Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Fighting Auntie Ethel without killing the enchanted people

I am currently stuck in the fight with Auntie Ethel: I would really like to save all four enchanted people this time, but the best I could achieve up till now was to save one.

Is there any possibility to remove the masks? I tried pickpocketing, but the masks did not show up in the inventory, and even with Lae'zel, I could not knock them unconscious.
I used Sleep and Hold Person, but of course this does not last long - and I need my spell slots to fight Ethel.
I tried to fight her while we were still in the Gnarled Teahouse, but I never manage to kill her before she disappears at half hitpoints.

Currently, I have my bard, Shadowheart, Astarion and Lae'zel in my party - and none of us has Magic Missile to target Auntie Ethel's clones, unfortunately.

Does anyone know by chance if/how it is possible to fight Auntie Ethel without killing everyone?
Thanks in advance!

Yes it is quite possible and easy to save them all. You cannot save any of the prisoners in her lair prior to the fight as removing the mask will kill them since she is actively holding the spell on everyone. So you have to fight and kill Ethel to break the spell.

My advice is spread out all 4 members around the hole in the center, give them ranged weapons and just ignore the masked people. Priority is Ethel and her clones. If she duplicates Mayrina, you can find the proper one by inspecting them both and comparing the stats. After that she won't duplicate anymore and you can just converge all of them on her and deliver the killing blow.

I did it with all kinds of party compositions, even a full melee one. And the fight can be made even easier with ranged scrolls and familiars such as Ravens or Imps if required.

If you're interested here's a video I made for a bug report, but it shows it actually dealing with her and saving all 4.

Thank you very much, Crimsomrider! I will try this tomorrow (or rather later today).

If you still have trouble with, I usually try to gank her in the teahouse, if you're able to control her turns once or twice it's possible. That's usually what I try to do, I find that fight one of the more challenging, I'm not sure why.

Thank you very much, Sozz! For me, the fight with Auntie Ethel seems so much harder than any other fight, maybe with the exception of the Githyanki patrol (that is why I hope that Lae'zel manages to lie convincingly, or let my very persuasive, disguised bard or sorceress do the talking, so we can avoid it)

I didn't know, you could save the other masks. So far, I only managed to save the halfling Lady, who promised me free drinks in the Elfsong tavern.

She was the one I managed to save, too. I hope I'll have some time tonight to try this fight again. I don't think I will be able to finish this playthrough before the new patch comes out, though

If it helps, you could go grab the Quasit scroll in the Blighted Village alchemist's basement for an extra helping hand. It's in one of the coffins. And you could check Arron in the Grove for any scrolls of Magic Missile, I think he sells some sometimes.

I have found two possibilities:

1) You kill Ethle before she could enter the lair. For this you have to put your group during the conversation around her and kill her before she escape after two rounds.
In the first round she uses a Invisible potion so you to use a potion/spell which causes an areal damage.
I always do it in this way because it is "easier".

2) You sneak with one character til to the point where Mayrina is caughted. Then you go to the door to Ethel's room. There is a teleporter which brings you back to the swamp. In this way you can move the whole group to Ethel with being in contact with enchanted people.

For 1), I seldom do enough damage within time to eliminate her. I've fought her what, four/five times? Achieved it only once. Think you need Astarion and Lae'zel outfitted and buffed (wyvern poison?).

And 2), I was clever and did that, then Ethel summoned them to the fight! Had to kill a couple of them ASAP, emphasis 'had to' not wanted to, and they had already wrecked the party.

Only in my first play through did I shove Ethel to her death. I thought back then that the fight was so easy; haven't managed it ever since.

1) I could do it in a lot of playthrough with Druid, Sorcerer, Bard and Barbarian. Most with Lae'zel, Shadowheart and Whyll in the group. But I have activated the "Weighted Dice" feature.

2) The last time I did it in the way is serval patches ago. There Ethel duplicates herselft two times.
Maybe you can select the option to knock out the enimies.

Thank you all for your help!


In the last fight, I had used the scroll to summon Shovel, and he is really useful for targeting the clones (I think his design is surprisingly cute for a little demon).


