My Baldur's Gate 3 experience has been flawless so far—with the exception of my chronic chainmail wedgie
There's no way that's comfortable
My Oath of Vengeance Paladin in Baldur's Gate 3 is a serious guy: stoic, determined, hammering out Divine Smite dingers like a god damned Half-Drow Babe Ruth. But he also has a problem, and it's a little embarrassing to talk about. His flowing chainmail armor just keeps flying up into a bunch at his waist, giving the impression of a megaton chainmail wedgie, or even some manner of massive chainmail diaper.
I don't want to come off too critical here—remember how in Fallout: New Vegas the NCR Ranger dusters were just kind of static? The Gamebryo Engine doesn't seem to play nice with cloth physics, and thus we could only get this approximation of the flowing longcoat fantasy.
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Well it's the future year 2023 and we've got cloth physics up the wazoo now, baby, but they can be temperamental. My PC Gamer colleagues have also reported some wonky physics on their armor's dynamic elements, but it really depends on what armor you're wearing. Unfortunately, the big whopper seems to be full chainmail—possibly the best heavy armor you can find in Act One.
Any sort of clambering or otherwise dynamic movement is usually a quick trip to wedgieville, but sometimes, man, this armor just seems to have a mind of its own, flying up willy nilly. I had this moment of relief when I finally found a set of chainmail +1 but oh dear god, it misbehaves in the exact same way. This undignified affliction continues to haunt my Pally as though he committed some great crime in a past life, but I'm not playing the Dark Urge here!
I know it'll get patched eventually, and in fact, I've felt some sense of communion across time and space with the 3D artists at Larian as they slave away over hot keyboards to fix the physics on these armors. The behavior and contours of my chronic chainmail wedgie have changed over the course of the pre-launch week and into the full release, almost as if there's someone on the other end slamming buttons and tweaking dials, something, anything to make this wedgie go away.
My guy's big old dump truck seems to right itself without any input from me more than it used to, but the only surefire fix remains toggling my armor and off to reset it. Just as often, he'll be waddling around helpless until I set things to rights. I used to notice it happening in conversations as well as in the overworld, but that vexingly seems to have been patched before I could get a good screenshot of it.
I can't even tell if this is happening to anyone else—extremely quick and lazy Google searches for "Baldur's Gate 3 chainmail glitch," "Baldur's Gate 3 chainmail wedgie," and even the desperate Hail Mary play of "Baldur's Gate 3 chainmail diaper" have done nothing more than provide particularly confusing data for our eternal tech panopticon to munch on. Was this punishment reserved for me and my Paladin alone?
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Whatever the case, I might just solve this once and for all myself: I'm pretty set on leaving my Paladin/Warlock behind to commit to my Rogue/Gloom Stalker Ranger, trading one of our recommended Baldur's Gate 3 multiclass builds for another.
Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch.