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Baldur’s Gate 3 has no day and night, no calendar and no clock on the screen, and yet it is full of things that run out. Companions leave, prisoners are hanged, a wizard’s chest grows hungrier, a grove is raided while you are elsewhere. All of it moves on one mechanism: the long rest. Nothing in the world advances until your party sleeps at camp, and when it does, spell slots come back, wounds close, and every timer in the game ticks once. That single fact organises the 570 pages we have written about the game, and it is where this hub starts.
The first three sections below are about the rest itself, what it gives back, what it moves forward, and the handful of doors it cannot reopen. After that, the eleven guides are placed by their relationship to that clock: the decisions you make before the first rest, the things that happen between rests, and the pages that sit outside the game altogether.
What a long rest gives back
A long rest at camp restores every spell slot and heals the party to full, and on Balanced difficulty it costs 40 camp supplies from the food and drink you have been picking up. On Tactician it costs 80, which our Tactician page treats as the setting’s real difficulty spike, since every enemy there has 30 percent more health than Balanced gives it and saves at +2. The mechanics guide sorts every system in the game by what it costs you, and the rest sits near the top of that ladder because it is the only way to recover slots for every class but the Sorcerer, whose points buy a slot back without sleeping.
The rest also gives back things you did not know you were owed. Once three Illithid parasites have been consumed, the next rest triggers the cutscene that opens the Illithid Powers tree. The Guardian who visits your dreams appears more often the more you rest. The Owlbear cub, if you spared it, arrives at camp over several nights. And every companion conversation that the game has queued, from Gale’s first request for a magic item to Lae’zel’s confession at the start of Act 2, is delivered at the campfire and nowhere else. The spells guide covers what the recovered slots buy at each level, and the rituals and cantrips that never needed a slot in the first place.
What a long rest moves forward
The same night that refills your slots ends things elsewhere. Our missable quests page lists the encounters that close on a rest: the Owlbear mother is dead and her cub taken by goblins after one, Gale asks for magic items after two, Karlach’s pursuers give up after an unknown number, Counsellor Florrick hangs after five in Act 3, and the Rivington ox and the Gazette basement resolve on their own. Approval moves the same way, in that a companion who watched you do something they hated will say so at the fire, and the companions guide sorts all ten by how many ways a rest or a decision can take them from you: five arrive on their own in the first hour, five must be fetched, and Minthara alone can be lost six ways.
Because resting is expensive in story terms, the change-party page recommends fast travelling to camp to swap members rather than resting there, and most of our walkthroughs tell you when a rest is safe. The quests guide sorts our 109 walkthroughs by how many endings each one has to cover, 57 with a single road, 39 that turn on one decision and 13 that branch three or more ways, and the branching ones are where a rest at the wrong moment costs the most, because the Grove, the Nightsong and the Emperor all resolve while you sleep.
The doors that do not reopen
Five thresholds close more than a quest, and the game warns you at each. Crossing the stone bridge into the Mountain Pass or taking the boat from the Underdark beach to Grymforge is the first, a soft lock that resolves the Grove and the Goblin Camp but still lets you walk back for other business. Entering the Shadow-Cursed Lands, by Elminster’s road or Grymforge’s elevator, closes Act 1 for good. Descending into the Shadowfell resolves the Moonrise prisoners and Isobel. Reaching Rivington after Ketheric ends Act 2. The last is a boat, the one that leaves for the Morphic Pool once every Netherstone is in hand. The regions guide sorts the nine areas we cover by how many roads lead in, and marks the two, the Creche and the Pool, whose only road runs one way.
Before the first rest: the decisions you make once
Character creation is the one screen the rest never touches, and four of our guides are about getting it right. The classes guide sorts the twelve classes by when each makes you commit to a subclass, at level 1 for a Cleric, Paladin, Sorcerer or Warlock, at level 2 for a Druid or Wizard, and at level 3 for the rest, and adds up the 46 subclasses along the way. Under it sit four standalone pages: classes explained, the reference sheet for all twelve; best classes for beginners, which puts the Wizard first because it learns from scrolls; the older best classes tier list, which puts the Fighter and Ranger first for players who want a class that works without reading; and best subclass for each class, one answer per class.
The builds guide takes the next decision, the three feat slots at levels 4, 8 and 12, and sorts all 59 builds by how many of those slots go to Ability Improvement; nine builds never take it and four take nothing else. The spells guide is the ladder from cantrips to level 6, showing which classes each list still covers as the levels climb, and it collects the spell standalones: best cantrips, which grow stronger at character levels 5 and 10 and at no other point; the level 1, level 2 and level 3 picks for each class; and the Eldritch Invocations, the Warlock’s substitute for a proper spell list. If the class turns out wrong, Withers rebuilds a character for 100 gold, and that is the only decision on this list the game lets you revisit.
Between rests: the world you are moving through
Everything else happens in the days between camps. The companions guide is built on the grid of our sub-pages, four for Astarion and Lae’zel up to eight for Shadowheart, and on the rule that only the five companions who can be missed have a recruit page. Its two standalones are the original companions guide, still the place for the five early-access starting sheets, and the companion tier list, which puts Lae’zel and Shadowheart on top and Jaheira and Wyll at the bottom. The NPCs guide covers the characters who are not companions and sorts them by what becomes of each if you walk past: some wait, some move on, some die, and a few, the Guardian and the Absolute, cannot be walked past at all.
The bosses guide sorts 31 pages by what each boss is standing in front of, a road, a chest, a person or a Netherstone, and collects the thirteen you can talk, drink or shove your way past. The dungeons guide sorts 50 dungeons and puzzle rooms by how far away the thing that opens them is, from a lever in the room to a hammer in another plane. The items guide sorts 77 items by what taking each one rules out, two Mithral ores for six Adamantine moulds, one spear that ends up Shar’s or Selune’s, a sword that costs a companion, and it links the one item standalone, best finesse weapons, for characters who fight on Dexterity.
Outside the clock: settings and saves
Four pages have nothing to do with the world of the game and everything to do with keeping it running. Best PC settings tunes the graphics options for a stable 60 frames at 1440p on low, mid and high-end machines. DirectX 11 or Vulkan settles the launcher question: Nvidia cards gain 7 to 11 percent on DirectX 11, AMD cards favour Vulkan, and the Steam Deck wants DirectX 11. Save file location finds the AppData folder your saves live in, for backups and moving progress between machines, and lost save files is the recovery procedure when a bug wipes them. Given how many of the pages above end with the advice to save before a conversation, these are worth reading once.
Where to start
A new player should read three things before the first rest: the beginner classes page to pick a class that forgives mistakes, the companions guide to know which of the five people on the beach can be lost and how, and the points of no return page inside the mechanics guide, so that the first warning the game gives is not a surprise. Everything after that can be looked up when it happens, which is what the eleven guides are for.