Act 3: Rivington
Step-by-Step Walkthrough
- During the rests on the way to Baldurs Gate, you will get attacked by some gith. I just run past them and enter the portal. Then buff and head forward. You will get in another fight with the gith and help the emperor. Whatever you do, DO NOT LEAVE until you looted the monk boots from the Prelate. Those are Astarions best in slot, make sure to grab them before you leave the Astral Prism.When the emperor gives you a choice, agree to become Illithid. This is HM and not a "this is what I want to do playthrough". Becoming Illithid allows you to fly and unlocks 3rd tier of skills. We are trying to beat HM, not have a good time, so take it whether you agree with it or not. Also convince Shadowheart and Lae'zel to become Illithid, Astarion will not. With the new worms, I would try to get Illithid Expertise and Psionic dominance with MC bard. Then get Psionic dominance with Shadowheart and Lae'zel. It's a free counterspell that 3 of your characters now have. After that it's mostly whatever you feel like. Most of the other skills are situational and I don't really use them. I just put the worms in MC bard and Astarion to maximize their cull of the weak usefulness.
- Leave through the portal and finish the rest. Welcome to Rivington!
- Our main goals for act 3 are upgrade our gear, get to 12 asap, and deal with the remaining bosses. We could rush through to Lower City, but there isn't really much fighting in Rivington, so may as well just wrap up here then leave. There's some stuff that's optional, some of the harder fights you might not want to do in Lower City. I'll try to mark the pro's and con's of the optional ones and let you decide if you want to risk it.
- Head down the path and straight across to the house with the mercenaries arguing with Arfur/Zenovia/Ben. Convince Arfur to let the people stay, then you can either kill the mercenaries or talk your way out of it. There doesn't seem to be much consequence either way. I tend to kill them since it's an easy fight and we want to level up ASAP.
- Go into Arfur's house and into the back room. There's a hatch on the ground under a table (shut the door so the people don't see you lockpick it). Go down with just 1 person, probably MC bard since he has best sleight of hand. There's a ton of traps and we don't want everyone to be caught in the explosion if you mess up. There is a chest in the back. You can jump over the traps or disarm them. You'll most likely set some off on accident, but that's why we only bring one person down. Once you disarm and unlock the chest, there will be a letter in there to read. It will start a quest to check Arfur's donations.
- Go to the SE corner of Rivington to find the donations warehouse. Talk to the guard and tell him you need to inspect some donation. Go to the back corner to find Arfur's donations and disarm it. Talk to the guard again, then we're done with this for now.
- Leave the mansion and head down the path. You can talk to Klaus (the assistant sniffer lol) and his little demon buddy Benji to get into the circus.
- Just the the right of the entrance is Zethino. You can play a love mini-game if you're romancing someone. Otherwise, not sure there's much reason to.
- Further down the path is Akabi the djinn. You want to pickpocket his djinn ring so that he can't cheat. Then play his game and he'll teleport you to another map.
- Keep sneaking. You can probably kill the dinosaurs, but I've never really tried. Your goal is the southwest cliff. You want to go up above and there will be a camp with a skeleton and backpack. The backpack has the band of the mystic scoundrel. Remember that you can fly now because you're Illithid, so super easy to get around. Equip the ring on MC bard, and give caustic band to Astarion.This ring allows you to cast spells as bonus actions after hitting with a weapon. Soon we're going to switch to a regular bow, so your bonus action will free up. I think command, confusion, hold person, vicious mockery, and dissonant whispers are all good choices.
- Make your way to the portal exit, there's a legendary spear in the chest, but we don't have a melee guy, so we'll just be selling it.
- Just 1 last thing to do in the circus for us. Head to the stage in the NE corner, you'll end up fighting some dopplegangers. They're pretty annoying by taking away our advantage, but still pretty weak.
- Leave the circus and go further down the street to the Open Hand Temple. You can go talk to Yannis and Valeria about the murders. Go back 1 room to the kitchen to find a hatch. The murder victim is to the west if you want to speak with dead on him first, I don't think it's required to move the quest forward though. Go down the hatch when ready.
- Go to the west room. There are 4 coffins. Interact with the PLAQUE on the SW one. It should update your quest for the monk necklace. Now you can open the coffin. I don't know if it's still bugged, but the first time I played, if you open the coffin before reading the plaque, it never registered that you found her and you were locked out of finishing the quest. The spirit will take over a corpse. Say "Gods, no. I don't want to inherit your curse". You'll have to fight them (I think if you kill Shirra first the rest die automatically). Afterwards, Astarions monk necklace should be upgraded and the quest is done.
- Go to the south room. The NE and SE corner have shields on the wall to find with perception. Interact with them to find hidden buttons behind them, press them both.
- Go through to the east into the cave, then curve south. You can sneak up to get closer to these guys before starting the fight. It's just a few of them, shouldn't be hard to deal with. Loot Zomm for the Flowery Key. We don't really need anything else. I usually skip the quest for putting together the clown body. It's tedious and not really worth the rewards (you can also just steal the reward from Lucretia in the circus, but we wouldn't use them).
- Go ahead and leave the temple. We have 1 more thing to grab before crossing the bridge. Head up the hill to the windmill. Lockpick the door and go inside and downstairs. You'll find a mindflayer where you can get another parasite (you have to consume the brain you loot off him)
- Now head on down to the south span crossing.