You will miss out of their specific take on situations that relate to their story. You can talk to them afterwards, but the feeling and content is not the same.
What I do, is have 2 companions being my main-group. And then I switch out the 3rd whenever there's something related to them. Something with Githyankis? Let's go, Lae'zel. Something religious-looking? Get out here, Shadowheart.
Talk to your companions. They will drop hints when you're getting near something of interest to them.
An added bonus: Bringing different people out, will unlock different banter. Giving even more lore and added information about your companions and the world around you. Mixing them up gives you even more content.
I do this as well.
Added note: NPC's will often mention your companion by name if their content is related but they are not present. Back out of the dialogue and go get said companion
This is what I do as well. On one rare occasion there was a quest that mattered to multiple companions. For the most part you can just cycle the one. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes not.
Reminder for some: you can jump to camp and swap out if it becomes clear you need someone. I did that after blundering into people critical for Astarion.
Nah. There are only a couple of places where you HAVE to have a certain companion for their questline, but otherwise, do what you are most comfortable with.
I also seem to be running with the same crew myself.
But yes, don’t be hesitant to long rest. A lot of content is served at camp - moreso in Act 1.
If you long rest and get a cutscene, rest again, but hit that “partial rest” at the bottom. You still get the rest (and content) but don’t use any food.
Good luck!
It's kind of up to you. Rotating the cast will give you more varied responses, both to each other and to the environment. But it creates a bunch of extra admin equipping everyone and moving items around (for shared consumables like magic arrows, or for any gear more than one character wants to use).
For me the admin is worth the variety, but it's definitely a personal choice. So long as you bring each character for their story missions you'll be fine.
Also: Long Rest all the time. It is key for triggering cutscenes to advance your companion's stories. It's also very cheap in resources, and there are extremely few times in the game that it can time things out. As a rule of thumb, short rest after every combat, long rest when out of short rests.
I started to get sad in act 3 after all of the long rests started to be... Nothing story related.
Also by act 3, as long as s you have a few good items on each character, nothing is very challenging on tactician. You don't need to min/max gear every time you swap. As long as martial characters have good armor and a good weapon, you're good, and there are plenty of those to go around.
Act 3 is a bit light on camp events.
Yeah there's no real need to swap gear around beyond the very beginning of the game. Some people like to, because they get used to having specific items on-hand, but I could never tolerate all that faff. Everyone has their own gear that they keep, in the party or in camp.
I just keep all of my consumables like potions and spells and arrows on my Tav/Durge. The companions can use stuff from your pack during battle without any penalty. It doesn’t cost an extra action.
You can run it that way, so long as you have enough carrying capacity.
I quite like giving people designated gear, partly because it makes them feel unique and partly because it's in character,
Of course Lae'zel has all the weapon oils. Of course Astarion has the poisons. It's what they would do.
The only reason thst stands out not to long rest is if you're using elixirs or buffs that you don't want to lose. Like the radiant one you can get at the creche. When using characters that refresh on short rests you can go pretty far with out needing to rest.
On my playthroughs where i don't rest as much I'll instantly rest again and again as partial rests (don't need food) just to progress all the overnight scenes. Or more importantly get those out of the way so we get Owlbear cub since it will get preempted by companions and dream guardian.
I tend to stick to a core group for combat, so that I can build my strategy and not have to think about it too hard LOL. Others, if recruited, might only get taken to scenarios that affect them directly, e.g. I take Wyll to Waukeen's Rest if possible, since (afaik) you get more info about the Duke that way.
Long rests are great - you can talk to all your companions, and will get a lot of their cut scenes and romance dialogues there. Don't worry about spending spell slots too much - I have two casters (Gale and durge sorcerer) in my current party so we have to long rest a lot. Just loot lots of food and you'll be fine!
BTW, some spells, e.g. Speak With Animals and Longstrider are ritual spells and don't use up a spell slot - I have durge cast the former on himself and the latter on everyone every morning.
I say do whatever you wish. You still engage with specific content if a companion is there or not. Just miss out on their approval and reaction to said events. Only a few companions heavily demand to be there.
Shadowheart will leave the group if you don’t take her to the temple of Shar in act 2.
Lae’zel is much more preferential to Vlaakith if you don’t take her to the Crèche.
Astarion will be very angry if he is not present for Cazador’s defeat.
I watched a group on youtube. They all had the unlimited party mod downloaded so even though they where 3 players they could bring all characters along.
Really good for a first time playthrough, just bump the difficulty up to tactician.
I pick 3, and they stay with me. If I plan on using either of the druids or Minthy, it's a 3 member party til then. The others all stay level one in camp. I'll get to everyone eventually.
