Alright folks, settle in. This week has been… an adventure. Got really excited to jump into Baldur’s Gate 3 with my buddies. Seemed simple enough, right? Load up, join their game, slay some illithids. Yeah, didn’t quite work out like that. Join button kept laughing in my face. “Failed to join the session” became my new, very frustrating, catchphrase. Time to dig in and figure out what was busted.
Strike One: The Obvious Suspects
First things first, blame the internet. Always. Figured it was probably something simple. Closed the game completely. Did the whole ritual: shut down BG3, slammed the door on Steam too, just killed every gaming thing running. Restarted everything. Launched BG3 again with my fingers crossed. Clicked join… Nope. Same old error message mocking me. Frustration level: rising.
Okay, next culprit: my connection itself. Hopped over to my router like I was on a mission. Found the power cable, yanked it out. Waited what felt like forever (probably 30 seconds), shoved it back in. Listened for the clicks and whirls while it decided to wake back up. My PC had a fresh restart too, just to be thorough. Launched the game faster this time, eager. Selected my friend’s session… Failed. Again. “Seriously?” I muttered. It was driving me nuts.
Strike Two: Diving Deeper
Fine. Time to get serious. Scrolled through forums, saw a bunch of people screaming into the void about similar stuff. Crossplay popped up constantly. Checked my own game settings. Found the crossplay option. It was… on? Huh. My friends were all on PC too, so maybe it wasn’t the issue, but forums swore flipping it sometimes helped. Toggled it OFF. Restarted the game as instructed. Tried joining. Failed.
Turned crossplay back ON. Restarted again. Clicked join holding my breath. Error. Pure agony. This wasn’t working.
Saw mentions of mods being the devil. I did have a few quality-of-life things installed. Nothing crazy, or so I thought. Dug into the BG3 folders, found the Mods folder like a bloodhound. Selected everything inside it, dragged them kicking and screaming onto my desktop, just emptying the folder completely. Cleaned out the “Public” folder too, removing any leftover mod settings files. Game was barebones now. Launched it, feeling hopeful. Saw my friend hosting… Failed to join. Again. Now I was starting to feel defeated.
Strike Three: The Save Game Nemesis
This one felt weird, but forums don’t lie (sometimes). People said corrupted saves on their end could block you joining them. That seemed nuts. What could I possibly do about my friend’s save? Then it clicked. They had mentioned struggling with their own game crashing recently.
Shot them a text: “Yo, your last save might be toast. Try loading your second most recent save and hosting from there?” They grumbled but did it. They started a new session based on that slightly older save. I watched their session appear in the list. My mouse hovered over join. Clicked. Held my breath.
The screen blinked. The loading bar appeared. For the first time all night, it actually started loading! “NO WAY,” I yelled at my screen. And then… I was in. Standing in their camp. It bloody worked.
So, here’s what I peeled back layer by layer:
- Restart EVERYTHING: Game, launcher (Steam/GOG), your PC, and especially your router. It fixes stupid stuff more often than not.
- Flip the Crossplay Switch: It shouldn’t matter for PC-only, but just turning it off, restarting, turning it back on, restarting again somehow greased the wheels for others. Try it.
- Mod Mayhem: If you mod, clear ’em out completely. Every last file in the Mods folder and the Public folder. Test clean. You can add them back later one by one if you need to.
- Host’s Save Game Blues: This was the killer. If the host’s most recent save got corrupted (maybe from a crash), they need to load an older, stable save and host from that. You joining the new session from their good save makes all the difference.
Felt like cracking a code, man. Took hours of restarting and tinkering, but finally getting in was pure relief. Hope this saves someone else the headache!