Baldur’s Gate 3 player roasted for breaking their game after somehow skipping major fight
Larian StudiosA Baldur’s Gate 3 player finished Act 2 without defeating a major boss, leaving them without a key item required for the endgame fight, and the internet is blaming them for it.
Baldur’s Gate 3 offers you multiple choices throughout your journey, but the main plot follows a linear pattern. There are different endings, but the bosses you fight in each chapter will be the same in all playthroughs. The storyline follows you trying to unravel a conspiracy involving Mind Flayers and the Dead Three.
There are certain things you can do that lead to an early game over to save you from soft-locking your save later on. However, Larian appears to have underestimated the various ways in which players can break their game. A Baldur’s Gate 3 player named ‘palomAstra’ found themselves in a difficult predicament after missing a major fight.
They finished Act 2 without getting a Netherstone from Ketheric, and are now “soft-locked before the final fight in Act 3.” In a detailed post on the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit, they explained how they ended up in this situation. The OP “accidentally separated Shadowheart from the rest of the party, leaving her behind when I jumped into the MF (Mind Flayer) colony from the roof.”
The entrance was then sealed off, so the fight started before they could reunite her with their party. The OP then managed to beat Ketheric but died when fighting Myrkul. Shadowheart revived everyone at their camp, but they couldn’t go back to the Mind Flayer colony anymore. So, the OP proceeded directly to Baldur’s Gate instead, which triggered Act 3.
After 100 hours of gameplay, they’ve reached a dead end because the game requires Ketheric’s Netherstone for the final battle. The OP asked the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit if anyone else ran into this “devastating issue,” but nobody could replicate the problem or offer a solution.
One user replied: “I can quite confidently say that the answer is No. No one has run into this issue.” Their response got almost as many upvotes as the post itself. Most users blamed the OP for their predicament. “Dude chose to ignore Act 2’s final boss and just leave instead of a bit of backtracking,” read a comment.
Larian StudiosHowever, others found it weird that they were able to get themselves soft-locked like this. One user called this a “dev oversight” and said: “Colony shouldn’t get sealed off or way to Baldur’s gate shouldn’t be open just because the army is gone.”
One user mentioned Bethesda’s Morrowind, which would notify you if you soft-locked the main quest and advise you to reload a save. “This is some ‘With this character’s (lack of) death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created,’ and OP chose to persist in the doomed world,” they added.
At this point, the best the OP can do is reload an earlier save, if possible, or simply restart. After all, if you only play through Baldur’s Gate 3 once, you’ll miss out on a lot of content.
If you want to read more Baldur’s Gate 3 stories, check out how a player accidentally killed “bestest boi” Scratch with a simple mistake or read how another player found a disturbing way to heal their Dark Urge character.