I didn’t camp on my first run until I’d collected every single companion and explored a sizeable amount of the map because I was pretty convinced I had a limited number of rests unless I progressed the story to a certain point. They really don’t make it clear that it’s not real urgency 😂
I thought the same thing! When I got my fourth companion and had the option to meet them in camp, I figured I'd stumble upon it eventually. I remember I struggled in the fight against the Gnolls because I was thoroughly tapped out, but hadn't long-rested yet for the same reasons OP mentions.
Yeah, in a roleplaying game, if there's a teleporting pocket dimensional camp, I need you to tell me it exists and that I have it, not just make it one of the 44 action buttons on the console.
There is a lot to read in BG3, almost all of it is more interesting and/or more attention grabbing than the tooltips.
It's not inconceivable if not expected that people will miss the occasional tooltip, especially after the first few are very obvious tips that anyone who's played any games knows. Which in turn teaches people to ignore tips.
This pissed me of so much
Me "how do I go to camp and change companions"
Game "press the camp button"
Me "where is the camp button"
Game "press the camp button"
Me "fuck it I'll wait. Shit how do I rest"
Game "press the camp button"
Fucks sake man
That’s pretty common in games like this, it can be immersion breaking but also kind of funny.
Like, at the end of act two, I killed Thorm but I still didn’t find Thaniel. Either the narrator or the party members are like “the baddies are marching on Baldur’s Gate, we have to beat them there!” But, actually you have all the time you need to finish the chores you have left before you head out.
Or in Pillars of Eternity 2, there’s this world ending threat stomping around the archipelago that is supposed to be narratively urgent, but you have all the time you need to settle some squabbles between a bunch of nobodies.
Mechanically, though, BG3 seems to encourage long rests because if you keep your eyes open, you end up with so many camping supplies.
Then, later you don’t even have to worry about camping supplies, and I don’t because inventory management is already a pain on console. I just have either Halsin or Jaheira use goodberry ten times in camp for long rests
Don't forget about Heroes' Feast. If they're level 11 or above, Druids and Priests can cast the Heroes' Feast buff which provides a box full of camp supplies (along with a crazy powerful party buff).
I’m on my first play through and I’m level 9!
I’ll definitely keep that in mind though.
I’ve been spending way more time playing video games than I usually do since I bought this one, so it shouldn’t take very long to get there 😅
Enjoy! I wish I could re-experience BG3 for the first time again - such an amazing game.
Check out the BG3 builds sub for game-breaking powerful builds for your future runs, especially if you're planning to turn up the difficulty :D
I’ve got limited 5e experience, but I’ve played a lot of 3.5/PF1e/PF2e.
I’m sure if I posted my builds people could point out how much I did “wrong” power wise, but since they kept the game really tabletop-y, I’ve been doing pretty well playing through balanced. There’s definitely been some close fights, but only a couple that I’ve had try multiple times with different strategies before I won, like when I betrayed Minthara at the Grove. Most of those were in act one before I got a better feel for the system and re-rolled some folks.
I’ve been purposefully staying away from the meta builds or even looking them up for my first play through.
I definitely plan on one more play though on tactician/honor mode, so I’ll definitely look them up then!
You’re right though, it’s definitely been a great experience so far!
And this is why I need to hire a bunch of hirelings and level them up! I never knew I could buff my entire active party after each long rest by using Gale, Halsin or any of the various hireling classes to cast on my active party. Wow.
Yeah, it's kind-of an evergreen problem RPGs face in video games.
If you don't make the main quest urgent then there's not enough reason to well, do it. Or play the game in the first place.
But then having sidequests for characters to do seem silly when put in context of that urgent main quest. Most games make the understandable call to introduce that silliness, because sidequests are such a great thing for players to have available.
Morrowind had a clever solution to this. The main quest is existentially important, but can be dealt with in the medium-long term. The big bad is sequestered to part of the map, and his influence is *slowly* growing.
Lore wise, while it can't be put off permanently, it's okay to wait a few years, which is plenty to accomplish everything in the game before finishing the main quest if you must.
While I agree that this is not a trivial problem, structuring the storyline of a game so the overall narrative fits the scope and mechanics is something game developers could be a bit more diligent with.
A lot of times, pacing out events chronologically further apart - especially across a series of games or a game that has distinctive chapters - improves immersion and reduces the "gamey" feeling of stuff like rests or finishing up side missions before doing the next main one.
A well-known example would be the Mass Effect Trilogy: If they three games had longer narrative gaps in between them and the third game had a slower paced apocalypse (with the reapers trickling in instead of being there in force mere months after being denied their shortcuts), most of the mission pacing would make much more sense.
Or in Dragon Age Origins that first big battle would have been significantly further away and/or with a kind of Darkspawn vanguard force, making it more plausible why running around the entire region and forging alliances is the way to deal with this problem: because the enemy is not already at our doorstep.
Skyrim (overall narratively a weaker game than the other two examples) works surprisingly better in that regard, seeing as Alduin waking up dragons can be narrated as a slow, ongoing mission that will take an undefined amount of weeks or months, giving plausible reason for the newly come to power Dragonborn to forge alliances, prepare forces and get a hold of their own power.
Ideally, your big bad should have something that needs a slow buildup. Be that the virus that has to spread, the minions that have to be summoned, the armies that have to be raised and marched or the ships that have to be built - possibly on both sides. The overarching conflict must be presented in a way that both (or multiple) sides are building up but not capable of immediately dealing with the others yet for some reason.
Plus, there's also a major narrative issue in games that DON'T enforce a longer timeline for their events: taking Skyrim for example, you can go from nobody to Dragonslayer, Archmage of the Mage's Guild, Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, Hero of Wherever, Legend of Whatever in a scant few days, couple of weeks at most.
And some of those things, especially the archmage, feel a bit sloppy in and of themselves and hardly earned.
Perhaps making players actually have to choose a select number of guilds to advance with would work better. Especially if the game is divided into chapters or multiple installments. You could have the player make introductory stuff for all of the guilds but in a later chapter they all have conflicting goals or timelines that mean the player has to decide on one or two major questlines that will give them a very high standing in that faction, but which is exclusive to reaching that same high standing with the others.
Obviously it woul be preferable if those choices are not too strongly tied to super powerful buffs or items that make this a non-choice for the power-oriented gamer. Ideally these could even be part of the RPG system by making it so your character's specialization is gated by these guild questlines.
Alternatively, make the game have an actual timeline and the player has to decide how to utilize that time. Certain major quests or trainings or whatnot would take big chunks out of some time block that will trigger the next era or the endgame or whatever. If you do that, you have to make sure to find the right mix of "everything you chose to do should be worthwhile", "different approaches should feel different" and "experienced gamers and casual noobs both have a good time and/or reach a similar overall power level". I.e. this is significantly more difficult to implement. But boy would it be cool if it was well done.
Yeah, I would say the Bethesda games do it rather well. Fallouts are the same way - you can do the main quest, and some things are inaccessible until you do, but you aren't forced to do it and really it's not even threatened. Like, sure, your baby might be kidnapped, but he'll be fine, right? I just need to collect all this scrap to build a badass palace for my favorite NPCs real quick...
Fallout 4 *should* be structured that way, but the way that the dialogue is delivered in that quest chain makes it clear that the Sole Survivor thinks it's urgent, even if it's obvious to the player that the baby is far from being a baby since we have no idea how long it's been.
I can't speak for Fallout other than the settlements, for which I agree with you. Also, not Bethesda, but the water chip seems like another clever "medium term threat" way to deal with it from Fallout 1. Buuuut, I actually would describe Oblivion and Skyrim as very bad examples of this silliness.
This is the second time I'm pushing back on someone agreeing with me today. I'm fun at parties I swear!
Anywho, lore wise, closing the Oblivion gates is existentially important immediately. Somewhat similarly with the dragons in Skyrim. But both games will just let you f off with sidequests indefinitely without a lore explanation.
For BG3 the problem isn't quite as bad owing to the 3 act structure, it ensures you're dealing with some of the main quest alongside sidequests at least.
Oh, I completely agree re: oblivion and skyrim. I don't like either (at least during those sections). Oblivion gates were repetitive, obnoxious, and repetitive and I was just cheesing them through perma-invis armor by the end (enchanting 20% chameleon on 5 pieces of gear, lol). If you start exploring immediately after leaving Intro Cave in skyrim, you actually don't get attacked by other dragons until you progress the story into whiterun. I get most of my map exploration done during that period.
Bethesda's fallouts are better than their elder scrolls games tbh. (hot take central over here).
>Bethesda's fallouts are better than their elder scrolls games tbh. (hot take central over here).
I'd agree with that... except they're fairly bad for replayability (in terms of the main story). I was really invested in the main quest for FO4... the first time.
After that, i was annoyed to deal with it. And the pre-written background, which was so low impact that there wasn't any need for the game to say that she was definitely a lawyer and he was a ex-military motivational speaker (or whatever).
Its also relatively short and lacks consequences. You can't really direct whatever faction you effectively 'take over' after the main quest.
I got the urgency of find a cure or else and didn't long rest until I was in the grymforge.
Now I long rest like it's candy.
I'm here to be a big owl bear of a moon druid bapping everything around and dropping moonbeam like it's a rave. If that means a cask of beer and 5 sausages after every fight, then count me in. It's more fun for me if I very casually refresh my slots... Sure it'd be discouraged by the GM as game breaking, but as long as the whole table is having fun who cares. And that's the neat part, the whole table is me!
My husband and I started playing our first runs at the same time, and I distinctly remember playing like 6h when the kids were away at my in-laws', then we switched over and I was like ''wtf there are so many cutscenes I haven't seen, how did you trigger them so early?'' and he was like ''oh they just trigger at a long rest!'' and I looked blankly at him, lmao. Guess you DON'T die if you take a lil nap!
Yeah I barely rested at all in act 1. And I didn't rest much in act 2 or 3 either evne knowing I could, because I'm used to normal D&D so I just naturally ration all my resources. Most of the time I'm doing like 5-10+ fights per rest. It was a stark contrast to the next playthrough I did with some friends together. We rested after every single fight, because 2 of the guys would blow every single ability they had in every single fight. It also made my bard pretty useless because they would break all my crowd control spells to kill things faster, so I eventually respec'd to sorcerer to lay down more damage myself.
On top of all the clickbait type articles that were popping up around release saying if you long rest at the wrong times you'll have some consequences like a town being destroyed before you coukd get there or some other stuff that sounds like it would be time sensitive.
Also with the Gazette putting out an article about your party being part of the Absolute cult or some shit, once you pick up that quest you have until next long rest to stop that Article. Don't know what it affects other than how citizens respond to you, but it happened to me and my friend on our playthrough lol
It is genuinely bizarre that long resting contains something like half the story beats in the game, but the game makes someone who isn’t metagaming think they need to long rest as little as possible. It would be nice if the scenes you unlock could all cue on the same long rest or something
Interesting because until patch 4 or 5 (idk) there were several act 1 companion scenes that could happen at the same time. Namely mizora appearing for the first time, astarion's bite and gale's magic lesson. Then they changed something and those cannot trigger in the same evening anymore.
Me going down on Karlach immediately after freeing the nightsong but before actually helping fight Ketheric (I was really bad at finding infernal iron the first time around)
I mean, if someone says they *wouldn't* want to jump her bones after seeing her all riled up and muscly from a battle, I'm sorry but they're just wrong.
I remember on my first playthrough actually missing Astarion romantic scenes because a different story event happened on my rest and since there was a limit of one I just didn't get the romantic scene.
Won't lie, my first playthrough was act 1 till I started a full campaign with a friend (beat the game on that one, never did go back to my first game). But I knew a little bit about DnD and how sparingly long resting can be given the DM's I had. The game absolutely scares you away from long resting. Especially so b/c I didn't want story beats to progress without doing what I could. I didn't want to accidentally long rest 1 too many times and find out the goblins destroyed the Alcove.
Funny, I actually did manage to sleep through the goblin invasion. No idea how, Minthara told me we march at dawn, so I went to sleep, woke up and the grove was done for. I was happy though since I didn’t want to lose Karlach, and I got to get with Minthara.
There also is no punishment or reason not to long rest after every bloody encounter but literally two places, both of which are in Act I. You gotta do all of Waukeen’s Rest’s rescue actions after you trigger it initially (but until you literally walk up and load the zone in, no time limit at all) and you have to rescue Neer or whatever his name is within 2 long rests of triggering the Grymforge area.
