Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Where do I go from here?? Act1

Rifle through Kagha's personal property.

Check the passages behind the jail.

Go up the hill behind the Idol, towards the coast.

Talk to or fight the goblins here.

Find the apothecary basement.

Explore down the well.

Recruit Karlach and do her little sidequest.

Fight the gnolls.

Rescue people from the fire.

Find the place where that caravan shipment is supposed to go.

lvl 2: Nautiloid - I do try to kill the captain and get his GS, but he also gives a nice chunk of exp, but you basically depend on the mindflayer to kill him
lvl 3: Explore the beach, get Gale, Astarion, Shadowheart, kill goblins outside of the Grove, talk to everyone in the grove. Explore the Village, I usually talk my way in just fine. If you walk around enough, do some of the caves, etc you should get enough exp to hit 3 pretty quickly without any major quest lines. Can also do the Kagha questline. Wake up Withers and explore those ruins. Basically level 3 & 4 is as much exploration as possible.
lvl 4: Harpies first. Deal with the goblin camp or grove however I'm gonna do that, Waukeen's Rest, the Zhentarium camp under it, explore Ethel's area and get the waypoint but otherwise leave her alone, gnolls, "Paladins of Tyr" (Karlach), maybe venture into the Underdark briefly if I need something to push me over but all over the starting area should be enough to get you here
lvl 5: Basically everything in the underdark: arcane tower, sentient fish, mushrooms/glut, rescue the moron, masterwork weapons, beach, open the path to the forge (although I always misty step to it). You should hit 5 there no problem
lvl 6-8: Go deal with Ethel, then continued underdark until Nere is dead, do everything there, clear the Mountain Pass area, do all the Gith stuff however you do it, Blood of Lathander

I've yet to break to lvl9 in Act I, but you can be 8 at minimum before leaving if you do everything. IMO ethel and those undead are some of the harder fights in Act I if you aren't leveled right, but a lot of classes get major boosts at lvl5 that make some of these fights more manageable. Getting there is one of the harder level grinds in the game IMO but you can do it if you explore enough, just know you can walk into situations you can't win.

You do not have to fight the Duergar in Grymforge right away. If you talk to one of them you can also recruit some of them to help you kill Nere after rescuing him, that splits up the fight a lot, but again this is one I wouldn't venture into until I'm at least lvl5.

On the goblin camp, they are super squishy and weak. Try to pull them into choke points, like the bridge outside of the camp, and pick them off at range. You can also create surfaces (grease, ice, etc) on the choke point to prevent them from rushing you too quickly. They have like 7-20hp, so at level 3 or 4 they should be really manageable. If you waypoint in and aggro the whole camp, it's a lot harder than going in the front door, but if you try to rush it with that many mobs you'll lose. You need to take some strategy and position yourself to be more effective.

1. Kill (or knock unconscious) her minions. Don't try to sneak past them.
2. Leave and full rest unless you've managed that without using more than one or two spell slots.
3. Have someone throw a bottle of water at the cage first round.
4. Magic Missile! By miles the best spell for this encounter. Use Gale and/or any scrolls. Ethel's copies can attack you, but disappear when hit. Magic missile is guaranteed hit on three separate targets and you don't even need line of sight (only range). Eliminate the duplicates and then go absolutely ham on her with your biggest damage dealer.
5. Remember that when your characters are next to each other in initiative order you can decide who goes first.