Highlights

  • Speedrunner Chronos beat Baldur's Gate 3 Honour Mode in just over 38 minutes.
  • The impressive run was completed mere hours after Larian launched the extremely punishing Honour Mode as part of the Patch 5 update for the game.
  • Chronos also holds the world record for the fastest Baldur's Gate 3 speedrun in the Any% (All Acts) category.

One seasoned Baldur's Gate 3 speedrunner has already beaten the game's Honour Mode in just over 38 minutes. He managed that achievement mere hours after Honour Mode was released as part of the massive Patch 5 update for Baldur's Gate 3.

In simple terms, the Baldur's Gate 3 Honour Mode is the game's ultimate challenge. Its name is derived from its core limitation that restricts players to one save file per campaign, thus eliminating the ability to practice so-called save scumming in search of favorable outcomes. Should the adventuring party be wiped out in Honour Mode, the whole run will end. The mode also tightens up the action economy in the later stages of the game, on top of bestowing legendary actions upon bosses that make encounters with them even more unpredictable and consequently difficult.

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Speedrunner Chronos Beat Baldur's Gate 3 Honour Mode in 38:08

In spite of all those challenges, Baldur's Gate 3 speedrunner Chronos managed to complete Honour Mode in under 40 minutes, having done so live on Twitch within hours of the Patch 5 update going live on November 30. His complete run, first spotted by TheGamer, clocked in at 38 minutes and 8 seconds, and was unsurprisingly heavily reliant on glitches and exploits that allowed the player to skip through large sections of the game. For example, Chronos took barely 42 seconds to complete the introductory Escape the Nautiloid quest, blowing past the entire prologue section by abusing some funky camera behavior in combination with the Enhance Leap spell.

Although numerous speedrunners have already beaten Baldur's Gate 3 in ten minutes or less, those insanely fast runs have all relied on getting to one unique bad ending in Act 2. In contrast, Honour Mode requires completing all three acts of the game. But that proved to be of little difference to Chronos, who recently set the world record for speedrunning the game in the Any% (All Acts) category, having done so in just over 25 minutes and 18 seconds, not accounting for loading times.

Those who find Honour Mode too frustrating but would still like a challenge greater than what the Tactician difficulty offers should be able to find what they're looking for in the Baldur's Gate 3 Custom Mode. Much like its name suggests, this second big addition bundled with the game's Patch 5 update allows players to design a ruleset tailored to their needs and preferences. While it can hence be used to make the game exceedingly easy, Custom Mode's many parameters can also be tweaked in order to deliver an experience that's significantly more punishing than the Tactician difficulty, but still not as frustrating as Honour Mode.