The Most Fun Challenge for Baldur's Gate 3 (Honour Mode)

your first playthrough of balers Gate 3 will almost always be the most fun the feeling of progression meaningful decision making and exploration is just perfect and there's much more to discover but on your second playthrough you start realizing that some of the options you thought you had before were actually just railroading you to the same conclusion a spoiler alert sure you can have your evil playthrough and your good playthrough and see vastly different dialog Vlogs but after that you're going to be trying to find much more Niche interactions that take you 50 hours or more of gam playay to find and once you've learned how the combat Works what builds are most powerful running through this with a fourman party even on tactician mode may not be the most engaging experience anymore that's why I tried out the Lone Wolf challenge which is basically just using one character and for the most part I've gotten an act three on a warlock and a monk which was a fun experience but I just get bored of doing the same overpowered strategy which usually involves abusing the same mechanic over and over to even be able to succeed because I've got limited options with only one build to work with I've only completed the game once so far on my first fourman party playthrough but have had many different playthroughs so I'm missing out on those promised 14,000 endings the reality is that the endings aren't what you want to see it's the journey so I wanted a more Interactive way to play the game and to me this is with not four not one but two characters was ready to go this alone but maybe sticking with the herd isn't such a bad idea a Duo composition not only allows you to play towards some Synergy between your characters but it also allows you to have another companion to witness more of the dialogue and Story related to them many dialogues and cutcenes will have your other companions interject or influence Ence your decisions and it's a shame to go through the entire game with only one character because the character you play as usually shows the least amount of Personality because the game lets you project yourself on them the most in other words playing as carlac gives you the least amount of voice acting for carlac but playing with carlac in your party will give you a lot more dialogue and voice acting from her I'm not doing anything here this is this is all automatic she's she's burning the place up also sometimes it just gets lonely and it's nice to have some company but maybe not all of those thirst Lords piling on top of you at the same time however with two players the game will still be somewhat easy to someone using the best strats and builds so there needs to be some trade-off to maintain the challenge so of course I went for a hardcore Iron Man rule set or essentially Perma death if you get a game over screen your run is over you don't reload the last save file that's it in Divinity original sin 2 there was a difficulty higher than tactician and it was honor mode which essentially allowed you only one save slot and deleted it on game over this was for the most part good it gave you a lot of flexibility to play the game how you want but therefore still abuse save scumming while there is no honor mode in bald's Gate 3 we can simulate it with our own custom rules no mods are needed but if you want them you can as you wish already this is going to put off many people because losing the 50 hours or more time investment into your current run would feel really bad but remember this isn't suggested for your first or second or even fifth playthrough to take on this kind of risk you want a lot more knowledge and strategies that simply come through experience this is for those who want a fresh new way of playing the risk of perade death isn't the only thing though there needs to to be some extra rules to prevent you from optimizing the fun out of the game like save scumming and infinite resource gains that trivialize decisionmaking and I've been playing this game mode for a bit and have come up with my own rules set which I'll go over in a bit but first let's highlight why a hardcore Duo run is in my opinion the best way to play the game not only does having a second companion give you much more story but it also removes a lot of the random RNG that will give you a game over let's face it this game is complete sometimes it'll kill you with jumping bugs enemies will critically hit you three times in a row while you critically Miss three times in a row and if your one character misses a saving throw on a cc like hold person that's an instant game over having a second companion means that if something like this happens you've still got an escape plan or a way to revive so it's much more forgiving and allows you to actually take on these enemies in a more fair fight if you tried to Solo in a situation where it's possible to instantly die to one cc spell you'd basically need to kill them all in one turn or abuse resetting combat which by all means if you like doing that the entire game there's a multiclass called gloomstalker Assassin for you but not everyone wants to play a sneak Archer every time so Duo hardcore is simply the better way in my opinion because it allows you to play and explore all of the classes as you progress through a somewhat risky but more immersive Journey a pleasure the first rule I made was no infinite resource tricks you can buy from vendors every day but doing a long rest when you don't need to just to reset vendors would be in my opinion an infinite resource although it does cost money to buy things from a vendor money is easily obtained and replenished for stealing in a similar infinite manner like Volo who will replenish a decent amount of supplies and gold every every time you sleep and he won't permanently leave you no matter how many times he catches you with your hands in his pockets this to me seems like an infinite resource user Common Sense here sometimes learning how the game works and abusing it can be more fun but abusing gamebreaking bugs might not be it decide for yourself what this line is because cheesing your way through the game to