Steam Edition: Cannot travel, hit a wall of black

FrostWolf

So, I'd never played Baldur's Gate despite having gamed since the early nineties, and I eagerly installed it. I played the tutorial, then exported my character and re-imported to use in the game. I got out of Candlekeep, lost Gorion, and found my three other party members...and from there, I cannot move more than a fraction. The map is surrounded by solid black borders I can't travel beyond. I can't get back to Candlekeep either, I'm just stuck in this x by x square area. I can occasionally kill a Gibberling or a Wolf, but that's it, I can't reach any buildings or other areas. I have no graphical glitches, no sound glitches, I just can't move anywhere that would do me any good. Any help would be appreciated.

I don't believe any of this has anything to do with hardware, but I'll post it in case:

ThinkPad T480, Windows 11 Pro x64
64GB RAM
2TB SK Hynix NVMe SSD
Switchable Intel HD 620 / nVidia Geforce MX150 (2GB) graphics
Intel AX210 Wifi 6
1920 x 1080p

_DD_

Did you try moving the cursor over the border like in this pic:

https://forums.beamdog.com/uploads/FileUpload/ec/b512d05b98a8384cc39978513e4e87.jpg

If that the issue, you can also removed those unnecessary black borders in the options menu.

FrostWolf

Thanks for your response. When I try moving the cursor over the border, it shows a circle-slash -or the glove, but I can't click on any of the black nor move my party there.

The map also corresponds to the same area (see below)



I tried temporarily fiddling with a couple of graphical options (Scale User Interface, Allow Scrolling Out of Bounds) but these did not help.

FrostWolf

And two pictures from actual gameplay (for some reason the forum posts these upside down despite them being right-side up on my system, it must be something with them transferring it to Imgur):

SixOfSpades

FrostWolf wrote: »

It's actually normal for your mouse pointer to be the "glove" when it's that far off the map. Riding the edge of the map (in a spot that's open enough for your party members to freely walk) is what turns it into the "wagon wheel" pointer. But yeah, if there really flat-out IS no spot that brings up the Travel screen, then your game is unplayable, and you're the 2nd person this week to report this same problem. (Although, the first person did manage to Travel once, so maybe he got lucky the 1st time, then ran into the problem the 2nd time & asked for help, and finally realized the problem was operator error the whole time, and was too embarrassed to come back & follow up with us?)

FrostWolf

I never get the "wagon wheel". The world map shows CandleKeep, and two other destinations shown, but listed as "unreachable".

I've walked the entire area shown; at first I thought maybe I had to accomplish something before I could get further. But I can't go back to Candlekeep itself, and I can't move forwards either. I was really liking the concept of this game, and now I'm wondering how I can get support to report this, as yes, the game is unplayable for me. All my party encounters in this space are Gibberlings and Wolves; I find nothing of consequence (I had thought that perhaps there was something I needed to do before I could go to the Friendly Arms Inn, but it doesn't seem so).

EDIT: I have now figured it out. I have gotten the wagon wheel (which I was not getting before) and it has allowed me to travel further. Thank you for the assistance.

SixOfSpades

It's good that you solved the current instance of this problem, but if it happens again you will almost certainly miss out on some game content, and potentially be unable to advance the Main Plot. That's because the direction from which you exit a map is crucial: It's how you "explore" new map areas to visit, by standing on the edge of your current map and "peeking" over the side. If there are wilderness areas to the south of you, for example, leaving your current area via the northern, eastern, or western edges will not reveal the new, southern territory as a place that you could visit. You have to either look off the southern edge of your current map, or take a more circuitous route through multiple neighboring maps.

I'm obviously not in the room with you while you play, so I don't know how you're using your mouse. But let me reiterate, because this is critical: Slowly move your mouse through & along the narrow boundary where the side of the map fades into black. Really wiggle it around, and watch for where it changes. The regions that make the mouse pointer change to a wagon wheel may be small, but in a functioning game, they are there. (Note: Unless you are, literally, at the very edges of the World Map. But usually, whatever local map you're in has a pretty good "edge of the world" wall made of impassable rocks, trees, or water, to help dispel any player confusion about that.)

The bad news is that, despite my being a long-time guru of the game, I had never heard of anyone having this problem before a couple of weeks ago. Not during the original CD-ROM days, not during the modding years, not when the Enhanced Edition came out, not when it was released on Steam, nothing. But then, suddenly, two users in one week. If this problem was caused by simple operator error, then statistically it would be nearly impossible for the game to go for 25+ years with zero users having this problem, and then suddenly 2 players have it simultaneously. So it's more likely that there is something genuinely bugged in your game code itself, and we here on the forums will probably be unable to help you. You'll have to take it up with the actual game's Support staff (Beamdog), and/or get a refund from Steam. Sorry.

claudio

i have the same problem and the game is unplayable for me.

claudio

I can't go back to Candlekeep and the two other destinations shown, are listed as "unreachable".

jmerry

You can bring up the world map at any time. This does not allow you to travel; only clicking on the map edge and having the map come up that way allows travel.

A destination is "unreachable" if you know where it is but haven't found a path to it yet. Your map actually starts with sixteen areas revealed like this; the nine unnamed sectors of Baldur's Gate, the bridge leading to Baldur's Gate (which is impassable until chapter 5, so you can't actually get into the city for a long time), Ulgoth's Beard, the Friendly Arm Inn, Beregost, Nashkel, the Nashkel carnival, and the Nashkel mines.

To reach one of these "unreachable" areas, travel in its direction. For example, reaching the Friendly Arm Inn to the northeast takes two steps from that first map outside Candlekeep. First, you travel through the north or east edge of the map; both of those uncover the next area, a crossroads to the east. You enter that crossroads map on its western edge. Follow the road north until you reach the northern edge of that map. Travel through that edge, and you can reach the Friendly Arm.

This is typical of wilderness travel in Baldur's Gate. You often have to travel through multiple areas to reach a destination for the first time. But if you're traveling back to an area you've already visited, you can shortcut the process. Traveling from the Friendly Arm, through any edge, will allow you to go back to Candlekeep. You still traverse those multiple links and a corresponding amount of game time passes, but it all happens at once unless a random encounter comes up.

Mixxie

I bought the game from Steam yesterday (December 5,2023) and I'm having this problem. I'm seeing the wagon wheel with the pointer at various points of the edge of the map but when I click on it it just takes me to the world map. It's super frustrating. I'm really enjoying what I've played so far. I got as far as finding Gorian's body with the note, meeting up with Xzar and Montaron and now I'm stuck. I've killed a couple of low-level things like wolves. The wagon wheel cursor isn't showing in the screenshot. Not sure if that's typical of screenshots. Never really needed to have it show before. Someone said they got it working but they didn't say how. I'd love to know. I tried messing with the graphics but I don't see anything that really pertains to the black border. Maybe I'm misunderstanding. All I see for graphics regarding the map is "allow scrolling out of bounds" and "area map zoom transition". I'm playing on an Asus Predator Helios 300 with plenty of extra hardrive space and ram. I can run RDR2 on this thing, no problem.
I have pretty extreme ADHD so if whomever responds to this explains it as if I'm an idiot, I'd appreciate it. I"m not an idiot but I need fairly specific instructions when I can't ask questions in real time.

ETA: Okay, I'm going to hesitantly say I have it working now. I think it was user error regarding the map. I read another thread in this forum and realized I wasn't using it right. I was trying to travel by just moving my party along the wilderness. Part of my problem is all the locations on the world map were labled "unreachable". Anwyay, somehow I managed to actually click on Friendly Arms and 'travel' and get the little cut scene.