Baldur’s Gate 3 Player Kills The Shadow Druids Before Even Knowing Who They Are

In an easy-to-miss side quest early on in Baldur’s Gate 3, you can unearth a secret plot orchestrated by Kagha to help the Shadow Druids overtake the grove. They can even be seen lurking around the ruins in the form of rats. But if you try to confront them before gathering any evidence (read: hurl a fireball at them, or swipe at them with a dagger), you’ll just aggro the entire sanctuary and prematurely end the quest.

That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, though. u/maxwellalbritten was able to sequester the rats—using the improvised melee attack and warp out exploit—and kill them with a couple of smokepowder bombs before confronting Kagha. But, of course, Larian wasn’t counting on players to sequence break the game with glitches, so don’t expect any unique dialogue or a new cutscene for pulling this off. All it does is bug out the quest.

“Pretty Anti-Climactic”

“First I went back to Kagha and there was no change in dialogue,” u/maxwellabritten explained. “I then went and got the letter from the bog and went back to confront Kagha for real. I tell her I know about the Shadow Druids and she says ‘What!?’ and then… that’s it […] Talking to her again gives you all the same dialogue options, including telling her you know about the Shadow Druids again. Rath does tell you that it’s a shame we had to kill Kagha and the ritual is stopped.”

The reason the game bugs out is that, when confronting Kagha, the Shadow Druids are supposed to reveal themselves. That’s hard to do if they’re dead, which the game has checks in place to prevent, like having the entire camp turn aggro if you attack them, making it impossible to confront Kagha afterwards, or disappearing if you somehow avoid being caught when trying to take a jab at them (ie through using exploits).

Sure, it’s “anti-climactic” to jump through so many hoops and hit a looping dead end, but it’s fascinating to see players find new ways to break the game nearly two years on from its release.