Baldur's Gate 3 Update: Finally, That underwater prison Just Got Way Easier!
Baldur's Gate 3's Iron Throne Prison: A Nightmare Before Christmas (or a Really Bad Time!)
Let’s be honest, Baldur's Gate 3 is amazing; however this game does present some really brutal challenges, and rescuing those prisoners in Gortash's underwater prison (the infamous "Iron Throne") is seriously frustrating. The encounter is limited by time. That’s tough enough; you get few rounds to grab those prisoners before everything floods and those key individuals are lost forever. It gets even worse—this area’s riddled with frustrating bugs!
This whole prison section matters, folks! It is tied into multiple important quests, that are deeply consequential and even impact future encounters! These are not mere side quests— it includes critical characters (like the Grand Duke Ravengard) and others whose fate impacts some major storyline developments in significant and unpredictable ways! Bugs made this extra painful. Planning an epic rescue and having those rescued prisoners ignore your instructions is ridiculously infuriating. Luckily, Larian released Hotfix #27 which should fix some major issues and potentially give people a fair chance to win this brutal but very important encounter, completely improving an area which many have deemed totally broken!
Why This Underwater Prison Is Such a Total Pain
That Iron Throne challenge is brutal on any difficulty! It starts the moment you open that hatch and kicks off this crazy limited-turn countdown timer; meaning time limits are inherent in the very structure itself and its level design. It's a race against time to pull those prisoners out; not made easier by the difficult pathing you’ll need to take! Avoiding those nasty Sahaguin enemies also adds extra stress! This is made way more difficult by how random the paths you'll end up choosing would become. This alone already generates a very high difficulty. It also is not helped by how random those choices could end up being! It requires careful planning; good cooperation within a team, and strategic ability for this whole ordeal to really work effectively.
The numerous glitches made things unbelievably awful! This is something anyone who played this might know very well! You rescue them, leading them to that submersible for escape; then they just ignore you—walking aimlessly rather than escaping! The very fundamental issues around pathing itself became totally broken in many instances. The devs have acknowledged this difficulty!
Hotfix #27: Ladders (and Hope) Are Back!
October 1st: Larian dropped Hotfix #27. That update had this totally vague note which hopefully fixes everything: "Reminded characters how to use ladders." It is totally ambiguous if it works! The very wording itself is so understated! It likely affects how those characters (prisoners included) interact with those very crucial submersible ladders. If successful this fixes those bugs; it greatly improves a formerly insanely broken and difficult section. This becomes crucial for people to remember.
Now for that really, really important bit – what does that mean for the players? Well, most updates on big areas like that would explain the fix completely; and that is not what happened. Thus, that unclear language implies no guaranteed fixes! This doesn't explicitly state that this fix applies only to this very frustrating and frequently broken location within the game.
Conclusion: A Glimpse of Hope in Baldur's Gate 3
This Iron Throne rescue is brutally difficult in Baldur's Gate 3, which became even harder due to numerous game-breaking issues. It’s likely that even that ambiguous “ladder fix” within Hotfix #27 makes a HUGE improvement! But the ambiguous language makes it impossible for those devs to completely assure us of the extent of changes this latest update creates!
It sounds really positive! Fingers crossed, this will resolve those incredibly frustrating pathing problems— giving everyone a decent chance to rescue those trapped prisoners! This will greatly impact all those playing this game.
