HOW TO BEAT HONOR MODE & Advanced Tips in Baldur's Gate 3 

Some random tips from my own Honor Mode: - consider rolling a Halfling or Half Orc, their racials might save your run - be patient - achieve surprise as much as possible, and have all or almost all characters with the Alert feat - scrounge as much camp supply food as possible (HM needs 80, not 40, for long rests) - learn to live with the consequences - use overpowered builds like Tavern Brawler Monk - use builds with good action economy like Bard or Fighter or Monk - get to Level 4 without major combat, and try to be +1 level over all bosses - a Tav or party face with high CHA and persuade skill, the best battles are the ones you don't have to fight - avoid most/all optional bosses; Act 3 only requires killing Orin, Gale can activate the nuke

I haven't even beaten normal mode yet, I keep starting over

As someone who has completed Honour Mode, I will say this: avoid dialogues and immediately just surprise attack whenever possible. Max out on Aid, Hero's Feast, Longstrider, and Death Ward before starting your day. Abuse elixirs (I found most value from Vigilance and elemental resistance) and the most powerful class: barrelmancy. Raphael and Ansur got nothing on 36+ smokepowder barrels.

Your herbalist hireling should also be set up as your breakfast buffer. Make sure you send everyone out with a death ward, heroes feast, poison resistance and aid without using a single party resource

It took me 3 attempts to complete honour mode. First one ended in the creche, had a really unlucky round in a fight and died to just some random guy while leaving. Second one was embarrassing... I had essentially completed act 1 and was cleaning up. I went to the big spider matriarch and killed it. Then had a dialogue I'd never encountered before where they talk about jumping down the hole...then, rather than casting feather fall...I misty stepped into the hole...without splitting the party so they all dived in after me....very silly party wipe. But my third playthrough I managed to get all the way to the end and get my golden dice and honestly it was the most fun playthrough I've ever had. All this to say yeah it's scary to do it and you might mess up but honestly it's sooooo do-able! So if you're tempted, have a go! I believe in you! I wish I had had these tips before hand though, would have made it easier! 😂

Kind of a niche tip, but specifically having a Duergar in your party is a massive boon in completing Honor Mode. The permanent invisibility cantrip makes stealing from NPCs and containers trivial. Being able to activate Invisibility on demand in any combat means you can escape if theres going to be a wipe. They are also just generally good with all the resistances they have.

I beat it a few days ago simply by not doing all the big fights, no forge, no devil, no Gith etc.. also used high charisma bard to talk through other fights. Then at end used Gale to go up alone and sacrifice himself meaning no end or brain fight after sneaking to climb end point. Toughest point I found was the dead bone god, but keep him blind and made it past him.

A Warding bond cleric is huge in honor mode. You can take Heavy Armour Master as your first feat and in the Grymforge you can make a set of Adamantine Splint Armour which almost doubles your party's survivability for the rest of the game.

honor mode is so amazing because it makes everything matter, it makes your choices, your skills matter. it feels more real and it never goes the same way twice, no matter how much you may have planned it lol. my current run i was going to use wyll, but he got crit at the gate xD

No one says this, but respec Gale as a full Cleric and have him cast Warding Bond and Death Ward on your entire party in camp. Then just leave him in camp and itll persist and you can take your normal characters with you, despite him not being in your party. At later levels, you can cast the full food spell too to increase your party health (including summons!) And make everything immune to poison.

A bunch of good tips here! Only one thing I disagree with but I’ll add a few things to help as well. 1. Play as a Bard! There’s no bard companion and the persuasion checks (which are so common) are much easier. 2. Dark-Urge is the strongest character. This is because you can get the Bhaalist armour if you follow the first few steps of the storyline - you don’t even have to become Bhaal’s unholy assassin to get it! This mixed with some ranger/swords bard build is unbelievably OP. Chuck the armour on a cleric (use dash but don’t end turn, switch character, shoot the enemy with the debuff, move the cleric again and repeat). This works really well if you have ‘alert’ on the cleric so you can strike first. 3. Use the stormshore tabernacle early on for your 4 party characters. A permanent +2 to all savings throws is so low-key strong. You don’t even have to be that rich to get it; just cast fog cloud to get into the basement after donating enough for the initial buff on one character - steal it with another character - remove the curse kill the deva - rinse and repeat. Disagreement: The video mentions that you should prepare your boss battles (which I agree with) but he says that you shouldn’t rely on specific gear or the mirror of loss. This isn’t logical as you can basically take steps to guarantee you get specific gear and some builds kind of need specific gear to work (e.g nyrulna for throwing builds). With the mirror of loss you can basically guarantee it: respec into 4 knowledge cleric/1 bard/6 wild magic sorcerer for each character before using it (and max int) so you have like +17 for each check with advantage. You can prepare everything in this game which is why it’s mostly knowledge rather than skills based

