Some random tips from my own Honor Mode: - consider rolling a Halfling or Half Orc, their racials might save your run - be patient - achieve surprise as much as possible, and have all or almost all characters with the Alert feat - scrounge as much camp supply food as possible (HM needs 80, not 40, for long rests) - learn to live with the consequences - use overpowered builds like Tavern Brawler Monk - use builds with good action economy like Bard or Fighter or Monk - get to Level 4 without major combat, and try to be +1 level over all bosses - a Tav or party face with high CHA and persuade skill, the best battles are the ones you don't have to fight - avoid most/all optional bosses; Act 3 only requires killing Orin, Gale can activate the nuke
I agree with everything except the overpowered builds. You really don't need anything fancy if you follow the other tricks you gave. Personally, I beat honor mode with an Archfey Warlock, Karlach, Astarion and Shadowheart. No withers, 12 levels of their original class. If wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.
As someone who has completed Honour Mode, I will say this: avoid dialogues and immediately just surprise attack whenever possible. Max out on Aid, Hero's Feast, Longstrider, and Death Ward before starting your day. Abuse elixirs (I found most value from Vigilance and elemental resistance) and the most powerful class: barrelmancy. Raphael and Ansur got nothing on 36+ smokepowder barrels.
@TurnersTea One of the chapters is literally titled "exploit whatever you can". Having said that, I did both encounters on Honour head on (ofc i still abused barrels elsewhere, like goblin camp, creche, and balthazar). I was also constantly swapping characters for story (like Wyll for Iron Throne and Ansur, Shadowheart for Gauntlet of Shar, etc.) without swapping equipment and keeping companions tied to their original class (albeit with multiclassing), and since i didnt rob vendors blind i was suffering from equipment poverty, so throw me a bone here.
Counterpoint - there are encounters you can talk your way out of and still get full XP/loot (lot of act 2). But point taken - for ones where you know the outcome is a fight and you don’t have a paladin and have to worry about violating your oath, surprise is the way to goz
@HuyNguyen-ck7hl good point! Totally agree; i know what encounters you mean. For those, what i ended up doing was prep and positioning for a fight in case dialogue fails. Only had to fight doc, but we had them surrounded 😏
@@TurnersTeaI’m for sure not touching house of hope nor grief in my 1st honor run. I’m doing it for the dice first; on my 2nd run, I’ll flesh everything out properly 😂
@@FreeAtlas.I cheesed the house of grief on balanced mode bc of how much I was struggling with it lmao. I’ll definitely be either cheesing it still or hoping my current build will annihilate everyone (there’s a good chance tbh, I’ve got a monk who can disable 4 enemies per turn and deals fuckin 30 damage per unarmed strike lmao)
Your herbalist hireling should also be set up as your breakfast buffer. Make sure you send everyone out with a death ward, heroes feast, poison resistance and aid without using a single party resource
In addition to what you listed, I also use hirelings for longstrider, freedom of movement, and mage armor (for those without armor). Imthen I have the hirelings and one camper use false life to increase their hit points before they ward-bond my party. Plus I always have a wizard give Tav transmutation stone for constitution.
It took me 3 attempts to complete honour mode. First one ended in the creche, had a really unlucky round in a fight and died to just some random guy while leaving. Second one was embarrassing... I had essentially completed act 1 and was cleaning up. I went to the big spider matriarch and killed it. Then had a dialogue I'd never encountered before where they talk about jumping down the hole...then, rather than casting feather fall...I misty stepped into the hole...without splitting the party so they all dived in after me....very silly party wipe. But my third playthrough I managed to get all the way to the end and get my golden dice and honestly it was the most fun playthrough I've ever had. All this to say yeah it's scary to do it and you might mess up but honestly it's sooooo do-able! So if you're tempted, have a go! I believe in you! I wish I had had these tips before hand though, would have made it easier! 😂
I feel less stupid now for dying in Act I. I guess its better than a TPK in Act III! If i ever get there it will be truly high stakes. Hard to remember that it doesn’t really matter. It is amazing how easily humans can assign arbitrary value to almost anything! i guess that is required for any successful game since God invented dice.
Honestly I still think Act 1 was the hardest act in honour mode so never feel bad about dying there! By the time I got halfway through act 2 my builds were strong enough to deal with most things provided I planned what I was doing next and didn't rush ahead. You also have so many back ups at that point too like scrolls, elixirs and barrels. There are also very few instant deaths (like jumping down holes or annoying githyanki goddesses) after act 1. So honestly as long as you plan your encounters for act 2 and 3 you'll have a much easier time than in act 1.
I too had three tries. First time (Gale origin) I died ... at Orin's fight. Which was the last fight before going to the morphic pool. That sucked. I finished the run anyways to see the epilogue The second (Astarion origin) I restarted after accidentally aggroing the druids (I used Friends on Kagha and forgot it counts as an attack when the spell runs out). I could've ran but I was just an hour or so in so decided to just restart The third (Astarion again) I won, although I had to savescum at one point; Karlach glitched off of an elevator at Shar's gauntlet, went to 0 HP from falling damage and stabilised out of borders, softlocking the game because I couldn't kill her, heal her or advance the story. So I forced the game to crash. It sucks I had to do it but if I'm softlocked due to a glitch I think I deserve a second shot
I’m on run 3 now. First run I hit a detrimental glitch. I was coming up from the Kua Toa encounter in the under dark and a mushroom stalk exploded before my screen even loaded and it blasted my entire party off the loading ledge that I just climbed up from. Instant TPK
Kind of a niche tip, but specifically having a Duergar in your party is a massive boon in completing Honor Mode. The permanent invisibility cantrip makes stealing from NPCs and containers trivial. Being able to activate Invisibility on demand in any combat means you can escape if theres going to be a wipe. They are also just generally good with all the resistances they have.
Halfling is super valuable as a face / skill monkey admittedly so if I wanted a duergar I'd use the hireling. Every race has a 5% chance to automatically fail rolls. Halflings have 0.25% chance. It almost never happens.
You are the only BG3 youtuber I watch because you are "low-anxiety." You keep things simple and you seem to be aware that your audience could easily feel overwhelmed, so you are attentive to information overload and you deliberately do not exploit dopamine and adrenaline for views like so many TH-camrs. Thank you.
I beat it a few days ago simply by not doing all the big fights, no forge, no devil, no Gith etc.. also used high charisma bard to talk through other fights. Then at end used Gale to go up alone and sacrifice himself meaning no end or brain fight after sneaking to climb end point. Toughest point I found was the dead bone god, but keep him blind and made it past him.
No one says this, but respec Gale as a full Cleric and have him cast Warding Bond and Death Ward on your entire party in camp. Then just leave him in camp and itll persist and you can take your normal characters with you, despite him not being in your party. At later levels, you can cast the full food spell too to increase your party health (including summons!) And make everything immune to poison.
honor mode is so amazing because it makes everything matter, it makes your choices, your skills matter. it feels more real and it never goes the same way twice, no matter how much you may have planned it lol. my current run i was going to use wyll, but he got crit at the gate xD
Some of the best advice I’ve seen for honor mode.Preparation, planning and your knowledge of the game will get you through those unlucky dice rolls. I cleared my honor mode run thinking it was gonna be my last play through of the game, but i had so much with it that I can’t seem to stop playing this game, i just wish Larian would let us play with the honor mode rule set, but without the single save file once we beat it, tactician is now way too easy for me.
You kinda can do that already just recreate the settings in custom difficulty. Pretty sure some settings you can make even harder than Honour Mode (merchant prices and supply requirements for resting for instance)
@@00SmileTime00Yes, plus don't being able to see passive dice rolls and skill checks. Now you can also push down the advantage multipliers for you and push it up for enemies, while Multiclassing isn't allowed 😈 Or you try some sort of Nutzlock (making it harder with your own rules). So you may not be allowed to revive teammates with scrolls and Withers (just with skills). Or you are only allowed to level up ONE character, once you have defeated a boss with legendary actions. So you have to choose wisely! 😈
Another tip would be: avoid squad wipes through text options; vlaakith can just murder your whole party if you antagonize her, and gale's orb has dangers around it too
I really hate that Gale orb ability. I almost failed at my honor run because of it. I was flying around with Gale, the detonate button was next to the fly button, I pressed it and almost confirmed the cast before realising what Inwas about to do. Why is there a game over button anyways? Just to troll the player?
@@exantiuse497 that's why you should just unlock ability tab click the big bad red button and scroll it out of the ability tab, and unless you manualy put it back, you'll never have to worry about that
Honour mode is easily the most underrated part of this game. Sure, it can be infuriating but it is easily one of the biggest challenges in any game, and there are so many insanely interesting strategies since you actually have to pay full attention to all of the systems in the game. I love how some of the strategies are like "Hire a potion brewer to stay in your camp and brew potions for you" or "Pickpocket the god of the dead so he can make your party immortal for free". It really brings out the best this game has to offer, especially since every choice is now permanent, it opens so many doors for players who usually savescum.
The tip I took the most to heart after playing D&D for 5 years and BG3 6 times over is to take your time. The game gets way harder if you try to speedrun through each area. Explore, loot, sell, experiment, and simply take your time. Homework helps, but pacing yourself helps infinitely more. If you have free time, play through an easier difficulty and make a road map of the items and quests you need first by difficulty of acquisition and by when you need it. Leveling is highly forgiving since you can respec. Lastly, when in doubt, save and close out/alt+f4. No shame in save-scumming an un-scummable save.
A Warding bond cleric is huge in honor mode. You can take Heavy Armour Master as your first feat and in the Grymforge you can make a set of Adamantine Splint Armour which almost doubles your party's survivability for the rest of the game.
Even better, get yourself 3 cleric hirelings and leave em at camp. They cast warding bond, freedom of movement, heros feast, aid, and a whole bunch of other useful spells for your party at no detriment.
Another option would be to use a Light Domain Cleric with the Luminous Armor or if you need more AC, Yuan-Ti armor (then Armor of Agility) and max your dex. 20AC from the armor alone, then your shield etc. If you use the Luminous armor though it helps spread the -1 to attack from dealing radiant damage that stacks. Almost tpked myself in the shadow trails because the shadow cleric had this stuff on and all the radiant damage it was doing gave my a 0% chance to hit.
