Who doesn’t love a good nap? In Baldur’s Gate 3, much of your time is spent in combat using your limited spell slots and getting pummeled within an inch of your life, all of which can be restored by taking a rest at camp. Like a child who doesn’t want to go to sleep because they’re having too much fun, you might be resisting the inclination to rest your head by your campfire because you’ve got so many important things to do in your waking hours, I’m here to tell you that rest is not only important to heal your party and replenish your spell slots, you’re actively missing out on some of the game’s best moments by not going to camp for a collective nap.
What is the difference between Short Rest and Long Rest?
There are two types of “rests” in Baldur’s Gate 3, one is done anywhere in the overworld, the other is done when you set up camp. Short Rests partially heal your team and don’t replenish spell slots unless you’re a class like Warlock which gets fewer spell slots in exchange for the ability to regain them in a short rest. You get two Short Rests each day and they’re replenished by taking a Long Rest. They’re useful for giving your team a second wind in a long dungeon or a quick heal before you go into a fight.
Long Rests, however, are the reset you’ll need at the end of the day before heading into a big dungeon or encounter. These are taken by setting up camp and using food and drink you’ve collected in your travels. Each food item has an assigned Camp Supply point value, and you’ll need to reach level 40 for a Long Rest to be effective. Anything lower and you’ll get a Partial Rest, which has the same effects as a Short Rest.
But my party isn’t dying. Why do I need to stop what I’m doing to rest?
Camp is where a lot of Baldur’s Gate 3’s personal drama goes down. It’s here where you’ll develop your relationships with your party members, as well as watch their budding friendships or rivalries unfold. The unfortunate reality is that, if you’re not setting up camp, you can miss several scenes, especially early in the game. I’m in my second playthrough right now, and realized that because I had already reached an approval threshold with Gale, my brilliant idiot wizard boyfriend, by the time I set up camp. As such, I skipped one of his earliest scenes and went straight into a later point in the relationship. It doesn’t seem to have affected my romantic prospects, but it was still disappointing to realize I missed a scene I distinctly remember from my first playthrough.
It’s always worth going back to camp to check-in with your party, and sometimes those scenes only happen when you rest, like the ones you get with the Guardian. It doesn’t have to be a Long Rest, so if you’re trying to see more story but don’t have a lot of food on-hand, don’t worry about missing stuff based on that alone. But do make a concerted effort to rest at camp as much as possible, because otherwise you might miss some of Baldur’s Gate 3’s best stuff.