Baldur’s Gate: Act 3
There’s plenty to do in act 3, but it can be summed up as explore Rivington and the south span of Wyrn’s Crossing, explore Wyrm Rock, then onto the main action in Lower City, where all the real action is. There are a few challenges (depending on difficulty setting, of course); these I’ll cover shortly. There is also the new difficulty setting and associated acheivement, with only one save slot and permadeath if your party wipes. Challenges like that make you appreciate guides more given a misstep can wipe out 100 hours of progress, eh.
Notable “visit here first” points are the ‘Circus of the Last Days’ in Rivington, the wyrm’s lair (for Balduran’s helm) and the Stormshore Tabernacle temple in Lower City.
The first includes the option to have a statue made of yourself (or another party member, one-time deal though). You get the option to be immortalised in armour, in your camp outfit, or in the altogether – either way, following your next long sleep, the immortalised character recieve a permnent blessing (+1d4 to saving throws). Costs 5,000g, but it’s worth it.
The Stormshore Tabernacle temple will also grant a (sort of permanent) blessing in return for a large sack of gold (cost being relative to to game difficulty). This stands +2 to all saving throws until long rest and can be bought for all party members. Again, especially for some of the harder fights (like Raphael), it’s worth the investment, especially for the main player who can now have +1d4 +2 to all saving throws, stacked with any other class and or gear bonuses.
However, annoyingly, while the payment is a one-off, the blessing only lasts a day. After your long sleep you have to return to the temple and pray to have it restored again. If you have 4 in the party with the blessing, they all have to go to their statue and pray. There are better ways this could have been implimented, like adding a small shrine to your camp.
Other stops I’d list as a priority are Dammon’s forge in Lower City and Sorcerous Supplies, if only for shopping.
After that, it’s simply a question whether you delve into the sewers for Orin first, or clear a path to Gortash. For me, the latter has better loot. House of Hope is great for loot, but given you are XP capped, the majority of Lower City is just eye candy for questers. (If you replay a lot, you reach the point where you question the point (time sink) of all the side quests).
Fancy footwork
On the matter of Gortesh and the achievement to “defeat Gortash in Wyrm Rock without activating any traps”…
My advice is to blow the bugger up!
I’ve seen guides where people cheese it by bodily picking him up at the coronation and throwing him over the cliff, and similar questionable methods.
I’ve tried killing him from the belltower. And I’ve tried MANY times in many ways to do it honourably. The game, it seems, does not allow you to complete this quest in an honourable fashion.
Solution?
I went all Guy Fawkes on his ass!
I walked into the coronation, did the dialogue, and then placed about 24 barrels of gunpowder and fireworks in a circle around him, stepped well back, and cast a fire bolt. Not something you want to try on ‘honourable’ difficulty, but on normal, loading a save game to blow him up just for the achievement, sure.
Notable LOOT in Act three: Rivington
Depending whether or not you played nice with Nightsong in the previous act, you can start with a legendary spear:
Selune’s Spear of Night
1d6+3
Grants darkvision (40′)
Advantage on wisdom saving throws
Advantage on perception checks
Grants Moonbeam (level 3, once per long rest)
Grants Moonmote (class action, once per long rest)
Another legendary can easily be had in Rivington, for the spin of a wheel, perhaps…
Nyrula (trident, chest loot)
1d6+3 +1d6 thunder
Light (permanent, 20′ radius)
+10′ to movement and leap distance
Immunity to fall damage
Cannot be disarmed
Can be thrown for 3-12 thunder damage (10′ radius blast); then returns to wielder
Grants Zephyr Break (once per short rest. Similar to Gust of wind spell, but with added 6d6 thundder damage)
Grants Zephyr Flash (one per shrot rest. Rush attack doing 6-48 damage and chance to cause bleeding for 3 turns)
Other gear in Rivington and Southern Wyrm’s Crossing include:
Band of the Mystic Scoundrel (ring, backpack)
After hitting a creature with a weapon attack, you can cast illusion or enchantment spells as a bonus action.
Bonespike Boot’s (boots, chest)
+1 to armour class and to saving throws – as long as you are not wearing armour or equipping a shield.
