For all the hardcore fans around the world, the wait is finally over as Baldur’s Gate 3 recently rolled into the Early Access phase. You can now dive right into the diverse and vibrant world of Dungeons and Dragons.
The game offers multiple options for you to choose from: you can play the single-player RPG campaign but also play co-op campaign with your friends. In this guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about how to play co-op in Baldur’s Gate 3.
How to Start Co-op in Baldur’s Gate 3
To start a co-op campaign in Baldur’s Gate 3, you’ll need to select the ‘Multiplayer’ option from the main menu. Once you click on the ‘Multiplayer’ option, another screen with available lobbies that you can join, will pop-up.
If you don’t want to join the listed Public Lobbies and want to play with your friends, you can create your own Private Lobby by clicking on the “Create Lobby” button which is located on the bottom-left side of the screen.
You can change the lobby settings according to your liking. For example, you can change the number of slots depending on the number of people who’ll be joining you – a maximum of 4 slots. Also, don’t forget to change the “who can join your game?” option to “Friends Only” in order to avoid random intruders.
Once the lobby is created, you can share its server ID with your friends who can then join it using the ‘Direct Connect’ option from the Multiplayer Screen.
You can also manually add them by clicking on the empty slots right next to your profile picture in the lobby. Once everyone has joined the lobby, click on “Launch” and you’ll soon be on your magical quest of exploring the world of Faerûn with your buddies.
Saving Progress and Resuming
With the feature to play co-op with your friends, many new questions come into mind such as what happens when a player disconnects or how can you save progress if you’re done for the night and want to resume it tomorrow. Don’t worry, we’ve got the answers to all of these queries.
What to Do when a Player Leaves
When a player disconnects or leaves the game, his/her character’s control is automatically assigned to someone who’s still in the game. If you’re the host of a game, you can also adjust character assignments to different players by hitting ‘Escape’ and going to the ‘Session’ menu.
How to Save Progress
Also, you don’t have to worry about losing progress if you and your friends want to take a break. The host of a game can save progress at any time and quit. The next time you fire up the game, the process of loading co-op is nearly the same as loading the singleplayer.
Once in the game, the host will have to click on the ‘Settings’ button in Session Menu. It’s located on the top-right of the menu screen. From this menu, the host can invite his friends back to continue their co-op adventure together.
One thing to keep in mind, however, is that the game is currently in Early Access and its multiplayer feature aren’t perfect.
You may face some bugs during the multiplayer gameplay. To avoid losing progress and your precious time, save the game as often as possible. This way you’ll always have a fail-safe in case you face any issue.
How to Play Split Screen on PC
On PS5, local split-screen co-op is available. PC split-screen is planned but not yet released.
If you still want to play split-screen on PC, programs like SplitScreen.Me and Universal Split Screen allow you to enable split-screen functionality for many PC games, including Baldur’s Gate 3. These tools let you connect multiple controllers and split the screen.
Connect both controllers to your PC. Start a new game or load an existing save. Press any button on the second controller when you reach the character creation screen or after the game has loaded. This will automatically split the screen for multiplayer.
Select “Multiplayer” from the main menu and create a new game. When you get to the screen for adding other players, you can add a second player using the second controller.
That’s all we’ve got in how to play co-op in Baldur’s Gate 3. For more help on the game, you can check out our detailed Baldur’s Gate 3 wiki guides.
