So I mistakingly thought the grove with the tiefling-goblin war was the main quest, because that’s what the game kept talking about.
And I didn’t see any way to continue the game outside of doing it, especially since the way North to do Wyll’s quest to get Kalrath was blocked off by a broken bridge. I eventually learned I could jump it, but I honestly didn’t think platforming was an option given that the game didn’t seem to have platforming elements.
I got stuck in the Goblin Camp on a really tough fight, as due to the game pointing me in that direction I went there without gearing up or leveling my guys, so I was only level four.
Honestly the fights were fine except for the one against Dror Hazlin, who kept killing my guys in one hit and refusing to take damage no matter what I did.
I tried attacking him from the rafters, but he was only half-way down on his health by the time he had my guys cornered and proceeded to kill them all by knocking them off the rafters.
I eventually turned down the difficulty, but found the fight unsatsifying. So I reloaded and eventually figured I could shove Dror Ragzlin down a bit and miss out on his worm.
I chose that, because the shame of using Explorer Difficult was just too great.
So, you might be wondering “What’s the problem? I found a solution”
Well I was talking to the Steam Message boards about it and they were overly toxic, accusing me of a being a troll, telling me how easy the fight was, giving non-answers like “Use Explosive Barrles” (I don’t have any) or “Hire some ogres!” (There are none around)
and when I explained why their solutions were unviable I was told I was a ragebaiter.
I just kept getting told how easy the fight was and how I’m a terrible person for asking for help.
Eventually the forum post was deleted due to how out of hand it got.
It left me in too sour a mood, because I figured, what if they’re right? What if I’m not gamer enough to properly enjoy Baldur’s Gate 3.
So now I ask on Lemmy, should I continue, or uninstall in shame?
I really do like the game, I don’t agree with every mechanic and I dislike how limited resoruces are, but I love the world and the story and would really like to see it through to the end.
If you think I should continue, then please, I ask any advice I can get for how to optimize enjoyment. Thank you.
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I chose that, because the shame of using Explorer Difficult was just too great.
Genuinely: pride is the enemy of joy. It’s a hard habit to let go of, but I have been trying to work on this myself. At the end of the day what you’re after is extracting maximum joy out of a game, and not everyone loves overcoming a challenge. Sometimes I just want to relax and enjoy a story, or world, or cinematic immersion. You sound like you’re the same, and there is absolutely no shame in that.
If you do want concrete gameplay tips, then yes: Steam mesageboards are often an absolute cesspit (from what I’ve seen). Asking around on here is a much better idea.
I was talking to the Steam Message boards about it
Oh no.
and they were overly toxic
Do you remember the Lion King meme? All of the internet is yours, but those are the Steam Forums, you must never go there.
Valve needs to shut those down.
My advice is to start the game over. It’s an RPG and there are a dozen ways to approach every situation and most don’t even involve fighting. You can get very creative with your approach. Maybe watch a “things I wish I knew before playing” video or two and then restart. After all, restarting a CRPG ten times before you commit is a time-honored gamer tradition.
As someone who’s restarted Pillars of Eternity a handful of times, this is exactly what I needed to read. Thanks for the validation.
Higher difficulties are mostly for metagamers like me. No shame in doing a lower one and I frankly think doing a less optimized build more focused on the roleplay is more fun than the other way around. Do not listen to these people, do what is fun for you.
My most sincere tip would be not to spoil anything for yourself and just chill out exploring the game on your own. If that means explorer difficulty (it is literally in the name), who cares?
I think you would enjoy games like this more if you just played through them before you go online to participate in discussions or look for information. The fun part of things like this is just figuring out solutions to these problems. They won’t be optimal but they might work. You can always play it again if you want to min-max everything.
Back away from the goblin camp and explore the rest of the initial map.
From where you are there are multiple ways to get to the Underdark, where you can level up a little bit more before facing the goblin bosses, and maybe find more explosive barrels or other assists for that fight.
It’s easier to face him once you are level 4, or maybe even 5, but that takes a lot of work.
I’m level 4, but I wound up reloading an earlier save, the ENTIRE CAMP aggrod on me, and I don’t have the resources to fight EVERYONE.
Figured I could just kill the Goblin leaders and they’d disperse or something. I… don’t see how to leave alive.
