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In their latest community update, Larian Studios has revealed new information about progress towards Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 7!
As the first anniversary of the game launch approaches, the developers at Larian Studios have been working on one of the last major content patches to the game. With an anticipated release in September of 2024, the new patch promises new evil endings and official modding tools for the community.
Top 10 Highlights from the Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 7 Update
Below are a list of the top 10 highlights from the most recent Community Update #28 for Baldur’s Gate 3:
- Closed Beta Registration – You can now register to participate in the Closed Beta Test that begins on July 22.
- Split Screen Updates – Dynamic split screen mode will allow split screens to merge when you enter the same space as your friend.
- New Legendary Actions – Boss characters such as Malus Thorm, Dror Ragzlin, and more will get powerful new Legendary Actions.
- Modding Toolkit – The incoming toolkit will allow modders to edit Items, Cosmetics, Classes/Subclasses, Races and more!
- Evil Endings – New cinematics for both Dark Urge and standard avatar chracters.
- Dark Urge Bugs – Fixing combat bugs, certain character interactions, and more.
- Origin Character Improvements – Incoming improvements to Wyll, Astarion, Lae’zel, Karlach, Gale, and Shadowheart playthroughs.
- Fixed Party Banter – Multiplayer parties will support banter between characters assigned to different players.
- Closed Alpha Progress – Positive feedback from community modders participating in the Closed Alpha.
- New Merch – The Baldur’s Gate 3 OST now available on cassette, along with two new t-shirt designs.
Full Notes – Community Update #28 Closed Beta
Ah, the summer. Outside the temperature is rising, the chemical aroma of sunscreen is inescapable, and your dad is on his third day wearing the same sweat-stained tank top. What better time than now to retreat indoors and catch up on the latest updates arriving in Baldur’s Gate 3?
Coming to you this September, Patch 7 rolls out the perfect escape with split screen updates, brand new cinematics for evil endings, plenty of bug fixes, plus our official modding toolkit which we talked more about in our last Community Update!
Let’s take a look! And as always, beware – spoilers lay ahead.
Split Screen Updates
Dynamic split screen mode is incoming! With our next update, friends will no longer be eternally confined to their side of the screen – because the power of friendship transcends all obstacles, including screen partitions.
When playing in co-op, you’ll now have the option to have split screens merge into a single screen when you near one another. You can access this directly from the HUD and within the game settings, both in and out of combat.
Honour Mode Improvements
We’re continuing to make improvements to combat in Honour Mode too. With Patch 7, even more creatures have been bestowed additional Legendary Actions, including the bulette, everyone’s favourite neighbourhood surgeon, Malus Thorm, and githyanki Ch’r’ai Tska’an, Ch’r’ai Har’rak, and Ptaris
Dror Ragzlin will now also be able to use a new spell called Arachnid Compulsion to rally the spiders that reside in the nearby pit to fight the real enemy – you.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Modding Toolkit
With this update also comes our official modding toolkit! Come September, you’ll be able to load up your game with a range of new game mods, and even try your hand at making some yourself.
We recommend giving our Modding FAQ a look for more information on what modding support means for Baldur’s Gate 3.
We’re currently working with Baldur’s Gate 3 Mod Authors during our Closed Alpha, who have been busy testing out the toolkit. To find out what some of the Mod Authors have been working on during the Closed Alpha, keep reading!
The Toolkit itself will give you everything you need to edit or create entirely new content, including:
- Items – Equipment like weapons and armours, consumables, and miscellaneous items.
- Cosmetics – Including different hair, beards, and other textures.
- Classes and Subclasses – Creating new variants or modifying existing ones to edit abilities, powers, and skills.
- Races – These can be created and edited to determine overall appearance, as well as their individual powers and abilities.
- Dice Skins – You’ll also have the ability to edit or redesign the appearance of your dice skins!
- User Interface – Including extensions and restyling of the game UI.
- Quality of Life Improvements – Such as mods that edit or improve gameplay that don’t rely on unsupported elements.
Evil Endings
And, of course, Patch 7 will also be bringing several new cinematics that offer your more evil playthroughs a grander finale.
From avatar Origin characters, including the Dark Urge, to the multiple different pathways that you can take as your own player character, each new cinematic is yours to discover through nefarious means.
While we don’t want to give everything away just yet, you can feast your eyes on the teasers below – and be on the lookout for more heading your way soon!
