God, I love patch day.
Patch 8 for Baldur’s Gate 3 signalled the arrival of a day we’ve all been dreading: the day when we finally have to accept that Larian is moving its attention to its next major project. But while we won’t be getting any more major BG3 additions, we can still expect hotfixes to address any outstanding issues like one that dropped earlier today. And where there’s a BG3 hotfix, there’s the timeless joy of bizarre Larian patch notes.
Unsurprisingly, today’s hotfix is focused on smoothing out some post-patch wrinkles. There’s a series of gameplay and scripting fixes to address fringe weirdness with items, abilities, and NPC interactions: Clerics will no longer lose their War Priest attack if they move before using it, for instance, and the Tavern Brawler feat won’t add a damage bonus when using the new Giant barbarian’s Elemental Cleaver ability in Honour Mode, presumably because barbarians are good enough at throwing junk without double dipping.
It also says here that there’d been a bug where telling the goblins at Moonrise Tower to sacrifice themselves wouldn’t produce the appropriate cutscene and the goblins in question would end up locked forever in an endless purgatory of pseudo-existence where they couldn’t be interacted with. It doesn’t do that anymore. Happy days.
What I particularly enjoy in this section is a note that the Polearm Clout bonus action granted by the Polearm Master feat is now gaining appropriate bonus damage from various sources. For example, binding a polearm with Pact of the Blade of Hexblade will make Polearm Clout use the Charisma modifier for damage.
In other words, if you’re clout chasing, it helps to be charismatic. If only posters online understood this.
Elsewhere, in the section describing fixes for the new subclasses, we get confirmation that kills made while drunk as a Way of the Drunken Master monk will now contribute to the Punch Drunk achievement. I don’t know that they needed the extra encouragement, but I’m sure they’ll make the best of it. Also, Circle of the Stars druids can now also use the other Wild Shapes, so they can become dinosaurs and owlbears in addition to using their little twinkly pictograms.
My favorites of the bunch, however, are way down in the Animation and Cinematics section. There, we get the following patch notes:
- Fixed lovely Buthir’s arms getting glued to one spot during gameplay
- Fixed a bug in a dialogue with Kagha at the Emerald Grove where she would glide across the ground on teeny tiny legs
If it’s been a while since you’ve played Act 1 of BG3, Kagha is the extremely rude interim archdruid who’s using the office while Halsin’s away to generally be an asshole to everybody—which is why I’m sad to have missed the opportunity to see her scooting around on little baby legs. I haven’t been able to find a video of this bug online anywhere, but if you do, send it my way. For journalistic purposes.
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