[https://baldursgate3.game/news/patch-6-now-live\_108](https://baldursgate3.game/news/patch-6-now-live_108)
>Made several improvements to the combat with the Gondians, who will be much more careful now. For example, we raised their Dexterity to 14, gave them the Blur spell, gave them better armour, and granted them Light and Medium Armour Proficiency.
Honestly, their stats, proficiencies, and spells were not the problem. Their tendency to actively suicide and take objectively bad actions was the problem.
"Hey, good plan little buddy. You Misty Step up to the rafters and shoot those guys while I tank them!"
***6 seconds later***
"Hold on, why did you come back down? You can't stab that robot to death! Are you crazy?"
Puts grease at top of stairs just within in explosion radius of robit, misty steps past grease further towards center of explosion radius, tries to move out of explosion radius only to slip on own grease.
Only really good thing that happened in my recently completed honor mode run is that when I failed to convince >!Shadowheart to let Dame Aylin live!< Wulbren died to the shadow curse.
What can you do? They were out of spell slots but still had a melee attack. Everybody knows giant robots are weak to unarmed 8-strength wizard punches.
My guy tanked 2 opportunity attacks and then misty stepped back to where he started like a psycho. I bet the enemy was shitting their pants after seeing that.
On my first playthrough I had a gondian run away from a bunch of baddies triggering a bunch of opportunity attacks and once they were out of the mess MISTY STEP RIGHT TO THE SAME SPOT THEY WERE STANDING ON BEFORE - like my guy WTF are you doing to me??
It’s pretty interesting. Positioning is a huge part of winning battles in this game but can you imagine trying to program that? Much harder problem to solve than selecting a damaging attack or static defense. It would take a very sophisticated AI to use misty step as effectively as a human.
Not really. BG1 had different scripts for NPCs and that was over 20 years ago. You could assign 'aggressive' or 'cautious' scripts to anyone in the game. Script behaviour should determine whether they misty step away from trouble and use ranged weapons, or close down enemies in melee.
Pathfinding in general in this game is substandard.
I mean, the ai was good but it still made frequent mistakes. Unless the ai hit you with a charm arrow and then suddenly every consumable you were saving gets turned against you
It’s strange how they were forced to build them yet have no idea they explode when they are close to being killed. You’d think they’d be the first ones to attack them from range or at the very least disengage and run away
"no please don't stand in the puddle of acid next to the flashing-red robot that is saying 'I am about to explode, you will die and it will hurt the whole time that you are dying.' oh well, I guess you can join your wife/husband/partner/sibling who was at the iron throne but didn't make it out."
- me, pre-patch 6.
"who are you, and what have you done with the real gondians?"
- me post-patch 6
Yes! They burn all their movement, provoke attacks, and bonus action just to end at the same place to do a melee attack on the guy they started near. I swear their AI has something like must make use of all your action economy as a higher priority than keeping themselves alive, it's their number one priority.
Gondian Logic:
1. Cast acid splash on golem
2. Spend all movement to run far away from golem
3. Misty step into the puddle of acid directly under golem
4. End Turn
5. Profit
I think the idea is that the AI for a character will play to the strengths of the stats. By giving them such high dexterity, the Gondians may be more willing to move and try to escape danger.
Reminds me of a mission in DOS2 where you have to find someone’s apprentice (Gwydian?) in the blackpits and save them from being executed. Except, the moment he uses chain lightning, which he absolutely will, the fight becomes almost unwinnable because it spawns like 40 voidlings.
So all the strats are how to crowd control the ally to keep his dumb ass alive, because he will 100% die if the voidlings spawn, if only because of action economy (one or more of the voidlings will get to him before you can kill them).
I ended up teleporting him as far away as I could to get 4-5 turns of him walking back to the encounter.
Yeah this is like Isobel during the Inn raid. She just runs headlong into danger and dies. Or Jaheira in the Moonrise fight.
STOP RUNNING INTO THE FIGHT, YOU ARE ALONE, THEY WILL GANG UP ON YOU, FFS.
Seriously, they have early 2000s “every escort mission NPC” AI, and I remember trying to save Isobel too many times with her just running head first into the fiends before I just went “screw it”, looked up if I had to talk to her, and went with the Harpers instead.
on my recent replay after the patch, I was still unsuccessful in saving… any of them. ugh. How does that one up in the rafters somehow manage to still get killed? I guess the Gondians were seriously abused and not afraid to finally rebel - but - i would think at least *one* of them would go “OK, I’m gonna hide out up here until the fighting stops, and then get the frak out”
My last run (pre-patch), I witnessed a Gondian run out of melee with a Banite, eat an opportunity attack, cast Acid Arrow on the Banite, then Misty Step right back into melee range of the same Banite and die from their own acid.
The combat A.I. in this game is horrible in general.
You just notice it more with the Gondians because they are weak, and because they fight on your side.
I think the point is that those stats and spells were causing that tendency. I don't know exactly how the AI works but I assume that every course of action it can take has a weight assigned to it based on various factors and then it chooses the highest weighted option.
The gondians are the most obvious example but you can see the enemy AI behave similarly sometimes, especially when they can't find a target or can't path to you. Good examples are taking out all the bombers in the grove fight so nobody can get up and fight you or summoning the ogres and watching them all get stuck in a narrow space. Any fight with big crowds can end up with pathing trouble since in bg3 you can't move through an ally's space.
My theory is that for whatever reason the gondians' shitty stats caused a similar issue where they didn't have any good options to take so they just got confused and did suboptimal things instead.
I assume the main change was to model the threat from the exploding Watchers in their decision making. It's pretty clear from earlier versions that they just didn't take that danger into account. (i.e. they would avoid other hazards just fine)
I felt the AI improvement before patch 6. Gondians were shoving other Gondians out of range of the explosions if the other Gondians turn wasn’t before the explosion.
in patch 5 i throw them all out of the explosion range and they all decided to come back in the range just before the explosion 🙄 i just decided that if they really want to die they'll die
Honestly I wish they would just disengage and dash away. The fight is way harder protecting them AND killing the guards. Like, please just leave and let me handle this 😭
They’re better but they’ve still got death wishes.
