Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Solo Evil Dark Urge I Fighter I Tactician I Mild Spoilers

On the Nautoloid - loot everything, save Shadowheart, equip a Longsword and a Light Crossbow. Just before you connect the nerves on the transponder, transfer every bit of existing loot that is on both (including armor and weapons) over to yourself. Lae'zel's Gith gear is what we will use until we acquire the items on our list. Other than that, we will need all the gold we can possibly get.
Once you are on the ground, loot everything you can, sneak up and savescum on Shadowheart until you get a good roll on your breath and initiative, the two Intellect Devourers you can kill by dipping your xbow in fire pre combat and sneak firing, and then running and jumping back as far as you can every time until you eventually kill them. You have plenty of HP potions so death will not be an issue, but it does mean that you won't be able to Jump. Kill the Mind Flayer by stomping on its head and rip off Gale's hand to get some Inspiration and extra XP, then sneak up on Astarion and kill him, and loot everything in the region (triangulated by Gale, Shadowheart and Astarion, don't attempt killing Lae'zel and her two guards just yet, the terrain in that area doesn't compensate for our puny damage output). Once that is done, make your way to the Grove, fight the two goblins on top of the cliff where you walk up (shoving helps here to compliment your lack of damage), and wait till the fight is over to make sure as many NPCs are dead as possible (including Wyll, Aradin and everyone else) to be able to loot as much as you can.

All this you can do with both of your short rests, although I managed to only need one.

Once you're in the Grove, your QoL will skyrocket. Vendor off your excess and then buy an Invis Potion and Giant's from Auntie, and a Greatsword+1 from the blacksmith. You should also buy some elemental arrows to use for later in Rosymorn Monastery. Make your way to Nettie (and get the child killed), be truthful towards her so that she doesn't poison you, then yoink the Mind Flayer Specimen.

After that, begin making your way to Brynna and Andrick. Drink your Giants, sneak up behind them (you might lose a couple hp as you try to Jump around em, but whatever), take em by surprise, once more loot everything including the parasite. At this point, if Aradin and others still live, go below the bridge and circle around behind Aradin and ambush them. Next up, backtrack and climb up on the hills south-west of the entrance to the Grove, and loot the place. Go back to Blighted Town and True Soul your way past the guards (note: you can fight the initial pack by climbing to the rooftop on the right as you enter, and sneak opening on the goblins and making sure you don't stand near a hole / stand far enough away from the ledge so that you don't get shot from multiple directions) and loot the entire damn thing, everything that isn't pinned down.

At this point, take a full rest so you can buy another set of Giants elixirs, and unlock Cull the Weak in your Illithid tree. Now, you will be doing some mischief with that Invis Potion you bought from earlier - you will walk up to the Idol of Silvanus, steal it in broad daylight, hope the Initiative rolls are in your favour, and Dash+Invis Pot out of there. Once you drop combat, you can teleport out to Emerald Grove Environs. This will secure us a bunch of bodies to loot later, and gives us a temporary boost in Nature and Animal Handling, and a full return in gold on our Invis Potion.

At level three, take Trip Attack, Sweeping Strike and Riposte. Trip Attack is an incredibly useful spell as it trivializes high AC targets. Sweeping Strike works wonderfully with Cull the Weak on low HP groups of mobs, and Riposte, while RNG, will come in extremely handy as we greatly increase our AC later.

Once you are done with the Grove and Blighted Town make your way towards the goblin camp, roughly with about 1.6k - 2k gold. Fighter Intimidate your way past the guards and trigger the cinematic on the Camp's bridge. After that, vendor off your excess until the vendor has no more gold left, buy the Swiresy Shoes as the price-value number is through the roof with this one. After that, take care of Crusher in the Goblin Camp. Bite off his toe, smack his head in, then let him grovel and follow him to the bridge where he can be killed and looted silently for his Ring. Next up, make your way inside the Defiled Temple, using your Illithid powers to convince the guards you're chill (just don't roll Critical Failure like I have). Loot the chests on the ceiling, loot the room with the Smokepowder Barrels, and loot the Gilded Chest in the High Priestess's room for the Amulet of Misty Steps - which might or might not get violent. We will come back later to kill the True Souls here for their parasites.

