One week after the early access launch of Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian is releasing its first major patch–but more importantly, has shared some anecdotes on the choices players are making in the game. Notably, the studio has shared a player death heatmap to see where players have been dying the most. The map, below, shows which areas are seeing the most action, and where potential trouble spots might be.
Not only is the heatmap interesting for those who have explored the dangers of the expansive map themselves, but it’s also an important QA tool for Larian to check whether player deaths are occurring in unexpected areas, so they can continue to refine Baldur’s Gate 3 for its full release. Of course, like any good D&D game, it’s also led to some great stories.
Most of them, for whatever reason, involve Gale. It turns out that a lot of people don’t like Gale, with Larian noting that player deaths spiked around the location of his introduction. While the conversation with Gale isn’t really meant to turn into a combat encounter, it still can if you choose to fight instead of listening to what he has to say. Fighting in video games is usually more fun than talking. Perhaps it isn’t a huge surprise this led to so many deaths.
Gale is also the most-killed NPC, with 333,757 total deaths logged in the last week. Party members have murdered Gale at a rate of four times more than any other NPC–though luckily, he has a contingency plan for that eventuality.
As far as player deaths go, there are a whole host of dangers that players are falling victim to. 5717 players died trying to tame the Owlbear Cub, for example, while exactly 4000 met their end as a result of “interrupting the intimate moments of Ogres and Bug Bears.” Don’t feel bad if you died at the encounter with the fallen Mind Flayer, Larian says, because at least 3753 other players did the same.
With Baldur’s Gate 3 designed to have near endless story possibilities for its players, its no wonder Larian is sharing some of the interesting eventualities that have come to pass. “Play however you want, in whatever way you want,” the update reads. “There’s no one way to play the game. We’ve created systems that try to react to whoever you are, and whatever you do. The results of this make the game better.” The studio has encouraged players to be a little more creative with the character creator after finding that most people were just making “the default Vault Dweller,” however. You can learn more about the game’s character creator in our Baldur’s Gate 3 starting class guide.
Check out more of the game’s first-week anecdotes and the full patch notes in Larian’s Steam update. Baldur’s Gate 3 is currently available in early access through Steam, GOG, and Google Stadia.
