I rue every day that the complete Baldur’s Gate 3 experience isn’t out yet, but we’re getting there. Today, developer Larian dropped the fourth patch for the Divinity: Original Sin 2 sequel/Baldur’s Gate sorta-sequel, which it calls its “biggest patch yet.” Standout features include the druid class, loaded dice to keep you from critical failing all the time, and new corpses to communicate with, if you’re into that kind of thing.
The druid is definitely the centerpiece here. If you play as one, you gain the ability to transform into a whole mess of animals, including a dire wolf, a bear, a cat, a raven, and a spider. In most games, these would function as mere combat modifiers, but in BG3, new forms mean alternative traversal options, the ability to talk to animals, and new quest outcomes. On top of that, the first act of the game’s main story basically orbits around a circle of druids, meaning that if you’re a druid yourself, the story stands to be radically different.
Other features are smaller, but still impactful. Loaded dice prevent you from going on streaks of hyper-lucky or hyper-unlucky rolls when engaging in dialogues or taking actions. Seems useful, given how many times I’ve reloaded saves in frustration due to preposterously bad rolls. That said, if you want pure RNG, you can disable the feature.
The Speak with the Dead ability has also received a big upgrade, adding snazzy cinematics and, of course, more corpses. Larian points out that if you get lost because you’re not paying attention to the story and just killing everybody, now you can just talk to their grisly remains. How fun!
There are also heaps of graphical and quality of life improvements, so that should please people who like looking at things and being alive, respectively. The patch is now out on Steam, GOG, and Stadia—the last of which you can only use if you know the Speak with the Dead spell in real life.
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