I Wish I Knew These Tips Before Starting Baldur's Gate 3

The game explicitly says that any source of light will help against the shadows, but nothing other than the special lanterns will keep it away forever. So, I just did what I naturally thought was right: Shadowheart hold the Blood of Lathander, cast Daylight on Karlach's weapon, and cast Light on Astarion's weapon and mine. We were so bright it completely ruined the entire mood of every cutscene in hilarious ways. When we first met the Harpers, they were peering around trying to spot us behind a tree, when we were a walking nova of light; then they were nervously looking around for the shadow beasts when I could see them all perfectly fine. I'm sure the scene was meant to be dark and moody and scary, but everything was brighter than midday and the entire effect was hilariously ruined.

just a reminder to always click next to your companion when you throw healing potions. Otherwise you can actually kill them with it. Trust me, i've done the "testing"

You can start digging even if you didn't pass the Survival check. Just right-click on the shovel and point around. Or, if you remember from your previous walkthrough, then you click, where to dig.

There's another big thing about turn-based mode. If you just walk around and initiate combat. For example you shoot an arrow at someone, you will have used your action on this attack, so when your initiative comes up, that specific character will not be able to use another action this round. While if you use turn-based mode and then initiate the combat by attacking, you will still have your full action when your turn comes up in the initiative order. So when you are about to initiate combat, turn-based mode essentially gives you a free action.

Pick up every backpack. Pick up pouches too. I put all the vendor trash in one backpack. All the potions, arrows, and AoE throwables in a pouch, although this requires you to manually stack items, so these may be best left in the open inventory. Also, odd bits of items I want to keep on hand go into a third bag. If the bag of vendor trash gets too heavy, just send it to camp and start filling up a new one. Rinse and repeat until you get to a vendor. A trip or two to camp to fetch all the bags and you're golden.

Can we point out, that there is no long intro and only necessary text for each section? This video is golden, thank you. Content and how the video is done is 10/10

Additional tip to the small holes tip: For the ones you listed for cat and gaseous form, you can also use Mage Hand to get through them. I don't know how often this is useful, however in the Underdark there's a mage's tower that has a locked door at the bottom of it, and a burrow hole nearby. Using mage hand allows you to move the hand into the hole and use the lever by the door to open it.

My favorite interaction is that if you take the dual weilder feat on a caster, you can have them equip two of the cool quarterstaves you can find and use the bonuses of each. It makes it one of the best feats in the game for casters just for that reason.

Quick note you can’t “always” go back to your camp. If the area you’re in had the minimap highlighted red then it’s an area that locks you out of going to camp and fast travel. Usually hostile story points.

3:57 Minor correction: No loot is destroyed when you break a chest. However, traps triggered by this action may and do destroy it. Additionally, some non-chest containers loose their content when destroyed.

If you use that “secret” trade window with Volo, you can buy a magic ring from him which gives the bless spell to anyone that the character wearing it heals. This includes throwing healing potions.

Something else I don't remember seeing a lot of people talking about is that throwing potions has a small AoE. If you huddle your party very, very closely together and throw potions on the ground in the middle of them, one potion can heal all 4 characters. This is especially useful early game where you don't have a lot of spells and you're being given basic health potions out the wazoo. It can be useful late game as well since you can forgo memorizing healing spells in lieu of buffs or damage.

You can progress camp encounters without consuming camp supplies by having partial rests.

FYI: The vendor price modifier is not CHA (at least not directly,) it is the Persuasion skill (which is based on CHA.) Use the character with the highest Persuasion skill. Due to the many ways this skill could be boosted, like Expertise, you might find that your best commerce character (Bard or Pally with high Persuasion) is not the character with the highest CHA score (Sorc or Warlock who ignored Persuasion.)

Do not leave attacks of opportunity on automatic. For example when undeads flee after Turn Undead you might not want them to drop the Turned status by the mage automatically hitting them for 1 damage.

Because a few people have mentioned it, the game warns you if you have too few supplies in your inventory when you go to rest, but when you actually go click the campfire they will show up!

You can automatically collect all alchemy/camping supplies in your inventory by dragging either the camp supply bag/alchemy bag off your inventory--->drop it to another character inv.-->then drop it back down to your inv. as soon as you drop it back, it sucks in all the items in the appropriate bag.

Your tip on marking vendors on the map was excellent. Thank you. I don’t think anyone else has mentioned that tip before.

Great video, I actually learned a lot. One remark in regards to jumping: You can jump past enemies without triggering attack of opportunity, but if you are already in range of it, jumping away will still trigger the attack.

Mage Hand can also go into burrow holes, but it wears off quickly, so it's best to use it in turn based mode.