Baldur's Gate III News
- Thread starter Antimatter
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Zaxares
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There's one mod I use for Scratch called "Scratch and Shovel" and it basically beefs up/rebalances the special summons (Scratch, Shovel, Us and Boo) so they're more resilient and capable in combat, allowing them to be viable summons all the way till endgame.
It's not on the official mods list so far, and I'm not sure if the mod author intends to port it over, but it's something you might like to keep an eye out for.
Black Elk
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Checking back today I saw that there was one called Scratch Overhaul! hehe
I decided that Glinda Hamilton and Barnold were going to need that one for sure!
No F8 but what we make! lol
I'm also trying the Adjustable Party Limit and these...
Seems pretty cool so far! Visable shields might be hit or miss, I kinda wish I could just adjust that with the U key, but it's still alright.
The Faerun Colors dyes I found right away, and went Mask black, cause of course hehe.
I also chose the mod that removed the Helmets from the Animal companions and a few others that seemed intriguing for a Ranger run.
It's funny how the game just instantly feels way more like a Baldur's Gate game with additional party members.
I chose party of 6, we haven't gotten to Wyll yet so still just 5 for now, but as soon as Lae'zel showed up without having to send someone else back to camp I felt instantly at home.
I think the move is to toggle the passive in Common, bring everyone on board, and then you can turn the passive off so the spell icons won't take up too much real estate in the action hotbar. I was about to download the "Better UI" mod, but the 16:9 thing gave me pause, since my laptop is 16:10. It might have worked, but I didn't want to risk Judgement day if somehow it janked up the video settings. It's a little hard to get the specs on the mods, unlike Nexus the descriptions are much briefer and you kinda gotta go by the images provided. Still, feels more convenient than the other stuff I was trying earlier or back in EA. Hopefully more stuff gets added, but this seemed enough to get the ball rolling. I'm trying for honours with 6 just to see how it plays. Fingers crossed, but so far so good!
I decided that Glinda Hamilton and Barnold were going to need that one for sure!
No F8 but what we make! lol
I'm also trying the Adjustable Party Limit and these...
Seems pretty cool so far! Visable shields might be hit or miss, I kinda wish I could just adjust that with the U key, but it's still alright.
The Faerun Colors dyes I found right away, and went Mask black, cause of course hehe.
I also chose the mod that removed the Helmets from the Animal companions and a few others that seemed intriguing for a Ranger run.
It's funny how the game just instantly feels way more like a Baldur's Gate game with additional party members.
I chose party of 6, we haven't gotten to Wyll yet so still just 5 for now, but as soon as Lae'zel showed up without having to send someone else back to camp I felt instantly at home.
I think the move is to toggle the passive in Common, bring everyone on board, and then you can turn the passive off so the spell icons won't take up too much real estate in the action hotbar. I was about to download the "Better UI" mod, but the 16:9 thing gave me pause, since my laptop is 16:10. It might have worked, but I didn't want to risk Judgement day if somehow it janked up the video settings. It's a little hard to get the specs on the mods, unlike Nexus the descriptions are much briefer and you kinda gotta go by the images provided. Still, feels more convenient than the other stuff I was trying earlier or back in EA. Hopefully more stuff gets added, but this seemed enough to get the ball rolling. I'm trying for honours with 6 just to see how it plays. Fingers crossed, but so far so good!
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Black Elk
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I ended up going back and grabbing all the 'Better' such and such mods.
The Adjustable Party Limit mod has a feature to allow it to be installed/uninstalled to an existing save, but some of the other stuff like the ones that change the UI need a new save. I got them pretty much all to work (the mods that all have that same font with 'Better' in the titles) figuring that they'd play well together.
The only one that didn't quite carry was the Better sidebar extender for the portraits on the far left. For some reason that one would push the bottom group/group hide menu on the left to overlap with the Class circle on the hotbar at the bottomleft. Maybe cause my screen is 16:10 instead of 16:9/UW, or perhaps just cause that one allows for the larger party like 8 or something for the crowding without having to scroll. Not sure. I could still click the icons and the like, so it was functional, but I didn't like the look of a tangent/overlap clip there for the main hotbar, so I just disabled that one. Otherwise the Better UI stuff all seemed to work and looked pretty slick. The Better topbar one gives more information and the context menu/inventory one felt pretty intuitive. Better dying worked fine with the Faerun colors too, so I think all those mods work well. The extended containers one from my first attempt didn't seem to work, (never saw those containers in my inventory) so I ditched that one. I also wanted to try the Hidden Scrolls mod that I saw, but it seemed to get stuck on the update while I was trying to enable it, so I left that one aside as well. Kept with the visible shields for now. Got Scratch up in the mix and a Squirrel, to go with our old Crows. The Ring of changing into a Cat is convenient, I need to remember to buy that one again from Arron, since it allows us to explore those cracks and drainpipe type transitions hehe. Anyhow, you can see below how the ImpUI/Better hotbar compares to the vanilla vscreen in the post above. A fair bit more room...
