Baldur's Gate 3's merchants complained to Larian again, so the RPG's latest hotfix stops "letting you generate gold" using cheesy exploits

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Baldur's Gate 3 volo eye
(Image credit: Larian Studios)

Larian is done with Baldur's Gate 3, with no DLC or sequel planned, but the developer is still working on more epilogue content and regular hotfixes for the mammoth RPG. Its latest patch takes aim at a gaggle of bugs and multiple economy-breaking exploits, preventing clever thieves from effectively duplicating items using the power of containers – again. 

"The tradespeople of Baldur’s Gate have also had a word with our people, and we both agree that container-based antics, while amusing, are damaging the economy," reads hotfix 23. "So in this update we’ve fixed several bugs with buying and selling. No more free lunches!"

Here's the bit Larian's talking about: 

  • Fixed an issue where selling all wares didn't remove the proper gold amount from the trader inventory.
  • Fixed a bug letting you generate gold by buying multiple items but only paying for one of them if you dragged the items into a container.
  • Fixed a bug letting you 'buy' a stack of items for free when dragging the stack into a container and using the item splitter.
  • Fixed equipped items blocked by shapeshifting being tradable, allowing you to get paid even if the items don't transfer to the trader's inventory.

Funnily enough, containers have been breaking Baldur's Gate 3 for months now, from corpse speedruns to similar gold exploits. Back in December, Baldur's Gate 3 patched out the ability to "buy out a trader with only 1 gold and a container" right as it was crowned GOTY at The Game Awards. 

The rest of today's hotfix is a pretty standard collection of crashes, rare crashes, and "randomly occurring issues" like broken dialogue, absent sound effects, and "the bulette getting permanently stuck under the ground when you passed by in Turn-Based Mode." Can't be having underground bulettes, folks. 

Larian was "thinking about" Baldur's Gate 4, but D&D 5E wouldn't work with "all these ideas of new combat that we wanted to try out."

Austin Wood
Austin Wood
Senior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.