Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Least favourite encounter!

Thinking about my favourite moments, made me think of my least favourite ones too. And seriously, I just needed one of these fav lists I could answer in a sentence (or five):

Act 1, mud mephits. No, just no, they explode, the cover you in mud, they procreate before your eyes. Their tree friends are not much better. Just no. And the worst thing is: Poor Shadowheart is usually out of spell slots by the end so she can't even give the whole gang a bath.

Honourable mentions: The honour mode Shadow-Cursed Shambling Mound in act two, saved from being my most hated by the sole virtue of being optional. The final battle, saved by at least feeling narratively significant.

My least favourite encounter are Harpies ...
I mean its well written kinda fun thing sure ... except keeping that kid alive is sometimes super hard, and its no fun to watch my whole group get charmed turn after turn after turn ...

Yes, i know there are spells to prevent it ...
And yes, i almost allways forget to use them in advance. xD

Oscars Quest in act 3, no questions. I just don't save him anymore, he doesn't deserve it. He nearly kills his new wife and torments another one even after death, because he makes everything about himself. The little piece of crap can stay a Zhentarim slave for all I care. I deal with the Mystic Carrion to help the polite zombies.

Cazador: the fight is entirely unfun and part of why I don't like that quest at all. It's just a slog going through the masses of undead.

The Harpies are quite annoying. Mostly because bad rolls can completely ruin you.

Nere fight can be annoying too since again, there's more chance to get ruined by an unlucky charm (Now also with the potential to get punted into lava)

The multi-Mindflayer fight if you opt to save Zevlor. More charms are more fun (NOT).

The Death Shepard duo in Mountain Pass. Their infinite resurrections make it just super annoying because you have to kill both Shepards at the same time as a result, while all the ghouls (Including the one that's farting out the Stinking Cloud) get free reign because again, you can't take them out because free action resurrections just bring them right back...

Oscar himself does not torment anyone - the ghost of his ex-girlfriend does. If you talk to her, it becomes known that she is the “main evil” in this situation. She committed suicide not because of Oscar, but because of her own mental problems. Oscar's mistake was to “take it personally” and that because of him the ghost was unable to get peace and now she is taking revenge on him and his wife. If this situation is resolved by sending the ghost to rest, Oscar comes to his senses (and he did not wish to harm his beloved wife, he was possessed by the ghost and was under her control) and the couple goes on to live a happy normal married life. The player, of course, authorizes the quest solely at their discretion, but I just don't think that Oscar's mistake with the ghost of his ex deserves such a serious punishment of two people at once (Oscar's wife, who loves him, will also suffer in this case).

My least favorite encounter in the game is rescuing the Gondians from Foundry. It's very, very hard to make them all stay alive - they just do everything to die. This fight is realistically the hardest in the game. I realize that the problem is my personal perfectionism and the death of one Gondian will not lead to the failure of the quest, but still, how great it would be if you could force them not to take part in the battle. If allied NPCs were under the player's control and could be pulled away from combat to safety, things would be much easier. In the aforementioned case of the boy and the harpies, it probably makes sense that the boy goes to the harpies, he's charmed, but NPCs in their right mind, it seems to me, could have stayed out of harm's way.

The girl was forced to stay on the material plane because Oscar made her suicide about himself and made a deal with Mystic Carrion to bring her back, so he can figure out, if the suicide wass his fault. That's pretty shitty behavior in my opinion, plus, I just don't enjoy the quest, similar to the others I listed above. If you see it differently, suit yourself, Asnka asked, what we don't like and I gave my opinion, no need to get into a discussion over it.

Oscar didn't make her suicide, he didn't matter to her at all, she suicide for her own personal reasons, unrelated to Oscar. She talks about it herself and is angry at Oscar for thinking that he was the reason. About the Mystic Carrion deal - yes, it was a bad decision on his part. Alright, I don't want to argue, everyone can perceive this quest as they like, it was just a clarification about the plot of the game.

My least favorite encounter is the whole ghost house encounter, the side quest for Oscar in Act 3 and only because my game has had tendencies to crash during it, most of what has been fixed on Larian's end thankfully.

After patch 7 it is the Bulette in Honor Mode.

