BG3 Logbook

This is a log of the Baldur’s Gate 3 playthroughs described on this blog site. The footnotes (like this*) are at the bottom of the page.

Host: Bill

Run1 Avatar Romance Level2 Words3 Pics4 Date5 Notes and essay features
Playthrough 1 Jank Halversen Shadowheart (Light) Explorer 9216 (single post) 31 Aug-2023 My introduction to BG3. Why I like the game; character introductions.
Playthrough 2 Karlach Minthara Explorer 47
Playthrough 3 “Tav” Karlach Explorer 140 Mar-2024 Dark Urge (redemption path)
Playthrough 4 Lae’zel Minthara Explorer 57
Playthrough 5 Shadowheart Minthara Explorer 82 Apr-2024
Playthrough 6 Astarion Minthara Balanced ⇒ Explorer 90 May-2024
Playthrough 7 Gale Lae’zel Explorer 7143 273 Jun-2024 Action economy; kissing.
Playthrough 8 Wyll Karlach Explorer ⇒ Balanced 5018 807 Jun-2024 The birth of Arctic Druid Angela (and the nickname Real Angela). Short and Long Rests; fanfic.
Playthrough 9 Laurelin Astarion (Dark) Balanced 6410 1245 Jul-2024 “Inadvertent doom”; Sorcerer Sabrina; spell slots.
Playthrough 10 Lae’zel Wyll Balanced 2393 724 Sep-2024 Another character introduction.
Playthrough 11 Karlach Gale Balanced 6240 2067 Oct-2024 A hireling’s destiny
Playthrough 12 Amaranth Shadowheart (Light), Halsin Balanced (with mods) 13217 2597 Oct-2024 Banter run; Bill’s first serious use of mods.
Playthrough 13 Sandalwood Minthara Balanced (with mods) 5925 1129 Feb-2025 ⇒ Apr-2025 “Wicked” run
Playthrough 8’/2.5 Wyll (Bill); Mor’lith (RA) Karlach (Bill) Balanced 7066 927 Jun-2025 Fork from playthrough 8. Galaxy Angela again proves she’s a Hero.
Playthrough 15 Drangela Lae’zel Tactician (with mods) Aug-2025 Dark Urge (towards the dark)
Playthrough 3′ Tav Karlach Explorer 2314 481 Nov-2025 Fork from playthrough 3. Trophy run. Dark Urge shifted towards dark choices. More fanfic, more spoilers.
Playthrough 17 The Chronicler Lae’zel Tactician 374 images 3513 Dec-2025 ⇒ Mar-2026 Photography support run for playthrough 15 fanfic, plus five posts of its own fanfic.
Playthrough 18 Druid Angela Gale Tactician Jan-2026 ⇒ Mar-2026 “Solo” tactician run with an Arctic Druid build; additional photography support for fanfic. Also a trophy run.
Playthrough 19/10 Druid Angela (Bill); Zvarka (RA) Astarion (DA); Wyll (Zvarka) Honor Apr-2026 Bill’s first true Honor Mode run; no mods.

Host: Real Angela (RA)

Run1 Avatar Romance Level2 Words3 Pics4 Date5 Notes and essay features
Playthrough 1/14; RA’s post; Bill’s post Fey (RA); Bellandria (Bill) Karlach, Halsin (Fey); Minthara (Bellandria) Explorer 9499 (Bill); 5149 (RA) 1060 Mar-2025 Real Angela’s first BG3 playthrough.
Playthrough 2/14.5; RA’s post; Bill’s post Raelia (RA); Tavelle (Bill) Astarion (Light), Halsin, Wyll (Raelia); Gale (Tavelle) Balanced ⇒ Tactician 3871 (Bill); 6188 (RA) 852 May-2025 Partial playthrough for Bill; heavy use of mods
Playthrough 3 Oleandra Shadowheart (Dark), Halsin Tactician 2880 Aug-2025 Dark Urge (towards the dark)
Playthrough 4 Karlach Gale Tactician 2355 Oct-2025
Playthrough 5 Astarion Lae’zel Tactician 1931 Nov-2025
Playthrough 6 Persephone Karlach Tactician (with mods) 3744 Jan-2026 Dark Urge (redemption path)
Playthrough 7 Honeylocust Halsin Enhanced Tactician with mods 3348 Feb-2026 A monogamous relationship with Mount Halsin. “Enhanced Tactician” is a specific mod to make the game more challenging.
Playthrough 8 Nightshade Minthara Tactician (with mods) 3702 Feb-2026 ⇒ Mar-2026 Solo/duo run
Playthrough 9 Azar Shadowheart Honor (with mods) Mar-2026 ⇒ Apr-2026 Aborted due to game glitch
Playthrough 11 Euterpe Astarion (Light), Halsin Custom difficulty, with mods May-2026 ⇒ Jul-2026 Dark Urge
Playthrough 12 Gale (Origin) TBA Custom difficulty Jul-2026 Honor-level difficulty, with QoL mods, and no single save

Host: Actual Sabrina (AS)

Run1 Avatar Romance Level2 Words3 Pics4 Date5 Notes and essay features
Playthrough 1/16 Scylla (AS); Charybdis (Bill) Karlach, Halsin (AS); Shadowheart (Bill) Explorer Oct-2025 First playthrough for Actual Sabrina.

Footnotes

  1. This is the ordinal number of the run; e.g., “playthrough 3” means it’s the player’s third playthrough.

    When there are two numbers (e.g., “1/14”, the first number is the count of the playthrough of the host, the second number is count for the guest.

    The link takes you to the blog post that describes the playthrough. If multiple blog posts were written for a single playthrough (e.g., Bill’s playthrough 8), the link will take you to the first of those posts.

    There are more BG3 essays than just the ones linked here. Here’s the complete list in reverse chronological order.

  2. The difficulty level of the playthrough.

    Baldur’s Gate 3 has four difficulty levels: Explorer, Balanced, Tactician, Honour. There’s also a “custom” mode to tweak individual difficulty levels for different aspects of the game.

    In a few cases, the host changed the difficulty level mid-playthrough; e.g., “Explorer ⇒ Balanced”.

  3. This is the word count for the blog post linked in the first column, as reported by the WordPress plugin Article Word Count. Note that this word count is highly suspect, given the number of pictures and other mark-up in many of these blog posts.

    If the playthrough write-up consists of several blog posts, this is the sum of the counts of all the posts for that playthough.

    In the case of playthrough 8, it does not include the fanfic.

    The write-up of playthrough 17 was entirely fanfic, and consisted solely of images. That why this column contains its picture count instead of a word count.

  4. This is the number of pictures associated with that playthrough that Bill has in his iCloud photo repository.

    This is a count of all images, including tests of photo mode, records of character gear, virtual photography for fanfic, and so on. Many of the pictures were made after the playthrough was over, as Bill experimented with photo mode.

    This number is much larger than the number of photos actually published as part of the associated blog post(s).

  5. This is the approximate date of the playthrough.

    I didn’t record the dates of most of the playthroughs. The date here is a guess based on the dates of the essays, the internal dates of any pictures, and other clues.

    I didn’t take any pictures prior to playthrough 6, at least during the playthrough, because I didn’t know how. I also don’t have dates on the old game save files; those were lost when I transferred them to my Mac. That’s why there are no dates for playthroughs 2 and 4.

    Most playthroughs take more than a month. The date shown can be at the beginning or end of the playthrough, or any time in-between, depending on the information I can find.