The most important thing to understand is that you will be able to become a tie. Yes, the David Attenborough of Dungeons & Dragons classes, the druid, is on his way to the early release of Baldur’s Gate 3. When? “Very soon”, according to a press release. There is no specific date yet.
In addition to a tie, the druid can become a polar bear, a spider (probably larger than a domestic spider), a raven, a cat, a horrible wolf, and a curious ‘deviant form’. This is something caused by the Mindflayer frog you shoved in your eye at the beginning of the game.
These wild forms are obviously useful in battles, but they have also been used outdoors. If a bear is blocking your path, like the big clumsy oafs, like they tend to, why not try turning into a bear and talking to them?
These kinds of things are, of course, where Larian excels: to be a little eccentric. So it would come as no surprise to hear that playing the early access building as a druid would be a different experience than playing as someone else, especially around Druid Grove.
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In addition to Wild Shape, the druids have a whole range of abilities and spells, including the handy ability to heat metal and fry warriors who think they have made themselves very safe. Fool!
The druid will come as part of Patch 4: Nature’s Power, which also has a bunch of bug fixes and changes – apparently more than all the changes made in the previous patches.
Headings are:
- Optional loaded dice, which ensures that you can not be ‘super-unhappy or super-happy with a few dice in a row’, even though it only regulates the dialogue and choice moments, not a fighting role, you big dirty cheater
- Enhanced movie art, thanks to a fresh lighting card, plus specific enhancements to special movie cameras, such as Speak With the Dead and while chatting as an animal, which every druid will no doubt do.
- The ability to see your friends’ equipment, spells, inventory, and character pages when in multiplayer. And the ability to take and place items in it, ho ho.
- Various quality of life, such as the ability to target friends and enemies by clicking on their portraits; Flight button, because when things go south; and a torch button, because that way it’s easier.
Full patch notes and a specific release date for Patch 4 are yet to come.
In addition, Larian has announced that he has acquired a game development studio in the United Kingdom. The studio is Turbulenz, a Guildford developer already working on Baldur’s Gate 3. That takes Larian’s worldwide studio score to six. As for the number of people: there were about 200 people working on the game in the summer of 2019. I expect it to be comfortably higher now. In short: Baldur’s Gate 3 is a big project.
All this news and more is discussed today in Larian’s bumper Panel from Hell 2 livestream. The special guest of the panel was Dungeons & Dragons ruler Jeremy Crawford, who did more druid details with Nick Pechenin, the designer of the BG3 main system.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is currently available on Steam early, which includes the first of three industries in the game. There is no full release date yet. We hope it will be this year. Only PC and Stadia have been confirmed as platforms, but Larian is openly investigating a console release. Whether it will be simultaneous with the desktop versions, I do not know. This has not been the case in the past with the Divinity: Original Sin games.