Jump distance increased by 5′
Grants Brutal Leap as a class action
Cloak of Displacement (cloak, buy from Entharl Danthelon)
Activates at the beginning of the wearer’s turn, granting enemies disadvantage on attack rolls vs wearer. Effect lasts until wearer takes damage.
Corpsegrinder (maul, mob drop)
2d6+2 +1d4 thunder
Tenacity: if you miss, it still deals 1 bludgeoning damage.
Flashblinder (bombs, buy from Bumpnagel, (or craft))*
Blinds target
Steelwatchers are stunned and suffer a -1d6 penalty to attack rolls
*(Limited supplies, you might want to save them for a titan fight!)
Gauntlets of the Warmaster (medium, buy from Entharl Danthelon)
Attack +1
Targets have Disadvantage on Saving Throws against wearer’s manoeuvre and weapon actions.
Necklace of Elemental Augmention* (amulet, chest)
When one of your cantrips deals Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder damage, add your Spellcasting Modifier to the damage dealt.
*(This is a second one, the other being found in the Gith creche in act two)
(Not to be underestimnated as this is actually quite powerful. For instance, it adds +5 (+10 with a crit) to cantrips for a warlock with charisma of 20. Shame it doesn’t apply to radiant damage as well.)
Nimblefinger gloves (gloves, buy from Bumpnagel)
Sleight of hand +1
Grants +2 dexterity to Gnomes (+1 to halflings and dwarves)
Ring of Truthfullness (ring, mob drop)
Gain adavantage on insight checks
Snow-dusted Monastery Gloves (gloves, buy from Entharl Danthelon)
Unarmed rolls deal +1d4 cold
Grants Ice Knife (level 3 spell)
Stillmaker (dagger, discovery, ground loot)
1d4+2
Grants Hold Person (level 3 spell)
Thunderpalm strike (gloves, buy from Bumpnagel)
Unarmed attacks deal +1d4 thunder damage
Grants Thunderwave spell (level 3)
Notable LOOT in Act three: Wyrm’s Rock
Short of pulling the entire Rock down on your head there’s little good loot to be had here, and even then…
Still, there are two legendaries to find without raising a ruckus. One’s just lying on the ground, free for the taking; for the other, you’ll have a fight on your hands.
Helm of Balduran (Ground loot)
Gain +2 hit points at the beginning of every turn.
+1 to armour class
+1 to saving throws
Immunity to stuns
Immunity to critical hits from attacks
Balduran’s Giantslayer (mob drop)
2d6+3
On hit, double damage from your strength modifier (e.g. +10 instead of +5 with a strength of 20)
Advantage on attack rolls vs large, huge or gargantuan
Grants ‘Giant Form’ class action
(Apart from the giant form, I think this is actually a mediocre weapon!)
Flame enamelled Armour (medium, AC16, chest)
+2 to initiative
+2 to saving throws
Fire resistance
Fire shield: Warm (level 4)
(Disadvance on stealth)
Defeating Gortash rewards on his body and in the room(s) include:
Concussion Grenade(s)
5d10+18 thunder (23-68)
(Rather than letting them explode, or throwing them at opponents, I just picked them up for later use! Picking them up is the equivalent of putting the pin back in a grenade – and it doesn’t use up an action). Between the coronation hall and upper Gortash encounter you can pick up around a dozen of these bad boys!)
Cloak of Authority (cloak)
+1 to armour class
Immunity to fright (and similar)
Advantage on intimidation and insight checks
Fabricated Arbalast (heavy crossbow)
1d10+2
Illuminating shot: dazzling ray (once per short rest. Does 2d10 radiant damage and blinds all in its path
Gauntlet of the Tyrant (gloves)
+1 to spellsave DC
+1d4 force to unarmed attacks
Cast Command (level 3) (once per long rest)
Helldusk boots (shoes)
Ignore difficult terrain penalties
Immunity to actions or spells that could move you (e.g. shove)
Infernal Evasion (when you fail a saving through you may use a reaction to succeed instead)
Hell Crawler (class action, once per short rest): Teleport to an area and deal 2d8 fire dmage on impact (5′ blast radius)
Tyrannical jackboots (boots)
+1 to charisma checks
+1 to saving throws
Notable LOOT in Act three: Lower City
Dammon
Armor of Persistence: (heavy armour (AC20), buy)
Reduces all damage by 2
Grants Blade ward (resistance to slashing, bludgeoning, and piercing damage).
