Finding the Hidden Fail-Safes in Baldur's Gate 3

Patch 3 Update:

Cerys will not talk about Zevlor if he died in Act I.

There are also fail safes to ensure you get certain items, like the silver of the astral plane. You can trade with voss during the end of his quest to get it,....even if you already have one witch is REALLY silly

I love that not only did Larian studies put this much effort into having fail-safes ready, but they even anticipated outcomes for the players that either bumbled around or deliberately bypassed fail-safes such as the pre-shadowfell illithid ending

I guess I'm alone in thinking I'd rather see the game fail or cut out sections than have this patchwork of things bringing it back on rails. It feels somehow more gamey than if they'd just reinserted 'essentials' where they belong as Sims style ghosts lol.

After playing act 1 above ground amd killing the dweegar as a Loth Drow that tries to be a good guy and finding I am not that fond of my choices I decided to embrace my inner Dark Urge and be the son of Baal once more. As a Half drow with a witch eye.


I DON'T THINK I'M SPOILING, but TDU's blood lust and appreciation for bloodshed leads me to believe he's a Baalspawn with amnesia! It makes sense!

They were so focused on what 0.01% were going to see that they dropped the ball on what 99.99% were going to see. smfh

Larian is so good. I cant stand starfield because SO MANY npcs are plot armoured. Its like every 3rd person is unkillable. Bethesda has got so weak and safe.

Most of these are probably bugs. I once entered my camp and everyone was so mad I made a deal with Raphael, but I didn't even speak to him just yet. So later I talked to Raphael and he gave me the choice to make a deal and I thought aaah.. so that's what's up. Super confusing and kinda annoying that this breaks immersion sometimes.

The game seems to break down on its own complexity.

Spoilers for act 3

If you unalive Roah Moonglow in the goblin camp, the Zhent boss will meet with "Jaheira" and Minsc in the abandoned cistern

yeah they probably forgot about that bug and now its been fixed as of Patch 3 as stated below

well yeah of course it has a few bugs its so big after all, and they can be funny too. I had once killed alfira as the dark urge while having something else activate the same night and no one cared about her death and she still showed up in last light inn XD

There's a lot of little inconsistencies like this. One I discovered is that if you don't follow Shadowheart's quest and she leaves the party and then go to The House of Grief in act 3 the dialogue is all over the place. In fact the reactions of your companions actually spoil what can happen in other paths. Pretty egregious oversight IMO.

having Alfira-faced Dark Urge and killing Quill is genius, it makes me want to start over to watch that scene

Unfortunately there are many achronological dialogues if you do things in different order. But after my playthrough in which I purposefully tried to break the storylines without killing npc's: they did a good job in not crashing the questlines.

I got cerys on my first playthrough because both died during the raid and I was like, who tf is this bih lol

letsa bring that drunk dancing tiefling back !

Have you solved the hidden helper in Cazador's place?

they put more effort into this one event than the entire ending

BG1 had an understudy for anyone that might break the game with their absence.

Ggg

Who is the tiefling that gets replaced with Zae so I can kill them? I want to dance at the party!

I attacked the druids as soon as I got to the grove. Every Tiefling was killed by the druids and I finished of all the Druids. Interesting to see how different the other acts will be now.

I killed Shadowheart in act 2 when she wanted to kill the knight song.

Everyone still talks as if she is alive and still an ally.

That’s actually crazy asf

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve seen a company put this much effort into a game

Yeah, but larian didn't expect me to save the teiflings, wait for them to enter my camp for the party and then murder them in my camp.
They also didnt expect me to save the nightsong, wait til shes with her wife again, and then murder them together. That last one broke my game so heavily i had to restart the entire save

if you massacre everyone in both the druid grove and the goblin camp, if you come to the goblin camp later there will be a single goblin trader (he only has gold and a few junk to sell) walking around talking about trying to scavenge items from the dead to sell later. Its like the game assumes you might come looking for a vendor to sell things to.

Backups for the backups

Where is the gerson cutscene video.

