Multi Baldur's Gate 3 Tips (Noob Cannon)

[Tommy Boy]

Total noob here, about to start a playthrough of this game for the first time. I'm looking for any type of generalized "good tips" for a new player to the series.

For context: I have never played a BG game before or D&D for that matter. Going in blind. My wife will be playing with me, but not as her own character, just with me as I play. If all goes well, maybe we will try again with her playing too (I think that's possible?) I have pretty advanced gaming understanding, but we prefer a chill experience so I'll probably be playing it on the easy setting.

That being said, any first timer tips we should know? More or less your version of a gamerant article without giving them the clicks. I'd prefer to get feedback from actual players rather than the same "top 10 things you should know before playing BG3!!!!!" articles that tell me how to enable full screen or something not useful.

 

[Quagmire]

Hmm, it's been a bit since I played. Because I am who I am, I did look up best classes, best skills and such.
At the time Magic Missile was a great spell for most of the game. Shadow heart should probably be re-speced to a different class, dont remember which one though, may want to look that up.

I also used the mod that allowed me to use more companions because 1, I wanted more dialogue, and 2 I suck at these games so even with extra party members there were tough fights later on.

I went with I think wood elf ranger which at the time (end of 2023) was really good combo

Dont multi class on a first playthrough from what I've heard

This is full of a good tips

Baldur's Gate III - Before I Play

beforeiplay.com

 

[Ben]

Let's see what I can remember...

First suggestion would probably be to just explore the zones a lot, especially after the tutorial part. Most of the available companions you can pick up are scattered around the first zone waiting for you to find/interact with them, and it's entirely possible to not manage to recruit them and lose them for the entire game. Some of these are going to be just finding where they are and navigating the dialog to persuade them to join you, but there are some followers who you've got to reach within a certain amount of time, or that you can only recruit if you follow a certain moral path. Most of the time I'd imagine you're making your own Tav (player character), but there's one option to play as the Durge which basically locks you in to an evil playthrough with a little more flavor. To speak more on the "you have limited time to recruit some people" thing, be aware that every time you rest in the game to recover HP/spells, that progresses the game time. If you're faffing around in the first zone and end up long-resting many many times, you're going to potentially progress the game world by a few days, and some shit could happen in that time.

That's perhaps the second point, that there is a very strong moral tilt to the story. Maybe there's some argument to be had over whether X course of action is evil compared to Y, but you'll get the general vibe of each potential path. Before starting to play, as with real D&D, have an idea of what you want your character to act like. If you want them to be a benevolent hero who tries to save everyone, that'll help guide your dialog path. If you want to be a chaotic villain seeking personal power over all else, that'll also help guide you. If you don't know what you want to do though and waffle back and forth, you're more likely to piss off any companions who joined you while you were being nice, before you started murdering innocents, etc.

As Quagmire said, I wouldn't worry too much about trying to dual-class on your first play through. Depending on what class you pick, it might be more min/max beneficial to do so, but you'll do better learning the mechanics of one class before trying to learn the mechanics of another. Especially with minimal D&D knowledge beforehand. For instance, one of the recommended Druid builds (at least at the time I played) suggested to take a few levels of Monk for the boosted hand-to-hand combat, but that just means you're having to learn how to use Ki on top of how to be a Druid. Druid is not a bad class to start with though, it gives you options for melee, ranged, or pet based builds and you can switch between them by respeccing at camp.

Console does have split-screen so your wife could play along. I think the most recent patch added cross-play, so you could do one on console one on PC too. Working out the controls on a controller is a little awkward at first but it becomes usable fairly quick. I'd say for me I had a lot of "I'm charging in knowing how I want to take on a battle where the wife is wholly unsure what she should be doing", but if you're both coming in without much prior experience you're less likely to have that kind of conflict.

 

[Ben]

Oh, it'd help to explain the short-rest/long-rest thing perhaps.

Short rests can be taken at any time outside of combat and recover a small amount of HP but normally no spells/abilities (there are some classes that do get spells back on a short rest.) It represents like 15 minutes of sitting down to catch your breath, and you can do it twice per day I believe.

