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

Baldur's Gate 3 features a massive and complex world to explore, and if you're just starting out, you may understandably be left quite overwhelmed. Thankfully, these essential tips and tricks will help you get started in Baldur's Gate 3.

• Don't miss the comprehensive Baldur's Gate 3 Beginner's Guide, for links to all the essentials.

Essential Tips and Tricks for Getting Started in BG3

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• General Tips and Tricks
• Combat Tips and Tricks

General Tips and Tricks

• Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't autosave often, so saving frequently is very important.
• Keep an eye out for tooltips that appear just below the minimap. These handy tips are especially useful when faced with new mechanics and features, such as jumping, that you haven't yet learned how to use.
• Remember to use Short Rests and Long Rests at the campsite by using the buttons near the minimap at the top right corner. These will help you recover health and spell slots.

See our How to Rest guide to learn more about this crucial feature.

• While exploring dark areas, you can see a lot better if you use a companion or party member with Darkvision.
• Let there be light! If you have not yet unlocked the Darkvision trait (or do not have someone in your party with it), equip a torch to brighten your surroundings.

• Are dice rolls feeling off when you roll? Toggle on or off the Karmic Dice setting in the game options.
• Even if you can’t disarm a trap, you can still shoot it from afar to trigger it.
• You can travel between all activated waypoints when at one. Also, you can fast travel between them by simply opening up your map, so long as you're not underground. Certain areas prevent fast travel as well.

• Sometimes a character will have a trade button at the bottom left corner even though they won't have a dialogue option to trade.
• If you sell something to a trader, you can try to steal it back by pickpocketing them.
• Hold Alt to make all lootable bodies visible nearby. This also works for showing certain items. Likewise, you can use the ~ key to highlight all characters in the game world, even through doors and walls! Your party members will be highlighted in blue, neutral NPCs in yellow, and hostile NPCs in red.

• Certain classes like wizards and warlocks can learn spells for a small sum of gold. Just right-click a scroll in that character's inventory to see if you can and for how much.

• Keep an eye out for areas you might be able to jump to. Baldur's Gate 3 has a large range for jumping both forward and up. You'll likely find a lot of secrets if you notice jumpable gaps.

• The minimap in the top-right corner has a marker for which way is north.
• Spacebar skips dialogue in case you're in a rush or replaying content.
• Some places are Hard to squeeze through for medium-sized characters without some magical assistance. You can use Disguise Self to go through cracked rocks by choosing a small creature, such as a Gnome or Halfling. If the space is too small for even your Gnome or Halfling Character, use other methods such as Enlarge/Reduce and Wild Shape to become something smaller.

• When building or respeccing your character, end your ability scores on an even number - you won't actually get bonuses for odd-number ability scores! Increasing your ability modifiers will cost two points to go up one score. Some Feats earned at later levels offer a single point in an ability score and can be used to round them off to an even number as well.
• Looking through each character's inventory to find a specific piece of equipment is a pain - instead, click the equipment slot, which will then show you a list of all available equipment that the character can use for that slot across everyone's inventory.

• Although it may feel dishonest, if you ever fail an ability check, be it during dialogue or when trying to lockpick a door, you're allowed to "save scum" which is saving beforehand and reloading the game if the outcome has unfavorable results. While you can't do it in a traditional tabletop version of Dungeons and Dragons, Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't obey the same laws, so feel free to do so if you don't mind redoing some of your actions if it helps you out in the long run.
• Want to sell a lot of items to a vendor at once? Before speaking with them, select multiple items (L Shift to select adjacent items or L Ctrl 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 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.

• You essentially have infinite carry weight because you can right-click on any item at any time and hit 'Send to Camp' and it'll teleport there into your Traveller's Chest in camp. You can even do this with locked/enchanted chests you find then you can unlock them later at your leisure.
• You can teleport back to camp any time you want outside of combat, and it isn't tied to a rest action. You can pop into camp, grab any items you need, and then head back out into the world.

• Play conservatively! The game's resource system may be very different than the ones you're used to if you're not used to playing tabletop dungeons and dragons. Having access to few spells between each rest and limited amounts of free HP recovery can really stifle your progress if you're having to long rest often, considering that camp supplies are also finite in supply in the early game. Use cantrips often for spellcasters, while also trying to conserve your HP where possible. You can't always just freely rest.
• If you're having trouble clicking on a squirrel that you're trying to converse with, or you just want to slow things down, press Shift + Space (On controller: Accessible via the Right Trigger shortcut menu). This will put you into a turn-based mode where the world acts as if you're in combat and makes it much easier to interact with small, fast-moving targets, and it lets you handle an impending trap with infinite time to prepare.

