Turns out that Baldur's Gate 3's slowdown bug occurs because you all just love thieving and vandalism so much.
Earlier this month, Baldur's Gate 3 received its fourth patch, which brought about a whole heap of changes, fixes, and additions. However, players also began to notice some performance issues once they started hitting Act 3 in the game, some of which found it to be unplayable. As explained by developer Larian Studios in a statement provided to IGN, this all comes down to a strange situation where the game wouldn't forget any acts of theft or vandalism.
"In Patch 4 we introduced a fix that would prevent the Scrying Eyes in Moonrise Towers from immediately calling the guards on you when stealing, even if you were sneaking, or invisible for example," Larian told IGN. "This 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 is 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 verbalising them. Mulling on it ad infinitum."
Baldur's Gate 3's next update, Patch 5, will address various performance issues caused by the bountiful fantasy RPG's previous patch. The source of the lag? No, it's got nothing to do with teeth. According to Larian, the slowdowns are actually connected to the game's understanding of crime and morality: Patch 4 left it unable to "forget" player thefts and acts of vandalism that haven't been detected by NPCs, meaning that BG3 players who break the rules often and get away with it have been saddling their simulations with unfinished tasks. That's right, the game's latest technical crisis is in fact a crisis of conscience. Oh the humanity!
Baldur's Gate 3 is reaching an exciting height with its recent GOTY win and now its various nominations at The Game Awards. While we're all jumping into our third or fourth playthrough of the DnD-inspired RPG, Larian Studios continues working to release regular patches. The most recent update seemingly introduced some stability issues, but it turns out that these performance problems may actually be our fault.
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Baldur's Gate 3 Druids have got to be one of my favorite classes. After much deliberation, it was the option I chose for my first character, so I'll always have a special bias. Beyond that, Druid companions Halsin and Jaheira are two of the most interesting and fun characters to have around. Yet while the Druid's signature spell Wild Shape is a very cool and undoubtedly powerful ability, allowing you to transform into all manner of different animals, it can feel a little one-note, with several of the forms rarely seeing use. That's all changed now, however, thanks to a new BG3 mod.
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