The points at which the game transition between acts seem a bit arbitrary (mainly for Act I to Act II), and I don’t see a narrative or mechanical reason to lock us out of previous maps and quests. As far as I remember, previous Baldur’s Gate games didn’t have this kind of points of no return. Why do you think they did it? Do you like it?
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There isn’t a point of no return between A1 and A2. Rather, you need to do certain A1 events prior to A2 or those events resolve without you (e.g. Goblin Attack, several others).
You can travel back to A1 while in A2. Only A3 prevents back-travel, and that’s for well-established story reasons.
I generally prefer having control of the timing rather than having it being tied to X amount of rests or something (notable exceptions for certain quests existing, of course).
BG2 and ToB both had notable points of no return. Paying the fee in Athkatla to recruit allies is one, any time you ever travel with Saemon is one, leaving the besieged city is one in TOB, etc. There were also a number of time-dependent quests, most notably those involving a certain dragon/drow situation.
You do get locked out of traveling back to Act 1 areas some time in Act 2. I think once you enter the Temple of Shar?
I wanted to go back for another crack at the forge and I couldn’t.
It’s when you go to Nightsong that it locks you out, and to be fair, the game does clearly warn you there are consequences for that - and depending on your actions, a 3rd party just straight up moves the story along, so it makes sense.
If you’re struggling at the forge, remember that you can just not hit the boss with anyone but a bait character, and that bait character doesn’t have to actually survive the encounter, meaning if you position well, you can just melt and smash the boss over and over without touching it (after the first hit or two) and it’s a free win.
Took me numerous tries before I learned that one.
The actual cheese of the forge is picking the pike of returning, placing one character in the stairs, waay above, and throwing the pike into him. If it’s a fighter that’s 4 throws the first turn, each doing their respective damage + 30ish damage per throw because of the weight+height. I killed it in 2 turns, he didn’t even move since he does nothing in the first turn.
That fight is also a lot easier if you focus on using a heavy hitter with a bludgeoning weapon doing damage. I made judicious use of Sanctuary, and made sure any vulnerable characters were out of range. You can use ranged weapons to lure Grym and change its threat assessment.
I cast haste on Karlach, giving her 4 hits every turn. She’d do 60 - 90 damage each turn, then have shadowheart cast sanctuary. All while making sure everyone is out of range so grym can’t do much damage to anyone else out of frustration that he can’t target Karlach. Others still sometimes get knocked down due to his Quake spell, but I was able to make it through that fight on Tactician without anyone falling.
Be careful not to trigger a melee reaction though, since that will cause Grym to recalculate his target and can mess up the plan.
I just love smashing dude with the hammer, what can I say lol
I’m sorry, you can hit it with the forge hammer? Hot damn.
By far the easiest way to kill it. You’ll need to lure it to the hammer spot though.
You can still travel between act 2 and act 1, I think the quests are locked out because the NPCs involved have moved on to the new area. It’s a little annoying to be unable to finish some things up but I don’t really mind overall. It’s nice that the side characters make some progress in the story.
The only point of no return I encountered was once you head into Baldur’s Gate itself, you can’t go back to any previous area. All the other areas before that may give you a vague warning implying you can’t go back, but you most certainly can. Though at some points, the only way back is to fast travel, since you can’t just turn around and go back the way you came because you had to jump/fall into a pit or something.
I do find that one point of no return silly. The only logical reason I can think of is that they didn’t make an uncursed version of the woods, so it would be immersion breaking to go back there. But plot wise? Shit doesn’t make sense at all. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to go back to Emerald Grove once I reach Rivington.
Yes, I found it confusing that sometimes there is a warning which has no consequences, then in anothere you get locked from all previous maps. Also with time-sensitive missions, you can fail a few quests and it is not always specified that there will be consequences if you take too long in your exploration (in a game that is all about exploration)
I believe they mentioned that those time sensitive ones are directly related to taking long rests near the location of the quest.
You aren’t told this in game, tho. The quests in question don’t even apply the pressure to give the illusion time is crucial, the way they do with the worm in your head every 5 minutes. You have no way knowing that these two specific quests have a time limit. It’s not like every quest has them.
Does your DM tell you the consequences of all your long rests and choices as well, or do you find out after?
When I’m running a game I absolutely tell my players things that I think their characters would be aware of, and that includes time pressures that a reasonable adventuring party would understand through professional experience
They do give you hints with some of them - I did a long rest and everyone was telling me we needed to hurry or the dude trapped under rubble was going to die. I thought that was a good way to handle it.