Yes the goblin camp can definitely wait
I’ve played through a few times.
What I usually do in the goblin camp is pick off stragglers at the edges, and this removes much of the danger of lots of enemies piling into one big fight. This works well outside and inside.
By the time I take on Dror Razglin, he has only the goblins left in the room with him.
You also spoke of dropping things from the rafters, and there is something else, a one of a kind thing, that is fun to drop from up there. I will elaborate if you don’t mind the spoilers.
I also agree with those suggesting you start over and try new approaches.
It’s true that it isn’t as much of a ROLEplaying game as you would like, but there are lots of opportunities that open up with different builds, classes, races, and backgrounds.
If you’re not in combat you should be able to teleport to any of the listed waypoints on the map screen, which will get you out of the goblin camp. You can teleport to waypoints even if you’re inside the ruins.
That’s what happened to me on my first playthrough hahaha. I ended up restarting from nothing and blowing through what I already knew. Same choices but made sure I was getting all the free equipment I could when I did it the second time through.
Let me mention something else here based on your experience with people telling you to use barrels. Barrelmancy is fun but it is absolutely not required to beat the game, even as a new player.
I wound up high-yielding it out of the goblin camp. I managed to cross a cliff or something before they got me, but my peeps were definitely falling on the way out haha. That was a wild one.
edit: after that the characters kept talking about how I killed the whole goblin camp and I definitely didn’t hahaha. They are very much still there.
Your mistake is giving weight to the opinions of guys who post their cheese strats to steam message boards. You aren’t less of a gamer because you haven’t learned how to cheese a fight.
You’re the one playing the game. Play it how you want.
As for tips to make it easier?
- When the game tells you something is urgent, it’s usually lying. You have all the time in the world, and nothing to fear from a long rest.
- Cantrips scale over time, so you can often use them rather than a spell slot.
- Barrel strats are beginner level cheese. Steal firewine and oil barrels, just in case you need it later.
When the game tells you something is urgent, it’s usually lying. You have all the time in the world, and nothing to fear from a long rest.
The only exception to this that I encountered was in the underdark. You take a boat to an area with an optional quest to rescue some gnomes (or dwarfs?). Forget exactly what I did (long rest, or taking the boat back again) but the gnomes had outlived their usefulness by the time I got back to them.
There is also the newspaper quest in Baldur’s Gate (Act 3) that is time sensitive. Maybe something else I forget. But I agree that the game handles that stuff incredibly poorly, largely because it has so many lies about quests framed as urgent that actually wait for you forever in stasis that you have no reasonable expectation to actually suspect anything is time sensitive.
It’s freeing Nere that’s timed. You have two long rests after you talk to him then gnomes free him and he kills them.
Keep playing! You’ve only just scratched the surface!
Ignore the trolls and people who thought you were rage baiting. If you’re enjoying it, keep enjoying it!
This is a game where knowledge of the game, the location of objects, and NPCs makes it easier. I would suggest you explore much more. The no ogres and no explosive barrels is just an exploration issue. Look at the minimap when you’re exploring. You can see places where you can jump to or climb to if you look at the minimap as any place you can move your character will look lighter on the map. Also just try and jump to a place. You’ll see the white line if you can jump there.
Save often. That way if you explore and end up in a fight that’s too difficult you can just reload your last save and go a different way.
There are almost always multiple ways to get to places in this game, like to get to Karlach. You can get to the bridge and go that way but I can think of at least two other ways to get to her. You can jump places or climb vines or go into holes if you’re small enough.
Also ask lots of questions on things you don’t understand on a forum like this. Even if someone says you’re ragebaiting some people will probably try and answer.
The ogres are in the goblin-controlled village, before you get to the keep. The one where you are ambushed by goblins on the roof at the entrance. You have to convince them not to eat you, either by a skill check or with gold. I suggest doing this, because you will greatly appreciate their help if you have to fight your way out of the keep. I do not know if they can be used inside the keep, because I saved them for the bigger fight outside.
As for the boss fight, I found it easier to fight from around the corner so that Ragzlin has to come out of the throne room to get to me. There’s an area to the left of the big entrance door to the throne room where you can stack up. Melee fighters on the front line, archers and spellcasters behind for crowd control. It also allowed me to try to push him and his minions off the edge of the bridge outside the door. Don’t worry about knocking him off, you can go down there after the fight and get his loot.
