In Baldur’s Gate 3, the items at your disposal are not limited to what you can loot. As you progress through your adventure, you’ll have the opportunity to craft powerful weapons and brew game-changing potions.
In this guide, we’ll cover the basics of crafting equipment and the key information about alchemy in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Crafting
Most of the crafting in Baldur’s Gate 3 involves some kind of quest or journey to collect specific items before creating weapons and armor. Examples of these quests include the Masterwork Weapon and the Adamantine Forge. An instance of crafting with no associated quest is creating the Mourning Frost staff after finding its three pieces in the Underdark.
For weapons and armor with a quest, you will have to return to a specific forge to create them, while for other items you can simply combine them in your inventory. Simply right-click on an item you want to use for crafting, and press the combine option. It will bring up an interface to combine two items into a new item.
A common and simpler form of crafting is dyeing armor. If you come across any dyes during your campaign, you can combine them with armor pieces to modify the color.
Alchemy
Unlike most crafting opportunities, alchemy is reasonably common and a bit more flexible. Alchemy ingredients are everywhere in Baldur’s Gate 3, both as plants and loot from certain enemies. An easy way to find alchemy ingredients is to highlight objects, as ingredients will always be highlighted.
A highlighted alchemy ingredient
Whenever you find a new ingredient, you will learn a new recipe. You can see your recipes and the alchemy menu at any time by pressing H, or navigating to your inventory and going to the alchemy page. Ingredients will be collected into the alchemy pouch that you start the game in, which is outlined in orange and should be near the top of your inventory by default.
Finding Alchemy Recipes
To put your ingredients to use, you need a recipe that utilizes them. Alchemy recipes can be learned from collecting all of the ingredients or from finding recipes around the world. For most recipes, the ingredients have to be extracted before they can be used and the associated recipe discovered. You can think of extraction as the refining of ingredients before they can be used.
In a rare move amidst a frustrating user interface, you can extract all of your ingredients at once from the alchemy menu by pressing the “Extract All Ingredients” button. Alternatively you can manually extract a single ingredient by selecting it from the left hand menu and clicking “Extract.”
Crafting with Alchemy
Once you have discovered some recipes and extracted your ingredients, you can start brewing. The four main categories of alchemy products are Potions, Elixirs, Grenades, and Coatings. Potions offer an instant or a short-lasting effect while elixirs last until a long rest and only one can be active at a time. Grenades are powerful throwables and coatings can be used to enhance your weapons.
The other categories focus on refining ingredients. Everything available in these sections will automatically be completed when you Extract All Ingredients.
Creating alchemy products is a simple process. Each alchemical solution requires a primary and a secondary ingredient. You can start crafting by either pressing the blue button in the middle or the “Craft Item” button beneath the crafting triangle. You can also specify a quantity or just craft the maximum amount available.
Have you pulled off any clever or unique tactics using alchemy in Baldur’s Gate 3? Let us know in the comments below!
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Lucky Boop
Strategy game enthusiast, especially Paradox titles and the Civilization series. Whenever he's not writing he spends his time watching sports, enjoying coffee, or studying history.