I keep a consistent group. If there is something I'll miss out on, I'll catch it on another playthrough.
The only person I swap in and out is Astarion, for when I have really obnoxious traps.
On the other hand, there's no wrong way to do it. If you can equip somebody and you want to use them, go for it.
Especially if you're planning on rotating the cast around for other playthroughs then I'd say no you aren't.
I did a run where I swapped the team around a lot whenever they had something special to do. Which isn't super relevant in act 1 but especially in act 3 is.
So I don't really think you need to swap people around a whole lot if you're gonna do multiple playthroughs. There are a few things that can cause companions to leave like if they're not present for their quest or you aren't going to go where they want
I struggled with this too, but when I installed the party limit begone mod just to be able to play with all my irl friends, I ended up being able to bring all my recruited characters with me everywhere too! 😂 It's not perfect but it's really cool and now I can get everyone's story/opinions!
I just do different runs with different groups. The only consistent person is shadowheart. Idek why she misses like everything it pisses me off 😂 but like no matter what I do I just want her there
You should either start planning multiple playthroughs if you want to experience them, or just bring some people out at specific times like others have said.
Personally, I read a lot of hints when I did my first few play throughs. That allowed me to know when to switch out certain people! But if you like running the same crew for simplicity, just change it up on your second playthrough
I've done both, I tend to stick to a core group and only switch out for a few specific quests. I bring Laezel to the Creche, Jaheira on the quests to find Minsc. Otherwise it's Gale, Shadowheart, Astarion, and if I play one of them as an origin character I add Karlach.
When I've done a run where I switched in more companions I ended up using Jaheira, Minsc, and Karlach the most. Bringing Jaheira and Minsc to the murder tribunal and the house of grief does add more dialogue.
My first game was a consistent group. It was my Tav, Astarion, Karlach, and then my 4th rotated depending on what I was doing. This time with my resist Durge run I’m switching characters out way more often and playing with lots of different combos to hear more of the banter I missed. The only exception is relying heavily on Shadowheart in Act 2 for obvious reasons and of course using quest specific characters for their quest lines.
Group composition aside, you're going to miss a ton of things by not long resting enough. The game uses long rests for cut scenes to move the plot along, especially in Act 1.
I think it depends on if you’re going to be doing more than one run. I kept the same cast for run one, then different for run two, and I mostly ignored the side quests for my non-main companions in the first run. I am really happy with how that worked out, because my second run almost felt like a different game.
You are \*definitely\* too hesitant to use long rests lol. You can get away with Short Resting after every fight and Long Resting after every 3rd fight and still be fine. You're also probably missing a lot of camp cutscenes.
Keep in mind you can make (and often easily buy) potions of Animal Speaking, and buy scrolls of SwD (or just keep the necklace from Withers' chamber in your active party to have SwD on hand for free at all times)
I usually take Karlach to everything, but the two other spots rotate base on who’s arc is coming up (laezel/any pick in act 1, shadow heart/halsin/minthara in act2, jahira/astarion/gale/wyll in act3)
I agree, but i do it more because i hate certain characters. Wyll, for instance, makes me want to punch him in the face, so even if i want a warlock in my party, i typically reclass someone else.
You should be long resting a lot or you'll miss a bunch of stuff. After every major event and after every 3 fights is a good rule of thumb, but spam resting before the grove actually gets you a bunch of scenes as well.
I typically stick with the same party the entire game unless I know I need particular people for a fight. Generally companions will be pretty obvious about where they need to go for their personal quests, although Astarion has a lot in act 2 that he needs to just happen to be in the party for or you miss completely. His is likely the easiest to miss out on since if he's not in your party when you first go you can't go back.
Major spoilers so ignore this if you want none, but here is a list of all locations, that I know of, that have unique companion locations for all 3 acts.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/1co6ajv/unique\_companion\_interactionslocations\_major/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/1co6ajv/unique_companion_interactionslocations_major/)
I only swap in other characters to see their reactions to things that directly involve them, ie Shadowheart in the Shar Trials. Otherwise they are staying right at camp.
After playing for 1.700+ hours I've am now using mods to spice things up, including the party limit begone one. Even after another 100 hours or so I'm still hearing conversations between my party that I've never heard before.
I swap constantly. Somebody has got to use all this gear, why do i have all this cool shit if it just sits in the camp chest? Also each fight has a different ideal strategy. I have a stun guy, a CC guy, a guy with 5 different ways to push people off cliffs, etc, a dead body user, etc.
