10 Best Changes In Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 3 (2024)

Patch 3 of Baldur's Gate 3 adds a host of new improvements and fixed to the game, but a select few of these stand out above the rest as truly game-changing. The nature of major Baldur's Gate 3 patches leaves them with long lists of tweaks — so long that the Steam news pages for them have to abridge things to focus only on the highlights. Even on Steam, however, it's impossible to scroll through in a minute or two and get a clear idea of the best changes in Patch 3.

Baldur's Gate 3 is no stranger to adjustments, having spent several years in Early Access before its full release. Changes since launch have arrived in both the major patches and smaller hotfixes, with the latter meant to provide quick solutions to more critical issues. The library of changes made in Patch 3 can span everything from visual glitches to story flow issues, potentially smoothing over rough spots, bolstering immersion, and improving general quality of life.

Related: Baldur's Gate 3 Review In Progress

10 Optimized Calculations

The surplus of variables in Baldur's Gate 3 can occasionally make the game hang, an issue that Patch 3 strives to address. Turn order calculations are one major target of optimization, which should hopefully decrease awkward pauses in the middle of a combat round, according to the full patch notes on the Baldur's Gate 3 website. Other areas that received tune-ups are projectiles, lighting, selected saves, and the level up system.

9 Gale Behavior

Gale was infamously overzealous when it came to relationships at launch – an issue that has already been addressed in some other romance updates to Baldur's Gate 3, including Patch 1 fixing Shadowheart's romance. Patch 3 continues to clean up Gale's behavior along with tweaks for companions across the board. His romance threshold is slightly raised, and he'll no longer immediately jump into breaking up with players who weren't with him to begin with. For those who do want to romance Gale, Patch 3 comes with some animation fixes for key scenes.

Related: Every Baldur’s Gate 3 Romance Option, Ranked Worst To Best

8 Listening In

Listening in on conversations that another player is having with NPCs can be a big part of Baldur's Gate 3 multiplayer, as it can be all too easy to miss out on important story concepts and interesting characters otherwise. Patch 3 contains several changes and fixes to make this experience smoother. Split-screen multiplayer has a fix for voiceovers stopping when one player jumps out of listening in, and another adjustment takes care of crashes while listening in. The Default Online Settings also feature a new option to make listening in automatic for those who want to make sure they miss nothing.

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7 Performance In Crowded Areas

Framerate in Baldur's Gate 3 tends to struggle most when it comes to crowded areas, a problem that is hardly surprising but frustrating nonetheless. The Lower City is the biggest example of how much slowdown this can cause, but Patch 3 notes improved performance in the Lower City with a promise of "More to come!" Performance in dense crowds is also optimized as a whole, and a tweak that disables behavioral aspects of faraway NPCs should help focus the computing work on what's actually in a party's direct vicinity.

6 Dye Colors

Dyes play a huge role in Baldur's Gate 3 customization, making it possible to alter the appearance of any outfit through recoloring. However, quicksaving before using dyes was often the way to go, as it wasn't uncommon for them to make less of an effect on certain articles of clothing or armor than one would have hoped. Patch 3 addresses this issue, increasing vibrancy on certain applications. This doesn't retroactively alter items already died, so there's no need to worry about a carefully tailored ensemble suddenly looking garish.

Related: Are You Missing Out On Style Points In Baldur's Gate 3?

5 Dialogue Scenes

Baldur's Gate 3 distinguishes itself from most classic CRPGs by having elaborate scenes for conversation, with motion capture driven animation and excellent voice acting bringing dialogue to life. Patch 3 further improves upon this aspect, tweaking "cameras, mocap, staging, and facial expressions" across the board as well as applying plenty of individual adjustments to specific scenes. This should help avoid any moments that might veer toward the unconvincing or uncanny and make the story even more immersive than before.

4 PS5 Stability

The PlayStation 5 release of Baldur's Gate 3 brought with it all the improvements made across the initial patches and hotfixes for the PC version of the game, but the unique PS5 changes and differences introduced some issues of their own. Patch 3 improves a number of aspects of the PS5 experience, most notably targeting performance with a more consistent 30 FPS on Quality Mode and an indication of continued effort on smoothing out 60 FPS for performance enthusiasts. HDR calibration, crashes, and stuttering are other various PS5 elements addressed by the patch.

3 Trade Mode

Baldur's Gate 3 features two possible ways to deal with vendors, labeled as trading and bartering. Trading offers a traditional buy/sell system where double-clicking on an item in a character's inventory will transfer it for the requisite gold, while bartering makes it possible to exchange items for items and cut deals. Opening the menu has always defaulted to bartering, but Patch 3 will now save the selected mode to a player's profile, making it so those who prefer to stock up or unload quickly and conveniently through the trade system don't have to toggle it on every time they speak to an NPC with wares.

Related: How To Reduce Trade Prices In Baldur's Gate 3

2 Mac Support

Official macOS support comes with Patch 3 of Baldur's Gate 3, fulfilling a promise made long before the game's launch. Early access was available on macOS as well as PC, but the official release met some delays. It's already been possible to play the game on Mac through cloud streaming or Apple's Game Porting Toolkit, but neither of these offered the convenience or stability of native support from Larian Studios. This leaves Xbox as the next planned destination for Baldur's Gate 3, although that release could take some time yet.

1 Magic Mirror

The Magic Mirror is the biggest highlight addition of Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 3, making it possible to fix character creation mistakes in camp. Using the mirror makes it possible for a custom character to tweak cosmetic choices made at the start of the game, from small changes like a new haircut to complete visual overhauls. Cosmetic alterations made by story choices — losing an eye, for instance — will remain, and the Magic Mirror doesn't work on Origin characters, but it still answers a core request that helps make character creation less daunting to begin with in Baldur's Gate 3.

Source: Baldur's Gate 3