Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 5 update crashing on startup & launch in Vulkan or DX11 mode : How to fix it

Baldur’s Gate 3 gives you the option to become good and turn darkness against itself or, become evil, the ultimate one! You can play this RPG solo or with friends. The game is based on the table-top RPG, Dungeons, and Dragons. Patch 5 of Baldur’s Gate 3 has a huge list of additions and fixes made to the game. A whole lot of new scenes are added plus new sound effects, graphic effects, and extra feedback to unperformable actions too.

Patch 5 of Baldur’s Gate 3

Players can now move their dice rolls in favor. Background goals for characters have also been added. There is now a toggle for non-lethal attacks which doesn’t kill your enemy when you strike them with weapons. The developers have done a great job of considering player feedback. We can say that Baldur’s Gate 3 is now a very “meaty” sausage! In addition to all the improvements done, there was a range of bug fixes carried out too. Baldur’s Gate 3 was released in early access mode last year. The developers intend to keep the game in early access mode for the entire of 2021. Hopefully, the final version of the game will be released in 2022.

Patch 5 is crashing on Vulkan or DX11 mode

So, Patch 5 may have got a lot of new additions and fixes for fans to be excited about. But, happens so that the update is causing problems. Users are trying to run the game after the update and facing unexpected crashes. Some are unable to complete the download itself. Users have also complained of extremely slow UI, followed by a crash.

The above-reported complaints point to a faulty optimization of Patch 5 or a bug in the software. However, some users and developers have suggested ways to stop the crashing issue. We are going to list the developer’s suggestions as suggestions from both sides are similar.

Fixes

1. Shut down all non-essential programs while booting up the game. Some programs, like the Anti-virus, can majorly interfere with the game and cause these crashes. According to the developer’s recommendation, disable anti-virus, firewall, any chat applications, or any graphics monitoring/tweaking applications.
2. Try using DirectX 11 instead of Vulkan from the game launcher and see if it solves the issue.
3. Close the Steam Client. Visit the Steam Apps folder on your desktop. Click on Common. Then, on Bin folder. Look for an executable file named bg3_dx11.exe or bg3.exe for Vulkan. Right-click on it and click on Run as Administrator.
4. Right-click the executable file, and select Properties. Click on the Compatibility tab and uncheck the Override high DPI scaling behavior option. Set it to Application. Run as administrator and disable fullscreen optimization.
   If you are playing on Windows 7, check off the option to Disable display scaling on high DPI settings, disable desktop composition and run as administrator.
5. If you are Windows 7 user, right-click and hold on to the bg3_dx11.exe executable file. Hold Shift down, release the right mouse button and click Run as administrator. Continue to hold Shift until the splash screen comes up.
   Another workaround for the same is to just hold the Shift key while right-clicking to run as administrator and all while keeping Shift held down.
   Alt-Tabbing again and again or spamming other key presses / clicking on the launcher window can be done to prevent the game from focusing on the issue while loading. This is will also bypass anything that is causing a crash.
6. If you are using Process Lasso to adjust the core affinity for games, try disabling it to restore the default. If you are wondering, Process Lasso is used to run games and system processes on different cores to increase optimization.
7. Verify local files in this way. Visit the Steam library, right-click on the game, and select Properties. Go to the Local Files tab. Then, click on the Verify Integrity of Game Files… button.
8. If you have the GOG version, go to the Galaxy client, select the game, then the settings icon at the top right. Under Manage Installation select Verify / Repair.
9. If you have a high desktop resolution, reduce it temporarily to put a check on what the game will auto-detect. If the game starts, you can exit and restore your desktop resolution.
10. Click Start (or, WinKey+R), type “event viewer” into the search box. In Windows 10, it should be View event logs. Expand Windows Logs left column and select Application.
    Look for a recent error in the center column for the game (search for bg3)
    Check information under the General tab below the list of events, starting with “Faulting application name…”.
    The event viewer might give out an error code or ‘Faulting Module’ file name that might help identify the cause of the crash.
11. Complete all pending driver updates and Windows updates. For Windows 7, you should have Service Pack 1 installed as it is the minimum required version of Windows (64 bit).
12. You may want to install the 2019 Visual C++ redistributable (64bit) if you are facing a VC-related DLL error when starting the game from the executable file. Here’s a link for downloads.
13.  Go to the following directory ..\Documents\Larian Studios and delete the Baldur’s Gate 3 folder.
    This folder contains the saved games, profiles, and configuration files.
    Then, extract the replacement folder from this link into ..\Documents\Larian Studios folder, and see if it fixes the crash.
14. Run clean boot and then test the game.
    Hit WinKey-R, type in msconfig, and hit enter.
    Click Selective Startup in the General Tab.
    Uncheck Load startup items (if required).
    Leave Load system services and Use original boot configuration options checked.
    Then, click on the Services tab, check the box to Hide all Microsoft services.
    Click the Disable All button, then click OK and reboot the computer.
    Run msconfig again to switch back to the normal boot configuration.
15. If none of the above steps help, you can contact customer support.
    Get the dxdiag report by hitting WinKey-R, type in dxdiag and hit enter. When it finishes loading, click on the Save All Information… button.
    Check the ..\Baldurs Gate 3\bin folder and the ..\bin\db\attachments folder, and if there are any CrashDump files being created, zip them.
    Send these reports to Support.

Hope this gets your game running!