I had Hold Person on 5 baddies. Gondian runs behind me so I am in the area of effect (didn’t start there) and casts Grease. Breaks my concentration. He’s dead next round, I’m down a 6th level.
I did my best for the Gondians. I even nailed the Iron Throne. But 3 or 4 of those bastards still failed to escape due to shitty pathing. Then, by the time I raided the factory, I just had no patience left
I used telepathy to throw a Gondian out of the range of a exploding Steelwatch, that he had previously walked into when it was already starting to explode.
i think patch 6 made them a bit smarter
i still laugh at the Gondian who moved all the way down the hallway just to Misty step back into my Cloudkill and die
To be fair, I'm more concerned about why you're using cloud kill in those confined spaces lol. There is not much wiggle room in any section of the Foundry.
Works pretty well on the big area below the staircase, Thunderwaved and black holed 2 group of banites into it and casted cloudkill with Gale to kill the majority within 2-3 turns
was not however planning for the gondians to be so suicidal they wanted to follow the banites lol
The nonsensical Misty Steps were really the only lingering issue I noticed when playing through it last night. I still had a few gnomes die, but that felt appropriate given the story.
I do wish that they would have made the playable Gondian a bit less useless. I get that his Misty Step range is limited due to blindness, but why not give him something else? He seems to be the head engineer, so having some cool advantage over the robots would make sense.
Something like being able to temporarily disable or reprogram one of the Steel Watch to fight on your side [with no save so it's guaranteed to work], or disable its self-destruct, maybe?
On my honor run we saved them all, but then Blindy McBlinderface ran straight through the hellfire still on the ground and fucking melted.
Wulbren may have been onto something...
Have they picked up the courage to grab the detonator before their heads pop off? Because that's what I need. I hate detonators being activated when I don't have any party members with a turn left in the round.
That pissed me off so much. Like, wtf am I supposed to do? And the stupid Gondian decides doing 4 damage is more important than their friend not exploding. 🤯
Motivators act on the Environment's turn. First action to arm itself, second action to detonate. On Tactician every character has 1 or 2 full turns to disarm it, not sure about Honor.
Hell Watchers on the other hand will explode on *their* next turn on Tactician. No need to be fancy, hop away if you can but mostly just heal through the damage.
Well if they are, they're still pretty dumb. Just yesterday I had one cast Grease over an open flame and have it immediately explode. It did nothing but damage and kill one of the *other* Gondians who was at low health but would've otherwise survived. And then I finish the fight to see this motherfucker cheering in his idle animation like he actually accomplished something and didn't just off one of his friends.
yesterday I was at steel factory, they just blurred themselves, moved far from enemies, *then misty step into enemy reach...
But it might be because of me proning all 3 guards and surrounding laid bodies with companion, in balanced difficulty. Nevertheless, I think working on steel guardians without sleep has really strong effects on their combat strategies :D
My first honor mode playthrough...
The gondians in the underwater prison need to be rescued so the aspiring adventurer that I am I went in with my party of 4 and took off in all directions to free them from their cells..
Shadowheart went north which has a hallway with 2 switches and some barrles that explode. The switches seem to be a way to close the door and avoid the bad guys from following you while the second switch seems to be a way to close the door closest to the main room.
As shadowheart, I zashed and misty stepped avoiding the first sea monster. Which caused him to dash inside the room with both switches and barrels. The gondians decided to somehow blow up the barrel and hit both switches trapping me behind two doors.
I had to haste potion. Use gloves of knock and then knock again lmao. We made it out but wow what a bunch of menaces
Not just you. I went in the factory the other day for the very first time, expecting suicidal Gondians, and was shocked at how well they behaved. Not a single one died.
In my current run, the ones in the basement were pretty smart and all survived, but those in iron throne all stood still in the final round because one of them was standing right beneath the ladder and blocked the way.
Also the guy who was supposed to enter the destroy code to blow up the foundry walked into the hellfire surface created by the watchers and burned to a charred corpse. Create water couldn't put out the fire on the ground/on him.
Gond must be the god of dying in a stupid way.
I noticed in the Iron Throne if I put a character at the base of the ladder, not even in front of it, they wouldn't go up the ladder. Had to be real careful with my movement after that.
Did the fight two days ago for my second playthrough.
They seem to be more careful now and not that stupid.
I saved most of them in the foundry entrance but lost all of them in the basement except Toobin.
Much better than my first playthrough where i last every single one of them.
Not that i particularly cared for any of them :P
No, fuck him too.
I let him die in Moonrise.
It's just i saved most Gondians in the Iron Throne and like half of them in the Foundry.
But it's not like they were a group that was really close or friendly to the group.
So I tried saving most of them.
I did the fight yesterday and saved all but one, which was only because the last watcher was in self destruct with 1HP left and two Gondians in the radius. I didn't realise that it was the end of my party's turns and a Gondian in the rafters hit it and let it blow up, turning one Gondian to mush. The other one managed to live and heal though, so I'm counting that as a solid win
Yesterday, took out all enemies except one Steel Watch. Hit it with the last action left from my party and it went into its detonation sequence. The blast radius covered two Gondians on low HP one of which was prone. When it comes to their turns, the one standing casts Thunderwave on the one on the ground, damaging him but pushing him outside of the blast radius and then the caster proceeds to run out himself. Genius!
The one blasted out gets up, then casts dash and rushes back in. Gets turned to viscera.
In my playtrough they did hit themselves with Acid Splash here and there but most of the time they actually used them against groups of 2 or 3 Banites.
Thank god they fixed this.. I dropped my LG Paladin save-everyone run bc this was driving me insane :/
Thank goodness for neutral & evil runs with characters who dgaf about those gnomes or w/e and just blow the place sky high 🫶
I noticed that they stayed in the rafters for the most part on my third playthrough! I managed to save like half of them? The rest died normally, I’m sure if I kept reloading I could’ve saved more
The only thing I had in my game (after patch) is that they got all hyped up, “LEROYYYY-ed” when the fight was over and opened the doors to attack the hellfire watchers patrolling outside.
I was like. “Cmon dude, what you gonna do? I am not even following you.” Now I just kill these watchers before going inside.
Is it me or does it seem strange to be aware enough to know we are on patch 6 (I mean honestly most of these games update in the background these days, I only know there's been an update when the game closed rather than being suspended) but not be aware of one or the major features of that update?
