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Another colossal update for Baldur's Gate 3 has landed with Patch 4 and the changelog, as expected, is utterly ridiculous. Seriously, what the heck. Oh, it's also enhanced with AMD FSR 2.2! So this should make it look better on Steam Deck.

The patch notes don't actually mention AMD FSR 2.2 (update 3/11/23: they do now), I only found that out thanks to the Director of Publishing at Larian mentioning it on X. I love Baldur's Gate 3, but the performance issues on Steam Deck mixed with the fuzzy visuals of the old FSR it shipped with made it a bit rubbish on Deck but at least some of that is now solved.

It's also Steam Deck Verified, which it definitely didn't deserve originally but perhaps now it does?

So what else is in the update? Uh, a lot. Over 1,000 fixes, tweaks and changes. There's new accessibility options, you can now dismiss dead avatars to Withers' Wardrobe, you can customise hirelings' appearance when recruiting them, Scratch will now fetch... pretty much everything, controller improvements like a setting to have end turn require hold instead of tap to prevent miss-clicks, they added map markers for when characters want to talk to you and loads more mechanics improvements.

Performance as a whole should be better too with optimizations everywhere like lighting in Lower City, improved UI performance, improved loading times after choosing to 'Venture Forth' by reducing delays during portrait generation, improved performance when multiple copies of the same animation would try to run at once (e.g. the ships in the distance in Grey Harbour) and improved performance in areas with crowds.

Gosh, there's just so much to it, can't wait to dive in again on desktop Linux and Steam Deck (because this would be great in bed…). Full patch notes here.

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Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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14 comments

mt Nov 2, 2023
ok why in the hells did they update fsr but not to 3.0?!?
Raaben Nov 2, 2023
"controller improvements like a setting to have end turn require hold instead of tap to prevent miss-clicks,"

I would have killed for that among other things during my playthrough. For a game aiming for console releases, the controller support felt pretty sub par. The bug (feature?) where opening the ability wheels would open one with any active toggle enabled vs first one made organizing my abilities where I wanted them feel terrible.
Arehandoro Nov 2, 2023
Nice! I can only play on the Deck for a few days, and this is going to help me a lot! Will download it right away.
minidou Nov 2, 2023
Quoting: mtok why in the hells did they update fsr but not to 3.0?!?

they were talking about it and probably started implementing before FSR3 was a thing
slaapliedje Nov 3, 2023
I keep thinking 'why would you play something like this on the Deck, I would think it'd kind of suck.' Then I remembered South Park, makes more sense now.

I wish I didn't have terrible ADHD and a hatred for 5e, or I think I'd actually be able to enjoy the game :P
StalePopcorn Nov 3, 2023
Damn! Family life… or Baldur's Gate 3!? 🥲 If this goes on sale this fence shall prove quite unstable!
ElectricPrism Nov 3, 2023
Patch 4 broke Vulkan

https://www.protondb.com/app/1086940

Also broke mods sadly ( https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/327/ )


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 3 November 2023 at 8:00 am UTC
Arehandoro Nov 3, 2023
I could only try a bit this morning with the patch, and there was another one of 15MB after Patch 4 install last night. Visuals are much better now, and without bringing the FPS counter up yet, the game feels slightly smoother.
hardpenguin Nov 3, 2023
Quoting: mtok why in the hells did they update fsr but not to 3.0?!?
Quoting: mtok why in the hells did they update fsr but not to 3.0?!?
Leave it to the Linux gamer to complain about a free update that fixes things 😎
Raaben Nov 3, 2023
Quoting: ElectricPrismPatch 4 broke Vulkan

Vulkan has never worked properly for me here. Tried it every patch/hotfix and it still randomly crashed all the time.
Jarmer Nov 3, 2023
Indeed this patch has completely broken vulkan for everyone. In addition, when I run it in dx11 mode Shadowheart now refuses to move and just stands still. So .... I pretty much can't play the game if one character in my party will not move .... Seems they didn't do any testing on this patch at all. We will just have to wait on a hotfix. Hopefully they can get it out today before the weekend!
Liam Dawe Nov 3, 2023
They actually updated the full patch notes to mention FSR 2.2 now. Was weird it didn't originally note it.
sniper_nine Nov 5, 2023
Quoting: JarmerIndeed this patch has completely broken vulkan for everyone. In addition, when I run it in dx11 mode Shadowheart now refuses to move and just stands still. So .... I pretty much can't play the game if one character in my party will not move .... Seems they didn't do any testing on this patch at all. We will just have to wait on a hotfix. Hopefully they can get it out today before the weekend!


on my system using a 3090ti vulkan has been broken since patch 2. On release I was getting 75-120fps in vulkan then after patch 2 it was 30 and remains something like 30 while using vulkan. Whereas using directX I get the same or similar 75-120 fps. I use the proton-experimental.
slaapliedje Nov 6, 2023
Quoting: sniper_nine
Quoting: JarmerIndeed this patch has completely broken vulkan for everyone. In addition, when I run it in dx11 mode Shadowheart now refuses to move and just stands still. So .... I pretty much can't play the game if one character in my party will not move .... Seems they didn't do any testing on this patch at all. We will just have to wait on a hotfix. Hopefully they can get it out today before the weekend!


on my system using a 3090ti vulkan has been broken since patch 2. On release I was getting 75-120fps in vulkan then after patch 2 it was 30 and remains something like 30 while using vulkan. Whereas using directX I get the same or similar 75-120 fps. I use the proton-experimental.
Huh, I'll have to try it out on my 7800 XT, I usually just use DirectX because I was getting graphical corruption and lock ups with Vulkan. Lately, I've been playing RoboCop instead of BG3, not that I have many hours in BG3 either, but mostly due to the crashes.
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