Baldur’s Gate 3 is the long-awaited next chapter in the revered Baldur’s Gate role-playing game series. The original Baldur’s Gate games pioneered the traditional fantasy RPG genre, with their epic stories, tactical combat, and exploration of the Forgotten Realms. Baldur’s Gate 3 looks to continue that legacy, bringing the franchise into the modern gaming landscape.
In this extensive blog post, I’ll be sharing 14 incredibly useful tips, tricks, and secrets for Baldur’s Gate 3 that you likely didn’t know about. These are strategies and interactions that I’ve learned through my own experience playing the game, as well as from conversing with friends, watching streams, and reading forums.
Some of these tips I really wish I knew about sooner when I first started playing, as they would have improved and smoothed my gameplay immensely.
If you’re currently playing Baldur’s Gate 3, or plan to in the future, hopefully you can benefit from these tips just as much as I did.
There is a ton of depth and emergent gameplay in Baldur’s Gate 3 just waiting to be uncovered!
Before we start, if you haven’t already, see how to mod BG3 and major mistakes.
Inventory Management Tricks
Managing your inventory is always crucial in large RPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3. With tons of items to collect, carry, and organize, inventory management can start to feel like a chore. But thankfully, there are some ingenious tricks to speed up the process.
Instantly Send Items to Camp Chest
As you explore the world of Baldur’s Gate 3, you’ll quickly accumulate more items and loot than you can reasonably carry.
Every camp has an infinite capacity chest where you can store excess items to lighten your load.
Normally, you have to right click and send each item individually. But there’s a much faster way!
By holding Ctrl and left-clicking, you can select multiple items at once. Then right click on any of the highlighted items and choose “Send to Camp” to instantly send the entire batch to your camp chest.
This is exponentially faster than sending items one by one. I can’t tell you how much time this trick has saved me overall!
Mark Items as Wares to Quickly Sell
Another result of looting everything in sight is that you’ll end up with a lot of random items you just want to sell to vendors.
You can mark these items as “Wares” for quick selling.
Simply right click an item and choose “Add to Wares“.
This adds a small silver icon indicator.
Later, when you visit a vendor, all the items marked as wares can be sold at once with the “Sell Wares” button at the bottom of the trade window.
No more clicking through and manually picking everything you want to sell!
The ability to batch-select items to mark as wares using Ctrl clicks makes this even better.
Transfer Items Between Party Members
When you have a full party, it can be tricky coordinating items between them.
But thankfully, transferring items is super easy using the party inventory screen accessed by pressing TAB.
You can freely drag and drop items between party members’ inventories on this screen.
Distance doesn’t seem to matter at all, so you can handle all item management from anywhere.
This is infinitely more convenient than having to position characters next to each other or drop items on the ground. Being able to quickly pass around quest items, potions, scrolls, and gear is a game changer. The full-party inventory screen is your best friend!
Sort Inventories by Type
Within that same party inventory screen, you might have noticed some small menus at the top left.
One of them allows you to sort by various criteria. Being able to sort every party member’s inventory simultaneously by type is insanely useful.
No more digging through clutter trying to find that one particular potion or scroll!
Sorting this way is far more efficient than having to manually organize each character one by one.
You can also sort by other handy criteria like weight and value. Use this to identify your most inefficient carried items. The search bar in your personal inventory is great for isolated lookups.
Other Tips & Tricks
Outside of inventory management, there are a ton of other lesser-known tips and tricks that can dramatically improve your Baldur’s Gate 3 experience.
Let’s go over some of the best ones.
Use Camp Supplies from Camp Chest
As your party rests between adventures, they will consume camp supplies like food and material sacks. These tend to be heavy low-value items that clutter your inventory.
The solution is to store them in your camp chest!
Your companions will automatically pull whatever they need from the chest when resting or crafting. This saves a huge amount of carrying weight.
Make use of the Send to Camp trick mentioned earlier to quickly offload supplies.
Party inventory management doesn’t just apply to gear and quest items!
Stack Crates to Reach Higher Locations
Wooden crates are extremely common clutter objects scattered around the world. You can actually pick them up and move them around.
What’s even better is that they can be stacked on top of each other, creating improvised towers!
With a tower of crates, you can reach higher ledges, building tops, and other areas that are normally inaccessible. This is great for accessing secret loot stashes.
In combat, use crate towers for height advantage and positional awareness. You can even drop them on environmental hazard vents to block poison or fire jets. Thinking vertically with crates has all sorts of applications.
Put Shields on Wizards
Typically in RPGs, shields are associated with warrior classes, not spellcasters.
But in Baldur’s Gate 3, any character can benefit from equipping a shield.
This includes wizards and other magical classes.
Don’t underestimate how much of a difference a simple shield can make.
Just adding a basic shield boosted my wizard’s armor class from 15 to 17.
That’s a substantial increase in survivability, especially for squishier characters. Magic shields offer even more powerful benefits like temporary hit points when damaged or an advantage on saving throws.
And don’t forget that shields also raise your base AC when not actively blocking!
Micromanage Party Positioning
Properly positioning your party members is crucial before major battles. Baldur’s Gate 3 gives you tools to micromanage combat formations with precision, instead of moving as one blob, separate characters into custom groups.
Select a character and drag them out of their current group to split off alone.
You can also drag select party members into new groups.
This lets you set up the exact formation needed. Send your wizard to high ground, rogue to stealth flank, cleric and fighter together on the frontline, etc. The combat possibilities open up greatly when you master party positioning.
Throw Potions to Heal Allies
Healing potions are invaluable to keep your party alive in Baldur’s Gate 3’s toughest fights.
Typically you use them by directly drinking them for self-healing. But clerics and other support characters can also throw potions to heal their injured allies!
