Baldur’s Gate 3: [EN] Strategies and tips for Honour mode

Now, if you’ve read the tooltip, you already know about the single save. Bosses having legendary actions is also fairly straightforward. However, before moving on you’ll want to know more about the stricter rules the game mentions. These stricter rules impact three aspects of the game:

• Action economy
• Damage bonuses
• Global economy

The stricter action economy rules are a nerf to extra actions gained with effects such as Haste, Haste Spore Grenades, Potion of Speed, or Elixir of Bloodlust (Action Surge is a notable exception). These extra actions will not benefit from extra attack. That means if a character with Extra Attack gets hastened, they will get three attacks per turn, not four like in other difficulties.
The Honour mode tooltip states these rules are in effect towards the end of the game, but that is false. They actually are applied right from the get go. You’re supposed to notice them later in the game, as the Extra Attack feature cannot be acquired before level 5.

The damage bonuses rules are a nerf to DRS[bg3.wiki]. Suffice to say, you will not be able to duplicate damage sources, which makes some interactions and builds less powerful, if not outright non-viable.

The global economy changes affect the rarity of some items (unsurprisingly, powerful items such as Returning Pike or Caustic band), making them much more expensive to buy.

One of the key aspects of Honor mode is having a strong and balanced party that can deal with anything. At the very least, you want :

• Sustained, single target damage. You want to be able to kill any enemy quickly, bosses included.
• AoE damage. You want someone to wipe several pockets of enemies to open the way for your single damage dealers.
• A party face. You need someone with persuasion proficiency to at the very least handle trading. It doesn’t need to be your avatar, but obviously it’s nicer for roleplaying purposes.
• Utility. Think lockpicking, spells like feather fall, longstrider or enhance ability to ease dialogue skill checks.
• Support. Not necessarily healing – although it’s useful – but the ability to set yourself up for easier damage. Lighting up the battlefield to weaken enemies that thrive in shadows, throw water on enemies to make them wet and vulnerable to Cold/Lightning damage, that sort of thing.
• Control. Anything that disables enemies, from paralysis to illusion/enchantment spells, including disarming abilities.

You’ll notice I didn’t mention any tanking character. In my opinion, damage is best avoided by killing or disabling enemies before they can do anything. Obviously, you want high AC and a minimum of 14 CON on your characters, but not what will help you kill enemies.

The other thing is that obviously, you have only 4 companions, and these roles can intertwine based on your builds. So how do we balance everything?

It is hard to give an exhaustive answer as there are several viable compositions. But here are some key principles:

• You want one support character. More is redundant, and will just weaken your party. Having none is not ideal either.
• Ideally, two of your characters have sustained single damage abilities, and one of them AoE damage. One character can cumulate both AoE and single target damage abilities.
• At least one character should be Charisma based to take the role of party face. This is not mutually exclusive with other roles.
• At least one character should have control abilities.
• Utility usually comes as a side and shouldn’t be the main focus of a build.
• Your 4 builds shouldn’t rely on the same key items. At the very least, be ready to use alternatives to contested items.

There are plenty of different builds that can fill in one or several of these rolls. Here are some possibilities:

• Your support character can be, for instance, a pure level 12 Life Cleric, or a 6 Lore Bard / 6 Cleric hybrid. Clerics and Bards are great characters for support roles (but not only that, mind you) as they bring a lot of utility/support spells. Cleric has great in-combat healing with spells, Bard provides off-combat healing (and resource regeneration) with the extra short rest.
• Open Hand Monk, Throwzerker, or Blade Master are good examples of a sustained damage build.
• The Storm Lord is a great example of build with both AoE and single target damage capabilities. To a lesser extent, so is my War Priest or my soon to come Honour Archer build.
• My War Priest has excellent control capabilities, and my Blade Master as a control variant as well.

If you want something even more concise, here are the two parties I used for my Honour Mode runs:

• Tav as Divine Champion (Paladin 9 / Champion 3 – coming soon).
• Astarion as 10/1/1 Bard (check this guide[www.reddit.com].
• Karlach as Open Hand Monk.
• Minthara as Eldritch Paladin (Paladin 7 / Bladelock 5 – coming soon).

