Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 7 early patch notes – Alfira companion, new Evil endings, more

Larian Studios confirmed that Baldur’s Gate 3 updates are far from over, and they’ve shared some early patch notes for Patch 7 to show what we can expect for the future.

From getting a new temporary companion and new evil endings to the long-awaited Mod toolkit, this next update brings some of the community’s most requested features. Here’s everything announced so far about Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 7.

When is Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 7?

Baldur’s Gate Patch 7 will be released in September 2024, but players can register to participate in its Closed Beta. The Beta was meant to release on July 22, but it was delayed as a result of some unforeseen bugs.

Patch 7 was announced in Baldur’s Gate 3′ Community Update #28, where Larian Studios also detailed that this wouldn’t be their final patch.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 7 early patch notes

Highlights

• Introducing ‘Evil Endings’: Brand new cinematic endings for the truly villainous playthroughs.
• Added our very own Mod Manager, which lets you browse, install, and use mods created by the community.
• Revamped split screen gameplay: When playing on split screen, the two halves of the screen will now dynamically merge together when player characters come close to each other in-game, and dynamically split back up when the characters move apart. This revamp comes alongside many other improvements and polishes to improve the overall split screen experience.

Honour Mode Combat

• If Dror Ragzlin finds himself inside the spider pit, he’ll try his best to befriend the spiders residing there with a new spell called Arachnid Compulsion so they can band together to fight the real enemy – you.
• The Bulette has a new condition called Diamond Scales and a new Legendary Action called Shredding Scales.
• Malus Thorm has a new Legendary Action called Grasping Appendage.
• Added a new aura and spell for Spectators: Panicked Sentinel and Ocular Nightmare, respectively.
• Ch’r’ai Tska’an, the leader of the githyanki ambush in Act II, has a new Legendary Action called Soul Sacrifice.
• Ch’r’ai Har’rak, the githyanki leader at the Knights of the Shield Hideout, has a new Legendary Action called Tu’narath’s Embrace.
• Ptaris has a new Legendary Action called Ptarian Dogma.

UI

• Revised and reorganised the in-game video options to be more logical and robust. You now have an Upscaling Type drop-down, an Upscaling Mode drop-down, and an Upscaling Sharpness slider, followed immediately by the options that are affected by them.
• Updated the Reactions UI so that you only have to toggle the Reactions you want to use and then confirm them. (This saves you from having to select ‘Do not react’ multiple times!)
• Added a new Equipment Options menu to the Character Sheet on controller.
• The panel that opens to ‘Donate’ magic items to Gale will now also show items in your Traveller’s Chest. It also now indicates which items are currently equipped.
• We noticed some of you hiccoughing bubbles, so the action for washing yourself with soap and sponges is now called ‘Use’ instead of ‘Consume’.
• Fixed your player character’s name getting reverted to ‘Custom’ during Character Creation if you moved on to create your Dream Guardian and then went back to edit the player character again.
• Fixed the wrong spell Ability showing up when selecting a Feat during Level Up.

Art

• Added a new loading screen in Act III, showing the busy streets of Baldur’s Gate.
• Fixed the skirt part of the Adamantine Splint Armour missing for female dwarves.
• Fixed the Adamantine Scale Mail clipping on large male characters.

Gameplay

• You can now start Custom Mode games using Honour Mode mechanics when starting a new playthrough. You’ll be able to do this via the ‘Ruleset’ dropdown.
• The kuo-toa that promised to build you an army will now support you in the final battle. Unless they all died in Act I.
• The help that the Gondians promised for the final battle will now arrive in the form of a friendly Steel Watcher. Apologies from Zanner Toobin for the delay.
• The hair colour options in Character Creation will now remain accessible after you choose the bald hairstyle, so that you can continue fiddling around with eyebrow colours.
• Overhead dialogues that support multiple player characters can now involve characters assigned to different players. (They were limited to characters controlled by a single player until now.) This means that there will be more banter among player characters in multiplayer games.
• Group Hide will no longer affect summons that aren’t linked to the group in the Party Line.
• Changed the behaviour for selecting camp supplies for a Long Rest. When selecting camp supplies that are stacked, the game now only takes what it needs from the stack.
• You can no longer cheese the Leap of Faith trial at the Gauntlet of Shar by just clicking the final platform and letting your character pathfind their way there. Shar threatened to smite us if we didn’t fix this one.
• Fixed a bug where resurrecting Lae’zel on the beach in Act I would cause her to appear in the Party Line but not in the world, preventing you from leaving Act I.
• Patched up some savegames where Gale still had his Necrotic Aura when he shouldn’t on load.
• Fixed Minthara’s body sometimes turning invisible on the Level Up screen. (We sorta liked the floating-head-and-hands look, but hey.)