Use the Throw command during combat and select a healing potion as the projectile.
Target a damaged friendly character within range and toss the potion to heal them from a distance. This conserves actions and offers more flexible party-wide healing.
For extra efficiency, place potions on the ground pre-fight and splash heal the whole party by attacking the potion.
Wizards Can Learn Scroll Spells Early
Being able to add more spells to your repertoire is always desirable for spellcasters. Wizards in Baldur’s Gate 3 have a special ability to permanently learn spells from scrolls.
Normally you can only learn level-appropriate scrolls based on your current Wizard level. But with some creative multiclassing, you can bend the rules!
If you take just 1 level of Wizard on an otherwise high-level character, such as a Level 4 Cleric, you qualify for the scroll learning ability.
This means you can start picking up potent Wizard spells from scrolls immediately at Wizard 1, well before you’d normally have spell slots to cast them. It’s a fantastic perk for multiclass casters.
Camp Mechanics
Camping is where you’ll spend a lot of downtime in Baldur’s Gate 3 resting up. There are some clever optimizations you can utilize at camp to make your party more efficient.
Send Crafting Materials to Camp
Just like with excess gear and potions, you can send crafting materials directly from your inventory to the main camp chest.
Things like leather, bones, feathers, etc can clutter your limited carry weight allowance quickly.
Offload them to camp storage using the Send to Camp feature and clear up tons of capacity.
Skill Proficiency Respec
Whenever you take a long rest at camp, you have the option to re-allocate your skill proficiencies. Take advantage of this to tailor your party’s skills to upcoming scenarios.
If you’re headed into natural caves next, boost Nature if the city is on the horizon to up your Charisma skills. Adaptability is powerful in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Shared Camp Supplies
Food and other camp supplies are shared between the entire party. You don’t need to distribute rations or bedrolls individually.
Transfer all that weight to the camp chest!
When you rest or craft, your companions will automatically use the shared supplies rather than personal ones. Keeping them stocked up is easy.
Free Fast Travel
Once you clear an area, your camp acts as a free, fast travel point to revisit earlier areas quickly.
Instead of costly teleportation spells or trekking back manually, use your camp to hop between key locations you’ve already uncovered.
It’s invaluable for turning in quests or handling unfinished business.
Environment Interactions
Baldur’s Gate 3’s environments are richly detailed and offer many interactive elements. Here are some clever tricks to engage with the world around you.
Create Shelter from Debris
Fallen trees, old ruins, rubble piles, and other debris can be arranged and stacked together to create makeshift shelters or blockades.
This is great for blocking wind oremies. Be creative in how you reshape debris to produce an advantage.
Manipulate Light Sources
Torches, candles, and other light sources can be picked up, moved, and placed in your environment. Use them to illuminate dark ruins and dungeons more effectively. Extinguish them to allow for stealth. Pay attention to lighting and how you can manipulate it.
Release Caged Animals
You’ll occasionally find caged beasts being transported by traders or villains. Set them free to create a distraction or temporary ally! Just beware they may turn on you afterwards. Useful in a pinch to change up a situation.
Smoke Out Burrowing Creatures
Some enemies like Ankhegs burrow underground and ambush you. If you see dirt mounds indicating burrowers nearby, you can smoke them out
Find fire sources and place them near mounds. Smoke will force creatures to emerge. Prevent ambushes this way.
Bless Campfires
Clerics and Paladins can bless campfires using their holy powers. This makes the fire radiate a 30 foot ward against evil creatures.
Use this to secure rest areas and deter nighttime ambushes. It also damages undead that come near. Protect your party with blessed fires.
Creative Combat Tactics
Finally, let’s discuss some unconventional combat tactics to win battles in Baldur’s Gate 3 and turn the tide when things look grim.
Distract Powerful Enemies
Keep barrels or crates in your inventory.
In boss fights, use them to momentarily distract terrifying enemies like Minotaurs.
While they furiously attack the object, reposition your party and hit them with ranged attacks.
Just a few seconds of distraction builds big advantages.
Anti-Undead Holy Bombs
Fill empty potion bottles with holy water blessed by a Cleric. Then during combat, smash the bottles with ranged attacks near undead enemies.
The blessed liquid will damage them like a holy grenade!
Useful against zombies, vampires, wraiths and more.
Freeze Water for New Routes
Baldur’s Gate 3 features water areas you normally have to wade or swim through slowly. Mages can instead cast Ray of Frost to freeze patches of water temporarily. This creates new quick routes to flank or escape. Just watch your step!
Levitate Giant Foes
Massive enemies with devastating melee damage but limited ranged options become neutered if lifted off the ground.
Mages should prioritize levitating giants, trolls, and ogres high into the air to effectively neutralize them. Then pelt them with ranged attacks safely.
Polymorph Allies in Trouble
When an ally gets overwhelmed and can’t escape melee range, cast Polymorph on them. Turning them into a bird, fish, etc, provides an avenue to flee combat and reposition. It also clears negative conditions and restores health. Great emergency utility.
Conclusion
And there you have it – a detailed look at 14 incredibly useful Baldur’s Gate 3 tips, tricks, and secrets that aren’t immediately obvious at first glance. From inventory management, to camp optimizations, environmental interactions, and creative combat tactics, there are so many ways to get more out of the game’s systems. I hope trying out some of these strategies can help enhance your own Baldur’s Gate 3 adventure.
If you have any other powerful tips to share, please let me know in the comments! The depth of Baldur’s Gate 3’s mechanics and interactions means there are surely many more efficiencies left to discover. Finding them is part of the joy. Now get out there and show the Forgotten Realms who’s boss, armed with your new knowledge. The journey continues…
