I Wish I Knew These Tips Before Starting Baldur's Gate 3 

just a reminder to always click next to your companion when you throw healing potions. Otherwise you can actually kill them with it. Trust me, i've done the "testing"

The game explicitly says that any source of light will help against the shadows, but nothing other than the special lanterns will keep it away forever. So, I just did what I naturally thought was right: Shadowheart hold the Blood of Lathander, cast Daylight on Karlach's weapon, and cast Light on Astarion's weapon and mine. We were so bright it completely ruined the entire mood of every cutscene in hilarious ways. When we first met the Harpers, they were peering around trying to spot us behind a tree, when we were a walking nova of light; then they were nervously looking around for the shadow beasts when I could see them all perfectly fine. I'm sure the scene was meant to be dark and moody and scary, but everything was brighter than midday and the entire effect was hilariously ruined.

Can we point out, that there is no long intro and only necessary text for each section? This video is golden, thank you. Content and how the video is done is 10/10

You can start digging even if you didn't pass the Survival check. Just right-click on the shovel and point around. Or, if you remember from your previous walkthrough, then you click, where to dig.

There's another big thing about turn-based mode. If you just walk around and initiate combat. For example you shoot an arrow at someone, you will have used your action on this attack, so when your initiative comes up, that specific character will not be able to use another action this round. While if you use turn-based mode and then initiate the combat by attacking, you will still have your full action when your turn comes up in the initiative order. So when you are about to initiate combat, turn-based mode essentially gives you a free action.

Pick up every backpack. Pick up pouches too. I put all the vendor trash in one backpack. All the potions, arrows, and AoE throwables in a pouch, although this requires you to manually stack items, so these may be best left in the open inventory. Also, odd bits of items I want to keep on hand go into a third bag. If the bag of vendor trash gets too heavy, just send it to camp and start filling up a new one. Rinse and repeat until you get to a vendor. A trip or two to camp to fetch all the bags and you're golden.

Additional tip to the small holes tip: For the ones you listed for cat and gaseous form, you can also use Mage Hand to get through them. I don't know how often this is useful, however in the Underdark there's a mage's tower that has a locked door at the bottom of it, and a burrow hole nearby. Using mage hand allows you to move the hand into the hole and use the lever by the door to open it.

Quick note you can’t “always” go back to your camp. If the area you’re in had the minimap highlighted red then it’s an area that locks you out of going to camp and fast travel. Usually hostile story points.

My favorite interaction is that if you take the dual weilder feat on a caster, you can have them equip two of the cool quarterstaves you can find and use the bonuses of each. It makes it one of the best feats in the game for casters just for that reason.

You can progress camp encounters without consuming camp supplies by having partial rests.

Something else I don't remember seeing a lot of people talking about is that throwing potions has a small AoE. If you huddle your party very, very closely together and throw potions on the ground in the middle of them, one potion can heal all 4 characters. This is especially useful early game where you don't have a lot of spells and you're being given basic health potions out the wazoo. It can be useful late game as well since you can forgo memorizing healing spells in lieu of buffs or damage.

FYI: The vendor price modifier is not CHA (at least not directly,) it is the Persuasion skill (which is based on CHA.) Use the character with the highest Persuasion skill. Due to the many ways this skill could be boosted, like Expertise, you might find that your best commerce character (Bard or Pally with high Persuasion) is not the character with the highest CHA score (Sorc or Warlock who ignored Persuasion.)

If you use that “secret” trade window with Volo, you can buy a magic ring from him which gives the bless spell to anyone that the character wearing it heals. This includes throwing healing potions.

Your tip on marking vendors on the map was excellent. Thank you. I don’t think anyone else has mentioned that tip before.

Do not leave attacks of opportunity on automatic. For example when undeads flee after Turn Undead you might not want them to drop the Turned status by the mage automatically hitting them for 1 damage.

3:57 Minor correction: No loot is destroyed when you break a chest. However, traps triggered by this action may and do destroy it. Additionally, some non-chest containers loose their content when destroyed.

You can automatically collect all alchemy/camping supplies in your inventory by dragging either the camp supply bag/alchemy bag off your inventory--->drop it to another character inv.-->then drop it back down to your inv. as soon as you drop it back, it sucks in all the items in the appropriate bag.