@@christopherbohan1451 Odd....I judt did the warding bond thing when fighting Orin at the Temple. You can't camp there, and I didn't have any issue with game crashing
A bunch of good tips here! Only one thing I disagree with but I’ll add a few things to help as well. 1. Play as a Bard! There’s no bard companion and the persuasion checks (which are so common) are much easier. 2. Dark-Urge is the strongest character. This is because you can get the Bhaalist armour if you follow the first few steps of the storyline - you don’t even have to become Bhaal’s unholy assassin to get it! This mixed with some ranger/swords bard build is unbelievably OP. Chuck the armour on a cleric (use dash but don’t end turn, switch character, shoot the enemy with the debuff, move the cleric again and repeat). This works really well if you have ‘alert’ on the cleric so you can strike first. 3. Use the stormshore tabernacle early on for your 4 party characters. A permanent +2 to all savings throws is so low-key strong. You don’t even have to be that rich to get it; just cast fog cloud to get into the basement after donating enough for the initial buff on one character - steal it with another character - remove the curse kill the deva - rinse and repeat. Disagreement: The video mentions that you should prepare your boss battles (which I agree with) but he says that you shouldn’t rely on specific gear or the mirror of loss. This isn’t logical as you can basically take steps to guarantee you get specific gear and some builds kind of need specific gear to work (e.g nyrulna for throwing builds). With the mirror of loss you can basically guarantee it: respec into 4 knowledge cleric/1 bard/6 wild magic sorcerer for each character before using it (and max int) so you have like +17 for each check with advantage. You can prepare everything in this game which is why it’s mostly knowledge rather than skills based
It's act three only but with ranger 5/rogue + assassin 3 you're still very strong if you use the titanstring bow with strength elixirs and use the hunter's mark bonus action. This falls off in act 3 though since you can't ambush a lot of battles@@ljthompson3011
@@ljthompson3011 some SPOILERS involved, I'll try to avoid heavy details (unless important) so you can still enjoy the questline to some extent. In Act 3 you will get the quest to investigate serial killings (hint: go to Open Hand Temple in Rivington, the starting town of Act 3, to start it ASAP). Follow the quest as it leads you. The most important part is to get the list of the killer's victims. When you're in Baldur's Gate proper, either stop the killer at one of his victims (all marked on the map) or (if you're indulgent Dark Urge/generally evil) kill a couple victims from his list before he gets to them himself. Either method will get you the location to go to have an audience with the Murder Tribunal (hint: if you have Jaheira and Minsc, don't take them with you for that part, they may go aggro at the tribunal thus ruining your chances for the armor). Once there, choose to become Bhaal's Assassin and kill the victim they have prepared for you (it may involve a deception roll if you're not a Dark Urge and haven't actually killed any victim from the killer's list yourself). This will unlock a new vendor in that location with many assassin-themed items, including Bhaalist Armor (permanent piercing vulnerability aura - it does bug out sometimes after resting or going uncoscious, but you just need to turn it off and on again in passives to get it back).
another tip that can go with using your actions in the right sequence, if one character has an elixir of bloodlust and you can attack with several of your characters, maybe attempt to weaken an enemy with the characters who aren't using the bloodlust elixir, then finish the enemy off with the character that is using it, allowing them to get another action to swing at a different enemy.
I had so much hard time the first times I tried honor mode. Misclick and agro the gob camp. Misclick and charmed a tiefling in the grove turning everyone red. Looting a dead Druid after killing Khaki. Had a crash on my save (ps5). The fight where so difficult I run out of money. Until I used a quasit and use surprise attacks in very combat. Playing a bard for my face party and knowing that if you don’t take the eye surgery Volo stays in your camp and you can steal everything from him without any negative consequence. Solved my money problem. I start know with Ethel as a main vendor giving her 400 gold first and stack 20 hill giant potions. The game now is very much easier and I succeed to go level 4. And be safe and rich for the first time. Time to go to under dark with your advice with a lone character and feather fall. Thanks !
Just to let you guys know, you get the forbidden knowledge from necromancy of thay even if you fail every saving throw for it, you just get a curse you can remove. To extend this, you can offer the forbidden knowledge get the +2 from mirror of loss without a roll, so you can guarantee it on one person
That being said you can't scum in honor mode and forbidden Knowledge is a very good buff. I actually reccomend keeping it and going for the mirror. You can remove the debuffs anyways. The 25 wisdom DC is annoying but if you keep some inspiration and respec into a Cleric with max wisdom your odds are a lot better with Bless, Guidance.
In the Shadow Cursed lands, have a cleric back at camp ALWAYS cast "Daylight" on every character. When they are high enough level, also cast "Freedom of Movement", "Death Ward". Always have a character pre-cast longstrider. Daylight on your characters removes the need for a torch, and keeps shadow monsters like wraiths, etc. from shadowmelding. GET THE LUMINOUS ARMOR in the Selunite Shrine that is somewhat hiding on a shelf but easy 100% risk free to get. It causes "Radiant Shockwave' and time a characer wearing it does radiant damage. One Shadowheart light cleric running Spirit Guardians having mobs charge her can max out 10 stacks of Radiant orb on an entire GROUP of enemies. That is a - 10 to hit AND save for every monster at those stacks. They'll fail any saving throw for any spell, they'll fail hitting every round... A good example- in the Last Light Inn, protecting Isobel, just have Shadowheart stand on top of Isobel with her wearing this armor. Isovel will never get hit. And so on and so forth, lol.
I just did my first playthrough on honor mode (wiped at end of act 2) and it is by FAR the best experience I have ever had playing this game. I was literally on the edge of my seat for some dice rolls and everything I did mattered. Very fun, highly recommend.
A small precision on resetting vendor inventories by respeccing a character to lvl 1: you don't want to do that on the character you talk to the vendor with, as his level will determine the quality of the items that are spawned.
I finished my Honour play-through recently using a Vengeance Paladin, a Storm Sorcerer with 2 levels on Tempest Cleric, Battlemaster Fighter, and a Moon Druid. My two best suggestions for anyone in Honour mode are: first, know exactly what your party is capable of and always try to set yourself up to take advantage of those abilities, and second, potions of speed are your best friend (exploit the fact that you can huddle up and speed buff your entire party with a single throw) if you want to win battles within 1-2 rounds. Other than that, avoid obviously poor decisions (unless it’s all part of the plan, I guess) and above all have fun!
10:25 for the hireling alchemist, I also give her light, longstrider, + mage armour as cantrip/spells so she can buff allies after their long rest (and then wait behind at camp)
Easiest way for me was to use the legendary Sharran spear from Act 2 on at least one character. Most legendary actions added by Honour Mode are negated by the Blinded status. Reactions in general are hindered by the lack of sightline from Darkness. The spear allows you to cast darkness once per Turn, letting you ignore many boss mechanics almost entirely. Act 3's Wyrm's Crossing boss has a huge lightning damage reaction - denied entirely. Cazador's vampiric swarm? Never triggers. Outside of casting that spell, the game felt like Tactician...
Sharran Shadowheart best Shadowheart. Arguably the more honorable playthrough as it was Shar that went through the trouble of obtaining Shadowheart meanwhile you beat the game trying for a Selunite Shadowheart and she doesn’t give you crap lol
Reminds me of an early playthrough on tactician, after the Shar temple, my normal party would be Shadowheart as a full class cleric with the spear and the cannot be blinded shar equipment and just myself, a drow warlock. Just cast darkness around yourself plus maybe an extra with the other character and not a lot can happen. For the tougher fights I took one more random character with a not blinded ring. Eased it through.
Until it is patched: When you are trading with a vendor, you can sell them empty containers, like crates or bags and then, in the trading mode, you can (only with the char who initiated the talking) open these containers and shift-pull all of the traders stock into it. Then, per long rest or level up, they will still restock! And once you are satisfied, take your favorite barbarian and carry them far away (improvised weapon and then right click, before you throw them). There, turn of non-lethal, knock them out, send your container straight to camp. If done right, after your next long rest, they are not even hostile! Easiest infinite money glitch so far. Works best with traders you are about to kill anyway (Zhentarim, Moonrise, etc)
I should point out that you are playing with fire if you have Astarion bite hirelings, at least once Aylin is in your camp. I literally had my latest honor mode run get completely fucked over, just because I had Astarion nibble on a hireling in camp. This made Aylin just lose her shit, and she turned on Astarion. When I had him defend himself, this just turned the camp into a war-zone: Wyll and Mizora? Gone forever. Shadowheart, Karlach, Gale, the Owlbear-Cub, Volo, Scratch, Halsin, Aylin, and Isabelle? All out for my blood. I don't even want to revisit that, and try to salvage it, as it just look completely hopeless. I have since started another run, but yeah. If anyone actually does read this, remember, having Astarion nibble on others in camp is a gamble.
My bit of advice: in normal modes, traps are an annoyance that can occasionally be run through with no problems, but in Honor Mode, they are absolutely lethal and cannot be ignored. Especially in the early game. Always have your highest Dex character scout our new areas to locate and disarm traps.
Ive gotten 2 playthroughs in with different team compositions trying to see what items are great and stuff. Having fun playing so many different classes and having to think outside the box so when it comes to honor mode hopefully i can have a plethora of knowledge
Comment for the algorithm, I made it to the final battle and it was messy out of the world, balanced mode even though my first play through but I literally lost in the most unfortunate way - my biggest respect to every succeeding in honor mode
Great video. 1 thing people should be aware of as i found it the hard way. If a character is wearing the constitution amulet and you swap to the amulet of wound closure you can actually lose hit points in the long run. You dont get the hp from the con bonus filled until you rest.
Tip from my run: 1. Have a druid in your party. Makes saving Arabella from the druids easier, and makes the grymforge guardian easier. Just drink a colossus potion, turn into an owlbear, and jump on top of it from above. Kills it in one hit. 2. have a potion/scroll of invisibility on you at all times in case a fight goes bad. 3. be stingy with inspiration. I saved mine for the gnolls to turn them against each other. save them for the rolls that matter. 4. Myrkul will be the toughest fight. You gotta stop him from healing, so I gathered arrows of ilmater.
In honor mode, you can’t abuse save-loading, but you can absolutely abuse respeccing. Not sure if you’ll get hag’s hair? Respec if you get it. Not sure if you’ll trigger mirror of loss? Respec your character to a 20 Int bard with religion expertise and cast enhance ability and guidance, then Respec back once you get the buff. Etc etc.