Now you can go to the Mountain Pass. This will trigger the already dead Alfira's replacement, Quil Grootslang early to join you, which means the day after you will have the Deathstalker's Mantle. Raphael might also show up if he hasn't already, you can threathen to kill him to make up for the terrible writing of Act3 (you can read this: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=892335&#Post892335 if you don't know what I'm on about). Next up, loot everything you can on your way to Lady Eshter (and kill a naked Lae'zel on the way), convince her to pay you up front for getting her the Githyanki Egg, and make your way to the Monastery. Once you climbed the natural terrain to sneak in topside, drink a Strength elixir, and kite the waves of rats outside and use elemental arrows to bring them down if they are stacked, or using melee attacks if they are seperated (note: you can initiate the battle without climbing in. Use an Arrow of Fire just to the right of the entrance, giving you a big advantage).

After this, get into the Creche, and buy the Gloves of Dexterity. Congratulations, you can now do damage with 21str and 18dex. Now, go to the doctor's office, shut the door, stab her, and loot the parasites.

Once you got your gloves and parasites, go back to Blighted Town, and pay Auntie a visit to restock on consumeables. You want to leave her alive for a long long time while you are still traversing Act1, as she will be the one supplying you both throughout Act1 and Act2. Just be careful with her dialogue, because if you start talking about her deal to remove your tadpole, you will lose the option to trade with her. Take a full rest afterwards (remember you HAVE to do it while you are topside in the Forest on the starter map, as you will only get your Cloak if you sleep in the exact same camp as you killed your Bard in).

Then comes the True Souls. This one's a slower grind - you want to kill the weaklings from the rooftop and abuse elevation and your stealth cloak until its a one on one fight of still abusing elevation. Minthara is incredibly strong though, and if she grabs you with Hold Person, you have to savescum as it's GG from that point on. Shoving her off of high elevation works wonders, but don't push her somewhere where you can't loot. Remember to grab the Smokepowder Barrels behind Dror's throne and the treasure room next to it. Minthara's chest is a good substitute until we get to the end of this build.

After this, make your way to the Underdark, first the Myconid Colony (climb out on the side of the Selunite Outpost, and book it to the Myconids. If you trigger the worm, just run and retreat to Camp). Derryth there sells the Caustic Ring, an item we will use for a long, long time.

By this point, you are quite well geared, have high stats, and have some of the most important tadpole powers, but you still have a bad ranged weapon. So, refresh your Luck of the Far Realms if you spent it, and use it on Gandrel, not too far from Auntie's home. Stealth open on him (I recommend using a Basic Poison coat to guarantee the kill) and use Far Realms for your initial Trip Attack opener. Together with Action Surge, you should be able to oneshot him.

Now that that's done, we go to Grymforge - you can choose how violent you want to be. Personally, I ambush the Duergar at the docks to pre-emptively compelte the Myconid quest, and then kill the Duergar that intercept me on the water using Roaring Thunder Arrows because I'm evil. Once on dry lands, you can take a detour to pick up the Fetish of Callarduran Smoothhands from the executed Deep Gnomes to have an optional Invis ring. After that, make your way to kill Philomeen and gather up the explosives to explode it into Nere. Use the Smokepowder you looted from the Defiled Temple to bust out Nere, then wait until everyone is grouped up in the middle to use the Runepowder to kill them all. Even if you don't kill everyone in one shot, you can either savescum or just dunk it out versus super low HP targets - your cloak and high mobility help with this. This scores us another Tadpole and our Boots alongside a bunch of vendorables.

