Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 2 notes

Dec 02, 2023

Withers' Wardrobe of Wayward Friends now lets you vault absent co-op companions and Karlach has a new epilogue scene in Baldur's Gate 3's latest patch notes.

Baldur’s Gate 3 has a big new update rolling out today, and it’s a doozy, bringing along a large number of improvements, tweaks, and quality-of-life updates. The promise of being able to vault inactive co-op companions has been fulfilled, and Karlach got a big new epilogue scene, as well as new interactions that expand upon her character. It’s all here in Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 2 and we’ve got the patch notes for your perusal.

Larian Studios released Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 2 and its accompanying patch notes via a Steam developer blog post on August 31, 2023. The main headliner of these patch notes focuses on Karlach, expanding her epilogue, as well as adding new interactions in Act 1 and Act 2. For co-op players, Larian delivered on the promise of being able to vault the characters of absent co-op players. You can store them until the players come back and then bring them back into the quest. There were plenty of other updates as well. Check out the full patch notes just below:

And there you have it. Be sure to check out our other Baldur’s Gate 3 coverage for guides and updates on the game to aid in your quest!

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at [email protected] and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.

TJ Denzer posted a new article, Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 2 notes

Baldur's Gate 3 act 2 done!The easiest GOTY in the history of video games. Even with the bugs.

I'm holed up in Act 3. With Starfield mere hours away, and 2 and half weeks from now MK1 is out, IDK when I'll get around to completing it.

Starfield will take months to fix. You have time to finish BG3 multiple times!

yeah I dunno 'bout that - plenty of chatter seems to indicate it's not that buggy at all. Most polished a Bethesda game as ever been, supposedly. I'm on PC though so who knows.

that said I'm sure I will be jumping between a few games come the end of the month.

"Most polished" does not necessarily mean "polished".

Lol yea, that bar is low

very true

Anyone have some pointers for in act 1 when you go into the cellar and end up in a cavern with a bunch of skeletons that pop out of coffins? For some reason my people only have like 60% chance to hit, each turn, so they keep whipping my ass.

You can always come back to do that stuff later. There's a useful trick around this you can destroy the coffins before they pop out and that helps manage the crowd.Skeletons are hard to hit sometimes! Also I assume that holy stuff and bludgeoning weapons will be more useful.

Grease to drop them then jump in and attack with advantage is my go to

Same advice for most other fights.... push them into the crevace.

Yea it's kind of dumb how difficult fights can just be resolved by pushing someone off a cliff. Why is shove a bonus action again?

I end most conflicts by pushing people off a cliff.

Right, but what does that have to do with BG3

What is BG3?

The downside is you can't loot the body. Tough for loot whores like me!

you can sneak someone in and destroy the coffins before the skeletons pop out and start opening the other coffins. Otherwise use something like grease (bottle or spell) or entangle to slow them down and keep them from busting them open so quickly. Or if you have turn undead (probably need shadowheart or a paladin, and not sure what levelel you get that)

Good ideas, here. I did turn undead to make 3 of them run in circles but it didn’t help much since I couldn’t hit them

Despite maxing out my stats and having a +1 weapon, my chance to hit always seem to float around 60-70%.

Do you have Advantage?

Which stats? What kind of weapon? What enemies and their AC?The to hit % depends on all of that. Having high STR will help a lot if you are using a greatsword but won’t help at all with your fire bolt cantrip. High DEX helps with ranger melee attacks (and possibly with some spell attacks) won’t help with most melee attacks.Also, a level 3 Goblin is going to be way easier to hit than a level 11 Drow.One thing that is annoying is the to hit percentage does not take into account any saving throws involved. I can’t tell you how many times Shadowheart’s Sacred Flame hit but the target succeeded at the saving throw and took 0 damage. I think her damage dealt/attack attempts with Sacred Flame is well under 50%.

Of course the primary stat that increases accuracy for the type of action. Dex for finesse, charisma for bad spells, etc. I'll get 90% occasionally like for surprise rounds and stuff. I end up finding high ground, pushing enemies off cliffs for quick kills or extra damage, or occasionally use a spell or ability to increase my attack roll.

Were you expecting to have consistently high hit chances without using positioning and spells or something?

70% w/o temporary buffs has been low to me even in the pathfinder games, mostly because I'm consistently rolling low.When I cast the bards taunt spell, I'm seeing 60-70% on most enemies. Historically this means that the character could go entire multi round fights w/o landing a single hit. With this game having only 4 party members, it can get frustrating.

Seems like it's working normally? The spells, abilities, and other methods to increase your hit % are there to increase your hit %.

Loot them first. Use the high ground (ungroup your party to position people before triggering skeletons).

Oh I'm thinking of a different event I think?

