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 for you here:

[Race] – [First, second, and third most popular class]
Dwarf – Paladin, Barbarian, Fighter
Dragonborn – Sorcerer, Paladin, Barbarian
Hafling – Bard, Rogue, Monk
Gnome – Bard, Rogue, Druid
Tiefling – Paladin, Barbarian, Warlock
Drow – Sorcerer, Rogue, Warlock
Elf – Rogue, Ranger, Druid
Half-Elf – Sorcerer, Paladin, Cleric

“And now, what you’ve been waiting for,” Larian writes ominously. Of the 658,000 players who had sex with Halsin, 30% “chose the bear.” They are joined by the 1.1 million players who “got down with the Emperor,” 37% of whom “discovered the sensual pleasure of mind flayer tentacles.” I can think of a few million Paladins who would not be pleased by this news.

I’ll tell you what I was waiting for: over 120 million pets for Scratch the dog, and over 41 million pets for the Owlbear Cub. Now that is righteous, Paladin-worthy behavior.

The ending stats are arguably the most interesting. Some 1.8 million players betrayed the Emperor (much like me – screw him, but don’t literally screw him, you pervs), 329,000 convinced Orpheus to become a mind flayer, and 3.3 million players killed the Netherbrain (with 200,000 getting Gale to do the job with his baked-in bomb). There’s a shockingly small number right at the end, too: just 34 players, playing as Lae’zel, “chose to kill themselves at the end of the game after Vlaakith rejected their ascension.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 director promises “something shiny, something big” for Larian’s next RPG: “It’s going to take a little bit of time, but … I think you’re going to like it.”

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