Dark Urge Bug Fixes
Along with the new evil ending cinematics coming this patch, we’ve introduced a number of improvements and bug fixes for our Dark Urge players – ironing out camera pops, missing inspiration, VFX, and a few other issues.
For instance, a bug has now been fixed where combat sometimes fails to trigger in the event that you decide to murder one of your companions as the Dark Urge and attack the party. This will now lead to combat with the rest of the gang. And Minthara will now respond accordingly if you’ve been stripped of Bhaal’s influence.
We may have also let a certain bard now join the party as a controllable character if there’s an empty slot,temporarily, of course.
“But will we be able to kiss Gortash?” we hear you plead. “We want to kiss Gortash!”
Listen, he’s a complicated guy who’s busy contemplating the minutia of death cult office politics. Babygurl doesn’t have time to kiss.
Origin Character Bug Fixes
This update will also see improvements made to some cinematics, endgame dialogues, and Origin characters – specifically things like clipping issues, a couple of broken triggers for quests, dialogues, and romances, the odd case of retrograde amnesia, and persistent exclamation marks.
Oh, and the Blade of Frontiers will no longer absent-mindedly swing his sword mere inches from the aorta of shorter races who try to recruit him.
Let’s look at some of the highlights!
Wyll Highlights
Patch 7 includes a heap of fixes for Wyll, ranging from improvements to his dialogue reactivity to fixes for romance scenes.
If you’ve experienced issues triggering the romance scene with Wyll, this update will fix that. Should your relationship be headed in that direction, the cutscene in question will now trigger when you speak to Wyll at camp before your Long Rest.
A bug that had been preventing his romance greeting from triggering has also been fixed, so players in Act III who have a stable, loving, and committed relationship with Wyll will now see his romance greeting triggering correctly.
We’ve fixed Wyll’s dialogue reactivity during the epilogue for partnered players who have either joined Karlach in the Hells or Lae’zel in the rebellion, and we also determined there simply weren’t enough opportunities to kiss Wyll during the epilogue. This update rectifies that with the option to ask for a kiss in more paths of Wyll’s epilogue dialogue.
And if you’re in holographic form during the epilogue, he’ll no longer automatically assume he’s talking to Lae’zel, which was weird.
Astarion Highlights
In Patch 7, we’ve made improvements to the facial animations of your character during some kissing cinematics, including with the ascended Astarion.
We’ve also made tweaks to how Origin characters react within certain cutscenes, to enhance their emotional impact. For example, companions will show Astarion more empathy when he loses his ability to withstand sunlight.
Lae’zel Highlights
Lae’zel will now wait a little longer at her recruitment site if you tell her you’ll be returning. And once she’s set up at camp, she will also cycle through more varied idle animations.
This update will also put an end to an annoying issue where resurrecting Lae’zel on the beach in Act I would cause her to appear in the Party Line but not in the world, blocking you from leaving Act I.
Karlach Highlights
Along with some more general fixes for Karlach, she will now react to Dammon if she finds him dead after he has told her that he can help her.
That sketchy fade-to-black that follows her final scene in Avernus, which also unintentionally gave you a very brief glimpse of the region in gameplay mode, was a visual bug that has also been fixed.
The dialogue block caused by choosing to stay with a different companion the morning after your second romance scene with Karlach is no more.
Also, she’ll no longer brush the shaved side of her head during her camp idle animation. Wrong side, Karlach.
Gale Highlights
With a few tweaks to camera angles and fixes to animation pops, repeated dialogue, and missing VFX, we’ve polished up Gale and his scenes and further refined his donation UI.
That panel that opens when donating magical items to Gale? This will now show all items eligible for donation – including those on your person, your party’s inventories, and your Traveller’s Chest.
This is part of the work that began with Hotfix #16 to improve the donation UI and update a player’s ability to access certain quest-related items, which has now been completed. We’re reinstating the intended behaviour that was removed in Hotfix #17 as a temporary bug fix to missing UI functionality. So if you now deny Gale a magic item three times in a row with magical items either on your person, your party’s inventories, or now from your Traveller’s Chest, he will leave your party.
Alternatively, selecting “I’m not giving you anything. Not now, not ever” will still cause Gale to leave your party forever.
We’ve also patched up a bug that was preventing the final dialogue between Gale and Mystra from triggering. As well as a scene in the endgame that would cut off before you could kiss.
