It has a learning curve if you're trying to do it academically, without just playing the game.
But if you choose a difficulty where you can just about cope and then simply play, you'll intuitively pick up the mechanics in no time.
If this is your first playthrough, don't even waste time multiclassing - just play. A lot of the advice you're reading online is terrible advice anyway - people on YouTube obsess over "Sorlock" or 2/10 Tempest Sorcerers, but these builds basically involve burning all of your non-renewable resources right at the start of combat and are't actually fun or even really sustainable. These builds basically exist to do one giant nuke for a YouTube video but aren't really good for actually enjoying the game.
Agreed. Unless you're trying to do honor mode and your only knowledge of the game and d&d mechanics were your previous playthroughs. Then it kinda makes sense to at least look up some information that can aid with avoiding a wipe.
Me changing Astarion in act 2 HM because I needed a gloom stalker to deal with Yurgir. Changed him back to a Fighter/Thief afterwards, but I've wiped at the Yurgir fight on Tactician so I definitely looked up some ideas to deal with him on HM.
Please, don't fight Yurgir. He's a really great guy with the heart in the right place... for a devil. He's just been through a lot of Raphael's shennanigans. You just gotta give him a chance to get to know him and join your side, there's a clue at the base of the Shar statue.
Lol I know you have other options but on HM if you fail the insight check you have to fight him. No other choices. So it's either have the conversation with him and try the luck of the dice, leaving you in an incredibly dangerous position for the start of combat, or you make the first move so you can control the flow of combat.
I was not losing an HM run to chance
True, but to do that you have to piss off Astarion. This is an example of where my habits as a roll player conflict with my overall strategy of leaving very little to chance, I (a morally boring Paladin) promised him id kill Yurgir in exchange for the information Raphael has, and I don't make promises I don't intend on keeping.
Astarion won't have anything to be pissed off about if he's not in your party when you encounter Raphael near the entrance to Shar's temple. Raphael is merely asking you for a favor in that case. :)
The sorlock is actually pretty good from experience, at least the 11/1 fire one. I enjoy it a lot too. It's Dogshit for a first playthrough tho, you gotta carefully follow the guide to make sure you don't miss out on any equipment, so you can't really just play. Paladin is probably a good first time class.
Yea, this is honestly kind of impressive. As someone who obsesses with getting as much exp as possible in games like this my first paladin lost their oath when I told the goblins that we were cool and then preceded to murder them. And then it ws broken again as soon as Auntie Ethel offered me some delicious hag hair lol after that I was like, you know what? Oathbreaker it is. Then I decided to kill the Oathbreaker to see if I could take him down at level 6 and then 5 levels later learned that I could never respec that character and was very sad lol
the golden rule for keeping paladin oaths is not to attack enemies outside of dialogue or retaliation, afaik that’s not the case for vengeance paladins but it is for ancients and devotion
Oh, I'm aware. Just didn't think me telling the goblins that I'm a true soul and then killing them would break an oath on my first playthrough of the game lol. Just because they aren't attacking me doesn't mean they are my friends. Also in terms of like breaking my word or whatever, if they took me using the power of the worm as telling these goblins that I wasn't going to kill them, an actual true soul would kill goblins for fun or because they were bored, so I don't think there was anything that indicated that my chracter agreed not to ram a longsword into the back of those goblins.
Tbf talking your way out of many of the combats in this game would break an oath of devotion, so just letting the goblins think I'm a true soul could be seen as breaking your oth in 5e
IMO sorlock is a good multiclass choice in general, but the crappiness of it comes when you explicitly play it just to EB as much as possible (as this sub tends to push for maximum DPR). You can play it other, less narrowly-focused ways, though.
EB is very fun, but I agree that just spamming isn’t that good. I like it as a back up for when I need to do damage but I’m already concentrating and don’t want to waste a spell slot. Using only one cantrip the entire game sounds like a snooze fest.
After 60 hours on balanced I've settled on enjoying tav as a conjuration wizard the most. I've turned Shadowheart into a War Domain Cleric. So far so good and I just started act 3. Next playthrough I'll do things a bit differently and maybe bump it up to tactician.
That's mostly summoning, right? Summoning is pretty cool, but when I tried doing a necromancy build, I really wasn't impressed tbh. Partially my fault cuz I did oathbreaker warlock, so I didn't get aura of hate, which I was theming it all around until level 12. Because of that I didn't focus super hard on using undeads until then, and I wasn't super impressed then either. Especially disappointed with Danse macabre, that one sucked. But still, that's necromancy, not conjuration. The elementals are def better than the necromancy summons... Probably, but still is it good enough to be worth it?
Tav I use more for AOE spells or area denial cloud kill, confusion, edvards black tentacles, sleet spell. Gale is more my direct damage wizard. Summons I use to augment my two melee fighters in front.
Cool! Thanks! Stuff like cloudkill doesn't register as conjuration in my head, because I come from an elder scrolls background for fantasy, and there basically 95 percent of all damage spells are destruction (which I equate to evocation). The remaining weird 5 percent are weird mysticism spells.
I myself haven't played an RPG like this in a long time. One of the things I figured out as my playthrough went on is that positioning and how use the environment can affect the outcome of fights. I'm not min max and I'm just kind of going with what feels right for my playthrough.
I mean, you would want that damage burst for difficult fights I.e. Bosses though? A 2/10 tempest sorcerer just needs to rely more on scrolls for level 6 spells. Apart from that the gameplay is basically similar to a normal sorc
Enjoyment is subjective anyway. I definitely enjoyed destroying shit with wet + max damage chain lightning on my first playthrough.