Another good strategy is to use Command to make him drop his weapon, then pick it up as soon as he does. There are spells you can use to lock him in place while you deal with his minions as well. He buffs his minions, so keeping him out of the way while you deal with them will make the fight easier.
Don’t give up. The fight is supposed to be hard for you, since it’s the end of act one. But you can do it. As in any CRPG, the key is to think tactically. Make use of things that block line of sight. Move in and out of cover with your spellcasters and archers. Make use of the high ground, it gives you advantage on your attack rolls. Find choke points and block them so they have to come at you one at a time. Remember you can pick up some objects to use them to barricade. And of course any barrels you find that are filled with oil can be used to blow people up. Imagine your party is a magical SWAT team, then think about how they would go clearing a room full of enemies. When you do that, you’ll get into the mindset of using the environment as a weapon.
Just turn around and leave the camp. Act 1 has so.much in it you can go do a side wuest or just find more enemies to fight to level up. I have restarted this game so many times and never finished it
By act 3 I had a ton of potions and scrolls. Don’t be shy about using them if you have trouble with a fight.
Also take a look at some guides for character builds. At that point in the game you’re probably still somewhat low level but there’s plenty of fights and such to get into to level up. The game really does reward exploration so don’t get too sucked into beating a specific fight in order to progress. I think there’s only a dozen fights in the game you truly can’t avoid.
The end bit of the goblin camp is tough, even on normal difficulty, so nothing wrong with struggling with it. Most areas have a fight or two that are intended to be very difficult, but these are usually optional, so you can return to them later.
I would say BG3 does have a fair bit of these difficult fights, but there’s usually also a lot of options to deal with them. Utilising stuff like stealth archery, area denial (grease/web spells/scrolls), environmental damage (like that pushing dudes off ledges) and so on is important. There are also often other ways around these fights (stealth, conversation options, using environment).
And yeah like others have said, I would generally stay away from Steam forums, there’s lot of assholes in there and a lot of the responses are often straight up wrong.
Now that you know how things shake out, start over. Each paragraph of your story has a “I didn’t know this” but “this is how the problem was solved”. Clear the goblin siege, get the levels, and go experience the story with characters who can handle whatever is thrown at them.
(And pick up some explosive barrels. They’re so handy.)
You should either never go to the Steam forums OR grow a much thicker skin first.
Play whatever difficulty you find okay for you. Anyone telling you your chosen difficulty is too easy can go take a hike.
If you like the game you can reload an earlier save and redoit. I’m on my first run too, and just like you I went straight to the goblin camp on act 1. The Dror fight was also the only challenging one, and eventually I beat it with some strategic thinking. I was level 4 when I managed to get it right, however, had I figured out the strategy I’m sure I could have beat it at level 3 when I originally attempted it.
I think the makeup of your party and the resources you have at your disposal make a huge difference. I have two rogues (my character+ astarion) and I don’t think I could have done it with a melee approach at that level. Also I chose thief for astarion, which I recommend if you haven’t.
After failing the first few times at level 3, I made a comment to a friend who is also playing it and he said, “no way, that’s too early! You need to be at least level 5 and have Karlach in your team”. He also asked what other areas of the map I had explored, and recommended I go search the ruins to the east and get xp before attempting the boss fight at the goblin camp.
I cleared the ruins and pottered around until I got to 4, then got bored with exploring and also more confident with my understanding of the mechanics and strategies, so I tried again and succeeded.
I recommend you do something similar, just enjoy exploring and take it slow. Eventually you’ll feel like it’s the right time and you’ll beat the challenge.
As for the ogres, I think people meant you can ask Withers for hirelings. I totally missed Withers when he first appeared at my camp. I remember taking a long rest and getting a warning “someone wants to speak with you! Are you sure you want to go to sleep?” Or similar. I checked so many times wondering who wanted to talk to me lol. Didn’t see him until the next day . So my recommendation is, go to camp and have a good look, use your map and you will see Withers. He shows up when you are level 3.
It’d be a shame of you to miss out on a game you say you are enjoying and that you want to see where the story goes just because you don’t meet some imaginary standards of gaming performance you’ve set up yourself based on the Internet hivemind out of all things. Just go play your way.
