Larian Studios has confirmed that the next patch for Baldur’s Gate 3 will launch this week. It will fix slowdowns caused by “eternally-active acts of thefts and violence” along with Astarion’s kisses. But what are these thefts, and how did they cause such issues?
The developer told IGN that it introduced a fix to a certain location in Act 2, where getting caught wouldn’t immediately summon the guards if you were stealing (whether sneaking or invisible). Unfortunately, this caused a ripple effect that affected the whole game.
“The fix had the unintended consequence of causing unnoticed thefts and acts of vandalism to remain stuck forever within the ‘did anyone see me’ pipeline, rather than timing out and moving on, as intended. Essentially, your dungeon master – in a real-world sense – constantly thinks about the acts of theft and violence the player keeps doing without ever moving on or verbalizing them. Mulling on it ad infinitum,” said Larian.
“These unnoticed and eternally-active acts of theft and violence eventually bogged down the game. The more a player commits those acts, the more the game tries to keep that all up to date and in memory, and so the more slowdowns start happening.
“Essentially, the dungeon master becomes unable to operate. By Act 3, this caused slowdown issues, which after some sleuthing we’re extremely happy to say we’ve solved in Patch 5, which is in testing and scheduled to release this week.”
Patch 5 could have fixes for other issues, so stay tuned for the full notes when it goes live this week. Baldur’s Gate 3 is available for PS5 and PC, with the Xbox Series X/S version coming in December. Larian will announce the release date at The Game Awards and has committed to including all existing patches.
A physical (and non-limited) Deluxe Edition is also releasing in Q1 2024 for $79.99 on Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC. Head here for more details on what it includes.