get to the end doesn't give you anything it's the journey that matters and the point is to make a more engaging playthrough next is no Barrel mancy this means stocking up on a bunch of explosives and using them all in one spot to instantly blow up a big boss with one fire spell this is the most overpowered thing in the game if the environment already has explosives in it then use them as the game intended them to be but pulling a bunch of barrels out of your back pocket where the boss is about to spawn is a bit weird and it removes your class identity since anyone can do this if you want to use explosives only use them in combat and only drop or throw one per turn or one per action point that way enemies have a chance to fight back third rule is no using any companions besides your main two there are some methods to use warding spells on your active party members with those still in your camp this is like cheating and when asked by your partner if you're alone you say yes but there's someone in the closet having other companions in the camp would be fine but send them to camp and don't interact with them fourth rule no Withers Revival you need to buy a scroll of revivify to revive your ally not only does this make you think more about your actions because Scrolls can be a somewhat finite resource it also makes it riskier when you're losing a fight you can't just go out of combat when one of your party members dies then go to camp and revive them at Withers for a full reset you need to make a rescue attempt and then recover and then engage again it feels more meaningful and realistic if you die to falling down a Chasm your spirit can still be revived so there shouldn't be any need to use Withers to prevent your safe file from being soft locked but if that did happen I guess it'd be okay next rule no reloading you can save whenever you want in case the game crashes but the only time you're allowed to load is when you fire up the game this means you need to be prepared to fight at any time you can't just reload if you fail a persuasion check to bypass a fight through dialogue this creates more interesting situations and means you'll need to have a backup plan because you can't just reload to get your meta strategy to work you need to either perform perfectly or live with your mistakes and learn to adapt if you get a game over no excuses delete the save file and start over the last rule is regarding fast travel you can only use the sigils to fast travel if you're already at the location of one of those sigils I don't think it should be disallowed because sometimes you do need to travel halfway across a map that is already cleared it's just tedious travel time but at the same time you could be in a dangerous situation and you need to come up with a plan to escape but fast travel would just solve that issue immediately there are some areas in the game that already prevent fast travel but obviously not all only being able to fast travel at a Sigil means you need to already be at a safe location to use it which prevents any easy easy solutions and it also just makes more sense regarding the lore those rules seem to be good enough for now remember that Boulders Gate 3 is a game about immersion and problem solving but there are so many broken mechanics that can trivialize that aspect of the game and deep down inside some of us just can't help but optimize the fun out of the game and having self-control can be difficult without any hard and fast guidelines if you have any necessary compulsion to save scum or use the most broken barrelmancy strategies then this obviously isn't for you also if some of these rules don't sound fun for you change them how you want add some more if it's too easy and leave some suggestions in the comments on how you would change this rule set to be more fun I'm just sharing this to hopefully Inspire others to find new ways to play the game until larion comes out with an official honor mode I think this is the best way to get some replay value out of the game so let's start out with carlac I've never used her any my parties so we can see how her story plays out there will be minor spoilers since I'll be talking about my playthrough so if you did enjoy the video so far please like And subscribe and I'll see you in the next one but let's check out a new character apparently carlac has an infernal engine for a heart and we need to find out how to fix that while we figure out how to deal with a tadpull in our brains so our heart and our brain is messed up things already aren't going well but since this this is a Duo run I need to find out who I want to use as my other companion I wanted to try out a Bard and Barbarian composition but none of the origin characters are bars so I'll need to respect one of them later but I think aerion is a good candidate for a Bard because he's very charismatic so I go talk to aerion and avoid being cut open by him I don't actually think there's a way to fail this dialogue with aerion other than deciding to fight him in combat so we tell tell him to join party and move on to the Grove my name's aaran with two party members we can also play more aggressively to win fights fast enough to actually have some of the NPCs survive like zor so we have the potential to affect the story a little bit more than a solo run where you have to hide behind everything and let your allies die afterwards we try to break up the fight between zor and aridan but we take justice a little bit too seriously I knock out zor but we aren't taking aridan side it's just that zor is getting off easy aridan has to die for his crimes and while I was confident aerion and I could take the 2v2 things got a little too close because early on these dice rolls can really go either way you got to be careful and not all in on a 50/50 next I went to the mausoleum because I wanted to unlock withs so I can respect atherion to a full Bard since for now he's only a multiclass Rogue bar but these Bandits looting the place they're one of the hardest fights this early on and while barrelmancy isn't allowed I can still make use of the environment which just so happens to already have barrels around it if they put the barrels