Afterwards, we go to the Forge. Pick up the Mithral guarded by the Armour pack using Philomeen's smaller grenade and the Splint Mould on the way there and do the event. Note that on Tactician, Grym has 450 HP and will need 3-4 hammer strikes to go down. You want to have 2 short rests available and preferably an Invis Potion. The first invis moment will happen via your cloak once you kill ONLY ONE of the trash spawns, and then the 2nd Invis is if you need to be better positioned but don't have the normal means to do so. During both Invis durations, you can Short Rest to reset both of your Misty Steps and heal up if needed. While out of combat, Grym doesn't heal nor does he move, so you effectively get a soft reset.

To go either directions (Philomeen and Forge), locate the Defaced Statue of Shar from where Nere is being dug out. Jump as far East as you can, loot the Splint Mould there, then go North if you want to loot Philomeen (note: to avoid picking up the attention of the Oozes, jump down via Misty Step to avoid taking stealth breaking damage, and make sure you turn off Cull the Weak when you ambush Philomeen - otherwise, you can jump behind the barrel, loot it, tell Philomeen everything is okay, and then kill her by using Turn Based Mode).

Now comes the last step. By this point, you should be level5, allowing you to use your bonus action. Go to the Creche Captain's room, get behind the guy guarding the way to the Inquisitor, and start picking off everyone one by one. The Captain will never get Surprised, but the rest will, allowing you to easily take them out one by one until it's just the Captain left (remember Short Rests during Invis combat reset portions). The Captain does little damage to us now, but is tanky herself, so get ready to savescum if you are getting exceptionally unlucky.

In just over 2-4 hours depending on how well you know the route and how much you have to savescum, you've gotten level5 and acquired all the strongest items you can get out of this Act1. Congratulations, and enjoy your Evil Dark Urge playthrough. Now you can begin killing everything and looting them, starting with the Emerald Grove given our setup from earlier. Just make sure you leave the vendors you need alive! And that you get the Blood of Lathander.

Kill Raphael in the House of Hope. Because the Act is terrifingly unfinished, he's treated as a side quest rather than a must-do objective. The link above goes into more detail on this from a storywriting perspective. Aside the fact of course that you get all the gear in the House, but it is possible to miss him entirely. Other than that, make sure you side with Orin initially and explode the Steel Factory, as that is where you will be getting your Longbow. You can send your companion away while you dunk it out with the guards, just make sure the collars never activate as that kills your companion too, even if he is not present.

The first big one was Grym, as you can't use multiple people to kite the bigboi around efficiently, coupled with running unusually low CON for a Fighter meant I could die in 1 Stomp (which is his weaker damage AoE spell) in one hit if he doesn't roll low or if he misses. Eventually I ended up developing a strategy for him, so I'm sure I could oneshot him now, but in my very first clears, he only died on the 5th hammer strike due to some abominable RNG rolls.

The second was Raphael. As I wasn't two-weapon fighting, and I went into my run with the intention of never respeccing ever, I couldn't equip Orphic Hammer + Blood of Lathander for the fight and be efficient, so I never destroyed any of his towers, and I ended up with a loop of trying to keep his monsters low enough HP to use them for Invis procs while also putting some damage on Raphael before Invis moments. I had to drink a LOT of Invis potions for that one - this was the fight that made an already satisfying pick even better, which was Mobile :P Since I couldn't use Bonus Actions to Jump around.

The last one, which, funnily enough, stems from being grouped was the final gauntlet with the Emperor all the way to the Netherbrain. Given I purely built myself around solo play, I would either have to tank a lot of damage which I couldn't, or be in Invis and all the mobs would move to the Emperor and decimate him. I knew the challenge of this part ahead of time, but I was biting my nails HARD praying for good mitigation rolls.

There were of course also some smaller packs of mobs here and there that are a headache - f.e. in the Gith Creche, as I found out, some of the NPCs have access to Hold Person, which caused a lot of headaches given the fact some of them also have access to Githyanki Parry at the same time, or in the Defiled Temple with the 3 Goblin Bosses and Minthara, where you can choose between getting destroyed by the goblins or getting Hold Person'd by Minthara depending on how the game feels.