A long rest comparatively is you bedding down at camp to get like 8 hours of sleep, fully replenishes your HP and restores all your abilities.

 

[Quagmire]

Oh, it'd help to explain the short-rest/long-rest thing perhaps.

Short rests can be taken at any time outside of combat and recover a small amount of HP but normally no spells/abilities (there are some classes that do get spells back on a short rest.) It represents like 15 minutes of sitting down to catch your breath, and you can do it twice per day I believe.

A long rest comparatively is you bedding down at camp to get like 8 hours of sleep, fully replenishes your HP and restores all your abilities.

I also remember something weird/useful about food for long rest , if I remember correctly, it doesn't have to be in inventory, just send it to camp and as long as it's in the camp inventory you're good

 

[Ben]

I also remember something weird/useful about food for long rest , if I remember correctly, it doesn't have to be in inventory, just send it to camp and as long as it's in the camp inventory you're good

This is correct, if it's in the camp inventory it'll be available to pull from. It costs I think 40 rations to long-rest, but it generally shouldn't be hard to cover that cost if you're looting all the available food, etc.

Actually the whole "send to camp" feature is your "get-out-of-encumbered-free" card. You can send anything in your inventory back to camp while out questing in the world, and it'll just dump it into a chest for you to access later on. You can do this with everything from camp rations to armor and weapons. Normally the only thing you can't send back to camp are quest items that you have to keep on your person for story reasons.

Might also pay to pick up any backpacks or satchels you find while questing. You can use those to help organize your inventory more, like dumping all your scrolls into one backpack. I don't 100% remember if they're still accessible from the item-wheel if in another bag and not in your inventory, but you can always just open the inventory during your turn to access them.

Also you can trade items between characters mid-combat, which is basically just you throwing something and it doesn't generally cost you any action to do so.

Oh... If you're truly brand-new to the D&D stuff, actions might be a bit confusing. Basically most classes can take 1 action per round during combat and 1 bonus action, while also getting to move a certain amount of feet determined by your run speed. Something like making an attack or casting a spell will count as an action, so you can normally only do one of those things per turn, you cannot normally attack with a weapon and cast a spell. Bonus actions are things like shoving an enemy or leaping, and again you can generally only do one of these things per round but you can take a bonus action on top of a regular action. You could for instance jump to the other side of a group of enemies and then attack one, or attack and then leap away.

Be careful about moving away from an enemy though, if you're within range of something and try to move away from them you'll invoke an attack of opportunity meaning they'll get to hit you even if it's not their turn in the initiative priority. Some classes have abilities that let them ignore provoking an attack of opportunity, like rogues get something where they can move away after they make an attack, but in most cases if you're within melee range you'll get socked for trying to retreat. Sometimes taking that hit might be more beneficial to you, just be aware that it'll happen. Especially if you're surrounded by multiple enemies, if you provoke an attack of opportunity by moving away, every enemy you exit range from gets to hit you, not just 1.

...I might remember some more general advice stuff later, but all this should cover the basics.

 

[Jawneh]

Long rest fairly often. During rests a lot of lore and character building is done. Normally, many of the characters give a quip about wanting to rest. You will feel very silly doing it as sometimes you long rest, do one battle, and suddenly they want to long rest again. That is simply a poke at you to let you know stuff will happen while resting.

Don't be afraid to use items. The Too-Good-To-Use Syndrome is real with this game. You will find and loot so much shit and never use it. Feel free to use most things.

Jumping is pretty damn OP. Remember to jump around to get to enemies or away from them. Really great early on when movement is still limited.

I would suggest to try avoid being a completionist on your first playthrough. Technically you need a two playthroughs to get through some choices you got to make, but there's also plenty of other things that diverge here and there. You can, of course, ignore that and just explore and do a lot of shit, but if you play somewhat conservatively in relation to content, you'll get more out of your second try. And there's would 100% still be stuff to do on your third one if you ever want more. There's so much fun little stuff in this game too.

