Baldur’s Gate 3 player shares trick to easily deal with Steel Watchers

Act 3 of Baldur’s Gate 3 offers players resolutions to most of the quests that they follow throughout the game, which means it comes with some formidable boss fights. That’s not the only danger you have to face, though, as there is the ever-present threat of Steel Watchers.

Steel Watchers in Baldur’s Gate 3 are hulking machines that are nothing less than terrifying. As Gortash’s guard, they walk around the city, guarding it against anything he deems a threat. 

They can be difficult to fight, as they are resistant to most damage and immune to poison and psychic damage. This becomes especially apparent when you need to disable the Steel Watch and save the Gondians from the Steel Watch Factory. 

When you finally do tick down their health, they also start a self-destruct sequence. If you get stuck in the damage radius, you will take a substantial amount of damage and it may even kill you. 

One player, however, has discovered a way to easily deal with this self-destruct sequence, so you don’t take any hits at all. 

“I discovered that if you use banish on a steel watcher when it begins its self destruction sequence that it won’t damage anyone in the original radius,” ‘KamiKuro_Enjoyer’ shared in a post on Reddit. 

“It will still show the original damage circle but when it comes to its turn it will still self destruct and not actually damage anything in the circle it showed.” 

When you get to the Steel Watch Factory in Baldur’s Gate 3, you can find the Gondians fighting the Steel Watch. It gets a bit difficult to save them, especially when the Steel Watchers start the detonation, and players found this tip useful. 

Interestingly, other players had tried this trick before, but on the Gondians instead. “I banished the Gondians instead. With upcasted banish, you can target more people. So two of my casters banished most of them so they can’t be targeted by anyone in the room,” a player commented.

Fans in the comments agreed that banishing the Gondians may be the better option, especially because it becomes difficult to use AoE attacks when they are present in the fight. Thankfully, it doesn’t make them hostile either. 

As one player put it, “Somebody in the Astral Plane is going to have very interesting time with all these exploding mechs popping out of nowhere.” 

If you want to know more about neat tricks to get through Baldur’s Gate 3’s challenges, check out the Class you won’t ever regret choosing and why you should always use Speak with Animals.