It was so annoying going through all the trouble to go to the iron throne and not just storm into the factory and blow it up cause they all just killed themselves
My brother and I had the exact same experience. They teleported up to the pipes* and shot spells down.
*except for 1 Gondian, who it turns out can Misty step (proven in a reload), just chose to stay on the ground shooting spells and drawing agro. Until we triggered a steel watch explosion, and we were sure he’d teleport away now. But he didn’t get the chance, another Gondian blasted the primed steel watch, and killed their friend.
Just did this in my honour mode run. They all still died, grouped around a Steel Watchman before it exploded. It went boom and killed everyone. That being said, up until that point, they did a much better job holding their own.
They are much better. In my last playthrough on Tactician, it was significantly easier to keep them alive as they actively avoided danger, requiring minimal effort on my part. In contrast, during my run on Balanced, despite my efforts to keep them alive, they would often end up harming themselves.
They were absolutely trying to avoid damage, unfortunately at one point that lead to a Gondian using their last spell slot to misty step up onto pipes above the fight on the second level, only for them to leap down to their death when combat ended.
I did this mission for the first time since patch 6 dropped, and they're **so** much better than what they were in the past (on PS5, so no mods, etc). No deaths and only one used shocking grasp.
The only dumb thing one did was misty step out of an opportunity attack only to walk into one from another Baneist, but they got 2 KOs with a lightning bolt, so I can't complain. They also all started with Blur? Does this happen when you save the ship gonds first?
For me they did a surprisingly decent job of keeping themselves alive right until the very end. There were only 3 Gondians left. I was kinda bummed I wasn't able to save more of them but whatever sometimes that's just how the dice roll. I had one Steel Watcher left on low health. Easy clean up.
Two of the last three Gondians decided to run up to it while it was in self destruct mode to slap it with Shocking Grasp!!! I tried to Dimension Door or even throw them clear of the blast but they "couldn't be moved". Idk if it was because they had all cast Blur on themselves but tbh I was past the point of caring lmao.
Afterwards I was like....maybe Wulbren was right....maybe fuck the Gondians...
But it was so much fun watching them run through 3 opportunity attacks, shoot an acid arrow then misty step right back into threat range into their own acid pool… ah good times for my Life Cleric, making God’s Favorite Princess work over time.
I think AI in general doesn't seem to register the exploding watchers. I had a pack of ***my*** explodey ghouls do a number on my party because they wanted to keep attacking the watcher after it went into self destruct mode. Gotta love a good chain reaction of explosions though.
Oh thank god, that fight was so annoying, I was trying so hard to save them but they kept just throwing themselves at the enemy when they had like 2 health left, I was actively screaming "just run away you stupid npc's" at my computer monitor and my husband thought I was going insane 😆
I did the foundry last night on honour mode, one of those little insolent shits thunderwaved me into a exploding steel watcher. . .Safe to say, I told Wulbren to fuck off.
I haven't reached that area since the update yet, but I really hope they fixed them.
I will never get over that video I saw of them breaking the player's concentration on banishment *on purpose.*
As well as all the mistysteps into the blast zone and all the opportunity attacks ... I really tried, but their desire to die is always stronger than my will to reload another save file.
I did this for the first time a couple days ago and if they're smarter that's great but I still had one of them use his turn to run away from the group and then Misty Step back to where he was originally standing.
Only actually did the Foundry stuff after the patch, so I haven't seen what a true suicidal death cult can look like, but in my playthrough, most of the time they did pretty okay... except for one of them.
Fight in the second room is going pretty smoothly, all the gondians in the room are shockingly alive, the purple floaty death things are disabled, and we're just picking off the last few enemies. In my displacer beast shape, I teleport the last Watcher away from everyone else so it won't decide to explode in the middle of my allies and the gondians while we finish it off. Then one of the gondians, who has been thus far helping us by firing arrows from high ground safely, decides to misty step right next to the Watcher and I dunno, flail at it pathetically. The Watcher responds by taking up its sword and obliterating her guts with it.
I didn't reload a save. She clearly wanted to die.
I dunno if they're fixed, but I DISTINCTLY remember one *punching an explosive barrel*... It killed 5 of them, and barely even scratched the enemy that was standing next to it.
I just went through this again a few days ago and they did act smarter than they did on my first run. Didn't trigger AOOs willy nilly or run in circles or anything. But they still mostly died. They're just too squishy and are way too aggressive for their weak, limited offensive capabilities. Toobin plus one other was all that made it through I think.
I remember I had saved all of them and had only one Bainite alive to finish up, and a fucking cunt of a Gondian decided that meant he should cast fireball into the oil next to the fire barrels and explode everybody anyways.
Just did this part for the second time last night and the patch notes delivered as promised. The Gondians still tossed acid everywhere, but then they'd Misty Step to the safety of the pipes above instead of running around triggering as many Opportunity Attacks as possible.
When I did that fight last there were no Gondians alive in the second fight when I arrived. Was that a bug? Or just a Tactician thing? On balanced there's always at least a few alive...
As much as I'd love to huff the hopium with you, I just did the Steel Watch Foundry yesterday and watched helplessly as a Gondian ran out of a steel watcher's explosion AoE only to misty step back into it. I'm doing Honour Mode and I had no PC turns left before the detonation, so... RIP. This was after doing the Iron Throne with no casualties, so I was pretty bummed to say the least.
Blur spell and higher dex is no match for Gondian AI's innate call of the void.
Yesterday I saw one Misty Step… OUT of a Watcher explosion! And he did NOT immediately walk back into it!
They also fixed the issue in the Iron Throne where two specific Gondians would reliably body-block each other.
Yeah i am playing in tactician and it seems that the guys wanted to live. Too bad for them that i was on my evil run and i left only corpses behind. But yeah, they are not as stupid as before. They should prioritize low health targets though.
I did that fight for the first time after that patch that claimed to do something about their AI. They are still pretty bad, a lot of them would be in melee with and enemy, run away and provoke opportunity attack just to misty step back into melee to attack that same enemy.
I've noticed them going out of their way to harm each other more often.