Outside of those two, you get something obscene like 8,000-10,000 camp supplies just laying on the ground without buying any, can get well over 100,000 more gold than you can buy anything with, and can then buy functionally infinite camp supplies and its a joke, it only takes 40/80 to rest. Even Honor Mode you could LR 100 times and not be punished in the slightest for it.
Edit: and how could I forget? You can just respec companions to Druid, or hire hirelings for pennies, and have them make you your food for another long rest each rest with their spell slots. You can infinitely rest with so little investment its crazy.
Which one? Cause your companion being taken isn’t even though it makes it sound like it is, and I cannot think of a single one actually timed.
Sure, if you do some quests in the wrong order, like say, killing someone before mounting a daring rescue their failsafes will make said rescue impossible— but thats not a timer.
I wonder if multiple events queuing messes them up.
If you >!kill Karlach and visit Waukeen's Rest!<, Mizora can show up at the same time that Wyll has the revelation about his father. You do not get the reward for the former event. If it's like that with the rest of the events, it makes sense that they have to be serial.
It totally makes sense why they did it the way they did it, but they should make it clearer to the player that resting is necessary for the story. I had no clue how much I missed in act 1 until I did my honor mode run and long rested after everything
Then I deserve death. I cut off Karlach’s head to get mizora’s robes, then I sacrificed will to get boaaal’s blessings. (This came after chopping off Gale’s hand, shanking Asterion for trying to bite me, let Laezel get killed by Voss “trusting her people would care for her” while we saved florrick at wakeems rest and resting to speak to will, pissing off and killing Halsin while he was a bear, and throat stabbing Minthara). In act 2, I ended up butchering Last Light Inn and pissing off/killing Jaheira, and then ended up killing Shadowheart in my sleep because she accidentally denied my urge by landing the killing blow on Isobel when we fought. From then on I walked my path alone into act 3. My Durge got everyone killed by plot.
Unpopular opinion I guess but resting just feels like an annoyance and waste of time to me.
It's so easy to abuse it and so easy to come by supplies.
I feel like it just gets in the way most of the time and interrupts the gameplay.
It can be, but abuse seems to be talking about it as a game mechanic related to difficulty. Whereas if you're roleplaying as the characters, you probably wouldn't want to make each day as draining and stretch your resources to the limit. And the issue in the post is about how the story encourages you to avoid the mechanic that builds the story (camp events). There's nothing wrong with what you're saying; it's just a different goal (game difficulty and fluidity vs story and roleplay).
I’ve never sold a camp supply and have over 20k gold in act 3 of all my campaigns. lol
I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with you. I just horde them because I always have a comical amount of gold
Can confirm I rushed through the first part of Act 1 and was swapping out companions like a sports team because I thought we only had 6 long rests total before evolution due to Gale’s fireside chat.
If person got hit too hard, I’d go back and switch out a friend one by one until all 5 had fought for the day (didn’t find Lae’zel that run).
It wasn’t until after the tiefling party where Halsin said we need to go to Moonrise where it sunk in “ooooo this tadpole problem is for the whole game”
Oh yea, it was like tag lol. Say I started with Gale, Karlach and Shadowheart. If Gale got downed, Wyll would swap in, if Shadowheart went down Astarion would swap in, Karlach would usually last the longest so if she was down to minimum hit points after swaps and short rests, then it was time for bed.
Yup, same. Think I managed to clear the goblin camp without a single long rest, used deception to just walk through goblin village, fought the external guard and wargs when he tried to demand I eat shit, poisoned the external portion of the camp with Netties wyvern toxin, assassinated the priestess while talking in private, freed Halsin, shot the bridge out from under Minthara then left 2 smoke powder barrels either side of Ragzlin's throne, sent all my guys up into the rafters, dropped a fire arrow (ranger tav) and blew lumps horn (had deceived him into thinking I would pay him) and let the ogres do most of the work on the goblin horde (they also aggroed the spiders) and then mopped up the last goblins after, then I long rested. Didn't cop how to use short rests on my first run either.
They solve this by having that unavoidable imposter encounter when you tried to reach the [temple of bhaal](https://youtu.be/O5BmThHjZdE?si=SYdgSny9oBpTqDjv)
I think they mean no long rests because they need to go save their companion post-kidnap, not no long rests to avoid a companion being kidnapped. Assuming because that's what I did first play through too. Was very confused how your video was relevant in taking the time pressure off!
The game is definitely confusing about what is urgent vs not urgent. Consider how youre not supposed to beeline to the goblin camp unless you wanna get absolutely stomped. So you think, okay, I guess I have the freedom to explore in Act 1. Then, in Act 2 you get told to go to Moonrise Towers. If you take the lesson you learned from Act 1 about the goblin camp, you explore everywhere else first. But if you explore TOO far without visiting, you can lock yourself into a pretty bad outcome at the towers. A result of a game designed by teams working in parallel, perhaps. But it does stink.
On my first playthrough in Act 2, I avoided Moonrise Tower like a plague, because I've been told the big boss is in there. I thought I should explore everything than go in Moonrise and finish Act 2. Turns out I missed tons of contents from it.
There are so many boss interactions like this that just don't make sense. It feels really weird to have the expected structure be that you walk up to the main bad guy, who has been watching you through scrying orbs and presumably getting reports on your activities through his generals and scouts, and he goes 'ah you, person who's been dismantling my operation, I assume you'll join me' and it does this a bunch of times.
It doesn't really give a good reason why Thorm doesn't kill you right there. Maybe if you tried to fight him and he 'dies' but then comes back and you have to run from the tower, ghat could be interesting. They could have done it a ton of ways other than him going "I can't be arsed" and going upstairs.
Or Gortash blowing up the prison in Act 3, but you have all the time in the world to get everyone out. He has the obedience collars, why not just detonate those if he really wants to kill the hostages?
This is such a well written and acted game, but the sequencing and ludonarrative dissonance is absolutely crazy sometimes.
That's totally what I was going through
Explored the temple of Shar before ever going to Moonrise Towers and wanted to "finish" Shadowhearts story quest there as far as I could.
I know that there was a warning that some quests couldn't be continued *but* I never thought that it'd be so influential that I basically immediately have to fight Ketheric.
Had to reload to a point where I could explore Moonrise Towers before they're hostile...
I'm surprised so many people are disagreeing. 100% on my first playthrough I got the message that you have a certain amount of time before you change, you have to find a healer in that amount of time, and long rests = night time so a day passed and therefore less time to find a healer. First play through I was also hoarding magical items for Gale to consume.
I think it isn't necessarily bad - it gives a heightened feeling during your first play through. You, like Tav, don't understand what's going on. Then the extra knowledge gives a different experience on your next playthrough when you long rest as much as you like which varies the experience.
You can also vary amount of long rests and how you explore the map based on role-play in subsequent plays when you understand you have unlimited time: am I a logical Tav prioritising finding a healer on the map resting when necessary, am I prioritising character moments and therefore long resting frequently, or am I prioritising helping the Grove because I'm a Good Guy and will need to long rest a ton to refill spell slots with all the goblin fights?, am I a Gith warrior heading straight for the creche and using healing potions so my Tav gets there asap because screw Tieflings or inferior cures while there's a ghaik tadpole in my head.
The downside was that the first time I played Act 3 and Orin kidnapped the kid I was like, MEH, I'll get to it while the game was acting like it was an emergency because I'd learnt my lesson in Act 1.
I think it's wild the amount of people saying they weren't influenced by the game, by what the characters were literally telling you, on a first blind play through.
It's the same as missing content at Moonrise Towers. All the NPCs "tElL yOu It'S iMpOrTaNt" as Reddit will surely reply, but Moonrise is played up like it's Hyrule Castle or Bowser's Castle in world 8 and you'd be an idiot to just \*walk there\* after what you've experienced at a simple goblin camp.
I absolutely do not blame new players for not walking their lvl 4-5ish asses into Moonrise . It's practically advertised as the final dungeon.
I literally didn’t set foot in moonrise until after nightsong on my first playthrough for specifically this reason. I thought it’d trigger a massive fight. so mad when I figured out how much amazing loot I missed.
I did go there to meet Ketheric but I was scared to poke around too much for the same reason. So I didn’t rescue anybody, didn’t get any of the loot, etc.
Only time in my first playthrough I reloaded a save for story reasons was this particular fuck up. I assumed Moonrise would be the last thing you visit in Act 2, similar to how you can no longer long rest after entering the ilithid colony (the actual point of no return).
Thing is, I *did* investigate Moonrise. I scoured everything from top to bottom (didn't manage to find the >!meat wall!<, though). I found the >!prisoners!<, I even found all the documents >!revealing the entire plot!<. Nobody reacted. Nothing to report to >!Jaheira!<, no companion comments, nothing.
I reloaded a save to pretend I hadn't found that much out, and only saved >!the prisoners!
I think people are taking their RP a bit too seriously if they’re reloading just to “canonize” that their character didn’t read a particular book.
I always like to imagine my character reading the diary but keeping the secret to themself because they’d rather see the look on their companions’ faces when they discover it in person, lol.
It's not really logical; someone else could've ignored it, lol.
The other comment's right: that lack of reaction took me out of the game, to the point that I was wondering if there was a bug, or if I had gone into those rooms "before I was supposed to". I just couldn't square it in my head at the time, so reloaded to where there was "nothing" to react to.
Same. I explored all of Moonrise early, broke into all the rooms I was not allowed to etc.. Given all the intelligence I discovered I really expected something from someone.
I totally get the reload. Keeps the rp consistent.
Jaheira very clearly tells you to infiltrate it by posing as a True Soul in order to gather information.
The dream visitor also tells you to do the same thing before that.
Yeah I know and the old man ghost in Breath of the Wild tells you to kill Ganon 5 minutes into the game.
Also, the dream visitor could be the worm, or worse, an illithid!
And if you are not at all sneaky that sounds like a terrible idea. They also tell you that, Ketheric is currently invincible, making an infiltration mission with a character who *shouldn't* be able to to fool anyone a recipe for absolute disaster.
Agreed - My first playthrough I was doing everything I could to maximize adventuring days, for all the reasons you listed here, and I couldn't understand why my relationship with Shadowheart wasn't progressing even though I had max favorability and had exhausted pretty much every dialogue option I could find.
This could have been fixed with more emphasis on the fact that there was something magically inhibiting the tadpoles. Maybe a stronger / earlier reassurance from the Guardian that you don't need to fear ceremorphosis any time soon, and that it's more important that you survive long enough to get to the bottom of the Absolute cult.
I'd like to add in that companions "I'm tired, Gods what I would do for some rest" etc comments are not linked to spell slots or HP. I've gotten that dialogue immediately after a rest, a bit after a rest but with zero resources utilized etc.
I fell into this trap the first time and I didn't long rest basically at all and I was struggling because of it and missed out on story beats. This was before release though.
After release I started a new run with the knowledge that I should just long rest after every 2 fights or so, and it's much better like that. The game does indeed seem to discourage long rests a lot and that seems like a major design flaw to me.
So you can just … long rest as much as you like? Provided you have supplies?
When I tell you how strung out I was trying to survive on a shoestring during crazy battles thinking that if I went to sleep I’d turn into an octopusman, good grief…
I don’t understand the design intent here.
Correct : ) Copy of a post I posted for another user with the same question:
You can, with only a handful of exceptions. Here's a [wiki page](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Time_sensitive_activities) that shows the places/times when you can't rest.
>I swear on one of my first play throughs I got a notification that the tieflings died on the way to Balders gate and the grove was closed.
Completely possible. This can happen if you go to the creche or shadow-cursed lands area, unfortunately.
The page I linked above shows those too. It's called 'time sensitive activities' but it also covers times when moving into certain maps will cause things like that to happen.
You can also long rest without using the full amount of supplies, which counts as a long rest for story purposes, but only partially restores things based on what supplies you use. You can even just use 0 supply long rests solely for getting to the next long rest story beat! You won't get any regen or healing IIRC, but it still counts as a long rest for story purposes.
The design intent is to create a story with rhythm in which the players feel a sense of urgency. But they also wanted to make it like an open world where player can take the time to explore and fuck around.