I know this video is old but if you focus Brinna only on raising her wizard and bard levels you can have her with the spell that gives her advantage in wisdom rolls, use another character to give her guidance, summon transmuter stones (support/utility) and her minimum medicine roll will always be of: 2 + 8 + 1 (guidance) + 4 (Wisdom 18/Int 18) = 15 (You could get an extra of 1d4 (Shapeshifter ring) + 1 (Wis prof) Raising wisdom to 20 and using disguise self) The only way to fail would be with 4 consecutive critical failures: "On a roll with advantage that succeeds on a 2 or more, Halfling Luck would reduce the chance to fail from 1/400 to 1/160000, making it practically impossible to fail. With Karmic Dice active, it may be simply impossible to roll 4 critical failures in a row."
My honor mode run was my first completion, and we did almost all the fights, that kind of helped us more cuz we had a ton of exp and were high levels entering a new act. Like at the start of act 3 we had just left rivington and we were level 11.
Do NOT bite someone in camp with Astarion if you have Dame Ayelin in camp. She will kick off and it's hard to not kill her in some camps as there is no exit. Apparently the oathbreaker doesn't like it either.
Use a camp cleric and hirelings to hand out extra bonuses. A hireling casting warding bond will protect a party member while not needing to be in the party, granting resistance to all damage without costing any resources in the party.
Love the tips, currently one explorer, two balanced, and three tactician runs in hoping to give honour mode a shake. I swore I wouldn’t try anything above balanced when I first got the game but after completing tactician I fell in love with character building and just general theory-crafting. Excited to put these tips into action, but also nervous thank u mr.tuber
A good DPS build is a Palock pact of the blade. You will have three attacks by end of act 2. Warlock spell slots refill on a short rest. Have a bard in the party for song of rest. Have someone be able to cast haste. That’s a possible 6 smites. With the right equipment and positioning, you can almost one shot any enemy/boss in the game. And if not you can gain two more smites back and do it again. Also CAMP CLERICS. Just like having a camp alchemist. Get some camp clerics and max their HP as much as possible. You only need them to cast bonding ward and aid. Do this after every long rest and you’ll have extra hp, all damage is reduced by half and make sure someone can cast long strider so everyone has that extra movement. These are all things allowed in the game. Some think it’s cheating, but it’s a work smarter not harder kind of thing.
I love that you're always upfront about the little things like "this is not a current honor mode save" and such, idk why they do but a lot of creators try to hide those things. Earned a sub from me
I just beat honor mode couple hours ago. Honestly everything gets so much easier once you hit lvl 5. You can hit lvl 5 before you even go to act 2. If anyone needs any tips here are mine 1:Play the game how you want, honestly you can choose whatever class, I was a paladin oath breaker. 2:Don’t be afraid to long rest. Honestly there’s plenty of food throughout the whole game, it’s only hard at the beginning. 3: collect barrels, like oil barrels and etc. they’ll help. 4: the hardest boss is fucking Raphael and that Githyanki FUCK in the mountain pass! The githyanki has a legendary action he can use like twice per round after he gets attacked. Man he almost did me in, tbh he was more of a pain than Raphael. Basically, watch out for those foos. Best way to deal with them is a good ole rune powder barrel
Play 3 ppl party with 4th being in camp ALWAYS. He can ressurect anyone at any time - 200 gold price is nothing so your game will never end if party is beaten. There are just 2 places where you can't do this: Act 2 final area, Act 3 final area; (House of Hope too but you can skip it) . So just two boss zones. If you are in doubt, use barrelmancy to defeat bosses. One barrel of smokepowder does avr. 30-35 force damage (50 max if lucky). Carry some of these with your STR character (or drink STR elixir). Drop several near the boss (dropping doesn't cost an action), plus, if you like, some grenades/smokepowder bags. Explode these with fire arrow (or fire bomb or fire spell) from the distance. For the last boss in A3 you can drop fireworks as well - there is a place (Felogyr's Fireworks) where you can get tons of them.
on your Potion maker, pick up long strider from wizard. 1 rogue for expertise, then cleric for aid AND enhance ability (for advantage on the checks). and now it's your aid/longstrider/potion bot. at 8 you do 2wiz/3bard/3cleric and you have max spell slots
Maximizing trade: if you plan on killing that merchant: Meet them ASAP Sell them a container Put all their inventory in the bag every day. This refreshes gold and items. Pull after every long rest until you killed them. We're doing a coop evil durge honor run, we have a combined 20k and we haven't even gone to the creche yet, and we still have a combined 38k we need to sell. In the meantime, vacuum, sell what you can, buy what you need, steal what you can, bag everything, kill, profit🤷♂️
Also another probably more well known tip: Having a wizard or some spell casing hireling that can cast Longstrider on your entire party is huge. Its a ritual spell that is just free 3m of movement that lasts until long rest. It doesnt sound like much but that little bit of movement can mean the difference between being able to hit something or hiding to avoid being in LoS to avoid being hit. Also, in regards to save scum, you kind of can, though its not as easy as just reloading the last save and you have to reload the whole game. Do you need to do a full long rest or can you long rest without using food? I know you can respec basically for free with withers because you can just steal from him, but if you can just long rest without actually using food that would be my preference rather than just respecing/leveling.
@Chronal-Rend Right, that I know, but if you long rest without food will it cause the vendors inventories to cycle or only long rest with food. Id rather not have a hireling and respect and level to cause the vendors items to cycle if I can just long rest without food.
(I have not done honor mode) your herbalist can be the longstrider caster - also make use of the characters left behind for spells without concentration like poison resistance and I think freedom of movement, etc. if you make your warding cleric a few levels of abjuration wizard they will survive the warding,
Something that you did kinda show in this video but I don’t think you actually mentioned is the importance of initiative. In regular DnD initiative is already important - if you can kill an enemy or shut them down before they can do anything, you reduce the danger in any encounter by a ton. In BG3 this is exacerbated by two big factors. (1) Initiative is rolled on a d4 instead of a d20, which almost completely negates variance and makes the Alert feat basically guarantee that you go first, and (2) you know the enemy’s AC, you know their saving throws and you know how much HP they have left, which means you can choose which enemy you want to kill or shut down and know your odds with almost perfect accuracy. If you add surprise rounds to this (which is not super hard to achieve) or use one or two rounds to precast your 10-turn buffs, you trivialize all non-boss and non-scripted encounters the game can throw at you.
Vendors: I was really puzzled lately when I realized that my Seldarine Drow did get far worse prices at vendors than any other party member -- despite not having bad charisma. She had basically a discount of 0%, where others had 14% or more. I think, you have to live with it, when you are a Seldarine. I think, Laezel also does not get so favorable prices, maybe better let the High Elf make the deals ....
Act 1 is the "hardest" act, as if you have a high charisma character for act 2, you can skip a lot of boss fights. Act 3 you get access to so many broken items. My main goal for act 3 was to get the weave items for Gale to get him an Enchantment master with a spell save DC of 28. Trivialized so many fights when he can lock down the boss with Tasha's Hideous Laughter at 100% success
For an alchemy bot you don't need rogue, bard is fine and that way it can cast enhance ability on itself (I use shadowheart so i don't want to waste her spell slots on this), you do want to use shadowheart or someone else to cast guidance though, and of course craft everything while in turn based mode.
Always enter turn-based mode before doing anything risky. My first "proof of honor" was awarded because Astarion failed to disarm the fire trap guarding Shadowheart's spear of only missing every second attack.
I’m just here to master the normal difficulty lmao I just beat easymode and I’m honestly kinda proud about that so now it’s time to actually understand the game better
Moonbeam/Sanctuary build is OP for honormode. You can use/move moonbeam while you're in sanctuary, without breaking it. There are also a lot of items that have aoe effects like blood of lathander mace you can put on your sanctuary character, so they walk around blinding/illuminating people, and they can't attack you cuz you're in sanctuary. ALSO, gale heals himself whenever he's not in your party...so you have him cast warding bond on your main tank(make gale a cleric) and then leave him in your camp, so he can take the warding bond dmg and then heal himself back up(max his con) and that makes a HUGE difference in how much that tank can tank. Also....build a beefy tank that takes all the damage, and then make a kind of glass cannon type character that uses invis/fog/greater invis, to keep them from being a target or to escape if they become a target. And then with your sanctuary moonbeam character....you have 2 damage characters that basically can't be targeted, and one character that tanks everytrhing. A great build for tank is going the luminous tank route. where when they miss you, you do 1d4 radiant dmg in an aoe around you. put on blur/mirror image/shield spell/lucky feat, and you can basically make sure they always miss. as they group up around you and 10 characters all miss you back to back, thats 10d4 radiant dmg that radiates from you hitting everything thats grouped up on you. Additionally, you can use the polearm/sentinel with the radiant polearm you get for saving the nightsong, to do/stack more radiant dmg, at range. Basically, super specializing each of your characters is huge. jack of all trades isn't as helpful(unless you're going a dex bard for steal/face to make sure you pass all possible checks) you want someone who can super tank and someone who can super buff and someone who can super damage. ANd you want to reduce the luck from the game. get the lucky feat, get the shield spell, get the portent dice, anything that helps you reroll or pick a different outcome for yourself. OH! Half orc race is very good also. They have the racial ability of coming back to life if they die, do extra dmg when they crit, and dark vision. And a super charismatic half-orc is AWESOME! lolol
I freely steal by having advantage on thief checks, and always grabbing potions of invisibly. If my thief gets caught he just goes invisible, and walks out of the area. Turn around and go right back to stealing again. The illusion cantrip can help reposition the room to find an opening and I go into turn mode and just start grabbing everything.
Agree with all except abandoning RP. Don't abandon fun for efficiency. My current playthrough has Lae'zel in the party, I knew doing the Zaith'isk was risky due to the penalties, but I still did it, and it was so much fun winning that roll to get her out.
Currently act 2. Im running sorcadin Tav, Life Shart, Abjuration Gale, and Open Hand Lae zel or Throw Karlach. Only close call so far was Balthasar. Ghouls paralysed 2 chars right off the bat. Had to use almost all my potions to finish the fight 😂
Great video! One improvement I would suggest would be to give the herbalist brewer only 1 level in rogue before spending the rest of the levels in cleric. This is so that the alchemist can source their own enhance ability spell. Also, for your feats I would recommend ASI +WIS +WIS.