About to roll up on the Blighted Village, just looking so hard right now lol
The black dyes are pretty boss!
ps. the more I poke around with it the more frustrated I am that Larian didn't adopt some of this stuff and incorporate it into the base game. For me just having the party of 6 makes for a superior D&D campaign in every single way. The pacing and gameflow just feels way better as a result. Every argument in EA about how adding more party members would somehow make the combats take longer, or that it would make the game too easy, or that it would be too much to manage, all instantly defeated by seeing how it actually plays with a larger party. Everything is just smoother, the economy feels tighter, the division of the kit, the sense of an actual party dynamic, all better with 6 characters. The only thing that undermines it is the arbitrary limit of 4 imposed on the long rest cutscenes, or those special area transitions that bork out if bringing more than 4. The mod prevents this by removing the "choose camp supplies" or transition options until characters have been dismissed back down to 4, but seems like that could easily have been a launch setting, along with split XP and other things that would be immediately familiar to returning BG players. The party comp advantage of having 5 or 6 characters over 4 is massive, even without increasing the total number of recruitable companions, although I'd love to have seen more of those too. The pathing and formations aren't great, but it sorta works. Like I care less if someone sets off a trap or whatever, when there are a couple more peeps in the group. Exploration is maybe slightly more tedious on account of that, but combat to me feels more enjoyable with the party up to bat more often. Having to dismiss companions to long rest, while also somewhat tedious, casually reinforces the idea of trying to push the long rest a bit. Similar to goodberries the sink is just sorta click tedium and delay of game, but it works without being too heavy handed. With 6 people in the party, it's just mechanically way easier to power through to the next encounter, as opposed to going in 4 all buffs and summons to the hilt with hella potions sleeping constantly, with 6 things are bit more spread out. Like obviously it should have been 6 right? BG game and all! hehe
Just the option to have a few more pets and such along for the ride is going a real long way for me right now. 'Twisting the knife' with that Alfira recruitment in the Dark Urge campaign seems pretty pointless though, like it's a complete tease. You get to bring her into the party and level her, but we can't leave camp and get into any trouble? I re-assigned all her skillpoints to max out "Survival" but to no avail lol. Just shatter my heart before we start why don't you! hehe
Shield riggings sometimes have a life of their own when worn on the back lol. Mostly it holds up pretty well, like I didn't notice too much. But the problem is that you don't get to see many shields models until pretty far along and some are just a bit large I think. I'm considering starting over to remove that one honestly. It's a little inconvenient in that it's one of those mods that can't be easily disabled once you start a new save, so I'd have to start over basically. Game really needs a mod to Hide Shield or Hide cape, or a toggle switch similar to the torch and then it'd probably be ok, but for now it just sorta obstructs too much of the avatar I think. Doesn't look too bad on the humans and elves, but on a Gnome not so much.
Ladders are still a chore same was with 4 really, but we usually go pretty light, with just a couple summons to explore. Maybe the Crow, instead of the whole animal army at once, and that helps a bit. Still has some issues on the jumps and the ladders, but overall fairly manageable with upside of more banter and smoother encounters. I prefer it this way for sure with 6 and the critters, feels faster and more exciting to me.
Anyhow, I just don't see why they wouldn't have leaned into it more with the extra companions. The vanilla hirelings system is so weak sauce. I'd have taken another Bard from the existing roster of characters any day of the week! Viconia and a couple Goblins to pad it out. Sign me up!