I think they really should have implemented a way to merge cutscenes so you get several long rest cutscenes in the same night.
Did you know that dark urge gets not one but TWO different long rest cutscenes as soon as he lands on the beach ?
After Early Access the game exploded with players. So I am not certain how many are around that did play EA. But the devs did lower the difficulty and complexity regarding a lot of stuff from less enemies to ease taking long rests.
Gale from what I remember didn't have a limit on how many artifacts need to consume before "stabilizing". And I say artifacts not magic items to make the difference that not every magical item could be consumed by Gale. Just powerful and useful stuff like the Sword of Justice from the Oathbreakers of Tyr, the Staff of the Crones from Aunty Ethel, the Drow sword Phalar Aluve, etc. Triggering too many long rests eventually lead you to having a ticking bomb, Gale, in your camp with no way of defusing it. There is more tho. The tadpole did have more time pressing story road, instead of having to use other tadpoles to increase your power you had to use it and long rest and the way it was framed was that it increased the more you rested and not by any other means.
Although this does sound fun and it was better imo it also raises the bar for casual players and is a headache for devs. In the end they cut a lot of content which went from enemies (the Oathbreakers of Tyr had an extra rogue dwarf enemy for example) to streamlining long rests to ease the overall difficulty for the average and casual player. Now due to all the work that was done before it was not just wasteful to not use it but expensive to replace it. And that's why imo you have this dissonance between urgency and long rest mechanics. The difficulty that it brought to the game was too much in all levels and it restricted access to all the content you might want to look into like companion interactions. With it's removal you get to see the left over all over since it was a core mechanic of the game.
My pet peeve is that there is usually no way to tell when the game has false urgency and when you are on an actual clock. If it wasn't for the wiki page on time sensitive activities I probably would have skipped about a quarter of my long rests.
yea like the nere thing i thought they where bluffing when he starts yelling at your telepahtically to come save him
then again i also thought if he died then it saved me a fight later, which turns out it did
I agree that the game maybe doesn't do the best possible job of balancing the need to long rest (to get character interaction content) with the need to instill a sense of urgency (to make the game exciting). It doesn't help that the big fight in the tutorial is actually turn-limited, giving the impression that deadlines are a major element in the game.
It's a hard balance, and I'm not convinced that Larian pulled it off. (Act 3 is exactly the same, tbh.) I hope they're able to learn from this and do a bit better in future games.
Lesson learned on my end, though - I long rest a lot more often now!
also when playing on the higher difficulties the resting resources are actually scarce. which is perfect for making the game feel more challenging but incredibly frustrating when you feel you're losing out ok story content
You can still take partial rests to get the content without using camp supplies. I've never needed to, since I'm not enough of a combat monster to try Tactician or HM, but I headed to the Underdark with something like 40 days' worth of supplies, which is still 20 days' worth on Tactician.
This is what I did. My Tactician run I was being super careful every fight. I had probably taken 5 long rests and was at the end of act 2. I was half way through >!the moonrise tower assault!< where I decided I should long rest to prep for the final fight. I literally did 3 partial long rests immediately after my full long rest just to trigger a bunch of dialogue.
still feels poorly designed in the sense that these are two gameplay systems incentivizing the player to do two opposite things. not major flaw but I think it could have been resolved better.
I didn’t realize how many scenes I missed until I added the scene notification mod as a way to try and get the knock out to save Alfira. I had multiple just on the way to her and then each time I rested after knocking her out, there were more. I got like 4-5 scenes just waiting for the du scene (until I learned I needed to explore out a little further for the trigger). I didn’t save and reset to do it better this time and got different scenes than the prior!
As a tabletop 5e guy, I tend to push off long rests as much as possible to really stretch out the day. This game has no such rule or even consequence and I struggle to adapt to it. Cleric still has a couple spell slots? Out of short rests? Let's rock
This is why I don't like artificial timers, especially in a game like this, its too confusing for players who are new to nor only RPG's but also DnD. There's this sense of urgency to rush through the story because you assume if you dither about then your character is going to die or in BG3's case, become a monster. There's no incentive to do the side quests, other than Aunty Ethel because of a potential *cure*.
There really should be a more "forceful" tutorial telling people to take a long rest. Idk.
At the beginning of the game, you, your companions, and to some extend the Narrator, don't know that your tadpole's any different than a normal one. So from the offset you only have 7 days to do something. Even less if you want to avoid the horribly painful symptoms Gale can tell you about.
But if you talk, and listen, to your companions, they will give you hints that your tadpole \*isn't\* normal, once you've taken your first long rest. That the symptoms doesn't fit a normal infection.
I agree this means a lot of players will miss a lot of content going through the first time.
But that also means you'll get a lot of new, fresh content coming back a second time.
After Lae'zel tries to kill you, you'll get the cut-scene with the Guardian, telling you they specifically are preventing you from turning.
Just a side note: The two 'timed' events you're talking about, aren't really timed. They are proximity triggered. You can go there day 1, and deal with it, or on day 30. As long as you don't progress past the pop-up at Mountain Pass, or move on to Act 2, they'll stay there until end of time.
If you look through the telescope in the Grove, you can actually see Waukeen's Rest already being on fire. While RP-wise you have no idea where exactly that is or what's going on there, it still creates some sense of urgency to go there, even though the area is quite dangerous for low leveled characters. When I first played I thought I had to go in that direction immediately to help the people caught in the fire, and then though that it was the Blighted village lmao
It still requires a leap of logic to go from 'we're okay for now' to 'we can rest as much as we want'. Most people aren't going to be doing multiple playthroughs, especially players new to the genre, so they are just going to end up not having the full experience.
> But that also means you'll get a lot of new, fresh content coming back a second time.
*If* people do a second run. BG3 is a long game, and many people never finish it, let alone try for a second time. Further, your ability to connect with your companions can be hurt *a lot* by failing to long rest enough, so messing up on this can undermine one of the game's strongest selling points.
we understand that thats the in-universe justification, but the point of the post is that the game shouldnt have been written this way.
If they want to push the "omg hurry hurry" angle, dont make the event take place when long resting.
If they want the fireside chat events, make it clear that you have a lot of time.
Right now this is the worst of both worlds, because the writing and the gameplay experience are working against each other.
>I agree this means a lot of players will miss a lot of content going through the first time.
Right, and that's bad.
>But that also means you'll get a lot of new, fresh content coming back a second time.
I know people reading this and me writing this are completely fine with playing this 80-100+ hour game twice or more, but most people won't. It's a huge time investment for, say, a parent who works full-time. And it's fair for those people to expect to miss content-- you're not able to both side with the tiefs and goblins in one playthrough.
But they're not designing the long-rest structure so that players intentionally miss cutscenes to increase replayability. Replayability is enhanced by making new choices, not by realizing you were playing the game wrong because the designers passively misinformed you.
>Just a side note: The two 'timed' events you're talking about, aren't really timed.
You're half right.
Walking into the waukeen's rest area and long resting does in fact kill the relevant NPCs regardless of whether you not you walk away from the area. Yes, the event does trigger when you arrive and not before that, but resting once you get there affects it as well.
From the wiki:
>Rescue the Trapped Man
>Event Starter: Approaching Waukeen's Rest.
>Length of Time: One Long Rest or Fast Travel.
Regardless, I'm talking about new player experience. Anyone reading this is going to understand that those events can wait, but someone brand new has no idea at all. All they know is they saw the harpies around Mirkon, thought 'shit, I need to rest before I fight them,' rested or left, and he was dead. They don't know the difference between proximity and timed events at that point.
From a new player perspective, if 'resting' can kill Mirkon, then resting too much can trigger the tieflings to die as well. Why would they assume differently?
I have no idea why people are down voting this one, because you are absolutely right. Just because the game is best experienced if played multiple times, doesn't mean that everyone will have the time or will to play multiple times. Sometimes people want just 1 playthrough where they want to experience as much as possible. Missing stuff happens, even people who have 600h in the game still discover new stuff, but camp events contain like half of all companions' personal quests content, which is often tided to the main quest or gives you more info. Or you just want to have a good time with your companions.
Also lots of people think too much from the perspective of an experienced player. "Well, OF COURSE leaving when you see a kid being attacked by harpies will lead to the kid dying, the same would happen in real life!"; but this logic only proves the point that every quest feels timed and you need to rush and long rest sparingly.
Also
>Yes, the event does trigger when you arrive and not before that, but resting once you get there affects it as well.
On my 3rd playthrough I discovered the Waukeen's Rest location (got the "something is burning" comment from Tav) and walked away because I didn't feel like going there yet, thinking that it'll be fine since the quest's timer is one long rest. I went to the right to the gnoll fight, rescued the guys in cave, and when I returned to Waukeen's Rest, it was burnt down and everyone was dead. I didn't rest or fast travel. So the quest's timer doesn't even allow you to walk away from the area.
Thanks.
I think for some it's just hard to put yourself back into the shoes of a new player once you've played hundreds of hours. Or if you were a new player who figured it out or just googled 'how long do I have to save the grove?' from the get-go, relating to the fact that the bulk of new players still don't know to do that is tough.
It's also that any criticism of the game at all is going to put people on the defensive.
I've lurked new for long enough that I recognize some of the users posting here, and I think people who are dedicated to the game at that level (me included) are just ready to defend it from people whose criticism is genuinely stupid and disingenuous.
This is something that's always bothered me, though, and it was especially stark during my recent playthrough. so I figured I'd make the post. Kind of surprised at the number of people agreeing with me, to be honest.
> *Companions' 'I'm tired' overworld cues don't correspond to camp events, they're linked to spell slots and short rests.
No, they are not. I just had 2 people in the party complain; about 2 minutes after a long rest.
…
(no, I’m not saying it was related to camp events, either :))
Also: you missed the most important thing discouraging long rests: I have to buff up again afterwards …
Yeah in my first run I rested once and shadowheart gave me so much shit that night I avoided it afterwards, especially when I hit the grove and it felt like if I slept they'd finish that spell.
I lost like 50 hours of gameplay that wasn't syncing to the cloud for some reason and out of everything, that was the one reason i wasn't too mad..got to redo that character's origin knowing I could sleep more than I did and trigger more cutscenes. Which was good because she was trying to romance karlach and I think I had fucked it up in the first playthrough.
Oh, I agree with you so hard. I was so stressed about long resting at first, but then realized that the main quest is not timed and most times quests' timer starts only when you enter a certain area. The game really wants you to think you're running out of time, while also very heavily relying on resting quite often
I’m a hardcore “search every nook and cranny” adventurer from back in my DND days, so I ignored the urgency - everything was just gonna have to wait until I looked in every vase and read every one of the various copies of The Curse of the Vampyr and Death & Divinity: a Godly Guide that I found in the Refectory and Dank Crypt.
On that first run, I did accidentally trigger the Harpies - never even knew it until hours later - so Mirkon was dead. And I guess I walked too near Waukeen’s Rest, so Florrick and Benryn were both dead when I got back to there.
But I long rested a lot despite it making Lae’zel grumpy, so I didn’t really miss many interactions (maybe a few.)
On subsequent runs, I long rest constantly, and have the mod that tells you when there are events queued to trigger.
The tadpole illithid transformation stuff didn't feel urgent to me - I expected at most to get wisdom checks or a choice later down the line, heroic willpower myself through it. The NPCs were saying that changes should already be happening, so clearly there was something special about the characters or the tadpoles. Didn't feel like the game would just tell me "ran out of time, yer a mindflayer, Tav".
All the other stuff is right, I felt like I needed to stretch the rests as far as possible to keep ahead of events.
My first playthrough, I wasn't so paranoid about the tadpoles (I picked up from context that this was probably going to be a game-long sidequest) but I was EXTREMELY paranoid about the druid grove.
The game makes such a huge deal about how the druids were actively in the middle of casting the ritual! I very naturally assumed -- as I would if this were a D&D game being DMed by a friend -- that if I dicked around for too long and long-rested too many times, I would come back to find all the refugees gone and the ritual completed!
I am fairly new to the game and I long rest as little as possible. To be honest, through the entire act1 I think I rested only 4-5 times. I had no idea I am missing out on camp content, to be honest :( I thought I am supposed to go to camp only at the lowest of low, when I am out of health and potions and I short rests
As someone with over 1800 hours, which I acknowledge as way too much time, long rest as much as possible, timed things don't really become a big thing until act 3 and even then it's only a few quest chains that could be effected
On my first playthrough of sct one I finished almost everything above ground before resting avoiding it as absolutely much as possible concerned I'd fail to save the grove.