Also just have fun. I went with the whole RPing with what my character would do instead of what I as a player wanted. It lead into some weird things happening that wouldn't have if I personally chose to do that. But hey. If you don't want to, then don't worry about it. Worked for me at least.

 

[Benzine]

I finished my honour mode run recently! Giving it a rest before I return for patch 8. I have also done a coop with my wife, and she loved the game.

How specific of suggestions did you want? Want a suggestion of a single really good class and weapon combo you can get early? Or four of them?

The feedback I gave to my friends was don't be afraid to restart the game once you get a handle on things a bit better. I got to act 2 and then worked out what I actually wanted to do then just started over. With the different dialogues and stuff it was still great.

Make sure you do all the story stuff and talk to all your companions of course.

The send to camp thing is the best advice.

Make sure you have a charismatic party lead.

If you go tadpoles then don't forget to change party members to be the face to use their charge each day... This probably won't matter if you play easy mode.

Changing entire class and builds etc is not a big deal at all. If you suddenly think of something you wanna try then just do it.

Talking to animals is fun

 

[Benzine]

Long rest fairly often. During rests a lot of lore and character building is done. Normally, many of the characters give a quip about wanting to rest. You will feel very silly doing it as sometimes you long rest, do one battle, and suddenly they want to long rest again. That is simply a poke at you to let you know stuff will happen while resting.

when i have a throwzerker, an EBing warlock, a monk, i find myself just not long rest and when you play dark urge it's kinda funny when you don't do long rests haha

 

[Quagmire]

The Too-Good-To-Use Syndrome is real with this game. You will find and loot so much shit and never use it.

 

[Quagmire]

I got to act 2 and then worked out what I actually wanted to do then just started over. With the different dialogues and stuff it was still great.

Christ, Act 1 took me like 30-40 hours probably and I know others who have taken longer.

 

[VashTheStampede]

Oh wow, I just happened to start this game yesterday out of nowhere so this thread is super cool. Thanks y'all!

 

[Quagmire]

Oh wow, I just happened to start this game yesterday out of nowhere so this thread is super cool. Thanks y'all!

Be ready for your rpg character list to extend

 

[Tommy Boy]

Thank you everyone for the feedback and advice - I'm sure I'll be posting updates of our adventures and will have questions along the way!

Another thing -- can I "fuck up" the game by accident? i.e. render the story incomplete because I did a thing wrong? I play games as a benevolent OP superhero who destroys evil, and I hate when I railroad myself into a decision I didn't want to do. I'm a save scummer by trade, so not worried about having to try something different/new approach to a scenario, but I hear that this isn't really the type of game to save scum because the narrative can branch so much, so it's not really necessary. Is that true?

 

[Tommy Boy]

Also, I noticed slight input delay with Steam Link. Are there QTEs in this game that require precision, or will I be okay with having a slight delay?

 

[Quagmire]

No qtes from what I remember and I don't think a way to screw yourself, at least I never did

 

[Ben]

No QTEs.

It's very hard to soft lock yourself in some way, the story will just work out differently. If an NPC dies, etc. you'll just end up getting a different ending.

 

[Benzine]

consider not save scumming and play the game more than once. i think the best experience is the first time around where you don't know squat and just accept whatever happens.

 

[Tommy Boy]

consider not save scumming and play the game more than once. i think the best experience is the first time around where you don't know squat and just accept whatever happens.

That's the plan for the first playthrough - we just want whatever happens to us to happen, since we have no way of knowing what else can happen yet. If wife eventually becomes uninterested, I would still likely play a couple more times just on my own, but she seems to be pretty engaged with the idea of playing with me

 

[Benzine]

how far in are you?

 

[Quagmire]

how far in are you?

 

[Benzine]

when you're teaching who do you think's having a bigger influence on who

 

[Quagmire]

when you're teaching who do you think's having a bigger influence on who

The perfect teacher pupil balance is when both learn from each other

 

[Benzine]

that explains it