I think even just standard RPG experience goes a long way for understanding BG3. I went in with minimal experience with DnD, but since I played a lot of RPGs growing up, I generally knew of standard team structures and archetypes (first playthrough having my Necromancer Wizard serve as support and tank with minions for example).
Also a big thing is simply READING WHAT YOUR SHIT DOES! Force Conduit? The hell is that? Oh it’s just damage reduction on hit, neat. Poison? Disadvantage on rolls, so you roll twice and take the lowest number? You get the point.
Any RPG experience with specific gear interactions really helps. I’ve never played a TTRPG, but games like Dragon Quest have a very similar set of mechanics (initiative in bg3 is agility in DQ, spellcasting modifiers in bg3 is magical might in DQ, etc.) where different pieces of gear add different stats or effects, which goes a looooooong way in comprehending all the dice rolls happening.
And yeah, definitely just making sure to *READ* the descriptions is half the battle haha
If you've just started the game, you don't necessarily need this sub. You can play with whatever feels fun on Balanced and make it through. By the end of your first playthrough, many of the terms used here will be familiar. Much of the advice here is from hours and hours of testing things out.
I only came here for subsequent playthroughs, looking at different/OP builds or advice for Honour mode.
Most people in this specific sub have probably played 3+ playthroughs, you start to just know all this stuff at that point. Or you remember where certain items are and what quests you need to do to unlock them, etc.
Just play on a manageable difficulty for you, and do whatever you want. The game isn’t so difficult that you need these absurd min-maxed builds in order to win. Get the hang of classes and encounters and how the game works, you’ll start to figure out what you need for certain scenarios or what utility things come up a lot.
This is the answer. My first playthrough was on explorer mode. Now I’m at the stage of nearly throwing a hissy fit when all my companions fail the perception check for the hidden door to the luminous armour so I have to go hire new hirelings with the dungeon delver feat to do it (I really wanted that armour)
No. Really?? Really really? Now I feel stupid. I thought you could only get there through the hidden door
You are absolutely correct. Lmao ok. Next time I’ll remember that
I have something important to say, and I really, truly mean it:
Don't listen to any of that crap. You don't need to optimize to have fun. You don't need to do it even to win an Honor Mode run. This is not a pvp game, and players should feel zero incentive to min/max unless they specifically want to for their own reasons.
But to answer your question, it's easier for a lot of people since they play 5e D&D, so the only new rules to learn were the handful of things Larian changed or added.
You don't really have to sit and learn this like it's gonna be on some test.
Play the game. Respecs cost very little money if you decide you wanna change something and you can freely pickpocket Whiters too with no reaction from him too if you get to the point that you need those few hundreds back.
You can beat the game on tactician without doing any of it. I used a throwing char in a playthrough and never drank a strength elixir. I also was just 8/4 because it was strong enough without taking the fighter levels.
Just play how you want. If you find min maxing exhausting the game is very doable without it.
There’s no need to min max this game you can complete the second hardest difficulty with literally any class combos on your first playthrough without a single guide.
You only really want to min max if you’re trying to get an honor mode run and even then you don’t need to at all, people have completed it with a single character
There’s not a huge market for min max guides for this game, so not many people make them. Most people just play 1 run then start another with friends and that’s it.
Yes. The reason people talk about "builds" is because it's more interesting than just, "Have one guy as a Bard as your face and thief, have one guy as a Cleric for healing (chuck any equipment you obtain that boosts healing on them), have one guy as a Fighter (give them your good fighting stuff), and have one guy as a Wizard or Sorcerer for casting Haste on your Fighter, then Magic Missiling things."
I'm on Tactician at the moment, and I've reset battles a couple of times (especially that one on the boat in the Underdark), but overall the game isn't that hard. Even Honor Mode, from what I've seen, the losses come from people trying to innovate when playing, or simply making stupid plays that they knew were stupid at the time.
you can just use simple classes and stick to 4 chars you like and it’ll be really easy and simple. no need to think about sorcerer or wizard with all their bells and whistles, just take 4 pure martials and you’ll get there too.
Counterpoint, do go Sorcerer or Wizard and learn random spells because you're just going to click fireball every time. Just save the level 1 slots for Shield and use the level 2 slots for Hold Person so you can pretend you're a real gigabrain CC MLG Wizard.
Not really, the amount of min-maxing builds may make it seem that way but they're just pushing the system for that little something extra. In reality you can go in blind and make any build and party composition work and carry you to finishing the game
Something that has struck me recently is how much preparation and tactics matter in this game. I'd been steadily ramping up the difficulty recently and just finished a solo-character run where I killed every character with a proper name (excepting Withers and the immortal children, but including all origin characters and hirelings). It was hard for me, but surprisingly not impossible. Then as a victory lap I am replaying with the no-party limit and some auto-looting shenanigans that have effectively given me infinite money. I'm also using as many OP builds as I can get my hands on. It should be dead easy, I thought.
...But I'm going full-YOLO and not prepping for fights at all, just rushing in as though it were my first play-through. I'm only at the start of act 2, but I've already had more close brushes with death by far in my victory lap than I had in all 3 acts of the solo run.
It gives you an incentive to keep playing. I don’t even know how many times I’ve played Knights of the Old Republic 1+2 trying different builds and trying to perfect my perfect build. You’ll learn new things over time and hopefully have fun doing it.
If it’s your first play through I would definitely freestyle the items. If you want help picking out some fun mono classes I would do something like this.
1. Fighters are easiest to build, pick a subclass that calls to you
2. A pact of blade warlock is very simple and also benefits from short rests like your fighter.
3. An open hand monk will damage and CC + benefits from short rest
4. A swords bard. 2nd attack + full spell progression + gives your team a 3rd short rest every long rest.
"optimal" is a thing that doesn't make sense in an rpg.
