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

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.