While cRPGs often grant players huge amounts of freedom to tackle main objectives any way they want, Baldur's Gate 3 brings everything up a notch, giving players almost complete freedom right from the very start of the campaign.
With so many possibilities, however, some players may feel overwhelmed by the game, especially if they are not D&D hardcore fans and have never played a similar game before. If you are among these players who are struggling to understand the basics of the Baldur's Gate 3 experience, you have journeyed to the right place, as the following tips will help you understand the game better and enjoy it more right from the start of your adventure to prevent yourself from turning into a mind flayer, or worse.
Take Your Time During Character Creation
Baldur's Gate 3 features a deep character creation system that allows you to customize pretty much every aspect of your character, from appearance to race, class, background, attributes, and more. Generally speaking, there are no truly bad combinations, so you can probably beat the game at Explorer and Balanced difficulty with any character, but if you want to make the best out of them, you will want to go for certain races and class combinations, so as to get the class' primary Ability Score to 16 to unlock bonuses such as +1 to Attack Rolls and so on without being forced to create an unbalanced character. Being able to do so requires a little bit of D&D knowledge, so make sure to take your time when creating your character to research the best possible combinations and have an easier time during the early game.
Form a Balanced Party
Despite Baldur's Gate 3 not being extremely challenging, at least at Balanced difficulty, more often than not, you will find yourself at a disadvantage when fighting enemies, as you will have to deal with multiple enemies with just your four characters. As such, you will want to form a balanced party, with an attacker/tank who can take more than a few hits and retaliate in kind, a supporting character who can heal and buff other party members, such as a Cleric, and long-range attackers who can take advantage of higher ground to attack enemies while staying out of harm's way. Depending on your companions and how you have customized them, you can make it out alive from most fights with any party combination, so experiment as much as you can to find out what works best for you.
Abuse Quicksave
Baldur's Gate 3 features an extremely dynamic world where anything can happen at any time. You may be strolling through a peaceful forest and get attacked all of a sudden by a fearsome creature, or you may be walking around a village minding your own business and then get forced into an interaction that may result in a battle. As such, it is always a very good idea to save as much as possible by using the Quicksave option, which is easy to access with both keyboard and mouse controls and a controller. Quicksave can also be used during battles and conversations, so if you're unsure a bold strategy will pay off, you can reload a previous save to change your approach in case something goes wrong. It's not the most natural way to play the game, for sure, but it works quite well and comes with no penalties, so there's no real reason to err on the side of caution and save as often as possible.
Explore, Explore, and then Explore Some More
The world of Baldur's Gate 3 is filled with items to collect, and you should definitely pick up every item you can see lying around or highlighted by pressing the alt key or the right stick on your controller (unless you are stealing from someone). While most of the items you will find around aren't particularly useful, many of them are, such as scrolls, food items that can be used to restore your part during Long Rests, weapons, throwable items, and more. Worst case, you can simply sell the items you do not need to merchants to get some extra gold, which is always useful to have. Best case, you will have found a rare weapon or gear that could carry you through the toughest battles.
Think Outside the Box
Often during your time in Baldur's Gate 3, you will think that violence is a decent enough answer to your troubles, but that is hardly the case. Despite not being exactly an open-world sandbox experience, the game allows players to clear quest objectives in any way they like, and thinking outside the box and experimenting is always the way to go to make some fun discoveries.
During the early game, for example, you have to infiltrate a goblin camp and kill its three leaders to save the Druid's Grove from them. While going in the camp spells-blazing sounds fun, it will pit you against the entire camp, making it difficult to reach the three leaders and kill them. If you try to be friendly with the goblins and use your party's skills to avoid conflict, however, you can reach the three leaders without having to fight an entire army of angry goblins and study some creative ways to get rid of them. Pro-tip: try shoving Dror Ragzlin while he is sitting on his throne.
Baldur's Gate 3 is chockfull of similar situations, so don't be afraid to experiment. Use Quicksave to avoid losing too much progress as often as you can, and have fun playing with an incredibly dynamic world that wants you to find unique answers to the many questions it poses!
WccftechContinue reading/original-link]