Also just the little cosmetic things like being able to choose outfit colors, or tweak our portraits - that stuff is so massive for me in a cRPG. Not that I would make Black on Black Dyes available immediately like this - I think it's too front loaded and removes the sense of aesthetic progression to have everything available right from the start. I probably would have restricted some of these cooler looking dyes to non-enchanted armors and then had the more expensive stuff come online later. Like they had everything in place for that, with the Facemakers in Act III, but that's the difference between leaving it for the Mods to kill and building the whole game around the idea. Still right now I'd say the FaerunColors Dyes are basically the same thing as Major/Minor colors in BG1, so I'll take it. But you know what I mean right? Like why not just do it that way from the getgo? Who could say I guess. Better late than never on some of this stuff, but even with a million people downloading mods over the weekend, it's hard to imagine the typical player going all ham with some of that stuff. At least not until they've played the regular game already for several hundred hours probably.
I think they could have gotten ahead of it a bit more, or starting the process a lot earlier, so the whole modding scene could have peaked a bit sooner. I'm pretty happy that it exists now, don't get me wrong, but I can just picture how it might really take off with more support. I guess I still just really want NWN 3 for some of this stuff. Go figure!
But yeah, Lae'zel looks fantastic in Mask black!
The Adjustable Party Limit mod has a feature to allow it to be installed/uninstalled to an existing save, but some of the other stuff like the ones that change the UI need a new save. I got them pretty much all to work (the mods that all have that same font with 'Better' in the titles) figuring that they'd play well together.
The only one that didn't quite carry was the Better sidebar extender for the portraits on the far left. For some reason that one would push the bottom group/group hide menu on the left to overlap with the Class circle on the hotbar at the bottomleft. Maybe cause my screen is 16:10 instead of 16:9/UW, or perhaps just cause that one allows for the larger party like 8 or something for the crowding without having to scroll. Not sure. I could still click the icons and the like, so it was functional, but I didn't like the look of a tangent/overlap clip there for the main hotbar, so I just disabled that one. Otherwise the Better UI stuff all seemed to work and looked pretty slick. The Better topbar one gives more information and the context menu/inventory one felt pretty intuitive. Better dying worked fine with the Faerun colors too, so I think all those mods work well. The extended containers one from my first attempt didn't seem to work, (never saw those containers in my inventory) so I ditched that one. I also wanted to try the Hidden Scrolls mod that I saw, but it seemed to get stuck on the update while I was trying to enable it, so I left that one aside as well. Kept with the visible shields for now. Got Scratch up in the mix and a Squirrel, to go with our old Crows. The Ring of changing into a Cat is convenient, I need to remember to buy that one again from Arron, since it allows us to explore those cracks and drainpipe type transitions hehe. Anyhow, you can see below how the ImpUI/Better hotbar compares to the vanilla vscreen in the post above. A fair bit more room...
About to roll up on the Blighted Village, just looking so hard right now lol
The black dyes are pretty boss!
ps. the more I poke around with it the more frustrated I am that Larian didn't adopt some of this stuff and incorporate it into the base game. For me just having the party of 6 makes for a superior D&D campaign in every single way. The pacing and gameflow just feels way better as a result. Every argument in EA about how adding more party members would somehow make the combats take longer, or that it would make the game too easy, or that it would be too much to manage, all instantly defeated by seeing how it actually plays with a larger party. Everything is just smoother, the economy feels tighter, the division of the kit, the sense of an actual party dynamic, all better with 6 characters. The only thing that undermines it is the arbitrary limit of 4 imposed on the long rest cutscenes, or those special area transitions that bork out if bringing more than 4. The mod prevents this by removing the "choose camp supplies" or transition options until characters have been dismissed back down to 4, but seems like that could easily have been a launch setting, along with split XP and other things that would be immediately familiar to returning BG players. The party comp advantage of having 5 or 6 characters over 4 is massive, even without increasing the total number of recruitable companions, although I'd love to have seen more of those too. The pathing and formations aren't great, but it sorta works. Like I care less if someone sets off a trap or whatever, when there are a couple more peeps in the group. Exploration is maybe slightly more tedious on account of that, but combat to me feels more enjoyable with the party up to bat more often. Having to dismiss companions to long rest, while also somewhat tedious, casually reinforces the idea of trying to push the long rest a bit. Similar to goodberries the sink is just sorta click tedium and delay of game, but it works without being too heavy handed. With 6 people in the party, it's just mechanically way easier to power through to the next encounter, as opposed to going in 4 all buffs and summons to the hilt with hella potions sleeping constantly, with 6 things are bit more spread out. Like obviously it should have been 6 right? BG game and all! hehe
Just the option to have a few more pets and such along for the ride is going a real long way for me right now. 'Twisting the knife' with that Alfira recruitment in the Dark Urge campaign seems pretty pointless though, like it's a complete tease. You get to bring her into the party and level her, but we can't leave camp and get into any trouble? I re-assigned all her skillpoints to max out "Survival" but to no avail lol. Just shatter my heart before we start why don't you! hehe
Shield riggings sometimes have a life of their own when worn on the back lol. Mostly it holds up pretty well, like I didn't notice too much. But the problem is that you don't get to see many shields models until pretty far along and some are just a bit large I think. I'm considering starting over to remove that one honestly. It's a little inconvenient in that it's one of those mods that can't be easily disabled once you start a new save, so I'd have to start over basically. Game really needs a mod to Hide Shield or Hide cape, or a toggle switch similar to the torch and then it'd probably be ok, but for now it just sorta obstructs too much of the avatar I think. Doesn't look too bad on the humans and elves, but on a Gnome not so much.