Some of the best advice I’ve seen for honor mode.Preparation, planning and your knowledge of the game will get you through those unlucky dice rolls. I cleared my honor mode run thinking it was gonna be my last play through of the game, but i had so much with it that I can’t seem to stop playing this game, i just wish Larian would let us play with the honor mode rule set, but without the single save file once we beat it, tactician is now way too easy for me.

Another tip would be: avoid squad wipes through text options; vlaakith can just murder your whole party if you antagonize her, and gale's orb has dangers around it too

Honour mode is easily the most underrated part of this game. Sure, it can be infuriating but it is easily one of the biggest challenges in any game, and there are so many insanely interesting strategies since you actually have to pay full attention to all of the systems in the game. I love how some of the strategies are like "Hire a potion brewer to stay in your camp and brew potions for you" or "Pickpocket the god of the dead so he can make your party immortal for free". It really brings out the best this game has to offer, especially since every choice is now permanent, it opens so many doors for players who usually savescum.

Just to let you guys know, you get the forbidden knowledge from necromancy of thay even if you fail every saving throw for it, you just get a curse you can remove. To extend this, you can offer the forbidden knowledge get the +2 from mirror of loss without a roll, so you can guarantee it on one person

I just did my first playthrough on honor mode (wiped at end of act 2) and it is by FAR the best experience I have ever had playing this game. I was literally on the edge of my seat for some dice rolls and everything I did mattered. Very fun, highly recommend.

10:25 for the hireling alchemist, I also give her light, longstrider, + mage armour as cantrip/spells so she can buff allies after their long rest (and then wait behind at camp)

Thank you for all your work and guides for BG3.

I finished my Honour play-through recently using a Vengeance Paladin, a Storm Sorcerer with 2 levels on Tempest Cleric, Battlemaster Fighter, and a Moon Druid. My two best suggestions for anyone in Honour mode are: first, know exactly what your party is capable of and always try to set yourself up to take advantage of those abilities, and second, potions of speed are your best friend (exploit the fact that you can huddle up and speed buff your entire party with a single throw) if you want to win battles within 1-2 rounds. Other than that, avoid obviously poor decisions (unless it’s all part of the plan, I guess) and above all have fun!

You are the only BG3 youtuber I watch because you are "low-anxiety." You keep things simple and you seem to be aware that your audience could easily feel overwhelmed, so you are attentive to information overload and you deliberately do not exploit dopamine and adrenaline for views like so many RU-vidrs. Thank you.

I think you've given me the confidence to try out honor mode! Great video --- thank you!!

Ive gotten 2 playthroughs in with different team compositions trying to see what items are great and stuff. Having fun playing so many different classes and having to think outside the box so when it comes to honor mode hopefully i can have a plethora of knowledge

Easiest way for me was to use the legendary Sharran spear from Act 2 on at least one character. Most legendary actions added by Honour Mode are negated by the Blinded status. Reactions in general are hindered by the lack of sightline from Darkness. The spear allows you to cast darkness once per Turn, letting you ignore many boss mechanics almost entirely. Act 3's Wyrm's Crossing boss has a huge lightning damage reaction - denied entirely. Cazador's vampiric swarm? Never triggers. Outside of casting that spell, the game felt like Tactician...

another tip that can go with using your actions in the right sequence, if one character has an elixir of bloodlust and you can attack with several of your characters, maybe attempt to weaken an enemy with the characters who aren't using the bloodlust elixir, then finish the enemy off with the character that is using it, allowing them to get another action to swing at a different enemy.

A small precision on resetting vendor inventories by respeccing a character to lvl 1: you don't want to do that on the character you talk to the vendor with, as his level will determine the quality of the items that are spawned.

