Enjoying your adventure in Baldur’s Gate 3, this year’s best-reviewed game so far? That’s awesome, but I advise caution, as there’s one pernicious little bug affecting even adventurers as heroic as the person reading this right now. The bug in question relates to the Slack Skinned Head, part of the brain puzzle that players will find in a section at the end of Act 2.
It’s best that you take the simple steps needed to prevent it from triggering as it’ll get some unlucky players completely stuck in their quest. Note: Some spoilers for the end of Act 2 follow, so be wary if you’re not here yet in the story.
Though it came out to meet immediate critical and commercial success, Baldur’s Gate 3—just like any game of its size and scope—is not without its technical hiccups. The slack skinned bug isn’t related to bad player choices, but may be due to a myriad other sources.
The slack skinned head bug appears to be affecting players running BG3 in Vulkan, AMD’s graphical rendering API. So, an easy way to attempt to fix this problem is just to change the settings to have Baldur’s Gate 3 run in DirectX 11. Restart the game once you’ve applied the changes, and that should be it. Very simple.
To do it, open the game’s launcher, and you’ll see two checkboxes at the bottom. Pick the one that says DirectX 11, and you’ll be set.
This will allow players to go through this puzzle with no problem. They can then switch back to Vulkan if they want to stay on it. We’ve also seen reports that general restarts, or using the “Insert” interaction with the machine instead of placing minds on top, may also help.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is now out for PC. PlayStation 5 owners will get to join in on the fun on September 6.
