Larian Studios has released yet another hotfix for Baldur’s Gate 3, this time addressing a series of ongoing bugs and performance issues, as well as one particular annoyance that was making a certain party member difficult to deal with.
If you’ve played the turn-based role-playing game, you’ll know that your camp’s resident wizard of Waterdeep, Gale, is afflicted with a power called the Netherese orb, which has corrupted his body. To keep the orb at bay, and prevent it from fully inhabiting his body, he needs to consume magic items which he later requests of the player after you meet him.
It’s up to you if you want to supply him with those precious antiquities you collect on your journey, and Gale will be most grateful if you do. However, there appears to be an issue that would make Gale leave your party for good if you fail to offer him in any in future conversations.
Now with Hotfix 17, Larian Studios has made it so Gale will no longer permanently leave the party if you don’t offer him any magic items while talking to him – “unless you’re abundantly clear that you don’t plan on ever doing so.”
“Poor Gale – we know your pain, sometimes it’s easy to read something into a situation that wasn’t there,” Larian said in the patch notes. “We’ve sat him down and explained that if someone doesn’t offer him a shoe to eat every time, that doesn’t mean they never will. You’ll find him more likely to stick around now.”
Alongside this main change, players will now find that in Honor Mode, the aura of Cazador’s Potent Mist Form will now properly dissipate after he’s no longer in Mist Form, a bug which Larian apologized for. In addition, characters should no longer get stuck “in a story event” which was making them uncontrollable after getting killed in the fight with Grym.
The studio has also reduced the size of save files by “removing summons that don’t exist in the game anymore” and also increased the compression of save games, which should resolve issues caused by large save files.
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