Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Clearing the Deck: Killing Everything on the Bridge

I was amazed to see that people managed to kill the Mind Flayer, Commander Zhalk, and the two cambions and decided to try it. I figured out some general tips and tricks. None of these are original, but I haven’t seen them typed up altogether before and thought I would share. I am ignoring killing the imps – they are (mostly) trivial.

Parts of this (but not all) are spoilers or exploits. If you don't want to learn them, do not read any further.

Strategy: Primary Goal

The primary goal is to keep the enemies from getting even a single attack on the PC. Downing the PC ends the run and one critical can take down any starting character. Keep this in mind no matter what.

Possible exception: Blade Ward might allow one hit.

Strategy: The Mind Flayer Dies First

The Mind Flayer will turn on you if Commander Zhalk is dead. Unlike the devilkin, he has ranged attacks and area attacks. To be safe, he has to die first.

Technique: Kiting with Ranged Attacks

None of the devilkin have ranged attacks, so kiting works well. Unfortunately, their movement speed is 12 meters, 3 meters more than yours. A character using Dash can outrun them, but any characters without more than 12 meters of movement will occasionally need to use Dash instead of an attack Action to keep out of melee distance. One alternative is to use Expeditious Retreat, which makes Dash a bonus action, too. So it permits normal movement + Dash (Action) + Dash (Bonus Action), allowing characters to run circles around the enemies.

Technique: Use the Elevated Ramps

There are two ramps starting near the front of the helm, one on each side. Go up those to gain height (Advantage on attack) and to keep kiting distance. When you get to the end, 1) pick up the useful items there (only on one ramp) and 2) either Throw (see Technique: Devilkin Tossing below) or Shove.

If Throw or Shove works, they take fall damage, you have Advantage on ranged attacks until they get to your level, and they take the long way back. If Throw or Shove fails, you have to Jump/Disengage down; it will do 1-2 points damage and inflict Prone, but the devilkin will turn around rather than jumping down, giving you plenty of time to reposition.

You cannot jump back up, even with Lae’zel’s jump distance and Jump, so if you have to jump down, immediately run for the other ramp.

Technique: Use the Nautiloid Tanks

On the way in, pick up as many of the Nautiloid Tanks (purple tanks) as you can carry. Note: They weigh 25 kg each. The best technique is to drop them near enemies, move well away (at least 5 meters), and hit them with fire. They explode doing significant damage. Doing this two to three times will take out the Mind Flayer and harm Commander Zhalk somewhat (he’s resistant to fire).

The second best technique is throwing them at the enemies and then setting the spill on fire, but that reduces the damage a lot – see the following:

Point of failure 1: Breaking the tanks before using fire doesn’t proc the explosion – you only get standard fire surface damage, and devilkin are resistant to fire. You have to use Fire Bolt or fire arrows (see next point) on intact tanks.

Point of failure 2: They have to be hit with fire to explode. There is exactly one Fire Bolt scroll you can get before the bridge. So you only get multiple easy attempts at the explosion if the PC has Fire Bolt or the PC is a wizard and learns the Fire Bolt cantrip from the scroll (there is just enough gold to do this). There is also a fire on the bridge that you can Dip into to get fire arrows, but it is a bit far away, near the entrance.

Point of failure 3: The game engine never seems to drop things where you want them. Moving the tanks without breaking them is tricky. This can get frustrating. The easiest way is to have multiple tanks, drop all of them, and pick back up the ones that are not where you want them.

Technique: Use Restoration

Just before the final fight, there is a Restoration station. Split off one character and have them stay there. Start the final fight. At the start and/or end of each combat round for each character, switch to the left-behind character and hit the restoration – instant full heal, plus renewed spell slots and abilities. This will also bring downed characters up, but will not cure death. I prefer Us for this, if it is available.

Point of failure 1: All effects, including buffs and hiding, go away when this happens. Be prepared to recast necessary buffs.

Point of failure 2: The cambions walk through that chamber on the way to the bridge. If you switch to the character while they are in the room and they see the character, they will attack the character. This is mostly avoidable if you move the character to the back wall on the left of the object (when looking at it from the room) and crouch. That way, even if the cambions are in the room with the character when you switch to them, the character is mostly out of line of sight and spotting them requires a roll. Using Restoration removes hiding, so re-crouch each time.

Point of failure 3: The character in the outer room runs on real-time, not turn-by-turn. There was a weird circumstance once where the cambions had already passed, I switched to Us, and the cambions advanced almost to melee distance before I could switch back and stop the clock. There was a “there is combat nearby” message, which is the only thing that saved my characters from dying off-screen.

Technique: Devilkin Tossing

When in melee range with the devilkin, you can right-click on them and Throw them. If you target a discrete object (not a character or a wall/floor), the throw chance is 100% and height doesn’t matter. This appears to be an unintended exploit. Throw them at the Brine Bulbs that are high up over the large flat area of the bridge – you will get an invalid target message but can still do it as long as you see a curved line connecting to the target. They land on the Brine Bulb for zero damage, but then they fall (moderate bludgeoning damage), the Brine Bulb hits them (moderate bludgeoning damage; low acid damage), and you can set the liquid on fire (low fire damage, resisted). Three rounds of this will usually finish off any one of them, and there are enough Brine Bulbs to do this with each.

Point of failure 1: If you are too close, the acid will hit you too, plus the fire if it lights up. Theoretically, if you are right under them, they can fall on you. Throw long.