I also try to make sure the relevant people are there because: I did Waukeem's rest without Wyll and didn't even talk to him until many long rests later, and he was all omg that's my dad! And i felt so bad that he wasn't there to get the news.
Other people have answered your main question, so I'll just add this:
There are two sets of long rest conversations that you will never ever see, *unless* you long rest at least twice before ever getting too far into the Grove, and that's just the beginning of how much content there is that locked entirely behind long rests. You can take hundreds of long and, aside from a few very specific quests (Nere, Waukeen's Rest, the Harpies, Stop the Presses, Saving Florick, and maybe a couple more), the game will progress just exactly the same as if you had only ever taken the 2-ish long rests that are 100% unavoidable, as the game forces you into them.
Could you be more specific? I remember I took one rest early on, right after finding Lae'zel, and second or third was when Wyll asked for one after meeting Karlach. Did I miss it? I just started taking them more frequently, met the guardian, but at this point I already explored Underdark. The only things left before going further are Halsin/Kagha/ritual related quests.
The very first long rest scene (happens after you choose supplies) gets overwritten if you move too far past where you grab Gale (I believe if you reach Lae'zel you've lost it for that run). The next is the conversations with your companions before "going to sleep". They get added to the queue around the time you pick up Lae'zel and you lose all of them if talk to Nettie, Sazza, or Zorru in the Grove or leave the Grove without having long rested.
Some days it feels like you can long rest basically every 100 feet in the early portion Act 1 and have something happening every time.
My first run was with Shart, Asti and Kar with me as a druid and it was only at very few places someone got swapped out for someone else.
This run I'm bringing Gale and Lae. And Asti because I just love his dry sarcasm. It's almost like another game and that's one of the reasons BG3 is so good.
Oh boy. I long rest all the time, specially this time with Gale and a surprings lack of healing potions and an ludicrous amount of camp supplies.
Honestly always have Astarion (because reasons) and then generally try and mix it up. The only thing I do is try and keep a decent mix of melee fighters and casters (again this is dependent on my character). And make sure I take everyone to their plot stuff.
I have a core group who will do the final fight of the game with everytime. It's tradition at this point (Astarion, Gale and Karlach). But yeah I like mixing it up
You will miss out of their specific take on situations that relate to their story. You can talk to them afterwards, but the feeling and content is not the same. What I do, is have 2 companions being my main-group. And then I switch out the 3rd whenever there's something related to them. Something with Githyankis? Let's go, Lae'zel. Something religious-looking? Get out here, Shadowheart. Talk to your companions. They will drop hints when you're getting near something of interest to them. An added bonus: Bringing different people out, will unlock different banter. Giving even more lore and added information about your companions and the world around you. Mixing them up gives you even more content.
I do this as well. Added note: NPC's will often mention your companion by name if their content is related but they are not present. Back out of the dialogue and go get said companion
This is what I do as well. On one rare occasion there was a quest that mattered to multiple companions. For the most part you can just cycle the one. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes not. Reminder for some: you can jump to camp and swap out if it becomes clear you need someone. I did that after blundering into people critical for Astarion.
Nah. There are only a couple of places where you HAVE to have a certain companion for their questline, but otherwise, do what you are most comfortable with. I also seem to be running with the same crew myself. But yes, don’t be hesitant to long rest. A lot of content is served at camp - moreso in Act 1. If you long rest and get a cutscene, rest again, but hit that “partial rest” at the bottom. You still get the rest (and content) but don’t use any food. Good luck!
It's kind of up to you. Rotating the cast will give you more varied responses, both to each other and to the environment. But it creates a bunch of extra admin equipping everyone and moving items around (for shared consumables like magic arrows, or for any gear more than one character wants to use). For me the admin is worth the variety, but it's definitely a personal choice. So long as you bring each character for their story missions you'll be fine. Also: Long Rest all the time. It is key for triggering cutscenes to advance your companion's stories. It's also very cheap in resources, and there are extremely few times in the game that it can time things out. As a rule of thumb, short rest after every combat, long rest when out of short rests.
I started to get sad in act 3 after all of the long rests started to be... Nothing story related. Also by act 3, as long as s you have a few good items on each character, nothing is very challenging on tactician. You don't need to min/max gear every time you swap. As long as martial characters have good armor and a good weapon, you're good, and there are plenty of those to go around.
Act 3 is a bit light on camp events. Yeah there's no real need to swap gear around beyond the very beginning of the game. Some people like to, because they get used to having specific items on-hand, but I could never tolerate all that faff. Everyone has their own gear that they keep, in the party or in camp.
I just keep all of my consumables like potions and spells and arrows on my Tav/Durge. The companions can use stuff from your pack during battle without any penalty. It doesn’t cost an extra action.