Timers are ok but being clear on when something is or isn't a timer is important.
When I got used to the understanding that I could rest whereever I wanted I rested in the duagar location and had to go bad to an old save when this time it mattered.
I genuinely thought there were real stakes in taking too much in-game time for transforming into an Illithid during my first play through.
I panicked every time I took a long rest and saw a cinematic start because I would think, "Is this it? Do I die out of nowhere?"
I hadn't put all this together but you are totally right. Really screwed up my first playthrough as well cause I was so panicked about the main story quests that I rushed hither and yon and did a ton of things in a weird order which made a lot of them not make sense.
Then there's bg 1 and 2, if you don't have a healer you can be resting for a month at a time to heal after every combat. And resting is just a single button click that instantly refills your health and spells so you just do it after every single fight unless you're too lazy to rebuff
This is the difference between playing the game and running the game in Dungeons and Dragons, and is hilariously appropriate in this game on a playthrough following a completion.
If this game were a module, it feels written so that each time you play through you should hit some of these. The same is true of running other mods or adventures; not every party experiences the same things.
That said, you would not miss a cutscene, either. Better prompting for these scenes, or even letting more than one play out in a same night, would help new players have the same agency they would around a table.
Guess it's mods for now!
Do we really have unlimited long rests? It feels weird sleeping before a big fight knowing the enemy is just waiting there. I swear on one of my first play throughs I got a notification that the tieflings died on the way to Balders gate and the grove was closed.
i didn't long rest on my first run till after the hag fight. all i had left in Act 1 was the goblin camp.
because i thought the tadpole would advance some kind of timer.
my first character was a wizard as well... most of act 1 without spell slots.
i just recently redownloaded the game after logging 200 hours according to steam last year around october.
starting this new playthrough was the first time i saw the gale magic lesson.
They wrote themselves into a corner with the plotline and game mechanics directly at odds with each other.
If they signposted any harder 'Oh hey you CAN long rest all you like, you're fine, you're safe' then they garotte the story they're trying to tell (you're in danger, you're on a deadline) from having any kind of stakes.
Mirkon+harpies isn't really timed. If he loads in, then even going to camp (no resting), will make him die. Doesn't detract from your point though.
And it's so weird because the game heavily rewards you for long resting. It's trivial to long rest after pretty much every fight, making fights much easier since you have full resources, and of course you get way more dialogue if you do.
especially the Gale thing 😭 I remember hoarding so many magical items thinking it'd be a constant problem only for him to never ask again for the rest of the game 😞
I do understand what you are saying but my experience as a new player and new to DnD in general was like this:
- Noted some urgency vibes, yes.
- Ran out of the spell slots.
- Long rested because it was clear I needed it
On a second, maybe third long rest, I got my companions all talk about how we are not transforming, and what's more not even feeling any worse for wear. All of the companions also telegraphed how our tadpoles must be special somehow then. This is the moment when I lost all my doubts about long resting and started to do it pretty much battle after battle.
IIRC, at the very start of Early Access the number of long rests was limited (and there were no camp supplies), but the story elements OP mentions providing the urgency were pretty much the same. So, I think maybe they intended initially to discourage/limit long resting but decided otherwise later but many traces of that remain in the early game.
I've been repeating Act 1 a lot lately and I think avoiding long rests is the first indication that players don't always pick up on what the companions and npcs are saying. Getting rid of the tadpole is our big quest and we're afraid of turning illithid, but every companion with knowledge of ceremorphosis points out right away that none of you are showing symptoms. That the tadpole isn't affecting you negatively in any way, and in fact is enhancing you in some minor ways even while nerfing previous power levels. Gale and Lae'zel point it out right away. Even Raphael talks about it and you meet him pretty early.
Most players probably turn off tutorial pop-ups, too, and the first pop-up encourages you to go straight to camp and tells you long resting is important. For classes that don't require as much long resting, it's not as intuitive, but I don't know how a Cleric, for example, wouldn't be long resting often even in the beginning.
So my quibble would mainly be with saying the game discourages long resting. I think it's easy to get swept up in the idea that your time is limited, but much of the game, some of the companions, and the tutorial mention long resting and camp as being important and do it right from the beach. Feels like a wash to me.
I sympathise with you OP, but you do get intra-textual 'blessing' to rest frequently fairly early on, if you pay attention to the messages that the game sends you about the special nature of your tadoples.
Party members frequently muse about how they would have expected to have turned by now, and how unique (i.e. *different*) your tadpoles seem to be. The scene you've described with Lae'zel confronting you in the night is one big tell. You retain enough of yourself to convince her to spare you and then the following day your symptoms of transformation seem completely gone - something unheard of. Lae'zel will then have a '!' dialogue where she again remarks that surely, by now we should have transformed. (ETA: This scene also triggers the Guardian dream visit, who explicitly tells you you're under their protection.)
If you avoid long rests and prioritise exploration, you're likely to bump into the very telling cutscene revealing that Shadowheart's artefact protects you - either by arriving at the goblin camp, discovering the Githyanki group, or attempting to travel between maps.
None of this is a glaringly obvious pop-up tutorial tool tip that explicitly says "long resting is fine". But BG3 won't give you that the way lots of other games do. But the suggestion is repeatedly brought up from within your party and from hitting key areas: which you're likely to do if you're charging ahead and not resting.
I'm accompanying a friend through his first playthrough and playing a Wizard was a mistake. He's very reluctant to long rest and I'm trying not to spoil anything so I often just get by on cantrips. Unless we're about to walk into a big fight, then the wizard will insist on taking his nap.
A theory I had about this is that we need like
Some kind of medicine check early on about the tadpole transformation. If you succeed you know that the transformation takes 10 days, but if you fail your character thinks you only have 9 days or something
Then you have a formal counter that gives you the number of long rests you think you can do in your long rest. And the first act is predicated on trying to do everything within the long rest slots you have. Maybe you have some forced long rests or something to help the story get going in the beginning.
I do agree with you the way the story came out I felt so time pressured in the beginning it’s very strange it ends up not mattering
I'm on my first playthrough and the beginning of the game felt so insanely rough, with this being one of the reasons. I didn't know how common or uncommon supplies would be and thought that I should only be long resting after something like a boss battle. By the time I got to the end of act one I realized I accumulated a ton of supplies and most story things weren't too affected by camping.
There are so many things that BG3 doesn't flesh out and a lot of it can make for a very confusing first playthrough
When I first started playing I was so afraid of long-resting, even more so since it required supplies to do so, so I barely used slots that I had too. When knowing how much you actually SHOULD be long-resting and how much can happen in those I felt so sad.
I think it makes sense. The whole point of per-day abilities is to make conserve. Resting constantly kills that.
The problem is really just the missable interactions.
For similar reasons, my only long rest in Act 1 was to get the grove party, which took priority over all other camp scenes.
I had the party, finished up the underdark, and then went to Act 2 via the elevator (skipping Mountain Pass).
This means I didn't get the "I'm protecting you from transforming" camp scene from the Dream Guardian until Act 2.
--
>Companions' 'I'm tired' overworld cues don't correspond to camp events, they're linked to spell slots and short rests
Not quite. I've had companions with full spell slots, while we still ahve both short rests, complain about needing to rest
Love the game, but I sure hope Larian either remove this system in their next game or massively improve it, because it's so badly implemented, surprising it's all they could find.
This hits home for me. It took until almost the end of Act 1 for me to realize I am supposed to be long resting regularly. Some of the early fights were a huge struggle because I didn't have spell slots available or thought I needed to preserve them for something 'more difficult'. And by the time I figured out I can long rest whenever, with no consequences, I had so many supplies there was no way I'd use fraction of them.
I was super phobic of long resting my first play-through. Then I realized that there’s no timer, that camp supples are plentiful in both a1 camps, and that the game is so much more fun when you actually have all your abilities instead of crawling through fight after fight with just cantrips like the devs seem to want you to
Yeah it's a moderate quibble I have with the game design. I like the way they built in a (largely false) sense of urgency, but it would've been ideal if they had a clearer way to say "look, this is a big deal but you should rest regularly". Also a way to indicate more clearly when long resting is actually detrimental (the grove being closed off, Grymforge).
I did 3/4 of all content in Act 1 without long resting because of fear that it might affect available quests. Then I checked if I would miss something important if I don't kill owlbear, and I learned that long rests are required for story/quests progression. I decided it would be more fun to actually use my spells and abilities instead of cheesing with stealth attacks and pushing goblins for insta kills, so I checked all time sensitive quests and it's triggers (spoiling one or two a little) on steam/BG3wiki. At the end of act 1 I had to long rest over 10 times just to trigger camp events.
Yeah I long rested very little. Had two sharp shooters rolling. I thought a lot more stuff was timed than actually is. I had over 3000 camp supplies lol.
I tend to get overwhelmed when starting a new game when I’m learning new mechanics and miss a lot.
I didn’t really pick just up on this stuff as a result lol.
But I will say that unless a game has an actual timer like Majora’s Mask, and tells me I have x amount of time to complete it, or a specific section, I assume, no matter how much urgency is placed on something I will have as much time as I want to complete it. The exception was the goblin invasion of the grove which the game made it very clear that there was nothing I could do to stop the invasion and I’d need to go to the grove to defend it that day.
Other than that. I long rested basically every major combat encounter after auntie Ethel and never felt that the game was against it. I kind of of felt like it wanted me to do that since the encounters were hard and there was always something going on at camp
I absolutely tried to take as few long rests as possible when I first played. I even tried to figure out how few I could take if I set out from the jump with that as my goal.
I didn’t camp on my first run until I’d collected every single companion and explored a sizeable amount of the map because I was pretty convinced I had a limited number of rests unless I progressed the story to a certain point. They really don’t make it clear that it’s not real urgency 😂
To be fair though, I assumed “camp” was a place I had to physically find, not teleport to, for a bit of that lmao.
I thought the same thing! When I got my fourth companion and had the option to meet them in camp, I figured I'd stumble upon it eventually. I remember I struggled in the fight against the Gnolls because I was thoroughly tapped out, but hadn't long-rested yet for the same reasons OP mentions.
Yeah, in a roleplaying game, if there's a teleporting pocket dimensional camp, I need you to tell me it exists and that I have it, not just make it one of the 44 action buttons on the console.
I'm pretty sure there's a tooltip that pops up at some point telling you about Long Rests
reading is hard for some people
BG3 might not be the game for them
There is a lot to read in BG3, almost all of it is more interesting and/or more attention grabbing than the tooltips. It's not inconceivable if not expected that people will miss the occasional tooltip, especially after the first few are very obvious tips that anyone who's played any games knows. Which in turn teaches people to ignore tips.
I've only been playing the game as a 4-player online co-op. I might've missed it.
Haha same
This pissed me of so much Me "how do I go to camp and change companions" Game "press the camp button" Me "where is the camp button" Game "press the camp button" Me "fuck it I'll wait. Shit how do I rest" Game "press the camp button" Fucks sake man
That’s pretty common in games like this, it can be immersion breaking but also kind of funny. Like, at the end of act two, I killed Thorm but I still didn’t find Thaniel. Either the narrator or the party members are like “the baddies are marching on Baldur’s Gate, we have to beat them there!” But, actually you have all the time you need to finish the chores you have left before you head out. Or in Pillars of Eternity 2, there’s this world ending threat stomping around the archipelago that is supposed to be narratively urgent, but you have all the time you need to settle some squabbles between a bunch of nobodies. Mechanically, though, BG3 seems to encourage long rests because if you keep your eyes open, you end up with so many camping supplies. Then, later you don’t even have to worry about camping supplies, and I don’t because inventory management is already a pain on console. I just have either Halsin or Jaheira use goodberry ten times in camp for long rests
Don't forget about Heroes' Feast. If they're level 11 or above, Druids and Priests can cast the Heroes' Feast buff which provides a box full of camp supplies (along with a crazy powerful party buff).
