Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Useful Stuff You Don't Know

I've got way too many hours in this game. In that time, I've learned a bunch of stuff that I haven't seen posted. So, here you go (note: these are all for honor mode. I don't know if there are differences in other modes):

• You can rename Shovel after a spellshite learns him. To do this, you need to have him summoned. Then use a hireling such as the cleric to talk to shovel. He can go through the "your name is shovel?" line of questions and rename him to Fork or whatever suits your fancy. I have done this successfully when Gale Party Member summons shovel and I use the cleric of selune hireling. YMMV with other combos. I don't know if it works if Tav summons shovel since talking to characters through a hireling does strange things like making Tav talk to the character in a strange state.
• Ray of Frost puts out ALL fire surfaces. For example: Wall of Fire? Cast ray of frost, it will permanently extinguish the fire surface. Anything burning will be extinguished by ray of frost. No matter how large. (NOTE: Characters who are "on fire" will only be extinguished if directly hit by the ray -- if they are standing on fire that gets extinguished, they will still be on fire)
• You can dump any amount of weight from the stash onto a character in a single go as long as no individual item being transferred is too heavy. For example, if you have a character with 25 lbs available carrying capacity, you can dump 100 x 25 lbs items on them. However, you cannot dump a 26 lbs item on them. This is really useful for doing things like loading up someone with barrels right before a big fight. Note that characters subjected to this will move very, very slowly in addition to having disadvantage on lots of checks.
• Ritual Spells are free when not in turn-based mode. For example, if you have jump, you can cast it 10 times in real-time mode no problem. However, if you enter turn based mode (either manually or because of combat), it will cost spell slots
• Longstrider can target one additional character per spell level slot assigned. However, it will still not use a spell slot unless you are in turn based mode. This means that you can target 6 characters with a single cast if you tell it to cast at level 6. Saves lots of buff time.
• Summoned Monsters and Concentration Spells will all be canceled if someone leaves the party, as will transmuter stones.
• Any spell that lasts until long rest and doesn't require concentration can be cast by characters who then leave the party. For example, I always hire a wizard and 2 cleric hirelings to cast: Longstrider, Mage Armor, Darkvision (wizard), Aid, Protection from Poison, Daylight on Weapon, Death Ward, Freedom of Movement, Heroes Feast (cleric). Aid and Heroes Feast will both target allies not-in-party, so you just need to have everyone gather around whatever character leaves the party temporarily to make room for the hireling.
• Aid and Heroes Feast will also hit all summons including undead. Be sure to summon your undead before you buff up
• You can animate dead from the same corpse every long rest. So once I have a campsite I know I will return to, I dump bodies there to raise my skeletons. I dump the bodies next to the party member who will be ejected to make room for hirelings so that I don't have to move my summons every time since that character will mark the gathering point for AOE buffs (aid, feast). Then I can animate dead from those every single day. Even though the bodies look exploded, they become usable again.
• Once you pickpocket someone or steal an item off the ground that will be noticed (i.e. anything not in a container), leave turn-based mode and fast-travel to camp for a couple minutes. That will prevent you from ever being suspected/questioned
• Save every water you find. They serve as water grenades. Water grenades can: 1. Apply wet, 2. Reveal invisible, 3. Only cost a single attack, so your fighter with 3 attacks can use a single action to wet stuff instead of blowing an action on create water spell, 4. Will NOT cause hostility unless you hit people with the actual bottle on the throw, 5. Remove acid/poison/etc. surfaces and replace with wet surface
• Freedom of Movement will not save you from slipping on ice. It's an oversight. It's been reported. Who knows if they'll fix it. You must use boots that explicitly prevent slipping on ice or falling prone.
• Tiger Barbs can completely avoid self-damage from using the ritual mace AOE. The AOE is centered on the mouse cursor and will trigger once per character hit by the tiger rage attack (up to 3 targets). Simply position your cursor so that the aoe will hit your opponents and not you. You can do shenanigans with this, too, to damage people otherwise out of reach.
• "Returning" items such as the returning pike will not return to the user if combat is started by throwing them. There is a bug where throwing an item that then starts combat breaks the system. Be sure to throw something else first.
• Although assassins reset their actions when the first round of combat starts, they do NOT reset their sneak attack. Also, they only get guaranteed crits vs "surprised" opponents. This means that if your assassin attacks someone from out-of-combat, do NOT use your sneak attack. Save it for the crit round. Because of this, you should always have your assassin's sneak attack set to only be automatic on crit. Otherwise prompt for it.
• Conditions that apply vulnerability have priority over "resistance." For example, if you drink an elixir of lightning resistance, you will still be vulnerable to lightning if you get wet. This means that cold followed by lightning are the most reliable damage sources in the game since almost nothing is cold immune and only a few more are lightning immune. Throw those water bottles!

I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of right now. Hopefully someone found something here useful.

Items inside containers being stolen do get noticed.

That said... You can steal a container, such as a locked chest and then it stops being considered "Stolen" for any actions involving it later.

You can, for example, steal Kagha's chest... Then drop it in front of her and pick the lock and take stuff out of it and no-one will care.

This can be useful if you want to steal from a container that has people nearby. Instead of having to use Turn Based mode to stop people moving around and seeing you while you disarm traps/pick locks (Both of which cost an action) you just pick up the chest and mess with it later.


Technically, you can actually drop water bottles from your inventory to the ground as a free action. If you drop them next to an enemy, you can then use a bonus action attack on it to break it and spill its contents on nearby enemies.

This is why it can be quite useful to have dual hand crossbows on casters, since they normally don't have much use for their bonus action (Besides Sorc with Quickened Spell Metamagic) this lets them freely apply Wet to enemies for their spells. The lack of proficiency with hand crossbows doesn't matter either, because attacking objects is 100% hit rate.


