Bosses

Almost no boss in Baldur’s Gate 3 is there to be fought. Each one is standing in front of something: a road you need to travel, a chest with one item in it, a person whose story cannot move until they fall, or one of the three Netherstones the ending runs on. Sorting our 31 boss pages that way turns out to be more useful than sorting them by act, because it tells you what you lose by walking around one, and about a third of them can be walked around, talked past, or shoved off a ledge without a proper fight.

The table lists every boss with what it guards and whether a no-fight route exists. The sections after it go through the four kinds of guardian in turn, and the last section collects the tricks.

Bosses in front of a road

Five bosses block the way to the next map, and every one of them has a door beside them. Priestess Gut holds the key that lets you skip the Defiled Temple moon puzzle, one of the four ways down into the Underdark. She has 36 hit points and dies in a turn if you shut her door and cast Hold Person, but the cleaner route is to drink her sleeping potion, wait in the cell without breaking your shackles, and let the assassin Korrilla cut her throat. Dror Ragzlin, the hobgoblin with the Faithbreaker warhammer and a legendary action that rallies every goblin in the room, has a treasury behind his throne with a piece of Infernal Iron in it, and Halsin’s quest needs him dead. The page wants your party at level 4, on the rafters, with Lump’s horn or a spider egg sac ready; the alternative is an invisible character with high Strength pushing him into the spider pit, which kills him and forfeits the loot.

True Soul Nere is buried behind a cave-in at the far end of Grymforge, and every Underdark road to Moonrise runs through him. The page has you gather Runepowder to clear the rockfall, then choose: fight a level-appropriate duergar leader with your party scattered away from the lava, or let the poison gas behind the rubble do the work and loot him afterwards. Kar’niss, a level 6 drider with 184 hit points and 19 armour class, carries the only working Moon Lantern, which is the ticket across the Shadow-Cursed Lands; Bless and Magic Missile are the page’s answers to his armour, and the Harper ambush is the way to have him killed for you. Balthazar, a level 8 necromancer in the Gauntlet of Shar, stands between you and the Shadowfell where the Nightsong waits. Fight him early and he brings a wave of minions; take him into the Shadowfell and he arrives alone, where a shove between his lines of dialogue drops him off the platform. That shove also drops his loot into the chasm.

The Lava Elemental belongs here too, in a smaller way: killing the level 6 elemental with its 85 hit points and 10 to 60 per turn regeneration cools the lava in Grymforge and makes the place walkable, on top of an Onyx, an Agate and two Bloodstones. Cold and lightning hurt it, fire, poison and piercing do nothing, and the page is firm that it cannot be talked to, whatever Reddit says.

Bosses in front of a chest

The largest group guards a single item, and the item usually decides whether the fight is worth it. The Owlbear in her cave north of the Blighted Village drops the Head of the Broken Spear, half of the Vision of the Absolute, and her nest holds the Owlbear Egg alongside a druid’s medium armour, the Oak Father’s Embrace; a level 3 party manages it, and the page asks you not to hit the cub. Filro the Forgotten, in a cave above the Sussur Tree, has only 25 hit points behind an armour class of 20, so one stealth attack from Astarion usually ends it, and his Icy Crystal is the ingredient for Mourning Frost. Flind, the gnoll warlord met during Find the Missing Shipment, drops the Shattered Flail, a +2 mace with acid on every hit, and her page is the one place the tadpole is worth using: reach into her mind with Illithid Wisdom and she turns on her own pack.

Three Act 1 monsters are optional and hard. The Phase Spider Matriarch at the bottom of the Whispering Depths is immune to poison and weak to nothing except gravity, taking around 50 damage per fall from the three bridges, so Wyll’s Eldritch Blast is the page’s weapon of choice; she leaves the Poisoner’s Robe. The Spectator ambushes you among petrified Drow below the Selune statue and again in the Underdark, wants a level 5 party, and gives up the Spectator Eyes amulet with Wounding Ray and Ray of Fear; the cheese is Astarion sniping a statue from the broken window while Gale prepares Scorching Ray and Fireball. The Bulette has no landmark at all, only tremors in the western Underdark, and surrounding it stops the dodging; Bloodguzzler Garb and 150 experience are the payout, and a Misty Step behind it followed by a push ends things early.

Two constructs guard places rather than corpses. Bernard stands on the roof of the Arcane Tower and asks questions whose answers are in four books left by his maker Lenore; read them and there is no fight, throw Sussur Bloom at him or shove him off the roof if you want his key. Grym wakes when the Adamantine Forge is first used and stands in front of every Adamantine item in the game. He resists almost everything until he is superheated by lava and lured under the forge hammer, which finishes him in three or four turns for the Grymskull Helm and 500 experience. The second Grym page is for the A Grym Fate achievement, killing him without the hammer: keep a ranged character on the lava valve, hit him with bludgeoning weapons while he is superheated, and let a tank kite him round the arena.

Two of the Thorm siblings in Act 2 guard hoards. Gerringothe sits in the Reithwin tollhouse under 600 hit points of gold, fed by floating skulls worth 100 each that are weak to area and psychic damage; a DC 18 Charisma check talks her into despair and she kills herself, and her mace was nerfed in Patch 5 to 3 extra slashing per 300 gold the target carries. Thisobald tends the bar at the Waning Moon with 288 hit points, 16 armour class and a Numb condition that shrugs off weapons and thunder while he is sober. Drink with him using a high-Charisma character and he bursts; fight him and it goes three phases. Either way the Worn Key on his body opens a back room holding the Punch-Drunk Bastard and the Purple Worm Poison recipe. The Gremishkas near Rosymorn are the odd entry, a swarm of magic-allergic panthers whose tails make Wizardsbane Oil; physical attacks only, Volo’s Ersatz Eye to see them when they vanish, level 4 minimum.