Tip from my run: 1. Have a druid in your party. Makes saving Arabella from the druids easier, and makes the grymforge guardian easier. Just drink a colossus potion, turn into an owlbear, and jump on top of it from above. Kills it in one hit. 2. have a potion/scroll of invisibility on you at all times in case a fight goes bad. 3. be stingy with inspiration. I saved mine for the gnolls to turn them against each other. save them for the rolls that matter. 4. Myrkul will be the toughest fight. You gotta stop him from healing, so I gathered arrows of ilmater.

Until it is patched: When you are trading with a vendor, you can sell them empty containers, like crates or bags and then, in the trading mode, you can (only with the char who initiated the talking) open these containers and shift-pull all of the traders stock into it. Then, per long rest or level up, they will still restock! And once you are satisfied, take your favorite barbarian and carry them far away (improvised weapon and then right click, before you throw them). There, turn of non-lethal, knock them out, send your container straight to camp. If done right, after your next long rest, they are not even hostile! Easiest infinite money glitch so far. Works best with traders you are about to kill anyway (Zhentarim, Moonrise, etc)

My honor mode run was my first completion, and we did almost all the fights, that kind of helped us more cuz we had a ton of exp and were high levels entering a new act. Like at the start of act 3 we had just left rivington and we were level 11.

Another tip around vendors, having a character with expertise in persuasion is a great way to get high discounts, especially at later levels

Get that ad bag man! You deserve it!

In the Shadow Cursed lands, have a cleric back at camp ALWAYS cast "Daylight" on every character. When they are high enough level, also cast "Freedom of Movement", "Death Ward". Always have a character pre-cast longstrider. Daylight on your characters removes the need for a torch, and keeps shadow monsters like wraiths, etc. from shadowmelding. GET THE LUMINOUS ARMOR in the Selunite Shrine that is somewhat hiding on a shelf but easy 100% risk free to get. It causes "Radiant Shockwave' and time a characer wearing it does radiant damage. One Shadowheart light cleric running Spirit Guardians having mobs charge her can max out 10 stacks of Radiant orb on an entire GROUP of enemies. That is a - 10 to hit AND save for every monster at those stacks. They'll fail any saving throw for any spell, they'll fail hitting every round... A good example- in the Last Light Inn, protecting Isobel, just have Shadowheart stand on top of Isobel with her wearing this armor. Isovel will never get hit. And so on and so forth, lol.

Awesome guide. Thanks bro!

I should point out that you are playing with fire if you have Astarion bite hirelings, at least once Aylin is in your camp. I literally had my latest honor mode run get completely fucked over, just because I had Astarion nibble on a hireling in camp. This made Aylin just lose her shit, and she turned on Astarion. When I had him defend himself, this just turned the camp into a war-zone: Wyll and Mizora? Gone forever. Shadowheart, Karlach, Gale, the Owlbear-Cub, Volo, Scratch, Halsin, Aylin, and Isabelle? All out for my blood. I don't even want to revisit that, and try to salvage it, as it just look completely hopeless. I have since started another run, but yeah. If anyone actually does read this, remember, having Astarion nibble on others in camp is a gamble.

Comment for the algorithm, I made it to the final battle and it was messy out of the world, balanced mode even though my first play through but I literally lost in the most unfortunate way - my biggest respect to every succeeding in honor mode

I was looking for a pathing video, which bosses do first, which later, which you can cheese etc. But this is helpful too.

Love the tips, currently one explorer, two balanced, and three tactician runs in hoping to give honour mode a shake. I swore I wouldn’t try anything above balanced when I first got the game but after completing tactician I fell in love with character building and just general theory-crafting. Excited to put these tips into action, but also nervous thank u mr.tuber

Do not try and pickpocket the Oathbreaker knight. I found out an hour ago he is not as forgiving as Withers...

My bit of advice: in normal modes, traps are an annoyance that can occasionally be run through with no problems, but in Honor Mode, they are absolutely lethal and cannot be ignored. Especially in the early game. Always have your highest Dex character scout our new areas to locate and disarm traps.

Well done bro, great guide.

