Baldur’s Gate 3 has been in early access since October, with players repeatedly running through the buggy environment of the game’s massive first area. The location features over 20 hours of content, including battles, heated dialogue, love, loss, and plenty of adventure. And today, developer Larian Studios has revealed that there’s more where that came from, with an update expected to drop next week.
The Panel From Hell 2 live stream detailed everything coming to Update 4, and it’s the largest update yet. The big focus is the introduction of the druid, members of an ancient order that channel the forces of nature, giving them powers to speak to animals, heal party members, and manifest the power of the Wyrd to become a creature. You’ll be able to become a spider, a badger, or the ever-helpful… cow. Moo.
The class also comes with two specializations, Circle of the Land and the Circle of the Moon. The former focuses on magic used in the land, and the latter leans more into channeling their powers with animals.
Update 4 also adds loaded dice. This mechanic changes an unfavorable dice roll, so if players find that they are consistently rolling, they can enable the loaded dice function to prevent this from happening. A bad roll is funny when you’re playing with friends, but it can feel pretty unfair when playing a video game alone.
In addition, the update brings improved dialogue for speaking with the dead, beefed-up cinematics, enhanced lighting, new torch mechanics, and plenty of bug fixes.
Moving forward, any future patch and update will be broken up into smaller chunks. Larian wants to make it easier for players with a data plan to keep the game on their platform while also keeping it updated as the constant patches can stack up pretty fast.
Larian Studios has remained flexible in its development process, speaking with players in the community as they play through early access to improve the systems. It’s already modified how cantrips work, made the party members less conservative in their beliefs, tweaked the resting system, and included smaller quality of life features. Each update adds more mechanics, but it also wipes the server, so players have to run through the game again every time it happens.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is still in early access, and you can grab it on Steam, Epic Games Store, GoG, or Stadia.
