Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks How do you know if its dark?

Hey everyone.

So for targeting purposes, I was wondering what constitutes darkness in the game. Like if I can see something on the screen does that mean its not in darkness? Or is anywhere inside, at night or in poorly lit areas considered dark and as a human I should be using light spells or a torch? I'm wondering if I'm missing so often its because my character can't see properly.

Cheers everyone.

Normally when you hover over an enemy to target them, it’ll tell you if you have disadvantage and include the tag “Too Dark” if darkness is an issue. At least for me. I’ve only seen that in Act 2 though.

More often my characters miss when their primary stat isn’t high enough, or if they’re casting a spell not using their primary stat (e.g., a cleric using a scroll, which relies on Intelligence).

My Lae’zel missed pretty often when her strength stat was 17-19, but once she hit 21 (… thanks Astarion), she became an absolute beast and rarely missed. So you might want to focus on bumping up characters’ primary stat.

If you’re worried, light is a common cantrip so it’s easily accessible. Because it’s a cantrip, you can cast it as often as you want while not using a spell slot. But the only time I worry about darkness is Act 2.

The easiest way for me to tell Light/Darkness, is to have my characters go into stealth. Where you normally see the character's buffs on the main screen, they will display Sun/Shroud symbols, this is what they look like (I took three screenshots and cropped it):


Basically if you see a full sun, anyone can spot you.
If you see a half sun, creatures with Dark Vision can spot you
If you see the Cowl/Fully Shrouded symbol, it means you're Heavily Obscured you can achieve that by using things like Fog or Darkness.

If you're having trouble seeing, try casting light on one of your characters.

The dark is unfortunately (or fortunately) not very dark, but sometimes switching between a human and a elf character makes a visible difference. In combat, as Ecc2a stated, attacking an enemy in a dark area might give you a disadvantage (you role two dice and take the lower result). You can avoid that by either canceling the disadvantage out through giving yourself an advantage (high ground for example) or placing a light source next to the enemy. I might be wrong but placing a light cantrip on your melee's weapon should help - or having them use a weapon that is illuminated to begin with - same as all other sources of magical or non-magical light. I think throwing candles around is also an option or those cute little hearth light bombs.

Along with your own primary stats being low, you can also miss often because you try to use an ability with a spell save DC against an enemy who is especially good in that stat. That is, casting a spell with a CON Save against a character with a lot of constitution might not work out so well.

Thanks very much everyone for the tips. I recently discovered the primary stat saving throws on spells. I'm not into magic and was struggling with the spell casters. Their spells never seemed to work. Then I looked at the spells in the actual spell book and it shows quite clearly what stat the target uses when they roll against it. There's a little shield icon even. None of that is on the spell's tool tip (on Xbox anyway) which is why I hadn't noticed. It was like Ohhhhhhhhhhh!

And it's also important to be aware of the stat used to cast it? I should be careful of what scrolls I'm giving to Shadowheart then.

Hang on, I thought that all scrolls scaled off of intelligence? Unless it’s a utility spell like Misty Step. Then everybody is good to go with it.

According to the wiki it is more complicated than that: "Spells learned from taking levels in a class will use that class' spellcasting ability modifier. Spells from other sources use the spellcasting ability of the class the creature most recently took a first level in."

Spellcasting ability can be either intelligence, wisdom or charisma. So, if I understand correctly, if you are a level 10 wizard and you then take a warlock level, your spellcasting ability for a scroll based attack roll will be charisma.

Yupe, my 10Wiz/2Sor Gale (skilled 2Wiz, 2Sor, 8Wiz) uses Charisma for the attack/spell save of his scrolls but at the same time his evocation subclass boni are applied as well. ^^

(For the evocation scrolls, of course.)

That's way too complicated for me. I'm glad I chose fighter. You just hit stuff. Sometimes you hit stuff in a slightly different way.

Oh wow, good to know! So scrolls work like Markoheshkir. Perfect.

The Fighter does not function that differently from other classes. You don't just hit stuff, you also need high attribute numbers according to the weapon you are using. Trying to use a crossbow with your high Strength/low Dexterity/heavy armor Fighter for example is not a good idea.

That's why I respected to high dex. I figured since I prefer med armor and short sword I might as well. Its quite cool, I'm really happy with my character and I never would have thought to do it.

If you have high DEX, you may want to look into light armor, possibly. Medium armor caps the bonus you receive from dexterity to +2, which amounts to a DEX of 14. Light armor in contrast applies the full dexterity bonus. So if you have a dexterity of 18, you would get a +4 dexterity modifier for your armor class. I think that in many cases, medium armor is still superior, but it’s something to consider.