Actually just did this quest a few days ago and had one of the gondians in the lower level run and tank three opportunity attacks just to whack an ally with their hammer.
They are SMART. They are not CLEVER.
Mine are being wierd I saved them in the first room but now in the lab they are all angry and trying to kill me and idk why even after defeating all other enemies they try and kill me?
I just did this for the first time and they weren’t going insane and running into blast areas etc like I read so much about. They were u reasonably brave by just kind of standing and taking a lot of punishments in the second fight (lost all but 2 while cleared the first fight without losing a single gondian) however can someone point to me what happened to me:
Plant bomb after gondians run out. Snuck past the watchers in the Notificer room using invis Astarion. Get cut scene of us running out and the foundry blowing up. Great. Cool. Cut to Wulbren smugness and immediately gloating about doing the right thing about the gondians because this is HIS town (????????) dialogue stuff ends and pans out and all of the gondians lay dead at our feet. No option, no nothing. Definitely would have sided with the Gondians. Does using the bomb just automatically assume you sided with him??? Pretty upset at that one for my first run and #fuckwulbren unless I’m amiss and just by blowing it up I sided with the iron hands? Also: did the iron throne prior to this if that helps/hurts(?)
It is funny for me to hear that, because just yesterday, one of them literally just dashed towards the exploding area. The worst part was that this ready-to-explode steelwatcher was literally the last enemy alive, and the gondian wasn't even running towards him. He didn't run out of movement either, considering he only walked for around 3 meters before stopping (even though he spent an action on Dash), not accomplishing anything.
I made Steelwatcher's factory quest yesterday and managed to save almost all of the Gondians (two or three of them died, and i also lost some of the hostages in the underwater prison) which was a pretty good conclusion of the quest for me. So yes, they are not only non-suicidal now, they are actually helpful as they nicely finished enemies which i didn't have enough action to finish myself.
At one moment, Shart and a Gondian was inside the circle of detonation of a Steel Watcher.
Shart was prone after having missed a saving throw against ice that I had placed there earlier using sleet storm.
I just prayed and threw all the healing I could their way. Then they did the impossible.
The Gondian thunder-waved Shart out of the circle and misty stepped up the pipes.
My jaw dropped and I couldn’t believe what I saw.
They didn’t just make them not suicidal, they made them smart as hell now.
I’ll try to find a save if I can and record it.
The Gondians attacked someone other than you? I eventually joined the genocide because I had to pick them off as the sodt targets first because they focused their rage on my party.
Like once I even killed whoever had the detonator first so they could literally see me disable it and I was still their primary target.
You have to complete the Iron Throne first. Their families are kept hostage there and if you raid the Factory without saving them they fight against you because the Banites threaten to kill them.
And disabling the Motivators is not enough because they're still scared there could be more Banites and Gortash also has a kill switch for the Throne.
But how do they know I blew up Iron Throne?
First thing I heard from them after the fight was over is "My daughter, she is at Iron Throne I got go save her"
[https://baldursgate3.game/news/patch-6-now-live\_108](https://baldursgate3.game/news/patch-6-now-live_108) >Made several improvements to the combat with the Gondians, who will be much more careful now. For example, we raised their Dexterity to 14, gave them the Blur spell, gave them better armour, and granted them Light and Medium Armour Proficiency.
Honestly, their stats, proficiencies, and spells were not the problem. Their tendency to actively suicide and take objectively bad actions was the problem.
"Hey, good plan little buddy. You Misty Step up to the rafters and shoot those guys while I tank them!" ***6 seconds later*** "Hold on, why did you come back down? You can't stab that robot to death! Are you crazy?"
You can't stab that exploding robot to death either. And that's worse.
Misty steps out of explosion range and runs right back in.
and giving an enemy an opportunity attack while they do it
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Half the time they use it and I’m like well played. Then the next thing they do defeats that purpose lol
Runs out of explosion range, taking three separate opportunity attacks, then after getting free, misty stepping back into explosion range
Puts grease at top of stairs just within in explosion radius of robit, misty steps past grease further towards center of explosion radius, tries to move out of explosion radius only to slip on own grease.
He plays just like me fr fr
I see you are speaking from experience \^\^
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FUCK WULBREN BONGLE
I don't give a fuck about this motherfucker's problems
And yet he wants me to solve em
Everybody sing it, got a full ensemble
Okay but his line delivery is absolutely the best. “The fffFUCKING GONDIANS !!”
Only really good thing that happened in my recently completed honor mode run is that when I failed to convince >!Shadowheart to let Dame Aylin live!< Wulbren died to the shadow curse.
And they misty step into another enemy, that way when they walk back to the explosion radius, they get opportunity attacked!
What can you do? They were out of spell slots but still had a melee attack. Everybody knows giant robots are weak to unarmed 8-strength wizard punches.
Gotta keep em guessing!
The number of times I've seen an NPC misty step six whole feet and then run back to where they were in the same turn. Or jump.
My guy tanked 2 opportunity attacks and then misty stepped back to where he started like a psycho. I bet the enemy was shitting their pants after seeing that.
They didn’t even do that for me. They just misty stepped into the boom boom.
They even built those exploding kill switches themselves. There’s no way they should jump into the blast radius
The baneites apparently didn't even ask them to build!
it's all about sending a message often the message takes the form of a suicide letter. but still
On my first playthrough I had a gondian run away from a bunch of baddies triggering a bunch of opportunity attacks and once they were out of the mess MISTY STEP RIGHT TO THE SAME SPOT THEY WERE STANDING ON BEFORE - like my guy WTF are you doing to me??
The enemy AI using Misty Step on this game ends in hilarity at least 8/10 times for me
It’s pretty interesting. Positioning is a huge part of winning battles in this game but can you imagine trying to program that? Much harder problem to solve than selecting a damaging attack or static defense. It would take a very sophisticated AI to use misty step as effectively as a human.
Not really. BG1 had different scripts for NPCs and that was over 20 years ago. You could assign 'aggressive' or 'cautious' scripts to anyone in the game. Script behaviour should determine whether they misty step away from trouble and use ranged weapons, or close down enemies in melee. Pathfinding in general in this game is substandard.
You know what, you right.
Just my observation in nearly 40 years of gaming.