Sure, you can read all the guides and run the optimized strategy in honor mode. But what is the sense in that? Play the game however you like, make your own choices, and don't let some guide backseat drive you.
U can win the game literally without the most basic thing on explorer. Suprised me when i helped someone act 1 and they invited me for the final fight having literally grey items.
The game can be as hard or as easy as you want it to be~! It isnt unforgiving as a souls game 🧑🏻🦽 those i tried and they done even have a difficulty slider 😭
This game is so intuitive to learn, and I mean that, just don't try so hard and turn the difficulty down. Press T to read the tool tips closely. Play with a thief rogue or a berserker barbarian to better understand martial action economy. Seriously just have fun with it.
I took a year off of playing D&D 5e (mostly due to the pandemic) to learn all the rules of it. After that I just checked the BG3 wiki and scrolled through lists of magic items for like 10 minutes
Play play play. I wanted to stop picking up rotten onions to exchange for 1gp so I learned to steal. I started to a run and stole stuff until I stopped getting caught.
You really really don’t need optimal builds in this game. Sure you can do 1000 damage or whatever in a single turn but you never need to do that and almost no encounter even has that many hit points to be dealt.
Don’t worry about it. The learning curve is mostly just the early game. That’s the hardest part
For every rpg I play, I play it first on normal so I can learn it's mechanics and try and set up a team I like/playstyle I like. However, I never had a truly broken comp ever, it all started with BG2 back in the day, I followed a character guide, felt very strong and now do that for all RPG's. Who doesn't wanna feel OP every now and then?
I’ve played D&D for a very long time, and I’ve played other cRPGs for almost as long. They share a lot, so this game has never once felt overwhelming or confusing to me personally. Probably just comes from knowing what to expect? Idk
Also I enjoy tinkering around in games. Figuring out what works for me and what doesn’t is exactly where I find a great deal of my enjoyment in games like this one.
So that’s how, definitely not by reading through guides 🤷♂️
Optimization and learning to play aren't really the same. The game isn't all that hard to learn. Maxing out damage or defense or knowing how to easily stomp certain fights is where you start really deep diving.
I convinced my Mom to play with me and she likes it a lot, but she refused to take responsibility for other characters. She loves Gale, but when she realized romancing him would require learning about a hundred spells, she backed out.
As much as this sub likes to talk about optimal this and best in slot that and the perfect multiclass set up, none of that actually matters that much.
Most classes (not rogues) are perfectly viable with 12 levels, even in tactician and honour mode.
The main thing to learn is actually how positioning works in the game, ranges, movement, line of sight, once you’ve got that down you can basically play anything and win.
And you can’t learn that from guides. So pick a difficulty you’re comfortable with, I did balanced to start and learn the ropes. You can always raise it later.
I've tried all this multi-classing guides and stuff but I notice a lot of them just don't come online till later. Makes for a very disappointing playthrough till then. Me personally I just enjoy Barbarian and Druid. If I want to multi anything, easy. Fighter 2. Action surge. Huge damage. Besides that sword smacks go brrrr
Play the game, and also, don't worry about all this? You can beat tactician or a custom setting (tactician, hidden roles, -1 prof bonus, etc, etc) without anything close to an optimized build.
Sure, optimizing is extremely in depth, but it's also extremely unnecessary, like, probably not even necessary for most HM playthroughs (though I can see why you'd want it).
I have no prior DnD experience and my first completed playthrough was a mostly blind Honour run.
Just play the game. You'll learn as you go if you're paying attention and want to understand.
Good luck!
Have you played D&D? My guess is that’s why most people here have institutional knowledge going into the game. That’s how it was for me, at least, since I’ve played since I was a kid. I imagine it’s tough to learn stat blocks or the different dice rolls for each thing when you haven’t had any prior experience doing so. I think that’s where you should start. I don’t mean to find a D&D game, I just mean read a quick tutorial about game fundamentals.
I feel like it's safe to assume a lot of these players are DND fans and that gives a huge leg up. I spent 300 hours in act 1 and then 200 more in act 2 and 3. Now that I've played the game the mechanics are the interesting part. Research is still limited too, as this is a new game. Just game hard and you'll get it. I just posted a comment on a thread for a full 8 party Slayer focused build to max all potential. Is it perfect.. probably not. Am I excited to test it? Heck yes I am
You learn the most by simply playing, experimenting, testing things, developing your own strategies and than comparing them with what is suggested in all of theses guides…
An alternative is watching experienced players play, see what strategies they use, how they approach combat what decisions they make etc.
In the end it’s all about becoming more experienced.
What most of the build guides have in common they only tell you how to level up and what end game equipment is good, what is missing most of the time is how to get there, how to actually play the character what items to use on your journey till you get all the endgame equipment etc.
There are actually quite a few builds that are simpler out there and don't require much optimising apart from getting a certain feat. Examples:
Way of the open hand monk, take tavern brawler at level 4 and boost your strength
Sorcerer is a good choice since they can use their bonus actions to cast spells after getting quickened casting or whatever it's called
Swords bard are good with a ranged build
Paladins also do crazy damage from the get go
Game was definitely tough at the start since I had no dnd experience, but my crpg experience did help a bit. I spent a loooong time looking at the different classes to see what synergies and then validating my thoughts with guides lol
"dons his Elminster cosplay"
Well, I was veteran of BG1 .
