Baldur’s Gate 3’s latest update has arrived, with Patch 3 releasing on Sept. 22 to the delight of many players—but, most notably, the patient (or impatient) players looking for full Mac support.
Larian previously revealed that Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 3 would coincide with the official full launch of the game on MacOS, and after postponing the patch, it’s finally released. But Patch 3 features much more than just the Mac version of the game, and the patch notes are so “hefty,” according to Larian, that they don’t all fit on the Steam page.
You can check out the full notes if you want, or you can take a gander at our helpful summary.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 3 notes
Mac Support
As noted above, Baldur’s Gate 3 is now fully supported on Mac computers and the Mac OS. While the game was playable on Mac, it didn’t have the same full support as the PC release, meaning there were some performance and compatibility issues.
There’s a catch, though, as previous versions of the game may not be compatible now that it’s been fully released. Players with a previous version on Mac are encouraged to fully uninstall the game and remove any mods before re-installing.
Camp expansion: Magic Mirror and changing your appearance
The Magic Mirror in BG3 will be a place in your camp that will allow players to change their appearance, voice, pronouns, and “nether regions.” These changes are limited to cosmetics only, though; you won’t be able to change your character’s race or body type. The mirror will only work on custom-created player characters, not origin characters like Astarion, Lae’zel, or Dark Urge.
Magic Mirror will also not work on appearance changes that are a result of in-game decisions, such as giving Auntie Ethel your eye. But you can use the Magic Mirror as many times as you’d like.
The expansion of camp amenities comes after Patch 2 included Withers’ Wardrobe of Wayward Friends, which allowed players to dismiss members of their co-op campaigns, for those play groups that struggled to stay together.
Combat changes and gameplay balancing
A handful of changes affecting certain areas and abilities have been made. Here are some of the changes that stuck out the most, either because of their impact or because they are amusing:
- Fixed level 4+ Divine Smite, allowing you to add Divine Smite as a reaction and adding the potential for two Divine Smites in a single attack. But a single Divine Smite will no longer deal damage over the 5d8 cap.
- Call Lightning, Evard’s Black Tentacles, Polymorph, Hunger of Hadar, Fear, Ice Storm, Flesh to Stone, Divine Intervention, Hypnotic Pattern, Slow, Stinking Cloud, Banishment, and Glyph of Warding will now all break the Sanctuary condition (see below).
- Sanctuary: You or an ally cannot be targeted until you attack or harm a creature. You can still take damage from area spells.
- “NPCs will no longer run away from anything but the Dark Urge Slayer form to improve interactivity and flow.”
- “Reading shop signs will no longer be considered a crime.”
- Spell Sniper feat now works on attack spells, and will now correctly reduce the Critical Hit threshold by one.
Bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements
There are hundreds of bug and crash fixes listed in the Patch 3 notes, covering issues that have arisen in combat, quest progression, scripting, saving, the user interface, character creation, and pretty much every possible aspect of the game.
The full, massive list of patch notes can be viewed in its lengthy entirety on the BG3 website.
