having strong beliefs about certain things. In short, they’ll feel a little more like companions.

Neat Factoid: For all 204k of players who let Astarion chow down, you won’t have to deal with SH’s approval dropping in what should be a private moment between the two of you.

Dialog skill checks will be less likely to ‘lock you out of content’

Dialogues with particularly harsh or dramatic skill checks have been rebalanced – instead of failing an entire situation based on one difficult roll, you’ll have a higher chance of succeeding the roll. This is to stop dice from locking you out of content unless the situation really merits it. Ultimately, however, you’ll still have to flow with the will of the dice.

Neat Factoid: A little over half of all players who use Speak with Animals on the Owlbear still fail the overall encounter. These success numbers only vary by about 5% for those without Speak with Animals. We’ve tweaked the DC here to reward investing parts of your character in animal handling.

No more micromanaging party jumping

Micromanaging gymnastics probably wasn’t something you thought you’d be doing in the Forgotten Realms, so now when you jump across a gap, for example, your party will automatically jump across it to follow you. Hooray!

Neat Factoid: Just over 200k players jumped the crossing to speak to a wayward and injured tiefling near the busy rapids of the river. No doubt making that jump alone. Now your companions will join you automatically.

More adventuring, and less resting

You now get 2 short rests after your long rest. Previously, you only had a single short rest. That’s twice the rest, for the same price! This means you have more uninterrupted adventures, and all the perks of resting.

Neat Factoid: 2 is exactly double the value of 1.