there it isn't barrelmancy but the bandits ended up using the barrels on me instead still I could kite the bandits back through the fire use choke points by fighting any who run ahead of their group and use the doorway as an ambush spot killing any who walk through overall this is one of the more fun fights because of the Strategic elements created by the terrain enemy formation environment and our lack of having sheer numbers I went to the final room with the skeletons and learned that skeletons are just a bunch of Bones so they're not very heavy so while most humanoid enemies besides gnomes are too heavy as a barbarian I can throw skeletons at each other and they're weak to bludgeoning damage too so this would was way too easy now I'm able to make aerion a full-on Bard and we can start taking on more challenges in act one I haven't yet decided what kind of alignment I want to do as well normally carlac is a pretty good character but aerion disapproves of most good things so we'll need to be a bit more neutral and sometimes do some sketchy stuff I like these two all Zeal and no brains so to make a compromise with theion we didn't immedi immediately killed the absolute cultists we told them to get revenge on the owl bear that killed their true soul but the owl bear is quite a challenge even with the help from these two NPCs so instead of helping them I thought to steal the AL bear egg which can sell for quite a bit and let the others die but then I realize that the mother attacks anyone who holds the egg so I dropped the egg and ran but that gave me a good idea what if I send the egg through my inventory to my other party member will the owl bear immediately go to attack them on the other side of the room and yep that worked so now aerion is tanking and the owl bear leaves me alone and I get an attack of opportunity when she leaves so whoever has the egg becomes the tank for this fight and I never really knew this until now and the owl bear won't do anything if they can't catch up to your egg tank so we could just wail on her this is the first time where I've done this fight and the absolutists actually survived even with a four-party group yes it was a bit of a cheese method but it didn't break any of my rules and I think it was a pretty clever and interesting way to handle this fight at least for this playthrough then I went over to the goblin camp and we went in guns blazing just for the fun of it I took a good 30 minutes just taking out every Goblin I could outside and there were some close moments because asterion can't really take being focused and eventually the Goblins made their way up to us but since goblins are also light enemies they can be thrown off the top of the fort and take plenty of fall damage while also helping to keep The High Ground Advantage this also works inside the sanctum for holding The High Ground in the rafters such a fun play style critical Miss so I decided I would go a Berserker Barbarian as carlac which basically gives you improved throwing capabilities so you can throw weapons and other characters obviously don't worry aerion even though you sometimes compromise the run I won't throw you out so long as you fully support me as a college of lore Bard so we did pretty well with this composition and for the most part I thought I could just solo as carlac since barbarians are so powerful and can take quite a few hits with their resistance to physical damage but then I started to take on some of the harder bosses in this act like the Spider Queen and I know what you're thinking just knock her off but it's not that simple because even though I have minor illusion on aarion I don't have a range knockback if I botch my opener I can't reload so I need to more reliable and consistent strategy so after painstakingly clearing out as many of the spiders as I could before taking on the queen and then having some very close encounters where I had to reset and revive aerion I eventually realized I had a consumable that is a ranged pull the void bulb and using some quick math I found the right angle and sent the Spider Queen down into the under dark falling damage is quite nice early on but we won't always have this luxury so I need to start getting some better strategies or I'm going to die normally you find carlac near the toll house which is a bit later on than the other origin characters but when you play as her you don't really get a good idea of what her back story is until you get to the toll house this is where these zaral devils are pretending to be paladins of tear so they can hunt down carlac and bring her back to zarel and when you play as carlac there's some different dialogue here you can even attempt to concede and return to zarel but they don't believe you and attack anyway but we handle them regardless I also have the returning Pike by now which is a throwing weapon that returns to your hand so you can just keep throwing it combined with the tavern brawler feet which gives you insanely High hit chance this weapon destroys things with a range throwing build aarion helped too then we went to the hag and most players avoid replacing their eye with the hag's eye because it's generally a detriment to their character because it gives you disadvantage on perception but it also gives you a plus one on intimidation and since aarian will do our perceiving and I'm a zaral tling I have other bonuses to intimidation so when that option arises in dialogue I will always take the intimidation route fighting the hag got pretty sketchy as well but because aarian landed a clutch Thunder Wave which his Bic inspiration ensured the saving throw would fail we put the hag in the chasm now I know what you're thinking right now get the hag's hair for the extra bonus stats that's such a risky thing to go for and I botched my opener and didn't land a hold person on her so I had to fight from behind and it came to desperation place at that point since I was running out of steam remember I can't reload I have to live with my choices and I chose to steal Marina's husband from her and use him as my own pet I need all the advantages I can get and besides it's not like we'll see her again right I thought you were