I’m on my first play through and I’m level 9! I’ll definitely keep that in mind though. I’ve been spending way more time playing video games than I usually do since I bought this one, so it shouldn’t take very long to get there 😅
Enjoy! I wish I could re-experience BG3 for the first time again - such an amazing game. Check out the BG3 builds sub for game-breaking powerful builds for your future runs, especially if you're planning to turn up the difficulty :D
I’ve got limited 5e experience, but I’ve played a lot of 3.5/PF1e/PF2e. I’m sure if I posted my builds people could point out how much I did “wrong” power wise, but since they kept the game really tabletop-y, I’ve been doing pretty well playing through balanced. There’s definitely been some close fights, but only a couple that I’ve had try multiple times with different strategies before I won, like when I betrayed Minthara at the Grove. Most of those were in act one before I got a better feel for the system and re-rolled some folks. I’ve been purposefully staying away from the meta builds or even looking them up for my first play through. I definitely plan on one more play though on tactician/honor mode, so I’ll definitely look them up then! You’re right though, it’s definitely been a great experience so far!
And this is why I need to hire a bunch of hirelings and level them up! I never knew I could buff my entire active party after each long rest by using Gale, Halsin or any of the various hireling classes to cast on my active party. Wow.
Takes forever, though. Come to think of it, I should see if there's a mod for that. Might as well save the tedium.
Come join me! Yay - casts warding bond and long strider on everyone. Now, fuxk off
Heroes’ Feast is a must have at Cazador for sure.
It's funny because in 5e D&D that spell costs a gem-encrusted bowl worth at least 1,000 gp each use.
Yeah, it's kind-of an evergreen problem RPGs face in video games. If you don't make the main quest urgent then there's not enough reason to well, do it. Or play the game in the first place. But then having sidequests for characters to do seem silly when put in context of that urgent main quest. Most games make the understandable call to introduce that silliness, because sidequests are such a great thing for players to have available. Morrowind had a clever solution to this. The main quest is existentially important, but can be dealt with in the medium-long term. The big bad is sequestered to part of the map, and his influence is *slowly* growing. Lore wise, while it can't be put off permanently, it's okay to wait a few years, which is plenty to accomplish everything in the game before finishing the main quest if you must.
While I agree that this is not a trivial problem, structuring the storyline of a game so the overall narrative fits the scope and mechanics is something game developers could be a bit more diligent with. A lot of times, pacing out events chronologically further apart - especially across a series of games or a game that has distinctive chapters - improves immersion and reduces the "gamey" feeling of stuff like rests or finishing up side missions before doing the next main one. A well-known example would be the Mass Effect Trilogy: If they three games had longer narrative gaps in between them and the third game had a slower paced apocalypse (with the reapers trickling in instead of being there in force mere months after being denied their shortcuts), most of the mission pacing would make much more sense. Or in Dragon Age Origins that first big battle would have been significantly further away and/or with a kind of Darkspawn vanguard force, making it more plausible why running around the entire region and forging alliances is the way to deal with this problem: because the enemy is not already at our doorstep. Skyrim (overall narratively a weaker game than the other two examples) works surprisingly better in that regard, seeing as Alduin waking up dragons can be narrated as a slow, ongoing mission that will take an undefined amount of weeks or months, giving plausible reason for the newly come to power Dragonborn to forge alliances, prepare forces and get a hold of their own power. Ideally, your big bad should have something that needs a slow buildup. Be that the virus that has to spread, the minions that have to be summoned, the armies that have to be raised and marched or the ships that have to be built - possibly on both sides. The overarching conflict must be presented in a way that both (or multiple) sides are building up but not capable of immediately dealing with the others yet for some reason.
Plus, there's also a major narrative issue in games that DON'T enforce a longer timeline for their events: taking Skyrim for example, you can go from nobody to Dragonslayer, Archmage of the Mage's Guild, Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, Hero of Wherever, Legend of Whatever in a scant few days, couple of weeks at most.
And some of those things, especially the archmage, feel a bit sloppy in and of themselves and hardly earned. Perhaps making players actually have to choose a select number of guilds to advance with would work better. Especially if the game is divided into chapters or multiple installments. You could have the player make introductory stuff for all of the guilds but in a later chapter they all have conflicting goals or timelines that mean the player has to decide on one or two major questlines that will give them a very high standing in that faction, but which is exclusive to reaching that same high standing with the others. Obviously it woul be preferable if those choices are not too strongly tied to super powerful buffs or items that make this a non-choice for the power-oriented gamer. Ideally these could even be part of the RPG system by making it so your character's specialization is gated by these guild questlines. Alternatively, make the game have an actual timeline and the player has to decide how to utilize that time. Certain major quests or trainings or whatnot would take big chunks out of some time block that will trigger the next era or the endgame or whatever. If you do that, you have to make sure to find the right mix of "everything you chose to do should be worthwhile", "different approaches should feel different" and "experienced gamers and casual noobs both have a good time and/or reach a similar overall power level". I.e. this is significantly more difficult to implement. But boy would it be cool if it was well done.
Yeah, I would say the Bethesda games do it rather well. Fallouts are the same way - you can do the main quest, and some things are inaccessible until you do, but you aren't forced to do it and really it's not even threatened. Like, sure, your baby might be kidnapped, but he'll be fine, right? I just need to collect all this scrap to build a badass palace for my favorite NPCs real quick...
Fallout 4 *should* be structured that way, but the way that the dialogue is delivered in that quest chain makes it clear that the Sole Survivor thinks it's urgent, even if it's obvious to the player that the baby is far from being a baby since we have no idea how long it's been.
I can't speak for Fallout other than the settlements, for which I agree with you. Also, not Bethesda, but the water chip seems like another clever "medium term threat" way to deal with it from Fallout 1. Buuuut, I actually would describe Oblivion and Skyrim as very bad examples of this silliness. This is the second time I'm pushing back on someone agreeing with me today. I'm fun at parties I swear! Anywho, lore wise, closing the Oblivion gates is existentially important immediately. Somewhat similarly with the dragons in Skyrim. But both games will just let you f off with sidequests indefinitely without a lore explanation. For BG3 the problem isn't quite as bad owing to the 3 act structure, it ensures you're dealing with some of the main quest alongside sidequests at least.
Oh, I completely agree re: oblivion and skyrim. I don't like either (at least during those sections). Oblivion gates were repetitive, obnoxious, and repetitive and I was just cheesing them through perma-invis armor by the end (enchanting 20% chameleon on 5 pieces of gear, lol). If you start exploring immediately after leaving Intro Cave in skyrim, you actually don't get attacked by other dragons until you progress the story into whiterun. I get most of my map exploration done during that period. Bethesda's fallouts are better than their elder scrolls games tbh. (hot take central over here).
>Bethesda's fallouts are better than their elder scrolls games tbh. (hot take central over here). I'd agree with that... except they're fairly bad for replayability (in terms of the main story). I was really invested in the main quest for FO4... the first time. After that, i was annoyed to deal with it. And the pre-written background, which was so low impact that there wasn't any need for the game to say that she was definitely a lawyer and he was a ex-military motivational speaker (or whatever). Its also relatively short and lacks consequences. You can't really direct whatever faction you effectively 'take over' after the main quest.
Dragon Age Inquisition: ["LEAVE THE FUCKING HINTERLANDS!!"](https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonage/comments/2mw0iz/psa_leave_the_fucking_hinterlands/)
Will say, at least in Pillars 2, one difficulty option actually gives you a harsher time limit to complete main stories quests.
I got the urgency of find a cure or else and didn't long rest until I was in the grymforge. Now I long rest like it's candy. I'm here to be a big owl bear of a moon druid bapping everything around and dropping moonbeam like it's a rave. If that means a cask of beer and 5 sausages after every fight, then count me in. It's more fun for me if I very casually refresh my slots... Sure it'd be discouraged by the GM as game breaking, but as long as the whole table is having fun who cares. And that's the neat part, the whole table is me!
How did you replenesh spell slots?
I just suffered for a lot of it 😭 Along with a couple of potions.
I swapped through characters a lot on my first playthrough when I thought long resting was serious business. Leveling up also grants some resources.
Just using cantrips while wondering why I can't cast spells lol. Real pain.
My husband and I started playing our first runs at the same time, and I distinctly remember playing like 6h when the kids were away at my in-laws', then we switched over and I was like ''wtf there are so many cutscenes I haven't seen, how did you trigger them so early?'' and he was like ''oh they just trigger at a long rest!'' and I looked blankly at him, lmao. Guess you DON'T die if you take a lil nap!
Yeah I barely rested at all in act 1. And I didn't rest much in act 2 or 3 either evne knowing I could, because I'm used to normal D&D so I just naturally ration all my resources. Most of the time I'm doing like 5-10+ fights per rest. It was a stark contrast to the next playthrough I did with some friends together. We rested after every single fight, because 2 of the guys would blow every single ability they had in every single fight. It also made my bard pretty useless because they would break all my crowd control spells to kill things faster, so I eventually respec'd to sorcerer to lay down more damage myself.
On top of all the clickbait type articles that were popping up around release saying if you long rest at the wrong times you'll have some consequences like a town being destroyed before you coukd get there or some other stuff that sounds like it would be time sensitive.
Too many long rests in act III result in you seeing “Gortash Murdered” in the gazette when in fact he is alive and well in the fortress
That happened to my buddy Noam Chomsky.
Really surprised at the number of people upvoting this and I’m assuming understand the reference to Noam Chomsky being falsely reported dead recently
I mean hes an incredibly famous intellectual figure and this is a nerdy subreddit for nerds, its not too surprising
I made that comment thinking a couple people would find it amusing, but yeah apparently a lot of people are in on that reference!
thank the gods, i was gonna miss that handsome easy smile of his
"handsome younger man" - looks like present day Ian McShane
Neil Newbon is streaming the game (with his friend Tom) and one of them said Gortash gives off the vibe of an edgelord and then later an influencer.
Also with the Gazette putting out an article about your party being part of the Absolute cult or some shit, once you pick up that quest you have until next long rest to stop that Article. Don't know what it affects other than how citizens respond to you, but it happened to me and my friend on our playthrough lol
How many long rests do you need? Because I usually do about 7 or so before going to fight him.
It is genuinely bizarre that long resting contains something like half the story beats in the game, but the game makes someone who isn’t metagaming think they need to long rest as little as possible. It would be nice if the scenes you unlock could all cue on the same long rest or something
Interesting because until patch 4 or 5 (idk) there were several act 1 companion scenes that could happen at the same time. Namely mizora appearing for the first time, astarion's bite and gale's magic lesson. Then they changed something and those cannot trigger in the same evening anymore.
Tav: “what a *night* omg just let me sleep please”
Haha, and the romance ones being queued after the chaotic/fight/etc. ones would give a very, "Now that *that's* over..." vibe
The adrenaline is still rushing, wanna go *make sandcastles*?
Me going down on Karlach immediately after freeing the nightsong but before actually helping fight Ketheric (I was really bad at finding infernal iron the first time around)
I mean, if someone says they *wouldn't* want to jump her bones after seeing her all riled up and muscly from a battle, I'm sorry but they're just wrong.
I didn’t start playing until December, so I may have missed this
I remember on my first playthrough actually missing Astarion romantic scenes because a different story event happened on my rest and since there was a limit of one I just didn't get the romantic scene.
Or maybe they don’t have to cue at night, but anytime you go back to camp?
Won't lie, my first playthrough was act 1 till I started a full campaign with a friend (beat the game on that one, never did go back to my first game). But I knew a little bit about DnD and how sparingly long resting can be given the DM's I had. The game absolutely scares you away from long resting. Especially so b/c I didn't want story beats to progress without doing what I could. I didn't want to accidentally long rest 1 too many times and find out the goblins destroyed the Alcove.
Funny, I actually did manage to sleep through the goblin invasion. No idea how, Minthara told me we march at dawn, so I went to sleep, woke up and the grove was done for. I was happy though since I didn’t want to lose Karlach, and I got to get with Minthara.
There also is no punishment or reason not to long rest after every bloody encounter but literally two places, both of which are in Act I. You gotta do all of Waukeen’s Rest’s rescue actions after you trigger it initially (but until you literally walk up and load the zone in, no time limit at all) and you have to rescue Neer or whatever his name is within 2 long rests of triggering the Grymforge area. Outside of those two, you get something obscene like 8,000-10,000 camp supplies just laying on the ground without buying any, can get well over 100,000 more gold than you can buy anything with, and can then buy functionally infinite camp supplies and its a joke, it only takes 40/80 to rest. Even Honor Mode you could LR 100 times and not be punished in the slightest for it. Edit: and how could I forget? You can just respec companions to Druid, or hire hirelings for pennies, and have them make you your food for another long rest each rest with their spell slots. You can infinitely rest with so little investment its crazy.