Боже, чувак... Ты здорово облегчил мне игру, своей фишкой с торгашами. Теперь, имеет смысл хоть ингредиенты скупать. Я думал товар обновляется только с долгим отдыхом или повышением уровня... Здорово 👏✊👍
A 12fighter/edlritch knight using radiant polearm and polearm master/sentinel with all the luminous armor/equipment is an extremely potent tank that still dishes out a lot of damage, while being a tank. the blur and mirror image spells are a MUSTinvis and greater invis are HUGE. there is a LOT of equipment in act 1 that you can build around, that you can effectively use all the way to the end of the game. ALSO, keep one of your 4 party members in camp...if one of your players isn't even there... you can't TPK. Resurrect them, then steal the gold back from withers. besides, making one of your party members a super buff spell monster, is a great way to economize your team, so all your members going into the fight can be full damage monsters to make short work of a fight, instead of having a bunch of turns taken up healing/buffing, etc. There is also an amazing dual wielding abj wizard tank that uses like 4 multiclasses to be extremely OP. Look into that build. and there is a super bard/rogue build that firesparks has that is extremely potent as well. Titanstring bow is OP ASFK. I'm using it now and it is just one shotting everything in act 1 on tactician. lol
I've completed honour mode 3 times, once with a solo run, currently on my 4th with a Durge Githyanki Barbarian party face and having possibly the easiest time with dialogue options
All great tips, many of theese are indeed things I would have benefited a lot from knowing from the start of my honor mode run (I eventually figure it out for pretty much all of theese but yeah lost some gold and had to figure out how to escape a fight for the frist time in my honor run).. One more I'll add is to tailor your builds for the moment of the game you are at, I heard someone advise to have your party set-up in a way that your builds have different power spike tresholds so you always have 1 or two strong characters to "carry" the weaker ones until they come online, I totally disagree with that, there's no need to "carry" weaker characters at any point, re-spec as needed to ensure all 4 members of your party are always strong, if a build doesn't come online till like level 8 then don't go for it from the start and hinder your team, play something that is strong earlier and then re-spec once you hit that level.
Example.. From levels 2-4 my cleric is almost always Nature Domain, why? because it gets spike growth at level 3 which is massive (druids also get it but honesstly nature domain cleric does it better, at least early on) at level 5 my Ranger can pick-up the spike growth so I usually re-spec my cleric there to Light or something like that. Or I really like Sword bard archer builds but imo they aren't that good unitl level 8 (for 6 bard and 2 figher) so I started as bard cause I like the early conversaiton but re-specced to warlock mid-way trough level 4 to do the difficult fights and keeping it warlock until at least level 6 but more likely 7 or 8. (this is my 2nd honor playtrough)
Another easy way to heal. Have a hireling be a druid and just make goodberries and use Longstrider after each long rest. Good berries help with little bit of healing and heal some effects
One thing I’d say is don’t sleep on wizards they can learn spells from any scroll in the early game you can learn the scroll to summon shovel which is useful the whole game since he can go invisible for free and inflict the surprised effect on most enemies also the versatility of a wizard is crazy heck they can even tank a max level abjuration wizard is the best tank in the game and they also help the team by reducing damage to them using a reaction
I cleared a few times on easy then finished my tactician run last night.. think I'm finally ready to attempt honor mode :P appreciate the tips especially around the vendors and improving herbalism because I didn't bother with any of that so far
I'm on my 4th HM run. Githyeeted at level 5. Swords bard as a party face means I get persuasion, sleight of hand, two-weapon fighting and two one-handed crossbows with sharpshooter. By level 4 my max damage in one turn can be about 50. Dearh warding everybody in my camp as well. For context, I use easy mode even when I'm taking a leak, that's how good bg3 is.
the biggest issue I have with honor mode is that I have played the Game trough at least 8 times and never ONCE without a bug that screwed something up. Be it starting a fight with an npc after the actual fight is long over (Karlach jumping to me automaticaly in owlbear form after last light, comes to mind as a "Oh f you game" moment) or a Character that got stuck mid air on a jump and im not willing to spend 100 hours of meticulous planning and hard work into something a bug can rip away from me
Gotta re-sign Cleveland. I’d love to get Robert Hunt and Connor Williams. Still try to land someone like Frazier in the draft. They might be planning to move Anton back to LT and draft a tackle. It all might be overkill, but it’s a good area to over invest in.
Honor mode is probably the only mode where min-maxing is expected, _encouraged_ even. You don't need to do it, but when save-scumming is disabled, you gotta what you gotta do. Imo, you gotta try the mode at least once.
Man, you should check out the Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous game if you haven't already. Honor mode in BG3 has nothing on that game's Unfair difficulty; you are literally forced to minmax to stand a chance. I hope they make a difficulty setting as hard as that for this game too :)
I blind gameplayed BG3 in Honour mode and is not that difficult, expecially after you understand the DnD mechanics, accept your character current potential and decide be best roleplay options, manage your stuff and use all you have. Never save during battles or dialogues, since the game battles are scripted and enemies usually have weakspots it gets easy to plan before battle, always have someone ready to escape. Save-scumming the game by reseting the PC before gameover is an option, not recommended because sometimes you get savefile corrupt and lose your gameplay. Watch lot of these BG3 crash courses before playing also helps. 🤣
About the Herbalist Hireling: If you are at least level 8, go Wizard 4 Rogue 4 so you can grab 2 ASIs, push wisdom to 20 and get an even higher chance to pass that Medicine check.
My vendors of choice to stock up on before leaving act 1 are the three in the shroom colony in the under dark, plenty of materials of haste spores/potions, str potions, it was a little obscene by the time I was done and walking away with so many str pots by the end of my run I hadn't even used half of them 😂😅
Ok FINE. Second video I’ve watched of yours (the “upfront knowledge” speech is recognizable lol). I haven’t played honor mode and tbh I’m the kinda clown to never play the game and stay in Act one for 12 playthroughs but now I’m subscribed for if I ever do finally start an honor run.
I never did the Raph fight on my balanced or tac run, but I obliterated him with ease in my HM run… that bath that allows you to restore all your spell slots allowed me to maximise all my buffs to the extreme… plus shadow monk is OP
Wow after using camp alchemy for my whole Honor Mode run I just learned that you need max wisdom not Intelligence. I had casted Enhance ability Intelligence since its a Wizard special function. I got a double potion almost every time anyway when i used the lucky trait. I had much more than enough without maximizing wisdom. But I sure feel dumb.
I'm working on my honor mode now, and the one letting me down is shadowhart her damage is just disappointing and crowd control is lackluster. I'm gonna have to figure out a better build soon.
If you want some truly degenerate strategies - combat will pause as long as one of your characters hasn't ended their turn. So you can have another character escape combat, go to camp, pay to resurrect anyone who died, and then re-enter the combat.
I play Honour Mode to see the legendary actions and find a way to handle those. So I avoid spoilers. My Main is a Tempest Cleric/Storm Sorcerer. I use a FighterBarbarian Tavern Brawler Throwing Build on Laezel, Lockadin Wyll and Gloomstalker Assassin Astarion. So called overpowered Classes. But no Sword Bard or Open Hand Monk yet. I get stressed in the Owlbear Fight. Thought I would need Sanctuary for the Cup, but needed to save my run. Wyll was dead, Leazel and Astarion down, and the Owlbear Mum (with 3 LP left) just jumped up next to my Sorcerer lv 3. I had a 49% hit chance to kill it or lose. I chose Sanctuary, healed me and Leazel with throwing Potions. Wasn't honourable, but I did it! 😅
Seems like it would be wise, when you're doing the halfling hireling thing, instead of randomly clicking through the feats, to use the ASIs to get their wisdom stat to max.
My herbalist is also a bard and cleric. She prepare the party with Aid longtrider. I also hire another one that is a pure life cleric that can do aid death protection posion protection and Heroes feast.
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Some random tips from my own Honor Mode:
- consider rolling a Halfling or Half Orc, their racials might save your run
- be patient
- achieve surprise as much as possible, and have all or almost all characters with the Alert feat
- scrounge as much camp supply food as possible (HM needs 80, not 40, for long rests)
- learn to live with the consequences
- use overpowered builds like Tavern Brawler Monk
- use builds with good action economy like Bard or Fighter or Monk
- get to Level 4 without major combat, and try to be +1 level over all bosses
- a Tav or party face with high CHA and persuade skill, the best battles are the ones you don't have to fight
- avoid most/all optional bosses; Act 3 only requires killing Orin, Gale can activate the nuke
I agree with everything except the overpowered builds. You really don't need anything fancy if you follow the other tricks you gave. Personally, I beat honor mode with an Archfey Warlock, Karlach, Astarion and Shadowheart. No withers, 12 levels of their original class. If wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.
Does using gale's nuke in act 3 give the trophy ?
@@rafaelsouza-wj7kj Yes (but not in Act 2)
@@Marshal_Dunnik thank you very much! Just to be able to not fight The Elder brain is a relief.
how do u use gale’s nuke?
As someone who has completed Honour Mode, I will say this: avoid dialogues and immediately just surprise attack whenever possible. Max out on Aid, Hero's Feast, Longstrider, and Death Ward before starting your day. Abuse elixirs (I found most value from Vigilance and elemental resistance) and the most powerful class: barrelmancy. Raphael and Ansur got nothing on 36+ smokepowder barrels.
@TurnersTea One of the chapters is literally titled "exploit whatever you can". Having said that, I did both encounters on Honour head on (ofc i still abused barrels elsewhere, like goblin camp, creche, and balthazar). I was also constantly swapping characters for story (like Wyll for Iron Throne and Ansur, Shadowheart for Gauntlet of Shar, etc.) without swapping equipment and keeping companions tied to their original class (albeit with multiclassing), and since i didnt rob vendors blind i was suffering from equipment poverty, so throw me a bone here.
Counterpoint - there are encounters you can talk your way out of and still get full XP/loot (lot of act 2).
