Baldur’s Gate 3 player clears the entire game without discovering key mechanic

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a big undertaking and there’s a lot of stuff to wrap your head around. One player found this out the hard game when they stumbled upon a core mechanic that they completely missed in their first playthrough.

2023’s Game of the Year Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the most massive games of all time. The breadth of content is astounding and it means that it’s impossible to experience everything it has to offer in a single playthrough.

This means players are constantly coming forward with new Baldur’s Gate 3 discoveries but they’re usually in the form of unseen interactions with the game’s lovable companions. At most, they’ll find whimsical Easter eggs thrown in by hard-working developers.

Of course, there are things in the game that those developers didn’t plan for people to miss, particularly core mechanics. Unfortunately for Reddit user Roxicaro, that’s exactly what they did.

The player managed to complete the entirety of Baldur’s Gate 3 without ever stumbling across the game-changing Ilithid powers afforded by lodging tadpoles into your brain.

“I avoided using the tadpole and refused anything related to it because I thought it would turn me into an Ilithid eventually,” they explained. The decision makes sense because a big part of the game revolves around you trying to cure this particular malady.

The roleplaying decision did have consequences, however, and Roxicaro spent their entire playthrough with a confusing gap in their radial menu. “ I never knew there was a whole menu for picking Ilithid powers,” they said.

It’s a massive thing to miss out on. Certain Ilithid powers offer really useful buffs that give Baldur’s Gate 3 players some significant advantages in and out of combat.

There’s a tonne of Ilithid powers to access if you don’t mind sticking tadpoles to your brain.

On the plus side, now Roxicaro has a fantastic excuse for a second playthrough where they load themselves up on tadpole goop. Particularly as there’s no significant story impact for doing so, outside of some narrative dissonance.

If you don’t want to miss anything on your Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough, check out our handy guides to get caught up.

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