7:00 never knew this was a thing :O Thanks a lot this changes my difficulty a lot ! I love potions

Great video. 1 thing people should be aware of as i found it the hard way. If a character is wearing the constitution amulet and you swap to the amulet of wound closure you can actually lose hit points in the long run. You dont get the hp from the con bonus filled until you rest.

It's also worth noting that you can use other characters that haven't expended their spell slots before you long rest. Sounds weird and obvious, I know, but it never occurred to me on lower difficulties that after the spell slots of some of my magic-based characters get drained that I could swap them out for others before needing to long rest again (it helps if your Tav isn't spell slot-dependent). The only downside is that you'd then have to gear out everyone but I think I rather do that than feed Gale's magical item addiction.

Great video! One improvement I would suggest would be to give the herbalist brewer only 1 level in rogue before spending the rest of the levels in cleric. This is so that the alchemist can source their own enhance ability spell. Also, for your feats I would recommend ASI +WIS +WIS.

I know this video is old but if you focus Brinna only on raising her wizard and bard levels you can have her with the spell that gives her advantage in wisdom rolls, use another character to give her guidance, summon transmuter stones (support/utility) and her minimum medicine roll will always be of: 2 + 8 + 1 (guidance) + 4 (Wisdom 18/Int 18) = 15 (You could get an extra of 1d4 (Shapeshifter ring) + 1 (Wis prof) Raising wisdom to 20 and using disguise self) The only way to fail would be with 4 consecutive critical failures: "On a roll with advantage that succeeds on a 2 or more, Halfling Luck would reduce the chance to fail from 1/400 to 1/160000, making it practically impossible to fail. With Karmic Dice active, it may be simply impossible to roll 4 critical failures in a row."

Another great video, keep up the hard work

The tip I took the most to heart after playing D&D for 5 years and BG3 6 times over is to take your time. The game gets way harder if you try to speedrun through each area. Explore, loot, sell, experiment, and simply take your time. Homework helps, but pacing yourself helps infinitely more. If you have free time, play through an easier difficulty and make a road map of the items and quests you need first by difficulty of acquisition and by when you need it. Leveling is highly forgiving since you can respec. Lastly, when in doubt, save and close out/alt+f4. No shame in save-scumming an un-scummable save.

I been following this channel sense it was mainly Total War Warhammer tactical tips and tricks.

thought i had the wrong tab open for a like a dragon video lmao that is an out of left field sponsor. cool though, super stoked to play

Always enter turn-based mode before doing anything risky. My first "proof of honor" was awarded because Astarion failed to disarm the fire trap guarding Shadowheart's spear of only missing every second attack.

I've completed honour mode 3 times, once with a solo run, currently on my 4th with a Durge Githyanki Barbarian party face and having possibly the easiest time with dialogue options

Play 3 ppl party with 4th being in camp ALWAYS. He can ressurect anyone at any time - 200 gold price is nothing so your game will never end if party is beaten. There are just 2 places where you can't do this: Act 2 final area, Act 3 final area; (House of Hope too but you can skip it) . So just two boss zones. If you are in doubt, use barrelmancy to defeat bosses. One barrel of smokepowder does avr. 30-35 force damage (50 max if lucky). Carry some of these with your STR character (or drink STR elixir). Drop several near the boss (dropping doesn't cost an action), plus, if you like, some grenades/smokepowder bags. Explode these with fire arrow (or fire bomb or fire spell) from the distance. For the last boss in A3 you can drop fireworks as well - there is a place (Felogyr's Fireworks) where you can get tons of them.

I cleared a few times on easy then finished my tactician run last night.. think I'm finally ready to attempt honor mode :P appreciate the tips especially around the vendors and improving herbalism because I didn't bother with any of that so far

I love all your videos! Commenting for the algorithm

Боже, чувак... Ты здорово облегчил мне игру, своей фишкой с торгашами. Теперь, имеет смысл хоть ингредиенты скупать. Я думал товар обновляется только с долгим отдыхом или повышением уровня... Здорово 👏✊👍

I would like to add to the throwing health potions thing. You can also throw other things like elixirs of universal resistance the same way.

I beat it first try, but almost ended it at the creche part, the legendary buff on the githyanki was brutal to deal in my position 😂

hell yes, please do some more stuff with Like a Dragon please!