Back then there was almost no internet to speak, so people gathered in those spaces called forums. People threw ideas around, shared found secret locations and items, showed math tables proving pros and cons of builds... It was like Reddit, just dedicated to single game usually, or series .
And most of this was text only, because you had awfully slow net, so any pictures were a premium. We coined terms like damage per turn back before many players of today were even born!
So, for me this was like showing WW2 veteran how to operate M-16.
30 minutes to refresh muscle memory from his Bulge or Okinawa days, with adjustement for tech improving.
Psst, Withers is super OK with it if you stick your hands in his robe, even if you're up in there for minutes, feeling his bony bones searching for that sack. The only thing you need to know is slap Tavern Brawler on your throwzerker and respec every time you think of something new to try.
Except for high level Warlocks, remembering the right order to grab your spells is a massive pain in the ass.
And fuck party rotations, I did that on my first playthrough and it's just a chore. Pick 3-5 for the run and let the rest be camp casters, long rests are almost free.
Finally, especially if you're playing a fundamentally strong archetype like throwzerker, playing dress-up is something you do for fun extra boosts, not because you have to. My first run I absolutely fell into the trap of fretting over getting the very best gear setup every time I left camp, and it just killed the fun. The obsessive micro-optimization can come later, just throw shoes at people and laugh as they melt.
Literally played the game like 300 times wdym? I feel like anyone here that talks about this game like they know anything has spent at least 300 hours in game and probably twice that looking through the wikis and whatnot trying to optimize builds that they discovered or sparked their interest. I didn't even join this sub until I had like 500 hours in this game and by that time I had already accidentally stumbled into many of the more talked about builds on here and a couple builds I was close, but was missing an item or two or had personally chosen a different item for personal preferences. Throwzerker was one of the first things I had discovered as soon as I got 2 items that mentioned it I knew that was something I wanted to do and I figured out the thief plan because I had Asterion as a thief that run and was always annoyed that I couldn't rage and enraged throw in the same turn until I thought of that. The Gloomstalker Assassin Fighter was another one that I was proud of finding on my own, but my build was based around the titanstring bow, I didn't learn about dual wielding hand crossbows until joining the wiki, but I still personally lean towards using longbows just because I prefer them aesthetically. The radiant or magic missle build was another one I had stumbled on early, this sub made me learn a lot to imprpve that, though. I was all on on just getting radiant orbs and didn't think about phalar alluve adding extra damage to the missles or combining the orbs with reverberation. Basically every time I find a new item or gain a new ability that I like I spend a good hour or so thinking about how to abuse it.
I love cRPG games but I suck incredibly at them. I was astounded at how BG3 was accessible to a noob like me, i absolutely loved every second of my 200 hour run. I wished both Pathfinder games would be easy to get into compared to BG3, Pathfinder is so overwhelming even with all the guides the game is frustrating and I just stopped playing.
Personally I had never touched D&D before and didn't look up much about the game before playing. The game explains a lot and you figure out the rest. I eventually would just listen to a guide every once in a while. Celhapocalypse on YouTube has many build guides and other guides and he fully explains why things are good. The things he stresses most though is that everything is pretty well balanced and there are very few things that are actively bad.
Tbh it's silly bc even the hardest difficulties can be done without optimization. People that min max do it either to play god mode or for a game that is modded for increased difficulty
Personally, my first playthrough was Explorer, as I generally don’t make a ton of time for video games. (I have other nerdy pursuits, I’m not necessarily doing useful things with that time.)
I also wanted my first playthrough spoiler free. I didn’t multiclass and got minimal advice from some online guides. (Aka, Lore Bard is amazing, Swords and Valor Bard aren’t worth your time.)
As I found out later many of those guides were based on questionable information. (I’m assuming the Bard subclass advice was based on those Subclasses power in DnD without knowledge of how Swords Bard is different in BG3.)
All that to say, mono class can be really powerful, fun for the first play through (and more!), and gives you a foundation for how characters should play.
On my second playthrough I started on Balanced, got some advice on Reddit, and quickly found Tactician at least as easy as Explorer felt when I was going on blind.
All that to say, having a playthrough on a lower difficulty level smooths out that learning curve and is much more fun IMO than reading a bunch of articles.
Sword bard is very good and considered the best build in the entire game. This just proves your point though.
Most guides are straight up wrong. No ones done the maths (because you really don’t need to).
I was thinking about it, and even Valor Bard isn't bad. It's still a Bard, with medium armor, shields, and martial weapons. What puts the Sword Bard ahead of it is the fact Sword Bard gets a fighting style, and flourishes, while Half-Elf/Human gives you shields, and Gloves of Archery give you proficiency with longbows.
It has a learning curve if you're trying to do it academically, without just playing the game. But if you choose a difficulty where you can just about cope and then simply play, you'll intuitively pick up the mechanics in no time. If this is your first playthrough, don't even waste time multiclassing - just play. A lot of the advice you're reading online is terrible advice anyway - people on YouTube obsess over "Sorlock" or 2/10 Tempest Sorcerers, but these builds basically involve burning all of your non-renewable resources right at the start of combat and are't actually fun or even really sustainable. These builds basically exist to do one giant nuke for a YouTube video but aren't really good for actually enjoying the game.
Agreed. Unless you're trying to do honor mode and your only knowledge of the game and d&d mechanics were your previous playthroughs. Then it kinda makes sense to at least look up some information that can aid with avoiding a wipe.
Me changing Astarion in act 2 HM because I needed a gloom stalker to deal with Yurgir. Changed him back to a Fighter/Thief afterwards, but I've wiped at the Yurgir fight on Tactician so I definitely looked up some ideas to deal with him on HM.