Ladders are still a chore same was with 4 really, but we usually go pretty light, with just a couple summons to explore. Maybe the Crow, instead of the whole animal army at once, and that helps a bit. Still has some issues on the jumps and the ladders, but overall fairly manageable with upside of more banter and smoother encounters. I prefer it this way for sure with 6 and the critters, feels faster and more exciting to me.
Anyhow, I just don't see why they wouldn't have leaned into it more with the extra companions. The vanilla hirelings system is so weak sauce. I'd have taken another Bard from the existing roster of characters any day of the week! Viconia and a couple Goblins to pad it out. Sign me up!
Also just the little cosmetic things like being able to choose outfit colors, or tweak our portraits - that stuff is so massive for me in a cRPG. Not that I would make Black on Black Dyes available immediately like this - I think it's too front loaded and removes the sense of aesthetic progression to have everything available right from the start. I probably would have restricted some of these cooler looking dyes to non-enchanted armors and then had the more expensive stuff come online later. Like they had everything in place for that, with the Facemakers in Act III, but that's the difference between leaving it for the Mods to kill and building the whole game around the idea. Still right now I'd say the FaerunColors Dyes are basically the same thing as Major/Minor colors in BG1, so I'll take it. But you know what I mean right? Like why not just do it that way from the getgo? Who could say I guess. Better late than never on some of this stuff, but even with a million people downloading mods over the weekend, it's hard to imagine the typical player going all ham with some of that stuff. At least not until they've played the regular game already for several hundred hours probably.
I think they could have gotten ahead of it a bit more, or starting the process a lot earlier, so the whole modding scene could have peaked a bit sooner. I'm pretty happy that it exists now, don't get me wrong, but I can just picture how it might really take off with more support. I guess I still just really want NWN 3 for some of this stuff. Go figure!
But yeah, Lae'zel looks fantastic in Mask black!
Last edited:
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"It's not 100% clear why Larian didn't include these features in the toolkit to begin with, but it may be a case of protecting certain copyrighted assets being scraped easily from the game, or from being altered in a way that is unpleasing to DnD's intellectual property overlords."
So maybe the question was not only about adding MTX to a future game, but even about modding.
This is massive though, for the whole longevity of BG3.
www.rockpapershotgun.com
So maybe the question was not only about adding MTX to a future game, but even about modding.
This is massive though, for the whole longevity of BG3.
Baldur's Gate 3 level editor is cracked open by modders, bringing homebrew campaigns one step closer
A modder has cracked open some disabled abilities in the official modding toolkit for Baldur's Gate 3, making it possible for modders to create new levels.
Zaxares
Habitué
- Messages
- 68
There's even been early talk of modders unearthing data/files for planned areas like the Upper City section in Act 3, some areas that were cut from Act 2 etc. that could potentially be brought back into the game via large modding projects."It's not 100% clear why Larian didn't include these features in the toolkit to begin with, but it may be a case of protecting certain copyrighted assets being scraped easily from the game, or from being altered in a way that is unpleasing to DnD's intellectual property overlords."
So maybe the question was not only about adding MTX to a future game, but even about modding.
This is massive though, for the whole longevity of BG3.
Baldur's Gate 3 level editor is cracked open by modders, bringing homebrew campaigns one step closer
A modder has cracked open some disabled abilities in the official modding toolkit for Baldur's Gate 3, making it possible for modders to create new levels.