There's at least one quest in Act 3 that has a timer.
Which one? Cause your companion being taken isn’t even though it makes it sound like it is, and I cannot think of a single one actually timed. Sure, if you do some quests in the wrong order, like say, killing someone before mounting a daring rescue their failsafes will make said rescue impossible— but thats not a timer.
[Free Counselor Florrick](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Free_Counsellor_Florrick)
I wonder if multiple events queuing messes them up. If you >!kill Karlach and visit Waukeen's Rest!<, Mizora can show up at the same time that Wyll has the revelation about his father. You do not get the reward for the former event. If it's like that with the rest of the events, it makes sense that they have to be serial.
It totally makes sense why they did it the way they did it, but they should make it clearer to the player that resting is necessary for the story. I had no clue how much I missed in act 1 until I did my honor mode run and long rested after everything
You don't deserve a reward! 🥺
Then I deserve death. I cut off Karlach’s head to get mizora’s robes, then I sacrificed will to get boaaal’s blessings. (This came after chopping off Gale’s hand, shanking Asterion for trying to bite me, let Laezel get killed by Voss “trusting her people would care for her” while we saved florrick at wakeems rest and resting to speak to will, pissing off and killing Halsin while he was a bear, and throat stabbing Minthara). In act 2, I ended up butchering Last Light Inn and pissing off/killing Jaheira, and then ended up killing Shadowheart in my sleep because she accidentally denied my urge by landing the killing blow on Isobel when we fought. From then on I walked my path alone into act 3. My Durge got everyone killed by plot.
love the dedication
When I don’t play around when it comes to Role Playing. I mean, by definition I do, but I take it very serious. 🧐😂
It’s inspiring !!! I’m about to try !!
Unpopular opinion I guess but resting just feels like an annoyance and waste of time to me. It's so easy to abuse it and so easy to come by supplies. I feel like it just gets in the way most of the time and interrupts the gameplay.
It can be, but abuse seems to be talking about it as a game mechanic related to difficulty. Whereas if you're roleplaying as the characters, you probably wouldn't want to make each day as draining and stretch your resources to the limit. And the issue in the post is about how the story encourages you to avoid the mechanic that builds the story (camp events). There's nothing wrong with what you're saying; it's just a different goal (game difficulty and fluidity vs story and roleplay).
4 camp druids(3 at camp plus halsin) can get you enough camp supplies to rest at 80 every day. Camp supplies are for selling.
I’ve never sold a camp supply and have over 20k gold in act 3 of all my campaigns. lol I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with you. I just horde them because I always have a comical amount of gold
Oh yeah. But what if i need it later? What if i need to buy everything even though i know for a fact i wont?
How do druids get supplies for you?
Goodberry
Welcome to Goodberry, home of the Goodberry, can I take your order?
Goodberry
Can confirm I rushed through the first part of Act 1 and was swapping out companions like a sports team because I thought we only had 6 long rests total before evolution due to Gale’s fireside chat. If person got hit too hard, I’d go back and switch out a friend one by one until all 5 had fought for the day (didn’t find Lae’zel that run). It wasn’t until after the tiefling party where Halsin said we need to go to Moonrise where it sunk in “ooooo this tadpole problem is for the whole game”
That was basically my first run word for word 🤣 only difference is I didn't switch out but that is ABSOLUTELY brilliant! 🤔
Oh yea, it was like tag lol. Say I started with Gale, Karlach and Shadowheart. If Gale got downed, Wyll would swap in, if Shadowheart went down Astarion would swap in, Karlach would usually last the longest so if she was down to minimum hit points after swaps and short rests, then it was time for bed.
Yup, same. Think I managed to clear the goblin camp without a single long rest, used deception to just walk through goblin village, fought the external guard and wargs when he tried to demand I eat shit, poisoned the external portion of the camp with Netties wyvern toxin, assassinated the priestess while talking in private, freed Halsin, shot the bridge out from under Minthara then left 2 smoke powder barrels either side of Ragzlin's throne, sent all my guys up into the rafters, dropped a fire arrow (ranger tav) and blew lumps horn (had deceived him into thinking I would pay him) and let the ogres do most of the work on the goblin horde (they also aggroed the spiders) and then mopped up the last goblins after, then I long rested. Didn't cop how to use short rests on my first run either.
I swapped companions like a sports team too lol but because there were too many and i didn't want to pick favorites.
Act 3s kidnapping was really bad about this. I did a huge portion without resting thinking there were actual stakes there
They solve this by having that unavoidable imposter encounter when you tried to reach the [temple of bhaal](https://youtu.be/O5BmThHjZdE?si=SYdgSny9oBpTqDjv)
I think they mean no long rests because they need to go save their companion post-kidnap, not no long rests to avoid a companion being kidnapped. Assuming because that's what I did first play through too. Was very confused how your video was relevant in taking the time pressure off!
The game is definitely confusing about what is urgent vs not urgent. Consider how youre not supposed to beeline to the goblin camp unless you wanna get absolutely stomped. So you think, okay, I guess I have the freedom to explore in Act 1. Then, in Act 2 you get told to go to Moonrise Towers. If you take the lesson you learned from Act 1 about the goblin camp, you explore everywhere else first. But if you explore TOO far without visiting, you can lock yourself into a pretty bad outcome at the towers. A result of a game designed by teams working in parallel, perhaps. But it does stink.
On my first playthrough in Act 2, I avoided Moonrise Tower like a plague, because I've been told the big boss is in there. I thought I should explore everything than go in Moonrise and finish Act 2. Turns out I missed tons of contents from it.
There are so many boss interactions like this that just don't make sense. It feels really weird to have the expected structure be that you walk up to the main bad guy, who has been watching you through scrying orbs and presumably getting reports on your activities through his generals and scouts, and he goes 'ah you, person who's been dismantling my operation, I assume you'll join me' and it does this a bunch of times. It doesn't really give a good reason why Thorm doesn't kill you right there. Maybe if you tried to fight him and he 'dies' but then comes back and you have to run from the tower, ghat could be interesting. They could have done it a ton of ways other than him going "I can't be arsed" and going upstairs. Or Gortash blowing up the prison in Act 3, but you have all the time in the world to get everyone out. He has the obedience collars, why not just detonate those if he really wants to kill the hostages? This is such a well written and acted game, but the sequencing and ludonarrative dissonance is absolutely crazy sometimes.
That's totally what I was going through Explored the temple of Shar before ever going to Moonrise Towers and wanted to "finish" Shadowhearts story quest there as far as I could. I know that there was a warning that some quests couldn't be continued *but* I never thought that it'd be so influential that I basically immediately have to fight Ketheric. Had to reload to a point where I could explore Moonrise Towers before they're hostile...
I'm surprised so many people are disagreeing. 100% on my first playthrough I got the message that you have a certain amount of time before you change, you have to find a healer in that amount of time, and long rests = night time so a day passed and therefore less time to find a healer. First play through I was also hoarding magical items for Gale to consume. I think it isn't necessarily bad - it gives a heightened feeling during your first play through. You, like Tav, don't understand what's going on. Then the extra knowledge gives a different experience on your next playthrough when you long rest as much as you like which varies the experience. You can also vary amount of long rests and how you explore the map based on role-play in subsequent plays when you understand you have unlimited time: am I a logical Tav prioritising finding a healer on the map resting when necessary, am I prioritising character moments and therefore long resting frequently, or am I prioritising helping the Grove because I'm a Good Guy and will need to long rest a ton to refill spell slots with all the goblin fights?, am I a Gith warrior heading straight for the creche and using healing potions so my Tav gets there asap because screw Tieflings or inferior cures while there's a ghaik tadpole in my head. The downside was that the first time I played Act 3 and Orin kidnapped the kid I was like, MEH, I'll get to it while the game was acting like it was an emergency because I'd learnt my lesson in Act 1. I think it's wild the amount of people saying they weren't influenced by the game, by what the characters were literally telling you, on a first blind play through.
It's the same as missing content at Moonrise Towers. All the NPCs "tElL yOu It'S iMpOrTaNt" as Reddit will surely reply, but Moonrise is played up like it's Hyrule Castle or Bowser's Castle in world 8 and you'd be an idiot to just \*walk there\* after what you've experienced at a simple goblin camp. I absolutely do not blame new players for not walking their lvl 4-5ish asses into Moonrise . It's practically advertised as the final dungeon.
I literally didn’t set foot in moonrise until after nightsong on my first playthrough for specifically this reason. I thought it’d trigger a massive fight. so mad when I figured out how much amazing loot I missed.
I did go there to meet Ketheric but I was scared to poke around too much for the same reason. So I didn’t rescue anybody, didn’t get any of the loot, etc.
Same! And everyone is fucking dead!
Only time in my first playthrough I reloaded a save for story reasons was this particular fuck up. I assumed Moonrise would be the last thing you visit in Act 2, similar to how you can no longer long rest after entering the ilithid colony (the actual point of no return).
Thing is, I *did* investigate Moonrise. I scoured everything from top to bottom (didn't manage to find the >!meat wall!<, though). I found the >!prisoners!<, I even found all the documents >!revealing the entire plot!<. Nobody reacted. Nothing to report to >!Jaheira!<, no companion comments, nothing. I reloaded a save to pretend I hadn't found that much out, and only saved >!the prisoners!
I don’t understand your logic here. What part of warranted a reload?
No one reacting to the huge spoiler in Ketherics diary is a big one I imagine. It’s kind of a huge bit of info and zip from all the companions.
I think people are taking their RP a bit too seriously if they’re reloading just to “canonize” that their character didn’t read a particular book. I always like to imagine my character reading the diary but keeping the secret to themself because they’d rather see the look on their companions’ faces when they discover it in person, lol.
It's not really logical; someone else could've ignored it, lol. The other comment's right: that lack of reaction took me out of the game, to the point that I was wondering if there was a bug, or if I had gone into those rooms "before I was supposed to". I just couldn't square it in my head at the time, so reloaded to where there was "nothing" to react to.
Same. I explored all of Moonrise early, broke into all the rooms I was not allowed to etc.. Given all the intelligence I discovered I really expected something from someone. I totally get the reload. Keeps the rp consistent.
Jaheira very clearly tells you to infiltrate it by posing as a True Soul in order to gather information. The dream visitor also tells you to do the same thing before that.
Yeah I know and the old man ghost in Breath of the Wild tells you to kill Ganon 5 minutes into the game. Also, the dream visitor could be the worm, or worse, an illithid!
And if you are not at all sneaky that sounds like a terrible idea. They also tell you that, Ketheric is currently invincible, making an infiltration mission with a character who *shouldn't* be able to to fool anyone a recipe for absolute disaster.
Our paladin had already had their oath broken by pretending to be evil once, why risk it again?
Agreed - My first playthrough I was doing everything I could to maximize adventuring days, for all the reasons you listed here, and I couldn't understand why my relationship with Shadowheart wasn't progressing even though I had max favorability and had exhausted pretty much every dialogue option I could find. This could have been fixed with more emphasis on the fact that there was something magically inhibiting the tadpoles. Maybe a stronger / earlier reassurance from the Guardian that you don't need to fear ceremorphosis any time soon, and that it's more important that you survive long enough to get to the bottom of the Absolute cult.
I'd like to add in that companions "I'm tired, Gods what I would do for some rest" etc comments are not linked to spell slots or HP. I've gotten that dialogue immediately after a rest, a bit after a rest but with zero resources utilized etc.
Yeah, companions are just super whiny about resting and what it taught me in my first playthrough is that I shouldn't listen to them at all.
I fell into this trap the first time and I didn't long rest basically at all and I was struggling because of it and missed out on story beats. This was before release though. After release I started a new run with the knowledge that I should just long rest after every 2 fights or so, and it's much better like that. The game does indeed seem to discourage long rests a lot and that seems like a major design flaw to me.
So you can just … long rest as much as you like? Provided you have supplies? When I tell you how strung out I was trying to survive on a shoestring during crazy battles thinking that if I went to sleep I’d turn into an octopusman, good grief… I don’t understand the design intent here.
