Things Baldur's Gate 3 Doesn't Tell You - Baldur's Gate III Guide - IGN (2024)

Baldur's Gate 3 is a massive adventure filled with mystery, drama, and action. While the game does its best to fill you in on details it wants you to know, there's just so much content packed into BG3 that it's hard to tell you everything. In this guide, we'll cover some of the features that BG3 might not tell you about and the ones that we think are the most helpful to your overall quality of life during your adventure!

• When escaping the Nautiloid, the final battle will involve the Mind Flayer battling Commander Zhalk. As it turns out, you can actually help the Mind Flayer take down Commander Zhalk, and once you’ve done this, you can claim his fire sword: the Everburn Blade. It’s an incredible starting weapon that will serve you well in your early adventures.
• From the moment you escape the Nautiloid and land on the beach, you will have access to your camp, which you can access by going to your map screen. To leave your camp, you can teleport to any of the fast travel nodes you’ve unlocked, or you can just select “Leave Camp” which puts you right back to where you were before going to your camp.
• When near an object in the world, you can actually pick it up and move it a certain distance, if your character is strong enough to lift it. This can be particularly useful when stacking crates to jump to higher areas in a room or moving them out of the way to uncover secret spots. You can also use a strong character to move heavy rocks to find hidden treasure!
• Soul Coins found in the wild are accompanied by some evil-sounding chanting, so keep your eyes peeled when you hear it. These items are useful to Karlach.

• Auto-saving happens fairly frequently, but it never seems to happen when you need it to – so make sure to manually save often. Not only will this prevent you from losing a bunch of progress if your party dies, but it can also be manipulated into getting outcomes you’d prefer. Have a big decision ahead of you? Manually save before you go into the conversation, that way you can reload if the dice betray you.
• Do your dice rolls seem to switch their luck often? You might have Karmic Dice toggled on! This is an optional setting that bends the randomness in dice rolls, both for you and for your enemies as well. In other words, you could be getting hit more often in combat because of Karmic Dice attempting to mitigate streaks of bad luck. If you would rather test your luck in Baldur’s Gate 3 without any behind-the-scenes adjustments, the good news is that Karmic Dice is entirely optional. Toggle this setting on or off in the options.
• It's pretty easy to accidentally end your turn, so beware of your button presses. But, you can undo an "end turn" if you go to the Character Select menu and select the character you just accidentally skipped. However, if an enemy acts after you, you won't be able to do this.

• Utilize your short rests to heal or regain ability uses. When hovering over your abilities, you’ll see which ones require a short rest to be able to use again. So make sure to use those short rests in between battles to heal up and get those abilities back. You’ll have two free short rests to use before you’ll need to long rest. Long resting replenishes every ability, whether they require a short or long rest, and replenishes your two short rests.
• The time in which you decide to take Long Rests can have an impact on the story and events in the game. For example, if you were to enter a town and see an inn on fire, and you immediately decide to take a Long Rest, this can potentially have an impact. As such, some Quests and events in Baldur's Gate 3 have time-sensitive elements. Taking several Long Rests during these quests will impact the outcome, which can include failing objectives or creating other consequences in the world.
• Be careful of equipping gear that you're not proficient with! Lacking proficiency will give you disadvantage whenever you take certain actions, like sneaking or attacking, which makes you more likely to fail. When on your character sheet, hovering over a piece of equipment will tell you if that character is proficient or not.
• If your character is proficient in Simple Weapons and Martial Weapons, they can use pretty much every weapon. Simple Weapons are things like Clubs, Daggers, and Crossbows, pretty much anything you can pick up and hurt people with little skill. Martial Weapons would require some level of training, like Rapiers, Battle Axes, and Longbows.

• When making a character, know that you'll be able to have complete control over all of your party members, the Origin Characters, even in dialogue and social interactions if you choose. So, don't get too hung up on making a jack-of-all-trades, your party members will balance you out.
• Your party maxes out at four members but newer potential party members can be sent to your camp should you want to change them out or if one should die and need replacing. To replace a party member, travel to your camp and talk to one of the members currently in your party. They should have a dialogue option telling them to stay at the camp. Then chat with the party member that you want to adventure with, and ask them to join!

• Additionally, only the character you're controlling or the character that is present during an interaction will be allowed to make skill checks and ability rolls. Always make sure you have control of the right character at the right time to make use of all your party's abilities.
• If you click on something and it's locked or doesn't react, right click on it for additional options of what you can do. Additionally, make sure you’re controlling the best person for that job. For example, if Astarion is in your party, use him to pick locks as he gets a few bonuses for doing so.
• Even more useful to know is that eventually, you can change your Class, Abilities (Stats), and some of your Skill proficiencies later! Just your Race and background are permanent. You can even respec your party members and allow them to multiclass! It costs just 100 gold to switch things up, but you will have to unlock this ability. See How to Respec and How to Multiclass for more details on how.

• Go wild with cantrips and ritual spells outside of combat. You won’t be spending a spell slot with these types of spells, so don’t worry if you’ve used all your level spell slots.
• Equipping or swapping a weapon in battle counts as an Action. So make sure to head into battle with all the correct gear equipped, that way you’re not wasting turns swapping things out.
• If you have a character that can summon a Familiar or a Mage Hand, be sure to do that just before entering a fight. Not only will they then be there from the beginning, but it’ll also save you a turn once in combat.
• Have your mages prioritize using cantrips for weaker enemies or battles and save their spell slots for tougher enemies, or larger battles when the odds are against you.
• You can toggle non-lethal damage in your passives tab if you're ever attacked by an enemy that you may not want to kill due to a misunderstanding or simply due to your character's personal code. Keep in mind that most spells and ranged attacks are still lethal, so these apply mostly to melee attacks.
• Your hotbar can quickly become a messy, unorganized smattering of spells, abilities, and items, but don't fret, there are a few ways to keep things more organized.
  • With mouse and keyboard, the hotbar has a couple of options on the right. Click the plus or minus sign will add more rows, allowing you to see more spells at once without needing to use the sliders as often. Above the plus and minus buttons is a lock key, which you can click to unlock your hotbar. Doing this allows you to move your spells and items around to how you see fit, or even remove some of the ones you don’t use. You can also press K to open your spellbook to see what spells you currently have access to.
  • If you’re playing with a controller, it's essentially the same thing, but with radial wheels. You can add radial wheels and move the spells and items around to your liking. Make sure to spend some time outside of battle to get everything looking good and organized, that way battles can go a bit smoother.
• Initiating turn-based mode while outside of combat can help quite a bit when trying to get a jump on your enemy. This mode pauses time and allows you to take your action, bonus action, and movement as if you were in a round of combat. Turn-based mode is also helpful if you’re trying to catch a conversation with a fast-moving rat or squirrel. Sometimes critters in the wild will give you helpful information!
• Opening and closing doors while in combat is a free action that should be utilized often to break enemies' line of sight. If you’re near a door and have a couple of ranged enemies that don’t want to leave their post, take your shots at them, and then close the door. This will force the enemy to either make their way towards you since they can no longer see you or if they don’t want to move, they might even just end their turn early. Closing doors is also great for going into hiding, since once again, their line of sight will be broken.
• Add items to your wares to quickly sell at a vendor. Use left-shift to select adjacent items or left-control to select items individually, right-click, and select 'Add to Wares'. When you are in the Trade/Barter menu with the vendor, toggle to 'Trade' and select 'Sell Wares' at the bottom. You’ll even get a warning if the vendor can’t afford to buy all of the items you have selected for Wares. You can use the same process to manage your inventory by selecting 'Send to Camp' and the items will go to your Traveller's Chest in camp.