I did this in a previous game, this really saves you a lot of trouble before the fight with Auntie Ethel starts (And sneaking through her lair, you can also discover a portal to the underdark).
But once she summons the masked people, my problems start...


It's the same with me, but the wyvern poison is a good idea!

I try not to shove her to her death, though. I still need to talk to her

In addition to what has been said so far:

Equipping your Rogue with two hand crossbows is a good alternative to not having a Mage or said scrolls with Magic Missiles.

Someone also suggested switching to non-lethal attacks before the coup de grace against Ethel, so she doesn't get accidentally killed and the dialogue is lost. But note that this only works for melee combat.

Thank you, Lotus Noctus! Usually, I equipped Astarion with The Joltshooter. Maybe this is a stupid question, but I did not use crossbows a lot before: do you get an extra attack with these?

If you use Hand Crossbows (dual wield), you can do two attacks per turn. Also if your Astarion is a Thief instead of Arcane Trickster, you can do three attacks.

Thank you, Crimsomrider! It's a bit embarrassing I didn't know this after so many hours of play time...
My Astarion is an Arcane Trickster, but two attacks is already a large improvement.

Crimson was faster and he is right. As a Thief class you have two bonus actions. Extra Attack is not included yet, because you get it only if you multi-class your rogue.

Thank you as well, Lotus Noctus! Maybe I am a bit too focused on playing full-casters, that sounds interesting (when it is included).

I've found no game mechanics difference between knockout and killing, the person disappear in both cases.

Now for most that doesn't matter, but one of the "mask" people is a future quest NPC in Baldur's Gate and the other person that is an issue is Helsings apprentice, she is still gone if you knock her out. Only the human vs Zevlor scripted knockout seems to have recovery.

I typically just collect a few smoke powder barrels from different areas.... Go chat her up and turn her help down so she goes about her day in her little home. Walk over and sit 3 or 4 barrels of smoke powder around her.... Move way back... firebolt/fire arrow from a distance.... BOOM dead hag. Wait a few rounds for the fire to calm down and collect loot. I did have a little luck once using a silence scroll on her to buy myself another round or two of melee combat. But the explosion route is always quick and glorious!

For the other masks “save” is relative. You can kill Ethel while they survive, but they are too far gone and refuse to remove their masks or leave Ethel’s lair, or at least that was the case in the earlier patches.

In patch 8 at least, the masks also remained hostile after I killed Ethel, and I had to run away through the portal and return afterwards before they would stop fighting and talk to me.

When I reported this as a bug, I was told it was intended behaviour which seemed bizarre to me as surely only people who already knew a mask could be saved would bother running rather than killing them, so I’m hoping this has been reconsidered.

Thank you all for your feedback and help!


I hope so, too. I just started the new game, so it will take some time before I'll be fighting Ethel again, but I am very curious if there are changes in patch 9.

I have now also gone through the Auntie Ethel Arc for the first time. It makes sense what you were told. The Vettel is like a lich and you will probably meet her again in Baldur's Gate with the so-called "Sisters of the Seeing Pearl" in one way or another.

The problem is that sometimes the masks turn neutral at the end of the fight, after Ethel is dead, and sometimes they don’t. I have not found a pattern to this. I thought it might be tied to Ethel getting in her surrender speech but that’s not it. It makes no sense to me that the behaviour isn’t consistent, and that even if they do stay hostile you can flee and come back and they are neutral.

I understand that. Hint: I did it this way, and that alone was very lucky that I was able to beat up the Hag enough in the first round to force her to give up in the second. Otherwise, the fight gets really tough. In her first round, she sets the cage on fire and calls for the masks. From the second round on, she calls her clones. A bit witless when a party of four faces four clones and gets incapacitated (Hold Person) by them and then leisurely taken apart by four masks + Vettel without being able to fight back. And even then you had a ranged hit chance between 25 -36 % and I was not really far away from the Vettel or her closest clones... If that's supposed to be the default difficulty, then I don't know how the higher difficulty levels are supposed to turn out. Anyway, I managed it with my LEVEL 4 party with a lot of luck, so that really only the stupid Vettel died...