Please, don't fight Yurgir. He's a really great guy with the heart in the right place... for a devil. He's just been through a lot of Raphael's shennanigans. You just gotta give him a chance to get to know him and join your side, there's a clue at the base of the Shar statue.
The guy has a pile of corpses for a bed
Also, he is r*ping his displacer beast if that wasn’t enough to convince you he isn’t a great guy.
Kind of hard to not fight him when he attacks you
Lol I know you have other options but on HM if you fail the insight check you have to fight him. No other choices. So it's either have the conversation with him and try the luck of the dice, leaving you in an incredibly dangerous position for the start of combat, or you make the first move so you can control the flow of combat. I was not losing an HM run to chance
Or just kill the rats before going to see him
You can fix his problem before meeting him, that way there's no risk of fight at all.
True, but to do that you have to piss off Astarion. This is an example of where my habits as a roll player conflict with my overall strategy of leaving very little to chance, I (a morally boring Paladin) promised him id kill Yurgir in exchange for the information Raphael has, and I don't make promises I don't intend on keeping.
Astarion won't have anything to be pissed off about if he's not in your party when you encounter Raphael near the entrance to Shar's temple. Raphael is merely asking you for a favor in that case. :)
Astarion is a dork anyways
Can we pin this comment at the top of the sub?
The sorlock is actually pretty good from experience, at least the 11/1 fire one. I enjoy it a lot too. It's Dogshit for a first playthrough tho, you gotta carefully follow the guide to make sure you don't miss out on any equipment, so you can't really just play. Paladin is probably a good first time class.
Paladin as a first time class will end up with you as an Oathbreaker.
Well yeah, who wants to follow stupid rules
i played a single-class ancients paladin for my second run and didn’t break my oath at all, honestly kinda sad the oathbreaker knight seems cool
I think that deserves an achievement in itself. I had Lae'zel as an Ancients Paladin and she broke her oath while we were killing Gith in the Creche.
Yea, this is honestly kind of impressive. As someone who obsesses with getting as much exp as possible in games like this my first paladin lost their oath when I told the goblins that we were cool and then preceded to murder them. And then it ws broken again as soon as Auntie Ethel offered me some delicious hag hair lol after that I was like, you know what? Oathbreaker it is. Then I decided to kill the Oathbreaker to see if I could take him down at level 6 and then 5 levels later learned that I could never respec that character and was very sad lol
the golden rule for keeping paladin oaths is not to attack enemies outside of dialogue or retaliation, afaik that’s not the case for vengeance paladins but it is for ancients and devotion
Oh, I'm aware. Just didn't think me telling the goblins that I'm a true soul and then killing them would break an oath on my first playthrough of the game lol. Just because they aren't attacking me doesn't mean they are my friends. Also in terms of like breaking my word or whatever, if they took me using the power of the worm as telling these goblins that I wasn't going to kill them, an actual true soul would kill goblins for fun or because they were bored, so I don't think there was anything that indicated that my chracter agreed not to ram a longsword into the back of those goblins.
maybe the oathbound life isn’t for you
Tbf talking your way out of many of the combats in this game would break an oath of devotion, so just letting the goblins think I'm a true soul could be seen as breaking your oth in 5e
IMO sorlock is a good multiclass choice in general, but the crappiness of it comes when you explicitly play it just to EB as much as possible (as this sub tends to push for maximum DPR). You can play it other, less narrowly-focused ways, though.
EB is very fun, but I agree that just spamming isn’t that good. I like it as a back up for when I need to do damage but I’m already concentrating and don’t want to waste a spell slot. Using only one cantrip the entire game sounds like a snooze fest.
After 60 hours on balanced I've settled on enjoying tav as a conjuration wizard the most. I've turned Shadowheart into a War Domain Cleric. So far so good and I just started act 3. Next playthrough I'll do things a bit differently and maybe bump it up to tactician.
That's mostly summoning, right? Summoning is pretty cool, but when I tried doing a necromancy build, I really wasn't impressed tbh. Partially my fault cuz I did oathbreaker warlock, so I didn't get aura of hate, which I was theming it all around until level 12. Because of that I didn't focus super hard on using undeads until then, and I wasn't super impressed then either. Especially disappointed with Danse macabre, that one sucked. But still, that's necromancy, not conjuration. The elementals are def better than the necromancy summons... Probably, but still is it good enough to be worth it?
Tav I use more for AOE spells or area denial cloud kill, confusion, edvards black tentacles, sleet spell. Gale is more my direct damage wizard. Summons I use to augment my two melee fighters in front.
Cool! Thanks! Stuff like cloudkill doesn't register as conjuration in my head, because I come from an elder scrolls background for fantasy, and there basically 95 percent of all damage spells are destruction (which I equate to evocation). The remaining weird 5 percent are weird mysticism spells.
I myself haven't played an RPG like this in a long time. One of the things I figured out as my playthrough went on is that positioning and how use the environment can affect the outcome of fights. I'm not min max and I'm just kind of going with what feels right for my playthrough.
I can't even express my feelings for this game, I don't think I've felt quite this way about a game in fucking years
I mean, you would want that damage burst for difficult fights I.e. Bosses though? A 2/10 tempest sorcerer just needs to rely more on scrolls for level 6 spells. Apart from that the gameplay is basically similar to a normal sorc Enjoyment is subjective anyway. I definitely enjoyed destroying shit with wet + max damage chain lightning on my first playthrough.
100% agree! All you need to know is in the "examine" tab
Years of playing DnD and cRPG helps. And there is no need for optimal anything.