Most OP trick here, some NPCs grant an aura, you can kill them and carry their bodies to gain and stack said auras.

Great video, I actually learned a lot. One remark in regards to jumping: You can jump past enemies without triggering attack of opportunity, but if you are already in range of it, jumping away will still trigger the attack.

Because a few people have mentioned it, the game warns you if you have too few supplies in your inventory when you go to rest, but when you actually go click the campfire they will show up!

I'm 80 hours in and this video just made me realize Gale could have been using a shield the whole time

Mage Hand can also go into burrow holes, but it wears off quickly, so it's best to use it in turn based mode.

Another tip for ranged characters: Even if you do not want to use your melee set, it makes sense to have a shield equipped there. You may only run around with your (cross-)bow, but the shield still gives you +2 to your AC. Or even more if you equip better shields.

At 3:40 you are talking about saving thief tools by smashing things. Thief tools and trap tools are only consumed when you fail at lock picking/disarming, a other little tip. Great video.

Important tip that you missed. During dialogs with a potential enemy/bosses, sometimes, game allows you to chose other party members and reposition them before the fight starts e.g. get your melee closer to emenies or get the high ground for ranged/casters.

I was missing a lot of good loots because I shoved boss enemies to their death. 🤣

From experience I find it's best to have all reactions on 'Ask' setting because there are niche moments where you may not want to use even an opportunity attack for example.

Note: Daylight on your items is a nice way to deal with low visibility in Act 2, however, note that extra casts of Daylight will make everything WAY TOO BRIGHT and actually lower your visibility (as a player). Learned this the hard way. 😫😫

Was worried this was just clickbait and obvious stuff, but it's genuinely really useful and most of these I didn't know or wasn't sure about, even as someone about to finish their second playthrough on tactician. You can get by without these but my god, is it nice knowing them.

You can give away junk (cups, spoons, forks etc.) in bulk to traders (via barter) you want to use regularly to increase their attitude towards you. And you can give them in gold as a gift. It's around 6-8 gold for every point of attitude depending on level and persuasion. [EDIT: definitely level dependant so 6-8 when you're level 3-4 and it goes all the way up to level 12 where you're spending 45gp per attitude point so more worth doing at lower levels] 600-800 gold for 100 attitude and a 20% discount from that merchant. So if you hoard trinkets to sell - maybe don't and use them to boost your attitude with a trader you want to use all the time. And if you do spend gold to buy their favour - you can always pickpocket the merchant and get your money back.

Here's a tip: Drop your healing potions for alternative ways to use them. What do I mean by this? Place a healing potion by someone's feet and then break it. Get your placement right and they'll heal off it when you do. But why bother? Because now you can dual wield and break it with your bonus action, allowing anyone to heal other's with a bonus action. Or maybe you don't need all of your Eldritch Blasts to land on a baddie and can spare one for a heal. Maybe all three of your friends are dying but you can't sacrifice any potential damage, well they'll survive a fireball, but those potions at their feet won't. Extra hint/ warning with dropping potions, npcs are aware that they are there. An allied npc will run up and lob a potion at anyone who needs it, which can turn even a weak escort quest npc into something useful. Obviously any hostiles around can steal whatever you drop as well, so be careful.

About changing spells. Some classes, like Druid, Wizards and Clerics can change their prepared spells at any time outside of combat. But for others like Bard and Sorcerer, your spell list is limited to those you chose during level up. Those classes offer you to swap one spell every time you level.

That zombie in the trunk tip is so clever!

The rationale I have against karmic dice, is that most enemies have multiple actions in a turn. This means they are frequently rolling many more diverse than we are, resulting in better benefits for them than us. It may be minuscule, but it's very nice when they start missing all those extras

For the light problem I recommend using the “Light Cantrip” on a physical attacker, so they shed light, that way they can attack normally and doesn’t cost either a hand or an action (lasts until Long rest too)

The long rest thing is quite funny to mention. I had basically no story progression on my characters in act 1 on tactician, because I rarely needed any long rests so i met the dream visitor just shortly before I went on to act 2 XD

Just gonna hop in and add to the Long Rest point: You can take long rests without using camp supplies, that way no resources are consumed. you don't get any spells slots back but the stories will progress and events are moved forward.

