Larian Studios’ latest patch for Baldur’s Gate 3 is rolling out, and it’s massive. According to IGN, Patch 5 adds a new playable Epilogue, which becomes available to all players with save data before the final boss. It occurs six months after the story in camp, where you meet “new friends and old, taking all the time they need to say their final goodbyes to the party.”
“For the writers of Larian, this ‘final goodbye’ has been some of the most complex writing in the game so far, as it takes advantage of the game’s reactivity across the entire adventure.” This content offers a “gigantic tree of permutations”, with 3,589 lines of new dialogue, cinematics and more.
That’s not all, as the recently leaked Honour Mode is also included. It’s a higher difficulty, which adds more than 30 new “tweaks” to the bosses. There’s also the new Legendary Action system, where bosses have new moves, mixing up fights in new ways. Save scumming is also disabled, and many “unintended exploits” have been removed for Honour Mode. Dying is permanent, and afterwards, you get to see how long you survived. You can continue the adventure with Honor Mode disabled, but completing a run on this difficulty awards a Golden D20.
There’s also Custom Mode for tweaking everything to your preference. You can hide enemy HP and failed Perception Checks, remove death-saving throws, make short rests fully heal the party and more. A new inventory UI is also available for accessing everyone’s items, even if they’re not in the party, and there are various performance improvements.
Check out some of the patch notes below for more details (though beware of spoilers). Patch 5 is 30 GB and requires 130 GB of free space to install.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 5 Notes
HIGHLIGHTS
Main Highlights
- Epilogue: An entirely new section at the end of the game that aims to provide a well-deserved sense of closure with your allies.
- Two new play modes: Honour Mode and Custom Mode.
- Many performance improvements, particularly in Act III.
- Added dynamic resolution for PS5.
- Players playing on machines with low VRAM/RAM should see improved performance.
- The game is now available in Korean!
- While at camp, you can now access and manage the inventories of companions who aren’t in your active party.
- Added a brand new fight in Ramazith’s Tower if you betray Nightsong there.
- Orin’s outfit now drops as loot and is wearable by anyone. We also gave it a suitably disgusting description and name.
Other Highlights
- Shadowheart will always be the owner of the artefact during the tutorial if she is a follower.
- Becoming half-illithid will now also visually affect your eyes.
- Basic Action variations (e.g. a free version of Dash that you can perform because of a class feature) that share a hotkey by default will now gain a hotkey according to a certain priority order.
- A romanced Minthara can now refer to her bond with you using a drow word for deep, unbreakable love.
- Fixed a bug where party members would sometimes not change back into the armour set they were displaying before entering camp.
- You can now talk to Mol more about her contract with Raphael in the Guildhall.
- Withers will sneakily resurrect any dead companions that fell before the final battle so they can join the ending cinematics. What a helpful skeleton.
- Gave Jaheira her own scene with Danthelon if she approaches him alone.
- Improved the physics of characters and walls to prevent NPCs being able to shoot through ceilings inside houses.
- Fixed an issue where Gale’s scene with Mystra after the final combat of the game only played if you had no one else in your party.
- Improved companion reactivity when making the decision before the Netherbrain.
- The loading screen art now unlocks gradually as you progress through the game.
- Boo will no longer take damage when thrown.
- Fixed the puzzle in Cazador’s Palace.
- Fixed the screen going black during Astarion’s endgame romance scene.
- Added some additional audio and cinematic work to the intimate scene with the drow in Sharess’ Caress.
- Wild Shapes that do not have weapons will now benefit from having the Tavern Brawler feat.
CRASHES AND BLOCKERS
- Fixed crashes that could occur while loading a savegame.
- Fixed a crash for some players upon entering Nine-Fingers’ Guildhall.
- Fixed a crash when dragging an item out of your inventory while your character is dead in another inventory.
- Fixed a texture-related crash and leak.
- Fixed a crash and blocker when interacting with Auntie Ethel in Act 3.
- Fixed an issue preventing you from levelling up when there were more slots than spells to choose from.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when entities that don’t support passives join a combat.
- Fixed a possible crash related to dealing damage when the game can’t detect a source for that damage.
- Added fixes for certain random crashes.
- Fixed a rare crash caused by clothing physics in the Level Up screen.
- Fixed a DLSS crash.