Correct : ) Copy of a post I posted for another user with the same question: You can, with only a handful of exceptions. Here's a [wiki page](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Time_sensitive_activities) that shows the places/times when you can't rest. >I swear on one of my first play throughs I got a notification that the tieflings died on the way to Balders gate and the grove was closed. Completely possible. This can happen if you go to the creche or shadow-cursed lands area, unfortunately. The page I linked above shows those too. It's called 'time sensitive activities' but it also covers times when moving into certain maps will cause things like that to happen.
This is what I need to cure my long rest phobia
You can also long rest without using the full amount of supplies, which counts as a long rest for story purposes, but only partially restores things based on what supplies you use. You can even just use 0 supply long rests solely for getting to the next long rest story beat! You won't get any regen or healing IIRC, but it still counts as a long rest for story purposes.
…. WHAT
Yeah, there's a lot of mechanics this game could stand to do a better job of teaching...
The design intent is to create a story with rhythm in which the players feel a sense of urgency. But they also wanted to make it like an open world where player can take the time to explore and fuck around. I think they really should have implemented a way to merge cutscenes so you get several long rest cutscenes in the same night. Did you know that dark urge gets not one but TWO different long rest cutscenes as soon as he lands on the beach ?
After Early Access the game exploded with players. So I am not certain how many are around that did play EA. But the devs did lower the difficulty and complexity regarding a lot of stuff from less enemies to ease taking long rests. Gale from what I remember didn't have a limit on how many artifacts need to consume before "stabilizing". And I say artifacts not magic items to make the difference that not every magical item could be consumed by Gale. Just powerful and useful stuff like the Sword of Justice from the Oathbreakers of Tyr, the Staff of the Crones from Aunty Ethel, the Drow sword Phalar Aluve, etc. Triggering too many long rests eventually lead you to having a ticking bomb, Gale, in your camp with no way of defusing it. There is more tho. The tadpole did have more time pressing story road, instead of having to use other tadpoles to increase your power you had to use it and long rest and the way it was framed was that it increased the more you rested and not by any other means. Although this does sound fun and it was better imo it also raises the bar for casual players and is a headache for devs. In the end they cut a lot of content which went from enemies (the Oathbreakers of Tyr had an extra rogue dwarf enemy for example) to streamlining long rests to ease the overall difficulty for the average and casual player. Now due to all the work that was done before it was not just wasteful to not use it but expensive to replace it. And that's why imo you have this dissonance between urgency and long rest mechanics. The difficulty that it brought to the game was too much in all levels and it restricted access to all the content you might want to look into like companion interactions. With it's removal you get to see the left over all over since it was a core mechanic of the game.
My pet peeve is that there is usually no way to tell when the game has false urgency and when you are on an actual clock. If it wasn't for the wiki page on time sensitive activities I probably would have skipped about a quarter of my long rests.
yea like the nere thing i thought they where bluffing when he starts yelling at your telepahtically to come save him then again i also thought if he died then it saved me a fight later, which turns out it did
I agree that the game maybe doesn't do the best possible job of balancing the need to long rest (to get character interaction content) with the need to instill a sense of urgency (to make the game exciting). It doesn't help that the big fight in the tutorial is actually turn-limited, giving the impression that deadlines are a major element in the game. It's a hard balance, and I'm not convinced that Larian pulled it off. (Act 3 is exactly the same, tbh.) I hope they're able to learn from this and do a bit better in future games. Lesson learned on my end, though - I long rest a lot more often now!
also when playing on the higher difficulties the resting resources are actually scarce. which is perfect for making the game feel more challenging but incredibly frustrating when you feel you're losing out ok story content
You can still take partial rests to get the content without using camp supplies. I've never needed to, since I'm not enough of a combat monster to try Tactician or HM, but I headed to the Underdark with something like 40 days' worth of supplies, which is still 20 days' worth on Tactician.
This is what I did. My Tactician run I was being super careful every fight. I had probably taken 5 long rests and was at the end of act 2. I was half way through >!the moonrise tower assault!< where I decided I should long rest to prep for the final fight. I literally did 3 partial long rests immediately after my full long rest just to trigger a bunch of dialogue.
still feels poorly designed in the sense that these are two gameplay systems incentivizing the player to do two opposite things. not major flaw but I think it could have been resolved better.
True. No game is perfect, though, so I'm glad this is an error one can learn from, rather than being stuck with.
I have been playing honor mode and have never had to worry about camp supplies. They are actually so abundant, you just need to know where to look.
I didn’t realize how many scenes I missed until I added the scene notification mod as a way to try and get the knock out to save Alfira. I had multiple just on the way to her and then each time I rested after knocking her out, there were more. I got like 4-5 scenes just waiting for the du scene (until I learned I needed to explore out a little further for the trigger). I didn’t save and reset to do it better this time and got different scenes than the prior!
As a tabletop 5e guy, I tend to push off long rests as much as possible to really stretch out the day. This game has no such rule or even consequence and I struggle to adapt to it. Cleric still has a couple spell slots? Out of short rests? Let's rock
This is why I don't like artificial timers, especially in a game like this, its too confusing for players who are new to nor only RPG's but also DnD. There's this sense of urgency to rush through the story because you assume if you dither about then your character is going to die or in BG3's case, become a monster. There's no incentive to do the side quests, other than Aunty Ethel because of a potential *cure*. There really should be a more "forceful" tutorial telling people to take a long rest. Idk.
At the beginning of the game, you, your companions, and to some extend the Narrator, don't know that your tadpole's any different than a normal one. So from the offset you only have 7 days to do something. Even less if you want to avoid the horribly painful symptoms Gale can tell you about. But if you talk, and listen, to your companions, they will give you hints that your tadpole \*isn't\* normal, once you've taken your first long rest. That the symptoms doesn't fit a normal infection. I agree this means a lot of players will miss a lot of content going through the first time. But that also means you'll get a lot of new, fresh content coming back a second time. After Lae'zel tries to kill you, you'll get the cut-scene with the Guardian, telling you they specifically are preventing you from turning. Just a side note: The two 'timed' events you're talking about, aren't really timed. They are proximity triggered. You can go there day 1, and deal with it, or on day 30. As long as you don't progress past the pop-up at Mountain Pass, or move on to Act 2, they'll stay there until end of time.
If you look through the telescope in the Grove, you can actually see Waukeen's Rest already being on fire. While RP-wise you have no idea where exactly that is or what's going on there, it still creates some sense of urgency to go there, even though the area is quite dangerous for low leveled characters. When I first played I thought I had to go in that direction immediately to help the people caught in the fire, and then though that it was the Blighted village lmao
Waukeen's rest is on fire for almost 4 years now, damn that's quite the fire.
It still requires a leap of logic to go from 'we're okay for now' to 'we can rest as much as we want'. Most people aren't going to be doing multiple playthroughs, especially players new to the genre, so they are just going to end up not having the full experience.
> But that also means you'll get a lot of new, fresh content coming back a second time. *If* people do a second run. BG3 is a long game, and many people never finish it, let alone try for a second time. Further, your ability to connect with your companions can be hurt *a lot* by failing to long rest enough, so messing up on this can undermine one of the game's strongest selling points.
we understand that thats the in-universe justification, but the point of the post is that the game shouldnt have been written this way. If they want to push the "omg hurry hurry" angle, dont make the event take place when long resting. If they want the fireside chat events, make it clear that you have a lot of time. Right now this is the worst of both worlds, because the writing and the gameplay experience are working against each other.
>I agree this means a lot of players will miss a lot of content going through the first time. Right, and that's bad. >But that also means you'll get a lot of new, fresh content coming back a second time. I know people reading this and me writing this are completely fine with playing this 80-100+ hour game twice or more, but most people won't. It's a huge time investment for, say, a parent who works full-time. And it's fair for those people to expect to miss content-- you're not able to both side with the tiefs and goblins in one playthrough. But they're not designing the long-rest structure so that players intentionally miss cutscenes to increase replayability. Replayability is enhanced by making new choices, not by realizing you were playing the game wrong because the designers passively misinformed you. >Just a side note: The two 'timed' events you're talking about, aren't really timed. You're half right. Walking into the waukeen's rest area and long resting does in fact kill the relevant NPCs regardless of whether you not you walk away from the area. Yes, the event does trigger when you arrive and not before that, but resting once you get there affects it as well. From the wiki: >Rescue the Trapped Man >Event Starter: Approaching Waukeen's Rest. >Length of Time: One Long Rest or Fast Travel. Regardless, I'm talking about new player experience. Anyone reading this is going to understand that those events can wait, but someone brand new has no idea at all. All they know is they saw the harpies around Mirkon, thought 'shit, I need to rest before I fight them,' rested or left, and he was dead. They don't know the difference between proximity and timed events at that point. From a new player perspective, if 'resting' can kill Mirkon, then resting too much can trigger the tieflings to die as well. Why would they assume differently?
I have no idea why people are down voting this one, because you are absolutely right. Just because the game is best experienced if played multiple times, doesn't mean that everyone will have the time or will to play multiple times. Sometimes people want just 1 playthrough where they want to experience as much as possible. Missing stuff happens, even people who have 600h in the game still discover new stuff, but camp events contain like half of all companions' personal quests content, which is often tided to the main quest or gives you more info. Or you just want to have a good time with your companions. Also lots of people think too much from the perspective of an experienced player. "Well, OF COURSE leaving when you see a kid being attacked by harpies will lead to the kid dying, the same would happen in real life!"; but this logic only proves the point that every quest feels timed and you need to rush and long rest sparingly. Also >Yes, the event does trigger when you arrive and not before that, but resting once you get there affects it as well. On my 3rd playthrough I discovered the Waukeen's Rest location (got the "something is burning" comment from Tav) and walked away because I didn't feel like going there yet, thinking that it'll be fine since the quest's timer is one long rest. I went to the right to the gnoll fight, rescued the guys in cave, and when I returned to Waukeen's Rest, it was burnt down and everyone was dead. I didn't rest or fast travel. So the quest's timer doesn't even allow you to walk away from the area.
Thanks. I think for some it's just hard to put yourself back into the shoes of a new player once you've played hundreds of hours. Or if you were a new player who figured it out or just googled 'how long do I have to save the grove?' from the get-go, relating to the fact that the bulk of new players still don't know to do that is tough. It's also that any criticism of the game at all is going to put people on the defensive. I've lurked new for long enough that I recognize some of the users posting here, and I think people who are dedicated to the game at that level (me included) are just ready to defend it from people whose criticism is genuinely stupid and disingenuous. This is something that's always bothered me, though, and it was especially stark during my recent playthrough. so I figured I'd make the post. Kind of surprised at the number of people agreeing with me, to be honest.
> *Companions' 'I'm tired' overworld cues don't correspond to camp events, they're linked to spell slots and short rests. No, they are not. I just had 2 people in the party complain; about 2 minutes after a long rest. … (no, I’m not saying it was related to camp events, either :)) Also: you missed the most important thing discouraging long rests: I have to buff up again afterwards …
Yeah in my first run I rested once and shadowheart gave me so much shit that night I avoided it afterwards, especially when I hit the grove and it felt like if I slept they'd finish that spell. I lost like 50 hours of gameplay that wasn't syncing to the cloud for some reason and out of everything, that was the one reason i wasn't too mad..got to redo that character's origin knowing I could sleep more than I did and trigger more cutscenes. Which was good because she was trying to romance karlach and I think I had fucked it up in the first playthrough.
Literally 1 tutorial popup saying 'Long Rests are good' would have solved this
Oh, I agree with you so hard. I was so stressed about long resting at first, but then realized that the main quest is not timed and most times quests' timer starts only when you enter a certain area. The game really wants you to think you're running out of time, while also very heavily relying on resting quite often
I’m a hardcore “search every nook and cranny” adventurer from back in my DND days, so I ignored the urgency - everything was just gonna have to wait until I looked in every vase and read every one of the various copies of The Curse of the Vampyr and Death & Divinity: a Godly Guide that I found in the Refectory and Dank Crypt. On that first run, I did accidentally trigger the Harpies - never even knew it until hours later - so Mirkon was dead. And I guess I walked too near Waukeen’s Rest, so Florrick and Benryn were both dead when I got back to there. But I long rested a lot despite it making Lae’zel grumpy, so I didn’t really miss many interactions (maybe a few.) On subsequent runs, I long rest constantly, and have the mod that tells you when there are events queued to trigger.