Second party:

• Tav as Honour Mode Archer (Swords Bard 5 / Gloom Stalker 5 / Fighter 2 – coming soon).
• Karlach as Throwzerker.
• Lae’zel as Blade Master.
• Shadowheart as support (Life cleric into Light cleric – coming soon).

Note: this section is meant to give you an easier time navigating early Act 1. If you’re confident in your routing, you can safely skip that part.

The hardest part of the game is probably Act 1 and 2. Yes, Act 3 has the strongest bosses, but at this point your characters become so powerful it doesn’t matter.

You need to be aware of when your different builds come online. Most martials want to reach level 5 for extra attack. Spellcasters tend to come online later, around level 7, while Tavern Brawler based builds come online as early as level 4. This is not a universal rule, just a pointer. But if you reach level 5, you’ve done the heavy lifting.

Hopefully, levels 2 and 3 are quick to earn. You should be level 2 right after you escape from the nautiloid and wake up on the beach. Then if you carefully explore the crash site, beat or scare off the bandits, and explore the temple, you’ll be level 3 by the time you beat the first fight near Emerald Grove.

Levels 4 and 5 are trickier, especially the latter. It honestly feels like it takes forever to get to level 5, and some fights should really be avoided until you’re level 5, in my opinion.

However, guess what… you need experience to get to level 5, and what is the primary source of this? Yup. Fights. So we can’t just avoid all fights until we’re level 5.

These are the fights you should avoid until you reach level 5:

• Gnolls attacking Zhentarim in a cave. The four isolated Gnolls are fine, especially if you get a surprise round.
• Ethel. You probably want to kill her at the very end of Act 1 and not a moment before, as you can use her to stock pile Hill Giant Strength Elixirs. Killing her four minions outside is fine, and will not make her hostile.
• Anything in the Underdark. You can go there, especially to pick up Phalar Aluve, but picking fights here is not worth it. You probably can kill the two minotaurs and get access to the myconid colony and their shops.
• Anything in the Mountain Pass. You want to delay going there until you’re absolutely ready to do the whole zone. Otherwise, it can trigger funny business with Lae’zel.
• The owlbear. I honestly don’t see the point in fighting her. Sure, you get extra XP but you don’t need it, and that’s about all you get for fighting her.

You can consider doing Zariel’s paladins at level 4. The paladin may be lying about his true allegience, but he sure smites like a real one, though. If you hit a Command: Drop on him, a surprise attack, or good early damage, you should be fine. But you don’t have to rush it.

Go to the Blighted village as soon as possible, there’s a lot to do there. Make sure you kill the two isolated cultists on the way (send them to the owlbear if you want to fight her) and the goblins in the nearby tunnel. In the Blighted Village, you can pick separate group of enemies apart with ambushes and intimidate the mill group to make them leave. Make sure you recruit the ogres for later (you’ll still be able to kill them, don’t worry).

You can do the cellar early. To avoid the surprise round, strike a coffin: it will wake the undead inside without triggering combat. You can even get an extra hit in before combat starts if you do it well.

Leave the spiders alone for now. You can do the 2 spiders/2 ettercaps once you’re level 4, and leave the boss for at least level 5. Make sure to have some antidote to throw or poison protection spells.

After this, you can do Kagha’s quest and fight the shadow druids. Make sure you swing Kagha to your side (this is where having a good party face + enhance ability on a support is very valuable).

Your next stop is the north of the map. You want to kill the hyenas on the bridge. Just walk up and trigger the dialogue with a good melee character and choose the melee dialogue option so that they can kill one hyena for free. Prioritize the hyena that flees to the north, otherwise she’ll alert the nearby pack of 4 gnolls. Then kill the other hyenas. You have advantage on bloated hyenas, so you should be able to kill most of them before they transform.

You can and should go to Waukeen’s Rest pretty early without any fighting. Just make sure not to go too far west, lest you trigger the scene with the Githyanki. Saving everyone in the inn gets you a pretty good reward (Priority should go to the Spellsparker as good spellcasting equipment is a rarity in early Act 1).

