Baldur's Gate 3's latest hotfix remedies an excruciating softlock near the RPG's end, and guarantees the correct ending for Karlach and Wyll

A new Baldur's Gate 3 hotfix has remedied a huge softlock that prevented players from progressing to the end of the game.

Last week, we reported on a Baldur's Gate 3 Honour Mode player effectively locking themselves out of the final battle by forgetting to bring along the Orphic Hammer into the Astral Realm. In Honour Mode, there's no save-scumming so no ability to go back and find the missing item. Just a few days later, Larian has rapidly implemented a workaround for the problem.

"You can now gain access to certain quest-related items on the spot - even if they're not held by your current party," the patch notes for the new hotfix read. That should theoretically let players stranded in the Astral Realm pick up the Orphic Hammer by reaching through space and time to break Orpheus out of his prison.

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Elsewhere, there are a few fixes for the very end of Baldur's Gate 3. Karlach will now get her big scene in Avernus regardless of whether she's an avatar, while Wyll will correctly follow Karlach into said layer of Hell depending on whether or not he's taken the title of the 'Blade of Avernus.'

After that, once players reach the final party, there are now several Potions of Animal Speaking available in the Baldur's Gate 3 Epilogue. We've seen players complain that they couldn't communicate with Scratch or the Owlbear cub if they hadn't taken a Potion of Animal Speaking before the game's final battle, but now that doesn't matter - you can just pop one right then and there in the epilogue and talk to your bestial pals. 

There's also one hell of a fix for the fight against Gortash. Apparently, the wall-mounted grenade launchers would just bypass the turn-based combat and shoot out grenades whenever they wanted, which has now been fixed. That's got to be seriously infuriating in the middle of a boss showdown.

Speaking of bosses, Cazador will transform into a misty area and threaten foes with Necrotic damage in Tactician mode, as if the difficulty mode wasn't already tough enough. In slightly more positive news, Barcus Wroot will now show up at Last Light Inn if you've successfully saved him in the game's previous act, a fitting reward for your heroic efforts.

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