It was probably set up so that the Vettel would only be confronted with level 5. On the other hand, if everyone is permanently affected by Hold Person, then you can also be level 10 and watch yourself die. Just kidding, the saving throws should be better from a higher level.

But to me, it seems illogical to reach level 5 by entering the Underdark first, because that means you also enter the Goblin Camp, and if you make a wrong decision here, you can quickly find yourself defending the Druid Grove and losing the opportunity to confront Kagha as a Shadow Druid, for example. Of course, you could go into the swamp beforehand and seek out the Vettel much later, but that's illogical exploration. I'm not going to meet the Vettel and Mayrina's brothers in the swamp. Explore the swamp only half-heartedly and leave Mayrina to the Vettel indefinitely, just because I'm going to the Underdark to become level 5 and face her with more combat power.

However, I have reported more than enough inconsistencies in the whole Auntie Ethel Arc. Also serious bugs. For example, if you refuse to give Mayrina the wand or kill her Zombie husband, she becomes hostile and the masks that are still in Hag's lair become hostile and the camera suddenly zooms to the masks even though your party is outside with Mayrina...

I speculate that you may not harm the masks at all, nor Mayrina + husband, or they will still be hostile after the Vettel's death, or become so again.

All in all, I'd prefer to have a reasonable implemented non-lethal attack option in the game so that knocked out individuals are amenable at a later point in time and aren't just considered dead.

That doesn’t seem to be it either. I’ve completed this fight a number of times in different playthroughs, including ones when I didn’t harm the masks during the fight and they still remained hostile after Ethel died, whereas in other games when I thought I’d done exactly the same thing they got an attitude adjustment at the end of the fight and turned neutral. And recall, it’s not that they remain hostile permanently, as I can run away and come back and they’re no longer hostile and will talk to me, though only one has a mind left.

Given the behaviour is so unpredictable from a user perspective I still think it probably is a bug, but if it’s intended and there is some pattern that I’ve not spotted, then I think it’s poor design and should be changed. I can metagame and run away and come back to talk to the freed mask, but why on earth would a new player discover this? I suspect only people replaying the game who have had the masks turn neutral immediately in another playthrough would even try, so it feels that all that having the masks sometimes stay hostile for longer is doing is cutting some users off from fun content for no good reason I can see!

Hmmm that definitely seems to be a nasty bug, yes. I think it's intended that you meet Auntie Ethel again even if you've already killed her once. The statements of the masks suggest that. Probably you also would meet the enslaved masks again. (Later, with a higher level, you could use spells like Remove Curse on them to free them for good, because that's not possible in the low level area! After all, you need this spell four times and that would be easier accessible in the advanced game...) But as long as you've eliminated Ethel, the masks should remain peaceful in any case.

If you are playing the game after the flow of the story, how do you get to Ethel without harming the masks? Is it by chance if exploring the coast of the swamp where the teleporter is?

For me, after I got some informations about Ethel, it was clear that she had to be removed from the landscape, for the greater common good. I followed her through her playhouse and was attacked by people who obviously sided with her. How could I know they were cursed instead of perhaps crazy devoters? And btw it would not have changed a lot, an attack is an attack and has to be fended off.

This way I also never had the situation that Ethel could call the masks for help, I see. Anyway, for me it is one of the most satisfying moments in the game when I kill Ethel, and anything coming in my way is to be destroyed.

There are various ways, the easiest I’m aware of is …

Sounds tricky. I'm not a DnD player and my CRPG experience is limited (mainly DA Origins, D:OS2 and a bit of PoE2), that may be the reason I'm so "uninspired" in my gameplay, I'm playing as if we were in the world and had our first and only journey and cannot lose and try again. After I solved the riddle of the door (made me really sweat and a bit angry) I ran into the next room, was attacked really hard and fired back with all I had. And that was that, to cite someone, no finetuning possible or intended.

