Advanced Tips and Tricks - Baldur's Gate III Guide - IGN (2024)

Baldur’s Gate III has been out for a few weeks and we’ve shown you the basics of character creation, combat, and exploration. It’s time to dive into the details and give you the tips you need to master the game and experience everything Baldur’s Gate III has to offer. Here are 44 rapid-fire tips to make you a Pro.

Advanced Tips and Tricks to Master

We've divided our tips into different subcategories. If you're looking for a specific subcategory, you can follow through the links below...

• Character Build Tips
• Exploration Tips
• Inventory and Equipment Tips
• Spell Tips
• Combat Tips
• General Tips

Character Build

• Now that you have some experience, maybe it’s time to multiclass! When you level up next, click the top right multiclass option and start a level in an additional class. It’s most efficient to pick a class where you can double dip on your stats, like the Dungeons and Dragons classic Pact of the Blade Warlock multiclass with Paladin build that both benefit from high Charisma. Experiment with different class combinations and find one that works for you! Keep in mind, Multiclassing is disabled on the Explorer difficulty.

• Synergise your Feat selections with your class, weapons, and other Feats. Take the mobile feat, it increases your movement speed and allows you to slip away from anyone you melee attack. Pairing this with the Thief Rogue giving you 2 bonus actions, you can forgo using Cunning Action to disengage, have 3 opportunities for your sneak attack damage to apply, and walk out of situations where you’re surrounded without suffering opportunity attacks.

• Keep that Guidance on you. A free extra 4 sided die to every skill check is incredibly strong. There’s even an amulet, the Silver Pendant, that gives you the cantrip without needing to learn it!

• Wizards can learn additional spells! Save those spell scrolls and feed them to Gale or another wizard to expand their magical repertoire. Just right click the scroll while you have him selected, and click “learn”. It does cost some gold, however.

Exploration

• When you find an especially dangerous environment it can be wise to enter Turn Based mode outside of combat. This will give you time to think, maneuver, and avoid potentially deadly situations!

• Levers and buttons can be activated by familiars, mage hand, or even just a projectile!

• Even when you fail a perception check to find a hidden chest, you can still manually dig on the expected spot and reveal the hidden treasure.

• You can swap characters while in conversation. This allows your sneakier friends to pickpocket them freely or set up some timely barrels for an encounter.

• You can manipulate items in the world. Click and drag, rotate with the mouse wheel, and stack things sky high! Use boxes and chests to block access points, or climb boxes to scale walls at unseen angles.

• Scratch, after you play fetch with him, can be summoned out in the world! He will bark at chests and can see through illusions.

• To instantly stop the whole party in their tracks, just right click! This will cancel all movement and actions, preventing you from triggering that hidden trap.

• Mask of the Shapeshifter is one of the most useful magical items in the game. It can be found in your Traveler’s Chest in camp: It can also be used to become smaller and sneak into areas you otherwise would not be able to. It can trick dead bodies into thinking you're not their killer and open up the Speak with Dead spell dialogue. "Conditional" weapon tags can be met by changing into the required race by using the mask. Transformations remain even after removing the mask, meaning you can equip another helm and remain the transformed race indefinitely. If you don’t have the mask, the Shapeshift and Disguise Self spells can do these things too!

Inventory and Equipment

• When splitting stacks, you can click the white number in the split window and type in the amount, rather than dragging the slider.

• Item management can be simplified with shift clicking full rows, and control clicking individual items to send them to other inventories, back to camp, or moving them to "wares". Additionally you can pick up bags and chests along the journey that can help keep your inventory organized.

• Remember that sort and "search" are in the inventory, making it easy to find specific items and you can click equipment slots to see all the items that you have for that slot.

• Weapons and shields that are equipped, but not in use, STILL convey their properties to the user. Like the crossbow, Gandrel’s Aspiration. It gives the character advantage against Monstrosities even though a melee weapon is being used!

• Don’t give heavy armor to you Barbarians. This will negate their Rage ability bonuses that allow them to take half damage in most situations. Generally, that ability is more effective than the armor class granted by Heavy armor.

Spells

• Spells with a "Ritual" tag can be cast as many times as you want out-of-combat without expending a spell slot - these include highly useful exploration spells such as Feather Fall, Speak with Animals and Speak with Dead.