But point taken - for ones where you know the outcome is a fight and you don’t have a paladin and have to worry about violating your oath, surprise is the way to goz
@HuyNguyen-ck7hl good point! Totally agree; i know what encounters you mean. For those, what i ended up doing was prep and positioning for a fight in case dialogue fails. Only had to fight doc, but we had them surrounded 😏
@@TurnersTeaI’m for sure not touching house of hope nor grief in my 1st honor run. I’m doing it for the dice first; on my 2nd run, I’ll flesh everything out properly 😂
@@FreeAtlas.I cheesed the house of grief on balanced mode bc of how much I was struggling with it lmao. I’ll definitely be either cheesing it still or hoping my current build will annihilate everyone (there’s a good chance tbh, I’ve got a monk who can disable 4 enemies per turn and deals fuckin 30 damage per unarmed strike lmao)
Your herbalist hireling should also be set up as your breakfast buffer. Make sure you send everyone out with a death ward, heroes feast, poison resistance and aid without using a single party resource
In addition to what you listed, I also use hirelings for longstrider, freedom of movement, and mage armor (for those without armor). Imthen I have the hirelings and one camper use false life to increase their hit points before they ward-bond my party. Plus I always have a wizard give Tav transmutation stone for constitution.
It took me 3 attempts to complete honour mode.
First one ended in the creche, had a really unlucky round in a fight and died to just some random guy while leaving.
Second one was embarrassing... I had essentially completed act 1 and was cleaning up. I went to the big spider matriarch and killed it. Then had a dialogue I'd never encountered before where they talk about jumping down the hole...then, rather than casting feather fall...I misty stepped into the hole...without splitting the party so they all dived in after me....very silly party wipe.
But my third playthrough I managed to get all the way to the end and get my golden dice and honestly it was the most fun playthrough I've ever had.
All this to say yeah it's scary to do it and you might mess up but honestly it's sooooo do-able! So if you're tempted, have a go! I believe in you!
I wish I had had these tips before hand though, would have made it easier! 😂
I feel less stupid now for dying in Act I. I guess its better than a TPK in Act III! If i ever get there it will be truly high stakes. Hard to remember that it doesn’t really matter. It is amazing how easily humans can assign arbitrary value to almost anything! i guess that is required for any successful game since God invented dice.
Honestly I still think Act 1 was the hardest act in honour mode so never feel bad about dying there!
By the time I got halfway through act 2 my builds were strong enough to deal with most things provided I planned what I was doing next and didn't rush ahead. You also have so many back ups at that point too like scrolls, elixirs and barrels. There are also very few instant deaths (like jumping down holes or annoying githyanki goddesses) after act 1.
So honestly as long as you plan your encounters for act 2 and 3 you'll have a much easier time than in act 1.
Same jump to me lol
I too had three tries.
First time (Gale origin) I died ... at Orin's fight. Which was the last fight before going to the morphic pool. That sucked. I finished the run anyways to see the epilogue
The second (Astarion origin) I restarted after accidentally aggroing the druids (I used Friends on Kagha and forgot it counts as an attack when the spell runs out). I could've ran but I was just an hour or so in so decided to just restart
The third (Astarion again) I won, although I had to savescum at one point; Karlach glitched off of an elevator at Shar's gauntlet, went to 0 HP from falling damage and stabilised out of borders, softlocking the game because I couldn't kill her, heal her or advance the story. So I forced the game to crash. It sucks I had to do it but if I'm softlocked due to a glitch I think I deserve a second shot
I’m on run 3 now. First run I hit a detrimental glitch. I was coming up from the Kua Toa encounter in the under dark and a mushroom stalk exploded before my screen even loaded and it blasted my entire party off the loading ledge that I just climbed up from. Instant TPK
Kind of a niche tip, but specifically having a Duergar in your party is a massive boon in completing Honor Mode. The permanent invisibility cantrip makes stealing from NPCs and containers trivial. Being able to activate Invisibility on demand in any combat means you can escape if theres going to be a wipe. They are also just generally good with all the resistances they have.
dammit. just started a paladin hm and played for an hour and a half. was about to pick duergar. oops
Can't see myself rping a duegar? Is there such things as a good alignment duergar?
@@danialroslan15315e from what I understand has stepped away from the rigidity of the moral alignments, anyone can pretty much be anything now.
Halfling is super valuable as a face / skill monkey admittedly so if I wanted a duergar I'd use the hireling. Every race has a 5% chance to automatically fail rolls. Halflings have 0.25% chance. It almost never happens.
@@chrissy9997I’m currently doing halfling in an HM run and it doesn’t look like the rerolls are kicking in consistently.
You are the only BG3 youtuber I watch because you are "low-anxiety." You keep things simple and you seem to be aware that your audience could easily feel overwhelmed, so you are attentive to information overload and you deliberately do not exploit dopamine and adrenaline for views like so many TH-camrs.
Thank you.
I beat it a few days ago simply by not doing all the big fights, no forge, no devil, no Gith etc.. also used high charisma bard to talk through other fights. Then at end used Gale to go up alone and sacrifice himself meaning no end or brain fight after sneaking to climb end point. Toughest point I found was the dead bone god, but keep him blind and made it past him.
Gale- "But I don't wanna die..."
Me - : "When he Golden Dice are on the line, that's what your character would do...."
Gale- "But I don't wanna die..."
Me - : "When he Golden Dice are on the line, that's what your character would do...."
@@legitdragon6202
Total Lord Farquaad moment "Some of you may die..."
Have someone hit him with the hammer you get from the goblin merchant. Prevents him from healing when he absorbs the skellies
I haven't even beaten normal mode yet, I keep starting over
😂 I've been doing the same
Same lol i think my honor mode run is going to be the first playthrough i complete lmao
Same. I have 4 separate campaigns saved at lvl5. Just can't decide which class to finish the playthrough on.
Same. 5 campaigns. 3 stopped at Act 2. 2 at the Lower City
Same
No one says this, but respec Gale as a full Cleric and have him cast Warding Bond and Death Ward on your entire party in camp. Then just leave him in camp and itll persist and you can take your normal characters with you, despite him not being in your party. At later levels, you can cast the full food spell too to increase your party health (including summons!) And make everything immune to poison.
I just use a hireling for that purpose and keep Gale as a wizard. 🪄
@@bodinian gale heals himself at camp, hirelings do not
@@jonlucich2854 good point
honor mode is so amazing because it makes everything matter, it makes your choices, your skills matter. it feels more real and it never goes the same way twice, no matter how much you may have planned it lol. my current run i was going to use wyll, but he got crit at the gate xD
Lmao one one of my runs he attacked me after we killed the goblins amd I had to uncon him
I discovered that aladin can get his own grave and leave me alone!!
....he got 1 tapped...
Some of the best advice I’ve seen for honor mode.Preparation, planning and your knowledge of the game will get you through those unlucky dice rolls. I cleared my honor mode run thinking it was gonna be my last play through of the game, but i had so much with it that I can’t seem to stop playing this game, i just wish Larian would let us play with the honor mode rule set, but without the single save file once we beat it, tactician is now way too easy for me.
You kinda can do that already just recreate the settings in custom difficulty. Pretty sure some settings you can make even harder than Honour Mode (merchant prices and supply requirements for resting for instance)
Sadly you can’t add the honor mode rule set in custom mode, you can only do tactician @@00SmileTime00
Seems like Larian listened. Patch is coming in September.
@@00SmileTime00Yes, plus don't being able to see passive dice rolls and skill checks. Now you can also push down the advantage multipliers for you and push it up for enemies, while Multiclassing isn't allowed 😈 Or you try some sort of Nutzlock (making it harder with your own rules). So you may not be allowed to revive teammates with scrolls and Withers (just with skills). Or you are only allowed to level up ONE character, once you have defeated a boss with legendary actions. So you have to choose wisely! 😈
Another tip would be: avoid squad wipes through text options; vlaakith can just murder your whole party if you antagonize her, and gale's orb has dangers around it too
Vlaakith's easy to navigate. The inquisitor you have to fight is the problem. That motherfucker single-handedly demolished my best Honor run yet.
happend to me 🤣
Not me losing my honor mode run to Haarlep in the house of hope cause I wanted to see the scene
I really hate that Gale orb ability. I almost failed at my honor run because of it. I was flying around with Gale, the detonate button was next to the fly button, I pressed it and almost confirmed the cast before realising what Inwas about to do. Why is there a game over button anyways? Just to troll the player?
@@exantiuse497 that's why you should just unlock ability tab click the big bad red button and scroll it out of the ability tab, and unless you manualy put it back, you'll never have to worry about that
Honour mode is easily the most underrated part of this game. Sure, it can be infuriating but it is easily one of the biggest challenges in any game, and there are so many insanely interesting strategies since you actually have to pay full attention to all of the systems in the game.
I love how some of the strategies are like "Hire a potion brewer to stay in your camp and brew potions for you" or "Pickpocket the god of the dead so he can make your party immortal for free". It really brings out the best this game has to offer, especially since every choice is now permanent, it opens so many doors for players who usually savescum.
The tip I took the most to heart after playing D&D for 5 years and BG3 6 times over is to take your time. The game gets way harder if you try to speedrun through each area. Explore, loot, sell, experiment, and simply take your time. Homework helps, but pacing yourself helps infinitely more. If you have free time, play through an easier difficulty and make a road map of the items and quests you need first by difficulty of acquisition and by when you need it. Leveling is highly forgiving since you can respec. Lastly, when in doubt, save and close out/alt+f4. No shame in save-scumming an un-scummable save.
A Warding bond cleric is huge in honor mode. You can take Heavy Armour Master as your first feat and in the Grymforge you can make a set of Adamantine Splint Armour which almost doubles your party's survivability for the rest of the game.
Even better, get yourself 3 cleric hirelings and leave em at camp. They cast warding bond, freedom of movement, heros feast, aid, and a whole bunch of other useful spells for your party at no detriment.
Another option would be to use a Light Domain Cleric with the Luminous Armor or if you need more AC, Yuan-Ti armor (then Armor of Agility) and max your dex. 20AC from the armor alone, then your shield etc. If you use the Luminous armor though it helps spread the -1 to attack from dealing radiant damage that stacks. Almost tpked myself in the shadow trails because the shadow cleric had this stuff on and all the radiant damage it was doing gave my a 0% chance to hit.
@@christopherbohan1451that seems like a bug, which they are hopefully aware of and fixing
@@christopherbohan1451
Odd....I judt did the warding bond thing when fighting Orin at the Temple. You can't camp there, and I didn't have any issue with game crashing
@@TheMeanDMhe has no idea wtf he’s talking about lol
A bunch of good tips here! Only one thing I disagree with but I’ll add a few things to help as well.