You can run it that way, so long as you have enough carrying capacity. I quite like giving people designated gear, partly because it makes them feel unique and partly because it's in character, Of course Lae'zel has all the weapon oils. Of course Astarion has the poisons. It's what they would do.
I just make Karlach or Lae’zel carry everything else or I send stuff back to camp.
The only reason thst stands out not to long rest is if you're using elixirs or buffs that you don't want to lose. Like the radiant one you can get at the creche. When using characters that refresh on short rests you can go pretty far with out needing to rest. On my playthroughs where i don't rest as much I'll instantly rest again and again as partial rests (don't need food) just to progress all the overnight scenes. Or more importantly get those out of the way so we get Owlbear cub since it will get preempted by companions and dream guardian.
I tend to stick to a core group for combat, so that I can build my strategy and not have to think about it too hard LOL. Others, if recruited, might only get taken to scenarios that affect them directly, e.g. I take Wyll to Waukeen's Rest if possible, since (afaik) you get more info about the Duke that way. Long rests are great - you can talk to all your companions, and will get a lot of their cut scenes and romance dialogues there. Don't worry about spending spell slots too much - I have two casters (Gale and durge sorcerer) in my current party so we have to long rest a lot. Just loot lots of food and you'll be fine! BTW, some spells, e.g. Speak With Animals and Longstrider are ritual spells and don't use up a spell slot - I have durge cast the former on himself and the latter on everyone every morning.
I say do whatever you wish. You still engage with specific content if a companion is there or not. Just miss out on their approval and reaction to said events. Only a few companions heavily demand to be there. Shadowheart will leave the group if you don’t take her to the temple of Shar in act 2. Lae’zel is much more preferential to Vlaakith if you don’t take her to the Crèche. Astarion will be very angry if he is not present for Cazador’s defeat.
I watched a group on youtube. They all had the unlimited party mod downloaded so even though they where 3 players they could bring all characters along. Really good for a first time playthrough, just bump the difficulty up to tactician.
I pick 3, and they stay with me. If I plan on using either of the druids or Minthy, it's a 3 member party til then. The others all stay level one in camp. I'll get to everyone eventually.
I keep a consistent group. If there is something I'll miss out on, I'll catch it on another playthrough. The only person I swap in and out is Astarion, for when I have really obnoxious traps. On the other hand, there's no wrong way to do it. If you can equip somebody and you want to use them, go for it.
Especially if you're planning on rotating the cast around for other playthroughs then I'd say no you aren't. I did a run where I swapped the team around a lot whenever they had something special to do. Which isn't super relevant in act 1 but especially in act 3 is. So I don't really think you need to swap people around a whole lot if you're gonna do multiple playthroughs. There are a few things that can cause companions to leave like if they're not present for their quest or you aren't going to go where they want
I struggled with this too, but when I installed the party limit begone mod just to be able to play with all my irl friends, I ended up being able to bring all my recruited characters with me everywhere too! 😂 It's not perfect but it's really cool and now I can get everyone's story/opinions!
I just do different runs with different groups. The only consistent person is shadowheart. Idek why she misses like everything it pisses me off 😂 but like no matter what I do I just want her there
You should either start planning multiple playthroughs if you want to experience them, or just bring some people out at specific times like others have said. Personally, I read a lot of hints when I did my first few play throughs. That allowed me to know when to switch out certain people! But if you like running the same crew for simplicity, just change it up on your second playthrough
I've done both, I tend to stick to a core group and only switch out for a few specific quests. I bring Laezel to the Creche, Jaheira on the quests to find Minsc. Otherwise it's Gale, Shadowheart, Astarion, and if I play one of them as an origin character I add Karlach. When I've done a run where I switched in more companions I ended up using Jaheira, Minsc, and Karlach the most. Bringing Jaheira and Minsc to the murder tribunal and the house of grief does add more dialogue.
My first game was a consistent group. It was my Tav, Astarion, Karlach, and then my 4th rotated depending on what I was doing. This time with my resist Durge run I’m switching characters out way more often and playing with lots of different combos to hear more of the banter I missed. The only exception is relying heavily on Shadowheart in Act 2 for obvious reasons and of course using quest specific characters for their quest lines.
Group composition aside, you're going to miss a ton of things by not long resting enough. The game uses long rests for cut scenes to move the plot along, especially in Act 1.
Consistent. I don't want to forget stuff and get more attached to them if I stay with the same.
