Baldur's Gate 3 will fix slowdowns and Astarion's kisses later this week

Larian Studios says it's aiming to release Patch 5 for Baldur's Gate 3 later this week. The update will include a fix for performance issues in Act 3, Astarion's kisses, and more.

Since Patch 4 was released at the beginning of the month, Baldur's Gate 3 players have experienced slowdown in Act 3. The performance issues were introduced in the patch, Larian stated on X (née Twitter), and resulted in tag crimes like theft and violence being tagged as "eternally-active", regardless of whether or not players were spotted by NPCs.

Larian director of publishing Michael Douse revealed the slowdown is caused by a specific bug in Moonrise Towers during Act 2. Patch 5 will address this and "so much more," Douse wrote, when it hopefully drops later this week. Mostly I'm just looking forward to being able to ask Astarion for a kiss and actually receive one.

Douse also shared information on the physical releases of Baldur's Gate 3 for consoles, revealing the retail versions on Xbox Series X/S and PS5 will both ship with Patch 5 on disc. The first physical versions of the game will be the snazzy Deluxe Edition for console and PC which includes the original soundtrack across three CDs and a beautiful, if not somewhat disturbing, mind-flayer poster.

The Deluxe Edition is currently scheduled for release in Q1 2024. Xbox fans are hoping they'll be able to get their hands on the game earlier than that as a release date on Series X/S will be announced at The Game Awards on 8th December.