My 4-Person Baldur's Gate 3 Playthrough Has Uncovered One Huge Problem Patch 8 Needs To Fix

Something that should come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about me is that Baldur's Gate 3 is my favorite video game of all time. I love anything with extensive lore and interesting characters, and I've found that the game has so much to offer. Even after hundreds of hours in the game, I can still start a playthrough and find the occasional detail that surprises me. Recently, I've been playing a co-op playthrough with three other people.

I've always been of the opinion that most video games are better with friends — as soon as I know what a game is like in multiplayer, single-player runs can often become lonely. Baldur's Gate 3 has been no exception. Especially if you haven't played through many previous campaigns, BG3 multiplayer feels very reminiscent of a Dungeons & Dragons party. I've found I've grown a lot more attached to my character, since by splitting the game's content over four people, dialogue interactions feel more exclusive, and I'm always a lot more excited when it's finally my turn in combat.

Baldur's Gate 3 Is Great With Friends, Until You Reach The End Of Act 1 & 2

If You Care About The Companions, Four-Player BG3 Requires Mods To Function Properly

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However, as we've progressed through this playthrough, I realized that four-player Baldur's Gate 3 isn't suited at all for people who have little prior experience with the game. Two members of our party had only gotten as far as Grymforge before, and we quickly got past this area in our game nights. I was the only person in the party who had ever seen Lae'zel's good ending where she doesn't get consumed by Vlaakith, so I encouraged the party not to skip the Githyanki Crèche before we finished up Act 1.

That's when it hit me — without being able to have Lae'zel in the party, there would be no way for her to have her defining character moment. She was also not going to be happy that we found the Crèche and "decided" not to bring her. Since we were so close to Act 2, I also realized that Shadowheart was not going to stay in the party for long, considering how she will leave if players enter the Shadowfell without her. We would also never be able to bring Karlach to Dammon to fix her engine.

Some players have technically found a way around the issue which involves having a player "sit out," but it's still extremely tedious for something that shouldn't really be an issue in the first place and can cause other complications. It also slightly defeats the point of there being four players in the first place.

I spoke with the other player in our group who had also reached the end of the game before, and we decided it would be best for us all to download the party limit increase mod to allow us to bring at least one companion with us. However, even though we all only enabled one mod, we were unable to load back into a post-modded save. I'm sure there must have been a fix somewhere we were missing, but we eventually decided to carry on without mods.

I'm aware that Patch 8 will come with more mod support, so I'm hopeful that this issue can be fixed by then. Even after that, that's not going to be the end of modding tools, and this probably isn't something experienced by enough people to warrant it not fitting in a future general hotfix. With that being said, although it should have been considered by the two of us who have already played through the game before we started, it's not great that the game needs mods in order to not lose Shadowheart, one of the most prominent companions.

Gaining Companion Approval Is Difficult When You Can't Have Them In Your Party

Perhaps Our Characters Weren't Charismatic Enough, But Our Romances Struggled

Without being able to take companions with you on adventures, it's a lot harder to rack up companion approval. I found this particularly obvious when we reached the tiefling party. We had all decided on a particular companion to attempt to romance — the rest of my party had settled on Gale, Karlach, and Halsin, while I had chosen Lae'zel. None of us were able to see the Act 1 romance scenes, which came as a surprise to me, as in my own playthroughs I've found Gale, Karlach, and Lae'zel's romances the easiest to start.

Adding mods sacrifices the ability to earn achievements. Though it doesn't take away from the quality of the game itself, it's a little annoying that certain milestones won't be recorded if any mods are present in the save, even if they're cosmetic and/or have done nothing to do with what was achieved.

This was actually the first time I triggered Lae'zel's rejection dialogue — this was quite ironic, as this was also my first time actively trying to romance her. I exhausted all of her dialogue options, speaking to her whenever I had the chance to, and never to my knowledge made her disapprove of me, yet she still told me that I had consistently turned my back on her. I also wasn't expecting my friend to fail to trigger any Gale romance scenes throughout the game, as the wizard's eagerness for romance has been a massive joke within the BG3 fandom.

Related 10 Easy Ways To Get Past Tough Encounters In Baldur's Gate 3 Not all Baldur's Gate 3 encounters have to be ridiculously tough or frustrating, especially when there are easy ways to get past them.

Romance routes aren't the only interactions that can be negatively affected by not having companions in your party. Something that I've noticed since starting multiplayer playthroughs is that it's hard to make individual choices for each player character. It makes sense why the game has been coded in this way, but it's still a bit jarring to have a companion question me about why I've decided to use the mindflayer tadpoles when I'm playing a character who is against the idea of using them.

Baldur's Gate 3 Without Companions Misses Out On What Makes The Game So Great

BG3's Cast Is One Of The Reasons It's So Enjoyable

Custom Image by Katarina Cimbaljevic

It's disappointing to have characters become angry at you for not taking them to complete their quests when there is no way to feasibly do so. I think a possible way around this would be to allow players to tell a character to meet them somewhere instead of having to bring them along for certain events — similar to how Halsin appears in Moonrise, or how he can be sent to Last Light Inn before he is recruited. For example, in Gale's Act 3 quest, he can be met at Mystra's statue instead of players having him in their party.

Related Baldur's Gate 4 Needs To Fix This One Problem With Party Members All the companions in Baldur’s Gate 3 are great characters, but there’s one glaring issue that a future sequel needs to address.

Not being able to bring companions around Baldur's Gate 3's world also means players miss out on companion banter and other interactions with NPCS. The game still feels lively with a party of actual players, but for such a character-heavy game, I feel like the four-player experience will always be lacking. I don't think players should entirely write off the idea of a four-person game, but it should not be their first BG3 experience. We obtained Connor Vinderblad early on and got very attached to him, which I think proves there was a vacancy for allies and companions.

When it comes to mutliplayer Baldur's Gate 3, I believe two players is always going to be the best experience. Neither player misses out on companion content, and you aren't locked out of any quests. Though it would have been nice for there to be a fail-safe in the base game to bypass the issues we experienced by not being able to bring companions along with us in four-player, I think the future extra support for mods will help us get around this issue.

Source: Baldur's Gate 3/X