Yea there’s no high ground with this one, I don’t think. It’s pretty early in act 1

that is a tough fight. you can try to lure them back into the doorway to use it as a funnel to protect your weaker characters. there is eventually a limit to the number of skeletons you have to fight, but it's quite a lot and it's easy to get surrounded and beaten to death if you're out in the openi like to make enemies chase me back to a point where I feel safer fighting them, usually through a doorway or on a narrow stairwell where they can't get around me easily and I can use walls for coveri just did this in a fight against 2 strong enemies capable of petrifying my party members that had a bunch of smaller flying imps too (the imps can do knockback damage and we were fighting in a place with lots of pits to get knocked into) so instead I made them all fight me through a doorway. it mostly worked out but then one of the main enemies flew UNDER the ground to circle behind me near the end of the fight and I had to scramble a little (we were on a floating platform, essentially)

They pop out one at a time. Kill them before they release more. Stand in their way, CC, etc.

Update - I was able to wipe them out by spawning my spider companion and ensnaring them enough to slow them down, I yeeted one off a cliff and did turn undead on the other two and ended up not taking a single hit. Sweet!

I'm still in act 1, really enjoying it. Okay with slow walking it until patch #2.

oh, well here's patch #2https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1086940/view/3656414378543586471

Act III SpoilersI killed Raphael last night and holy hell the loot in the zone is ridiculous. The drops alone are making excited for my next build, especially using the armour and handwraps for a Monk, but probably all of them can be used at the same time to be completely bonkers.I'm going to get my next dude up to 12 and then immediately murder the place again, so I can use the loot for most of Act III.

how awesome was the boss music for that fight?

Made it all the sweeter for driving my pike through them.

Patch #2 just hit. Mostly QoL and bug fixes, but added some Karlach interactions.Not up on the main site but are in steam and here; https://primagames.com/tips/baldurs-gate-3-august-31-update-full-patch-notes-listedThis is the best of the patch notes;If you dismiss your companion to camp and shove them into a chasm, Withers will now be able to resurrect them... so you can shove them into a chasm again, probably.

Curious to see what they improved!

You missed performance improvements. I'm most excited about those.

I really enjoy the humor in their patch notes. It's not overbearing and just enough to crack a smile.

Noticed a few UI things too. Enemy health bars have a different animation when taking damage. It also shows the name of the character on the your turn display. Looks good

Oh the name thing is mentioned in notes I see.

Dreaming of BG now!Last night I dreamt Karlach apparently had a complex love backstory with Wyll and if she sees him in camp she immediately invokes this wild-looking spell that deletes her files from your computer. She literally deleted herself, noping the fuck out, in my dream lol

You know a game has it's hooks in you when you dream about it

That's some Doki Doki Literature Club level stuff there.

Folks that're through Act 2, how'd you deal with the big demon fight down by Shar's trials? I'm just getting whomped.

Divine Smite + Killer's Sweetheart ring + Surgeon's Subjugation Amulet + Invisible Menace + Haste spell + Cloud Giant elixir (but probably could have used Viciousness)

Should have read Unseen Menace (pike).

If you create a fog cloud or darkness on the area that requires the enemies to jump over, it will help with the pacing for the enemy adds. I also put an entangle down on this side so when enemies did jump over they mostly got stuck, then I had someone with boots of free moving go push them into the chasm

This was the fight that made me realize Hunger of Hadar was a sphere, not a flat circle.Don't stand directly under the floor of enemies when casting spells to make them abandon their position.

Come around the back way so they don't have high ground, hypnotic pattern the adds so you can focus on smashing the boss, dodge or throw back bombs. Enemies also love running through spirit guardians.

I talked him into getting rid of all of his cronies and then killed him

Evidently you can convince all of his followers and him to kill themselves. I was not able to do this and ended up in a huge fight. All 3 of the girl squad companions went down and it was just my Sorc trying to take them all out. l somehow managed to do this after like 10 turns of combat with almost no spell slots left thanks to a liberal use of scrolls. It's super important to take the hoarding guy out or he just continues to heal up the rest of them.

Co-op game: Meatshielded it.Personal game: Realized that you can throw the damn bombs back and clear a ton of them at once

Had 'See invisibility' on when wandering and found him and cronies waiting to ambush. If you're able to engage on the same level, and not get ambushed on the lower level, you can try and alpha strike the demon then deal with the adds afterwards o]

First playthrough I convinced the displacer beast to help me but it was still hard. Half the party stood upstairs. Balthazar's brother helped out too.]o. 2nd time I had him kill all his friends, but failed to get him to kill himself. Then dogpiled him and killed him in 2 rounds

Throw all his bombs back at him and his cronies. They should be all nice and grouped up for you. The object is to keep him from getting stealthed and 1 tapping your party members. My priority was Yurgir, the displacer beast and then clean up.Even from the side entrance to the room that is still the hardest fight in the game for me. Died a lot before I got it. Super hard on tactician for sure.