Animation

• Astarion now has idle animations at camp that aren’t just him reading a book.
• Added a new idle animation for Minsc at camp – Boo may or may not have taught him some tai chi.
• Karlach will no longer brush the shaved side of her head.
• Polished the appearance of neck kisses in lovey-dovey scenes with Shadowheart on the Sharran path for characters with large body types and dragonborn characters.

Writing and Flow

• Dotted some dialogue options and voiced lines into dialogues across the game to add some more overall reactivity, particularly to account for edge-case flows.
• Dotted more Dark Urge reactivity (dialogue options and Narrator lines) into dialogues across the game.
• Resolved an issue that had been rendering some romance party banters inaccessible while adventuring.
• Avatar Lae’zel can now decide what she wants to do at the end of the game after the brain is defeated even if she wasn’t the avatar making the choices in the main dialogue.
• Added a dialogue option asking for a kiss in more paths of Wyll’s epilogue dialogue.
• If you’re in holographic form in the epilogue, Wyll won’t automatically assume he’s talking to Lae’zel.
• Gave Wyll a new greeting for romance partners in Act III and characters with really low approval.
• Companions should now be more sympathetic to Astarion fleeing from the sun.
• Added a new dialogue in which Karlach will react to Dammon if she finds him dead after he told her that he can help her.
• Minthara will now react if you knock her out in Act I.

Scripting

• Fixed several issues (related to resurrecting characters via Withers, restructuring the party at night, and automatic camp night scenes) that would trap you in an eternal slumber, unable to end a Long Rest.
• Fixed a bug causing Shadowheart to keep repeating one line when you talk to her after she’s resurrected by Withers from the Shadowfell.
• Fixed a small flow issue preventing you from commenting on Gale’s last name.
• Fixed several occurrences of Wyll still having an exclamation mark above his head when he already told you everything he had to say.
• When playing as the Dark Urge, Minthara will no longer act as though you accepted Bhaal when you’ve been stripped of his influence.
• Fixed a broken kissing scene after you gave Shadowheart the Idol of Shar.
• Fixed an issue where Jaheira would stop following the party after spending a night outside of the party.
• Fixed the rune tablets on the nautiloid sometimes not triggering the Narrator’s lines.
• Clerics of Lathander should now recognise his symbol on a Lathanderian amulet.
• Ensured the avatar is prioritised as the main speaker in dialogues related to the hag’s Act I surrender.
• Minthara does, in fact, now have something to say about Orin after you kill her.
• Made the romance scene at night with Wyll in Act III unskippable if it triggers to avoid accidentally skipping it and not being able to finish the romance arc.
• If Avatar Karlach and Wyll are partners and go to the Hells together, he’ll now act accordingly during the epilogue.
• Fixed Karlach’s scene in Avernus not playing if you decided to go with her when playing as Wyll.
• A bug has been fixed so that Wyll will now talk to his father if Ansur is defeated after the pact with Mizora is broken but Ravengard is saved from the Iron Throne despite this, to decide on his title.
• Lae’zel will now wait a little longer for you at the site of her recruitment if you tell her you’ll be back.
• Improved Lae’zel’s idle camp behaviours to align a bit better with the other companions’.
• Fixed the fade-to-black after Karlach’s scene in Avernus at the end of the game, which would give you a very brief glimpse of Game Developer Land.
• Breaking up with Karlach by speaking with another companion you’re dating the morning after her romance scene won’t block her dialogue anymore.
• Reinstated Gale’s last line in his detailed explanation of ceremorphosis and tweaked a dialogue option to react to it.
• Now that you can give Gale magic items from the Traveller’s Chest, he will leave again if you refuse to do so.
• Patched up some savegames that had a bug that would prevent the dialogue between Gale and Mystra at the end of the game from triggering.
• Fixed a bug that let you kiss Gale even if he was in a disguised form before confronting the Netherbrain.. Also fixed this dialogue with him cutting off before you could give him a smooch.
• Reworked the script that determines whether a character is too busy to talk. This will prevent bugs like Minthara’s dialogue not triggering at Moonrise Towers after you rescue her, and knock-on effects as a result of this, like not being able to rest or fast travel.