I actually didn’t notice the equippable Whispering Masks were there my first playthroughs as they’re well camouflaged and it’s pretty dark, and then the fact that I’m not used to 5e meant it took me a while to twig that Protection from Evil and Good might be useful given it protects against charm from fey creatures. I’d have appreciated some cue to help draw my attention to the equippable masks and highlight their importance, such as a comment from a party member who passed a perception check.

But once you have those pieces of the puzzle, even though the fight against Ethel is trickier with her henchpeople you actually don’t need to kill them once she’s dead, just survive them while she’s alive, so from that perspective it’s possibly an easier option. Or if you just want to be able to talk to the masks without fighting Ethel alongside them, then you can try to kill Ethel in the cottage before she retreats to her lair. I’m not sure exactly how this pans out though, as I never go that route as it feels like cheesing.

I would advocate that easiest way would be to activate "non-lethal attacks" ...

Sure, they are story-wise concidered dead (meaning there is no futher interaction with them and they dissapear after Long Rest) ... but you still "know" you didnt kill them.

Killing Ethel before she retreats to her lair is the path of least resistance to me anyway. You don't get the bargaining dialogue, otherwise I think it's the same.

Apart from the nice feeling of knowing you haven't killed innocent victims of a swamp hag, the reward for avoiding combat with the thralls is the dialogue with the halfling. One that leads into something further along in the story. The non-lethal attacks in BG3 are like all the games of yore where people 'faint' after they've been defeated. Got that kids? You're not a murderer. Just don't inspect the body.

Killing Ethel in her hut is imo only doable, If you role good Initiative for your characters, preferrably all before Auntie. Then you have two rounds to kill her, after that, she vanishes to her hideout. I did that a few times. It is less fun, but the surest way to save the masks.

Or you all drink your Haste Potions ...
Prefferably in turn based mode before combat starts.

has anyone figured out how to save the person stuck in the mirror? Poked my head a lot and I ended up placing mirrors in front of mirrors and casting any buff/debuff I had on that mirror or around it, with no result

I’ve killed her only once successfully in the tea house - it is doable but you need to use the wyvern poison
or other high damage scenarios ..speed pots, paladin wasn’t a class when I killed her.
But that’s once in 520 hours of early access - could try harder but kinda feels like cheating as player characters wouldn’t have any idea what she was going to do …

IIRC there is a way into her place past the masks if you go through the underdark. I vaguely remember jumping up a mushroom wall and there being a teleportation mushroom ring on the ground high on a cliff. It's been a while though, so don't quote me on that.

I do recall saving them all though, and only the halfling feels like she had a chance, and I think was going to hunt down another hag in the city.

The others rambled on like mindflayer thralls, so I just hid and one-shotted them out of their misery.

I remember that, too. But I always take the direct route to her house, through the swamp, because my character wouldn't know about the other portals. I try to metagame as little as possible (though I don't say I am always successful, after so many hours of early access, it is hard to always ignore what you know as a player 😄)

I didn't have enough potions of speed when I tried this , but I also didn't try it very often, for the same reason you stated.

Yesterday, I managed to save (or rather: not kill) three of Auntie Ethels slaves. But I hope we will be able to remove their masks on full release, maybe after knocking them out.

I love how Auntie Ethel is by far the most talkative corpse in the game. She doesn't seem to mind at all to talk to her killer - if that means that she has the possibility to mock us even postmortem 😄

I wonder if we will meet the other hag, M., in Baldur's Gate (at least I assume M. is a hag, too).

I didn't even realize that she summons them to the fight until this convo. What turn does that happen? I haven't even got her to negotiate with me in the last few patches.

This means that if you sneak past the masks and then confront Auntie Ethel, she will summon them for support. If I remember correctly, this only happened during the last Patches (7-9) because Larian wanted to test different difficulty levels. But no idea if it wasn't like that before?

Here is my documented approach https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=843515#Post843515

Are there any good tips for sneaking past the masks? Because I always have trouble with that and haven't really managed it in any of my playthroughs.

Use Potions of Invisibility by throwing them on your party for the AOE effect.... This sometimes only catches three of them and my fourth party member has to use a second Potion of Invisibility or Scroll of Invisibility. Moreover switch to TB mode and sneak past the masks until you've jumped through the waterfall with all party members. But be careful after the jump you have to sneak a bit ahead, because one of the masks could see your party during their patrol through the waterfall. Also, the waterfall removed my invisibility after I jumped through it. Then deactivate TB mode.

