Some quests related to specific NPC’s will be closed once you enter the Shadowlands and begin Act 2, but you keep all the fast travel locations and most open quests until almost right up to almost the end of Act 2.
Once you arrive in Baldur’s gate and begin Act 3 there is no going back.
Why yes Shadowheart, I would love to hear more about your religious cult of pure evil!
Thanks! I had thought the underdark was the start of act 2.
My best achievement so far…
Funny, that was the last entrance into the underdark that I found. There are at least two others, I even think there are three or more.
I found the entry in the Hag’s cave first but I couldn’t get back and reverted to an earlier save, it was still way too early for me to start the Underdark. I got caught up in that sub-plot when I took a bit of a side track on my way to smash the goblins.
I messed up big time. I jumped the gun in the Gauntlet of Shar. I was warned, but proceeded anyway and knew I messed up. I decided to play things through to see how they would turn out. Arrrrrghhhhhh! Rolled back to an old save and life feels better. 
BG3 is hellaciously unforgiving but the most fun I’ve had since Witcher 3. I’m that guy with ADD that rarely finishes games but BG3 is hard to put down.
Looks like I have hit one of the Act 3 bugs that caused a dialogue/reaction from a Companion to an event that didn’t trigger. It doesn’t seem to be preventing the story from progressing but it is a bit jarring when you have a convo in camp and you are ‘WTF did that come from’ only to have the encounter later in the game.
Specifically: Gale started a conversation asking why I accepted Raphael’s offer. I had already been non-commital at the entry to the Gauntlet of Shar and it was before I encountered him again in Baldur’s Gate (Sharess’ Caress) where I actually turned him down this time - no way am I trusting a Demon.
In any case this is apparently one of the issues that the 2nd patch will fix and just in case it does effect the story in some way I will wait until the patch drops and then go back to the start of Act 3 - I will ‘only’ be losing about 6 hours of game time.
Looks like I am just slow enough that (after my vacation) they will probably have Patch 3 live before I reach act 3.
Good work by the devs, lots of stuff fixed in those patches.
I saw a video addressing that issue. The next patch is going to be much welcomed. Still in act 2 after rolling back to fix my epic mess up. Truly glad I rolled back because I discovered so much more content to uncover.
OK. That was seriously messed up…
I just had ‘The Emperor’ make a pass at me - WTF
I am going to have to stop being nice to people?
Become the queen harry! The rest of us are bending over and taking it from government. Why not virtually as well 
OMG! I can’t believe that I have only just figured this out.
If you have Scratch in your Camp, you can summon him as a familiar and he will ‘sniff’ out all sorts of interesting stuff.
Yeah, a bit of a spoiler but I wish I had known a lot earlier.
Yep, and he can even distract enemies for a turn or two, so he has also a combat use.
Scratch is inconsistent for me so I started ignoring him when he starts to sniff. lol!
I’ve finally made it to Act 3, but starting to run into adventurer’s block/overload. Not sure what to do next so I’m essentially walking around aimlessly talking to the locals. I also discovered that I missed out on some adventures from Act 2, which was brutal but satisfying. I’m not sure I will finish in time for Starfield (because I’m easily distracted) but I’m committed to seeing this game through. lol!
Q: Karlach misses a lot even when she has “advantage.” I think she or I is cursed with bad luck because her dice rolls suck. Is there any way to change that, perhaps through respeccing?
If it’s a curse I have it too! Its making me a little crazy.
Well, the obvious thing is to give her a weapon that has a “to hit bonus” like a +2 weapon or something.
Most enemies have armor classes between 12 and 18 so if you have advantage (which is equivalent to a +4 bonus mathematically IIRC) and a +2 weapon that should give you a pretty good chance to hit, over 50% even for heavily armored enemies.
The math is like this:
Edit: argh I forgot: add the strength bonus!
Should be +4 or even +5, she is strong!
So level 10 Karlach and a +2 weapon against some enemy with an AC of 14 means 1d20+4+2+4… should be over 85% hit chance (only misses with a 1, 2 or 3).
With advantage the chance should be 97% or so.
Your best way to hit well armored enemies is to hit often. Depending on how you skilled her you might get an extra attack while raging. One of those three attacks should hit.
Oh, and have you turned off the weighted dice feature? It causes bad luck.
and i thought the old THACO system was complex 
It is around the same complexity.
But at least now all the modifiers are positive. They just changed the direction for the calculation.
The armor class is now (since 3E) going up from ten instead of down.
Edit: arguably 3E or Pathfinder have it worst, because there are SO many modifiers.
5e has the advantage/disadvantage system, which is a bit coarse but SO much faster.
In 3E if you wanted to attack a prone rat at night in light rain using a +2 throwing axe while being drunk but being blessed by a cleric and standing on a roof then you had to add up 12… maybe 14 numbers.
The number of bonuses to take into account in 5E is almost always six, and four of them are the same for most attacks.
I don’t think the problem is neccessarily Karlach? It seems to be high dexterity opponents and their saving throws? I have specced Karlach pretty much as @Aginor has suggested. Maxed out her strength to 20, rare greataxe, etc… but yeah she is still missing (especially her first strike) frustratingly often? That said, she she is my go to when it comes to the ‘tank’ in the party (I also reckon she has some of the best lines/dialogue of all the NPC’s).
Speaking of which. What is everyones favourite combination for your party. This is mine:
I will sometimes swap out Karlach for Lae’zel or Wyll for Gael… At the moment I have Jaheira in the party instead of Gael, for reasons that will become obviuos as you progress through Act 3 - Minsc is back and I hope he still has Boo with him.
I was there as well, but now have a kinda plan? I have just broken it down into chunks and going with the flow. This has led me to the reason for having Jaheira in the party and doing that is now my immediate goal.
By the time you are ready to enter the city proper you should have two murders to solve/investigate and if you are ‘walking around aimlessly’ you should also run into your old Ironhand Gnome chums before too long.
