Difficulty Levels – Baldur’s Gate 3

One of the many decisions you’ll make in Baldur’s Gate 3 is what difficulty to use during your campaign: Explorer, Balanced, or Tactician. Fortunately unlike most decisions in the game, you can change this at any time during your playthrough.

At first glance, it seems Baldur’s Gate 3 follows the classic easy, medium, and hard difficulties, but a deeper look shows some pretty key differences between each of the difficulty levels.

The easiest difficulty, designed for players more interested in the game’s intricate storytelling than its combat, is Explorer. The main downside to choosing the Explorer difficulty is that you cannot multiclass without switching to a harder difficulty. While playing on Explorer, you can expect the following changes from Balanced difficulty:

  • +2 Proficiency Bonus to all Attack Rolls and Saving Throws
  • Cheaper items in shops
  • Enemies have decreased hit points

For most players, Balanced will be the perfect blend of story telling and challenge. It isn’t a huge step-up in difficulty compared to Explorer, but players have full access to the game’s mechanics including multiclassing. Your party has a balanced hit chance compared to Explorer, and enemies have their default hit point level. Baldur’s Gate 3 was intended to be played on Balanced difficulty.

baldurs gate 3 difficulty tactician example
You can expect a more aggressive AI on Tactician difficulty

The hardest difficulty in Baldur’s Gate 3 is the Tactician difficulty. You’ll want to get some experience with the game mechanics before trying this mode, as it is a significant step up from Balanced. Tactician has the following changes compared to Balanced:

  • The camp supplies required for a long rest increases from 40 to 80
  • Enemies have increased hit points
  • Enemies will adopt superior strategies against you in battle
  • Larger number of enemies in battle
  • More environmental hazards

You can change the difficulty at any point in time during your playthrough. Navigate to the pause menu and you’ll see the difficulty option between session and options.

baldurs gate 3 difficulty change difficulty

Now that you know they key information about each difficulty level in Baldur’s Gate 3, which difficulty are you going to use? Let us know in the comments below!

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Lucky Boop
Lucky Boop

Strategy game enthusiast, especially Paradox titles and the Civilization series. Whenever he's not writing he spends his time watching sports, enjoying coffee, or studying history.

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