• A great long lasting spell that is good for parties without darkvision is Daylight! Lasts until long rest and you can cast it on a weapon a party member is wielding.

• AoE spells can be used to activate potions! Place potions on the ground and activate them with spells like Whirling Blades.

• Glyph of Warding is good! In Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, the spell takes 1 hour to cast. In Baldur's Gate III the spell is a single action and while slightly less damage than Fireball (about 8 points at max damage and base level), you can change the damage type (Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Thunder), have the same effective AOE area, and have optional utility like an AoE push or Sleep effect!

• The spell Longstrider is a great way to give your slower party members extra movement. It's a Level 1 Ritual spell and gives 3.3m/10ft of extra movement that lasts until the next long rest. You can have a single caster with this spell apply it to all party members since it's not a concentration spell!

• Warding Bond gives a target resistance to all damage, +1 to AC and Saving Throws until long-rest with no concentration. The downside is the caster shares the damage. BUT you can send the caster back to camp and replace them with another active companion and the spell still works with no downside.

Combat

• At the end of every turn, equip your main hand melee weapon. This ensures you can perform opportunity attacks as they are available.

• In that same vein, set your reactions to "ASK". You don't want to unnecessarily waste your reaction or resources, so it's better to be able to make the decision in the moment.

• Interact with the environment during combat. This includes shoving enemies off ledges, toppling statues, dropping rocks, or setting fire to some nearby barrels. Use everything at your disposal to defeat the enemy!

• Falling items and creatures will deal damage to those below them. The damage delivered is defined by the weight of the items or creature. You can increase weight by using the Enlarge spell/potion before making the leap, and even stacking that with wild shape! OWLBEAR FROM THE TOP ROPE!

• Examine your enemies! This will show you vulnerabilities, resistances, abilities, buffs, and otherwise. You ALSO can see specific things about NPCs like injuries which can unlock new dialogue options.

• Some combat ability passives are automatically toggled “ON”. You can turn them off in the passives tab! This is probably why you’ve been missing your attacks with great weapons ever since you took the Great Weapon Master Feat!

• STOP USING FIREBOLT WITH SHADOWHEART! Firebolt is a racial cantrip that scales based on her Intelligence stat, that’s why it misses so much! You’re likely better off giving her a bow for those one-off ranged situations.

General Tips

• If you want to clean your character’s dirty face without using a long rest (because short rests won't), find some water. A bottle, creek, or a Create Water spell will clean you right up!

• Your characters have magic pockets! Take anything from your companions instantly by opening the group inventory screen and moving what you need. This even works when a character is unconscious or DEAD.

• When you have a character selected, you can open your companions inventory and use items directly from their pockets. Just right click and "use" as the selected character!

• Clothing color can be changed with dyes in the combination menu, and as of the newest patch, merchants that sell dyes also sell dye REMOVER! Go forth in FASHION.

• Use environmental interactions to your advantage. Create steam by using fire on pools of water, making everyone inside vulnerable to cold and shock damage, and also resistant to fire damage. Additionally you can ELECTRIFY the steam!

• Hirelings are easily exploited, especially as spellcasters. They can be used as free spell slots throughout your adventuring day, then dismiss them back to camp. Things like featherfall, fly, jump, or other spells can always be at your disposal and catered to your needs without expending any of the "main" party's limited abilities and spells.

• Fires will burn longer when fuel is added. Use grease, alcohol, oil, or those firewine barrels that are all over the place.

• Playing a necromancer? Pick up and store bodies at camp to make it easier to animate the dead when needed!

• Need a target for practice? Withers makes for a great test dummy. Immune to almost everything and even has some choice words for you after a while!

This isn’t an exhaustive list. Baldur’s Gate III is incredibly detailed and its vast mechanics systems make for near infinite combinations and tricks to use throughout the game. We suggest experimenting, making great use of the quick save system, and trying anything and everything that interests you. Play the way YOU want to play, and if that involves an unreasonable amount of barrel explosions, we say let the fireworks fly!

For more Baldur’s Gate III, check out our ever growing wiki, and if you need more beginner help, see our video guides on character creation and basics of combat. As always, keep it here, on IGN.