Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Spoiler - Flaming fist and Waukeen's rest

There's a significant force of Flaming fist at Waukeen's rest early, but sooner or later most of them go away, the councilor dies, and you can't pick up the rescue Duke Ravengard quest. Any idea what triggers this? Number of rests, progress of other activities, what? It seems connected to the progress with the Goblins, but maybe I'm fooling myself.

Resting after entering the area triggering the "smoke... Blah blah" comment.

This is one of the quests with a timer.
One timer starts when you enter the area. If you rest before saving the people in the building they will die.
Another timer starts when you enter the burning building. The fire will spread and people in the building (including you) will die if you are too slow.

This is how I did it yesterday without problems:
- Save the game before entering the area, just in case something goes wrong
- Walk into the yard but do not go close to the soldiers at the gate. Move the camera around to see the positions of 2 people in the building. (upper floor)
- Unchain your group and enter turn based mode. Turn based is importent because you have to move several chars indipendently while a timer is running.
- One char will rescue the man, one char will rescue the woman, two chars wait at the gate.
- Both rescue teams jump on the upper floor and move to their target, smashing blocked doors along the way. The two chars in the yard wait.
- The rescue team for the man will save him from under the wood pillar, then follow him until he reaches a corpse and he stays there, now he is safe.
- The rescue team for the woman will talk to her, then smash all obstacles between her and the front entrance, where the other chars are waiting.
- Once the woman starts moving to the entrance, the other two chars talk to the soldiers and open the gate. (Two chars so you have two chances for the str check to open the doors, else you have to smash the doors.)
- Once the woman has reached the entrance (cut scene) and the man has reached the corpse, both are saved and this part of the quest is over.

I was on my Halfling Bard with my usual group - Shadowheart, Gale, and everybodys favorite Gith. My group was level 4, just having received our first feats.

I ran to the door and, as a Bard with Strength 9 but Charisma 18 and Expertise in Persuation, choose to primarily inspired the troups to break the door down, instead of having any delusions how much my strength would help with the effort. While I was in that dialogue, I got out of it to the other characters and moved my group to the door as close as possible, because as always they stood waaaaay behind.

Then I got a hilarious scene in which my Bard "kicked the door in". That looks so incredibly stupid with a Halfling.

Then I immediately, as fast as possible, enabled round based mode, and used the feature of the free camera to look for people in need of rescue. Turns out there was nobody, but there was stairs in the back.

So I ran to these stairs. Ignoring the initiative, which of course put my Dex 16 Halfling first and Dex 10 Lae'zel last, my Halfling as always ran last because he's slower and would stay behind, while Lae'zel came first because with her high Strength she can jump really far and with that move further than everybody else.

I also choose to pick up that barrel with water right next to the stairs, though I'm not sure it does much. Anyway you can just drop that barrel on any burning surface and the fire damage will break the barrel, releasing the water, without you having to pay any action or bonus action.

As soon as I managed to get up the stairs, I searched around again on the upper level and found two people to be rescued.

After several retries of various accidents I found out you have to rescue the woman first, because when you rescue the man, all hell breaks lose and the fire really accelerates and throwing water doesnt seem to help at all against that.

Lae'zel says as much when you get near the doors behind which the first man is, but of course I wasnt sure at first what exactly she meant with her statement.

The doors I handled with Eldritch Blast from Gale, which he has because I picked Spell Sniper for his first feat, and with that Magic Weapon that Shadowheart gets on spell level 2 and that can be cast as a bonus action.

Anyway so I unlocked the door for the woman first and waited until she had passed the second door. I stayed way away safe distance with everybody from the second door when breaking through, since that always resulted in a big explosion. I then moved to the man inside that room, first with Shadowheart and Lae'zel. Shadowheart, which I had respecced to only have Strength 8 in favor of better mental stats, tried the hard solution but failed, Lae'zel (also respecced, to Str 17 Dex 10 Con 16 Int 8 Wis 14 Cha 8) tried the easy Strength solution and succeeded. She had help from the amulet that gives Guidance, too.

I had then control of that man, too. I made him run out of the room and receive the Longstrider buff from Gale, which everybody else already had. After that I just ran out and Lae'zel, who was again at the front thanks to her high strenght and resulting long jumps, got to choose one of the three weapons offered by the woman. I settled on the Longbow so I would have two of those, since neither Trident nor Quarterstaff would see any use anyway.