Baldur’s Gate 3 Player Loses Honor Mode Run, and It’s All Withers’ Fault

This article contains slight spoilers for Act 1 of Baldur’s Gate 3.An unlucky Baldur’s Gate 3 player online has lost their Honor Mode run in the most tragic way imaginable. Their Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough came to a conclusion after an unfortunate mix-up while speaking to Withers led to the player dying in what would be a very infuriating situation.

Honor Mode is the hardest way to play Baldur’s Gate 3. Players are given just a single save file, meaning save scumming is impossible. If every character in the player’s party dies, then the run ends. Gamers can continue to play beyond this point, but its status as an Honor Mode run will come to an end. Some of Baldur’s Gate 3‘s most significant bosses also have new Legendary Actions, too, making them more powerful and dangerous than ever. It’s built on top of Tactician’s rules, which buff regular enemies all around. It’s no coincidence that very few players have completed Baldur’s Gate 3 on Honor Mode, as Larian designed it to be both brutal and rewarding in equal measure.

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Baldur’s Gate 3 Player Loses Honor Mode Run to Withers Mix-Up

Over on Reddit, user LogensTenthFinger revealed the tragic way their Baldur’s Gate 3 Honour Mode playthrough ended. While trying to knock out Minthara to recruit her later without needing to kill the Emerald Grove, they “botched the setup so it went very poorly.” As a result, they survived the fight, with Karlach the only one left at 1 hit point, at which point they went back to Withers at their camp to revive the party. When resurrecting the first party member, Gale, Withers placed him on top of Karlach, inflicting that single hit point of damage onto the player before the game registered that Gale was alive again. As a result, Withers’ clumsy placement of Gale caused the death of both Karlach and LogensTenthFinger’s Honor Mode run. Whether it was explicitly Withers’ fault or the players was a hot topic of debate among others in the comments.

Many jokingly pointed out that following Withers’ advice to step back would have saved this particular run, but since it’s very rarely of any consequence in a normal playthrough of the game, it’s easy to see why they wouldn’t necessarily be thinking of it in this scenario. However, another user said that having just one character alive with one hit point in Honor Mode “is asking for trouble,” and it’s hard to disagree. Others speculated that the player wasn’t necessarily killed by Gale’s physical corpse hitting them. It could also have been Gale’s Necrotic Aura, which only appears around his corpse when he is dead. Regardless of how it happened, it’s undoubtedly a frustrating way to lose a run, but they can take some solace in the fact that this happened in Act 1, as opposed to anything further into the game.

Because Baldur’s Gate 3 features such a dynamic sandbox that challenges players to push it to its limits, there are tons of ways players can take damage in the game. Since the launch of the game, there have been tons of stories about players losing Honor Mode runs in a variety of heartbreaking ways, and it’s hard to say what is the worst. The player who lost their Baldur’s Gate 3 Honor Mode run to a painting has to be a contender, while LogensTenthFinger’s new Withers death is also pretty bad. But ultimately, it’s supposed to be the game’s biggest challenge, so it makes sense that even the slightest lapse in concentration could bring it all to an end. Otherwise, everyone would have completed Baldur’s Gate 3 on Honor Mode.

Released

August 3, 2023

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence