Larian unveils a full year of Baldur's Gate 3 player stats: Astarion is the favorite, Paladin is best class, and "a surprising amount of you enjoy bear sex and tentacles"

Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian released a year's worth of player stats to celebrate the RPG's first anniversary, confirming what most people apparently knew all along: Paladin is the best class, everyone loves Astarion, and too many of y'all cannot be trusted around tentacles. 

Ending spoilers for Baldur's Gate 3 ahead. 

In a lengthy thread packed with fascinating infographics, Larian confirms "Astarion has been your favorite Origin character avatar, shortly followed by the wizard of Waterdeep and, of course, God’s favorite princess." Astarion starred in 1.21 million runs, while Gale had 1.2 million flat. Gale sweep in 2025? Shadowheart is a distant third at 860,000. That said, Shadowheart has received the most kisses of any companion – a whopping 27 million to Astarion's mere 15 million kisses. A total of 75 million companion kisses have been given out overall. 

This is a big shift from the early stats of August 2023, just after the game's opening weekend, which handily put Gale as the top Origin character followed by Karlach and Astarion fighting for second place. I have to imagine Astarion actor Neil Newbon's sheer charisma and online visibility have played a part in the character's rise. 

93% of players chose a custom character, and the class makeup has remained fairly consistent, at least at the top of the podium. After a full year of Baldur's Gate 3, Paladin is the most popular class overall, followed by Sorcerer and Fighter. Paladin was also the top pick a year ago, again followed by Sorcerer, but with Warlock in third at the time. 

Elf is the leading pick for character race, with Half-Elf close behind and barely beating good old-fashioned Human. Tiefling, Crow, and Dragonborn are all fairly popular and make up the middle of the pack, but there's a steep drop off down to Half-Orc, Githyanki, and the others. Halflings are, I imagine to nobody's surprise, the least popular. 

The intersection of class and race shows a more involved spread that I'll bullet