Because it pushes everything towards the same type of builds. All other encounters can be dealt with by using your builds creatively in different ways, but the Bulette is all about Great Weapon Master/Sharpshooter or some variant of Lightning Sorcery builds. Everything else is pointless.

Nere: I hate the way he Thanos blips your allies with his legendary action. The way that forces changes in how and when I feel safe attacking him is annoying.

Balthazar: You get a necrotic AoE, and you and you! The endless resurrections, his mobility, and even worse yet if you stick to siding with him you get a far more difficult battle that shuts down your dedicated spellcasters at the start of it.

Gondians: "The quickest route to freedom is exploding an oil barrel in your own face. Or standing idle in front of ladders. Gond HATES when his worshippers have a sense of self preservation." I feel like I spend the majority of the Iron Throne encounter skipping my turns, waiting on them.

Oliver: Necrotic AoEs are great, aren't they? That whole fight feels specifically like it's made to punish melee users.

Orin: In a change of pace, I have been getting a glitch for about a year that causes her not to attack Durge while in Slayer form. She'll do Sanguine Lash as a reaction, but she won't spend actions on attacking. This makes the fight literally so easy that I can't lose unless I actively try to. I don't remember the last time I had a non-glitched Durge/Slayer Orin battle.

I hate those things that garrotte and then teleport your characters far apart from each other during the fight. Meazels I think.
No shot I was not prepared

Millenia Old Mutant Ninja Gits

Oh, the Meazels. >_< They are especially deadly if you haven't any shadow protection yet.

That's a good point about the Bulette, papercut_ninja. Although I felt that it isn't such a major boss that you would reskill your whole party for it, but more of a case in which half of the gang cheers on the other half while they do they do the hard work.

Lady Jannath house is also the most unstable portion of the game for me, if it is haunted, which is a little sad.


Ha, yes I had one of them run away from the ladder once. I mean we did leave some loot behind where he was heading to, but priorities my friend, pirorities! They could benefit from a Staying alive 101 manual.

With the Iron Throne, I never had problems, but the factory is a Gondian suicide nightmare. I mostly focu now on keeping Toobin alive for that sweet come together afterwards, when Barcus takes control of the Ironhands and reach the hand of friendship to Toobin and the Gondians (that would go under favourite moments - everything Barcus really)

The battle in the basement at the Foundry isn't as much of a combat encounter as it is a puzzle involving yeeting gnomes, with a bit of side activity of fighting.

I hated that in my first campaign, had pretty much most of my party silenced and teleported alone. But in my second campaign we saw them all in advance, cast slow on them all, and they only managed to get into a couple of garotting positions and teleported one person away to where I could reach them in a single move

Confined places with several levels (like the tollhouse, or the drunken kobold cellar) You spend 5 minutes fighting and 30 minutes camera turning, moving up and down, while trying to see your opponent instead of a wall, pillar or the roof.

Nice! I always anticipate them now, but yeah the first time was terrible. It was a legitimately scary fight in the game for me though, which isn't a bad thing.

I agree with a lot of what folk have said here.

I really like the concept of the poltergeists and curses in Lady Jannath’s house and it’s very atmospheric but just *so* frustrating with the multiple levels. Not as bad now I know what’s going on, but the first time I had no idea why my party kept being blasted about and had gone in with a party without any way to combat the cursed objects. I suppose fair enough that I had to run ignominiously away and come back better prepared, but the blasts are just way OTT.

The Steel Foundry is another one where I like the idea but I agree the execution is annoying. Especially downstairs. I’m all for the Gondians taking on their own fight, and for freedom to come at a cost for some of them, but while I think their AI might be a bit better than it was it’s still pretty poor, and the fact that some of them start off so outnumbered in groups of enemies shows they planned their uprising very poorly. And in my last playthrough, one of the guards dropped a detonator after all my party had used their turns so I could do nothing but wait while all the Gondians pointlessly fired off ineffective spells while their doom approached (does the game say they can’t touch the detonators with their collars on? You’d have thought such talented engineers would be able to disarm the detonators themselves).

And yes, the mud mephit fight in act 1 is a pain.

And the final battle is somewhat of a slog. The bit up the top when one has fallen out with the Emperor I find particularly anticlimactic, as it seems the best way to deal with that is simply to ignore the fight and leg it up to the portal.