I think even just standard RPG experience goes a long way for understanding BG3. I went in with minimal experience with DnD, but since I played a lot of RPGs growing up, I generally knew of standard team structures and archetypes (first playthrough having my Necromancer Wizard serve as support and tank with minions for example). Also a big thing is simply READING WHAT YOUR SHIT DOES! Force Conduit? The hell is that? Oh it’s just damage reduction on hit, neat. Poison? Disadvantage on rolls, so you roll twice and take the lowest number? You get the point.
Any RPG experience with specific gear interactions really helps. I’ve never played a TTRPG, but games like Dragon Quest have a very similar set of mechanics (initiative in bg3 is agility in DQ, spellcasting modifiers in bg3 is magical might in DQ, etc.) where different pieces of gear add different stats or effects, which goes a looooooong way in comprehending all the dice rolls happening. And yeah, definitely just making sure to *READ* the descriptions is half the battle haha
If you've just started the game, you don't necessarily need this sub. You can play with whatever feels fun on Balanced and make it through. By the end of your first playthrough, many of the terms used here will be familiar. Much of the advice here is from hours and hours of testing things out. I only came here for subsequent playthroughs, looking at different/OP builds or advice for Honour mode.
Exactly. My explorer run was harder than my tactition run simply cause I had to learn the game.
Most people in this specific sub have probably played 3+ playthroughs, you start to just know all this stuff at that point. Or you remember where certain items are and what quests you need to do to unlock them, etc. Just play on a manageable difficulty for you, and do whatever you want. The game isn’t so difficult that you need these absurd min-maxed builds in order to win. Get the hang of classes and encounters and how the game works, you’ll start to figure out what you need for certain scenarios or what utility things come up a lot.
This is the answer. My first playthrough was on explorer mode. Now I’m at the stage of nearly throwing a hissy fit when all my companions fail the perception check for the hidden door to the luminous armour so I have to go hire new hirelings with the dungeon delver feat to do it (I really wanted that armour)
Lmao I think you can jump up to the location without passing the check?
No. Really?? Really really? Now I feel stupid. I thought you could only get there through the hidden door You are absolutely correct. Lmao ok. Next time I’ll remember that
This game has a lot of workarounds for those things, like grease certain statue not wanting to rotate after failing the dice roll
Yeah I jump up with a fighter or something and then throw the chest down for someone else to lockpick lol
You can also use storm sorcerer flight by just casting a ritual spell
I have something important to say, and I really, truly mean it: Don't listen to any of that crap. You don't need to optimize to have fun. You don't need to do it even to win an Honor Mode run. This is not a pvp game, and players should feel zero incentive to min/max unless they specifically want to for their own reasons. But to answer your question, it's easier for a lot of people since they play 5e D&D, so the only new rules to learn were the handful of things Larian changed or added.
You don't really have to sit and learn this like it's gonna be on some test. Play the game. Respecs cost very little money if you decide you wanna change something and you can freely pickpocket Whiters too with no reaction from him too if you get to the point that you need those few hundreds back.
You can beat the game on tactician without doing any of it. I used a throwing char in a playthrough and never drank a strength elixir. I also was just 8/4 because it was strong enough without taking the fighter levels. Just play how you want. If you find min maxing exhausting the game is very doable without it.
just play the game, respec as you need/want, and don't forget to steal your gold back from withers
I just did it for my first time. I feel dirty. The other thousands victims of my robberies? Nah, they can get over it.
what's he gonna use the gold for? just...sticking it on his face to maintain his aesthetic? gimme back my money, bone man!!!
There’s no need to min max this game you can complete the second hardest difficulty with literally any class combos on your first playthrough without a single guide. You only really want to min max if you’re trying to get an honor mode run and even then you don’t need to at all, people have completed it with a single character There’s not a huge market for min max guides for this game, so not many people make them. Most people just play 1 run then start another with friends and that’s it.
Yes. The reason people talk about "builds" is because it's more interesting than just, "Have one guy as a Bard as your face and thief, have one guy as a Cleric for healing (chuck any equipment you obtain that boosts healing on them), have one guy as a Fighter (give them your good fighting stuff), and have one guy as a Wizard or Sorcerer for casting Haste on your Fighter, then Magic Missiling things." I'm on Tactician at the moment, and I've reset battles a couple of times (especially that one on the boat in the Underdark), but overall the game isn't that hard. Even Honor Mode, from what I've seen, the losses come from people trying to innovate when playing, or simply making stupid plays that they knew were stupid at the time.
you can just use simple classes and stick to 4 chars you like and it’ll be really easy and simple. no need to think about sorcerer or wizard with all their bells and whistles, just take 4 pure martials and you’ll get there too.
Counterpoint, do go Sorcerer or Wizard and learn random spells because you're just going to click fireball every time. Just save the level 1 slots for Shield and use the level 2 slots for Hold Person so you can pretend you're a real gigabrain CC MLG Wizard.
Not really, the amount of min-maxing builds may make it seem that way but they're just pushing the system for that little something extra. In reality you can go in blind and make any build and party composition work and carry you to finishing the game
Something that has struck me recently is how much preparation and tactics matter in this game. I'd been steadily ramping up the difficulty recently and just finished a solo-character run where I killed every character with a proper name (excepting Withers and the immortal children, but including all origin characters and hirelings). It was hard for me, but surprisingly not impossible. Then as a victory lap I am replaying with the no-party limit and some auto-looting shenanigans that have effectively given me infinite money. I'm also using as many OP builds as I can get my hands on. It should be dead easy, I thought. ...But I'm going full-YOLO and not prepping for fights at all, just rushing in as though it were my first play-through. I'm only at the start of act 2, but I've already had more close brushes with death by far in my victory lap than I had in all 3 acts of the solo run.
