Npcs

Most characters in Baldur’s Gate 3 are not companions, and the game is quieter about them. A companion tells you when they are unhappy. An NPC just stops being there. This guide covers the nineteen non-party characters we have written about, plus two sub-pages, and sorts them by the one question that matters when you meet one: what happens if you keep walking? Some wait indefinitely. Some carry on with their own lives and turn up two acts later. Some die, and take other people with them. And a few cannot be walked past at all, because they are the story.

The ones who wait

Withers is the most consequential NPC in the game and the easiest to miss, because he is asleep in a sarcophagus in the Dank Crypt under the Overgrown Ruins, reachable from the first hour of Act 1. The front door needs a hard check, so the page offers the hatch to the east and the locked door to the north, then a skull lever behind the wizard statue and a hidden button beside the statue of Jergal that wakes every undead in the room. Answer his question and he moves to camp, where he will revive the dead at full health, rebuild any character from level 1 for 100 gold with all experience kept, and sell hirelings. Who he is stays hidden until a good ending, and the identity page lays out the case that he is Jergal, the old god of death the Dead Three replaced.

Healer Nettie is the Grove’s druid and the first person you are sent to about the parasite. She is in a chamber off the Sacred Pool reviving a bird, and the quest ends with two items on offer, a Vial of Wyvern Poison and, separately, an Elixir of Silvanus; talk her out of the poison and you leave with nothing but the conversation. Pandirna is a paralysed Tiefling on guard duty in a locked shack at the north end of the Grove. Lesser Restoration, which Shadowheart carries, puts her back on her feet and earns you the run of the shed and its treasure; do nothing and she is simply not there in Act 2.

Three more are content to be left alone. Buthir and Grukkoh, a bugbear and an ogress, are busy inside a barn at the north edge of the Blighted Village, and the page’s first piece of advice is the one Shadowheart gives at the door: do not open it. If you do, Buthir attacks, and the reward for winning is 3 gold and a bone. Myshka is a white Persian cat in the alley south of the Wine Festival, beside Bonecloak’s Apothecary, with unique lines if you speak with animals. And Dairow Vin lies passed out near the sewers with a note about his missing husband; hitting him, shoving him and dropping things on him all do nothing, and the page’s method, Death Ward followed by the level 5 Dominate Person, wakes him for no dialogue at all.

The ones who move on without you

Alfira is a Tiefling bard composing on a cliff above the Sacred Pool in Act 1, and she is the clearest case of an NPC with her own itinerary. Help with the song or not, she turns up at the Last Light Inn in Act 2, where saving the Tieflings from the Moonrise prison earns the Potent Robe, 460 gold and her lute, and again in Act 3. She cannot be romanced. The exception is the Dark Urge: play it, and you wake beside her body having killed her, and the page walks through the choices that follow.

Dammon, the infernal blacksmith, moves with the refugees from the Grove to the Inn to the Lower City, and his page is really a map of the two early pieces of Infernal Iron, one in Dror Ragzlin’s treasury and one in the necromancer’s basement, that let him work on Karlach’s engine. Because he travels with the refugees, their fate is his: a fallen Grove or a fallen Inn means no smith. Sazza goes the other way. Free the goblin from the Grove prison, disarm the guardian statues in the passage with your most dextrous character, and she waits for you at the Goblin Camp gate to vouch for you; intervene once more when Minthara orders her death and the She Cannot Be Caged achievement is yours.

Elminster Aumar is met near Rosymorn Monastery and comes to camp whether you trust him or not. Trusting him is what heals Gale through the Artefact and unlocks an area of the Shadow-Cursed Lands that otherwise stays hidden; the page also has the fix for the bug where he stands in camp repeating that he is expecting someone. Mizora is the one non-recruitable character you can romance, and only with Wyll in the party. Her page runs the courtship across three acts and ends with a warning: attack Gortash at his coronation and the romance is over.

The ones who die

Isobel is the reason the Last Light Inn is safe, and her page is the one to read before you set foot in it. Flaming Fist Marcus attacks in two stages, coming back from the dead for the second, and the fight is lost the moment she is carried off. The page recommends Spirit Guardians and a Cleric to keep her standing, because everyone in the Inn dies with her, Jaheira and Dammon included, and every quest that lives there ends. The capture page is the mirror image: help Marcus, hand her to Ketheric, gain his trust and an open door into Moonrise, and accept the same massacre as the price.

Counsellor Florrick spends Act 1 being rescued and Act 3 waiting to be hanged: Gortash gives her five days in Wyrm’s Rock prison, which the missable quests page counts as five long rests. Talk past the guard Breva Brightmoon, persuade Florrick that she still wants to live, and get her out through the crack in the storage-area wall or over the bodies of every guard. Philomeen is the Ironhand gnome holding the Runepowder the enslaved gnomes need to clear the Grymforge cave-in in Free True Soul Nere. She hides in the northeast past three level 5 ochre jellies, threatens to blow herself up if you crowd her, and hands over one vial if you calm her; ask for more and she does exactly that. A backpack with a smoke powder map is the alternative fuse.

Zevlor, who led the Tieflings in Act 1, goes missing in Act 2 and is found in a pod in the Mind Flayer colony. The Neural Apparatus in the northeast corner frees every prisoner who has not yet turned, and he fights beside you against four mind flayers and six intellect devourers. Thaniel is a child trapped in the Shadowfell for centuries and the key to lifting the curse. His page strings together waking Art Cullagh, defending Halsin’s portal, hide and seek with Oliver, and the Nightdome fight, where the 300 hit point bubble only breaks when Mama and Papa are dead. Finish it and Halsin finally joins the party; skip it and he never does.

The ones you cannot walk past

The Guardian is the only NPC you build yourself, race and face chosen at character creation, and it exists in dreams at first, appearing more often the more you rest. It saved you from the crash, it says, and it wants you to use the tadpole; the page also notes it returns after Halsin is freed to argue against removing the parasite. Whether to trust it is the question the whole Creche detour turns on. Prince Orpheus is the character the Guardian does not want you to learn about, and his history page is a scavenger hunt: three discs, in the Arcane Tower, the Creche and Balthazar’s room at Moonrise, each translated only if Lae’zel is with you. Read them before the free or kill decision at the end.

The Absolute is the game’s antagonist, the voice every tadpole answers to, and the page explains what it is, how the Dead Three fit around it, and whether you can take its place at the final confrontation. The bosses guide covers the fight; this page covers the idea.

Where the NPC pages hand off

Several of these characters are the hinge of a companion story rather than a story of their own, and the companions guide counts them as ways a companion can be lost: Isobel for Jaheira, Thaniel for Halsin, Mizora for Wyll, Dammon for Karlach. The timers, Florrick’s five days and the rests that move Alfira and Dammon along, are all long-rest counters, and the mechanics guide explains why resting is the only clock the game runs on.