Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion What happens if Gortash is defeated on the first encounter?

This is possibly the most difficult battle in the game, as it doesn't have an option to be won (unless you specifically level up to level 12 before visiting the castle). This is what makes it a very interesting challenge.

I'm interested to see what happens if the player does this

not worth it, I've done it in Explorer mode at lvl 11, on my second playthrough, it's an excruciating fight with a lot of RNG luck and some iron gnome bombs(check their traders to see what I mean, and some specific quest bomb) it's possible, ... keep into account all floors(70% of the first floor) will join the fight which will make it even worse, Larian kinda makes it obvious they don't want you to kill Gortash on first Encounter, i say kinda - because:

I actually did this on accident on my tactician dark urge playthrough. I broke into the fortress through the prison and fought against all the guards, then Gortash got randomly triggered aswell as some other guards. However no steel watchers were alarmed, the other guards and Gortash needed 5 turns to run down the stairs and get to me, but by then the rest of the guards were already dead and I had an easy fight against him. So far I dont know what happens afterwards but if you do it like me you can definitely beat it on tactician, even tho its not the intended way. I also had zero dialogue with Gortash, he just ran into combat and died, kinda sad. But the whole fight took me around 1,5h and was ultra laggy so I wont reload after sitting through all that.

Gortash is completely devoid of content. The dukes even if you kill him when appropriate later won't react and will still be on pre-coronation dialogue while the rest of the lower city is talking about his death. Gortash ahs a lot of cut content.

so... there is a pretty easy way to cheese this fight, you just need a small stockpile of chests and pile them up at the base of all 4 ladders, and at the top of the ladders... this will trigger a "cannot reach" effect when trying to use the ladders
the big grumbly machines aren't all that skilled at ranged combat. then its a slow grind to kill em all... instead of talking to gortash, begin the fight by shooting him.
if you have some grease, this can be another huge asset when it comes to making normally difficult fights very easy, as Larion didn't exactly prepare the NPCs to remove heavy armor to get out of the grease.

Honestly, Im not sure why we cannot reveal Gortash is a leader of the absolute to all and sundry to remove him from power and have a nice sizeable army to contest his steel watch. toss in that Zariel and Bane are NOT friends, and get the devil to help with the eradication of the steel watch... In theory, you just have to convince Zariel that if she doesn't deal with the steel watch, then she's siding with bane, and get other gods to intervene against her in Avernus if she doesn't comply... Zariel once served a forgotten god... she herself is not a god, but an archdevil, which means she's far inferior to the actual gods (comparable to the nightsong in actual power) Avernus is one of the 9 hells, so divine interventions there wouldn't necessarily cause the same kind of problems...

Personally, if It were me, I'd recruit Lord Belashyrra to handle the issue, as the Daelkyr is my favorite entity, far superior to a mere god, the daelkyr being the ones who created the gods to begin with... Belashyrra is the one who created the original mind flayer... and beholder... and mimic... you get the idea... the lord of Xoriat, the realm of madness, is rather insane himself. his contracts rarely make any sense, famously trading a whole country for the price of a cheese wheel... rule of theumbm, the more absurd it is, the more likely it is to work with him... and anything guaranteed to work, is guaranteed to fail. the only truth is that Belashyrra cannot be destroyed, only banished back to Xoriat. the same is true for all the daelkyr, as they are all primal embodiments of existance.
as long as there is thought, belashyrra lives. to kill Belashyrra you have to also kill everything that thinks, including the other daelkyr, like Orlassk the lord of stone... to kill him, the progeniter of all rocks and lands, well, all land has to go, from all realms. (that's just how unkillable a Daelkyr is)

@ All

I'm not sure why Cazador Szarr isn't there at the ceremony, given his status among the nobility. Though I suppose we'd need a night cycle for that. Would still be cool.

Cazador was very busy with other things. things much more important to him than who rules Baldur's Gate.

A comment on how to accomplish this.

I just did this on tact by entering the path behind the main chamber, i climbed up and then used arane lock to lock one of the only two doors, then set a fire wall and dark cloud up on the other entrance then i would disarm the steel watch as they came into the room i was holding off and then kept the steel watch stuck in the door way and was able to feed them in only a few at a time, i killed everyone and everything this way, it took two tries and lots of healing potions but it worked.

I just broke in and killed everyone with my 10 lvl eldritch knight, life cleric and lore bard on tactician. Sanctuary doesn't allow enemies to hit the bard and the cleric, while the eldritch knight doing all the job under haste and warding bond. So it's possible to win this by rough strength.