After a series of quick hotfixes, Larian Studios has finally released the first proper Baldur’s Gate 3 patch.
Baldur’s Gate 3 patch #1 weighs around 2.18GB and includes over a thousand bug fixes, not to mention many balancing and flow improvements. Here’s a highlight of the balance tweaks:
- Made gold bounties more generous in several containers across the game.
- Increased players’ HP bonus in Explorer Mode from +50% to +100%.
- Fixed the Freecast tadpole power to properly reset on Long Rest. It was creating infinite spell slots and Sorcery Points for sorcerers.
- Arcane Tricksters’ Mage Hand Legerdemain now does not expire until destroyed, and does not lose Invisibility on Long Rest.
- You can no longer have multiple Mage Hands active at the same time.
- The Shield reaction can no longer be used while Silenced.
- Fixed not being able to create 5th-level spell slots from Sorcery Points.
- College of Lore bards can now pick which additional skill proficiency they receive. Bards already of the College of Lore need to respec to get this choice.
- Made sure proper spell DC is applied during multiclassing.
- Added spells to bards’ Magical Secrets feature: Banishing Smite, Animate Dead, Crusader’s Mantle, Hunger of Hadar, Revivify, Sleet Storm, Rage of Enfeeblement, Web, Entangle, Hunter’s Mark, Sanctuary, Thunderous Smite, Bone Chill, Eldritch Morphic Blast, Fire Bolt, Ray of Frost, Sacred Flame.
- The Club of Hill Giant Strength now increases Strength to 19 and not some puny 15.
- Fixed a bug with ranged enemies reapplying Hunter’s Mark constantly, even when not needed.
- Warlocks’ Pact of the Chain summons now get to use their Extra Attack more than once.
- Fixed NPCs sometimes spotting you even if they’re not supposed to be able to.
- Fixed an issue where multiple rolls trigger if you walk along the edge of a cone of vision.
- Danse Macabre ghouls will no longer kill you when you Long Rest.
- If you make a successful Saving Throw against a poison, you will now gain immunity to that specific poison for 2 turns.
- Grym now deals more damage in Tactician Mode.
- Meenlocks are now immune to the shadow curse.
- Helped Minthara remember how to use her weapons.
- Enabled trespass warnings for any additional characters that trespass after the first instead of immediately triggering combat.
- Fixed NPCs attacking outside of their turn when combat starts during forced Turn-Based Mode.
Some of the bug fixes delivered by Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch #1 include NPCs now being unable to spot you when they really shouldn’t be able to, floating items now abiding by the laws of gravity, and the conclusion to Shadowheart’s romance scene now properly triggering for everyone. Moreover, kissing contact in cutscenes has been improved for short races.
Even more interesting is that Larian says Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch #2 is ‘around the corner’ and will feature ‘significant’ performance improvements. It would be especially welcome if they tackle the CPU optimization or lack thereof that is most noticeable during Act 3. Meanwhile, Larian shared some updated player engagement figures. Users have played over 200 million hours of the game since launch, translating to around 22K years.
In other Baldur’s Gate 3 news, Larian CEO Swen Vincke announced a few hours ago that the game will ship to Xbox Series S and X this year thanks to Microsoft’s concession to remove the split-screen co-op feature from the Series S version.
