I Made One Mistake 5 Hours Into This Game—And It Haunted Me the Whole Time

I liked to think of myself as an RPG veteran. As a seasoned completionist, there wasn’t a role-playing game that I couldn’t decode. I believed that by exploring every side quest and corner of the map, I would achieve my ideal gaming experience. And I had the track record to prove it, too: from not losing anyone during my first attempt at Mass Effect 2’s suicide mission to successfully robbing the Italian court undetected on my first go in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. I believed nothing could elude me, until that fateful December night when I eagerly installed Baldur’s Gate 3 on my Xbox Series X. Unfortunately, Larian Studios’ masterpiece thoroughly humbled me and stripped me of any claim to mastery.

The early hours of Baldur’s Gate 3 were a crash course in unlearning everything I thought I knew. Larian Studios doesn’t hold a player’s hand. It’s offered, but a player must choose to accept it. I went in expecting a modern RPG with familiar signposting: characters who’d tap you on the shoulder when it was time to care about them, clear mechanical indicators when a quest had time-sensitive consequences, and an invisible net to catch me if I strayed too far from the intended experience. That safety net didn’t exist. Instead, Baldur’s Gate 3 gave me freedom. Freedom to choose, freedom to fail, and most importantly, freedom to walk right past the emotional heart of the game without even realizing it.

And even throughout this learning curve, I still committed one of the most negligent cardinal sins of Baldur’s Gate 3 without even blinking. This one mistake not only hindered what I could reap from the game’s Act one, but also caused me to miss out on crucial companion content. And when I realized my mistake, it felt completely unnatural to correct it without just starting all over.

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Long Resting in Baldur’s Gate 3 Escaped Me Somehow

During the first few moments of Baldur’s Gate 3, my Tav was presented with huge responsibilities:

Being the leader of a camp full of BG3’s iconic companions with oftentimes opposing interests (and convincing them not to kill each other).
Finding out more about the nature of the infection.
Navigating the treacherous lands on the outskirts of the fallen Elturel without experiencing a total party wipe.
Finding a cure or a means to remove the parasite.
Deciding when to long rest.

At first, I was intoxicated by the possibilities. The dialogue options, the branching paths, the dice rolls that could alter the trajectory of entire encounters—it was all my cup of tea. I spent hours exploring every corner, talking to every one of Baldur’s Gate 3’s NPCs, and combing through every chest. But even with all that enthusiasm and exploration, I failed to understand one of the game’s most essential rhythms: the long rest.

I wasn’t just out of sync: I was out of touch. The last piece in this daunting list escaped me. The first few hours of the game provided little in the way of hope or supplies to sustain the camp. So, in an attempt to maximize my playthrough, I did not long rest until my Wizard Tav practically begged me to.

When I Noticed

I jumped on the Baldur’s Gate 3 hype train early on, but not at launch. The game was only released on Xbox the night of its big Game of the Year win, and my humble MacBook could barely run it without threatening to burn down my house. So, for months, I looked forward to the day I could finally play the game without worry. In the meantime, I did everything I could to soothe the burning FOMO that took over my life. From TikTok thirst compilations to fan art, I was a certified Baldur’s Gate 3 fangirl before I ever held a controller to play it.

Because of my early-seeded BG3 obsession, I already knew a lot about the companions that would navigate the game’s perils alongside my Tav. I knew of their fears, their stories, and their personalities. I was eager to meet them.

However, I didn’t experience any of that fandom magic during my playthrough. Instead, I encountered hesitation and unfriendliness. As an RPG player, I initially thought these were just early growing pains I needed to overcome. But as 5 hours became 10, then 25, it seemed I was making little progress in earning my companions’ favor. I realized I was doing something wrong when Astarion still hadn’t revealed his vampiric nature, and Shadowheart hadn’t confided about Shar worship, even deep into Act 1.

Then, when discussing my frustrations with a friend who was also bitten by the Baldur’s Gate bug (or parasite), she asked me a question that made me feel like a total newbie to gaming: “Are you long resting?”

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I Didn’t Long Rest, But It Was Partially Baldur’s Gate’s 3 Fault

I’m not proud to admit that I barely long rested during my first playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3. It certainly wasn’t easy to bend the knee at the sight of this RPG and let it take away my hard-earned crown. However, if I can shift the blame onto anything or anyone other than myself, I have to point at the tonal gravity with which Baldur’s Gate 3 presented its narrative to me.

Hear Me Out, Please

BG3’s tutorial level is one of life or death. Being recently infected with a mind flayer tadpole, the player is tasked with escaping a burning nautiloid ship traversing the hells. As a Dungeons & Dragons player, I knew what was at stake the second I saw that grotesquely detailed worm in Baldur’s Gate 3’s opening cinematic. Therefore, when my Tav escaped, I didn’t think that I had time as a luxury. The parasite in the D&D world takes over its host in about seven days’ time. So I inherently assumed that in seven long rests, my whole party would be dead.

The narrative urgency was a total false alarm that went under my radar. I was comparing Baldur’s Gate 3 with BG and BG2, where the stories take a bit more urgency to heart. Of course, one of the ways that I could have realized BG3’s manufactured deadline was by long resting enough in the first place. But that was a risk I could not muster to take, or so I thought. One of the mistakes I committed was taking this urgency seriously. And there should be no shame in that. That is, if you’re not me. I’m still embarrassed.

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The Real Consequences of Not Long Resting in Baldur’s Gate 3

The worst part wasn’t the mistake itself—it was how quietly it crept into everything else. At the moment, it felt like a harmless choice, a minor oversight. But as the hours wore on, the game started reshaping itself around that one decision. Storylines dissolved. Characters grew distant. Progress slowed to a crawl. And the more I tried to fix things, the more it felt like I was digging myself deeper. That’s what really haunted me: not that I did something wrong, but that the game let me keep going like nothing was wrong at all. It didn’t punish me outright. It just quietly withheld everything I didn’t know I was missing until it was too late.

When I Finally Gave Up—and Got Better for It

By the time I hit the goblin camp, the weight of my choices (or lack thereof) had caught up with me. I wasn’t triggering the friendships I wanted. I was missing the narrative beats that made social media light up. And no matter how hard I tried to steer my Tav toward a romance with Astarion, the game had already decided we were on different paths. I could have kept pushing through, forcing long rests just to shoehorn in companion moments I’d already missed. But it would’ve felt hollow and unearned. So I did the one thing my pride resisted: I threw in the towel and started over.

This time, I didn’t assume I knew better than the game. I leaned into the systems instead of pushing against them. I looked things up. I planned ahead. I played smarter instead of harder, and the story came to life in ways I’d missed entirely the first time. And the journey that came from it was absolutely breathtaking: Baldur’s Gate 3 made me grieve and laugh and cry. And it completely humbled me on the way there. I am no longer a self-proclaimed RPG veteran. I don’t know everything, I no longer fear reaching out for a trusty online guide to lead the way, and I am a better game for it. I have Baldur’s Gate 3 to thank for that.