Exactly, all the time critical events I encountered had NPCs clearly indicating it’s a time sensitive issue.
Does your DM straight up not make it clear there are time constraints, either through context or by just directly telling the party? The story in BG3 emphasizes a time crunch in one thing, that doesn’t matter until you progress beyond certain map points, but then you get these other couple of quests that make no effort to say there is any time limit, so you rest after 1 fight and fuck everything up without even realizing wtf happened. Even after it happens, it’s not clear it was because you rested and time had passed.
Does your DM let you re-roll if you don’t like the outcome?
Yeah, actually. If I have inspiration points. That’s what they’re there for.
In act 1, if you don’t resolve the druid/goblin/tiefling dispute, and iirc the burning house before reaching act 2, it resolves itself. If you did nothing the grove’s ritual finishes, if you killed the druids the goblins invade and kill everyone, and the other options don’t matter since you would resolve the quest, oh and karlach’s personal quest too, if you don’t do it she leaves.
Odd, I tried to go back to Act 1 from Act 2 (looking for a vendor since spoiler stuff happened at the only settlement in cursed lands) and when I clicked the elevator it told me I “really shouldn’t” like twice and the third time it game over’d me in a unique and creative way… I felt that was a pretty hard lock out of act 1… Lol
I think there is a grace period after hitting act 2 where you still can go back but once you’ve done a bit of story related stuff you are pretty locked in.
You could try just opening the map and bringing up the list of fast travel spots. This will let you fast travel even to points on another map. Like if you’re in the under dark, you can warp straight to Emerald Grove without going back up topside. I had to do this when in the basement of Moonrise Towers because I wanted to go back and sell shit before moving forward, but there’s no transition back the way you entered.
Once you hit the lock out point, there aren’t any waypoints for act one when you open the map… I didn’t get all the way through acts one and two by literally walking everywhere and ignoring fast travel, lol.
No waypoints was why I had to walk back to the elevator to even try going back. I don’t want to drop spoilers, but I have a hunch what the “point of no return” is and depending on your methodology playing the game you might trigger it relatively early in act 2 or it could be very nearly the last thing you do… I’m assuming you happen to have done the later and didn’t even notice when you got locked out of act 1.
I’ve heard of this early ending and yeah, maybe that’s it because I was able to go back to the very beginning as far as just before entering Rivington. After that, is when the only FT point I had was my camp. I did all the top of emerald Grove, then the underdark, then the mountains, then the shadow forest before finally moving on.
I think the problem is you’re viewing it like you would say Diablo. Where those have acts and you can just freely roam through the whole thing.
This is d&d. So this is more of a linear story. More precise your linear story. If your story involves going from the beach to baldur’s gate and you never saw the underdark then that’s perfectly fine. There’s really no right or wrong way to play.
And that’s where the massive amount of replayability comes. Because long as you don’t keep choosing the exact same things every time you will get a different story.
The problem with this is the encounters and enemies have specific levels. If you skip things (and there are several instances where progressing one quest ends or eliminates many others even when they are not mutually exclusive, a la evil vs. good companions) you could end up very underleveled later on. I had several fights early in Act 2 where I felt I was VERY obviously missing content as I needed my entire party to be a level or two higher to get through without save-scumming, spamming items, exploiting mechanics, or all of the above.
A lot are super not obvious too - in Act 1 there are quite a few things you’re “supposed” to do before you go to the goblin camp or else you’ll be pretty unprepared to deal with the sheer number of level 3~4 mobs. But I assumed initially it worked like more traditional RPGs and you do the side quests first and the main quest as the last thing before wrapping up the act. You can also sneak around and pretty much get instantly TPK’d by the Spectator until you have the action economy to deal with it (level 5ish). But in Act 2 you’re actually “supposed” to go to Moonrise first before going to the Mausoleum or else you lose the ability to finish tons of quests and access to several vendors. You’re told to find tieflings, Mol, and Zevlor all at the same time but you have no way of knowing that if you go to the mausoleum first you’ll lose access to the tiefling quest resolution, but not the other two. It’s not obvious at all that you can’t find Mol until Act 3. It’s missing the kind of corrections and hints a DM could do on the fly to keep things moving, or at least nudge you in the right direction if you’re willing to be railroaded in order to see the most content possible.