All these backups make sense because if you bait minthara into the grove with the goblins, and then you decide to defend the grove with the tieflings instead of opening the gate, then the goblin horde could potentially kill those characters in combat including Zevlor. So it's not that unforeseen if you let the whole scenario play out that way. In fact this happened to me in some of the early access playthroughs I had. I defended the grove but Zevlor and some of the other tieflings died and so instead I got the backup characters at the party.

There is a lot of inconsistencies in the dialog but given how MUCH there is... well.

The Tifling party — I didn’t know it could be a rave…I walked around the camp talking to people wondering where the party was…

It’s like being invited to a party but told the wrong time and place….except it was going to be at your place…

The original Baldur's Gate games had a more transparent fail-safe, since all of its characters could be killed. Instead of making contingencies for the many situations, Bioware just made it so that, if a character that was dead was required for a scene, instead an NPC named "Biff the Understudy" would be spawned and given their lines. Not quite as elegant, but fairly understandable for one of the earliest fully-fledged RPGs to take this shortcut :).

Oh god, now I want to raid Baldurs's Gate with a group of Owlbears.

You're not lying with that QA remark, talk about edge case. As a developer I would love to work with someone this committed to testing

Zevlor actually died for me during the fight for the grove but I redid the fight cause I was too sad he got replaced like that idk 😂 glad to know it wouldve worked either way anyway

Acting like Larian is the only one who thought about this and does this... wtf?
If no one remembers at least about Biff the Understudy, then I've crossed to a dystopian timeline.

Why everyone dick riding Larian is beyond me.

Spoiler:
Someone said that there is a failsafe for Alfira when you play Dark Urge. Before long rest, you can knock Alfira out, and you will kill the failsafe character instead of her. Can anyone confirm this?

as for the dialogue not quite lining up with event's. during my second playthrough I got shadowheart to really like my character, and she started talking about a conversation we had yet to have. as well as saying "I'm shocked you hadn't pieced together I was a shaar worshiper yet" when she had made mention of wanting to be a dark justiciar. XD Dialogue webs can definitely get pretty tangled in this game.

liking so that gets fixed

cerys hangs by the gith patrol on the north of the map.

I started playing druid and noticed that you cannot interact while shapeshifted, so even though your char is the main and active, many dialogues will be initiated with another char.
So i respecced the whole party to druid (btw. very funny to attack as a wolfpack ;-) ...). Appearently now some interactions don't start at all, since there is no "speakable character" in the party.... for example the argument between Zevlor and Aradin after the grove gate battle doesn't trigger when i approach... i can simply walk by.

Makes me wonder if any important cutscenes can be skipped and what the implications are....

I had failsafe 2 lmaoo. I had everything killed

so... tell me please... where i can see that 0.01 % of players know that?

If you hit Auntie Ethel in the grove first time you see her, her entire line gets bugged - still is. Either way, the game is massive and a shining beacon of storytelling and having decisions impact the story

hello my name is gerson look exactly like that tiefling this shit is weird

I honestly think that one fail-safe that I've mayyyyyyyyyyyyyybe seen 1 person talk about on the internet period is what happens if you fail every roll in Gut's private chambers. My friend and I did it in our campaign and are still perplexed as to wtf happened.

Alfira. If you play Dark Urge, and kill Alfira before the long rest where she would normally die, she has a backup as well. Not a tiefling, though.

ngl. I like that they made these.
But at the same time, I'm immensely dissapointed in my Lolth playthrough. It just falls off a cliff after act1.
"Welcome to baldur's gate oh underdark drow who murdered the goblins, the druids, the tieflings, and 3/4 of everyone in act 2! Have a nice day!"
huh.....maybe the dark urge will play better. But right now it's just silliness. My party randomely interacts with people I've never seen as if I should know who they are. "We need to help Minsc!" ..."Wait who the F is minsc? You mean the lunatic who just robbed the bank? 1st, why do yo know who he is? 2nd, how the F do you know he's mind controlled? 3rd we are helping the absolute right now so that we can betray her later, so you trying to interfere?"

wtf.....this run is so borked up....