Eager Baldur's Gate 3 players were set to get their first taste of Patch 7 today thanks to a closed beta, but that test period has gotten a last-minute delay after Larian realized that passive dice rolls had suddenly stopped working.
"The Patch 7 Closed Beta has been delayed," Larian explains in a tweet. "Why? While fixing bugs, passive dice rolls literally stopped working. We’re trying to figure out how we got here, so while we do that, we’ll be pushing the planned Closed Beta back to later this week." Broken passive dice rolls would of course prevent you from, say, seeing deadly traps before you walk directly into them, so that seems like a pretty essential thing to fix.
For now, Larian is letting you peruse the highlights of the full patch notes in a new Steam blog, though be warned that you'll see some late-game spoilers among those notes. There are "over 1,000 fixes and improvements" in total, but some of the highlights "making the way you use soap a bit clearer (we were noticing too many suspicious teeth marks on the bars), dissipating Gale’s Necrotic Aura when it should dissipate (terrible vibes), and making sure Jaheira doesn’t stop following the party after a Long Rest (she just needed a longer rest)."
There are also a load of fixes for various romance sequences, the ability to change the eyebrow color for bald characters, and a brand-new loading screen for act three. You can also make use of the advanced Honour Mode gameplay mechanics in custom games without fully committing yourself to permadeath. Perhaps most importantly, the devs have made a variety of performance optimizations, which "will have a more noticeable impact in areas with large numbers of NPCs," including the notorious Lower City.
Larian has already been teasing some of the larger headline updates for Patch 7, including improved evil endings, official modding tools, and a dynamic split-screen upgrade. With the delay of the closed beta, you now have a bit more time to sign up for the playtest over on the game's Steam page. The final version of the patch is still set to go live for everybody sometime in September.
