Act 3: Exploring Lower City
Step-by-Step Walkthrough
- We are setup gearwise for now. So our focus will be to do the easiest fights to get ourselves up to level 12 and get some more upgrades. Once that's done, we'll take out the remaining dead 3, raphael, and the Netherbrain.
- Let's start by cleaning up the overworld fights, so there's no surprises when you're walking around.
- Go ahead and warp to Heapside Strand if you have it. Walk down the stairs to the beach SE of it. You'll be ambushed by some fish creatures.They are weak to lightning damage, but otherwise nothing of note.
- Next warp to Baldur's Gate waypoint in the NW. Go south then southwest to the docks to see an angry crowd. You'll see they have Volo tied up and a fight starts. If you can cast water to put out the fire before Volo blows up, that would be good. He offers a buff in the final fight, but not a huge deal if he accidentally dies.You're probably starting to feel a little overpowered right now! Don't get over confident though, there's still some tough fights, with the final one being one of the toughest. Release Volo and talk to him if he's still alive. Otherwise get the waypoint by the water.
- Keep going south to the Water Queen's Temple. You'll find some people having a funeral in the building. Talk to them about their murdered friend to start a quest.North on the dock you can talk to Gowlan who is cleaning oil on the deck. He'll update the quest pointing you to the warehouse across the water. We can go there and kill some wolves now for a little more xp. Nobody seems to care if you break into the warehouse or murder people in the street.We'll come back later to deal with the sub. It's not a difficult fight, but might as well do it at 11.
- Go over to this house on the map. There will be an explosion from inside and Araj comes out. Talk to her and agree to her experiment, this will make it so your blood explodes in combat. Not super useful, but sometimes causes some extra damage.
- Head to the Wine Festival north of the Lower City waypoint and talk to Meztli. This is going to end in a fight, so kill the dopplegangers. I think there's a way to kill him before he escapes, but he seems to always escape. No matter, we'll go get him in a minute.
- After the dopplegangers are dead, warp to the Baldur's Gate waypoint again. Go into the Facemaker's Boutique. Close the front door and the back door so that the entrance room is cut off. Then attack the 2 doppleganger's in the front room. Once they are dead, go to the back to find more dopplegangers. If you can save the people that's fine, but if not it's not a big deal. Just loot the bag of hands from Dolor. Talk to Figaro and Devella if they're alive, not much else to do here.
- The last random overworld fight is up east of Baldur's Gate waypoint, in the park. You'll find some Bhaalists who aren't too bad, but can be annoying with their stealth. Don't forget faerie fire can bring them out of invis. Some guards join you halfway through.I was about 75% the way to level 11 here. Not doing too bad!
- There is some sewer exploration we can do to get waypoints and some more xp. So warp to Basilisk Gate waypoint, and enter the sewer just west of it.Have Astarion break the wall on the west side of the room you come to.
- There will be a hole in the wall in the next room to jump into a room full of poison. Separate MC bard and give him an elixir of poison resistance. If you don't have one, it's not a big deal, there is a switch right below where you jump down to turn off the poison.
- If you go east, you'll end up at the Emperor's hideout. We'll come down through the tavern in a minute, I think it's easier to start the fight that way. Instead go west.
- There will be some Bhaalists shooting at citizens, just kill them. There's an explosive barrel behind them you can use to cause some damage.After they're dead, there's a lever past them to turn off the poison again.
- Head west through the next room, there's some trip wires. The room after that has a waypoint for City Sewers.Keep heading north until you get to a door. Ignore the blobs and monsters, they won't attack you unless you cause them problems.You'll end up at the Undercity Ruins waypoint. To open the door, shoot the corpse hanging above the altar to make it bleed on the altar.There's a vendor to the left, but we don't need anything from him.
- Go east past the door til you get to this point. There's a super annoying fight in the next room, so instead, separate a character from the group. Then cast greater invisibility on them, run through the room, down the fallen pillar and into the door on the right. This will get us past the fight. Keep following the path down and you'll eventually unlock another waypoint. This way we can just warp here and avoid that annoying fight.
- Warp the rest of the team to the Temple of Bhaal. Then head back up until we can head north to the morphic pool.I would leave someone back like Astarion. The rats up here are pretty annoying and can randomly cause you a lot of pain. It's best to be safe and keep one back in case worst case happens. Just aoe and attack and try to take them all down. Once that's done, get the waypoint.I usually have Shadowheart use spirit guardians and stay behind her, that way they funnel through her until they break her concentration, which is no easy feat!
- After that, we can warp back to Basilisk Gate and head into the Elfsong Tavern.Go to the back room and find the stairs. Before going down, the easiest way to do this fight is just separate Shadowheart. Go into turn based mode, cast spirit guardians and use the stairs. There are a bunch of rats again, and they will all rush her and die to spirit guardians. This is also a good place to get the drunk boxing trophy, just get Shadowheart drunk, then go down the stairs. She will get 20 kills drunk and pop the trophy.
