Baldur's Gate 3's latest hotfix declares 'No more free lunches' as it stops you bamboozling merchants with boxes, confusingly also makes it easier to literally give people free lunches

Larian is done with Baldur's Gate 3, but Baldur's Gate 3 isn't done with Larian. The studio just put out the game's 23rd hotfix, fixing a bunch of crashes and bugs and, notably, declaring «No more free lunches!» which is—in the case of this specific patch—metaphorically true, but entirely inaccurate in a literal sense.

That's because, amidst all the ho-hum patch notes you'd generally expect, Larian has implemented two key fixes in hotfix #23. The first is that you can no longer hornswoggle the game's merchants with a Matryoshka doll-style trick, and the second is that the game will no longer collapse under its own weight if you throw a Black Pudding Platter at someone.

Prior to this hotfix, BG3 players had been getting one over on the game's merchants by buying multiple items but only paying for one of them. How? Sticking them in a container. 

For whatever reason, the shopkeeps of Faerûn struggled to process it when selling, for instance, a bunch of health potions that had all been put in the same bag, meaning they'd only charge the price of a single one of 'em, even when you had a bulging sackful. 

Alas, those golden days are behind us, Larian says that «The tradespeople of Baldur’s Gate have also had a word with our people, and we both agree that container-based antics, while amusing, are damaging the economy.»

So, yes, «No more free lunches» is true in the sense that you can no longer Criss-Angel-Mindfreak merchants into giving you free gear. But also, the game won't crash anymore if you yeet a Black Pudding Platter at friend or foe. That is, if anything, a quantitative increase in the number of literal free lunches on offer, at least for the game's NPCs.

Heady stuff, I know, but the patch notes aren't all philosophy. We've also got a bunch of crash fixes, rectified scripting errors, and various other little repairs. You know, hotfix stuff. You can find the full patch notes below (beware some light Act 2 spoilers):

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