Bosses in front of a person

Nine bosses are really gates on someone else’s story. The Githyanki Inquisitor drops nothing worth having; what he guards is Lae’zel’s loyalty to Vlaakith, which breaks when he does. His Mindsteal Link gives him armour class for every creature in the room, so the page bans summons and orders the four warriors killed first. Malus Thorm in the House of Healing guards the Battered Lute that wakes Art Cullagh, the first link in the chain that ends with Halsin joining the party; he resists slashing, bludgeoning, piercing and fire, his nurses heal him, and a run of dialogue checks removes the need to fight him at all. Auntie Ethel is fought twice, for Mayrina in Act 1 at level 4 with plenty of water ready, and for Vanra under the Blushing Mermaid in Act 3, where the page wants level 12, Counterspell and fire for her healing flower pads.

Two Act 3 fights decide a companion’s ending. Cazador has 200 hit points and seven runes that will complete his ascension if he draws on them three times, so the ritual is the first thing to break. Leave Astarion at the door so he cannot be bound to a rune, and the cheese is an invisible Shadowheart carrying Daylight into the arena for 20 radiant a turn. Viconia DeVir leads a Sharran coven of frail necrotic clerics and tanky smiting paladins in the House of Grief, reflects radiant damage back at double strength, and hides in Darkness that Daylight dispels; the fight only exists if you refuse to surrender Shadowheart. Yurgir the Orthon sits in the Gauntlet of Shar as Raphael’s target, and killing him pays in an Umbral Gem, the Hellfire Hand Crossbow and what Raphael knows about Astarion’s scars; a DC 30 check later turns him into an ally against his master.

Raphael himself has 666 hit points, two lieutenants and a houseful of minions, and he guards the Orphic Hammer, the key to freeing Orpheus and to Lae’zel’s best ending. Free Hope first, make the DC 30 alliance with Yurgir, never use radiant damage, and kill Korrilla’s 24 hit points from range; the loot is Helldusk Armor and his diary. The alternative is his contract, which the deal page weighs against the Crown of Karsus. Ansur is a level 17 undead dragon with 400 hit points under Wyrm’s Rock, reached through the four Wyrmway trials, and he ends Wyll’s companion quest. Melee is useless, lightning is absorbed, his second phase opens with the unavoidable Stormheart Nova, and Arrows of Dragon Slaying are the page’s answer; Balduran’s Giantslayer and the Helm of Balduran are the reward. The Crash Landing page covers the achievement for killing him mid-flight with burst damage while The Waiting Storm is arisen.

The Oathbreaker Knight is the exception in the bucket: not an enemy but a visitor who appears in camp when a Paladin breaks their oath, guarding the hidden fourth subclass. Spiteful Suffering comes at level 1, Control Undead and Dreadful Aspect at level 3, and he will sell the old oath back for 1,000 gold.

Bosses in front of a Netherstone

Three stones control the Elder Brain, and three bosses hold them. Ketheric Thorm ends Act 2 at the top of Moonrise and cannot be hurt until the Nightsong is beside you; the fight runs through Necromites, Susdera’s Fireballs and egg-laying, a trip into the Mind Flayer colony and three phases, and his page notes that the walk down puts Ketheric, Orin and Gortash in one room with Duke Ravengard as hostage. Gortash holds the second stone in Wyrm’s Rock and offers an alliance instead; refuse it, disable the Steel Watch first so his sentries stay out of it, and focus him rather than his guards, whose wizard has more health than is worth chewing through. His Netherstone comes with a studded gauntlet and a heavy crossbow. Sarevok Anchev guards the third stone indirectly: the murder investigation leads to his tribunal, the bag of hands gets you in, and his death gives you the Sword of Chaos, the Amulet of Bhaal and the map to the Temple of Bhaal where Orin keeps hers.

The ones you can talk or trick past

Every one of these is a choice about what you are willing to give up, which is the same question the table at the top asks. The dungeons guide covers the buildings these bosses sit inside, the items guide covers what the chests hold, and the companions guide tracks the stories that Cazador, Viconia, the Inquisitor and Ansur are standing in front of.

Boss questions

How many bosses are there?

Our pages cover 29 distinct bosses, two of them twice: Grym has a page for the forge hammer fight and one for the achievement, and Ansur has a page for the fight and one for knocking him out of the sky. Of the 29, only the three Netherstone holders and the Inquisitor are unavoidable on a normal route.

Which boss is the strongest?

By the numbers on our pages, Raphael at 666 hit points, then Gerringothe Thorm at 600 and Ansur at 400. By difficulty as our writers describe it, Raphael, Ansur and the Githyanki Inquisitor are the three called the hardest in the game, with Dror Ragzlin the hardest thing a level 4 party meets.

Which bosses are hidden?

The Bulette has no landmark and is found by tremors. The Spectator waits beneath a broken window off the Selune statue’s courtyard. The Phase Spider Matriarch is at the bottom of an optional dungeon. Ansur is behind four trials under a fortress most players only pass through. Filro is in a cave you only enter while collecting Sussur Bloom.