Use shadowhearts group are stealth. Only hairy one is the guy by the waterfall, have to go once he turns.

There is maybe a bug in the game.
I killed Ethel in the Tea House and went to the basement.
There the enchanted people walking around but I can't talk to them only attacking.

In case it wasn't mentioned already you can sneak up on her from behind(take the first path down instead of the one with the flower trap) and cast silence where she is standing(her line of sight gives it away). Then she won't summon the masked slaves and can't cast anything as long as she's in the silence bubble. If you don't want to kill her, make sure she gets out of the bubble when she's low on health, or she can't initiate dialogue.

In my playthrough with Ethel, I would start by dousing the fire and casting sanctuary on Mayrina. It keeps you from being fooled later on and keeps her from harm mostly, or you can simply pay attention to their AC, the real Mayrina will be the easiest to hit.

I'll keep a wizard with magic missle which never misses to deal with hag copies, ignoring them is a fatal mistake.

During the time Ethel is disguised as Mayrina leaves her vulnerable to the hold person spell. You get one chance to cast it on her depending on how many have that spell to cast before Ethel's next turn. If successful, this will leave her open for a pounding. If she breaks free, cast command on her.

Was a pretty easy fight for me. I did it at lvl 4 before the underdark.

Use the Protection from Good and Evil.
Put the Mask On.
walk the Hole Shit to Her, Fuck her Hard, Intimidate the Hell out of Her.
(but yu have to Gank Her really Fast..)
Free evrybody. lol
yeah Show that Hag Bitch whats the True Meaning of Greed Are Guys.

YU ARE THE BOSS F. Yu Hag>

(best advice never go face her before yu have atleast lvl 4.. its easy this Way.)

(if yu dont know how to do it from what i Say.. there are already 3 tutorials showing how i do it.. some other Crazy dudes already realized the same as me..)
But this way yu will only have to Face Her, and will avoid all Traps along the Way inside her Lair.

Heavy Spoilers look at your own risk.

Hmmm, will it work the same way with the mask minions if you confront them together with Ethel down in her lair?

Hello. Not sure if the correct procedure is to reply here, or start a new thread, but ...

I managed to knock all of Auntie Ethel's masked thralls unconscious after entering the area behind the fireplace (before the showdown with Auntie Ethel).

It seems to work fine, but as soon as you removed the mask from the final person (I checked twice, it doesn't matter who, just the last one of the bunch), they all die. Like D-E-D.

Is this intended? I am very disappointed, sigh, spent such a long time trying to figure out a peaceful solution to this.

For now I will remove the masks from all but one, and see what happens.

And now the first one whose mask I took, died. I give up. Some people just don't want to be saved.

Yes, this is intended. The lore reason is that "their mind collapses", or perhaps it's a failsafe in whatever deal they made with Ethel. Normally though, you remove a mask, that person dies on the spot. Only one of the 4 can be saved, and it requires passing up on a major reward. However, once they're knocked out, they're dead to the game regardless (since they were red type and not yellow type enemies). You already were far past the point of being able to save them.

No, she also dies. The game also counts them as dead if knocked out. She'd be double dead, if you will :P

I tried to save her in multiple ways, but came to the same conclusion as multiple guides: it's either the hag hair, or the life of that halfling.

The only thing I haven't tested is letting Ethel summon them, killing everyone but that Halfling, and seeing if she's freed even with the Hag alive -- but someone reported a bug about that just yesterday. Not attractive.

Thanks for the responses! So sad that it is all in vain. But at least I can continue now without racking my brain over these four.

Does the Arcane Lock trick on the stairs behind the fireplace not work anymore? I haven't tried it lately, but if pulled off correctly, it used to leave everyone except the headless woman alive. Well, for a limited definition of "alive," as far as three of the Masks were concerned.

It works sometimes. It works better if you can box the entry way closed on top of that, but it still deprives you of the hair.