The second Baldur's Gate 3 Panel From Hell has arrived, detailing quite a few small changes to the game and featuring the debut of the Druid class as a major highlight.
Baldur's Gate 3 is a CRPG on Steam Early Access. It's had more than its fair share of delays before it was finally released on Steam late last year. Now, a brand new "Panel From Hell" has arrived, detailing a bunch of improvements to the game alongside "The Big Thing That Contains Many Things" — the Druid has come to Baldur's Gate 3.
The Baldur's Gate 3 Panel From Hell Details New Changes
The second Baldur's Gate 3 Panel From Hell opened up with a long list of small (but not necessarily insignificant) changes that are coming to the game before we got to the mysterious Big Thing That Contains Many Things.
To start, "Loaded Dice" is a new feature that should help balance out one of the more annoying issues with dice-rolling. Players may find themselves plagued by a few Natural 1s in a series of rolls; now, this new feature should ease up the difficulty a little bit by reducing the chance of multiple 1s in a row.
Speak With the Dead has gotten some improvements. New corpses can now be spoken to, and many of these corpses now have dialogue. Cinematics have improved, too. The game has more than 25,000 in-engine cinematics as it is, and some new ones are on the way; for example, a bunch of new cinematics have been added for the Speak With Dead spell. In addition, the game's lighting team has looked over the game, and things look a heck of a lot better now.
The combat in this game can be pretty challenging, but it doesn't always go your way. That's why Larian has introduced a new "Fleeing" mechanic that will allow a player to run away from battle if they can get far enough away — even if they're in a multiplayer group.
The next Baldur's Gate 3 patch is also going to be the "big" patch, but the developers weren't talking about content. Previously, downloading a new patch would require a pretty hefty download and that's not so great for people on metered Internet connections. Some new changes are in testing that should make the file size of future patches much smaller.
Larian Studios Expands to Guildford
Larian Studios also detailed a key element of its success in development: it has multiple studios around the world. As one example, this allows QA teams to pass along save files to their colleagues and effectively have quality assurance going 24 hours a day, ultimately delivering a finished product in 1 week instead of 3 weeks.
Speaking of studios, Larian is opening a new studio in Guildford, Ireland. This studio has already done some work for Larian including the cinematics, inverse kinematics, and many other features tied into the game's animation and visual elements.
Baldur's Gate 3 Druid Revealed
The big reveal today was the introduction of the Baldur's Gate 3 Druid. The Druid is a challenging class to implement correctly, but it looks like Larian might be on the right track here.
One of the most challenging aspects of making a Druid is the "Wildshape" ability. This power allows you to transform into a variety of different animals, each of which has their own special abilities. As one example, a badger can burrow underground and safely travel a short distance, almost like a teleport ability. It can even let you get under some doors!
Wildshaped Druids will also be able to speak with their animal kin. The Panel From Hell showed a Druid shapeshift into a bear and ask another sleepy bear to move out of the way, entirely preventing a possible combat encounter through diplomacy. Unfortunately, Wildshape will have some restrictions. The selection of animals will not be quite as large as you'd see in the tabletop game and it has some notable exceptions; unfortunately, your Druid won't be able to turn into a dinosaur.
And yes, the Goodberry will be in the game. This magical food item will fill up your stomach and heal you; cross-classing into a Life Cleric can make it an even more powerful item that provides excellent healing to players.
The Panel From Hell started to wind down with a gameplay demonstration, but that was about it for the major news revealed in the panel. You can get started with your adventures in this wonderful fantasy world by buying Baldur's Gate 3 via its official website for $59.99 or your regional equivalent.
What do you think of the introduction of the Baldur's Gate 3 Druid? What other classes do you hope to see added to the game in the future? Let us know in the comments below!
