UPDATE: Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 7’s closed beta has been pushed back due to passive dice rolls going kaput during a bit of “bug-fix whack-a-mole”
UPDATE (25/07/24, 4:10 PM BST): Larian has confirmed that Baldur’s Gate 3’s Patch 7 Closed Beta is now live on Steam.
“If you were lucky enough to be randomly selected, check your Steam Library, and you should now be able to download the playtest,” it writes, “Not everyone will have access, so we’d appreciate it if you could keep any spoilers to a minimum. We’ll be adding more players throughout the Closed Beta, so keep an eye on your Steam Library!”
If you’ve been looking forward to diving into Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 7’s closed beta after securing your spot, there’s some bad news. Unfortunately, Larian’s had to delay it a bit, after the game’s dice decided to stop working as intended while the developers were trying to resolve some other issues.
The beta had previously been set to kick off yesterday, July 22, as outlined in last week’s community update from Larian, which saw the studio continue to name the nine million things it’s packing into the update — having somehow not run out of stuff after telling us about the extra evil endings and the official modding tools.
“Well, the Patch 7 Closed Beta was set to begin today, but while preparing the build for you, we were once more humbled by the classic lesson taught to every game dev while playing bug-fix whack-a-mole: if you fix one bug over here, another one might still pop up over there,” Larian explained in a fresh update post on Steam.
“This happened with one of the fixes we wanted to introduce in Patch 7, which has caused passive rolls to stop working. We’re trying to figure out how we got here, so while we do that, we’ll be pushing the Closed Beta back to later this week.”
So yeah, sad face, but not sad face for too long, assuming those pesky dice go back to d-n-doing what they’re told as quickly as Larian seems to reckon they will. Though, as the studio notes, it does mean you’ve got a little more time to throw your hat in to be selected for participation in the beta if you haven’t already.
It went on to confirm that Patch 7 includes “over 1,000 fixes and improvements”, sharing some fresh highlights from that list. They include: “making the way you use soap a bit clearer (we were noticing too many suspicious teeth marks on the bars), dissipating Gale’s Necrotic Aura when it should dissipate (terrible vibes), and making sure Jaheira doesn’t stop following the party after a Long Rest (she just needed a longer rest).”
“Also, by popular demand,” Larian added, “you will now be able to turn on the Honour Mode mechanics in a Custom Mode playthrough! Select the option in the Ruleset dropdown menu and you’re set for new exciting battle mechanics without the pressure of Honour Mode.”
If you’re after more BG3-related reading while you wait to find out if you’ve gotten into that closed beta, why not read our recent interview with a modder who added a whole roguelike mode to the game.