My choice for breaking doors and such is Eldritch Blast. May not break things in one go but when you're not in combat it doesn't really matter.

Thowing pots causes them to AoE heal as well. If you can spare the action, you can heal multiple allies instead of only one with a single pot

I cannot believe Karmic Dice is enabled by default and never mentioned... Now I understand how my spellcasters kept missing on easy enemies even with advantage... I did an entire playthrough with no idea the option even existed!

Man, this is the first "tips" video i find useful. Really well made and you seem like a really good producer. So you got a like and a follow, keep up the good work.

Another trick I found out is taking chest out in the world and sending them to camp. You can get infinite extra storage space in your travel chest which you can organize items into so you can hoard everything.

I dont know why but man the "Its free real estate" really got me haha

Trade is easier than barter, but with barter you can raise the merchant’s disposition and get discount prices.

As a note about the Karmic Dice setting. For enemies it makes their rolls more favorable too which on most characters you won't noticed it that much. But in particular on Magic characters, and on high AC characters you will notice it a TON. Ever wonder why those enemy tanks with swords and shields will fold like paper when you have karmic dice on? Its because it also affects AC rolls, meaning your 24 AC super tank will get hit just as often as your 14 AC paper boy. As for the magic users, instead rolling your characters attack against an enemies AC (meaning karmic dice is in your favor) the enemy will instead roll their stat (mentioned on the spell) for a save, meaning the karmic dice is in their favor. This is why all your spells are missing. After turning Karmic Dice off, the rolls are notably far more varied and more importantly, both mine and the enemies high AC tanks will actually avoid hits like they should. Honestly Karmic Dice should NOT be on by default at all. Edit: Oh yeah should also be noted that Karmic dice, despite sounding like it should sway rolls both positively and negatively, will ONLY sway them positively. Seriously if you are up against a high AC super tank (or have one in your party) turn karmic dice off and watch how long it takes to actually hit them. Which is the way it SHOULD be, why be a tank if you are gonna get hit just as often as a 10 AC wizard.

That Gear Interface was actually a pretty recent addition so it's no surprise that you just found out about it. I believe Larian added this during their latest update patch. 🙂 Also, loot is never destroyed when you break a chest. Loot can only get destroyed by secondary effects like traps going off in their vicinity. So your Barbarian can happily smash chests to kindling with their battleaxe and no loot would be lost. Good tip on sending corpses to camp though. The only reason I didn't make a necromancer was because of needing corpses but this definitely makes things a whole lot easier. So on my next playthrough I'm definitely going to send all corpses to camp for a nice selection of undead servants! +1

Careful when throwing potion on allies. You can kill them with the bottle damage.

Great tips. I just figured out the corpse in a box for animating after I beat balanced. You can drop things on the ground like healing potions and use mage hand to burn its actions throwing them for heals. Also if you have characters close together and throw the potion between them just right it affects both. Potion of speed in the middle of your characters and suddenly you have haste on everyone for a single potion. Takes planning. Larian is infamous for Barrelmancy. Hoard explosive barrels in camp chest. Go to a potential fight that is currently neutral. Stand next to your target. Pop in & out of camp and surround them with say oil barrels. Then to start the fight Firebolt a barrel and a chain reaction of death will end the fight quickly.

Related to the tip at 1:28, on Controller you can select multiple items using R2

One thing I learned the hard way: When a certain beef-boy, a certain hunk decides to join your party in act 2, you are not able to leave the area anymore without him leaving your party forever. At that point you are not allowed to backtrack into act 1 content anymore :/

Shove is even *more* useful if you consider that you can use it on allies, too. You can shove an ally out of an enemie's melee range or shove them out of damaging AOEs. Additionally, if you have a very strong character, you can probably shove a low strength ally further than they can jump. For example, a 21 STR Barbarian can shove an 8 STR Rogue over a chasm the Rogue couldn't jump. This can be very important for positioning in fights or using specific shortcuts.

Thank you so much for making this!! A lot of these I had no clue about or just a vague idea without the ideal understanding to apply. I just got the game last week and the learning curve is definitely a bit more steep than most games I've played, but it's folks like you making videos like these that make it more attainable. KUDOS!! The footage you chose with your voice over was super helpful in illustrating your points so thanks so much for taking that extra time selecting that.