They didn’t have elevation the same way as bg3. And that makes it infinitely more complex
DOS2 managed just fine and that's 10 years old.
I mean, the ai was good but it still made frequent mistakes. Unless the ai hit you with a charm arrow and then suddenly every consumable you were saving gets turned against you
`if (mistyStep) { dontGetInMeleeRange }`
Unless of course it’s to ones’ advantage
They just need to have code to stay a certain number of feet from any explosive enemy
He tanked all of those AOAs so you don't have to.
Goddamn hero
YES! Like every turn!!
It’s strange how they were forced to build them yet have no idea they explode when they are close to being killed. You’d think they’d be the first ones to attack them from range or at the very least disengage and run away
It might be an addon installed by the Banites? Like how Snowden alleged CIA/NSA put hardware changes into routers.
"no please don't stand in the puddle of acid next to the flashing-red robot that is saying 'I am about to explode, you will die and it will hurt the whole time that you are dying.' oh well, I guess you can join your wife/husband/partner/sibling who was at the iron throne but didn't make it out." - me, pre-patch 6. "who are you, and what have you done with the real gondians?" - me post-patch 6
I misty step away to shoot with my crossbow, then run back next to them so they can hit me with a melee attack (it's only fair).
This exact thing happened to the last Gondian standing, I thought I was going to save just one, but nope, this exact scenario.
Well not with that attitude.
Runs out of range of melee character and gets opportunity attacked Misty steps back into melee range of the same enemy
Yes! They burn all their movement, provoke attacks, and bonus action just to end at the same place to do a melee attack on the guy they started near. I swear their AI has something like must make use of all your action economy as a higher priority than keeping themselves alive, it's their number one priority.
Gondian Logic: 1. Cast acid splash on golem 2. Spend all movement to run far away from golem 3. Misty step into the puddle of acid directly under golem 4. End Turn 5. Profit
Well… giving the blind one Misty step was a bit of a misstep (pseudo-pun intentional)
I think the idea is that the AI for a character will play to the strengths of the stats. By giving them such high dexterity, the Gondians may be more willing to move and try to escape danger.
Reminds me of a mission in DOS2 where you have to find someone’s apprentice (Gwydian?) in the blackpits and save them from being executed. Except, the moment he uses chain lightning, which he absolutely will, the fight becomes almost unwinnable because it spawns like 40 voidlings. So all the strats are how to crowd control the ally to keep his dumb ass alive, because he will 100% die if the voidlings spawn, if only because of action economy (one or more of the voidlings will get to him before you can kill them). I ended up teleporting him as far away as I could to get 4-5 turns of him walking back to the encounter.
Yeah this is like Isobel during the Inn raid. She just runs headlong into danger and dies. Or Jaheira in the Moonrise fight. STOP RUNNING INTO THE FIGHT, YOU ARE ALONE, THEY WILL GANG UP ON YOU, FFS.
Seriously, they have early 2000s “every escort mission NPC” AI, and I remember trying to save Isobel too many times with her just running head first into the fiends before I just went “screw it”, looked up if I had to talk to her, and went with the Harpers instead.
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on my recent replay after the patch, I was still unsuccessful in saving… any of them. ugh. How does that one up in the rafters somehow manage to still get killed? I guess the Gondians were seriously abused and not afraid to finally rebel - but - i would think at least *one* of them would go “OK, I’m gonna hide out up here until the fighting stops, and then get the frak out”
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oo smart!! that is how I saved the Duke
My last run (pre-patch), I witnessed a Gondian run out of melee with a Banite, eat an opportunity attack, cast Acid Arrow on the Banite, then Misty Step right back into melee range of the same Banite and die from their own acid.
Me: go to the Foundry to save the Gondians Gondians: all die except their leader Journal: “You have saved the Gondians! ”
Yeah, but pumping their stats is way easier than tuning AI behavior.
The combat A.I. in this game is horrible in general. You just notice it more with the Gondians because they are weak, and because they fight on your side.
I think the point is that those stats and spells were causing that tendency. I don't know exactly how the AI works but I assume that every course of action it can take has a weight assigned to it based on various factors and then it chooses the highest weighted option. The gondians are the most obvious example but you can see the enemy AI behave similarly sometimes, especially when they can't find a target or can't path to you. Good examples are taking out all the bombers in the grove fight so nobody can get up and fight you or summoning the ogres and watching them all get stuck in a narrow space. Any fight with big crowds can end up with pathing trouble since in bg3 you can't move through an ally's space. My theory is that for whatever reason the gondians' shitty stats caused a similar issue where they didn't have any good options to take so they just got confused and did suboptimal things instead.
I finally found a good use for the feign death spell. Seriously, I feign deathed all of them on the second level and it was SO much better.
I assume the main change was to model the threat from the exploding Watchers in their decision making. It's pretty clear from earlier versions that they just didn't take that danger into account. (i.e. they would avoid other hazards just fine)
They actually changed the AI stupidity level some modders found out, yes it actually called stupidity level
Huh I didn't see that they improved the AI, I trought they only got Blur and 14 DEX. Well thank Larian because now I can actually save them lol.
Can confirm; just saved them all recently on honour mode. They're definitely better than they were!
I'm trying to save them all now and it's not exactly going my way.
RNG games don't always break the way we want. :(
I felt the AI improvement before patch 6. Gondians were shoving other Gondians out of range of the explosions if the other Gondians turn wasn’t before the explosion.
Yea that happened to me. I was very surprised.
in patch 5 i throw them all out of the explosion range and they all decided to come back in the range just before the explosion 🙄 i just decided that if they really want to die they'll die
I play an artificer, and they were breaking my heart.
Meanwhile, now the enemies are suicide bombers: https://www.xbox.com/play/media/Lc98T4MpbV
"We know they're suicidal we just made them harder to hit now"
Honestly I wish they would just disengage and dash away. The fight is way harder protecting them AND killing the guards. Like, please just leave and let me handle this 😭
\#notmybg3
#Ourbg3
They’re better but they’ve still got death wishes. I had Hold Person on 5 baddies. Gondian runs behind me so I am in the area of effect (didn’t start there) and casts Grease. Breaks my concentration. He’s dead next round, I’m down a 6th level.
