Baldur’s Gate 3 has been in Early Access for more than four months. Since then, the developers at Larian Studios have been working flat out to improve and complete the role-playing game.

With three major updates over the past few months, numerous changes have already been made. But that was just the beginning, because with Update 4, a huge patch is just around the corner, which, according to the developers, is bigger than the three previous updates combined.

The fourth main patch is titled “Nature’s Power” and is so extensive that the developers have decided to present its content in a second edition of their “Panel from Hell” live stream. In this article we will summarize everything that was presented there.

New class: Druid

The biggest change in Patch 4 is the introduction of the Druids as a new character class. This increases the number of classes in the Early Access version to currently seven.

The class brings more than 30 new spells and skills, including the typical Wild Shapes, i.e. animal shapes. In the pen & paper template, a player can transform into every imaginable animal. In a video game, however, this is difficult to implement in this form.

Therefore, the developers have ready-made animal shapes on offer. There are currently eight different shapes to choose from: cat, raven, terror wolf, badger, spider, polar bear and the D&D-specific creatures Deep Rothe and Aberrant.

As with the other classes and races, the choice of the druid also influences the conversations and reactions of others and thus ensures a special experience.

A visit to the druid grove as a druid should bring about understandable differences. During character creation, there are two different subclasses of the Druid to choose from, based on which circle your hero comes from.

Druids of the circle of the land are keepers of the old beliefs and have a deep connection to arctic wastelands, sunny coasts, green grasslands and many other landscapes, which give them special powers.

The druids of the Circle of the Moon, on the other hand, are masters of shape transformation. For example, only they have access to the powerful form of the polar bear.

Transferring this diverse class from the D&D system to a game was no easy task. Lead designer Nick Pechenin and D&D principal rules designer Jeremy Crawford provided a few insights into this process during the panel, whose discussion you can watch in the recording of the panel.

Fairer dice, more comfort and more

The integration of the new class is not the only innovation in Patch 4. Once again, the developers have taken numerous feedback and suggestions for improvement from the community to heart and have integrated various bug fixes, game changes and improvements in comfort.

A major point of contention since the start of the Early Access phase has been the dice and the associated element of chance. Some consider this aspect to be too dominant. To counteract this, there are now the options to activate a so-called “loaded cube”.

This is intended to significantly weaken the extremes to ensure that you no longer have absolute bad luck or luck several times in a row.

A major focus of the developers was also on improving animations and cut scenes. For example, speaking to the dead has been visually improved significantly.

In addition, the druids in Grove will benefit from the introduction of the druid class, which will finally allow them to use their own animations and spells. In the multiplayer mode it is now possible to view the equipment, spells, inventory and character sheet of the other players as well as to take or add items from them.

The function, which now allows enemies and friends as targets for spells to be selected directly in the interface via their portraits, should provide more comfort in combat, instead of having to click on them in the game world. The use of torches has been made much easier with a specially created button.

The full patch notes with all changes should be available shortly before the patch is released. This should be installed very soon, with a little luck even this week.

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