Baldur's Gate 3 is only a few hours away, and I've already completely blown my weekend. But if you too are about to spend the next few hundred hours in Fairrun, Larian says there are a few things you should know before you go in, especially if you've been playing the early access version until now.

In a news post on the game's Steam page titled "Baldur's Gate 3: Preparing for Launch," Larian compiled a six-step to-do list for those about to gather their party and begin their adventure The important thing to note is that the studio has not previously been involved in the development of the project. Importantly, the studio has long emphasized: before installing and running the full game, which will be released today at 8 a.m. ET / 11 a.m. ET / 4 p.m. ET, you must clean out any traces of the EA version from your PC.

Point #1 on the list is to delete the save from BG3 itself. Simply moving them to a folder in File Explorer and deleting them can cause a meltdown of the game's cloud save system. Once that is done, uninstall the game and remove any mods left in the previous directory.

The particular circumstances of the BG3 release highlight the inefficiency of the way Steam is set up to handle preloaded and early access games. The nature of that release was quite specific, and while I believe the EA version served more as a demo or prototype than as an unfinished model of the final game, a huge platform like Steam can handle BG3 preloads without servers buzzing and sparking I really feel that it should. Perhaps Valve will solve this problem in time for Baldur's Gate 4.

Apart from wiping the EA version of BG3 off the PC, the other steps on Larian's list are more like guidelines or strong recommendations. First of all, the studio states that SSDs are "strongly recommended" for players looking for a place to put a game as large as 122GB (similarly, SSDs are listed as "required" in the game's spec requirements). The loading time is surely enough to make even just the long HowLongToBeat time even longer.

Otherwise, experienced PC gamers like yourself will already know: keep your GPU drivers updated and consult the FAQ in the game's launcher if you encounter further problems. Good luck everyone, Starfield is only 34 days away from release.