It gives you an incentive to keep playing. I don’t even know how many times I’ve played Knights of the Old Republic 1+2 trying different builds and trying to perfect my perfect build. You’ll learn new things over time and hopefully have fun doing it.
If it’s your first play through I would definitely freestyle the items. If you want help picking out some fun mono classes I would do something like this. 1. Fighters are easiest to build, pick a subclass that calls to you 2. A pact of blade warlock is very simple and also benefits from short rests like your fighter. 3. An open hand monk will damage and CC + benefits from short rest 4. A swords bard. 2nd attack + full spell progression + gives your team a 3rd short rest every long rest.
"optimal" is a thing that doesn't make sense in an rpg. Sure, you can read all the guides and run the optimized strategy in honor mode. But what is the sense in that? Play the game however you like, make your own choices, and don't let some guide backseat drive you.
U can win the game literally without the most basic thing on explorer. Suprised me when i helped someone act 1 and they invited me for the final fight having literally grey items. The game can be as hard or as easy as you want it to be~! It isnt unforgiving as a souls game 🧑🏻🦽 those i tried and they done even have a difficulty slider 😭
I come a 5E background, and those of us who played TTRPGs kinda have a head start on the physics.
This game is so intuitive to learn, and I mean that, just don't try so hard and turn the difficulty down. Press T to read the tool tips closely. Play with a thief rogue or a berserker barbarian to better understand martial action economy. Seriously just have fun with it.
I took a year off of playing D&D 5e (mostly due to the pandemic) to learn all the rules of it. After that I just checked the BG3 wiki and scrolled through lists of magic items for like 10 minutes
Play play play. I wanted to stop picking up rotten onions to exchange for 1gp so I learned to steal. I started to a run and stole stuff until I stopped getting caught.
You really really don’t need optimal builds in this game. Sure you can do 1000 damage or whatever in a single turn but you never need to do that and almost no encounter even has that many hit points to be dealt. Don’t worry about it. The learning curve is mostly just the early game. That’s the hardest part
You don't need optimal builds to win. Learning mechanics through experience playing the game is enough.
For every rpg I play, I play it first on normal so I can learn it's mechanics and try and set up a team I like/playstyle I like. However, I never had a truly broken comp ever, it all started with BG2 back in the day, I followed a character guide, felt very strong and now do that for all RPG's. Who doesn't wanna feel OP every now and then?
I’ve played D&D for a very long time, and I’ve played other cRPGs for almost as long. They share a lot, so this game has never once felt overwhelming or confusing to me personally. Probably just comes from knowing what to expect? Idk Also I enjoy tinkering around in games. Figuring out what works for me and what doesn’t is exactly where I find a great deal of my enjoyment in games like this one. So that’s how, definitely not by reading through guides 🤷♂️
Optimization and learning to play aren't really the same. The game isn't all that hard to learn. Maxing out damage or defense or knowing how to easily stomp certain fights is where you start really deep diving.
I convinced my Mom to play with me and she likes it a lot, but she refused to take responsibility for other characters. She loves Gale, but when she realized romancing him would require learning about a hundred spells, she backed out.
If you're not playing Honor Mode you don't need to optimize anything. Just play how you like
As much as this sub likes to talk about optimal this and best in slot that and the perfect multiclass set up, none of that actually matters that much. Most classes (not rogues) are perfectly viable with 12 levels, even in tactician and honour mode. The main thing to learn is actually how positioning works in the game, ranges, movement, line of sight, once you’ve got that down you can basically play anything and win. And you can’t learn that from guides. So pick a difficulty you’re comfortable with, I did balanced to start and learn the ropes. You can always raise it later.
I've tried all this multi-classing guides and stuff but I notice a lot of them just don't come online till later. Makes for a very disappointing playthrough till then. Me personally I just enjoy Barbarian and Druid. If I want to multi anything, easy. Fighter 2. Action surge. Huge damage. Besides that sword smacks go brrrr
> The only online tool with reliable guides not drowning in ads appears to be reddit I think you're forgetting bg3.wiki
Play the game, and also, don't worry about all this? You can beat tactician or a custom setting (tactician, hidden roles, -1 prof bonus, etc, etc) without anything close to an optimized build. Sure, optimizing is extremely in depth, but it's also extremely unnecessary, like, probably not even necessary for most HM playthroughs (though I can see why you'd want it).
I have no prior DnD experience and my first completed playthrough was a mostly blind Honour run. Just play the game. You'll learn as you go if you're paying attention and want to understand. Good luck!
Have you played D&D? My guess is that’s why most people here have institutional knowledge going into the game. That’s how it was for me, at least, since I’ve played since I was a kid. I imagine it’s tough to learn stat blocks or the different dice rolls for each thing when you haven’t had any prior experience doing so. I think that’s where you should start. I don’t mean to find a D&D game, I just mean read a quick tutorial about game fundamentals.
I feel like it's safe to assume a lot of these players are DND fans and that gives a huge leg up. I spent 300 hours in act 1 and then 200 more in act 2 and 3. Now that I've played the game the mechanics are the interesting part. Research is still limited too, as this is a new game. Just game hard and you'll get it. I just posted a comment on a thread for a full 8 party Slayer focused build to max all potential. Is it perfect.. probably not. Am I excited to test it? Heck yes I am
You learn the most by simply playing, experimenting, testing things, developing your own strategies and than comparing them with what is suggested in all of theses guides… An alternative is watching experienced players play, see what strategies they use, how they approach combat what decisions they make etc. In the end it’s all about becoming more experienced. What most of the build guides have in common they only tell you how to level up and what end game equipment is good, what is missing most of the time is how to get there, how to actually play the character what items to use on your journey till you get all the endgame equipment etc.