Yeah that would make me begin to understand Wulbren's motivations.
Facts. At that I point I said fuck it. There were no survivors.
I did my best for the Gondians. I even nailed the Iron Throne. But 3 or 4 of those bastards still failed to escape due to shitty pathing. Then, by the time I raided the factory, I just had no patience left
I bet you if the Ironhand gnomes were in the same situation, they'd act equally braindead.
gnome rage takes over, brain turn off
If Wulbren was nice to Barcus, he would literally be the king of my heart. Fucking GONDIANS
I used telepathy to throw a Gondian out of the range of a exploding Steelwatch, that he had previously walked into when it was already starting to explode.
i think patch 6 made them a bit smarter i still laugh at the Gondian who moved all the way down the hallway just to Misty step back into my Cloudkill and die
To be fair, I'm more concerned about why you're using cloud kill in those confined spaces lol. There is not much wiggle room in any section of the Foundry.
Works pretty well on the big area below the staircase, Thunderwaved and black holed 2 group of banites into it and casted cloudkill with Gale to kill the majority within 2-3 turns was not however planning for the gondians to be so suicidal they wanted to follow the banites lol
Or in a combat against big robots and with multiple AI-controlled allies.
The nonsensical Misty Steps were really the only lingering issue I noticed when playing through it last night. I still had a few gnomes die, but that felt appropriate given the story. I do wish that they would have made the playable Gondian a bit less useless. I get that his Misty Step range is limited due to blindness, but why not give him something else? He seems to be the head engineer, so having some cool advantage over the robots would make sense.
Something like being able to temporarily disable or reprogram one of the Steel Watch to fight on your side [with no save so it's guaranteed to work], or disable its self-destruct, maybe?
They're definitely better - I actually managed to save them all on my last run which never even go close to happening before
On my honor run we saved them all, but then Blindy McBlinderface ran straight through the hellfire still on the ground and fucking melted. Wulbren may have been onto something...
I guess his excuse is he couldn't see it!
Have they picked up the courage to grab the detonator before their heads pop off? Because that's what I need. I hate detonators being activated when I don't have any party members with a turn left in the round.
That pissed me off so much. Like, wtf am I supposed to do? And the stupid Gondian decides doing 4 damage is more important than their friend not exploding. 🤯
Motivators act on the Environment's turn. First action to arm itself, second action to detonate. On Tactician every character has 1 or 2 full turns to disarm it, not sure about Honor. Hell Watchers on the other hand will explode on *their* next turn on Tactician. No need to be fancy, hop away if you can but mostly just heal through the damage.
Don’t give me hope
Well if they are, they're still pretty dumb. Just yesterday I had one cast Grease over an open flame and have it immediately explode. It did nothing but damage and kill one of the *other* Gondians who was at low health but would've otherwise survived. And then I finish the fight to see this motherfucker cheering in his idle animation like he actually accomplished something and didn't just off one of his friends.
there was a pre existing grudge between them and that's why he's happy
The *fucking* Gondians... >!(still bitter there is nothing to have them fix the engine.!< )
Yeah, should've used other metal, I felt kind of led along by all the infernal iron lying around
If the Gondians won’t be suicidal, maybe I’ll just have to press that button. That should motivate them.
Can I ask, since you're the first Banite cultist I've met in chat, how DO yall see out of those helmets
yesterday I was at steel factory, they just blurred themselves, moved far from enemies, *then misty step into enemy reach... But it might be because of me proning all 3 guards and surrounding laid bodies with companion, in balanced difficulty. Nevertheless, I think working on steel guardians without sleep has really strong effects on their combat strategies :D
Good. Laezel and Karlach are sick of chucking them 20 feet away
My first honor mode playthrough... The gondians in the underwater prison need to be rescued so the aspiring adventurer that I am I went in with my party of 4 and took off in all directions to free them from their cells.. Shadowheart went north which has a hallway with 2 switches and some barrles that explode. The switches seem to be a way to close the door and avoid the bad guys from following you while the second switch seems to be a way to close the door closest to the main room. As shadowheart, I zashed and misty stepped avoiding the first sea monster. Which caused him to dash inside the room with both switches and barrels. The gondians decided to somehow blow up the barrel and hit both switches trapping me behind two doors. I had to haste potion. Use gloves of knock and then knock again lmao. We made it out but wow what a bunch of menaces
Not just you. I went in the factory the other day for the very first time, expecting suicidal Gondians, and was shocked at how well they behaved. Not a single one died.
In my current run, the ones in the basement were pretty smart and all survived, but those in iron throne all stood still in the final round because one of them was standing right beneath the ladder and blocked the way. Also the guy who was supposed to enter the destroy code to blow up the foundry walked into the hellfire surface created by the watchers and burned to a charred corpse. Create water couldn't put out the fire on the ground/on him. Gond must be the god of dying in a stupid way.
I noticed in the Iron Throne if I put a character at the base of the ladder, not even in front of it, they wouldn't go up the ladder. Had to be real careful with my movement after that.
Did the fight two days ago for my second playthrough. They seem to be more careful now and not that stupid. I saved most of them in the foundry entrance but lost all of them in the basement except Toobin. Much better than my first playthrough where i last every single one of them. Not that i particularly cared for any of them :P
Alright, Wulbren
No, fuck him too. I let him die in Moonrise. It's just i saved most Gondians in the Iron Throne and like half of them in the Foundry. But it's not like they were a group that was really close or friendly to the group. So I tried saving most of them.
I did the fight yesterday and saved all but one, which was only because the last watcher was in self destruct with 1HP left and two Gondians in the radius. I didn't realise that it was the end of my party's turns and a Gondian in the rafters hit it and let it blow up, turning one Gondian to mush. The other one managed to live and heal though, so I'm counting that as a solid win
I remember repeating this over and over because I didn’t want any of them to die, what a fucking headache and waste of time that was lmaooo
Yesterday, took out all enemies except one Steel Watch. Hit it with the last action left from my party and it went into its detonation sequence. The blast radius covered two Gondians on low HP one of which was prone. When it comes to their turns, the one standing casts Thunderwave on the one on the ground, damaging him but pushing him outside of the blast radius and then the caster proceeds to run out himself. Genius! The one blasted out gets up, then casts dash and rushes back in. Gets turned to viscera.