Tell the demon to kill himself

Haha I did this as a Bard having maxed out my Charisma. I couldn't stop laughing.

I cheesed this. If you just grab the thing in the room and then immediately hit the map button and fast travel anywhere else you can get out before everyone goes aggroIt's was bizzare but it works

I talked my way out of it

I'm right at the end of Act 2 but it kept crashing on me a couple turns in the big fight that I'm on so I gave up and started a Dark Urge playthrough. Hoping the patch today helps things and I can power through Act 3 before Starfield next week

Are you using Vulkan? Everytime I crashed in a fight, I switched to dx11 for the fight. Worse performance, but doesn't crash.

I want to say I'm on DX11 but I'll have to check after work. I used the skip launcher instruction on Steam so I haven't had to pick since like the third time I launched the game

I just got to Act 3 Lower City; going to hold off until the next patch before I finish Act 3.

Patch 2 came out today that added some stuff.https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1086940/view/3656414378543586471

thanks! will probably wait just a bit more for the additional character epilogues to get added.

the patch came out this morning. i am sure there will be more patches but this is the one they had announced

Ok, how do I know when I'm ready to leave act 1? I'm also curious about which way I should take. I think I've done all the quests I can do here, and stuff is posting me towards the next act.If I list it out, I saved the druids and tieflings, killed ALL the goblins, killed the hag, met the githynaki, did the burning inn, fought the harpies, and fucked up the smuggler quest (read the note after looting, because who has time to READ y'all). Then I went to the under dark and I sided with the mushroom people, I fucked up the dark dwarves, murdered the fuck out of Nere (HOLD PERSON MOTHERFUUUUUCKER while I usurp your crew and slaughter the slackers), saved the gnomes, did the forge thing, saved the lost stuck mushroom hunter, and explored the moon goddess castle thing, found the arcane tower, and who knows what else?So I think I need to move on? Did I miss something? Then I have to pick a path.

You said you met githyanki, but did you meet them at a bridge or a temple?

I met them at the bridge, I lied my way out of a fight, and now the quest icon points me to the mountain pass I think?

The mountain pass doesn't go straight to Act 2. There's a notable area in the pass you should check out before looking for the Tower.

You can also go back to this area during Act 2 without any problem, so if you don't do it now nothing is stopping you from doing it until you leave for Act 3 (which is another telegraphed point of no return)

Wait, so I can return to this starting area? When I click on the next section of the under dark or the mountain pass, I get a pop up that seems to be indicating I can't come back.

You cannot.

Oh, but I can return to the mountain pass from whatever is next, up until a point?

After you beat the Tower, you cannot go back to the starting zone, the Underdark, or the Mountain Pass.

He hasn't started Act 2 yet, so you're confusing the point of no return at the end of Act 2 with the one at the end of Act 1, which isn't really a point of no return at all. The game warns you that you are moving to a new area, but you can go back to Act 1 areas as much as you want UNTIL you finish Act 2 and progress to Act 3.

Ok, so I'm in the starting area, and I can move out (and come back) if I want, it's just a matter of where I go, right?

Yep, you can come back to act 1 areas at any time until the very end of act 2.

Excellent! Thanks.

Yes, if you have cleared all of the starting are and the under dark you I’d say go to the mountain pass next, once you finish that you can move to the next area to start act 2 but once in act 2 I know you can go back to the mountain pass and other areas in act 1 also. Once you get to act 3 though I don’t think you can go back:

So intersting! Ok, thanks. The pop up really threw me for a loop.

Yeah it’s a bit misleading for that transition, going back to act 1 from 2 is more manual that just fast traveling but I remember doing it because I was dumb and had sold something I didn’t know I would possibly need but I got lucky and found the vendor I had sold it to and was able to buy it back.

Oh shit, that sort of thing haunts me! Glad you fixed it.

I recommend going to the Mountain Pass before the Tower because you can get a pretty good item at the end of it for the entire Tower area.

I think the Tower he referred to was the Arcane Tower in the Underdark, not Moonrise

Based on the information you've learnt so far, what does your character think they need to do to get the parasite out? Do that.

Good metric, but those quests have been telling me to leave the area for a while; I've been mopping up other stuff for a bit.

Did you talk to the other sovereign mushroom there?

Yes, and I 100% used the powerful raise red, but mushroom skill to fuck things up, and then totally didn't get on that dude's murder my friends plan so he got got.

The mountain pass is still part of act 1 so I'd probably do that next.

Super helpful! Thanks. I wish that was more clear; I got a cutscene that strongly indicated otherwise to me.

BG3 preload just hit PS5.108.8 gbI think it includes Patch 1 & 2