1. Play as a Bard! There’s no bard companion and the persuasion checks (which are so common) are much easier.
2. Dark-Urge is the strongest character. This is because you can get the Bhaalist armour if you follow the first few steps of the storyline - you don’t even have to become Bhaal’s unholy assassin to get it! This mixed with some ranger/swords bard build is unbelievably OP. Chuck the armour on a cleric (use dash but don’t end turn, switch character, shoot the enemy with the debuff, move the cleric again and repeat). This works really well if you have ‘alert’ on the cleric so you can strike first.
3. Use the stormshore tabernacle early on for your 4 party characters. A permanent +2 to all savings throws is so low-key strong. You don’t even have to be that rich to get it; just cast fog cloud to get into the basement after donating enough for the initial buff on one character - steal it with another character - remove the curse kill the deva - rinse and repeat.
Disagreement: The video mentions that you should prepare your boss battles (which I agree with) but he says that you shouldn’t rely on specific gear or the mirror of loss. This isn’t logical as you can basically take steps to guarantee you get specific gear and some builds kind of need specific gear to work (e.g nyrulna for throwing builds). With the mirror of loss you can basically guarantee it: respec into 4 knowledge cleric/1 bard/6 wild magic sorcerer for each character before using it (and max int) so you have like +17 for each check with advantage. You can prepare everything in this game which is why it’s mostly knowledge rather than skills based
How do you get the bhaalist armor exactly im in act 2 rn
It's act three only but with ranger 5/rogue + assassin 3 you're still very strong if you use the titanstring bow with strength elixirs and use the hunter's mark bonus action. This falls off in act 3 though since you can't ambush a lot of battles@@ljthompson3011
@@ljthompson3011 some SPOILERS involved, I'll try to avoid heavy details (unless important) so you can still enjoy the questline to some extent.
In Act 3 you will get the quest to investigate serial killings (hint: go to Open Hand Temple in Rivington, the starting town of Act 3, to start it ASAP). Follow the quest as it leads you. The most important part is to get the list of the killer's victims.
When you're in Baldur's Gate proper, either stop the killer at one of his victims (all marked on the map) or (if you're indulgent Dark Urge/generally evil) kill a couple victims from his list before he gets to them himself. Either method will get you the location to go to have an audience with the Murder Tribunal (hint: if you have Jaheira and Minsc, don't take them with you for that part, they may go aggro at the tribunal thus ruining your chances for the armor).
Once there, choose to become Bhaal's Assassin and kill the victim they have prepared for you (it may involve a deception roll if you're not a Dark Urge and haven't actually killed any victim from the killer's list yourself). This will unlock a new vendor in that location with many assassin-themed items, including Bhaalist Armor (permanent piercing vulnerability aura - it does bug out sometimes after resting or going uncoscious, but you just need to turn it off and on again in passives to get it back).
@@Mordring appreciate you, very well explained and great attention to detail!! 🙏
another tip that can go with using your actions in the right sequence, if one character has an elixir of bloodlust and you can attack with several of your characters, maybe attempt to weaken an enemy with the characters who aren't using the bloodlust elixir, then finish the enemy off with the character that is using it, allowing them to get another action to swing at a different enemy.
I had so much hard time the first times I tried honor mode. Misclick and agro the gob camp. Misclick and charmed a tiefling in the grove turning everyone red. Looting a dead Druid after killing Khaki. Had a crash on my save (ps5). The fight where so difficult I run out of money. Until I used a quasit and use surprise attacks in very combat. Playing a bard for my face party and knowing that if you don’t take the eye surgery Volo stays in your camp and you can steal everything from him without any negative consequence. Solved my money problem. I start know with Ethel as a main vendor giving her 400 gold first and stack 20 hill giant potions. The game now is very much easier and I succeed to go level 4. And be safe and rich for the first time. Time to go to under dark with your advice with a lone character and feather fall. Thanks !
Just to let you guys know, you get the forbidden knowledge from necromancy of thay even if you fail every saving throw for it, you just get a curse you can remove.
To extend this, you can offer the forbidden knowledge get the +2 from mirror of loss without a roll, so you can guarantee it on one person
had no idea about the mirror of loss, that would be huge to be able to get around that nasty DC without scumming
That being said you can't scum in honor mode and forbidden Knowledge is a very good buff. I actually reccomend keeping it and going for the mirror. You can remove the debuffs anyways. The 25 wisdom DC is annoying but if you keep some inspiration and respec into a Cleric with max wisdom your odds are a lot better with Bless, Guidance.
In the Shadow Cursed lands, have a cleric back at camp ALWAYS cast "Daylight" on every character. When they are high enough level, also cast "Freedom of Movement", "Death Ward". Always have a character pre-cast longstrider.
Daylight on your characters removes the need for a torch, and keeps shadow monsters like wraiths, etc. from shadowmelding.
GET THE LUMINOUS ARMOR in the Selunite Shrine that is somewhat hiding on a shelf but easy 100% risk free to get. It causes "Radiant Shockwave' and time a characer wearing it does radiant damage. One Shadowheart light cleric running Spirit Guardians having mobs charge her can max out 10 stacks of Radiant orb on an entire GROUP of enemies. That is a - 10 to hit AND save for every monster at those stacks. They'll fail any saving throw for any spell, they'll fail hitting every round... A good example- in the Last Light Inn, protecting Isobel, just have Shadowheart stand on top of Isobel with her wearing this armor. Isovel will never get hit.
And so on and so forth, lol.
I just did my first playthrough on honor mode (wiped at end of act 2) and it is by FAR the best experience I have ever had playing this game. I was literally on the edge of my seat for some dice rolls and everything I did mattered. Very fun, highly recommend.
A small precision on resetting vendor inventories by respeccing a character to lvl 1: you don't want to do that on the character you talk to the vendor with, as his level will determine the quality of the items that are spawned.
I finished my Honour play-through recently using a Vengeance Paladin, a Storm Sorcerer with 2 levels on Tempest Cleric, Battlemaster Fighter, and a Moon Druid. My two best suggestions for anyone in Honour mode are: first, know exactly what your party is capable of and always try to set yourself up to take advantage of those abilities, and second, potions of speed are your best friend (exploit the fact that you can huddle up and speed buff your entire party with a single throw) if you want to win battles within 1-2 rounds. Other than that, avoid obviously poor decisions (unless it’s all part of the plan, I guess) and above all have fun!
10:25 for the hireling alchemist, I also give her light, longstrider, + mage armour as cantrip/spells so she can buff allies after their long rest (and then wait behind at camp)
Easiest way for me was to use the legendary Sharran spear from Act 2 on at least one character.
Most legendary actions added by Honour Mode are negated by the Blinded status. Reactions in general are hindered by the lack of sightline from Darkness. The spear allows you to cast darkness once per Turn, letting you ignore many boss mechanics almost entirely.
Act 3's Wyrm's Crossing boss has a huge lightning damage reaction - denied entirely. Cazador's vampiric swarm? Never triggers.
Outside of casting that spell, the game felt like Tactician...
Sharran Shadowheart best Shadowheart. Arguably the more honorable playthrough as it was Shar that went through the trouble of obtaining Shadowheart meanwhile you beat the game trying for a Selunite Shadowheart and she doesn’t give you crap lol
Ugh but yeah then I guess no Halsin, Jaheira or Minsc.
Reminds me of an early playthrough on tactician, after the Shar temple, my normal party would be Shadowheart as a full class cleric with the spear and the cannot be blinded shar equipment and just myself, a drow warlock. Just cast darkness around yourself plus maybe an extra with the other character and not a lot can happen. For the tougher fights I took one more random character with a not blinded ring. Eased it through.
Until it is patched: When you are trading with a vendor, you can sell them empty containers, like crates or bags and then,
in the trading mode, you can (only with the char who initiated the talking) open these containers and shift-pull all of the traders stock into it.
Then, per long rest or level up, they will still restock!
And once you are satisfied, take your favorite barbarian and carry them far away (improvised weapon and then right click, before you throw them).
There, turn of non-lethal, knock them out, send your container straight to camp.
If done right, after your next long rest, they are not even hostile!
Easiest infinite money glitch so far.
Works best with traders you are about to kill anyway (Zhentarim, Moonrise, etc)
I should point out that you are playing with fire if you have Astarion bite hirelings, at least once Aylin is in your camp. I literally had my latest honor mode run get completely fucked over, just because I had Astarion nibble on a hireling in camp. This made Aylin just lose her shit, and she turned on Astarion. When I had him defend himself, this just turned the camp into a war-zone: Wyll and Mizora? Gone forever. Shadowheart, Karlach, Gale, the Owlbear-Cub, Volo, Scratch, Halsin, Aylin, and Isabelle? All out for my blood. I don't even want to revisit that, and try to salvage it, as it just look completely hopeless.
I have since started another run, but yeah. If anyone actually does read this, remember, having Astarion nibble on others in camp is a gamble.
Thank you very much for warning! O.o Holy shit!
My bit of advice: in normal modes, traps are an annoyance that can occasionally be run through with no problems, but in Honor Mode, they are absolutely lethal and cannot be ignored. Especially in the early game. Always have your highest Dex character scout our new areas to locate and disarm traps.
Ive gotten 2 playthroughs in with different team compositions trying to see what items are great and stuff. Having fun playing so many different classes and having to think outside the box so when it comes to honor mode hopefully i can have a plethora of knowledge
Comment for the algorithm, I made it to the final battle and it was messy out of the world, balanced mode even though my first play through but I literally lost in the most unfortunate way - my biggest respect to every succeeding in honor mode
Great video. 1 thing people should be aware of as i found it the hard way. If a character is wearing the constitution amulet and you swap to the amulet of wound closure you can actually lose hit points in the long run. You dont get the hp from the con bonus filled until you rest.
Tip from my run:
1. Have a druid in your party. Makes saving Arabella from the druids easier, and makes the grymforge guardian easier. Just drink a colossus potion, turn into an owlbear, and jump on top of it from above. Kills it in one hit.
2. have a potion/scroll of invisibility on you at all times in case a fight goes bad.
3. be stingy with inspiration. I saved mine for the gnolls to turn them against each other. save them for the rolls that matter.
4. Myrkul will be the toughest fight. You gotta stop him from healing, so I gathered arrows of ilmater.
Another tip around vendors, having a character with expertise in persuasion is a great way to get high discounts, especially at later levels
In honor mode, you can’t abuse save-loading, but you can absolutely abuse respeccing. Not sure if you’ll get hag’s hair? Respec if you get it. Not sure if you’ll trigger mirror of loss? Respec your character to a 20 Int bard with religion expertise and cast enhance ability and guidance, then Respec back once you get the buff. Etc etc.