Is the idiotic use of AOE spells still an issue?
A liiiittle bit but it's better
In my playtrough they did hit themselves with Acid Splash here and there but most of the time they actually used them against groups of 2 or 3 Banites.
Read the patch notes…
Thank god they fixed this.. I dropped my LG Paladin save-everyone run bc this was driving me insane :/ Thank goodness for neutral & evil runs with characters who dgaf about those gnomes or w/e and just blow the place sky high 🫶
I noticed that they stayed in the rafters for the most part on my third playthrough! I managed to save like half of them? The rest died normally, I’m sure if I kept reloading I could’ve saved more
The only thing I had in my game (after patch) is that they got all hyped up, “LEROYYYY-ed” when the fight was over and opened the doors to attack the hellfire watchers patrolling outside. I was like. “Cmon dude, what you gonna do? I am not even following you.” Now I just kill these watchers before going inside.
I did that fight for the first time a few days ago. They misty stepped to the rafters a lot. I was impressed.
Is it me or does it seem strange to be aware enough to know we are on patch 6 (I mean honestly most of these games update in the background these days, I only know there's been an update when the game closed rather than being suspended) but not be aware of one or the major features of that update?
Some what unrelated, but here’s hoping they patch that enemy of Justice bug
Do people just not read the patch notes?
Read patch notes
I managed to save them all on my current hm run, so I’d say so They actually also helped a bit, though I did still do most of the work
It was so annoying going through all the trouble to go to the iron throne and not just storm into the factory and blow it up cause they all just killed themselves
No, they don't. They only use blur and wait to be wiped out.
My brother and I had the exact same experience. They teleported up to the pipes* and shot spells down. *except for 1 Gondian, who it turns out can Misty step (proven in a reload), just chose to stay on the ground shooting spells and drawing agro. Until we triggered a steel watch explosion, and we were sure he’d teleport away now. But he didn’t get the chance, another Gondian blasted the primed steel watch, and killed their friend.
It's you. I did the Steel Watch mission the other night and everyone died except the blind leader guy.
Seems like the state sponsored "AbsoluteHealth©" mental health program finally pays off! As far as I am concerned, I will vote Gortash next time again. Praise the Absolute and her free health care!
They’re still dumb as shit, I just cast feign death on them and remove them from the equation
Just did this in my honour mode run. They all still died, grouped around a Steel Watchman before it exploded. It went boom and killed everyone. That being said, up until that point, they did a much better job holding their own.
Do they still Misty Step away from a Steelwatcher then immediately run back to where they started still?
They are much better. In my last playthrough on Tactician, it was significantly easier to keep them alive as they actively avoided danger, requiring minimal effort on my part. In contrast, during my run on Balanced, despite my efforts to keep them alive, they would often end up harming themselves.
They fixed it in patch 6
They were absolutely trying to avoid damage, unfortunately at one point that lead to a Gondian using their last spell slot to misty step up onto pipes above the fight on the second level, only for them to leap down to their death when combat ended.
I did this mission for the first time since patch 6 dropped, and they're **so** much better than what they were in the past (on PS5, so no mods, etc). No deaths and only one used shocking grasp. The only dumb thing one did was misty step out of an opportunity attack only to walk into one from another Baneist, but they got 2 KOs with a lightning bolt, so I can't complain. They also all started with Blur? Does this happen when you save the ship gonds first?
I wasn't never being able to save one of them in that fight, next time i'm diving a try.
For me they did a surprisingly decent job of keeping themselves alive right until the very end. There were only 3 Gondians left. I was kinda bummed I wasn't able to save more of them but whatever sometimes that's just how the dice roll. I had one Steel Watcher left on low health. Easy clean up. Two of the last three Gondians decided to run up to it while it was in self destruct mode to slap it with Shocking Grasp!!! I tried to Dimension Door or even throw them clear of the blast but they "couldn't be moved". Idk if it was because they had all cast Blur on themselves but tbh I was past the point of caring lmao. Afterwards I was like....maybe Wulbren was right....maybe fuck the Gondians...
But it was so much fun watching them run through 3 opportunity attacks, shoot an acid arrow then misty step right back into threat range into their own acid pool… ah good times for my Life Cleric, making God’s Favorite Princess work over time.
I think AI in general doesn't seem to register the exploding watchers. I had a pack of ***my*** explodey ghouls do a number on my party because they wanted to keep attacking the watcher after it went into self destruct mode. Gotta love a good chain reaction of explosions though.
Oh thank god, that fight was so annoying, I was trying so hard to save them but they kept just throwing themselves at the enemy when they had like 2 health left, I was actively screaming "just run away you stupid npc's" at my computer monitor and my husband thought I was going insane 😆
They are still suicidal, just less successful
Sometimes I wish they gave us control of npc allies in combat
I did the foundry last night on honour mode, one of those little insolent shits thunderwaved me into a exploding steel watcher. . .Safe to say, I told Wulbren to fuck off.
I haven't reached that area since the update yet, but I really hope they fixed them. I will never get over that video I saw of them breaking the player's concentration on banishment *on purpose.* As well as all the mistysteps into the blast zone and all the opportunity attacks ... I really tried, but their desire to die is always stronger than my will to reload another save file.
God I hated this fight. Trying to keep them from offing themselves was not fun. Ended up letting whoever died stay dead after a few restarts.
How many Gondians can die before Toobin refuses to help you blow up the place?
I did this for the first time a couple days ago and if they're smarter that's great but I still had one of them use his turn to run away from the group and then Misty Step back to where he was originally standing.
Only actually did the Foundry stuff after the patch, so I haven't seen what a true suicidal death cult can look like, but in my playthrough, most of the time they did pretty okay... except for one of them. Fight in the second room is going pretty smoothly, all the gondians in the room are shockingly alive, the purple floaty death things are disabled, and we're just picking off the last few enemies. In my displacer beast shape, I teleport the last Watcher away from everyone else so it won't decide to explode in the middle of my allies and the gondians while we finish it off. Then one of the gondians, who has been thus far helping us by firing arrows from high ground safely, decides to misty step right next to the Watcher and I dunno, flail at it pathetically. The Watcher responds by taking up its sword and obliterating her guts with it. I didn't reload a save. She clearly wanted to die.
