Baldur’s Gate 3’s eighth hotfix was released today, October 3, 2023, and with it came several improvements that can make or break your game. Alongside fixing a major Vulkan crashing error that would freeze your game with a “DEVICE_LOST” message, this update also features a massive change to the shared stash system initially introduced in patch two. In short, you’ll no longer get over-encumbered immediately after sending someone back to camp.
Previously, when the shared stash system was first added, you could send your party members back to camp, with them transferring story items to your inventory. In theory, this sounded like a fantastic idea, as it reduced the odds of you losing important quest items from forgetting that someone is back in camp holding them all. However, this also raised an alarming issue: whenever you sent someone back to camp, they’d transfer all their items to you, often over-encumbering your character.
You also can’t turn off the shared stash, which made it an unavoidable issue unless you kept the same party members for your entire playthrough.
As detailed in the hotfix 8 patch notes, the first major change is that companions will no longer transfer story items to your character, completely reversing the change from the second major patch. Upon initiating the request, you will mainly receive gold, but most other items will remain on your old party members.
With this fix in place, you can now send companions back to your camp freely, without any worries about dozens of items being transferred to your inventory and weighing you down. At most, your weight may go up by a few points with the gold you receive.
Hotfix 8 also addresses several crashing issues, primarily with Vulkan, multiplayer actions, and split-screen character re-assignment, with other miscellaneous problems getting patched too. Most notably, Twitch drops on PlayStation 5 are now claimable with the hotfix, allowing you to get the same rewards available on PC.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is available now on PC and PlayStation 5. An Xbox Series X and S release is scheduled before the end of the year.