You can easily do the goblin outpost with a bit of stealth, just take position on the high ground just after the bridge and use ranged attacks to deal a lot of damage.
Try not to let the goblins call reinforcements – though if they do, it seems only three drunkards (just outside the outpost) come. You can kill them after.

Once this is done you can go to the Goblin camp. Make sure you buy what you need from the goblin trader as most of his inventory isn’t available when he dies. You can also free the owlbear cub, and kill a few asleep enemies for free experience on the high ground. You may not oneshot the bugbears but that should be fine.

Note: if you want to go the evil route, ignore this part. Attacking the tieflings is just a big fight with no special routing and you get allies, too. You should be fine.

Inside the camp is the scariest part. I usually talk to Gut and get hear to heal me, just to isolate her from the rest. You can kill her early. It’s worth using her key to get the entrance to the Underdark. You can even go grab Phalar Aluve.

Note: if you want to recruit Minthara, go knock her out before this.

Freeing Halsin is probably the easier fight in the camp. He’ll fight the encounter with you, and unless you let the two nimble goblins escape, there will be no reinforcements. One of the goblins can call a spider companion, focus the invoker rather than the spider (the latter disappears once the former dies).

Once the fight is done, you have to decide whether you keep Halsin for the rest of the camp. He’s a very tanky ally, but he tends block a lot of space and if he gets in sight of any goblin, they will instantly attack (which isn’t too big of a deal as you can de-group him from your MC). I did the rest of the camp both with or without him, both ways are fine.

This is a scary fight. She usually casts Hold Person on someone and suceeds, which means someone is going to die pretty quick. At that point in the game, not many builds can deal enough pain to break her concentration, though Throwzerker or Open Hand Monk can succeed. Make sure you destroy the eye quickly to avoid reinforcements. It has stupid damage negation, but you can push it in the void.

If you followed my route she should be alone in her room. Clear the main hall first, and use the beams on the high grand if you have a ranged character (you can access them with various ladders). Once this is done, you can go and kill Gut. Even if you don’t kill her before the takes a turn, she should not be able to call too many reinforcements.

This is a fight where you can really use terrain to your advantage. Again, you can position your ranged character on one of the beams of the ceiling. Let the enemies come to you through the big door and make it as painful as you can (Cloud of Daggers, Grease, etc.). Dror is strong, but he’ll usually spend his first turn buffing and moving, so bring him as much pain as you can before he activates rage. Making him go prone for advantage (OH Monk, Battlemaster, Throwzerker) or disarming him (Command, Battlemaster) is great.

It’s probably the hardest fight in the camp with Minthara, and you want to do it once the main hall (where Gut is at the beginning) is empty, to make sure no big reinforcements come to bother you. You can also clear the small room with the prisonner before.

Once all three bosses are down, you can go and clear the rest of the camp (there are a few goblins by the entrance, by the cage, and Gut’s bodyguard). If you haven’t done it yet, get the entrance into the underdark for some more free experience (and the fast travel point which is convenient).

Then you can just fast travel back to Emerald Grove, have the party with the tieflings, etc. You can come back later to the outer Goblin camp and use the horn to call the ogres and help you with that fight. I just aggro’ed everyone from the main bridge, ran back, summoned the ogres, let everyone fight while shooting arrows, and collected the spoils after. You can kill the ogres during that fight as well to grab their loot.

You want to loot everything you can. Even if you’re playing resourceless builds, there are some pieces of equipment you want to buy (Caustic Band, Gloves of Dexterity, etc.) and can’t reliably acquire with other ways.

Take everything from defeated enemies, everything you can loot in public spaces, every treasure, etc. I didn’t steal any items – unless I absolutely needed to. To trade, use a character has high Charisma and persuasion proficiency for better prices.

Whenever you can’t carry any more loot nor sell stuff, just send some stuff to camp to free up some space.

Also, here’s a tip to free some space: keep the camp supply sac in everyone’s inventory. Every item yielding camp supplies will go in there. Whenever you need some space, you can open the supplies sack, take everything from it, then send everything back to camp. Plus, the game now registers supplies in camp (and not only those in your inventory) when hovering the Long rest button.

