The latest update for Baldur's Gate 3 has introduced a rather frustrating and almost unplayable glitch where companions empty their inventories onto you

Baldur's Gate 3 is an excellent game, historically speaking, but it does have its flaws. The first of these, of course, is that Astarion is not voiced with Neil Newbon's original Brummie accent, but a close second is the problematic inventory system in the game. I don't know about you, but I've probably spent at least a couple of hours in the game standing still in camp, desperately trying to organize my chaotic inventory and that of my companions, with little success.

The third patch for the game attempted to improve this situation by introducing a new "Shared Stash" system. This system takes important quest items away from party members when you dismiss them and places them in your inventory, preventing you from accidentally losing quest items when you dismiss a party member carrying them. However, there's a problem.

As noted by GamesRadar, this system seems to be affecting items that aren't part of quests, and it's frustrating players. Alongside your quest-related artifacts and harlequin costumes, the shared stash is also dumping alchemical pouches, camp supply packs, and keys into your inventory whenever you remove a party member. This often leads to significant over-encumbrance, forcing you to sift through your inventory to find these items and move them to the camp or other remaining party members. It's quite tedious.

"My main character has low carrying capacity, and she gets over-encumbered every time I send a party member back to camp," says Reddit user Blindspy4, lamenting that "at least one of my party members takes off their armor every time I make them wait at camp too." Describing the experience as "very frustrating, almost unplayable," the player says they now have to "spend several minutes trying to figure out what just happened" to their inventory every time they swap someone out.

Similar sentiments are echoed elsewhere, including one player declaring that the issue has "ruined the game" for them. However, it seems particularly acute for multiplayer users. One player named Arbitrary_Pseudonym is running a multiplayer campaign, and when one player can't join, they just leave that character behind and take a story NPC. "But now, when we do that, all their stuff transfers over to whoever left them behind. Those items don't go back to the original character, so when those players come back, camp items and keys just mess up their inventory."

Some observant players may have figured out the cause. A player named Agamemnon155 points out that the patch 3 notes mention that "Alchemy Pouches, Camp Supply Sacks, and Keychains will now show up in the Trade UI and won't be highlighted as story items." It seems this change hasn't retroactively applied to pre-patch 3 saves, causing many players to still see these items as story items. This makes them susceptible to the shared stash system and, consequently, disrupts the inventory of unsuspecting players.

Hopefully, a hotfix will be released soon. I've reached out to Larian to inquire about this issue and will update if I receive a response.