Baldur's Gate 3's stress test update fixes heartbreaking bug that wiped out Honour Mode runs at the last possible moment

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Never before has so much been owed by so many to so few.

Gale, a wizard from Baldur's Gate 3, looks very bloodied and very sad at the player while a celestial midnight blooms behind his depressed mug.
(Image credit: Larian Studios)

It has been exactly one year since we published news that Larian was done with Baldur's Gate 3. You'd be forgiven for forgetting, given that the studio has released one patch and seven hotfixes for the game since then.

But wait, there's more. Yesterday, Larian announced that it's got a third stress test update for everyone currently helping the studio test its upcoming patch 8, which promises to bring 12 new subclasses to the game alongside a whole host of other tweaks and changes.

In Larian's parlance, 'stress test' seems to be a synonym for 'beta'—a way to make sure the patch doesn't break more than it fixes before the studio releases it to the general population, and this third update is a doozy. There are crash fixes, banished bugs, and an alteration that stops Halsin suddenly becoming a set of floating limbs in camp. But the big one for me is a single Honour Mode fix.

"Fixed an Honour Mode issue at High Hall where all party members would die when reaching the top of the stem if anyone in the party was being dominated by an enemy, causing a Game Over," reads the patch note. Oof. For those of you unacquainted, Honour Mode is BG3's Ironman Mode: a trial by fire where everything is harder, you only get one save slot (that self-deletes when you load it, preventing savescumming), and where you lose your shot at its ultimate reward—a set of sparkly golden dice—when you die.

The bug this update fixes was causing a total party-wipe at literally the last level of the game. Imagine it: slogging your way through Honour Mode, enduring impossible fight after impossible fight, somehow making it all the way to the very end before a single bug annihilates your entire party at the last possible moment, meaning you have to start the entire game over again if you want to get your shiny dice.

It's absolutely heartbreaking, and I'm pouring one out for whichever poor beta tester uncovered this particular bug. Their sacrifice is our gain. With any luck, when we finally get our hands on patch 8, Honour Mode will be slightly less prone to summarily executing you and all your friends just as you're about to vault the final hurdle.

So I'll be glad not to endure that whenever patch 8 gets here. Just my personal opinion. If you want to see the reams of other stuff this update fixes, you can find the full Baldur's Gate 3 Stress Test Update 3 patch notes here.

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Joshua Wolens
Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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