A roleplaying journey wouldn’t be complete without inspiring songs or a melody. Lucky for you, Baldur’s Gate 3 allows you to bring out the bard within you with the help of musical instruments and potentially start your own band. All four party members playing Down By The River on different musical instruments in BG3? Sign me up!
Types of Musical Instruments in Baldur’s Gate 3
There are many instruments in the game, but most of them are variations of these five main categories. Out of these, you can choose one at the start of the game if you choose the Bard class.
| Musical Instrument | Weight | Location |
| Hand Drum | 1.5 | Can be found in Last Light Inn. |
| Flute | 0.5 | Over the crates near Kanon’s belongings (Grove’s gate). |
| Lute | 1 | Alfira plays it in Druid’s Grove. You can get it from her. She also teaches you how to play musical instruments. |
| Lyre | 1 | The Goblin Trader at the Goblin Camp has it. (Minthara also drops Spider’s Lyre) |
| Violin | 0.5 | It can be found in Last Light Inn. |
How to use Musical Instruments in BG3
All the instruments do the same thing of attracting people, which can only be helpful if you want to sneak past. Just put your companion on the instrument, and you are free to skip through. This is helpful if you don’t want to go through a large crowd and reach a certain place without any distractions.
Another way this can be used is for a sneaky attack. Get your companion to play the music instrument, and then wait. Once all the people are in one place, you can use a heavy attack good enough to eliminate all. This can make fights quite easy and quick.
To play instruments in BG3, you either need to pick the Bard class or select the musical instrument proficiency skill during character creation. You can check whether your character has the proficiency or not on your character sheet. If you do, simply equip any musical instrument and press the corresponding action on your action bar.
Interestingly, you can also earn money by playing instruments. For this, just find a calm space with a lot of characters (NPCs) and then start playing the instrument. Pretty soon, NPCs will gather around you. And if you play long enough, they’ll start giving you money.
It’s not a lot, but it’s good to know that even while listening to music, you are not wasting time. There are no specific abilities or advantages you get by using a specific musical instrument, as these are just for fun. They just add an interesting element to the game that everyone can enjoy in the game and the players.
How to gain free musical instrument proficiency
If you are not Bard and still want to learn to play musical instruments, don’t worry. You can still do it with an extra step. Complete Alfira’s quest, and she’ll teach you how to play the instruments.
To start the quest, go to Alfira east of the Druid’s Grove. Talk to her, and you will be able to help Alfira write a song. After a few trials, you’ll be able to get musical instrument proficiency. This will now allow you to play any instrument in BG3, even if your character didn’t have musical proficiency from the start.
Best Musical Instruments in Baldur’s Gate 3
As mentioned before, musical instruments don’t really have any stats. It is more of a personal preference which type of sound you like more, but for us, the musical instruments in Baldur’s Gate 3 can be ranked in the following order.
1. Flute
The flute has the first place solely because of its tune. It carries most of the songs and has the most input out of all the musical instruments.
2. Violin
The violin is a very pleasant-sounding instrument and is the most loved in the Baldur’s Gate community. This is solely because it has a good rhythm and can work well paired with any other instrument.
3. Lyre
The third place is for Lyre solely for aesthetic purposes. With its association with angels, it gives a very soothing and soft background sound.
4. Lute
It’s not a bad one, but compared to others, it is not much of a memorable sound. It sounds beautiful in some songs, but not all.
5. Hand Drum
Drums are a good musical instrument, but only if they are played alongside others. If not, they can be quite heavy and bland to hear.
