One Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 7 Change Might Actually Help Honor Mode Parties

Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 7 made Honor Mode harder than ever, but one change that can heavily punish parties also has the potential to save them in their time of greatest need. As the highest difficulty setting available in Baldur’s Gate 3Honor Mode dials up the challenge and makes every party wipe into true permadeath that ends the campaign. It’s not for the faint of heart, but figuring out how to take advantage of every quirk can make the process of survival uniquely rewarding.

The biggest difference in Honor Mode gameplay might be the inclusion of Legendary Actions, which allow powerful enemies to interrupt the turn order with devastating maneuvers. The roster of Legendary Actions has been expanded with successive updates to Baldur’s Gate 3and the recent Patch 7 both introduced them to foes that previously had none and doubled down in a few instances. One beneficiary of the upgrade was the Spectator, a one-eyed monster found in Act One that can cause a lot of trouble for parties that aren’t well-seasoned in combat.

BG3’s Honor Mode Changes Make The Iron Flask Better

An Unusual Tool Unleashes An Enemy That’s More Powerful Than Ever

Compared to most troublesome Baldur’s Gate 3 enemies the Spectator is a unique situation, as it is actually possible to employ the assistance of one if the party acquires the right item. While one of the game’s Spectators is found roaming the Underdark, where it’s best avoided by those who don’t feel confident in tackling the challenge, another is imprisoned inside an Iron Flask. The flask is part of a shipment meant for the city of Baldur’s Gate, but adventurers without scruples can steal the shipment and commandeer its contents for their own purposes.

Opening the Iron Flask unleashes a Spectator, which won’t hesitate to attack the party if that’s the closest target at hand. Used in the right scenario, however, that Spectator can be used to the party’s advantage and turned against other challenging enemies. Reddit user Neveroth021 made a note of how powerful the Iron Flask is after the recent Honor Mode update, describing a scenario where they unleashed the Spectator during the assault on Moonrise Towers and “frightened and stunned the entire fortress,” making a gigantic encounter that can ruin Honor Mode campaigns into something significantly more manageable.

Using Baldur’s Gate 3’s Spectator Is Still A Risk

The Enemy Of An Enemy Might Not Be A Friend

The key to the Spectator’s newfound might is the Legendary Action”Ocular Nightmare,” which Spectators can use after being struck five times, a threshold that’s cleared quickly when an entire fortress is on the offensive. Ocular Nightmare flings the Spectator’s eye beams indiscriminately at enemies, providing a chance to Wound, Confuse, Paralyse, and Frighten targets. In tabletop Dungeons & Dragonsthe Spectator doesn’t even have a Legendary Action, and Ocular Nightmare is significantly more powerful than the Eye Ray Legendary Action that full-fledged Beholders possess.

The Iron Flask still isn’t a tool to use lightly Baldur’s Gate 3‘s Honor Mode, as there’s no good way to guarantee the avoidance of collateral damage. If the party hides away before tossing the flask into a den of enemies, however, the odds are in their favor, and it could serve as an incredibly powerful tactic when other resources are running low. Even without the new Legendary Action, the creature’s eye rays are already worthy of fear, so the Iron Flask can still be worthwhile in a standard campaign.

More than anything else, the newly enhanced Iron Flask is a great example of what makes Honor Mode so special. All the changes in Honor Mode make the experience brutally punishing, but unlike most games gunning for maximal difficulty, overcoming its trials isn’t reliant on precision gameplay or following a specifically optimized strategic playbook. By offering ways to turn around the same factors that make it so hard and use them to the party’s advantage, Baldur’s Gate 3 recaptures a lot of the ingenuity found in tabletop DnD play, and Patch 7 provides one additional way to do so.

Source: Neveroth021/Reddit