Iirc you don’t lose access to anything in the mausoleum until you take a dip in the pool, where they quite literally show a popup that uncompleted quests may be broken. If by that point you check the map and the quest log and you have stuff you clearly should do before continuing, like exploring the tower, or freeing th eprisoners they will obviously murder if an assault happens to avoid having to fight them in the case we liberate them in the assault, well, yeah, idk man.
My only gripe is the Zevlor quest and the Mol quests, where the don’t really say that you need to do it to see them. Well technically you can go down below through a hole and featherfall or through some stairs after liberating the prisoners, and rescue Zevlor before the pool, but most do it after it. SO my only gripe is Mol, because the journal gives no indication that spoilers of act 2:
spoiler
she was not at the towers
But besides that it’s quite clear that once you reach the gauntlet that maybe that’s a bigger thing than a simple side quest, specially when the popup shows up.
they quite literally show a popup that uncompleted quests may be broken
It is unclear which quests will be broken, or how many. 15 of the 20 or so quests I had at that point couldn’t actually be progressed then anyway, but 5 could.
you clearly should do before continuing, like exploring the tower
How is this clear? I was assuming once I got to Moonrise it would be one long fight to Ketheric and so was trying to do everything else first, imagining it would effectively conclude the act. I had no reason to assume it would be a social zone that I needed to visit and complete quests in before doing the temple. I had no idea there would be an assault on the tower.
it’s quite clear that once you reach the gauntlet that maybe that’s a bigger thing than a simple side quest, specially when the popup shows up.
The pop-up is, but a similar popup happens when you leave Act 1, but many things remain accessible. So it is inconsistent. I think it would help to have quests show recommended levels so it is more obvious what order you’re expected to do them in - you could still go out of order like you can now, but I think it would be a better experience.
How is this clear? I was assuming once I got to Moonrise it would be one long fight to Ketheric and so was trying to do everything else first
Well, all Jaheera and Isobel told you to go to the towers to investigate how to disable Ketheric’s invulnerability and that you could pass through as a True Soul thanks to your condition, so… yeah? You had reasons to assume that it would be a social zone.
The act 1 to 2 popup doesn’t say that previous zones will become unnaccesible and this does. That’s a pretty big indicator to me.
By the way, I think that it’s possible to go down below through the prison and reach the final zone before dealing with the nighsong, I have to try it in my yet next playthrough.
The level indicator thing would be nice, but this won’t happen with Larian, since they don’t treat quests like quests you are expected to do, but as “stories” that you write up in your journal. The issue here is that effectively they are quests and that you are expected to do them since they give EXP and you need it not to get stomped anyway. Here I agree with you but don’t expect changes.
The game warns you before you enter the mausoleum. There is even a character who warns you. That’s exactly how a dm would do. You even have 2 warnings actually. One when you enter the mausoleum, and one when you enter the final zone of it.
I feel like level is a bit less important than people think, at least for BG3.
Lower level simply means less HP and fewer spells to work with. But your damage for the most part doesn’t change (except for like lvl 5 as an example). In this video, this guy solos Act 1. It does require more planning and tactics. But if you can solo this stuff, you certainly can do it with fewer levels. Just those additional levels will make it easier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N12VfAo6WNk
And here’s a video of them trying to beat the game (full team) as level 1
I was pretty annoyed when I couldn’t do the underdark after choosing the other path.
What do you mean? If you enter Act 2 from the mountain pass, that probably breaks some Grymforge quests, but the underdark is very much still accessible.
Not when you start the final quest in act 2, which isnt really all that clearly stated.
I mean, now I know what I’m doing for playthrough 2, so it’s fine
If you do the underdark, then port out and do the mountain pass, you can also be just about level 7 before A2 which makes some of the early fights there quite easy
Found this out on accident when I realized I’d skipped the pass for the second time and trudged back, determined to finish it.
Still haven’t seen these harpies people are talking about tho. Playthrough 3 I suppose.
Explore the druid camp more if you want to find the harpies.
they are lvl 3, in the coast near the grove, inside the grove.
So long as you don’t progress past the Mountain Pass into the Shadowlands you can go back and do the Underdark no issue, and you can still go back and hit the underdark even after that (all the way until Act 3) though you will miss some quests that way.
I’m waiting for a mod to allow the back travel for my second play through, also hoping the level 20 mod gets updated to allow you to level your main class past 12
You’re not locked out until act 3. Just use a fast travel waypoint.