I know this video is old but if you focus Brinna only on raising her wizard and bard levels you can have her with the spell that gives her advantage in wisdom rolls, use another character to give her guidance, summon transmuter stones (support/utility) and her minimum medicine roll will always be of: 2 + 8 + 1 (guidance) + 4 (Wisdom 18/Int 18) = 15
(You could get an extra of 1d4 (Shapeshifter ring) + 1 (Wis prof) Raising wisdom to 20 and using disguise self)
The only way to fail would be with 4 consecutive critical failures: "On a roll with advantage that succeeds on a 2 or more, Halfling Luck would reduce the chance to fail from 1/400 to 1/160000, making it practically impossible to fail. With Karmic Dice active, it may be simply impossible to roll 4 critical failures in a row."
I beat it first try, but almost ended it at the creche part, the legendary buff on the githyanki was brutal to deal in my position 😂
My honor mode run was my first completion, and we did almost all the fights, that kind of helped us more cuz we had a ton of exp and were high levels entering a new act. Like at the start of act 3 we had just left rivington and we were level 11.
Do NOT bite someone in camp with Astarion if you have Dame Ayelin in camp. She will kick off and it's hard to not kill her in some camps as there is no exit. Apparently the oathbreaker doesn't like it either.
Use a camp cleric and hirelings to hand out extra bonuses.
A hireling casting warding bond will protect a party member while not needing to be in the party, granting resistance to all damage without costing any resources in the party.
Love the tips, currently one explorer, two balanced, and three tactician runs in hoping to give honour mode a shake. I swore I wouldn’t try anything above balanced when I first got the game but after completing tactician I fell in love with character building and just general theory-crafting. Excited to put these tips into action, but also nervous thank u mr.tuber
Do not try and pickpocket the Oathbreaker knight. I found out an hour ago he is not as forgiving as Withers...
Almost lost a run to this but by the grace we beat him as level 4, 2 clerics and a ranger rogue is how we saved our run.
I think you've given me the confidence to try out honor mode! Great video --- thank you!!
A good DPS build is a Palock pact of the blade. You will have three attacks by end of act 2. Warlock spell slots refill on a short rest. Have a bard in the party for song of rest. Have someone be able to cast haste.
That’s a possible 6 smites. With the right equipment and positioning, you can almost one shot any enemy/boss in the game. And if not you can gain two more smites back and do it again.
Also CAMP CLERICS. Just like having a camp alchemist. Get some camp clerics and max their HP as much as possible. You only need them to cast bonding ward and aid. Do this after every long rest and you’ll have extra hp, all damage is reduced by half and make sure someone can cast long strider so everyone has that extra movement.
These are all things allowed in the game. Some think it’s cheating, but it’s a work smarter not harder kind of thing.
I love that you're always upfront about the little things like "this is not a current honor mode save" and such, idk why they do but a lot of creators try to hide those things. Earned a sub from me
Thank you for all your work and guides for BG3.
I just beat honor mode couple hours ago. Honestly everything gets so much easier once you hit lvl 5. You can hit lvl 5 before you even go to act 2.
If anyone needs any tips here are mine
1:Play the game how you want, honestly you can choose whatever class, I was a paladin oath breaker.
2:Don’t be afraid to long rest. Honestly there’s plenty of food throughout the whole game, it’s only hard at the beginning.
3: collect barrels, like oil barrels and etc. they’ll help.
4: the hardest boss is fucking Raphael and that Githyanki FUCK in the mountain pass! The githyanki has a legendary action he can use like twice per round after he gets attacked. Man he almost did me in, tbh he was more of a pain than Raphael. Basically, watch out for those foos. Best way to deal with them is a good ole rune powder barrel
A paladin with full buffs and worm crit with divine smite can almost 1 shot him aswell
Play 3 ppl party with 4th being in camp ALWAYS. He can ressurect anyone at any time - 200 gold price is nothing so your game will never end if party is beaten. There are just 2 places where you can't do this: Act 2 final area, Act 3 final area; (House of Hope too but you can skip it) . So just two boss zones. If you are in doubt, use barrelmancy to defeat bosses. One barrel of smokepowder does avr. 30-35 force damage (50 max if lucky). Carry some of these with your STR character (or drink STR elixir). Drop several near the boss (dropping doesn't cost an action), plus, if you like, some grenades/smokepowder bags. Explode these with fire arrow (or fire bomb or fire spell) from the distance. For the last boss in A3 you can drop fireworks as well - there is a place (Felogyr's Fireworks) where you can get tons of them.
on your Potion maker, pick up long strider from wizard. 1 rogue for expertise, then cleric for aid AND enhance ability (for advantage on the checks). and now it's your aid/longstrider/potion bot. at 8 you do 2wiz/3bard/3cleric and you have max spell slots
Maximizing trade: if you plan on killing that merchant:
Meet them ASAP
Sell them a container
Put all their inventory in the bag every day. This refreshes gold and items.
Pull after every long rest until you killed them.
We're doing a coop evil durge honor run, we have a combined 20k and we haven't even gone to the creche yet, and we still have a combined 38k we need to sell.
In the meantime, vacuum, sell what you can, buy what you need, steal what you can, bag everything, kill, profit🤷♂️
Money gets you through Act 3.
Also another probably more well known tip: Having a wizard or some spell casing hireling that can cast Longstrider on your entire party is huge. Its a ritual spell that is just free 3m of movement that lasts until long rest. It doesnt sound like much but that little bit of movement can mean the difference between being able to hit something or hiding to avoid being in LoS to avoid being hit.
Also, in regards to save scum, you kind of can, though its not as easy as just reloading the last save and you have to reload the whole game.
Do you need to do a full long rest or can you long rest without using food? I know you can respec basically for free with withers because you can just steal from him, but if you can just long rest without actually using food that would be my preference rather than just respecing/leveling.
Long resting without food only restores your health not spell slots
@Chronal-Rend Right, that I know, but if you long rest without food will it cause the vendors inventories to cycle or only long rest with food. Id rather not have a hireling and respect and level to cause the vendors items to cycle if I can just long rest without food.
@@LithNeo yeah if you're just trying to progress days, which resets vendors and what not You don't need to use food
@@Chronal-Rend Preem, thank you!
(I have not done honor mode) your herbalist can be the longstrider caster - also make use of the characters left behind for spells without concentration like poison resistance and I think freedom of movement, etc. if you make your warding cleric a few levels of abjuration wizard they will survive the warding,
Get that ad bag man! You deserve it!
Something that you did kinda show in this video but I don’t think you actually mentioned is the importance of initiative. In regular DnD initiative is already important - if you can kill an enemy or shut them down before they can do anything, you reduce the danger in any encounter by a ton. In BG3 this is exacerbated by two big factors. (1) Initiative is rolled on a d4 instead of a d20, which almost completely negates variance and makes the Alert feat basically guarantee that you go first, and (2) you know the enemy’s AC, you know their saving throws and you know how much HP they have left, which means you can choose which enemy you want to kill or shut down and know your odds with almost perfect accuracy. If you add surprise rounds to this (which is not super hard to achieve) or use one or two rounds to precast your 10-turn buffs, you trivialize all non-boss and non-scripted encounters the game can throw at you.
I been following this channel sense it was mainly Total War Warhammer tactical tips and tricks.
Thanks for being a true Longbeard!
Vendors: I was really puzzled lately when I realized that my Seldarine Drow did get far worse prices at vendors than any other party member -- despite not having bad charisma. She had basically a discount of 0%, where others had 14% or more.
I think, you have to live with it, when you are a Seldarine. I think, Laezel also does not get so favorable prices, maybe better let the High Elf make the deals ....
Act 1 is the "hardest" act, as if you have a high charisma character for act 2, you can skip a lot of boss fights. Act 3 you get access to so many broken items. My main goal for act 3 was to get the weave items for Gale to get him an Enchantment master with a spell save DC of 28. Trivialized so many fights when he can lock down the boss with Tasha's Hideous Laughter at 100% success
I was looking for a pathing video, which bosses do first, which later, which you can cheese etc. But this is helpful too.
For an alchemy bot you don't need rogue, bard is fine and that way it can cast enhance ability on itself (I use shadowheart so i don't want to waste her spell slots on this), you do want to use shadowheart or someone else to cast guidance though, and of course craft everything while in turn based mode.
Reminder that there's a necklace that gives people Guidance.
Just equip it for crafting.
Always enter turn-based mode before doing anything risky. My first "proof of honor" was awarded because Astarion failed to disarm the fire trap guarding Shadowheart's spear of only missing every second attack.
I’m just here to master the normal difficulty lmao I just beat easymode and I’m honestly kinda proud about that so now it’s time to actually understand the game better
Moonbeam/Sanctuary build is OP for honormode. You can use/move moonbeam while you're in sanctuary, without breaking it. There are also a lot of items that have aoe effects like blood of lathander mace you can put on your sanctuary character, so they walk around blinding/illuminating people, and they can't attack you cuz you're in sanctuary.
ALSO, gale heals himself whenever he's not in your party...so you have him cast warding bond on your main tank(make gale a cleric) and then leave him in your camp, so he can take the warding bond dmg and then heal himself back up(max his con) and that makes a HUGE difference in how much that tank can tank.
Also....build a beefy tank that takes all the damage, and then make a kind of glass cannon type character that uses invis/fog/greater invis, to keep them from being a target or to escape if they become a target. And then with your sanctuary moonbeam character....you have 2 damage characters that basically can't be targeted, and one character that tanks everytrhing.
A great build for tank is going the luminous tank route. where when they miss you, you do 1d4 radiant dmg in an aoe around you. put on blur/mirror image/shield spell/lucky feat, and you can basically make sure they always miss. as they group up around you and 10 characters all miss you back to back, thats 10d4 radiant dmg that radiates from you hitting everything thats grouped up on you.
Additionally, you can use the polearm/sentinel with the radiant polearm you get for saving the nightsong, to do/stack more radiant dmg, at range.
Basically, super specializing each of your characters is huge. jack of all trades isn't as helpful(unless you're going a dex bard for steal/face to make sure you pass all possible checks) you want someone who can super tank and someone who can super buff and someone who can super damage.