My vendors of choice to stock up on before leaving act 1 are the three in the shroom colony in the under dark, plenty of materials of haste spores/potions, str potions, it was a little obscene by the time I was done and walking away with so many str pots by the end of my run I hadn't even used half of them 😂😅

Thanks for the video

Act 1 is the "hardest" act, as if you have a high charisma character for act 2, you can skip a lot of boss fights. Act 3 you get access to so many broken items. My main goal for act 3 was to get the weave items for Gale to get him an Enchantment master with a spell save DC of 28. Trivialized so many fights when he can lock down the boss with Tasha's Hideous Laughter at 100% success

great content!

I freely steal by having advantage on thief checks, and always grabbing potions of invisibly. If my thief gets caught he just goes invisible, and walks out of the area. Turn around and go right back to stealing again. The illusion cantrip can help reposition the room to find an opening and I go into turn mode and just start grabbing everything.

I’m just here to master the normal difficulty lmao I just beat easymode and I’m honestly kinda proud about that so now it’s time to actually understand the game better

on your Potion maker, pick up long strider from wizard. 1 rogue for expertise, then cleric for aid AND enhance ability (for advantage on the checks). and now it's your aid/longstrider/potion bot. at 8 you do 2wiz/3bard/3cleric and you have max spell slots

In honor mode, you can’t abuse save-loading, but you can absolutely abuse respeccing. Not sure if you’ll get hag’s hair? Respec if you get it. Not sure if you’ll trigger mirror of loss? Respec your character to a 20 Int bard with religion expertise and cast enhance ability and guidance, then Respec back once you get the buff. Etc etc.

Playing tactician currently, running a gloomstalker, assassin, sword bard and my character has an ac of 24, the build is going nuts.

Moonbeam/Sanctuary build is OP for honormode. You can use/move moonbeam while you're in sanctuary, without breaking it. There are also a lot of items that have aoe effects like blood of lathander mace you can put on your sanctuary character, so they walk around blinding/illuminating people, and they can't attack you cuz you're in sanctuary. ALSO, gale heals himself whenever he's not in your party...so you have him cast warding bond on your main tank(make gale a cleric) and then leave him in your camp, so he can take the warding bond dmg and then heal himself back up(max his con) and that makes a HUGE difference in how much that tank can tank. Also....build a beefy tank that takes all the damage, and then make a kind of glass cannon type character that uses invis/fog/greater invis, to keep them from being a target or to escape if they become a target. And then with your sanctuary moonbeam character....you have 2 damage characters that basically can't be targeted, and one character that tanks everytrhing. A great build for tank is going the luminous tank route. where when they miss you, you do 1d4 radiant dmg in an aoe around you. put on blur/mirror image/shield spell/lucky feat, and you can basically make sure they always miss. as they group up around you and 10 characters all miss you back to back, thats 10d4 radiant dmg that radiates from you hitting everything thats grouped up on you. Additionally, you can use the polearm/sentinel with the radiant polearm you get for saving the nightsong, to do/stack more radiant dmg, at range. Basically, super specializing each of your characters is huge. jack of all trades isn't as helpful(unless you're going a dex bard for steal/face to make sure you pass all possible checks) you want someone who can super tank and someone who can super buff and someone who can super damage. ANd you want to reduce the luck from the game. get the lucky feat, get the shield spell, get the portent dice, anything that helps you reroll or pick a different outcome for yourself. OH! Half orc race is very good also. They have the racial ability of coming back to life if they die, do extra dmg when they crit, and dark vision. And a super charismatic half-orc is AWESOME! lolol

WOW, i always forgot to use hirelings now it makes sense !

Ok FINE. Second video I’ve watched of yours (the “upfront knowledge” speech is recognizable lol). I haven’t played honor mode and tbh I’m the kinda clown to never play the game and stay in Act one for 12 playthroughs but now I’m subscribed for if I ever do finally start an honor run.

I'm on my 4th HM run. Githyeeted at level 5. Swords bard as a party face means I get persuasion, sleight of hand, two-weapon fighting and two one-handed crossbows with sharpshooter. By level 4 my max damage in one turn can be about 50. Dearh warding everybody in my camp as well. For context, I use easy mode even when I'm taking a leak, that's how good bg3 is.