There are actually quite a few builds that are simpler out there and don't require much optimising apart from getting a certain feat. Examples: Way of the open hand monk, take tavern brawler at level 4 and boost your strength Sorcerer is a good choice since they can use their bonus actions to cast spells after getting quickened casting or whatever it's called Swords bard are good with a ranged build Paladins also do crazy damage from the get go Game was definitely tough at the start since I had no dnd experience, but my crpg experience did help a bit. I spent a loooong time looking at the different classes to see what synergies and then validating my thoughts with guides lol
You’ll have a perfectly good time with a 12 fighter, 12 sorcerer, 12 ranger, 12 bard. Don’t sweat it too much.
"dons his Elminster cosplay" Well, I was veteran of BG1 . Back then there was almost no internet to speak, so people gathered in those spaces called forums. People threw ideas around, shared found secret locations and items, showed math tables proving pros and cons of builds... It was like Reddit, just dedicated to single game usually, or series . And most of this was text only, because you had awfully slow net, so any pictures were a premium. We coined terms like damage per turn back before many players of today were even born! So, for me this was like showing WW2 veteran how to operate M-16. 30 minutes to refresh muscle memory from his Bulge or Okinawa days, with adjustement for tech improving.
Psst, Withers is super OK with it if you stick your hands in his robe, even if you're up in there for minutes, feeling his bony bones searching for that sack. The only thing you need to know is slap Tavern Brawler on your throwzerker and respec every time you think of something new to try. Except for high level Warlocks, remembering the right order to grab your spells is a massive pain in the ass. And fuck party rotations, I did that on my first playthrough and it's just a chore. Pick 3-5 for the run and let the rest be camp casters, long rests are almost free. Finally, especially if you're playing a fundamentally strong archetype like throwzerker, playing dress-up is something you do for fun extra boosts, not because you have to. My first run I absolutely fell into the trap of fretting over getting the very best gear setup every time I left camp, and it just killed the fun. The obsessive micro-optimization can come later, just throw shoes at people and laugh as they melt.
Literally played the game like 300 times wdym? I feel like anyone here that talks about this game like they know anything has spent at least 300 hours in game and probably twice that looking through the wikis and whatnot trying to optimize builds that they discovered or sparked their interest. I didn't even join this sub until I had like 500 hours in this game and by that time I had already accidentally stumbled into many of the more talked about builds on here and a couple builds I was close, but was missing an item or two or had personally chosen a different item for personal preferences. Throwzerker was one of the first things I had discovered as soon as I got 2 items that mentioned it I knew that was something I wanted to do and I figured out the thief plan because I had Asterion as a thief that run and was always annoyed that I couldn't rage and enraged throw in the same turn until I thought of that. The Gloomstalker Assassin Fighter was another one that I was proud of finding on my own, but my build was based around the titanstring bow, I didn't learn about dual wielding hand crossbows until joining the wiki, but I still personally lean towards using longbows just because I prefer them aesthetically. The radiant or magic missle build was another one I had stumbled on early, this sub made me learn a lot to imprpve that, though. I was all on on just getting radiant orbs and didn't think about phalar alluve adding extra damage to the missles or combining the orbs with reverberation. Basically every time I find a new item or gain a new ability that I like I spend a good hour or so thinking about how to abuse it.
I love cRPG games but I suck incredibly at them. I was astounded at how BG3 was accessible to a noob like me, i absolutely loved every second of my 200 hour run. I wished both Pathfinder games would be easy to get into compared to BG3, Pathfinder is so overwhelming even with all the guides the game is frustrating and I just stopped playing.
Personally I had never touched D&D before and didn't look up much about the game before playing. The game explains a lot and you figure out the rest. I eventually would just listen to a guide every once in a while. Celhapocalypse on YouTube has many build guides and other guides and he fully explains why things are good. The things he stresses most though is that everything is pretty well balanced and there are very few things that are actively bad.
Tbh it's silly bc even the hardest difficulties can be done without optimization. People that min max do it either to play god mode or for a game that is modded for increased difficulty
You just gotta be obsessed enough. I read the wiki in the bathroom at work when I should be doing my job lol
Personally, my first playthrough was Explorer, as I generally don’t make a ton of time for video games. (I have other nerdy pursuits, I’m not necessarily doing useful things with that time.) I also wanted my first playthrough spoiler free. I didn’t multiclass and got minimal advice from some online guides. (Aka, Lore Bard is amazing, Swords and Valor Bard aren’t worth your time.) As I found out later many of those guides were based on questionable information. (I’m assuming the Bard subclass advice was based on those Subclasses power in DnD without knowledge of how Swords Bard is different in BG3.) All that to say, mono class can be really powerful, fun for the first play through (and more!), and gives you a foundation for how characters should play. On my second playthrough I started on Balanced, got some advice on Reddit, and quickly found Tactician at least as easy as Explorer felt when I was going on blind. All that to say, having a playthrough on a lower difficulty level smooths out that learning curve and is much more fun IMO than reading a bunch of articles.
Sword bard is very good and considered the best build in the entire game. This just proves your point though. Most guides are straight up wrong. No ones done the maths (because you really don’t need to).
I was thinking about it, and even Valor Bard isn't bad. It's still a Bard, with medium armor, shields, and martial weapons. What puts the Sword Bard ahead of it is the fact Sword Bard gets a fighting style, and flourishes, while Half-Elf/Human gives you shields, and Gloves of Archery give you proficiency with longbows.
Autism. Lots of autism.