I’ve never played D&D and I’m getting into BG3. I must be marathoning my characters cause I’m usually out of spells when I run into fights. My useful exploration spells also cost spell slots so I’m usually proceeding with cantrips for my adventures until I decide I really need to recharge.
How often is everyone else going through a long rest? I know there’s a trade off of consuming camp supplies and so maybe I’m just the guy who saves all the items for end game and never ends up using them.
Camp supplies are easy to come by. Rest often - unlike in actual D&D, resting every encounter doesn’t piss the DM off and get tigers sent after you.
Thanks. I will start resting more often.
It’s been said already in this thread, but I’ll echo my experience too.
At first I was leaning into the sense of urgency and tried to play immersively. I was managing my resources, planning ahead, limiting short rests and conserving spell slots, often taking on fights with my whole team already bloodied.
Mechanically, this was very enjoyable to me, both the sense of pressing on through straining circumstances and the added challenge and resource management.
As others have said, though, BG3 anchors an absolute TON of story and companion events to Long Rests, and I consequently missed out on an incredible amount of content, some of which seem to have permanently locked me out of progressing certain companion relationships, as well as missing out on the owlbear cub joining the camp and probably a lot more too.
I really wish there was a day/night cycle that would naturally force you to set up camp frequently in a more natural fashion, but as it is I recommend to basically take Long Rests as often as possible, especially in Act 1.
Yeah, I don’t know why they didn’t bring the Day/Night cycle and Fatigue mechanics from the previous games, it made resting feel much more natural. You even had inns that gave you more healing depending on the quality of room you choose. I know that the companions say they are exhausted, but they like to do so while I barely done anything and still have most of my resources available. In BG1/2 when I heard my companions complain, you bet I’m looking for a safe spot to rest, Fatigue debuffs were no joke!
I was doing the same thing initially. My natural instinct was to horde supplies because I’ll definitely need then later, and just barely make it through a few fights before finally resting. I was also avoiding expending spell slots on anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary, so I could last longer before needing to rest. Then I noticed I was having issues with my carrying capacity. What am I carrying around that’s so heavy? Ah, yes, the massive buffet I’m dragging around everywhere I go. That’s when I finally accepted that there is no food shortage in the area. The game is actually a lot more enjoyable now that I can just blast out all those spells. I also learned that you can just send all of that food to camp, and when you go to the campfire to rest it’ll just pull it out of the camp storage box. No need to drag any of it around with you.
Rested like 3 times Act1 top side and 2 times underdark. Didn’t see a need to rest more, but the game is kinda small or one big ass dungeon where there are no clear breaks.
A lot of sense of urgency though.
There should be a system to help player rest more. It so easy to miss camp stuff. I had to power rest 4 times in row to get the owlbear cub yo show up, before leaving the area.
You long rested 5 times total in act 1?! Jesus, I must suck at this game lmao
I tried to play this game the way I play DnD at first, conserving resources and long resting only after multiple fights. I missed a lot of dialogue in Act 1 and had a hard time in combat.
The combat and camp events are balanced around using long rests frequently. There are a few quests that you can fail by resting (such as the inn burning down or the situation in Grymforge), but generally things are much less urgent than the game makes them sound. Don’t be afraid to dump all your resources into one or two fights and then rest.
It’s a failure to rest for the Grymforge situation? I saw it as a non-combat win.
If you don’t care about the lives of the slaves trapped in with him then sure, you can consider it a win.
You should be long resting all the time. There’s not really any penalty to it. Hell, if anything not resting runs the risk of missing out on important NPC conversations.
Camp supplies are never a problem. I end up selling a lot of them - particularly the heavier and more valuable ones (we only drink cheap alcohol at my camp lol).
There are certain timed events that will trigger if you long rest nearby, so make sure if you’re near a place that looks like it needs immediate attention, that you don’t long rest quite yet.
Yes, for example if you see a group in a fight, then go long rest, when you come back the fight will be over.
One thing I’ll add is that Find Familiar doesn’t seem to refresh on long rests (not for me, although I haven’t checked in the latest patch). So if you have any short rests left it might be an idea to use one of those then long rest.
Those guys at the INN burned to dust while I was long resting and getting hot with Shadowheart.
Long Rest every 3-4 encounters. Short Rest after every encounter.
I’ve found this to be the best balance between seeing camp content, completing timed quests, and managing Elixir supplies. Camp supplies are abundant but Elixirs/Alchemy supplies are somewhat limited.
I try to make it pretty balanced. Dnd isn’t really balanced around constantly long resting, and I think resource management is part of the fun. Low level spells are pretty meaningless if you always have high level spells slots to blast through and such.
So my approach is this:
- Only long rest after my 2 short rests
- Short rest when reasonable, such as when the party has a good chunk of HP missing.
- Generally aim for 3-4 encounters per long rest (encounters don’t have be combat, can be anything you expend resources on, such as healing or charming an NPC)
So far it’s worked out pretty nicely. It makes the game more challenging and rewarding, imo.