As for which items to buy, it obviously depends on your build. That said, some items are always worth buying, like some healing potions (though I always ended up having much more than what I needed), the Caustic Band ring, the Titanstring bow, etc.

Have the Enhance Ability spell somewhere in your party. I mean it. This spell is a basically free advantage on any ability and for as long as the caster maintains concentration, which means you don’t have to recast it if there are several checks for the same ability in the same dialogue. It just makes skill checks so much more manageable, especially when cumulated with the likes Guidance, Resistance and/or Bardic Inspiration. It’s also really good to help with lockpicking.

Make sure you have Inspiration points in store for important checks you want to do (e.g. Swaying Kagha, convincing Shadowheart to spare Nightsong, etc.).

If at any point you make a big gamble and hope to suceed a 40% (or less) chance roll to win, you’re probably doing it wrong. Consistency is key in honor mode, and you don’t want to waste actions doing nothing.

Bless is not a good use of a concentration spell, but can be applied by items, notably The Whispering Promise or Phalar Aluve. It’s a good boost to consistency especially in the early game.

If Great Weapon Master or Sharpshooter bring you to less than 70-80% chances to hit an attack, see if you can mitigate this by getting advantage on your target, using Oil of Accuracy or Bless-like effect as described above. If you still can’t reach a good 70%+ chance to hit, deactivate the passive, attack and reactivate it after.

Surprise attacks are great to carry early fights. You won’t get a surprise round every time, but hiding gives advantage on your next attack, so you might as well try.

Even if you do not get that, getting some free damage (maybe even a free kill) before the fight even begins can be the difference between winning and losing the fight, or just save you precious resources.

Use high ground whenever you can, especially with your ranged characters. Use chokepoints to make it difficult for enemies to come at you safely, force them together for a big fireball. Put some grease, alchemist’s fire, even bloody firewalls where they have to come.

On the contrary, you want to avoid shooting from low ground, walking in hazards, etc. unless you have no choice. You can jump over hazards (especially if you have high STR), Misty Step or, if it comes from a spell, break the caster’s concentration.

If you’re well positioned at the beginning of the fight, a lot of enemies will spend their first turn not doing much apart from a dash, which gives you a completely free first turn.

Speaking of free turns, it is important to always have an eye on the turn order in the upper part of your screen.

When it’s your turn with any character, look at which enemies are going to play after you this turn, especially before any of your other characters gets to play. Whenever you feel like your current character(s) could kill one of these enemies before they get to play, then go for it. This also goes for stunning enemies, using Command on them to make them waste a turn, paralyzing them, etc.

Any turn the enemy doesn’t get to take is less damage your party has to sustain. And this is a very important rule in higher difficulty modes: the less turns the enemies get to play, the better for you.

However, you need to be wary of bosses when applying this rule, especially those with legendary actions. Obviously, they tend to be the targets to prioritize here, even if you could kill another minor enemy. More on that later.

By default you have only 9 meters per turn of movement speed. You should always have someone cast Longstrider on your whole party at the beginning of the day to get that to 12 meters. Some items (Crusher Ring), or skills (in Barbarian/Monk skills) allow you to get more, and some other items or skills allow you to dash as a bonus action.

One very useful trick is to use Jump. It costs 3 meters of movement speed, but usually allows you to go further than that (unless you have low strength). Sometimes, it’s the extra boost you need to be able to get in melee range and hit an enemy.

One very useful feature in this game is the ability to open character portraits during the fight. This allows you to have details about them like characteristics, armor class, conditions, etc. Mind their resistances (and vulnerabilities) as well.

The game does an excellent job of underlining keywords, so you know when you can get additional information. Make sure to open the tooltip (T by default, when hovering over the word) whenever you see an effect you don’t know. You don’t have to know everything by heart.

This is especially important when you’re against boss with legendary actions, as these are described on the character portraits.

There are plenty of consumables that are great to use and most of them only cost a bonus action.

Poison for extra damage or effects (drow poison early, crawler mucus for paralysis, etc.), Oil of Accuracy for consistency, and of course elixirs. STR Elixirs are super good for a lot of builds. Bloodlust elixir is amazing for damage dealers, even if the granted action does not benefit from extra attack anymore. Vigilance and Viciousness are great as well.

