Baldur's Gate 3 players are running into bugs and narrative inconsistencies in the game's third act. The reason? They're not sleeping enough.
No, that's not a jab at Baldur's Gate 3 fans for not being able to control their sleep schedules. Rather, players are learning that by not using the Long Rest feature in one of the best RPGs enough, they're missing out on some crucial narrative beats that should be witnessed prior to Act 3's latter half.
Over at the Baldur's Gate 3 subreddit, user Neville_Lynwood posted a PSA, entitled 'Long Rest as often as possible. It will reduce bugs.' The user goes on to explain that "Larian has made a rather weird error with the way they've designed the whole narrative progression. They have tied a lot of events, companion quests, romances, side characters, and even main story events to you having a Long Rest."
The main issue here stems from players largely being "de-incentivized to rest," the user explains, for a variety of reasons. While Long Resting at camp fully heals your party and restores spell slots, you also lose buffs from spells and elixirs that remain active until your next Long Rest. Pair that with the constant reminders of urgency when it comes to the main questline, and you've got a situation where players prefer to avoid heading back to camp.
However, because many plot-altering events occur during Long Rests, including big narrative developments and party member bonding, Neville_Lynwood explains that "players end up breaking the narrative progression which leads to event flags and triggers getting jumbled, which leads to all kinds of bugs" when they avoid using Long Rest.
The user concludes the PSA by recommending an update for Larian, providing an optional "soft force rests" toggle to suggest players head to camp after major story events or character relations development, likening it to clearing out your email inbox regularly.
And honestly, given just how good the writing is in Baldur's Gate 3, returning for a rest more regularly is advice I'm certainly going to take to heart.
Baldur's Gate 3 is also launching on PS5 on September 6, when it could well find a spot on our regularly updated best PS5 games list.
