Thanks to Larian himself and the modders, Baldur’s Gate 3 continues to receive new parts, because clearly the absolutely enormous base game hasn’t been enough to completely consume the free time of hardcore DnD partiers.
A lot of people were busy doing interesting things with BG3 last year, both before and after official modding support for the game arrived last summer, and one of the most interesting creations I saw was ‘Trials of Tav’. Basically, modder Hippo0o managed to develop a full roguelike mode for the game, allowing you to go on your own adventure fighting endless hordes of enemies, as we were told at the time.
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Now, in the wake of updates to the original mod slowing down, other modders have begun releasing their own spins on Trials of Tav, giving its central premise a new layer of tweaks and additional paint. Enter ‘Tav Trials – Reloaded’, by modder Celerev.
Its revamped version of the roguelike mode is designed to offer “bug fixes, revised monsters, new scales, [and] new enemies adapted from the tabletop.” What kind of new enemies, you ask? Well, one of them is a sort of final test: a “true ‘super boss,’ level 27, designed to do everything possible in the role-playing game classic. fashion”.
“He is the last creature available on the ladder, and if you defeat him, you can basically consider the race ‘won,'” the modder writes. This is the part where you say “challenge accepted”, if you didn’t die 20 times from rats in the basement of Elfsong Tavern.
Aside from that, Celerev writes that they’ve added over 60 enemies from the base game, including “unique, rarely fought enemies” like Nine-Fingers Keene and what appears to be a killer sheep. There are also some new custom bosses and plenty of bug fixes for existing ones. Mechanically, scaling rates have been changed to ensure that “creatures with powerful and themed abilities can be reasonably added without having to worry about the player not being able to make the saving throw” and stores have been rebalanced.
“I can’t overstate how incredible of a job Hippo0o has done. [in creating the original mod] es,” Celerev concludes, “While I have the benefit of the toolset and a lot of time researching game mechanics, the lua script Hippo0o wrote to create a complete, functional, and now extensible game mode from scratch is a true passion, a A lot of effort and real skill. I hope those of you who are like me and wished that BG3’s tactical combat could be extended to higher levels will enjoy my additions.”
Naturally, you may end up sticking with early Tav Trials if you find that these settings don’t suit your style, but it’s nice to see modding concepts like this evolve over time. At the very least, it might be something you can try out while you wait to see if you’ve participated in the Patch 8 testing that begins this month.