3:26 it's always especially useful if they are npcs you're going to fight because they'll no longer be able to use the items you bought from them in combat (such as throwing objects, drinking potions, etc.)

Ah, so there is a sell wares button! So many great tips, thanks!

The best tips video for a game I've ever watched. Tons of information, packed in tightly, all of it very useful. Thanks!

I've started 4 playthroughs already. The farthest I've gotten so far is about 1/3 of the way through Act 2. And there were still several things in here I haven't discovered yet. Great tips!

You can use shove also to wake up a sleeping ally, learned it by watching the enemies do it lol

One other crucial tip for you guys : When in conversation with someone.. you can switch to other characters and they can move freely. For example I did this to completely skip the fight with Balthazar.

THANK YOU for this video! I'm on Act 3 and I am now so excited to replay it back after completing the game!

Marking the math for vendors is so genius I’ve never thought of that. Thank you sir.

You can store gunpowder/firewine/oil barrels in your camp too..if you have the chance to set up before a fight you can take out everyone sometimes in one attack. Like the main boss in the goblin camp. You can get a ton of them in the room next to Gut.

with the reactions one, i'd actually advise the opposite. always have reactions ask before using. you only get one reaction per round and dont want it wasted on one thing if theres a better option (like using oppertunity attack on a high hp target if you might get to use it on a lower hp target, or casting counterspell on a weak damage spell instead of a cc effect spell that'll wreck your party). its wise to have it always ask so you get to decide on whats important enoughto use a reaction on

I am glad for the Karmic dice enlightnment, I rummaged through the settings on my first playthrough and saw that option leaving it on as I thought all it'd do was prevent losing streaks (in a way it does) but it also hurts you a TON in the long run, and it gets most frustrating when you know the results will be bad after a successfull one while also murdering many advantages from your skill points. That will make rolling the dice much more better now (and probably combat will be a little less annoying)

Note you still need Trap Tools and SoH proficiency due to traps. If you destroy a Trapped chest you detonate it and potentially destroy the loot within. This can lock you out of some quest. Even if you don't want to Lockpick or Pickpocket you still need Slight of Hand Proficiency.

2:55 I REALLY dislike the fact that u can use Disguise Self to fit smaller openings, when it's an ILLUSION... essentially makes Disguise Self a humanoid version of Wild Shapes, and that's pretty OP for what it is.

The most useful practical tips that I have seen so far. Thanks.

You can drop a water at gales feet or any other target to get lightning charges (free action), then use offhand hand xbow to break the water, then cast a lightning spell for double damage. More if they're wearing metal armor. Simple chromatic orbs can proc up to almost a 100 dmg.

The sleep spell is only limited by HP. Some vendors have low HP. 5 finger discount is part of the game. Astarion has like +17 sleight of hand with the right gear and advantage on Dex checks. Failing on a sleeping target only costs you one turn. In other words with an average cost of one lvl 1 spell slot I can steal even the most expensive stuff, like magic armors that cost several thousand.

This might be a little different, but if you install mods that add any items to the game. DO NOT uninstall them or it will break the run. Since the game does not replace missing items with empty slots, it will cause errors. I think someone said that if you drop and destroy the items it should be fine, but needs to be tested.

The problem with karmic dice is that it trains you to think that what you have previously rolled will affect what you are going to roll. It reinforces the gambler's fallacy. So, what this really means is you can no longer believe the difficulty class; meaning, if it says the difficulty class is 10, which is slightly better than 50/50, it actually is not, because it depends on what you previously have rolled. This is bad on so many levels, but most importantly it's bad because it fundamentally fools you into believing that you are gaming the system when in fact you are not. It is far better to trust the RNG and the natural difficulty class. I could write a whole article on this, but I'm too lazy :)

I didn't learn anything new, but you're spot on with the ones you listed. Well done!

The karmic dice effecting enemies is definitely a thing, I've tested it with 32ac and the amount of crits the enemies were getting just to hit me was about 50% as opposed to the 5% it should be.

my biggest tip is to take Shadowheart with you on your playthrough❤️

Thanks man helps alot. Iv been struggling on learning this game and your tips helped

Bonus advice for shove: be aware that while you can shove enemies off into chasms and such, you are effectively throwing away any loot they had, so be sure that it's worth it.

its not recommended to rest a lot for a long time, some missions can be solved without your presence

Vendor prices are based on the persuation skill, not just charisma.

