Fans of Divinity: Original Sin II are hoping that Larian Studios will bring in more features from the game into its newest title, Baldur’s Gate 3. After the latest BG3 patch, some Redditors claim they found an added achievement. If real, this achievement will be familiar to DOS2 players and sorely wanted by veteran computer RPG players.
On November 2, BG3 got another massive patch. Once again, the notes crossed the character limit on Steam, so to read all of Patch #4, players must go to the BG3 website. The patch featured tweaks to Origin characters, widened accessibility for colorblind players, and bug fixes, among many other tune-ups. Some GOG players, however, noticed something new not mentioned in the patch notes. Created by CD Projekt, GOG serves as an alternative marketplace to Steam that specializes in curated, DRM-free (Digital Rights Management) games. The company has an interesting history, with the 1998 Baldur’s Gate game being the first major seller for the Polish distributor.
On Reddit, these GOG players found that their progress of completing 100% of BG3‘s achievements slid back down to 98%. After some digging, they posted they found that a 54th achievement was added to GOG. This is for a currently inaccessible game mode: Honour Mode.
Foehammer
In DOS2, Honour Mode means you’re playing at the highest difficulty level. Unlike the other three modes (Explorer, Classic, and Tactician), there’s only one save file available. Adding an extra level of thrill and/or frustration, players lose all progress when they die. The game deletes their save file immediately. Unlike DOS2, BG3 currently offers three difficulty levels that are changeable at any time. At the current highest difficulty level (Tactician), enemies are smarter, stronger, and jump on the weakest party members first. If Honour Mode is rolled out, this will be part of that added challenge.
Following Scornz’s Reddit post, other GOG BG3 players like W0lferino93 posted similar screencaps of the achievement named “Foehammer.” This name likely alludes to the sword wielded by Gandalf in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. The sword’s common name is Glamdring, but the Sindarin (a common Elvish language) name translates to “foe hammer.”
Even without confirmation from Larian, there’s already debate on whether this would be a positive or negative addition to BG3. Some love it, citing it provides another reason to play another campaign, while some completionists wanting to play other games are displeased about possibly having to return to FaerĂ»n so soon. Regardless of opinion, this will likely only impact a small set of players. For one, only 2% of Steam players have completed the game on Tactician as of November 7, 2023. Additionally, BG3 has brought in a lot of non-RPG players (like me) who get enough of a sense of achievement by completing the game on its easier two settings.
(featured image: Larian Studios)