ANd you want to reduce the luck from the game. get the lucky feat, get the shield spell, get the portent dice, anything that helps you reroll or pick a different outcome for yourself. OH! Half orc race is very good also. They have the racial ability of coming back to life if they die, do extra dmg when they crit, and dark vision. And a super charismatic half-orc is AWESOME! lolol
Honor mode tip: Barrelmancy cheese boss fights if you just want the achievement and don't care about the gameplay
Or if you're terrified.
I freely steal by having advantage on thief checks, and always grabbing potions of invisibly. If my thief gets caught he just goes invisible, and walks out of the area. Turn around and go right back to stealing again. The illusion cantrip can help reposition the room to find an opening and I go into turn mode and just start grabbing everything.
You 100% can save scum if you want to. Just use your task manager to close the game. It's a bit tedious.
Agree with all except abandoning RP. Don't abandon fun for efficiency. My current playthrough has Lae'zel in the party, I knew doing the Zaith'isk was risky due to the penalties, but I still did it, and it was so much fun winning that roll to get her out.
Currently act 2. Im running sorcadin Tav, Life Shart, Abjuration Gale, and Open Hand Lae zel or Throw Karlach. Only close call so far was Balthasar. Ghouls paralysed 2 chars right off the bat. Had to use almost all my potions to finish the fight 😂
Great video! One improvement I would suggest would be to give the herbalist brewer only 1 level in rogue before spending the rest of the levels in cleric. This is so that the alchemist can source their own enhance ability spell. Also, for your feats I would recommend ASI +WIS +WIS.
Боже, чувак... Ты здорово облегчил мне игру, своей фишкой с торгашами. Теперь, имеет смысл хоть ингредиенты скупать. Я думал товар обновляется только с долгим отдыхом или повышением уровня... Здорово 👏✊👍
A 12fighter/edlritch knight using radiant polearm and polearm master/sentinel with all the luminous armor/equipment is an extremely potent tank that still dishes out a lot of damage, while being a tank.
the blur and mirror image spells are a MUSTinvis and greater invis are HUGE.
there is a LOT of equipment in act 1 that you can build around, that you can effectively use all the way to the end of the game.
ALSO, keep one of your 4 party members in camp...if one of your players isn't even there... you can't TPK. Resurrect them, then steal the gold back from withers. besides, making one of your party members a super buff spell monster, is a great way to economize your team, so all your members going into the fight can be full damage monsters to make short work of a fight, instead of having a bunch of turns taken up healing/buffing, etc.
There is also an amazing dual wielding abj wizard tank that uses like 4 multiclasses to be extremely OP. Look into that build.
and there is a super bard/rogue build that firesparks has that is extremely potent as well. Titanstring bow is OP ASFK. I'm using it now and it is just one shotting everything in act 1 on tactician. lol
Playing tactician currently, running a gloomstalker, assassin, sword bard and my character has an ac of 24, the build is going nuts.
thought i had the wrong tab open for a like a dragon video lmao that is an out of left field sponsor. cool though, super stoked to play
I would like to add to the throwing health potions thing. You can also throw other things like elixirs of universal resistance the same way.
I've completed honour mode 3 times, once with a solo run, currently on my 4th with a Durge Githyanki Barbarian party face and having possibly the easiest time with dialogue options
All great tips, many of theese are indeed things I would have benefited a lot from knowing from the start of my honor mode run (I eventually figure it out for pretty much all of theese but yeah lost some gold and had to figure out how to escape a fight for the frist time in my honor run).. One more I'll add is to tailor your builds for the moment of the game you are at, I heard someone advise to have your party set-up in a way that your builds have different power spike tresholds so you always have 1 or two strong characters to "carry" the weaker ones until they come online, I totally disagree with that, there's no need to "carry" weaker characters at any point, re-spec as needed to ensure all 4 members of your party are always strong, if a build doesn't come online till like level 8 then don't go for it from the start and hinder your team, play something that is strong earlier and then re-spec once you hit that level.
Example.. From levels 2-4 my cleric is almost always Nature Domain, why? because it gets spike growth at level 3 which is massive (druids also get it but honesstly nature domain cleric does it better, at least early on) at level 5 my Ranger can pick-up the spike growth so I usually re-spec my cleric there to Light or something like that. Or I really like Sword bard archer builds but imo they aren't that good unitl level 8 (for 6 bard and 2 figher) so I started as bard cause I like the early conversaiton but re-specced to warlock mid-way trough level 4 to do the difficult fights and keeping it warlock until at least level 6 but more likely 7 or 8. (this is my 2nd honor playtrough)
Running around with three party members and leaving one at camp is the safest option you can choose
Another easy way to heal. Have a hireling be a druid and just make goodberries and use Longstrider after each long rest. Good berries help with little bit of healing and heal some effects
One thing I’d say is don’t sleep on wizards they can learn spells from any scroll in the early game you can learn the scroll to summon shovel which is useful the whole game since he can go invisible for free and inflict the surprised effect on most enemies also the versatility of a wizard is crazy heck they can even tank a max level abjuration wizard is the best tank in the game and they also help the team by reducing damage to them using a reaction
I cleared a few times on easy then finished my tactician run last night.. think I'm finally ready to attempt honor mode :P appreciate the tips especially around the vendors and improving herbalism because I didn't bother with any of that so far
I'm on my 4th HM run. Githyeeted at level 5.
Swords bard as a party face means I get persuasion, sleight of hand, two-weapon fighting and two one-handed crossbows with sharpshooter. By level 4 my max damage in one turn can be about 50.
Dearh warding everybody in my camp as well.
For context, I use easy mode even when I'm taking a leak, that's how good bg3 is.
the biggest issue I have with honor mode is that I have played the Game trough at least 8 times and never ONCE without a bug that screwed something up. Be it starting a fight with an npc after the actual fight is long over (Karlach jumping to me automaticaly in owlbear form after last light, comes to mind as a "Oh f you game" moment) or a Character that got stuck mid air on a jump and im not willing to spend 100 hours of meticulous planning and hard work into something a bug can rip away from me
Gotta re-sign Cleveland. I’d love to get Robert Hunt and Connor Williams. Still try to land someone like Frazier in the draft. They might be planning to move Anton back to LT and draft a tackle. It all might be overkill, but it’s a good area to over invest in.
HAHAHAHA
Honor mode is probably the only mode where min-maxing is expected, _encouraged_ even. You don't need to do it, but when save-scumming is disabled, you gotta what you gotta do. Imo, you gotta try the mode at least once.
Man, you should check out the Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous game if you haven't already. Honor mode in BG3 has nothing on that game's Unfair difficulty; you are literally forced to minmax to stand a chance. I hope they make a difficulty setting as hard as that for this game too :)
I blind gameplayed BG3 in Honour mode and is not that difficult, expecially after you understand the DnD mechanics, accept your character current potential and decide be best roleplay options, manage your stuff and use all you have.
Never save during battles or dialogues, since the game battles are scripted and enemies usually have weakspots it gets easy to plan before battle, always have someone ready to escape.
Save-scumming the game by reseting the PC before gameover is an option, not recommended because sometimes you get savefile corrupt and lose your gameplay.
Watch lot of these BG3 crash courses before playing also helps. 🤣
About the Herbalist Hireling: If you are at least level 8, go Wizard 4 Rogue 4 so you can grab 2 ASIs, push wisdom to 20 and get an even higher chance to pass that Medicine check.
My vendors of choice to stock up on before leaving act 1 are the three in the shroom colony in the under dark, plenty of materials of haste spores/potions, str potions, it was a little obscene by the time I was done and walking away with so many str pots by the end of my run I hadn't even used half of them 😂😅
You have one of my favorite channels on TH-cam, keep up the great work bro!
Ok FINE. Second video I’ve watched of yours (the “upfront knowledge” speech is recognizable lol). I haven’t played honor mode and tbh I’m the kinda clown to never play the game and stay in Act one for 12 playthroughs but now I’m subscribed for if I ever do finally start an honor run.
I never did the Raph fight on my balanced or tac run, but I obliterated him with ease in my HM run… that bath that allows you to restore all your spell slots allowed me to maximise all my buffs to the extreme… plus shadow monk is OP
WOW, i always forgot to use hirelings now it makes sense !
Wow after using camp alchemy for my whole Honor Mode run I just learned that you need max wisdom not Intelligence. I had casted Enhance ability Intelligence since its a Wizard special function. I got a double potion almost every time anyway when i used the lucky trait. I had much more than enough without maximizing wisdom. But I sure feel dumb.
On console you can spam the pickpocket button to get multiple attempts to steal your gold back from withers
I'm working on my honor mode now, and the one letting me down is shadowhart her damage is just disappointing and crowd control is lackluster. I'm gonna have to figure out a better build soon.
If you want some truly degenerate strategies - combat will pause as long as one of your characters hasn't ended their turn. So you can have another character escape combat, go to camp, pay to resurrect anyone who died, and then re-enter the combat.
After speaking to Omeluum and hearing him say BLURG in his echoey voice, how can you possibly forget Blurg’s name? Lol those two are iconic
I play Honour Mode to see the legendary actions and find a way to handle those. So I avoid spoilers. My Main is a Tempest Cleric/Storm Sorcerer. I use a FighterBarbarian Tavern Brawler Throwing Build on Laezel, Lockadin Wyll and Gloomstalker Assassin Astarion. So called overpowered Classes. But no Sword Bard or Open Hand Monk yet.
I get stressed in the Owlbear Fight. Thought I would need Sanctuary for the Cup, but needed to save my run. Wyll was dead, Leazel and Astarion down, and the Owlbear Mum (with 3 LP left) just jumped up next to my Sorcerer lv 3. I had a 49% hit chance to kill it or lose. I chose Sanctuary, healed me and Leazel with throwing Potions. Wasn't honourable, but I did it! 😅
Seems like it would be wise, when you're doing the halfling hireling thing, instead of randomly clicking through the feats, to use the ASIs to get their wisdom stat to max.
My herbalist is also a bard and cleric. She prepare the party with Aid longtrider. I also hire another one that is a pure life cleric that can do aid death protection posion protection and Heroes feast.
Best tip is action economy and sequencing. The rest just changes your honor run to easy mode
7:00 never knew this was a thing :O Thanks a lot this changes my difficulty a lot ! I love potions
You can dip a thief berserker into life cleric and they’re a pretty decent healer while holding their own
First try on Honor mode, just made it past the grove battle. Accidentally killed minthara 😊