Baldur’s Gate 3 presents such a wide array of decisions for players to make that at times, if you’re the type of person that likes to have a definitive formula for optimizing your play, it can be overwhelming.
However, in order to incentivize exploration and encourage players to create their own unique journey, Larian Studios did what any creative dungeon master (DM) would do in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign by hiding ways for players to beef up their characters through permanent ability score upgrades that can be earned by focusing less on “min-maxing” and more on immersing themselves in the BG3 world.
Before going any further, here is one spoiler alert for players that want to maintain a “pure” run. The rest of this article will discuss different methods for players to earn permanent ability score upgrades.
The first major ability score upgrade opportunity is one that many players have already either earned or missed from Act One. During the Save Mayrina quest, which includes a fight with the evil hag that goes by the facade “Auntie Ethel,” players realized that if you approach the encounter a very particular way, you can earn a +1 bonus to an Ability Score of your choice.
But you have to be smart about it. If you get Ethel’s health down to the 20-30 hit point range without killing her, it will trigger a cutscene in which she tries to plead for her life, offering you a permanent Ability Score bonus if you let her go alive. In some playthroughs, players may have missed this buff because you simply hit Ethel too hard and killed her before triggering the dialogue, or perhaps you even Eldritch Blasted her into a chasm.
While the perk is huge for people looking to min-max their character, it’s not something that a lot of players would necessarily discover without seeking it out. For those that were able to find it organically, the achievement of getting such a massive buff early in the game was extraordinarily fulfilling.
In a less tricky situation, players that go out of their way to talk to just about everyone at Moonrise Towers could be rewarded by talking to Araj Oblodra. If you have Astarion in your group and convince him to suck her blood, which she weirdly requests, you can not only progress Astarion’s story a little bit deeper, but you also earn a Potion of Everlasting Vigour, which gives a permanent +2 boost to a character’s Strength.
For people that go into Moonrise all-too-ready to take on Ketheric Thorm, they likely missed out on an easy upgrade that’s effectively a buffed version of the Ability Improvement Feat, because it gives +2 Strength and isn’t capped at 20.
Lastly, the Mirror of Loss in Act Three is a part of Shadowheart’s personal questline, and you probably won’t get a chance to get to it if you don’t deepen your companionship with her. The mirror allows people to sacrifice a memory, which represents two Ability Score points in a specific Ability, in exchange for a +2 buff to another Ability Score. While that hypothetically means that your overall Ability Score total will come out in the wash, it’s not necessarily true because you can remove the debuff from the mirror since it is a removable curse.
These three instances are just a few of the countless reasons that Baldur’s Gate 3 has generated so much critical acclaim. The lengths that the creators went to in order to reward players for going on a journey instead of just following a linear path is truly impressive—and DMs everywhere should be taking note.
