Baldurs Gate 3 Act 1 Checklist: What to Do and in What Order

Most of the frustration around act 1 checklist comes from missing a prerequisite rather than from the fight itself.

Reading ahead spoils some of it; going in blind costs some of it. Pick which you mind less. A failed attempt usually leaves the world in a state you can still recover from. Where something depends on your platform or region, that is called out rather than glossed over.

Choices that matter later

Some outcomes are locked behind an earlier conversation rather than behind performance. A save immediately before the decision point costs nothing and occasionally saves hours. Where two approaches both work, the one with fewer moving parts is the one to keep. The game signals the requirement once, quietly, and never mentions it again.

Optional preparation is what separates a ten-minute attempt from a two-hour one. It helps to understand why a step exists, because then you can adapt it when your situation is slightly different. Difficulty settings change numbers here, not the sequence.

The part people get stuck on

If a step reads as obvious, do it anyway — the obvious ones are the ones people skip and then wonder about. There is usually a fast way and a reliable way, and it is worth knowing which one you are choosing. The developers have changed their mind about this at least once, which explains the older advice.

• Do not sell anything you picked up here until it is finished.
• Complete the optional preparation — it is the actual difficulty setting.
• Write down what you changed, so you can undo exactly one thing if it goes sideways.
• Note which choice you made, for later sections that reference it.
• Check your inventory against what the section demands.

Working through it

Do the cheap check before the expensive one — that ordering alone saves most of the frustration. If your result differs from what is described here, note what is different first rather than starting over. What follows assumes you are on a current install and have not modified it. There is no hidden trick here that the game is keeping from you.

Screenshots age faster than text, which is why this describes rather than shows. If you are coming to this after a long break, the terminology has probably moved on. The awkward part is rarely the step itself, it is knowing which step comes first.

Before you start

Nothing here assumes a particular playstyle beyond wanting the thing to work. Everything below is framed around the current state of Baldur's Gate 3 rather than a launch-week impression. Most of the disagreement you will find online is two people describing different builds.

Treat anything stated without a version number as provisional. The community wisdom on this is roughly half right, and the half that is wrong costs the most time. The short version is near the top on purpose; the reasoning is there if you want to know why.

If it goes wrong

Half the pages on this topic were written for a build that no longer exists, which is why they stop matching what you see. Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters. Baldur's Gate 3 is not shy about hiding useful information two menus deep, so some of this is simply knowing where to look.

Where people go wrong

• Grinding a method that was patched months ago because a thread still ranks well.
• Ignoring the platform-specific note and then wondering why the steps do not line up.
• Copying a setup wholesale from a streamer without understanding what each part does.

BG3 FAQ

Does difficulty change the outcome?

It changes the numbers, not the route. The steps described work at every setting.

I missed a step — is my save ruined?

Almost certainly not. Most of these have a recovery path, and where there is not, an earlier save covers it.

Is this still accurate after the latest Baldur's Gate 3 update?

The method is; individual numbers may not be. If a value on your screen differs, trust the screen and keep the sequence.

What if none of this works for me?

Then something in your setup differs from the assumption — version, region or platform. Check those three before anything else.

That is the whole of it — if something here stops matching Baldur's Gate 3, the game changed, not the method.