A good DPS build is a Palock pact of the blade. You will have three attacks by end of act 2. Warlock spell slots refill on a short rest. Have a bard in the party for song of rest. Have someone be able to cast haste. That’s a possible 6 smites. With the right equipment and positioning, you can almost one shot any enemy/boss in the game. And if not you can gain two more smites back and do it again. Also CAMP CLERICS. Just like having a camp alchemist. Get some camp clerics and max their HP as much as possible. You only need them to cast bonding ward and aid. Do this after every long rest and you’ll have extra hp, all damage is reduced by half and make sure someone can cast long strider so everyone has that extra movement. These are all things allowed in the game. Some think it’s cheating, but it’s a work smarter not harder kind of thing.

No comment for this video. Thanks for all your videos!

Another easy way to heal. Have a hireling be a druid and just make goodberries and use Longstrider after each long rest. Good berries help with little bit of healing and heal some effects

I'm working on my honor mode now, and the one letting me down is shadowhart her damage is just disappointing and crowd control is lackluster. I'm gonna have to figure out a better build soon.

Maximizing trade: if you plan on killing that merchant: Meet them ASAP Sell them a container Put all their inventory in the bag every day. This refreshes gold and items. Pull after every long rest until you killed them. We're doing a coop evil durge honor run, we have a combined 20k and we haven't even gone to the creche yet, and we still have a combined 38k we need to sell. In the meantime, vacuum, sell what you can, buy what you need, steal what you can, bag everything, kill, profit🤷‍♂️

On honor mode for Xbox. If you think you will lose, reload save. If you do die, do not quit your game or load menu. Immediately go to dashboard and press pause on BG3, manage game and add on, and then open save data and (console only) delete your local save and restart. Upon syncing your save file you should have a perfectly fine save that is not compromised. You can back up the save on PC in many different ways. I’m sure PlayStation has many methods of this too and it will work similar to PS save avoidance techniques but haven’t tested any. The moment you die, your cloud save isn’t yet overwritten.

Currently act 2. Im running sorcadin Tav, Life Shart, Abjuration Gale, and Open Hand Lae zel or Throw Karlach. Only close call so far was Balthasar. Ghouls paralysed 2 chars right off the bat. Had to use almost all my potions to finish the fight 😂

A 12fighter/edlritch knight using radiant polearm and polearm master/sentinel with all the luminous armor/equipment is an extremely potent tank that still dishes out a lot of damage, while being a tank. the blur and mirror image spells are a MUSTinvis and greater invis are HUGE. there is a LOT of equipment in act 1 that you can build around, that you can effectively use all the way to the end of the game. ALSO, keep one of your 4 party members in camp...if one of your players isn't even there... you can't TPK. Resurrect them, then steal the gold back from withers. besides, making one of your party members a super buff spell monster, is a great way to economize your team, so all your members going into the fight can be full damage monsters to make short work of a fight, instead of having a bunch of turns taken up healing/buffing, etc. There is also an amazing dual wielding abj wizard tank that uses like 4 multiclasses to be extremely OP. Look into that build. and there is a super bard/rogue build that firesparks has that is extremely potent as well. Titanstring bow is OP ASFK. I'm using it now and it is just one shotting everything in act 1 on tactician. lol

I never did the Raph fight on my balanced or tac run, but I obliterated him with ease in my HM run… that bath that allows you to restore all your spell slots allowed me to maximise all my buffs to the extreme… plus shadow monk is OP

Also another probably more well known tip: Having a wizard or some spell casing hireling that can cast Longstrider on your entire party is huge. Its a ritual spell that is just free 3m of movement that lasts until long rest. It doesnt sound like much but that little bit of movement can mean the difference between being able to hit something or hiding to avoid being in LoS to avoid being hit. Also, in regards to save scum, you kind of can, though its not as easy as just reloading the last save and you have to reload the whole game. Do you need to do a full long rest or can you long rest without using food? I know you can respec basically for free with withers because you can just steal from him, but if you can just long rest without actually using food that would be my preference rather than just respecing/leveling.

Vendors: I was really puzzled lately when I realized that my Seldarine Drow did get far worse prices at vendors than any other party member -- despite not having bad charisma. She had basically a discount of 0%, where others had 14% or more. I think, you have to live with it, when you are a Seldarine. I think, Laezel also does not get so favorable prices, maybe better let the High Elf make the deals ....

