2023’s Game of the Year
Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3) is one of the most popular games to come out in recent years. It has a wonderful story with compelling characters who are easy to get invested in. The game offers near endless replayability with different characters to choose from and create. There are also different classes and builds for characters. Baldur’s Gate also offers multiple different endings based on the choices the player makes. Baldur’s Gate’s world is massive, full of memorable NPCs, side quests, and unique locations to explore. The entirety of the game may seem daunting and a new player may not know where to start. That is why in this article I’ll offer some useful tips and tricks for new players looking to get into one of the 2023 Game of the Year: Baldur’s Gate 3.
Make Your Own Difficulty
Baldur’s Gate 3 excels at something that many other games struggle with. That being, its ability to be welcoming to newcomers while also being able to challenge the more experienced crowd. Baldur’s Gate does this by having 5 different difficulty levels. These levels range from easy to incredibly challenging. The different difficulty modes are: Explorer, Balanced, Tactician, Honor, and Custom. Explorer adds many things to help a newbie. Explorer increases the bonuses added to rolls. It also makes it easier to regain health and spells. Overall, Explorer just makes it much easier to purely enjoy the story and world of Baldur’s Gate 3.
Baldur’s Gate 3 also offers a Custom difficulty mode. In Custom, the player can adjust settings for their campaign to tailor their experience to whatever they’d like. There’s also a solution if the experience ever gets too easy or too difficult. The player has the option to adjust the difficulty level on the fly. So if an obstacle is too great, the game ensures the player is never trapped.
Experiment With Your Build
The first thing the player does after loading into a new campaign in Baldur’s Gate 3 is building a character. This includes selecting a race for your character as well as their class and their ability scores. This may feel intimidating for a first time player. Baldur’s Gate is a long game so there’s decent pressure put on the player to make sure they optimally build their character. Luckily, not too long after the adventure begins the player is able to find Withers. Withers has the ability to set your party member back to level 1. Afterwards, you can rebuild your reset character however you wish. You’re then able to bring back whoever you altered to the level they were originally at with your new changes intact.
This ability to easily alter your character’s stats and class on the fly is one of Baldur’s Gate 3’s greatest strengths. This ability encourages experimentation and grants the player the ability to customize any way they wish. If the player so wishes, they could spend a couple hundred gold and change their party into a full team of Barbarians. While not always optimal, there’s nothing stopping the player from playing the game however they wish.
So in case it wasn’t obvious, the first piece of advice I can give to a new Baldur’s Gate 3 player is don’t be afraid to experiment. Try a class you haven’t played before, add the characters you want to your party and alter them to be whatever you like. The game gives the player loads of freedom in how they wish to tackle the various obstacles the game throws at them, so don’t be afraid to try something new if you’re stumped with a problem facing you.
Hold Onto Your Saves
Unlike other games, saving in Baldur’s Gate 3 does not automatically overwrite a previous save. If your device has the storage to spare, it’s more than worth it to hold onto these previous saves. In Baldur’s Gate there are a large number of time sensitive side quests. These quests become unavailable to accept or complete if not handled fast enough. If the player winds up missing out on a time sensitive objective, the only way to complete said objective is to load an earlier save. While this may cost the player some time, if the objective the player missed out on was one that they cared about the extra time is a price well paid.
There are also other uses of reloading saves. Many things in Baldur’s Gate 3 are resolved via the roll of a dice. These rolls can be pivotal in determining the way the main story and the development of your party members go. In order to ensure the desired outcome, the use of reloading saves can be incredibly helpful if the rolls just didn’t happen to go in your favor. If this strategy isn’t to your liking, one of the aforementioned difficulty levels, Honor Mode, solves that problem. Honor Mode limits the player to a single save per campaign, but also adds harder bosses and if the party wipes its game over, no reload, so play at your risk. Honor Mode is a challenge mode and not made for a player’s first experience with Baldur’s Gate.
Play With Friends
One of the many things that makes Baldur’s Gate 3 a great game is the ability to play with friends. Baldur’s Gate 3 allows for 2 player split screen co-op and 4 player online co-op. Playing with friends is also one of the best ways to get good at Baldur’s Gate 3. If you have friends who know a lot about Baldur’s Gate 3, playing with them is a fast track way to learning more about the game.
While Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game that’s incredibly fun to play single player. Speaking from experience, playing Baldur’s Gate 3 with friends is some of the most fun I’ve had playing games together with friends. The feeling of playing Dungeons and Dragons with friends can’t be replicated anywhere else. However, Baldur’s Gate 3 co-op offers something that feels almost as valuable. Baldur’s Gate 3 also lets you join other players’ online lobbies as well. So it’s easy to find someone to help show you the ropes and have a good time while doing it.
Modding Has Never Been Easier
Post release, Larian has been consistently updating Baldur’s Gate 3 with new content. These patches have added loads more content to the game and at the time of writing this, the highly anticipated Patch 8 is soon to be released. This patch plans to add crossplay and more subclasses and many fans are eagerly awaiting it’s release. As a part of the most recent patch; Patch 7, Larian added a built-in Mod Manager.
This built-in Mod Manager allows you to add community made mods to your campaign. These mods can be simple things like more cosmetic options for your character or more complex additions like custom classes and races. Other mods make it easier to carry more gold and supplies on your character. There are also plenty of other quality of life mods as well like an improved UI. The dedicated community of Baldur’s Gate 3 fans have made hundreds of mods. Larian’s implementation of these mods to the game, has made it easier than ever to make your Baldur’s Gate 3 campaign as fun as you could hope.
In Conclusion
Though a very large and complex game to get into, Larian has done an amazing job at making Baldur’s Gate 3 a beginner friendly experience for people looking for a good time. There are plenty of ways to get into Baldur’s Gate with now being as good a time as any with the previously mentioned and highly anticipated Patch 8 set for release soon. Baldur’s Gate 3 is an incredibly enjoyable experience for those who are familiar with games and for those who aren’t. Baldur’s Gate 3 goes on sale regularly and you owe it to yourself to give it a shot.
