My attitude to long rests inBaldur’s Gate 3has turned on its head across my playthrough. Initially, I regarded them with caution. Maybe even disdain. When I playD&D, either as a DM or a player,it’s never particularly hardcore and you can rest whenever it makes narrative sense. If you want a long rest, you need to make camp or book a room overnight, which will involve paying either with money or with time, or posting lookouts. Long rests in D&D introduce nightfall, and offer a range of different scenarios. Baldur’s Gate 3, I’ve learned, does this in a different way, and they have become one of my favourite mechanics in the game.
In my own D&D games, my party cast Charm Person on someone to get them to build a boat. They then went for a long rest, expecting the boat to be there when they woke up. Unfortunately, Charm Person only lasts for an hour, and those affected by it are aware of its effect when it ends. So, rather than gaining a boat, they were awoken by an angry carpenter, only half-rested, and needed to flee town. This is the fun the narrative elements of long rests offer in the tabletop game that they don’t in BG3. But they have other virtues in the virtual world.
Part of my initial reservation around long rests in BG3 was pride. Playing as a warlock, my spell slots recovered on short rests, and I was eager to try out all of my camp mates so preferred to swap them around when they were injured rather than just having Karlach, Lae’zel, and Shadowheart as my a-team who were constantly in the spotlight. Having grown in appreciation of Gale andadding Jaheira to my party, I can still get that diversity anyway. And with save scumming every other minute, I’m not exactly in a position to feel accomplished over my lack of rests.
In time, I learned to embrace them, which might be the single best thing I’ve done in my Baldur’s Gate 3 journey. Oh sure, I’ve picked up weapons that transform my approach to combat, discovered new synergies between companions, and disappeared down side quests that are key to my experience of and love for the game. But long resting more is such a simple change, and it makes everything else better.
I found out a little too late that most of the major companion beats happen during long rests. Unless there’s something that specifically happens as the result of pursuing or completing a quest, most of the development you get with characters comes as you go to sleep. Astarion’s secrets,Shadowheart’s and Lae’zel’s rivalry, and Wyll’s burden to bear all develop most just before you sleep. You will see glimpses of them in the various side quests you pursue, but you’re never getting the full story that way.
Mechanically, long rests also fully heal you and recover everyone’s spell slots, as well as a lot of the ‘recovers on long rest’ abilities you and your team will learn across the story. Considering how easy rations and supply packs are to come across, there’s nothing harmed in long resting as often as you can, except maybe your pride. But if you’re playing Baldur’s Gate 3 to show off how great you are at combat while blasting through the story, maybe it just isn’t the game for you.
Storytelling is at the heart of Baldur’s Gate 3, and long rests are the perfect platform for that. The stories these rests hold might be less directly related to your main quest, as they are in the tabletop game, but there’s always an undercurrent of narrative flowing through Baldur’s Gate 3, and long rests allow that to flow to the surface. Your game just isn’t complete if you’re not long resting as often as you can. Right now, I have nine supply packs and enough other rations for another three long rests. That’s 12 potential story beats, and I’m close enough to the end that I won’t use them all - of course, ideally I would have used them earlier. But to have so many left over now that I’m leaning on the mechanic more shows I could, and should, have been doing it from the start. I guess I’ll catch whatever I miss on my second go around.
