Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 8 stress testing is now officially live, after the update accidentally came earlier than you did on your first night with Halsin for PS5 players

Baldur’s Gate 3’s Patch 8 stress test is now underway, and it’s a good thing it is, because it’s helping Larian do a proper Penguins Of Madagascar ‘You didn’t see anything’ regarding its accidental brief early deployment of the update on PS5 last night.

As the studio revealed last year, Patch 8 is the final major update for BG3, bringing a heap of things like crossplay, a photo mode, and 12 new subclasses – with the latter including the likes of a College of Glamour bard, bladesinging wizards, and drunken master monks – to the game.

Registration for this stress testing of it opened up in December last year. You should now know if you’re in or not, and be able to hop in and try some crossplay if you were.

If you’re on PC or PS5, you should have an email from Larian with your game code and details on how to access the stress test, while those who registered through the Xbox Insider Programme should now have access to the application they’ll need through the Xbox Insider Hub.

The studio’s put together a nice video on how to get started With cross-play for those taking part on the test, with it reccomending that a console player hosts the cross-play lobby if you’re wanting to play with someone on PC, and that modded lobbies for PC players are hosted by a PC person who’s got less than 100 mods installed, with that load order only containing mods with the ‘Available on Mac and Console’ tag.

So, there you go. If you’re a PS5 player who downloaded Patch 8 when it accidentally went live on the platform yesterday due to what Larian says was due to a mix-up with its partners in some regions in relation to the stress test kicking off, you’ll need to return to the Patch 7 version by totally uninstalling and reinstalling BG3.

If you stick with what you’ve updated to, you’ll be in for a world of inconveniences when it comes to new saves becoming unusable, mods potentially playing up, and even possibly some performance issues. Trust me, it likely ain’t worth it just to be able boast about being an early adopter.

Don’t pout, there’s plenty to do while you wait for patch 8 to properly drop if you’ve had to revert or missed out on the test. For example you can read this interview we did the other day with some of the modders behind an ambitious BG3 custom campaign that’s aiming to release a playable demo later this year.