Performance

• Continued to make performance and stability optimisations across the game and implemented many under-the-hood code fixes.
• Optimised performance. This will have a more noticeable impact in areas with large numbers of NPCs (like the Lower City) and will reduce peak memory usage when loading levels for the first time. It will also be noticeable when managing lots of loot (e.g. when transferring everything from a camp chest to a character’s inventory).

Cinematics

• Reworked and revamped the cutscene that plays when you interact with Ansur’s bones in the Wyrmway.
• Polished facial expressions and emotions across companion dialogues, including to the facial animations of your character during some kissing cinematics, including with the Vampire Lord Astarion.

Split Screen Updates

Dynamic split screen mode is incoming! Friends will no longer be eternally confined to their side of the screen.

When playing in co-op, you’ll now have the option to have split screens merge into a single screen when you near one another. You can access this directly from the HUD and within the game settings, both in and out of combat.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Modding Toolkit

Come September, you’ll be able to load up your game with a range of new game mods, and even try your hand at making some yourself. We recommend giving the Modding FAQ a look for more information on what modding support means for Baldur’s Gate 3.

Larian is currently working with Baldur’s Gate 3 Mod Authors during the Closed Alpha, who have been busy testing out the toolkit. To find out what some of the Mod Authors have been working on during the Closed Alpha, keep reading!

The Toolkit itself will give you everything you need to edit or create entirely new content, including:

• Items – Equipment like weapons and armours, consumables, and miscellaneous items.
• Cosmetics – Including different hair, beards, and other textures.
• Classes and Subclasses – Creating new variants or modifying existing ones to edit abilities, powers, and skills.
• Races – These can be created and edited to determine overall appearance, as well as their individual powers and abilities.
• Dice Skins – You’ll also have the ability to edit or redesign the appearance of your dice skins!
• User Interface – Including extensions and restyling of the game UI.
• Quality of Life Improvements – Such as mods that edit or improve gameplay that don’t rely on unsupported elements.

Evil Endings

Patch 7 will also be bringing several new cinematics that offer your more evil playthroughs a grander finale.

From avatar Origin characters, including the Dark Urge, to the multiple different pathways that you can take as your own player character, each new cinematic is yours to discover through nefarious means.

Dark Urge Bug Fixes

Along with the new evil ending cinematics coming this patch, a number of improvements and bug fixes for Dark Urge players have been introduced – ironing out camera pops, missing inspiration, VFX, and a few other issues.

For instance, a bug has now been fixed where combat sometimes fails to trigger in the event that you decide to murder one of your companions as the Dark Urge and attack the party. This will now lead to combat with the rest of the gang. And Minthara will now respond accordingly if you’ve been stripped of Bhaal’s influence.

A certain bard may now be able to join the party as a controllable character if there’s an empty slot – temporarily, of course.

“But will we be able to kiss Gortash?” we hear you plead. “We want to kiss Gortash!” Listen, he’s a complicated guy who’s busy contemplating the minutia of death cult office politics. Babygurl doesn’t have time to kiss.

Origin Character Bug Fixes

This update will also see improvements made to some cinematics, endgame dialogues, and Origin characters – specifically things like clipping issues, a couple of broken triggers for quests, dialogues, and romances, the odd case of retrograde amnesia, and persistent exclamation marks.

Oh, and the Blade of Frontiers will no longer absent-mindedly swing his sword mere inches from the aorta of shorter races who try to recruit him. Here are some highlights:

Wyll Highlights

Patch 7 includes a heap of fixes for Wyll, ranging from improvements to his dialogue reactivity to fixes for romance scenes.

If you’ve experienced issues triggering the romance scene with Wyll, this update will fix that. Should your relationship be headed in that direction, the cutscene in question will now trigger when you speak to Wyll at camp before your Long Rest.

A bug that had been preventing his romance greeting from triggering has also been fixed, so players in Act III who have a stable, loving, and committed relationship with Wyll will now see his romance greeting triggering correctly.