Shadowheart Highlights
In addition to fixing a few of her animation bugs, this update fixes a number of quest issues for Shadowheart.
A bug that saw the Spear of Night either not being received, or being spoken about as if it hadn’t already been acquired, is no more. Another bout of amnesia has also been fixed, in which Shadowheart occasionally thought Viconia was still alive after killing her. The ‘Daughter of Darkness’ quest should also now close properly if you choose to surrender Shadowheart to Viconia.
And yes, we’ve tweaked a few kissing scenes for her too. Fixing a broken romance cutscene that should have triggered after giving Shadowheart the Idol of Shar, and a kissing animation that will no longer kick in before the dialogue option is chosen. We’ve also polished up the appearance of neck kissing. In the words of Michelangelo,
no great work of art is ever finished, and so too is our approach to the art of snogging.
Party Banter Improvements
Prior to this update, party banter between companion characters was limited to the characters controlled by a single player. In Patch 7, multiplayer parties will support banter between characters assigned to different players.
This patch also resolves issues that had been rendering some romance party banters inaccessible while adventuring.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Toolkit: Closed Alpha Progress
With the Baldur’s Gate 3 Toolkit, we’re hoping to make modding more accessible and convenient for everyone.
To help us expand on what the tool can offer, we invited Mod Authors to join a Closed Alpha. They have been busy building their Baldur’s Gate 3 mods using the official modding tools arriving in Patch 7, and we wanted to show off some of their creations!
Mod Author Padme4000 has been tinkering with the Baldur’s Gate 3 Toolkit during the Alpha, and has been able to bring her Dragonborn Scale Colours mod to life.
I really love making CC colours in the toolkit, as a visual person, being able to visually see my changes in the Toolkit by utilising the Character Visuals and switching the preset to view mine… it’s beyond words.
Padme4000
Another Mod Author, TechRoot, has also tried his hand at modifying colours in game:
FaerûnColors is a small mod that, despite being almost entirely visual, had to be written entirely in code. Transforming the exact tone of colours without seeing it is no easy task. Until now, I had to imagine it, transcribe it into code, and run the game multiple times to check the result.
Now, the toolkit allows me to select exactly the colour I want, where I want it, and see how another thousand colours I hadn’t even thought of do look. I’m no longer writing; now I’m painting.
Tasks that used to be tedious, like creating icons and registering them within the game, have now been transformed into easily understandable and usable menus. This means I no longer need to struggle with multiple versions of the same icon in various code files, with the Toolkit, I can create the atlas in a single window without complications.
TechRoot.
Closed Beta – July 22nd
Are you interested in playtesting Patch 7? With all these bug fixes, updates to gameplay, and new features, we want to make sure we haven’t broken anything or introduced something that will make your computer explode. (We’re kidding, our legal representatives ensure.)
We mentioned in Community Update #26 that we were introducing additional internal playtesting. But we’d also like to test Patch 7 at scale, with a variety of different systems and savegames – this is where we would like your help!
Registration Now Open
Head to the Baldur’s Gate 3 store page here on Steam and register now for your chance to take part in the Patch 7 Closed Beta. It will go live next week on July 22nd!
Entry to the playtest will be given to randomly selected registered players, and if you’re selected, we’ll let you know more about what to look out for. Including partial patch notes, and how you can report any issues you might come across!
New Merch Online Now
You’ve been waiting for it, and now it’s here! Check out our new merch available online, including two new original t-shirt designs by Anna Hollinrake. Additionally, the Baldur’s Gate 3 OST on cassette with exclusive bonus track, Down By The SynthWave, a gorgeously ornate mind flayer poster, and more!
It Ain’t Goodbye Just Yet!
It’s hard to believe it’s almost been an entire year since we launched Baldur’s Gate 3. But the journey isn’t over yet.
Patch 7 won’t be the final update for Baldur’s Gate 3. We still have a few things up our sleeve – including many community-requested features like crossplay and a photo mode to capture and share your unforgettable moments. And we’re working on a host of other enhancements, from gameplay tweaks and quality-of-life improvements to bug fixes and performance optimizations.
We’ll keep you looped in on when those are likely to hit a little further down the line. In the meantime, stay in touch with us on our socials, stay tuned, and don’t forget to wear sunscreen.
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