Baldur's Gate 3 speedrunners mourn the 'death' of sex% runs after sneaky tweak ruins their favourite strat
RIP to the rapid Lae’zel romance, you didn’t last long, but you were pretty damn funny.
Baldur's Gate 3’s speedrunning community has suffered a great tragedy thanks to the game’s latest patch, with a sneaky tweak having nixed their favourite sex% strategy.
If you’re not familiar, sex% runs through Larian’s RPG have been seeing players compete to reach a romance encounter in the game as fast as possible, with the first sub-two minute run having been recorded just last week. In order to reach speeds that rapid, runners have been taking advantage of the fact that it’s pretty simple to convince Lae’zel to get down and dirty with you very early on in the game if you know exactly what to do.
Or, I should say, it was pretty simple to convince the Githyanki warrior to hop into bed. You see, nestled among the lengthy list of changes made to the game by its fourth patch is one which says: “For Lae'zel to decide to romance you, you no longer only need to gain high enough approval from her. You must also have proven yourself worthy through your actions.”
As pointed out with “immeasurable disappointment” by one of the BG3 community’s top runners, Mae, this tweak essentially patches out the sex% run, or at least its current preferred form, by making one of the moodiest party members (I appreciate there’s a lot of competition) require a bit of a lengthier courtship.
Thankfully for those devastated by the change, Mae has made a touching tribute video that recaps some of the best moments sex% runs have been responsible for during the time that the Lae’zel strat was viable. If it doesn’t make you cry, then congratulations on having no soul.
Fortunately, there are a number of other interesting Baldur’s Gate 3 speedrun categories that haven’t, as of yet at least, had their best strategies nerfed. For example, Mae recently snatched the world record for all acts runs by engineering a bunch of unfortunate accidents for key NPCs.
Speaking of sex in Baldur’s Gate 3, it looks as though the game’s speedrunning community has been gradually mapping out the ideal route for a run category based around reaching that infamous Halsin bear sex scene. So, hopefully we start seeing a bunch of bear% runs begin to pop up at some point soon to fill the sex% void.