Wyll’s dialogue reactivity has been fixed during the epilogue for partnered players who have either joined Karlach in the Hells or Lae’zel in the rebellion, and we also determined there simply weren’t enough opportunities to kiss Wyll during the epilogue. This update rectifies that with the option to ask for a kiss in more paths of Wyll’s epilogue dialogue.

And if you’re in holographic form during the epilogue, he’ll no longer automatically assume he’s talking to Lae’zel, which was weird.

Astarion Highlights

In Patch 7, we’ve made improvements to the facial animations of your character during some kissing cinematics, including with the ascended Astarion.

We’ve also made tweaks to how Origin characters react within certain cutscenes, to enhance their emotional impact. For example, companions will show Astarion more empathy when he loses his ability to withstand sunlight.

Lae’zel Highlights

Lae’zel will now wait a little longer at her recruitment site if you tell her you’ll be returning. And once she’s set up at camp, she will also cycle through more varied idle animations.

This update will also put an end to an annoying issue where resurrecting Lae’zel on the beach in Act I would cause her to appear in the Party Line but not in the world, blocking you from leaving Act I.

Karlach Highlights

Along with some more general fixes for Karlach, she will now react to Dammon if she finds him dead after he has told her that he can help her. That sketchy fade-to-black that follows her final scene in Avernus, which also unintentionally gave you a very brief glimpse of the region in gameplay mode, was a visual bug that has also been fixed.

The dialogue block caused by choosing to stay with a different companion the morning after your second romance scene with Karlach is no more. Also, she’ll no longer brush the shaved side of her head during her camp idle animation. Wrong side, Karlach.

Gale Highlights

With a few tweaks to camera angles and fixes to animation pops, repeated dialogue, and missing VFX, we’ve polished up Gale and his scenes and further refined his donation UI. That panel that opens when donating magical items to Gale? This will now show all items eligible for donation – including those on your person, your party’s inventories, and your Traveller’s Chest.

This is part of the work that began with Hotfix #16 to improve the donation UI and update a player’s ability to access certain quest-related items, which has now been completed. We’re reinstating the intended behaviour that was removed in Hotfix #17 as a temporary bug fix to missing UI functionality. So if you now deny Gale a magic item three times in a row with magical items either on your person, your party’s inventories, or now from your Traveller’s Chest, he will leave your party.

Alternatively, selecting “I’m not giving you anything. Not now, not ever” will still cause Gale to leave your party forever.

We’ve also patched up a bug that was preventing the final dialogue between Gale and Mystra from triggering, as well as a scene in the endgame that would cut off before you could kiss.

Shadowheart Highlights

In addition to fixing a few of her animation bugs, this update fixes a number of quest issues for Shadowheart. A bug that saw the Spear of Night either not being received, or being spoken about as if it hadn’t already been acquired, is no more.

Another bout of amnesia has also been fixed, in which Shadowheart occasionally thought Viconia was still alive after killing her. The ‘Daughter of Darkness’ quest should also now close properly if you choose to surrender Shadowheart to Viconia.

And yes, we’ve tweaked a few kissing scenes for her too, fixing a broken romance cutscene that should have triggered after giving Shadowheart the Idol of Shar, and a kissing animation that will no longer kick in before the dialogue option is chosen. We’ve also polished up the appearance of neck kissing. In the words of Michelangelo, no great work of art is ever finished, and so too is our approach to the art of snogging..

Party Banter Improvements

Prior to this update, party banter between companion characters was limited to the characters controlled by a single player. In Patch 7, multiplayer parties will support banter between characters assigned to different players.

This patch also resolves issues that had been rendering some romance party banters inaccessible while adventuring.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Toolkit: Closed Alpha Progress

Larian Studios invited Mod Authors to join a Closed Alpha where they’ve been building their Baldur’s Gate 3 mods using the official modding tools arriving in Patch 7.

Mod Authors like Padme4000 included her Dragonborn Scale Colours mod, TechRoot worked with their FaerûnColors mod and LostSoul was able to test the Toolkit’s UI to provide some extra feedback.

Baldur’s Gate 3 keeps adding details that add more depth to its role-playing narrative. If you’re wondering what else you might have missed that was included in other updates, check out which seemingly useless item is really used for, and everything which class doesn’t even need weapons anymore.