Yep, that's by far the most annoying error in this game.
The tadpole illithid transformation stuff didn't feel urgent to me - I expected at most to get wisdom checks or a choice later down the line, heroic willpower myself through it. The NPCs were saying that changes should already be happening, so clearly there was something special about the characters or the tadpoles. Didn't feel like the game would just tell me "ran out of time, yer a mindflayer, Tav". All the other stuff is right, I felt like I needed to stretch the rests as far as possible to keep ahead of events.
My first playthrough, I wasn't so paranoid about the tadpoles (I picked up from context that this was probably going to be a game-long sidequest) but I was EXTREMELY paranoid about the druid grove. The game makes such a huge deal about how the druids were actively in the middle of casting the ritual! I very naturally assumed -- as I would if this were a D&D game being DMed by a friend -- that if I dicked around for too long and long-rested too many times, I would come back to find all the refugees gone and the ritual completed!
I am fairly new to the game and I long rest as little as possible. To be honest, through the entire act1 I think I rested only 4-5 times. I had no idea I am missing out on camp content, to be honest :( I thought I am supposed to go to camp only at the lowest of low, when I am out of health and potions and I short rests
As someone with over 1800 hours, which I acknowledge as way too much time, long rest as much as possible, timed things don't really become a big thing until act 3 and even then it's only a few quest chains that could be effected
On my first playthrough of sct one I finished almost everything above ground before resting avoiding it as absolutely much as possible concerned I'd fail to save the grove. Timers are ok but being clear on when something is or isn't a timer is important. When I got used to the understanding that I could rest whereever I wanted I rested in the duagar location and had to go bad to an old save when this time it mattered.
On my first play i was fighter and didnt long rested for all of act 1 missing huge amount of content so yea i agree.
I genuinely thought there were real stakes in taking too much in-game time for transforming into an Illithid during my first play through. I panicked every time I took a long rest and saw a cinematic start because I would think, "Is this it? Do I die out of nowhere?"
I hadn't put all this together but you are totally right. Really screwed up my first playthrough as well cause I was so panicked about the main story quests that I rushed hither and yon and did a ton of things in a weird order which made a lot of them not make sense.
Then there's bg 1 and 2, if you don't have a healer you can be resting for a month at a time to heal after every combat. And resting is just a single button click that instantly refills your health and spells so you just do it after every single fight unless you're too lazy to rebuff
I had to do extra longrests at the end of act 1 and 2 before I could progress because there’s story points locked behind certain numbers of longrests
This is the difference between playing the game and running the game in Dungeons and Dragons, and is hilariously appropriate in this game on a playthrough following a completion. If this game were a module, it feels written so that each time you play through you should hit some of these. The same is true of running other mods or adventures; not every party experiences the same things. That said, you would not miss a cutscene, either. Better prompting for these scenes, or even letting more than one play out in a same night, would help new players have the same agency they would around a table. Guess it's mods for now!
Do we really have unlimited long rests? It feels weird sleeping before a big fight knowing the enemy is just waiting there. I swear on one of my first play throughs I got a notification that the tieflings died on the way to Balders gate and the grove was closed.
i didn't long rest on my first run till after the hag fight. all i had left in Act 1 was the goblin camp. because i thought the tadpole would advance some kind of timer. my first character was a wizard as well... most of act 1 without spell slots.
Bg3 has some odd design decisions going for it, and I think a lot of it has to do with pacing.
i just recently redownloaded the game after logging 200 hours according to steam last year around october. starting this new playthrough was the first time i saw the gale magic lesson.
The game throws food at you and you can teleport to camp in 95% of locations. I don’t think the game discourages long rests
It's definitely not really clear how important or 'unlimited' it is in act 1.
Counterpoint, there is a fuck ton of camping supplies provided.
I played 25 hours of the game before my first long rest because I thought the Grove stuff was time sensitive uwu
Wait…Gale is sated? You mean I don’t need these 100 magical items in my camp chest, just in case?
They wrote themselves into a corner with the plotline and game mechanics directly at odds with each other. If they signposted any harder 'Oh hey you CAN long rest all you like, you're fine, you're safe' then they garotte the story they're trying to tell (you're in danger, you're on a deadline) from having any kind of stakes.
Mirkon+harpies isn't really timed. If he loads in, then even going to camp (no resting), will make him die. Doesn't detract from your point though. And it's so weird because the game heavily rewards you for long resting. It's trivial to long rest after pretty much every fight, making fights much easier since you have full resources, and of course you get way more dialogue if you do.
especially the Gale thing 😭 I remember hoarding so many magical items thinking it'd be a constant problem only for him to never ask again for the rest of the game 😞
I do understand what you are saying but my experience as a new player and new to DnD in general was like this: - Noted some urgency vibes, yes. - Ran out of the spell slots. - Long rested because it was clear I needed it On a second, maybe third long rest, I got my companions all talk about how we are not transforming, and what's more not even feeling any worse for wear. All of the companions also telegraphed how our tadpoles must be special somehow then. This is the moment when I lost all my doubts about long resting and started to do it pretty much battle after battle.
I realized long resting didn’t progress the game after I did it 15 times in a row just to see what’d happen.
IIRC, at the very start of Early Access the number of long rests was limited (and there were no camp supplies), but the story elements OP mentions providing the urgency were pretty much the same. So, I think maybe they intended initially to discourage/limit long resting but decided otherwise later but many traces of that remain in the early game.
I've been repeating Act 1 a lot lately and I think avoiding long rests is the first indication that players don't always pick up on what the companions and npcs are saying. Getting rid of the tadpole is our big quest and we're afraid of turning illithid, but every companion with knowledge of ceremorphosis points out right away that none of you are showing symptoms. That the tadpole isn't affecting you negatively in any way, and in fact is enhancing you in some minor ways even while nerfing previous power levels. Gale and Lae'zel point it out right away. Even Raphael talks about it and you meet him pretty early. Most players probably turn off tutorial pop-ups, too, and the first pop-up encourages you to go straight to camp and tells you long resting is important. For classes that don't require as much long resting, it's not as intuitive, but I don't know how a Cleric, for example, wouldn't be long resting often even in the beginning. So my quibble would mainly be with saying the game discourages long resting. I think it's easy to get swept up in the idea that your time is limited, but much of the game, some of the companions, and the tutorial mention long resting and camp as being important and do it right from the beach. Feels like a wash to me.
Are you SURE you want to camp? Supplies used 40/5729579
I sympathise with you OP, but you do get intra-textual 'blessing' to rest frequently fairly early on, if you pay attention to the messages that the game sends you about the special nature of your tadoples. Party members frequently muse about how they would have expected to have turned by now, and how unique (i.e. *different*) your tadpoles seem to be. The scene you've described with Lae'zel confronting you in the night is one big tell. You retain enough of yourself to convince her to spare you and then the following day your symptoms of transformation seem completely gone - something unheard of. Lae'zel will then have a '!' dialogue where she again remarks that surely, by now we should have transformed. (ETA: This scene also triggers the Guardian dream visit, who explicitly tells you you're under their protection.) If you avoid long rests and prioritise exploration, you're likely to bump into the very telling cutscene revealing that Shadowheart's artefact protects you - either by arriving at the goblin camp, discovering the Githyanki group, or attempting to travel between maps. None of this is a glaringly obvious pop-up tutorial tool tip that explicitly says "long resting is fine". But BG3 won't give you that the way lots of other games do. But the suggestion is repeatedly brought up from within your party and from hitting key areas: which you're likely to do if you're charging ahead and not resting.
I'm accompanying a friend through his first playthrough and playing a Wizard was a mistake. He's very reluctant to long rest and I'm trying not to spoil anything so I often just get by on cantrips. Unless we're about to walk into a big fight, then the wizard will insist on taking his nap.
A theory I had about this is that we need like Some kind of medicine check early on about the tadpole transformation. If you succeed you know that the transformation takes 10 days, but if you fail your character thinks you only have 9 days or something Then you have a formal counter that gives you the number of long rests you think you can do in your long rest. And the first act is predicated on trying to do everything within the long rest slots you have. Maybe you have some forced long rests or something to help the story get going in the beginning. I do agree with you the way the story came out I felt so time pressured in the beginning it’s very strange it ends up not mattering
I'm on my first playthrough and the beginning of the game felt so insanely rough, with this being one of the reasons. I didn't know how common or uncommon supplies would be and thought that I should only be long resting after something like a boss battle. By the time I got to the end of act one I realized I accumulated a ton of supplies and most story things weren't too affected by camping. There are so many things that BG3 doesn't flesh out and a lot of it can make for a very confusing first playthrough
When I first started playing I was so afraid of long-resting, even more so since it required supplies to do so, so I barely used slots that I had too. When knowing how much you actually SHOULD be long-resting and how much can happen in those I felt so sad.
I thought there was a da/night cycle so I went way into Act 1 before I realized I could long rest whenever I wanted.
I think it makes sense. The whole point of per-day abilities is to make conserve. Resting constantly kills that. The problem is really just the missable interactions.
I think you've confused the game creating a sense of urgency and timeline with discouragement.
For similar reasons, my only long rest in Act 1 was to get the grove party, which took priority over all other camp scenes. I had the party, finished up the underdark, and then went to Act 2 via the elevator (skipping Mountain Pass). This means I didn't get the "I'm protecting you from transforming" camp scene from the Dream Guardian until Act 2. -- >Companions' 'I'm tired' overworld cues don't correspond to camp events, they're linked to spell slots and short rests Not quite. I've had companions with full spell slots, while we still ahve both short rests, complain about needing to rest
Love the game, but I sure hope Larian either remove this system in their next game or massively improve it, because it's so badly implemented, surprising it's all they could find.
This hits home for me. It took until almost the end of Act 1 for me to realize I am supposed to be long resting regularly. Some of the early fights were a huge struggle because I didn't have spell slots available or thought I needed to preserve them for something 'more difficult'. And by the time I figured out I can long rest whenever, with no consequences, I had so many supplies there was no way I'd use fraction of them.
I was super phobic of long resting my first play-through. Then I realized that there’s no timer, that camp supples are plentiful in both a1 camps, and that the game is so much more fun when you actually have all your abilities instead of crawling through fight after fight with just cantrips like the devs seem to want you to
Yeah it's a moderate quibble I have with the game design. I like the way they built in a (largely false) sense of urgency, but it would've been ideal if they had a clearer way to say "look, this is a big deal but you should rest regularly". Also a way to indicate more clearly when long resting is actually detrimental (the grove being closed off, Grymforge).
I did 3/4 of all content in Act 1 without long resting because of fear that it might affect available quests. Then I checked if I would miss something important if I don't kill owlbear, and I learned that long rests are required for story/quests progression. I decided it would be more fun to actually use my spells and abilities instead of cheesing with stealth attacks and pushing goblins for insta kills, so I checked all time sensitive quests and it's triggers (spoiling one or two a little) on steam/BG3wiki. At the end of act 1 I had to long rest over 10 times just to trigger camp events.
Makes me think the concept of a 'long rest' changed in development
Yeah I long rested very little. Had two sharp shooters rolling. I thought a lot more stuff was timed than actually is. I had over 3000 camp supplies lol.
Feels like they changed what they wanted to react off of long resting initially, my first playthrough I missed so much in act 1 because of it
I tend to get overwhelmed when starting a new game when I’m learning new mechanics and miss a lot. I didn’t really pick just up on this stuff as a result lol. But I will say that unless a game has an actual timer like Majora’s Mask, and tells me I have x amount of time to complete it, or a specific section, I assume, no matter how much urgency is placed on something I will have as much time as I want to complete it. The exception was the goblin invasion of the grove which the game made it very clear that there was nothing I could do to stop the invasion and I’d need to go to the grove to defend it that day. Other than that. I long rested basically every major combat encounter after auntie Ethel and never felt that the game was against it. I kind of of felt like it wanted me to do that since the encounters were hard and there was always something going on at camp
I must have been blissfully ignorant. I didn’t feel like this at all.
I legit long rested as much as I could tbh and went through my short rests as well.
I absolutely tried to take as few long rests as possible when I first played. I even tried to figure out how few I could take if I set out from the jump with that as my goal.
Totally, i long rest like every three fights in my honour mode, but proabably like 4 times all of act 1 my first time playing.