Something that you did kinda show in this video but I don’t think you actually mentioned is the importance of initiative. In regular DnD initiative is already important - if you can kill an enemy or shut them down before they can do anything, you reduce the danger in any encounter by a ton. In BG3 this is exacerbated by two big factors. (1) Initiative is rolled on a d4 instead of a d20, which almost completely negates variance and makes the Alert feat basically guarantee that you go first, and (2) you know the enemy’s AC, you know their saving throws and you know how much HP they have left, which means you can choose which enemy you want to kill or shut down and know your odds with almost perfect accuracy. If you add surprise rounds to this (which is not super hard to achieve) or use one or two rounds to precast your 10-turn buffs, you trivialize all non-boss and non-scripted encounters the game can throw at you.

Honor mode tip: Barrelmancy cheese boss fights if you just want the achievement and don't care about the gameplay

Good stuff

Seems like it would be wise, when you're doing the halfling hireling thing, instead of randomly clicking through the feats, to use the ASIs to get their wisdom stat to max.

About the Herbalist Hireling: If you are at least level 8, go Wizard 4 Rogue 4 so you can grab 2 ASIs, push wisdom to 20 and get an even higher chance to pass that Medicine check.

One thing I’d say is don’t sleep on wizards they can learn spells from any scroll in the early game you can learn the scroll to summon shovel which is useful the whole game since he can go invisible for free and inflict the surprised effect on most enemies also the versatility of a wizard is crazy heck they can even tank a max level abjuration wizard is the best tank in the game and they also help the team by reducing damage to them using a reaction

Honor mode is probably the only mode where min-maxing is expected, _encouraged_ even. You don't need to do it, but when save-scumming is disabled, you gotta what you gotta do. Imo, you gotta try the mode at least once.

This video made me feel stupid because I died in Honor Mode with Grym when I could have just kept Asarion as an archer/bomber on the ledge above like Spartacus did. I even read about that but chose not to because the distance was outside the normal firing range of the character, and it seemed cheesy. But its just insurance. You really only need three characters and a summons if possible to get Grym with the hammer. I also realized too late I can use all but one of my characters as bait to get Grym on the center for the hammer -- only one has to survive. I didn't even know that Withers can rez a character without a body. I was bringing him the bodies. So thanks for the info for my next attempt! When I redid Grym in Custom right after, with all the right prep, I realized it was a totally unnecessary death. (Even though I know that Grym may not have the legendary abilities in custom like in Honor, but still it would have been easy).

Question around the 29 mark (action economy). How do you get say shadowheart to go first when you have iniative order?

You can dip a thief berserker into life cleric and they’re a pretty decent healer while holding their own

Invisibility potions are goated on honor mode lol got me out of tpk 2 times

Just wondering: could you actually throw Potion of Everlasting Vigour on the ground to spread the effect to multiple characters in a Luality-style big-brain move? 🤔 Also; keep up the good work, Sparty! I discovered your channel through Turin's WH TW content years ago when he had abt. 6000 subs - and I love him and his style - but the adversity in the games you play is quickly making your channel my go-to for content from anything from Chaos Gate to BG3, Gladius, Darktide, D4, TW WH, etc. If I ever make it to CA (which I probably won't), I wanna buy you a beer. We have much to discuss. :) Greetings from Denmarkl! Now, back to my question: could you? Can you? :)

Thanks

I really should use hirelings. Coincidentally I just lost my honor mode, I got overconfident...that and I was experimenting with the cleric sorcerer storm build. I think I'll do a pure sorcerer for my third attempt. Quick question, how did you find spells like Disguise self, speak with animals, etc. Where they a must have for you or did you rely on potions/scrolls for them?

Good tips

Basically all you need are elixirs, invisibility potions, hirelings, and good team composition

I’m curious, haven’t tried it yet, but does Steam have any protection against people sharing save files for easy honor dice?

For an alchemy bot you don't need rogue, bard is fine and that way it can cast enhance ability on itself (I use shadowheart so i don't want to waste her spell slots on this), you do want to use shadowheart or someone else to cast guidance though, and of course craft everything while in turn based mode.

I’m almost done with my first tactician run! I just killed Raphael with minimal casualties.