going to hell I I making our way down to the underd dark I took out the bullet which is no easy feat the game started to become a lot easier because at level five I can use an extra attack which means I can also throw an extra weapon but at the same time I lost my returning Pike it must have fallen down a Chasm or something when I threw it and it didn't return to me so I lost it forever I can't reload now I need to actually collect and throw unique weapons to get value out of my Tavern brawler trait which actually made things more interesting because I could run out of weapons to throw or I had to pick up the weapons I threw which required me to sacrifice my positioning so things got a little bit more strategic than just spamming throw and this was around the time that I went to take on the Grim Forge this boss has so many different strategies you can use to beat it but they can all go terribly wrong if you mess things up because the boss does tons of damage and I can't reload but since I have a barbarian and a hammer I can make use of the bludgeoning strategy and just do as much damage as possible by throwing a haste potion on both of us putting accuracy oils on my weapon and using scratch and Conor as bait just so I can get a few extra turns before carlac needs to tank damage after thinking about this a little too hard and just ending up smashing him to death I made my way over to the fire Elemental although I was quite confident in this fight I didn't prepare for it as much as Grim so I was quite surprised when the elemental one-shotted me I was able to revive and retreat but before I fully committed to just letting this one fight go I had a massive asterion moment and ported behind it to thunderwave it off the ledge to the lower platform and from there Pelt it with attacks until it died now was time for act two and by now aerion had access to haste and restore Vitality which I got from the college of lard level six you can choose two spells from a list of many different spells I wanted more support and with this setup I can haste carlac so I can do four attacks per turn and then restore Vitality to use my bonus action to heal every turn which with the helmet I got from The Grove also heals a Starion every time he heals another so our party has a pretty robust support and Striker roll setup which works very effectively and saving Isabelle from Marcus 's Ambush went pretty well as expected we then went out with the Harpers to Ambush the absolute Caravan and this fight is mostly dangerous because of the spider Dr carnis but we killed all the others so quickly that we could easily overwhelm Carnes with a numberers advantage and even though he still put up a fight we came out Victorious we got the Tinker Bell blessing which is really nice to get early on in act two because we don't need to worry about the shadow curse at all and we can go wherever we want so we were set up for success but I engaged the measel Ambush a bit sloppily and aarian got GED and pulled away from carlac which silences him so he can't use spells and also immobilizes him so only carlac can really do anything here and these measles have a lot of health so trying to take them out fast enough didn't work so I had to make a getaway but they kept Shadow stepping at me and restraining me I tried to make one final desperation play by putting on Survival inst inct and using a potion of invisibility but none of that worked so carlac and aerion's journey ends and we go again next time I know not to mess with the measles or at least be a bit more cautious when engaging them so next time I decided to play as gaale I wanted to play a wizard and maybe another Barbarian with Lazelle as a wildart barbarian whereas last run Barbarian felt really strong this run playing as a wizard that starts out with eight base health things were a bit rough I almost got sent back to the nautiloid by the intellect devourers who did seven damage to me so basically a one shot if they just rolled one number higher or I didn't use a potion yeah this run is cursed in more than one way I needed to say Lazelle from some racist teelings but if I play too safely she dies before she joins my party and if I play too aggressively to save her I can die before she's in my party party which would mean game over even if she's still alive despite this I got some lucky rolls and freed Lazelle I went to get Withers so I can respect her from a fighter to a barbarian but of course that means going through the bandits again and this time I'm not feeling so good but the cursed part of this run actually became a benefit Gail has a ticking time bomb in him and if he dies you get a game over if you leave him dead for 2 days now obviously I wouldn't leave him dead for 2 days but while he is dead he leaves behind a necrotic Aura which deals damage to nearby characters and I realized I can send Gail in to die and use positioning to bait enemies to stand in the necrotic Aura then once enough are dead I can go in and finish the rest with lasel since Gale would be out of spell slots anyway so the necrotic Aura strategy was legit at least this early on but yeah this run feels really rough and hopefully I don't die but for now I think that's enough for the this video if you do want to see more of my journey you can check it out on my live stream where I'll be playing perade Duo runs and if it's interesting I'll come out with a part two but once again if you like this content support it appropriately and I will see you all next [Music] time our light burning the tow hold tight down find the [Music] power

Channel: Vallun

Views: 99,248

Keywords: bg3, baldur's gate 3, baldurs gate 3, honor mode, honour mode, permadeath, hardcore, iron man, no save scum, duo, solo, lone wolf, tactician, vallun, rules, bg3 honour mode, bg3 honor mode, baldur's gate 3 honor mode, baldur's gate 3 honour mode, challenge, playthrough, gameplay, roleplay, immersion, barrelmancy, no reload, fun, consequences, death, larian studios, dos 2, divinity original sin 2, builds, barbarian, bard, wizard, berserker, karlach, astarion, gale, lae'zel

Id: aGCUxpKi_1Q

Length: 25min 45sec (1545 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2023