Grants Resistance (+1d4 to all saving throws)
(Disadavantage on stealth, no dexterity bonus)
Boots of Persistance (medium, buy)
Grants Longstrider (movement +10′)
Grants Freedom of movement (difficult terrain can’t slow wearer down, and they can’t be magically Paralysed or Restrained. If the Restrained by non-magical means (e.g. nets), wearer can spend 1.5m of movement to free themself.
Legacy of the Masters (gauntlets, medium, buy)
+2 bonus to attack and damage rolls
Strength saving throw +1
Sorcerous Supplies
Birthright (hat, buy)
Charisma +2 (max 22)
Ring of regeneration (ring, buy)
At the beginning of your turn, heal 1d4 hit points.
Out and about, exploring
Hellfire Engine Crossbow (heavy crossbow, put together from parts)
1d10+2
Cast Lightning arrow (once per long rest) for 8d8 lightning damage (8-64)
Gond Mael longbow (longbow, Steel Titan drop)
1d8+3
Grants light 20′
Chance on hit: inflict Guiding bolt
Grants Celestial Haste (level 3) for 5 turns (once per long rest)
Sword of the Emperor (longsword, ground loot)
1d8+2
+1d4 vs shapeshifters or polymorphed
+2 bonus to saving throws vs spells
Looting, by the numbers
The figures below are cumulative through the acts, playing tactical.
These are the final figures just prior to attacking the netherbrain. The main character (Tav) has a permanent bless (5,000g), and all the party have their god’s blessing (4,500g each, so 18,000g). A further 20,000g went to open a portal to Raphael.
The party’s remaining gold is negligible, but selling the items below would realise over 100,000g, given that the base value of goods stored in Traveller’s chest totted up to over 200,000g.
You’d think that would be more than enough to fix or even restore Kalack, especially given the debt the gnomes, city, factions, devils, and even gods owe the party. Ho hum!
Alchemy components: 13,100g
Arrows: 4,900g
Barrels of fun: 168 items/stacks with a combined weight of 11,400! (value: 800g)
Along with all the firewine, oil, water and brine, there were 2 barrels of acid, 20 boxes of oddfire fireworks, 70 popdrakes and 35 smokepowder barrels.
There would have been a lot more explosives but I blew up Ansur for the ‘Crash Landing’ achievement!
Books, scrolls, notes etc: 779 (worth 18,400g)
This, if nothing else, shows the sheers scale of this game!
There’s an achievement for reading 100 books, but I managed to gather 779 and I know I missed a few, selling some from sets, thinking they were duplicates. Makes my OCD twitchy having incomplete sets, but it’s close enough.
Enchanted equipment (weapons, aroumur, rings etc): 257 (87,000g worth)
Obviously excludes equipped items across all camp. Can’t really fight in the buff, though I suppose someone will try!
Gems: 10,000g
Ingots and infernal iron: 6,850g
Expected to be able to use the ingots, if only in a quest. Ah well. You can’t even use the enriched infernal iron you find.
Keys: 178
Mind flayer specimums: 36 collected
15 needed to unlock first 3 circles of power
The ‘Astral touched tadpole’ (turning you part Illithid) gives you a further 9 powers.
(That just leaves fly (levitate) and other Illithid skills – like eating peoples brains – for the end game.)
I played without giving in to the parasite, given you want the thing out of your head, but – while not game changing – there are a few powers, particularly the passive ones, that would help things along.
Potions: 12,250g
(Stored potions, so excludes healing potions etc carried on characters)
Soul coins: 17 (1,700g)
These buff Kalack ‘until long rest’ and – conditionally – add 1d4 fire damage to her attacks. (If she’s raging or is below 25% hit points)
“What price a man’s soul?” 100g, apparently!
There’s no other use for them in the game.
Spell scrolls: 102 different learnable spells picked up (45,400g worth)
White gear (armour, weapons, cloths): 174 examples (5,100g)
