Hidden Baldur's Gate 3 Item Uncovers Dark Lore Implications (2024)

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game that keeps on giving to inquisitive players and lore-lovers. Due to its long development period, Baldur's Gate inserted a veritable treasure trove of Easter eggs on the Sword Coast, such as new hidden areas and a secret love letter. Even after collective millions of hours in the world of Faerûn, players are still finding new items and new ways to play the game, including feats such as beating the game with a party consisting entirely of cats.

Nestled in the Underdark, the party can encounter many secrets. Tav can find plenty of useful loot and test their mettle against tough enemies like True Soul Nere in the subterranean zone. But in the underground, one player discovered an artifact tucked away in a far-out cave with disturbing implications.

Gno-Mercy For These Wicked Duergar

The new find comes from Reddit user Impressive-Time8757, who claimed to find an item they had never seen after 500 hours of playing the game. The artifact in question is the Crooked Wand of Fireballs. Its description reads, "You can use an action to cast Fireball from this (broken) wand. All (very) nearby creatures must make a Dexterity Saving Throw. Targets take 9–48 Fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one."

To find this item, the player must first go to the Decrepit Village in the Underdark section of Act 1. Once there, they must head to the coordinates X:56 Y:-183. The player will find three charred corpses, two duergars and one gnome, next to what looks like a caved-in mine shaft. Reddit user ProxyGateTactician, author of YouTube challenges such as the all-cat run mentioned earlier, explained, "It always felt like more of a story item to explain what happened to the corpses there."

The deep gnomes are currently being used as slave labor by the duergar. This item is a wonderful environmental storytelling device showing the last act of desperation by one of the enslaved gnomes, and also a fun way to blow a member of the party up. The player can also add a little world-building to the scenario. Was the wand originally unbroken and only broken after the attempt to blast away the captors? Was it already broken, and the gnome knew it had a chance to misfire?

Items Like BG3's Crooked Wand Of Fireballs Are More Common In D&D

The wand is exciting, as it’s the only one in Baldur’s Gate 3. In Dungeons & Dragons 5e, wands are magical items with a certain number of spell charges. For instance, if a non-broken wand of fireball is found, the player can take a short rest to attune to the item. They can then cast a fireball as an action, without using a spell slot, a predetermined number of times.

This isn’t the only instance of Larian Studios cutting certain items and abilities from the tabletop source material. For example, players pick an alignment during the character creation process in Dungeons & Dragons. Normally, this alignment determines what the player's actions align to, such as lawful, evil, chaotic, good, or neutral. In Baldur’s Gate 3, the player does not pick an alignment through the paladin class but still has to choose an Order. If players act outside their Order, they become an Oathbreaker and gain access to different abilities, such as raise dead and other necromancy spells.

With Dungeons & Dragons, players can spin spells, with the Dungeon Master’s permission, to do various things. For instance, the powerful spell polymorph states, “This spell transforms a creature with at least 1 hit point that you can see within range into a new form.” This new form is potentially limitless, from a squirrel to an owlbear. In Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios chose the more traditional route of turning the target of the spell into a simple sheep.

Baldur's Gate 3 Draws From Its Tabletop Origins With Perfect Balance

As limitless as Baldur’s Gate 3 is with player choice, it would be next to impossible to add all the possibilities that can occur in a less linear environment, such as a DnD tabletop session. Items such as the Crooked Wand of Fireballs pay homage to certain items and abilities that Larian was forced to cut from the game. The developers' choices translate playability from the original tabletop that inspired it excellently.

Environmental storytelling, such as the charred bodies of the two dwarves and a gnome, shows that Larian excels in its writing. This excellence extends not only to character narratives but also to small instances in the world that, even after hundreds of hours, players might not notice. In a fresh playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3, loot everything that’s not tied down, it might just reveal a new story that was never noticed before.

Sources: Impressive-Time8757/Reddit, ProxyGateTactician/Reddit

Baldur's Gate 3

Developed and published by Larian Studios, Baldur's Gate 3 is an upcoming role-playing game set to release in August of 2023. Players will create a character to embark on a large-scale journey and can do so solo or cooperatively with a friend. Combat is a turn-based style this time around.

Franchise

Baldur's Gate

Platform(s)

PC , Stadia , macOS , PS5 , Xbox Series X

Released

August 3, 2023

Developer(s)

Larian Studios

Publisher(s)

Larian Studios

Genre(s)

RPG

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence