Generally confused and concerned about save file size

[noratcat]

I recently bought this game. I had to set the settings to low in order for ti to play comfortably on my laptop. Overall, I am enjoying the game. Last night I played for hours and admittedly, I did some save scumming. Mostly I'm getting used to the D&D playstyle, and learned little by little.

After installing the game, it brought my files down to 680 GB, but after I noticed I played and made several saves over the course of the day, it brought my GB down to 677. I went in, deleted a bunch of saves and autosves, and atm, I have only two saves, and no autosaves. I try to limit myself to two to three saves at a time per character. Doing that brought my GB back to 680. Still, I am not sure if the GB is determined by how many saves, or how much I do in the save?

I am not an expert on computers, and mostly play console games. Just wondering if anyone can enlighten me?

[Jaggid Edje]

It's both. A single save file is pretty darn big in BG3 compared to most games, but if you also combine that with having a lot of saves, then obviously you are going to dramatically increase how much drive space is needed.

[desrtfox071]

First off, look here for your actual saves:
C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\PlayerProfiles\<ProfileName>

Or your system's equivalent.

In my case, I only have a few saves and the total space taken up by saves is about 50MB. On a second PC with many more saves, the total space taken by saves is just over 200MB. So, I'm not sure where you're getting 680 GB for saves. I think this is literally impossible. (I think you're looking at something other than saves, and something other than the BG3 install. In my case, the total BG3 install is ~130 GB)

Also, why bother? The game itself takes up much more space than the saves, so pruning your saves, while useful, isn't going to save you tons of space. Just keep your saves in line more or less and forget about the space. If you have space issues, there are probably much better ways to free space than pruning saves.

[noratcat]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

It's both. A single save file is pretty darn big in BG3 compared to most games, but if you also combine that with having a lot of saves, then obviously you are going to dramatically increase how much drive space is needed.

Ah, so I should probably keep my save files to like two or three right? I'm asking as I am only in act 1 and worry if I continue to act 3, I will use up most of the space on my hard drive.

[desrtfox071]

Originally posted by noratcat:

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

It's both. A single save file is pretty darn big in BG3 compared to most games, but if you also combine that with having a lot of saves, then obviously you are going to dramatically increase how much drive space is needed.

Ah, so I should probably keep my save files to like two or three right? I'm asking as I am only in act 1 and worry if I continue to act 3, I will use up most of the space on my hard drive.

No. Read my posts. You don't have 650 GB of saves, unless maybe you have thousands of them.

[noratcat]

Originally posted by desrtfox071:

First off, look here for your actual saves:
C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\PlayerProfiles\<ProfileName>

Or your system's equivalent.

In my case, I only have a few saves and the total space taken up by saves is about 50MB. On a second PC with many more saves, the total space taken by saves is just over 200MB. So, I'm not sure where you're getting 680 GB for saves. I think this is literally impossible. (I think you're looking at something other than saves, and something other than the BG3 install. In my case, the total BG3 install is ~130 GB)

Also, why bother? The game itself takes up much more space than the saves, so pruning your saves, while useful, isn't going to save you tons of space. Just keep your saves in line more or less and forget about the space. If you have space issues, there are probably much better ways to free space than pruning saves.

Sorry, I meant 680 GB left on my computer. What I meant is when I had several saves, like maybe 15, I had over 677 GB of space on my hard drive, but then I noticed after pruning my saves, it increased it to 680.

[Shells]

Saves for me are right now 30 MB (begin of act 2). Three days ago they were 21 MB, haha. Basically Larian is spying (and logging) every single mouse click, it seems. Not sure whether this is a good way to ensure finding bugs or a sad excuse for their catastrophic inhouse QA.

[Rhett]

Well, in my case, I have 3 separate campaigns/playthroughs going, and a limit of.. 10 or 15 quicksaves? 92 individual save files between the 3, totaling 1.88GB. I don't think that's bad? I wouldn't be worried. This is with zero pruning, ever.

[desrtfox071]

Originally posted by noratcat:

Originally posted by desrtfox071:

First off, look here for your actual saves:
C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\PlayerProfiles\<ProfileName>

Or your system's equivalent.

In my case, I only have a few saves and the total space taken up by saves is about 50MB. On a second PC with many more saves, the total space taken by saves is just over 200MB. So, I'm not sure where you're getting 680 GB for saves. I think this is literally impossible. (I think you're looking at something other than saves, and something other than the BG3 install. In my case, the total BG3 install is ~130 GB)

Also, why bother? The game itself takes up much more space than the saves, so pruning your saves, while useful, isn't going to save you tons of space. Just keep your saves in line more or less and forget about the space. If you have space issues, there are probably much better ways to free space than pruning saves.

Sorry, I meant 680 GB left on my computer. What I meant is when I had several saves, like maybe 15, I had over 677 GB of space on my hard drive, but then I noticed after pruning my saves, it increased it to 680.

Note other poster's actual numbers. You're fine. You'd be hard pressed to get 5-10 GB of saves in BG3 anytime soon.

[noratcat]

Originally posted by Rhett:

Well, in my case, I have 3 separate campaigns/playthroughs going, and a limit of.. 10 or 15 quicksaves? 92 individual save files between the 3, totaling 1.88GB. I don't think that's bad? I wouldn't be worried. This is with zero pruning, ever.

Ah I see. Sorry, I'm just a naturally anxious person, so I was worried I was eating up my hard drive by playing a game I like. I really bought this game on impulse. Had there been an X Box version, I would have bought that. Sadly, there isn't yet. If ever.

As I mentioned, my Pc isn't exactly a high end game laptop or anything. Just a standard one. Really the only game I've been playing on my computer prior to this one is Guild Wars 2.

[desrtfox071]

Originally posted by noratcat:

Originally posted by Rhett:

Well, in my case, I have 3 separate campaigns/playthroughs going, and a limit of.. 10 or 15 quicksaves? 92 individual save files between the 3, totaling 1.88GB. I don't think that's bad? I wouldn't be worried. This is with zero pruning, ever.

Ah I see. Sorry, I'm just a naturally anxious person, so I was worried I was eating up my hard drive by playing a game I like. I really bought this game on impulse. Had there been an X Box version, I would have bought that. Sadly, there isn't yet. If ever.

As I mentioned, my Pc isn't exactly a high end game laptop or anything. Just a standard one. Really the only game I've been playing on my computer prior to this one is Guild Wars 2.

Even if you got to 10 GB (5 times what Rhett has used) that's less than 2% of your free space. You're fine. (Your free space is probably good for something north of 20,000 saves FYI)

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by noratcat:

Sorry, I meant 680 GB left on my computer. What I meant is when I had several saves, like maybe 15, I had over 677 GB of space on my hard drive, but then I noticed after pruning my saves, it increased it to 680.

That's how I read it, so you weren't entirely unclear.

I had originally set the game to have the maximum allowed number of auto-saves and quick saves, which iirc is 50 of each, and at one point the total for my saves was close to 3 GB.

I have since turned it down to allow only 20 of each and it's only around 680 MB of space. You're fine with more than 3 saves.

[angelsenvy228]

Originally posted by noratcat:

Originally posted by Rhett:

Well, in my case, I have 3 separate campaigns/playthroughs going, and a limit of.. 10 or 15 quicksaves? 92 individual save files between the 3, totaling 1.88GB. I don't think that's bad? I wouldn't be worried. This is with zero pruning, ever.

Ah I see. Sorry, I'm just a naturally anxious person, so I was worried I was eating up my hard drive by playing a game I like. I really bought this game on impulse. Had there been an X Box version, I would have bought that. Sadly, there isn't yet. If ever.

As I mentioned, my Pc isn't exactly a high end game laptop or anything. Just a standard one. Really the only game I've been playing on my computer prior to this one is Guild Wars 2.

You may want to turn off cloud saves though if you get annoyed waiting so long for them to sync, I did. The game saves are pretty crazy in size but they are recording everything like the position of every half eaten apple in the entire world so it kind of makes sense, but I'm not waiting 5 minutes for my cloud saves to sync I will just back that folder up to google drive and it'll be faster.

[Jaeger Pilot]

In the settings you can also decide how many quicksave and autosave files the game keeps before overwriting them. Lower this number as you see fit.

[M19*Haunter]

~10 gb of saves only for act 2... it's a big fail of Larian.

[desrtfox071]

Originally posted by M19*Haunter:

~10 gb of saves only for act 2... it's a big fail of Larian.

Lol, how many saves?