I kinda like the mud mephit fight. On round 2 or 3, there usually are a bunch of them clumped together. Now at lvl 4 we don't have good AoE spells (like fireball) yet, but with focussed missile fire on one of the younger ones, you can make it explode and wound all the others around it. I always find that a very gratifying thing to watch.

The only suck encounter for me is the sub/ prison ... I'm ok with lossing a few to combat but then they run away from the hatch in order to circle around a guard... I mean we are all about to drown so clearly leaving isn't your best option right gnomes?

Shocked at no shout outs to the self-same trial.
I always crouch and sneak everyone into ambush positions directly behind their counterparts, but I must've done that trial two dozen times by now and I still don't know why sometimes hitting a non-you curses you and sometimes it doesn't.
Not to mention if you CAN'T kill the you in two turns (ambush turn and the turn before they get a go)... then you're in for about 100 Disarming Attacks which are by far my least favourite thing to go against!

The Self-same Trial has plenty of ways to cheese it.

Personally, I tend to just go in with one character (Normally whomever is best at bursting a target down). That way it's a 1v1 where the entire fight lasts like 1 round as someone like a Fighter who's pre-buffed with Haste and uses Action Surge just goes to town.

You can also make it much easier by unequipping your gear before heading in. Since the copies copy your gear, removing everything makes them weak (Outside of spell casters, though you might also be able to prepare bad spells. I'm not sure if they copy what you're prepared or not) - Which can also be useful with the aforementioned Fighter 1v1 if you unequip your armour so the copy has low AC for you to smack down. (If you sneak in you can re-equip your characters before engaging to boot)

As for the cursing, it's to do with your clone being active. If your clone is dead, you're free to hit other clones without issue. If your clone is alive you can only attack it or you get cursed.

Ooh, that last bit about the curse is something worth testing on my next trial! Would be neat if it was consistent (not that the curse itself is that big a deal, but I always consider it a "fail" when I get it for the trial lol).
I know about the unequipping, I did it on my first honour mode run when I was really nervous lol, but I like to go in without cheese. I'm too honourable (outside of that one time)!

On that note though... I hadn't considered the 1v1!
That's a cool idea, I'll try that with just Shart going in alone (has to be her for the roleplay obviously) next time.

As for spells, I believe their spells are based on their class, rather than what you have prepared.
That's why every multi-class that has a point or two in Fighter (which most of mine do because I love Action Surge lol) results in the enemy-you knowing Disarming Attack (even when you don't).

It's a bit mean that you usually enter the library, which has all the rule and guide books, last. But the tome about the self-same trial reads: "A dusty tome advising Sharran initiates on how to please the Nightsinger by succeeding the Self-Same trial. Initiates must ensure they defeat their mirror image. Any violence meted out to others will be penalised."

I usually just have my martial fighters take down their shadow selves in the first/ surprise round and then let them help the casters if needed.


In some of the notoriously unpleasant encounters - such as saving our suicidal Gondian friends - I wonder if the friendly PC AI is really the worst about them or if it's the set-up of the encounter that makes them awkward. When you enter the lower level of the Foundry after cleaning the Iron Throne, I can't find a good way to approach the encounter. If you come from the elevator, you are far away from everyone and are blocked by the group fighting on the ramp. If you enter via the door, you are well positioned to deal with the Steel Watchers but you still have to get around the big boiler to get to the ultimately more dangerous Banites on the ramp, who you can't just blast away either because it is a mixed group of friends and foes. Even though it is very narratively unpleasing, next time I want to try to free everyone before dealing with the Iron Throne and then return to finish of the central unite. I hope that does not set off any alarms.

Similarly the Meazels are fairly quickly dealt with, if you approach them from the lower entrance (the side with the kilns) because this way you can take two of them out before the fight even starts and the rest are conveniently close together. Lady Janath's staircase of cursed objects is worst, if you enter it from the door right next to the room in which you get the quest. Which means that most likely during your first time in the house you will have the worst experience of it because everyone in your group will be affected by Phantasmal Force AND get pushed around on top of it while you still try to figure out what's going on. I feel there would be much fewer complaints about this encounter, if that candelabra right next to the door would be moved to the other side of the room.