Apart from STR Elixirs, these elixirs are somewhat rare even in shops and should be saved for latest fights. It’s okay if you’re not always using an elixir (unless your build requires a STR one).

The same can’t be said for other consumables, poison especially. In all my runs I tend to stockpile them (”I’ll use them later”) and that’s a mistake. In early act 1 use Drow/Wyvern poison as soon as you have it (unless enemies are immune to it, obviously), you’ll just make your life easier and it’s not like you’re really going to miss it later. Bottom line: sure, saving consumables for tougher fights is good, but if you’re using no consumables at all you’re just burdening yourself. Don’t be afraid to use buffs.

Once upon a time, my Paladin had nothing to do with their action and casted a Command: Flee on Grym that gave me a whole free turn to kill all the Mephits.

In another time, Dror was very happy to have been buffed in patch 6… Until Karlach tripped him off his feet, just before Lae’zel disarmed him and picked up his hammer.

Enemies are only scary if they get to play. There are some builds out there that can use control spells or abilities with a disgustingly high success chance, sometimes even 100%. In the early game, you’re not going to have such high chances, but it’s worth using nonetheless. Things like Sleep, Command, Hold Person, Battlemaster abilities, Enraged Throw, Flurry of Blows: Topple… the list goes on. Damage is not everything. If you can damage and undermine the enemy’s abilities at the same time, you should.

“Control” is rather vague a term here, but this section can be summed up with one sentence:

Bait. The. Counterspell.

I mean it. If you have a spellcaster that’s about to hit a big fireball or chain lightning, well make sure nobody is going to Counterspell you first. Because that negates your action while you still lose a spell slot. The AI is kinda dumb in that regard and will counterspell an Eldritch Blast, so you can just do that instead.

Alternatively, if you see a mage in the enemies, kill him first. They tend to have lower AC and HP so your martials will make quick work of them.

Bosses with legendary actions may seem super scary. They kinda are not, really. Apart from the Owlbear – which you don’t have to fight – and the Spider Matriarch – which you can just delay – you don’t encounter legendary bosses until late Act 1. By this time, you’ll be level 7 and most of your builds will be pretty powerful.

Most of the legendary bosses didn’t even get to play in my Honour playthoughs. Inquisitor W’wargaz didn’t play a turn, Ethel died before even teleporting to her lair, Gortash died in half a turn, etc.

The point isn’t to boast, but to tell you: if you already have good builds and use them well, bosses are not any more of a problem than they were in Tactician. Here are some tips to ensure you prevail, though.

Again – read the tooltips! As soon as you see a boss with Legendary Resistance under their name, open their portrait and read the Legendary action’s description. You can also read the official wiki (not Fextralife). What you need is to identify what triggers the Legendary Action.

Any crowd control such as stun, paralysis, maybe even making them go prone can nullify their reactions, and by extension the Legendary Actions triggered as reactions.

If you can avoid it, then just don’t trigger the Legendary action. The Phase Spider Matriarch’s Gossamer Tomb[bg3.wiki] may look scary, but from my experience you can kill her before her spiderlings really become a problem. By extension, she will not trigger at all.

Sometimes you can’t avoid triggering the action unless you get a surprise round, which is the case of Inquisitor W’wargaz[bg3.wiki]. Good news – he can only summon two claws per turn, and they disappear once he’s dead. This is a case when you just want to hit him with everything you’ve got before he becomes too much of a problem. He has “only” 145 HP, so you should be able to burst him in one turn.

Basically: play around the Legendary Action and avoid the trigger whenever you can. Worst case scenario, a character that can’t attack the boss can still provide support, set up, or kill other minions.

Unsurprisingly, you don’t want legendary bosses to live long. Usually, they should be your priority target – but not the only priority target. Viconia’s fight, for instance, gets already a lot easier if you kill the two Dark Justiciars before they do anything.

At any rate, you don’t want the legendary bosses to live long. Crowd control is amazing and should be used as much as possible. Sure, bosses get +10 on saving throws thrice per turn… but you can overcome that, especially with Haste and the like. If you want to nuke them with spells, remember to bait the counterspell first.