Playing with friends makes Baldur’s Gate 3 really fun. Right? You should be careful, because friends can ruin your save file forever.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a massive role-playing game with many great stories, and you want to experience as many of them as possible. But if you play with friends, it can lead to problems. In the game’s subreddit, some players report that their save files are now “ruined forever” because they invited other players. We reveal what’s behind it.
What’s the danger? In the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit, hamburglin
reports a bit upset that he accidentally destroyed a friend’s save file.
He only wanted to “quickly join” his friend’s game and see how he was doing. The consequence is, however, that his own created character is now permanently part of his friend’s companion group and cannot be removed from it.
This can become a problem if you want to travel with the origin characters. Because the character introduced by the friend is now a permanent part of the group and therefore takes up a slot.
It can be even worse if the friend takes control of one of the origin characters when joining the game. Then that origin character also becomes a “player character” and is permanently linked to the group. This closes off some dialogue and story options.
Big problem with four players: A particular problem arises for co-op players starting with four. Because when everyone brings their own character, the group is already completely filled. You will never need one of the origin NPCs in the group. This, in turn, means that you will not be able to experience many of the NPC quests of these developed characters. Because those who want to experience Shadowheart’s personal story must sometimes also have her in the group. However, this is not possible if the group consists of four standalone heroes.
Although Baldur’s Gate 3 also offers enough content without fully exploring the stories of the origin characters – you should be clear in advance that this option will be denied.
Can this be avoided? If you want to keep your save file “clean”, make sure in the options that your game cannot simply be joined by friends or strangers. If it happens that one or more friends unwantedly fill the group, loading a previous save file may help.
In general, it is advisable to open games only for friends who should also play permanently – or to be aware that your friends’ characters will become permanent companions in the group that you cannot get rid of.
Is this intentional? It is not entirely clear. It seems at least strange that even the origin characters permanently become “player characters” when a friend temporarily takes control of them, meaning you can no longer interact with them in conversations.
Whether there will soon be a fix for this or whether the problem is indeed intended game mechanics is not entirely certain. In any case, it seems not to be optimally resolved – as an appropriate warning is also absent from the game.
If you still need to create a character to ruin someone else’s game – or simply to play cooperatively – find out here which classes and races suit you.