• Look around as you explore! If there is an area that looks interesting but you can't walk to it, see if you can jump to reach it. (Or any other spells/resources you have, like a Potion of Flying)
• Find the shovel and keep it in your inventory. You only need one shovel to share with your party, but you cannot dig up treasure from mounds of dirt you find without it.

• Group Hide is useful for keeping the whole party in stealth mode. For mouse and keyboard: the button is on the bottom left of your screen. For controller: hold down on the d-pad.
• You can gather more information and insights by talking with animals or corpses. Bards, Druids, and Rangers are able to cast Speak with Animals (and recast it until Long Rest). You can find The Amulet of Lost Voices in the room with Withers, which grants the wearer the ability to cast Speak with Dead. You can only ask the corpse 5 questions, though, so choose your options wisely!

• The way that you act in front of a vendor or store owner can completely change your experience with them. Being seen committing crimes by a vendor can make them charge you much more for items, so try to be sneaky if this is part of your playstyle.
• Make sure to pay attention to your party's chatter as you travel. More often than not, they can offer you insightful looks at elements like the lore of the surrounding area or relevant deities and cultures simply by talking to one another.
• It's totally possible to upset an Origin character enough for them to leave you. Leaving a bad first impression can also lead to them not joining you or outright attacking you. It's also worth mentioning you can miss-click and target these characters with an attack meant for a Goblin. Shout-out to Withers.

Combat Tips and Tricks

• Always take advantage of high ground and get behind your enemies. This will make it easier to hit them if you have a height advantage. For example, if you stack three crates and jump/climb on top of them, you'll have advantage on ranged attacks against enemies. Being behind enemies only really benefits melee characters for the backstab advantage.

• You can use a bonus action to dip your weapon in nearby elements for extra damage. The most common one you'll likely find is fire.
• Be careful of moving during a fight when you're right next to an enemy. This will trigger an opportunity attack where they can attack you without expending actions. You can do the same thing to enemies as well.

• You can use the disengage bonus action to get out of an opportunity attack without getting hit.
• Cantrip spells don't exhaust any spell slots and can be used every turn. Remember to check what actions are used when hovering over an ability. It will say at the bottom of the window that appears.
• You can eat all different types of food for health. Certain types of meat are especially great for healing.
• You can right-click an enemy to examine them. This is a useful way to learn about their resistances, current conditions, and more. If you're not sure what a condition is on yourself or a companion, you can hover over the condition on your portrait.

• Offhand attacks count as a bonus action. This can work well with a Rogue using two daggers.
• Pressing the spacebar will activate the turn-based mode outside of combat. This can be useful for planning the first move or treading carefully.
• Always look for opportunities in the environment. You may see a stalactite hanging from a cave ceiling or a wooden stockade you can knock down. Sometimes it pays off to hover your mouse around with an arrow prepared.

• Take advantage of the elements by freezing blood, burning water to create steam, or zapping a water source. These are a few methods great for certain spells and potions.
• 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 Longbow.
• Keep a candle in your character's inventory. In combat, you can use a free action to place the candle on the ground and light it. Then, as a bonus action, dip your weapon into the candle and it will become a flaming weapon that deals additional fire damage!
• You can throw potions at other people to get that effect on them. This also works on groups of people that are very close together. For example, throwing a healing potion between two companions or party members to heal both of them at once.

• It's pretty easy to accidentally end your turn, so be wary 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.
• Each enemy only has one reaction, so if you notice an enemy use their reaction, you can now walk past them without invoking an opportunity attack. Reactions are used for things like basic Opportunity Attacks, Fighter class action like Riposte, or even spells like Shield or Counter Spell. If you're next to a character and you're not "Threatened," you'll know that they've used their Reaction and you can safely reposition yourself.
• If a weapon is light, you can equip two of them and dual wield. This gives you a Bonus Action to attack a second time. It will automatically use your Bonus Action to make this second attack, but you can toggle this on and off in your passives menu.

• Equip or swap weapons outside of combat. Otherwise, it will spend an action during your turn.
• All party member inventories are linked in realtime, even in combat. So you can hit Tab at any time to bring up inventories and teleport a potion or poison or weapon or whatever from one character to another. Or even a weapon!
• Use shove and your environment to your advantage in combat. It's only a bonus action! If you and an enemy are on a high ledge or near a bottomless abyss (or other hazard), you can shove them off the ledge or into the abyss. Be warned, the loot will fall with the enemy.