Technically, they will return. But only if it continues to be that characters turn in the turn order.

This likely won't be the case because a character using throwing will be prioritizing Str over Dex and so won't have crazy initative... But if you're using bonuses like Elixirs (Either Alert one that gives +5 Initiative and no surprise, or a Strength Elixir that lets you dump Str and pump Dex) or items like the Bow of Awareness you can get your thrower consistently acting first and so "Returning" weapons can function when initiating combat.

As an aside, this quirk is also true during combat. Sometimes a returning weapon will take some time to actually return (Normally when it's wedged inside a large enemy) and if you end your turn before it returns, it will not do so. Meaning you should always pay attention and make sure your weapon has returned before you switch characters or end your turn.


Interestingly, this is only true for hostiles. For non-hostiles you are murdering, Sneak Attack does reset upon initiating combat.

Oh cool, I did not know this one!

- "You can rename Shovel"

But IIRC you really shouldnt because it leads to bugs.

- "Ray of Frost puts out ALL fire surfaces."

Interesting, didnt knew that. Cant think of too many instances of a Wall of Fire cast by opponents though.

- "You can dump any amount of weight from the stash onto a character"

Thankfully. Its allowing to organize the static container in camp even after you have collected for example heaps of food. Cant think of any instance that this is helpful in any other place. And IIRC if you have too much weight in the inventory you cannot move at all.

- "Ritual Spells are free when not in turn-based mode."

Thats literally the defining feature of the very term "Ritual Spell". The only way to avoid knowing this is if you havent bothered informing yourself what the term means.

- "Longstrider can target one additional character per spell level slot assigned"

Not really important. At best this saves some clicks.

- "Summoned Monsters and Concentration Spells will all be canceled if someone leaves the party, as will transmuter stones."

Wasnt there an exception to that rule ? Its been a while since I've played.

- "Aid and Heroes Feast will also hit all summons including undead. Be sure to summon your undead before you buff up"

Well yeah

- "You can animate dead from the same corpse every long rest. So once I have a campsite I know I will return to, I dump bodies there to raise my skeletons."

That one I didnt knew either, though its not something of much consequence.

- "Once you pickpocket someone or steal an item off the ground that will be noticed (i.e. anything not in a container), leave turn-based mode and fast-travel to camp for a couple minutes."

Well yeah.

- "Save every water you find."

Well yeah.

- "Freedom of Movement will not save you from slipping on ice."

Dunno why it should. Slipping on ice is a Larian mechanic not part of D&D.

- "Tiger Barbs can completely avoid self-damage from using the ritual mace AOE."

Okay.

- ""Returning" items such as the returning pike will not return to the user if combat is started by throwing them."

I am painfully aware.

- "Although assassins ..."

Okay.

- "Conditions that apply vulnerability have priority over "resistance.""

Yeah.




Out of the top of my head:

- Since Initiative is rolled on a d4 instead of a d20 as by the original rules, the Alert feat is worlds more powerful than in the original rulesystem and basically a musthave for all characters. In combination with high dexterity and initiative gear it is easy to go first in almost all combat.

- Also try to get a surprise round at the start of battle, so only you can act in the first round. Together with Alert, this gives you two rounds before the opponents can do anything. This is easier to archieve if you first start round based mode before you attack. Some boss opponents have the Alert feat and are immune to being surprised.

- Whenever possible, attack from high ground.

- The same potion can be applied to multiple people if they are all in the splash range, i.e. if three people stand as close as possible to each other. But this doesnt work properly for elixiers (day long buffs).

- Giant Strength Elixiers allow to have enormous strength of 21 or 27, despite a strength score of just 8. Especially important for characters with demand of many high attributes, such as Monk or Paladin.

- Resistance, thief uncanny dodge, and damage split (either through rings or the cleric spell) each halve damage by themselves independently, allowing to reduce damage up to 1/8 of the original value.

- Mage Hand is incredibly powerful and a must to pick if you get the option. It provides 10 rounds of actions, including but not limited to throwing weapons from high positions for gravity damage, or simply throwing potions. Ideally you should cast this spell right before combat.

- Minor Illusion is another amazing musthave Cantrip and helps to sort out opponents before combat, such as getting multiple opponents in the same place or separating an opponent from their allies.

- About background experience, only the experience of the main character matters. Everyone else gets adjusted to the protagonist experience when they join the party. Thats why you should play The Dark Urge because they get the most background related experience in Act 1 and 2.

- If you want to merely knock out an opponent, enable non-lethal in your passives, and only attack with melee once the hitpoints of the opponent get low.

- Your first character should be a custom one, because all origin characters get part of the story spoiled to them.

- Every time one of your character levels up, all merchants reset their inventory.

- Your protagonist basically has to be a Lore Bard. They get so many advantages in dialogues over all other options, its not even funny. And the protagonist is often forced to be the one to communicate with, so their communication skills are by far the most decisive. Also all Bards are masters at opponent disabling spells like Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Hypnotic Pattern, Hold Monster, etc, which is the second most important ability to have right after raw damage output.

Etc etc etc

After you've used the security vault keys to empty the vaults, you can still sell the keys to Bursar Uktar for 400+ gp each.

Mage Hand (or you, yourself for that matter) can grab a thing with the mouse and just drag it along the ground. This is distinct from the pick up or throw operations. This would have saved me much heartache on several plays.

It also helps you picking up junk from a table, you can drag the stuff from the other side to your side so you don't keep running all the way around. This is especially useful in early game where you're a scavenger to get every penny you can. Assuming you don't use tricks.

Ironically, they teach you to drag a rock several times early on in Act I, but I never thought to do it with anything else for ease, comfort, and profit. I thought it was just a situation-specific mechanic to look under a rock.