Baldur’s Gate 3’s transformative patch 8, with 12 new subclasses and photo mode, will finally launch next week

Larian has finally announced a date for Baldur’s Gate 3 patch eight, an enormous update to our 2023 game of the year and Top 100 champion. The update, as well as a special launch stream on Larian’s YouTube Channel From Hell, will go live on Tuesday, April 15.

All of BG3’s numbered updates have been quite substantial: Patch five at the end of 2023 introduced the permadeath Honour mode, while the most recent patch seven expanded BG3’s evil endings with new cutscenes. Taken together, they add up to a sort of “Definitive Edition” final pass, much as Larian did with its Original Sin games.

Patch eight is one of the biggest yet. The photo mode might have excited me more back when we were desperate for Baldur’s Gate 3 listing images on PC Gamer dot com, but the new subclasses are like Christmas and my birthday rolled into one: A new way to play the game for each of BG3’s core classes, which has already set the power gaming sicko in me into overdrive.

Consensus from the playtest is that the Hexblade Warlock and Booming Blade spell are the new hotness. I’ve finally settled on a Hexblade 1 / Swashbuckler 11 as my first build to tackle patch eight, though I also have a very dear fondness for the Arcane Archer subclass from its various forms in D&D videogames over the years.

April was shaping up to be a pretty quiet month ahead of May’s deluge of new releases like Doom: The Dark Ages and Elden Ring Nightreign, but now Larian’s gone and lobbed a grenade right in the middle of it. Not that I’m complaining too much, I just wish I’d wrapped up my replay of the OG Baldur’s Gates in time for it.