- After those rats are dead, bring everyone down. In the NW room there is a button that opens one of the kegs as a door. So go thruogh the keg door. You'll want to stealth before or immediately after you step through the next door. There's gonna be a fight with some Githyanki and you want to get better positioning. The only thing to note for this fight, there are portals on the top left and top right balcony. You want to shoot or fly up and destroy the Gate Masters channeling those (the guy with the purple glow around his head) asap. They will just summon more gith if you don't. It should be your top priority to get those closed. Then mop up the rest.
- After they are dead, there's a button on the north wall behind the statue. This opens up the door to Emperor's Hiedout. To complete the quest, just interact with his sword in the middle of the room. There's some other gear in here, but nothing we'll equip. You can get it to sell though.
- IF YOU PISSED OFF GORTASH AT ANYPOINT AND SIDED WITH ORIN SKIP THIS STEP. If you come here while Gortash hates you, the sentinels and soldiers will attack you. You're probably not ready for that. Now I was very close to 11. There's another thing we can do without starting a big fight.Warp to Wyrm's Rock. Go down the stars in the west room (right next to the waypoint). This takes you to the prison. I would just kill the guards down here, nobody notices or cares and it might avoid them fighting you later. Kill the first one before opening the door. Loot the key from her and then take out the rest inside by the cells. This is where I got level 11. If you didn't get it yet, we'll get some quest xp pretty soon and you should.
- On the west side are 2 dragon torches. Use shocking grasp on both of them to turn them blue and open the wall. Follow the path to a statue and door. Talk to the statues. Don't worry, I'm not crazy. We're not fighting Ansur, just doing the quest leading up to him and grabbing the Helm of Balduran.
- Chamber of Justice - SW trial Have Shadowheart use Remove Curse on The Judge. Then take the painting the cell
- Chamber of Insight - NW trial Just walk in, shoot Suelto and walk out.
- Chamber of Strategy - NE trial This chess game has a few outcomes. I would just google and try to find the solution for the one that matches yours. If you get it wrong, some demon/shadow guys spawn and will mess you up, so you don't want to get it wrong. I had this one. Queen to back corner so it checks the king. Then move the queen again across the back row, 1 square past the king.
- Chamber of Courage - SE trial This is just a fight against some elementals. Pickup the torch from the statue, and kill them as they spawn.
- Now that the 4 trials are complete, the main door to Ansur opens. Go on in, DO NOT INTERACT with the dragon corpse. Walk past it to find a helmet on an alter, then just leave through the door behind it. Ansur will mess you up. You can give the helmet to Shadowheart.
- In the House of Hope is a fountain that acts as a long rest. You can use it as much as you want, as long as you don't steal/cause trouble.
- Head to the Devil's Fee and go upstairs (talk to the shopkeep first if you didn't get the bag of stuff for opening the portal yet). Go to the pentagram on the floor and place the items, going clockwise
- Skull goes on west most point, near table.
- Coin of mammon on the next point
- Skip a point, then place diamond
- Incence goes after diamond
- Infernal marble goes right in the center
- Head forward and talk to Hope. Agree to rescue her. Our first stop is to the room on the west. It's a gallery of sorts, you want to talk to the Archivist and get an invitation to the bedroom. You can detect thoughts and tell him you're the High Inquistor or whatever. Then tell him you're looking for the contract of MC. He gives you the invitation to hte boudouir.
- Go to the north room, use your invitation on the barrier to lower it. When you enter the room, go into the pool and use a faucet for a free long rest! It doesn't remove your buffs or elixirs, so I suggest coming here to rest until we kill Raphael. It will save your cloud giant elixirs and camp supplies if you're running low.Note that your short rests don't get recovered, but song of rest does. So you still get a short rest each time you use the fountain.
- There's 1 more thing to grab here before we leave. Just south across the hall from the bedroom is some star looking thing on the wall. Pass 2 intellect checks (knock might also work, I'm not sure). This will lower the wall to a treasure room. There's a solid helmet and the staff of spellpower for MC bard. There's a contract for Mol, but I think it's not fully implemented. I brought it to him in the guild hall before and he never said anything about it.Now you can leave the house of hope, we'll be back later to save hope and kill Raphael.
- We can finish up Arfur's toy story, head to the quest marker south of Sorcerous Sundries. It's a fireworks shop. Talk to the shopkeep to be let upstairs. They tell you not to go all the way up, but we're here to kill them so who cares. Just make sure to shut the front door of the store before going up. I've had this fight spill into the streets and aggro guards before. Other than the verticality of the fight, it's not bad, just might have to run around more than you like.