Point of failure 2: They fall Prone, so they lose movement. But still, if you are within about 6 meters of them on their next turn, they can melee before you get a chance to Throw them again. Throw long or step back.

Point of failure 3: It is possible to get the enemy stuck on the ceiling fixture. While this makes killing them trivial (just keep shooting), you don’t get to loot the corpse because it stays up there too.

Point of failure 4: Not all PCs can use Throw, reason unknown. You have to use Lae’zel. If you still want to kill her, win first, then kill her off. [edit] Note: Leaving the bridge is an automatic failure and forced reload - you have to party fight to kill her. [end edit]

Technique: Other

Don’t forget the standard combat techniques of Grease to help slow them, lighting surfaces for fire, Dip for fire ammunition, throwing objects for ranged damage if you don’t have a ranged weapon (there are several mucoid shells and they can be reused), Void Bulbs for forced repositioning, Spiked Bulbs or Caustic Bulbs for area damage, Bless or True Strike to increase hit chance, Pin to slow them down, etc.

Putting It All Together

No single one of these works by itself. My general sequence is:

Split off Us or the PC to use the Restoration ability.

Take out the first wave of imps.

Drop one tank at a time next to the Mind Flayer and Zhalk and explode it until the Mind Flayer is dead. If you are lucky or good at positioning and timing, some of the second wave of imps will be in the explosions.

If you are using Us for Restoration, have the PC run up the right ramp (when looking at the helm) – there are usable consumables at the end.

If there is one imp left, you can probably ignore it until the end. If there are two, kill at least one.

Use Lae’zel to throw Zhalk around. The cambions will probably enter before Zhalk is dead. Then it gets tricky – I usually kite up a ramp until I can deal with one enemy at a time and just keep Throwing.

What is the Point?

This is a long and dangerous fight, even with all of the techniques. Why do it?

The cambions are worth 120 XP together and carry greatswords; Zhalk also has a greatsword but gives no XP, dammit. It is possible to get to level 2 while on the ship; that doesn’t work every time and I haven’t figured out why, but it can work. (Maybe party size? Is XP split? With 3 characters the whole way, killing everything, each has 262 XP, 38 short of advancement. Still, the scene bonus levels you up as soon as you drop on the beach.)

And, of course, bragging rights, satisfaction, etc.

To get to level 2 before touching the transponder, you've got to do everything, as well as killing everything; certain actions on the ship grant small amounts of XP. Exploring every chamber, even the one you don't need to go into, pushing the button there and watching the cutscene, etc., You've also got to kill all the little things that only give one xp each, such as the injured thralls, even the ones who are green to you.

Other than for experimentation, it's not really worth the time and effort it takes, but it's still an interesting exercise.

A safer (and more boring) way to do this is just to make sure that your entire party are up top on one of the raised areas by the time the cambions show up, and hide. Then you can just take your shots/spells, and hide again every round, and they'll never see you, and so will just stand around and growl at the air while you whittle them down.

In terms of who can throw what, it's all based on strength - Creatures have a weight, and characters can throw things under a weight threshold based on strength. A nifty extension of this is that characters with 12 strength or more can throw 40lb, which means they can throw halfling team mates around.

I do that. Every time. Kill everyone, even the 1 XP guys (after talking to them), push every button, watch the transformation, the works. Are there any particularly esoteric/unusual actions that gain XP?


Right, that exploit. It would be a lot easier... but not nearly as fun as 'cambion toss'.


That makes sense, but the current build I am playing around with has 15 STR and can't do it. So it takes at least a 16.

Thanks for the reply.

I don't know about the XP in that case.... I've always hit 2 on the runs where I've been thorough, and not on the ones where I've rushed. Not sure, sorry.

16 strength for throwing a medium creature that is listed at ~200lb sounds about right for the game's metric, I think. I couldn't tell you for certain since I always work in halflings ^.^

I think I missed the obvious - you kill Us, don't you? I save it to make the final fight easier and don't worry if it dies, but that means I don't usually get XP for actually killing it. But sometimes my attack splash damage kills it, which would explain why I got a level up on the nautiloid once. Time to experiment.

"Never mind my Investigation roll when I found you, Us, I just figured out what you are made of! XP!"

I wonder if the MC's are really any different from the gnolls: The gnolls believe everything is made of meat; the MCs believe that everything is made of XP.

If Larian is following 5e rules, characters can lift up to 30 * their STR, in pounds. Assume 16 STR minimum, that's 480 pounds, or about 218 kilograms. Time to go Examine some cambion (living or dead) to see if it gives their weight.

I don't kill Us, but he usually dies in the course of the fight, yes. I don't *think* you get XP for him though. Not sure.

Enemies killing it definitely doesn't give you XP - I already checked that. If you kill it while it is in your party, you also do not get XP, even if you did all of the damage. This is going to bug the sh** out of me until I figure it out. Anyone, help?

[edit] Figured it out. The game engine doesn't always give you XP for killing each cambion - reason unknown. Really annoying. Maybe it is how you do damage? This time around I only played 'cambion toss' once, so most damage was done by the characters directly instead of fall/environmental damage. If that's it, that's BS - you should get credit for using the environment against them. [/edit]

[edit2] And if you want to be absolutely ruthless about it, you can wait until you win, level up, disband Us, and kill it for another 10 XP. [/edit2]