Topic: Baldur's Gate 3

@CJD87 I think it's maybe about the same, possibly slightly shorter, depending. But as you advance both act 2 and 3 can be longer or shorter depending on whether you are mainlining the story or doing everything, or based on how you approach the main area of interest in act 2 (I hung around there for a while as it is strongly hinted at that you don't need to just go and kill stuff. Plus I discovered a bunch of stuff just by exploring) There is also a much more legit point of no return screen in act 2, but you will know when you get there, and it is much further down the line, so just trust the pop up and do everything available in your journal and uncover all the map just to be sure before clicking advance.

Finished! 😁

Phew. What a great experience. Took me longer than Elden Ring, or the Witcher 3 + its DLC's, but I never once fell off it, or lost interest, which is a testament to great games.

I don't know how it only cost like £50, or less with vouchers and PSstars, for months and months of entertainment. Tremendous value 👏

And the music is still playing, the credits still rolling now as the PS5 wants to enter rest mode 😁

To any of the others that finished long before me, care to put in spoilers how your end game went? And did you do the epilogue they added?

Me and @CJD87 in this thread;

This evening I managed to finish of the Githyanki creche section which escalated pretty quickly.

@Thrillho Ha!

I'm currently causing chaos in Grymforge, and actually failing a few dice rolls.... my intent is really to try to avoid 'bloodshed', but these dodgy rolls are leading to all-out massacre!
Once GF is sorted, I'm off to the creche! Looking forward to that as Lae-Zel is a permanent fixture in my party, and keen to see how her quest plays out.

On a side note, I know we all love Astarion (and rightly so).... but over the course of the last 30ish hours I have really begun to appreciate Gale! Genuinely very well written, and a pretty solid character. Far from the 'goody two shoes' I had him pegged as, he proves to be a great addition to my team in terms of skillset and personality.

Potential spoiler - has anyone with Gale in their party seen what happens when he dies?? Very interesting!

I feel I’ve made pretty good progress on this, despite a few days away from it over Crimbo.

I finally finished up in Grymforge. Found the forge itself and defeated the boss without using the hammer (actually not too difficult).

Struggled with the fight against the slavers and Nere so restarted and took the smaller enemies down before blowing up the rocks. Buddied up to Nere after releasing him before surrounding and killing him before he could enter combat.

Have been wandering the shadowlands for a while and been to the Inn. Managed to complete that fight successfully and continuing to explore that whole area now.

And recent things I’ve learnt;

1) You can summon Scratch. Use his ball from the inventory and he appears. The option to do so again will then be on your action wheel.

2) You can fill pouches with explosives, throw them, and fireball them for big damage.

3) Throwing potions revives allies without having to run right up to them.

@Thrillho congratulations, you are now in what I'd call actual proper act 2, nice change of scenery, isn't it? 😁😁 my only tip, listen to what people at the Inn actually said. I know I did, but I also know of other people that went to a certain place and decided it was time to fight everyone right away, before actually doing the entirety of act 2 first lol. It's cool that the game allows it, but there is so much content to take in in the shadow cursed lands, all of its locales and the tower itself before just running in and fighting. For me it was a chapter of undercover work 🧐

@Ravix Yeah, when I left the inn I met the group who were like “let’s get going and end this madness!” while my gang were more “sorry, there are unopened chests out there that need to be found first”.

@Thrillho it's quite an Elden Ring/FromSoft chapter in a way. I found so much out about the history of what heck was actually happening, who all these mysterious deities that we hear about are, and various other things just through exploration and noseyness, reading notes, and chatting to some strange relatives of a certain someone at various points 🤣🤣 snooping at moonrise etc, it is very satisfying in that way.

Let us know when you've met some of the shadow cursed lands more intriguing characters 😁😁

@Ravix I cleared all of the areas I could get to with the basic blessing and have progressed to go deeper into the shadows.

And I met the toll collector who I managed to convince I was there to replace them because they’d got a promotion and they just died instantly instead of having to fight them.

I love reading on Reddit how other people have approached things and how wildly different things can go.

Preordered the physical version for PS5. Sadly, I didn't soon enough to get the first wave, but preordered for the second wave coming in the spring.

I've only just found out (after almost 90 hours) that if you hold left on the d-pad it switches your weapon from ranged to melee without using an action. So useful for those opportunity attacks.

@ApostateMage I don't think you ever need to manually switch between the two do you? You just select which attack you want in the wheel. I'm trying to work out in which situation either is not available anyway, and I can't 😅😅 like, if I have used my crossbow last (and it's on my back) I can still choose to do a melee attack on the wheel and vice versa.

What am I missing? 😬

@Thrillho gold? Me? Gold?! Goooooold?!

@Ravix There's been times where I've used a crossbow as a last action and couldn't select a melee weapon again because it was greyed out on the wheel. It was frustrating when an enemy came within melee range and I missed an Opportunity Attack because I still had my crossbow equipped. Holding the d-pad left just switches weapons without using an action or bonus action.

@ApostateMage glad it works for you, though I still can't imagine it 😆 I guess i'll chalk it up as something that never happened for me and my build. Is it only for opportunity attacks that spend a reaction? As I usually used my reactions to grant a bonus attack and/or for shield bash based stuff, so it might just never pop up the way I had mine built as my reactions would get spent most rounds anyway.

I can imagine it being quite an issue if your sentinel was trying to react with a bow from 2 yards though 😂 I never had my front liners bother with ranged weapons, Karlach especially would just throw heavy things like warhammers at people's heads for ranged attacks 😁😁 and later on a magical trident that came back after every throw that also exploded with AOE damage for hitting groups. Barbaric considering throw is available as both an action and a bonus action for barbarians and can be redone more than a few times with rage 😁

@Ravix When I say Opportunity Attack, I mean an attack during the enemy's turn. If a foe moves in or out of melee range of a party character with 'Opportunity Attack' then it's basically a free hit. But they wouldn't do it with a ranged weapon equipped. I hope ya get me. 😄

@ApostateMage yeah, yeah. The ones that spend a 'reaction' so I was on the right track. But as it is also possible to spend/allocate reactions in other ways, opportunity attacks weren't as big for me, unless it was parking a sentinel in a choke point, which is a highly satisfying tactic. And like I say, all those who'd benefit from Opportunity attacks in my party didn't equip ranged weapons anyway, so the weapon switch problem never popped up for me when they reacted for Opportunity attacks.

Basically either I'd spent my reactions with cool features that gave me extra attacks or various shield retaliations (so in the same round if someone wandered past a character i'd usually have no reaction left as I'd spent it already) or they would have melee equipped anyway.

This is me realising how amazingly well I set up my party though haha we were incredibly efficient and lethal 😁

@Ravix Boss 2 in the shadow lands defeated non-lethally 😁

Made more progress and just completed the portal section with Halsin which was a pretty tough fight and needed a couple of goes to succeed at