Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 8 - The Grand Finale Fans Deserved

Larian Studios has finally released Baldur's Gate 3's Patch 8. It is the last major content update for the game. There may still be smaller patches that fix bugs and make the game better, but this latest update pretty much ends the process of making new content. Even though Patch 8 is the last in a long line of expansions released after the game came out, it comes with a lot of changes that affect almost every part of the game.

Full crossplay, which has been long-awaited, is one of the best things about Patch 8. Now, players from different platforms can work together in the Forgotten Realms, but there is one catch: everyone who joins a modded game must have the exact same mods installed. Technical issues and problems with compatibility are likely to happen without this synchronization. Anyway, the process is pretty easy—all players have to do is turn on crossplay in the multiplayer settings, and they're good to go.

In addition to crossplay, Larian has also released updates for the game's modding toolkit. Even though modders will still have to follow some IP-related rules, these changes are meant to make it easier to create unique content. The expansion of the toolkit should lead to more interesting and different mods in the future. Larian suggests that people who want to make mods read the updated modding guidelines to ensure they stay within the rules.

Photo mode is another feature that has been requested for a long time and is finally here in this patch. This new feature is sure to become a fan favorite since Baldur's Gate 3 emphasizes stories and characters. It doesn't add any new features that aren't expected, but it does let players pause and frame their favorite moments more precisely, immortalizing the epic or silly scenes that naturally happen in a huge fantasy RPG.

The 12 new subclasses, on the other hand, are by far the most important addition. This expansion promises to make character customization and game variety much deeper. These subclasses were shown off during the stress test phase for Patch 8. Things may have changed since then, but now that they've been officially released, they're fully part of the game. 

There is now the Path of the Giant Barbarian, the College of Glamour Bard, the Death Domain Cleric, the Circle of Stars Druid, the Arcane Archer Fighter, the Way of the Drunken Master Monk, the Oath of the Crown Paladin, the Swarmkeeper Ranger, the Swashbuckler Rogue, the Shadow Magic Sorcerer, the Hexblade Warlock, and the Bladesinging Wizard. These additions give players more ways to play and strategize, and Larian has confirmed that achievements have been changed to reflect these changes.

In addition to the big new features, Patch 8 adds a lot of useful improvements to the game. One of these improvements fixes a problem that has been bothering people for a long time with managing inventory. Players who keep items in containers in their inventory can now get to those items during conversations. Before, you had to have potions, scrolls, or other similar tools out of your inventory in order to use them during dialogue. This small but very welcome change will make life much better for people who like to keep their inventory neat.

Non-playable characters (NPCs) becoming hostile for unknown reasons is fixed in the patch, which was one of the most annoying things about the game. In particular, it was common for NPCs to walk into environmental hazards, like surface effects that were still there after a fight, and act like the player had meant to hurt them. This would often turn into fights that weren't necessary. Larian has changed how NPCs act to stop these misunderstandings. This should lead to fewer accidental killings and a smoother flow of the story.

Larian also used this chance to do a balanced pass around the field. A lot of these changes are small, but there are a few that stand out. For instance, the Wall of Ice spell used to do a lot less damage than it should have. Now, it works right, having the full effect it was meant to have, besides normal resistances. Another fix makes sure that ghouls and ghasts can't paralyze drow characters anymore. This is in line with the story of Dungeons & Dragons and may affect both player strategies and enemies controlled by AI.

A lot of changes have been made to how monsters and bosses act to make the game more challenging and realistic, especially in harder settings like Tactician and Honor Mode. As an example, Balthazar will now use Shield as part of his fighting style, even though many players probably thought he was already doing this. Another boss whose AI wasn't very good before has had it fixed so that it makes better decisions in battle: Gortash. It's still too early to tell how much these changes will make these encounters harder, but they show that developers are still working to keep high-level play interesting and fresh.

On a more technical note, Larian has taken away the ability to travel quickly while standing on moving platforms like elevators. This fix fixes a bug that caused players to respawn at their original location after returning from camp to find that the platform had moved, causing them to fall and die right away. In these situations, turning off fast travel gets rid of that headache.

There are also a lot of bug fixes for scripting logic and story flow. These mostly fix situations where characters might act in a way that doesn't match the player's chosen path. For instance, some characters had lines that were only meant to be used in Dark Urge playthroughs, even if the player hadn't chosen that origin. In other bugs, characters like Lae'zel would talk about non-playable characters (NPCs) before they were even introduced, which broke the flow of the story. The goal of these fixes is to make sure that conversations and plot points make sense in the game.

Handling of quest items has also been made stronger. Before, players who sent a key item straight to their stash could accidentally stop their progress in a quest if they forgot about it. Now, items like Gortash's glove are given out automatically in some cutscenes, even if they were stored right away. It should happen less often now that inventories are better managed, so quests won't get stuck.

Another goal of this patch was to improve performance. To make the game run more smoothly, changes have been made to the lighting, combat AI, and inventory loading. These changes are especially important in Act 3, where big battles and crowded areas have historically made the game run slowly. Larian has tried to fix these issues by better managing memory and cleaning up the backend. This should make the game run more reliably on a wider range of systems.

The developers have also changed the names of items and moved environmental elements around in the tooltip descriptions and cinematics to make sure they work with the new mechanics. Some problems with the terrain have also been fixed. Gaps in the level design have been filled in, and interactive objects have been moved around to make the game look better and easier to use. Even though these changes aren't very exciting, they make the game more immersive and improve the user experience.

Patch 8 is a proper farewell to Baldur's Gate 3, and it shows how much work Larian Studios has kept putting into improving the game even after it came out. With crossplay, modding upgrades, new subclasses, and dozens of other fixes and improvements, the update doesn't just end the story; it gives players who want to start a new adventure or character a new way to play a new lease of life. For both old and new fans, Patch 8 made sure that Baldur's Gate 3 ends on a high note after it came out.