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Way back in June, treacherous, fickle Larian declared that Baldur’s Gate 3 patch 7 would be their final handover to players of the well-good D&D RPG, with the focus then shifting internally to Larian’s two currently untitled new game projects. CEO Swen Vincke did, however, caveat that while the overall level of post-release support would be “diminished”, there would be a few more updates. We interpreted that to mean bug fixes and the like. Certainly, I wasn’t expecting brand new subclasses for every class in the game, which is what you’ll get with the just-announced Baldur’s Gate 3 patch 8, together with new crossplay functionality and a full-figured photo mode.
The subclasses in question are a fanciful bunch. Take Drunken Master for the Monk class, which lets you intoxicate enemies and then rapidly sober them up to inflict physical and psychic damage. As a Ranger Swarmkeeper, meanwhile, you can wield a “legion of bees” like a battering ram and then teleport to the swarm’s location to stick the boot in. The Fighter’s Arcane Archer subclass lets you temporarily banish people to another dimension, the Cleric’s Dark Domain lets you blow up corpses, and the Rogue’s Swashbuckler gets to flick sand in faces, jolt weapons from hands and generally speaking just wind adversaries up. Fire up the Steam announcement post for the full list.
As for the new photo mode, this gives you a bunch of lens settings such as FOV and focus level, together with scene settings such as the ability to toggle off either party members, NPCs and enemies. It also lets you choose facial expressions and pick from around 40 static and animated poses, each with variations. There are also post-processing effects such as contrast, saturation, highlights, brightness and vignetting, and a choice of frames and stickers.
The sweetener is full cross-play functionality with full cross-platform progression. No longer will that Xbox player you know have to play Baldur’s Gate 3 solo. You’ll be able to invite them into your game and, as the case may be, cover them in angry bees.
There’s no release date for the patch just yet, but Larian are doing early public “stress-testing” in early January. You’ll be able to register your interest beforehand.