Well, that is a nasty one, but I think I skipped it when I first saw what was happening and came back with a plan. I had a savegame just outside the door.

I've found that the easiest of the trials of Shar, because I always sent Shadowheart in alone and won in a couple of rounds. I never even considered having anyone other than her take part in the trials.

Now, the hidden platform trial... that one is a pain, because as far as I could tell the way to solve that is to keep flipping back to the map at the start of the chamber. So it's very slow and boring

It feels like encounters like these could have been so much fun if they were designed to allow different approaches than straight up combat. My instinct on my first run was to do it covertly and I tried so many different combinations of spells and items thinking that there must be another way to do this than simply attacking the banites.

The fight with the harpies annoyed me. Most stressful fight ever. Everyone ends up getting lured into the water.

When you have to find out about those very very boring shadow druids who decided to hide their letter to Kagha in a swamp for some reason. You have to fight like an army of mud mephits and some walking trees just to get the letter.

Nere with the dwarves. Delivering Nere's head to the mushroom colony was very important since the mushroom folks celebrate with a fun little dance. But it was difficult to finish this quest because Nere kept falling into the lava during the battle. Had to start the fight over again so many times.

I stumbled upon the Death Shepard herd on a road bifurcation, and this became the perfect choke point to hold them at bay, with Wyll's Hunger of Hadar spell. I only had to take care of the few that managed to slip around, while firing missiles and long range spells to the ones inside. When one did manage to move out, my monks "push flurry" or Lae'zels push manoevre or Wyll's repelling blast pushed them right back in, after they got a radiant shock from Shart's guardian spirits.

After my first (frustrating) time fighting the Death Shepards, I used Sleet Storm at the choke point. They kept uselessly (and hilariously) falling, as I picked them off with ranged. Combo-ing Sleet Storm with Hunger of Hadar is even better.

because hitting a non you is different to doing damage i.e, doing damage to a non you causes you to be cursed (it should not matter what you did to cause that damage as long as the game records it was you)

Yes, that should be a fun combination. I just now did the same chokepoint tactics in a corridor of the creche Ylek. Hunger of Hadar to block the youths and their mentors, but now Tav had the sparkswall ring and the watersparkler boots. Shart cast create water to add the electrified surface in the hunger area. It doesn't really add much damage. 3 or 4 HP. But it's a joy to see those overpowered enemies struggle and get their just return.

Sleet Storm is one of the best spells in the game. I had so much trouble with Halsins portal in my first playthrough and now I just use Gale to Sleetstorm the enemies, Wyll with Hunger of Hadar and my Tav with either AoE spellscrolls or Hypnotic Pattern, depending on what class I play. And Shadowheart just spirit guardians the hell out of everyone coming too close.

I think it has to be FF Marcus and his jolly band of winged undead... just one blown save by Isobel, or one critical hit on her and POOF you lose, sucker! Not to mention why are you all "Surprised" when it's perfectly obvious what's going to happen?

I always like to brag with how little meta-knowledge I had to solve quests, but with the Last Light I could draw on the experience of maybe a dozen ways of how not to do it after just entering the Shadow-cursed Lands. My in-game explanation for waiting with visiting Isobel until almost the end of Act II, was that we were technically on team Shar and doing it could upset Shadie. Then, we returned fully buffed and knowing many secrets.

Ha, I was "surprised" in the encounter at the end of the sentient amulet quest line, despite the fact that I initiated combat by clicking the icon at the bottom left of the cutscene screen

To add to the "surprise", Darcus Marcus was visible throughout the dialogue with Isobel due to some bug when we finally went in, standing there along with the gang and listening to her speech with a completely unironic "totally, dude!"-expression. While we managed to save Isobel and the Last Light, Marcus did return to Moonrise Towers with the wings he really deserved as a flying ghoul.

I find most of the ACT III encounters to be poorly designed most likely due to the crunch to get the game finished and lack of playtesting. The whole "Unstoppable" nonsense is a real turnoff and seems like a band-aid attempt at increasing difficulty.

My least fav in the whole game is the Netherbrain fight starting with the dash up the stairs right to the bitter end. Just a lot of gamey gimmicky stuff, winning brings a sense of relief instead of satisfaction, and there is not enough variety in ways to beat it (which is the best part of so many other fights in BG3).