After Wrath of the Righteous I am paranoid about missing things, so I'm really taking my time. The weird plot progression on long rest is also making me second guess.
I'm doing the opposite, in anticipation of probably replaying the game in future. I always feel like, if an RPG with varied endings/characters/etc. is actually good and fun, there's no point in doing a 100%/maximalist run as your first run. But I can understand people with less time for games and/or who aren't expecting to play it again doing differently. Or people playing for the first time - because it's particularly easy to miss a lot of stuff in Act 1, far easier than the other acts (albeit a lot of the clues I've been given only make sense in retrospect).
I'm also slightly surprised by the levels of difficulty a lot of people are reporting - I know this is a total humblebrag, but I don't think there have been more than a handful of fights where I've been forced to reload by something the enemies/boss did, over what is like 80 hours now, and most of the really major boss fights, I've taken in the first attempt. I have had to reload a
lot of times, sure, but it's all been really dumb things
I did, that I immediately knew were dumb seconds after clicking them (often breaking a vital concentration spell by casting another spell I forgot was concentration lol), or where I didn't understand how a mechanic worked on my end (mistakes you wouldn't make at a table). I think a lot of that though is due to keeping extremely sturdy characters in my party most of the time and making sure they had the best possible gear I could get. I rarely don't use both Lae'zel and Karlach, with Gale as the fourth. I'd rather swap out Gale in most cases than those two. Not sure what I'll do on future playthroughs, maybe play a tank myself and leave Lae'zel at home because boy I think I've basically maxed out her storyline this playthrough, and it's a good one. Also very straightforward optimization helps - Lae'zel is a straightforward EK GWM Fighter (Battlemaster would also be fine, but too many good manuevers got nerfed for no reason) and Karlach is a Berserker Barbarian with either Rogue or Monk depending on how I feel - I actually think overall Monk is slightly stronger, despite some stuff shutting down if in armour, and would be tempted to go that way more seriously next time. I honestly feel like Shadowheart is probably part of the problem - almost every group has her in, and she is not a strong character if not respec'd. Easily the worst subclass of Cleric, bad stat array (13 STR
and DEX girl come on), can't even wear heavy armour, what a mess. Combine that with tons of people having Astarion as a Rogue, in a game where Rogues are... unspectacular... unless very carefully micro'd (and Shadow Monks actually better at the "stealth assassin" deal by miles), and that's probably the explanation.
Another bug - returning thrown weapons frequently tell you that there's no path to your target, and when I say frequently, I mean like literally 30% of the times you try to throw them - particularly indoors (even with high ceilings and open areas). Usually repositioning does
not help, either - it'll be an entire room that's bugged in this way. I haven't encountered it in a major boss fight yet, but did encounter it in an extremely tightly timed section in Act 3 (6 turns to complete what we were doing), which was pretty annoying. Normal throwing weapons do not have the same issue, so you can throw those, but they're not as good.