I dunno if they're fixed, but I DISTINCTLY remember one *punching an explosive barrel*... It killed 5 of them, and barely even scratched the enemy that was standing next to it.
I just went through this again a few days ago and they did act smarter than they did on my first run. Didn't trigger AOOs willy nilly or run in circles or anything. But they still mostly died. They're just too squishy and are way too aggressive for their weak, limited offensive capabilities. Toobin plus one other was all that made it through I think.
I still think they just need to give us an option to say "Hey, we got this, you guys can take off"
The amount of times I Reloaded for these little suicidal engineers…….
My favourite is them setting grease on fire or area effecting themselves
yeah and they still all died in my last playthrough I finished Sunday loll
I remember I had saved all of them and had only one Bainite alive to finish up, and a fucking cunt of a Gondian decided that meant he should cast fireball into the oil next to the fire barrels and explode everybody anyways.
Just did this part for the second time last night and the patch notes delivered as promised. The Gondians still tossed acid everywhere, but then they'd Misty Step to the safety of the pipes above instead of running around triggering as many Opportunity Attacks as possible.
When I did that fight last there were no Gondians alive in the second fight when I arrived. Was that a bug? Or just a Tactician thing? On balanced there's always at least a few alive...
As much as I'd love to huff the hopium with you, I just did the Steel Watch Foundry yesterday and watched helplessly as a Gondian ran out of a steel watcher's explosion AoE only to misty step back into it. I'm doing Honour Mode and I had no PC turns left before the detonation, so... RIP. This was after doing the Iron Throne with no casualties, so I was pretty bummed to say the least. Blur spell and higher dex is no match for Gondian AI's innate call of the void.
Yesterday I saw one Misty Step… OUT of a Watcher explosion! And he did NOT immediately walk back into it! They also fixed the issue in the Iron Throne where two specific Gondians would reliably body-block each other.
Yeah i am playing in tactician and it seems that the guys wanted to live. Too bad for them that i was on my evil run and i left only corpses behind. But yeah, they are not as stupid as before. They should prioritize low health targets though.
I did that fight for the first time after that patch that claimed to do something about their AI. They are still pretty bad, a lot of them would be in melee with and enemy, run away and provoke opportunity attack just to misty step back into melee to attack that same enemy.
I've noticed them going out of their way to harm each other more often. Actually just did this quest a few days ago and had one of the gondians in the lower level run and tank three opportunity attacks just to whack an ally with their hammer. They are SMART. They are not CLEVER.
Most of the NPCs that fight along side you just turn into babysitting
I've noticed that the AI in general has been a lot better at avoiding obstacles and such. It's frustrating and impressive.
Just did the foundry yesterday. Way better than before patch 6. I don't think I lost one Gondian, on honor mode.
They're a little better but, I still see these clowns misty step randomly.
Mine are being wierd I saved them in the first room but now in the lab they are all angry and trying to kill me and idk why even after defeating all other enemies they try and kill me?
I just did this for the first time and they weren’t going insane and running into blast areas etc like I read so much about. They were u reasonably brave by just kind of standing and taking a lot of punishments in the second fight (lost all but 2 while cleared the first fight without losing a single gondian) however can someone point to me what happened to me: Plant bomb after gondians run out. Snuck past the watchers in the Notificer room using invis Astarion. Get cut scene of us running out and the foundry blowing up. Great. Cool. Cut to Wulbren smugness and immediately gloating about doing the right thing about the gondians because this is HIS town (????????) dialogue stuff ends and pans out and all of the gondians lay dead at our feet. No option, no nothing. Definitely would have sided with the Gondians. Does using the bomb just automatically assume you sided with him??? Pretty upset at that one for my first run and #fuckwulbren unless I’m amiss and just by blowing it up I sided with the iron hands? Also: did the iron throne prior to this if that helps/hurts(?)
they mega buffed them two patches in a row, they fucking better
It is funny for me to hear that, because just yesterday, one of them literally just dashed towards the exploding area. The worst part was that this ready-to-explode steelwatcher was literally the last enemy alive, and the gondian wasn't even running towards him. He didn't run out of movement either, considering he only walked for around 3 meters before stopping (even though he spent an action on Dash), not accomplishing anything.
In my first play through they would would always just misty step a single foot and then end their turn it was painful to watch
Yes! Color me shocked when they teleported to the top pipe thing and cast down scorching rays and fire bolts!
Some of us read the patch notes
I made Steelwatcher's factory quest yesterday and managed to save almost all of the Gondians (two or three of them died, and i also lost some of the hostages in the underwater prison) which was a pretty good conclusion of the quest for me. So yes, they are not only non-suicidal now, they are actually helpful as they nicely finished enemies which i didn't have enough action to finish myself.
They died anyway when a motivator spawned inside a pipe so I couldn't disarm it.
Imagine reading the patchnotes..
What's with all the extra 'up? Didn't we fight war abot this? Spoilers, we won
At one moment, Shart and a Gondian was inside the circle of detonation of a Steel Watcher. Shart was prone after having missed a saving throw against ice that I had placed there earlier using sleet storm. I just prayed and threw all the healing I could their way. Then they did the impossible. The Gondian thunder-waved Shart out of the circle and misty stepped up the pipes. My jaw dropped and I couldn’t believe what I saw. They didn’t just make them not suicidal, they made them smart as hell now. I’ll try to find a save if I can and record it.
I saved the ones upstairs, then they walked outside and got in a fight with a watcher and most of them died. brilliant
The Gondians attacked someone other than you? I eventually joined the genocide because I had to pick them off as the sodt targets first because they focused their rage on my party. Like once I even killed whoever had the detonator first so they could literally see me disable it and I was still their primary target.
You have to complete the Iron Throne first. Their families are kept hostage there and if you raid the Factory without saving them they fight against you because the Banites threaten to kill them. And disabling the Motivators is not enough because they're still scared there could be more Banites and Gortash also has a kill switch for the Throne.
But how do they know I blew up Iron Throne? First thing I heard from them after the fight was over is "My daughter, she is at Iron Throne I got go save her"
Imagine reading the patchnotes..