Baldur’s Gate 3is a ridiculously complex game. It has 11 races, 31 subraces, 12 classes, 46 subclasses, over 600 spells, and a seemingly infinite number of ways the story can play out depending on how you handle main quests, side quests, companion quests, and your optional battle with the Dark Urge. Combat encounters can be just as multifaceted, as your characters bring all the differences listed above in with them, and have any number of spells and items at their disposal. You could connect one of your party members to a baddie with Witch Bolt, deal surefire damage to several different goons with a round of Magic Missiles, or knock a redcap on their arse with Tasha’s Hideous Laughter. You could push a goblin to their death with a well-placed shove, cause poison damage by coating your sword, or sever the chain holding up a chandelier to drop it on a worg’s head.
TheRPGoffers so many options that it can feel a little wrong when you find one strategy that works for you and want to stick with it. It does a good job of pushing you out of these habits, throwing well-designed encounters at you that make you reconsider your tried-and-true tactics. Still, when I hit a battle that really tests my skills, I know that I have one technique in my back pocket that can almost always turn the tides in my favor: lighting everything on fire.
There are plenty of ways to make sure you always have some pyrotechnics at your disposal. The foundation of my firebending is my wizard player character’s Grease spell which can coat a sizable area in slippery fat. I also try to keep some grease bottles on hand, which any of my other characters can chuck in a pinch. Once the ground is as slick as my fingers after eating a bucket of fried chicken, I simply cast Fire Bolt or Burning Hands, and watch the world burn. Alchemist’s Fire, a magical molotov, is another key consumable. It isn’t always possible due to how heavy they are, but having a barrel or two of Firewine in your inventory is a nice bonus. Consider this an Enji Todoroki starter kit.
My flame skills were put to full use last weekend as, after a dozen-plus hours in the Shadow-Cursed Lands, I returned to the Githyanki creche beneath Rosymorn Monastery to wrap up a story thread I had left dangling much earlier in my playthrough. I had completed much of this section already, but had decided to abandon it for the time being when I realized that I wasn’t tough enough to fight Ch’r’ai W’wargaz and his Githyanki gang. And Iwouldneed to fight them because the character I’m playing wasn’t willing to risk upsetting Shadowheart by giving up her precious artifact.
Now at level six, I cut through Ch’rai W’wargaz and co. quickly, which I expected. But, from this deep in the creche, I didn’t have the option to fast travel or long rest, and as I walked out onto the bridge that led back to the main fortress, several enemies were waiting to stop me while I had hardly a spell slot to my name. Still, I tried this encounter several times and failed each one. As I’ve written elsewhere, this kind of trial and error doesn’t bother me in Baldur’s Gate 3, because mastering a tough encounter makes me feel like a strategic genius. It’s my Napoleon simulator. Unlike Napoleon, my strategy almost always involves lighting everything on fire, and this battle was no exception.
The battle was set on that bridge, which seemed like a perfect bottleneck. The difficulty arose when I found that some of my enemies could teleport across the battlefield, andallof my enemies were fast. I needed to hit them with fire right at the beginning of their trek across the bridge and keep them burning as they went. So, I busted out the Grease and cast the spell several times to coat the whole bridge. It took several tries to make sure I was close enough to my enemies to cast grease on the ground in front of them but notsoclose that they got aggroed and started running toward me.
Eventually, I nailed it, and had them trudging through embers while my wizard PC and Karlach waited for them to reach us. As they went, all of them took a bunch of damage from the dancing flames. When one of the warriors I had had the most trouble with in earlier attempts finally reached me, we were close enough to the edge that Karlach easily pushed them to their death. After dispatching the vanguard, Karlach and I retreated to the chamber where we had fought Ch’rai W’wargaz and, with Lae’zel and Shadowheart, picked the rest off one by one. By the time they reached us, they were charred husks of their former selves and we won the day.
All of that was only possible because of the immense power of fire. If all you had in battle were swords and sorcery, fights like this could easily become unfair. But Larian lets you throw everything that isn’t nailed down at your enemies. That’s what makes the game great. But I’d still be happy if all I could throw was fat and fire.
NEXT:Playing Baldur’s Gate 3 As A New Class Is A Whole New Game