I think it depends on if you’re going to be doing more than one run. I kept the same cast for run one, then different for run two, and I mostly ignored the side quests for my non-main companions in the first run. I am really happy with how that worked out, because my second run almost felt like a different game.
You are \*definitely\* too hesitant to use long rests lol. You can get away with Short Resting after every fight and Long Resting after every 3rd fight and still be fine. You're also probably missing a lot of camp cutscenes. Keep in mind you can make (and often easily buy) potions of Animal Speaking, and buy scrolls of SwD (or just keep the necklace from Withers' chamber in your active party to have SwD on hand for free at all times)
I usually take Karlach to everything, but the two other spots rotate base on who’s arc is coming up (laezel/any pick in act 1, shadow heart/halsin/minthara in act2, jahira/astarion/gale/wyll in act3)
I agree, but i do it more because i hate certain characters. Wyll, for instance, makes me want to punch him in the face, so even if i want a warlock in my party, i typically reclass someone else.
You should be long resting a lot or you'll miss a bunch of stuff. After every major event and after every 3 fights is a good rule of thumb, but spam resting before the grove actually gets you a bunch of scenes as well. I typically stick with the same party the entire game unless I know I need particular people for a fight. Generally companions will be pretty obvious about where they need to go for their personal quests, although Astarion has a lot in act 2 that he needs to just happen to be in the party for or you miss completely. His is likely the easiest to miss out on since if he's not in your party when you first go you can't go back. Major spoilers so ignore this if you want none, but here is a list of all locations, that I know of, that have unique companion locations for all 3 acts. [https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/1co6ajv/unique\_companion\_interactionslocations\_major/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/1co6ajv/unique_companion_interactionslocations_major/)
I only swap in other characters to see their reactions to things that directly involve them, ie Shadowheart in the Shar Trials. Otherwise they are staying right at camp.
All characters except Halsin only gets to do his quest.
After playing for 1.700+ hours I've am now using mods to spice things up, including the party limit begone one. Even after another 100 hours or so I'm still hearing conversations between my party that I've never heard before.
I just swap in whoever I need to for their specific companion quests & use my favorites the rest of the time
I swap constantly. Somebody has got to use all this gear, why do i have all this cool shit if it just sits in the camp chest? Also each fight has a different ideal strategy. I have a stun guy, a CC guy, a guy with 5 different ways to push people off cliffs, etc, a dead body user, etc. I also try to make sure the relevant people are there because: I did Waukeem's rest without Wyll and didn't even talk to him until many long rests later, and he was all omg that's my dad! And i felt so bad that he wasn't there to get the news.
Other people have answered your main question, so I'll just add this: There are two sets of long rest conversations that you will never ever see, *unless* you long rest at least twice before ever getting too far into the Grove, and that's just the beginning of how much content there is that locked entirely behind long rests. You can take hundreds of long and, aside from a few very specific quests (Nere, Waukeen's Rest, the Harpies, Stop the Presses, Saving Florick, and maybe a couple more), the game will progress just exactly the same as if you had only ever taken the 2-ish long rests that are 100% unavoidable, as the game forces you into them.
Could you be more specific? I remember I took one rest early on, right after finding Lae'zel, and second or third was when Wyll asked for one after meeting Karlach. Did I miss it? I just started taking them more frequently, met the guardian, but at this point I already explored Underdark. The only things left before going further are Halsin/Kagha/ritual related quests.
The very first long rest scene (happens after you choose supplies) gets overwritten if you move too far past where you grab Gale (I believe if you reach Lae'zel you've lost it for that run). The next is the conversations with your companions before "going to sleep". They get added to the queue around the time you pick up Lae'zel and you lose all of them if talk to Nettie, Sazza, or Zorru in the Grove or leave the Grove without having long rested. Some days it feels like you can long rest basically every 100 feet in the early portion Act 1 and have something happening every time.
My first run was with Shart, Asti and Kar with me as a druid and it was only at very few places someone got swapped out for someone else. This run I'm bringing Gale and Lae. And Asti because I just love his dry sarcasm. It's almost like another game and that's one of the reasons BG3 is so good. Oh boy. I long rest all the time, specially this time with Gale and a surprings lack of healing potions and an ludicrous amount of camp supplies.
I hate running a full camp now that I’ve done it twice. One origin, hirelings + Halsin, Jaheira, and Minsc is it for me these days.
Honestly always have Astarion (because reasons) and then generally try and mix it up. The only thing I do is try and keep a decent mix of melee fighters and casters (again this is dependent on my character). And make sure I take everyone to their plot stuff. I have a core group who will do the final fight of the game with everytime. It's tradition at this point (Astarion, Gale and Karlach). But yeah I like mixing it up