That tip about using disguise self to utilize the burrow holes is amazing. It doesn't work that way in D&D, its just a visual illusion and even has restrictions on how much taller or shorter you can make yourself. I'd never have considered it was more of a transmutation in bg3.

Probably the best collection of tips for this game I've seen so far.

Point 12. Loot can get destroyed in chests with traps!

Most useful BG3 tips video I have seen! Not just the generic CRPG tips. This is very useful!

Actual, genuine, useful and uncommon knowledge for most of these points! Thank you! Most videos like these will be like “you can swap party members at camp” or “using your map to find quests can be very helpful” but shipping bodies to camp!? Disguising then using reduce spell to go into small entries? Hell yah

The biggest one i figured near the end of my first playthrough is using your Hireling as a Transmutation Wizard with stacked Int, Wisdom and Medecine proficiency. It can be any of then since the default Wizard Hireling doesn't come with Medecine proficiency so you have to respec him anyway. This has multiple benefits : 1 : You can use him as your Alchemist NPC which will make the feature significantly more useful. You'll be swimming in more potions, potions and elixirs than you'll know what to do with if you're very diligent with picking up stuff on the ground. Even if you're not big on using consumables, you can sell all that stuff for a ton of gold. Some NPCs also sell a ton of alchemy mats that you can flip for a profit this way. 2 : it makes exploration a lot easier. Just stack him with Jump, Fly, Dimension Door, Knock Enlarge/Reduce etc. Dungeon crawling becomes a breeze. Make sure to give him the Dungeon Delver feat for good measures. Yes the character gonna suck hard in combat but most random encounters are pretty trivial with just 3 party member even on Tactician so you can just have him cast Invis on himself, or keep him backline just firing Scorching Rays. Obviously once you're done exploring a dungeon go to camp and replace him with a good combat companion before any boss fights or long encounters. But yeah this made what i considered a completely useless feature into a really useful one for me.

that was a very nice video. a lot of information put together as short as possible yet still very informative. Even though half of it i did know allready , i do think as a collection of wisdom it was very helpfull . thank you .

You can use the throwing of health potions out of combat to heal more than one character. You can get all 4 if you move them close together. It works for some others like invisibility, too.

Excellent tips!

I learned new things with your video today, I appreciate it! Thanks you

Nice short succint clear and timespaced. Amazing. A sub coming your way

Great stuff! I’m just starting!

Sooooo many great tips! Thanks so much for sharing these. 😀

I've watched a lot of BG3 content in the last 24 hours for useful info and this video is the only one that hasn't recycled the same 10 dumb tips in a 10 minute video. This is the one. Thanks.

This was the most insanely useful tips video ever!

Something about jumping; it goes off your character's strength and I'm pretty sure it's a bonus action. I use it frequently because you can essentially 'force' a character to jump a distance, and get right next to an enemy, they couldn't normally reach with normal movement range in combat.

I had no idea that you can change what gets added to your hotbar. Great video man!

"I sure hope you haven't been throwing away gold by trading on your eight charisma barbarian." Me: Psh, no. He has ten charsima.

These are all amazing tips which I rarely see in the popular bg3 tips videos. About 60 hours in and I've figured almost all these myself. Would've been nice and saved me a ton of I saw em before when I watched multiple watch before you play videos

Thank you for the tips!

Regarding the chest smashing: this is probably a bug and don't happen every time of course, but I've encountered a situation once when some of the items that fell out of the chest disappeared after a couple of seconds. Reading community posts on Steam some people report that items can sometimes clip through the floor. So, use chest smashing at your own risk.

To add to the first tip on supplies to be sent back to camp. Carry two camp supply bags. When it starts to get heavy send the whole bag with all the supplies in it at once. Then next time you go to camp for a long rest empty the bags you sent back and take the empty ones back out with you. Just makes the process faster saves a bit of time.

Quite a few useful tips that I didn't yet know (started playing a week ago). Some I already knew or have been using, but others, like keeping camp supplies, corpses and stackable crates in your camp is a cool idea I'll start using, among other things. I also never noticed Gale had shield proficiency, so I'll make sure to give him a shield too.