Larian's latest crop of Baldur's Gate 3 stats mathematically proves that y'all are a bunch of heathens

Larian's whipped up a to-the-hour stats breakdown for the Baldur's Gate 3 community, and it's a fascinating look into the most popular choices in the RPG. And by fascinating, I mean concerning.  

Let's get the big numbers out of the way first. Actually, let's get the biggest number out of the way. Some 33% of y'all elected to sleep with Halsin in his bear form, which is simultaneously fewer people than I expected but also way too many. Let that knowledge percolate in your noggin like a brain implant that, instead of providing life-changing cognitive assistance, instead exclusively worsens your opinion of mankind. 

Now for the big numbers. Baldur's Gate 3 players have collectively logged 452,556,984 hours, or over 51,662 years, in-game. Astonishingly, a full 8,196 years – some 71.6 million hours – were spent in character creation. 

It tracks, then, that 94% of players made a custom character. Among premade Origin characters, Gale is still the most popular, followed closely by Astarion. There's a larger gap with Karlach in third, but she's neck-and-neck with Shadowheart. Wyll and Lae'zel, meanwhile, are the least popular. 

In August, Paladin was Baldur's Gate 3's most popular class. As a Paladin devotee tired of (admittedly not entirely undeserved) Paladin slander, I'm pleased to report that this is still true today. Paladin is in the lead, but Sorcerer is close behind. Fighters and Rogues are in third and fourth, respectively, and are quite close to Barbarian and Warlock. I'm also intrigued by the subclass choices. Barbarians love Berserker, for example, while Bards are most often going to the College of Lore. Paladins apparently choose Oath of Vegeance more often than not, which I guess officially makes me the most basic bitch on the planet. 

Here's a stat that's sure to cause drama: Shadowheart is the "most popular romantic interest." The criteria for this simple: 51.3% of players reached the final act of Shadowheart's romance arc. The runner-ups are Karlach and Lae'zel, which makes me wonder how the nature of their personal storylines, as opposed to the love for the characters themselves, might affect this statistic. That said, Shadowheart was my Paladin's goth girlfriend too, so I have no complaints. 

I'm also fascinated by how frequently peculiar oddities come up in Baldur's Gate 3. For context, 1.3 million people have beaten Baldur's Gate 3. Meanwhile, 1.24 million were transformed "into a sentient wheel of cheese." This is one makeover I didn't run into, and frankly I feel like I missed out. Elsewhere, 1.2 million characters were "compelled to dance against their will," while 14.4 million "have been disintegrated into a pile of fine grey dust." Y'all really love the Disintegrate spell, huh? 

The weekend rollout of Baldur's Gate 3's new Honour Mode, which makes difficulty-ratcheting changes to the whole game and most especially its boss fights, has yielded some of the most interesting details of the bunch. Astonishingly, some people have already beaten the game on Honour Mode – 464 of them, to be exact. I've got to wonder how cheesy speedruns play into this. Either way, these gamers need a nap and probably some water. 

That said, this is still a very small percentage of clears: around 158,000 Honour Mode playthroughs were started, and some 34,000 players have already died. Baldur's Gate 3's Honour Mode really is a whole new RPG, and even Tactician veterans are struggling. 

Baldur's Gate 3 fans spot a bunch of additional combat changes added in patch 5, including one that lowers the effectiveness of Warlocks.