Auntie Ethel, also known as the Sister of the Seeing Pearl, is a powerful creature and one of the bosses you can put down early on in Baldur’s Gate 3.
She is going to appear as a harmless old woman at first, but underneath all of that hides a hideous witch who has already kidnapped and killed dozens of people for her spells and rituals.
You are going to uncover her true identity over the course of your progression. Eventually, when you do get to engage her in a boss fight, Auntie Ethel is going to pull out all of her spells to get rid of you. This is not going to be an easy fight to win but you need to kill her to stop her from preying on the locals.
Where to find Auntie Ethel
You are going to come across Auntie Ethel at two different locations in Baldur’s Gate 3. Your first encounter will be in Druid Grove where she appears as an old (and harmless) healer that sells potions and other consumables.
You are going to then encounter her again while entering the Sunlit Wetlands. Do note that this region requires you to be at least level 3 to enter.
Go through the Overgrown Tunnel to find Auntie Ethel under attack by a couple of men at the location marked on the map below.
The men attacking her believe that she is responsible for their missing sister. This is where the Save Mayrina quest starts in which you have to find evidence of what happened to their sister.
Auntie Ethel dialogue options
There are a bunch of dialogue options to go through when you meet Auntie Ethel on both occasions in Baldur’s Gate 3. Here are the outcomes of those choices and how they impact your quests.
Druid Grove
At this point in the game, Auntie Ethel is nothing but an elderly lady who only wants to help you get rid of that tadpole on your arm for the Remove the Parasite quest.
You obviously need to accept her request, after which you can access her store to purchase various potions, consumables, and weapons.
Something important to note here is that if you have a Warlock or Sorcerer in your party, they will sense something odd about Auntie Ethel. This will be your cue to be on alert around this hag. Auntie Ethel, however, will assure that she means no harm.
Sunlit Wetlands
Once you stop the men from attacking Auntie Ethel, you will have a choice to make.
If you believe what the men are saying about their missing sister, you can choose to Side with the Brothers. You will offer your help, which they will refuse, and eventually get killed by Auntie Ethel while searching for their sister Mayrina.
If you Side with Auntie Ethel though, the brothers are going to attack you and you will have to kill them. It will only be at the end of the quest when you realize that they were innocent and right.
Whichever choice you make, Auntie Ethel is going to go back to her teahouse. Head back to speak with her.
If you choose to ask her about Mayrina, who is being held captive by Auntie Ethel, she will become angry. Keep testing her or tell Mayrina about her brothers, and Auntie Ethel will reveal her true form and lead you to a secret lair where her boss fight happens.
If you decide to mind your own business and not ask about Mayrina, she will then offer to remove your tadpole in exchange for an eye. If you accept, you lose your eye but she will fail to remove the tadpole. You get the Paid the Price debuff in return which prevents your character from landing critical hits.
Lastly, during the boss fight in her lair, Auntie Ethel will offer you a new deal. If you let her go with Mayrina, you will get a permanent +1 stat boost. Having an extremely high skill check, though, will allow you to keep the stat boost and save Mayrina as well.
How to defeat Auntie Ethel in Baldur’s Gate 3
Auntie Ethel can create three clones of herself during the fight in Baldur’s Gate 3. Her copies do the same damage to you, but since only one of them is real, you need to find which one or else keep losing your party members while taking on all of the clones.
This fight becomes easy when you know how to figure out the real Auntie Ethel.
Identify the clones
One way of getting rid of the clones is to hit them and they will disappear if they are clone. But this way, you are not dealing any damage to Auntie Ethel in Baldur’s Gate 3. On the other hand, if you are lucky and hit the real Auntie Ethel, this time, it will not disappear.
You can take not disappearing as a sign that you hit the real Auntie Ethel. Also, you will hear a confirmation from her saying “You Bloody Clever Clog”. You can take the help of a debuff such as Pinned Down to speed up the process of finding the real Auntie Ethel in BG3.
With debuffs, you are also doing the same thing, but you can fire multiple debuffs from your bow at a single time. And it will only take a minute for you to find the real Auntie Ethel. This is because all the clones will disappear once they are hit with debuffs.
During the second stage of the fight, she will clone herself as one of her prisoners Mayrina. To stop Auntie Ethel from appearing as Mayrina, you need to use the same trick of debuffing. After you hit the real Mayrina, Auntie Ethel will not appear as Mayrina.
During the final stage of the fight, Auntie Ethel clones herself again but this time, she uses a clever technique. She will create four clones of herself but make herself invisible.
To find the location of the real Auntie Ethel in BG3, you just need to hit one of the clones once. While that happens, the invisible Auntie Ethel will deliver a counterattack on you. Locate the origin of the attack and you will find the invisible Auntie Ethel.
Once you have found the location where the Sister of the Seeing Pearl is hiding, you can launch an AOE attack on her which will make her appear back. Another thing to note is that once Auntie Ethel has chosen a place to hide, she will not move until her invisibility buff is over.
Save Mayrina from burning
In the final stage of the fight, Auntie Ethel is going to set fire to the cage which holds Mayrina. Remember that you have a quest to save her, so either use a Water spell or throw a bottle of water at the cage to douse the flames.
She also has other prisoners, and she will then charm one of the prisoners to make her ally. By doing that, these prisoners will start attacking you. To deal with the prisoners, you can use the help of the Thunderwave spell.
After the prisoners are dealt with, you can then focus on fighting the Sister of the Seeing Pearl. Here, you can easily finish off Auntie Ethel by pushing down the cliff where she is standing. Killing her that way will save the life of all the prisoners, but you will not be able to retrieve valuable items from her.
If, however, you want to save all her valuables, you can fight Auntie Ethel the traditional way. The fight will be very long this way so make sure that you have a healer in your party to keep your team going through the fight.
Another thing to keep in mind is that she will paralyze one of your teammates through the entirety of the fight by casting Hold Person. One way of getting away with that is resisting when that happens. Otherwise, you have to reload the game from the earlier stage of the fight.
Auntie Ethel rewards and loot
Defeating Auntie Ethel is going to give you the key to her laboratory in Baldur’s Gate 3. Head on inside to complete Mayrina’s quest. In addition to the rewards from the quest, you are also going to get your hands on the following:
- Potion of Hill Giant Strength x3
- Corellon’s Grace – two-handed quarterstaff with Topple.
- Spellthief – two-handed longbow with Piercing Shot and Arcana Vehemence.
