An Early Baldur’s Gate 3 Quest Is Hiding A Weapon Of Mass Destruction (2024)

Baldur's Gate 3 features a lot of powerful ways to deal damage, but most of them aren't available early on. Like its tabletop Dungeons & Dragons inspiration, Baldur's Gate 3 features fairly aggressive level scaling, with characters unlocking wildly effective magical attacks and repeated martial blows as they progress through the game. Even when resources are limited, however, some creativity can go a long way, and one quest found near the beginning happens to feature an object that can be turned into a tool capable of devastating enemies.

One of the earliest memorable encounters in Baldur's Gate 3 is the run-in with owlbears in Act One. Owlbears are iconic DnD creatures that can be dangerous at low levels thanks to a tendency toward aggression that manifests through beak and claw attacks, and depending on how the scene plays out, the Owlbear mother found in a Baldur's Gate 3 cave is no exception. The owlbears aren't the only interesting thing in the cave, however, with a gilded chest dedicated to the goddess Selûne also standing out as a tempting bit of loot.

The Gilded Chest Can Be A Powerful BG3 Weapon

Goblins Don't Fare Well Against This One

Unlike the average chest found in the world of Faerûn, the Selûnite chest is only meant to be accessible to the devout. Opening it requires the reading of a Selûnite Prayer Book that can be found behind a statue nearby, which undoes a magical seal that can't be lock-picked through more mundane means. Attempting any crude method of opening the chest quickly backfires on the would-be thief, hitting them with an explosive effect that deals a decent chunk of damage, at least as far as low-level health goes.

Even picking up the chest requires the character to be a Selûnite cleric, which isn't the default state for any party member. It does, however, raise the interesting question of what a Selûnite cleric might be able to do with it. YouTube creator MarTayTay tested out this possibility by making Astarion into a convert and removing the chest from the cave, and despite a hiccup along the way, this method did ultimately prove that the gilded chest can be a powerful Baldur's Gate 3 weapon in the right hands.

The tricky part of using the gilded chest is that even a Selûnite cleric can't effectively use it as a straight-up improvised weapon, as the damage immediately backfires on whoever attempts to strike an enemy with the chest. If NPCs can be convinced to touch the chest of their own accord, however, it's still capable of punishing only those who truly deserve it. The perfect place to pull this off is the goblin camp, which is full of characters who, while not hostile to the party by default, are happy to kill nearby druids and tieflings with no remorse.

How Weaponizing The Gilded Chest In BG3 Works

A Convoluted Method Is Still Easy To Pull Off

If a party member carrying the chest sells it to a goblin trader and then steals it back without others noticing, the chest will register as a stolen item, a surprisingly useful trait in this scenario. Placing the stolen chest on the ground in the goblin camp means that nearby NPCs will attempt to retrieve it, inadvertently sending themselves to their doom. Since the goblins don't have particularly high health, the chest is capable of taking them out one-by-one, and it's a much safer way of doing so than attempting to fight everyone in a giant brawl.

Whether killing all the goblins is actually worth it is a separate question, and one that largely seems inconvenient while pursuing the thrill of discovery. It certainly isn't necessary, as even helping out the druid camp and rescuing Halsin can be achieved by focusing on the goblin leaders inside the Shattered Sanctum in the camp. Cleaning them out this way can make it easier to pull everything off, however, clearing out a path for unbothered extraction without having to rely on fast travel or run the risk of engaging an entire goblin horde in direct combat.

The Selûnite Chest Is Generally Useful In BG3

Some Valuable Contents Sweeten The Deal

There's also nothing theoretically stopping a party from deploying this weapon of mass destruction on other victims, even if the goblins are the most obvious choice. The druid camp in the Emerald Grove could be a good target for an unrepentantly evil playthrough, or the chest could be lugged further along for use in a later scenario. It's definitely at its most effective early on, as the damage it deals won't be as catastrophic to high-level NPCs, but some creative application could probably make it genuinely useful in the right situation even in a later act.

Weaponization isn't the only use for the Selûnite chest, and opening it to find out what's inside also pays dividends. The contents of the chest are a Selûnite rite, Silver Necklace , Bloodstone , Idol of Selûne, and the Moondrop Pendant . The Moondrop Pendant is especially enticing at this stage in the game, letting characters with low health avoid provoking opportunity attacks in battle without having to disengage. Anyone wanting to use the chest as a weapon will have to wait until afterward to access these, as the chest loses its explosive potential once it's been safely opened.

Using things in obviously unintended ways is one of the great charms of Baldur's Gate 3, and it's one area where the game manages to replicate the scrappy ingenuity of DnD surprisingly well. Not every attempt is going to pay off as effectively as using the Selûnite chest can, but taking the time to experiment can make any campaign more consistently exciting. Baldur's Gate 3 offers players a lot of freedom, and sometimes challenging that freedom into doing very silly things is the best way to use it.

Source: MarTayTay/YouTube

Baldur's Gate 3

Developed and published by Larian Studios, Baldur's Gate 3 is an upcoming role-playing game set to release in August of 2023. Players will create a character to embark on a large-scale journey and can do so solo or cooperatively with a friend. Combat is a turn-based style this time around.

RPG

Franchise

Baldur's Gate

Platform(s)

PC , macOS , PS5 , Xbox Series X

Released

August 3, 2023

Developer(s)

Larian Studios