Baldur’s Gate devs still finding stuff to patch and add to the game almost a year on as another big update lands

Have you been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 for the last year? Quite possibly. Do you think you have seen all there is to see? Probably not. That hasn’t stopped Larian’s tireless background work on its magnum opus and landing right now is Patch 7 for one of the best games of all time. Boot up your game and start it downloading while you read this because it is not a small one.

We are now mainly at the stage where Larian is refining and polishing its already gleaming treasure. Here we get a more customizable hot bar and a reworked UI, borne out of the devs playing the game for thousands of hours and working out how to make the system even better.

Patch 7 also brings us a new Barbarian class, goblin-tossing (no!), and cinematic improvements to over 700 in-game events. Due to popular demand from players, even Shadowheart’s ponytail now moves according to the laws of physics.

It’s great when we get to the stage when devs aren’t merely panic-fixing bugs but having fun and making the game as perfect as they always wanted to be, were time constraints are not a thing.

Here are the Patch 7 notes anyway, well, the best bits, and if you have time to read the lot then you can check out the post here.

Baldur’s Gate Patch 7 Highlghts

• Added the Barbarian class with two new subclasses – Berserker and Wildheart.
• Berserker: Grow your Rage into a relentless frenzy and gain the ability to deal additional damage in the heat of battle. When you are filled with Rage, you can use improvised weapons as a bonus action to do extra damage.
• Wildheart: Draw from the power of your Bestial Heart and wield ferocious combat abilities inspired by the eagle, elk, tiger, bear, or wolf. As a Wildheart Barbarian, you can flaunt unique facial piercings based on which animal you choose to guide you.
• Overhauled the HUD UI. We are continually refining and improving all of these new features, but we’re excited for you to try them out!
• Designed a brand new hotbar to better help you explore all the options and features your characters have to offer. The hotbar, now more intuitive and less cluttered, allows you to thematically collect common actions, class-specific actions, and spells and items into ‘Decks’. We’re also working on ‘Custom Decks’, which allow you to fully customise your hotbar tabs – you can dip your toes into this feature through the custom deck we’ve made available. The new hotbar also allows for resource-based filtering, especially useful in combat.
• Introduced brand new Character Sheet and Party Panel views, which combine the old Equipment, Inventory, and Stats panels. You can now continue to play while you have these open and move them around the screen as needed.
• Added extensive quality-of-life search filters for items, weapons, and abilities.
• Updated the Turn Order UI to appear at the top-centre of the screen and allow for scrolling.
• Added a Party Management panel (and an associated tooltip) below the party member portraits that includes toggles for Group Mode and Group Sneak.
• Vertically aligned the party member portraits.
• The minimap is now a circle – the most noble shape.
• Added new melee combat options.
• Thrown weapons: You can now throw a new class of weapons from a distance. Thrown Weapons like Daggers, Javelins, Handaxes, and Spears do damage based on their Damage stats rather than their weight. Barbarians will begin the game with two Handaxes in addition to their primary Greataxe weapon.
• Improvised weapons: You can now attack by using furniture, instruments, animals, limbs, and NPCs as Improvised Melee Weapons.
• Expanded throwing: You can now throw objects or characters that weigh up to three times your Strength ability score. The range of the throw scales based on your Strength and the object’s weight. Rile enemies up by throwing a badger at them or yeet a goblin to test their aerodynamics.
• Placed 24 new hand-crafted Magical Loot items throughout the world. Seek out the Hamarhraft – an Uncommon Maul that deals 1d4 Thunder damage within a 10ft radius upon landing after a Jump. Or find a pair of Linebreaker Boots and gain +1 melee damage for one turn after a Dash.
• Implemented a new ‘Room Portal’ system, which conceals the details of characters and objects in closed-off or unexplored rooms. This brings more surprise and tension to exploration.
• Added new music.
• Added a new live orchestral suite to the Character Creation playlist.
• Added new ambient pieces to Grymforge.
• Added a new piece to the main Camp.
• Added brand new spell-casting animations that are tailored to each spell-casting class, giving each class a unique look.
• Improved the detection of light and dark areas.
• You are now less likely to miss during combat in lit regions.
• Your ability to hide from NPCs is now more accurately affected by how dark it is.
• Improved how Darkvision is visualised: characters with Darkvision can now see in the dark via a cone of vision.
• Improved cinematic pacing and visuals.
• Refined animations and cameras across nearly 700 cutscenes.
• Implemented over 400 new animations.
• Improved animal and creature animations across over 200 interactive dialogues.
• Added Barbarian reactivity to interactive dialogues.
• Re-recorded and remastered portions of the narrator’s voice-over audio.
• And the update we’ve all been waiting for: we’ve improved the chicken wing flap SFX and enhanced the VO for nervous squawking to bring you a truly authentic depiction of chicken anxiety.