How to Rescue Volo in Baldur's Gate 3: Should you trust him?
The sometimes-bard, sometimes-sociologist Volo is an interesting character - but is he trustworthy?
Sometimes he’s a bard, sometimes he’s a sociologist, but whatever his specialism that day, Volo is one character in Baldur's Gate 3 you’re not going to forget in a hurry.
You meet him multiple times throughout your early adventure through Faerun, but even in that short time there are a few different ways your interactions can shake out.
Here’s what you can do during your trials and tribulations with Volo in Baldur’s Gate 3
How to rescue Volo from the goblins
You first meet Volo at the Druids’ Grove before you’ve rescued Halsin.
He takes an immediate interest in your exploits and asks to interview you about the goblin raid.
Indulge his questions and he will tell you that he plans to infiltrate the goblin camp to learn more about their society.
When you reach the camp yourself you find that his investigations haven’t gone unnoticed. Engage him in conversation and his captors will grow annoyed, then haul Volo off to a new cell inside their temple.
Follow, then make your way over to the right-hand side of the area. Here you find Volo inside a cage.
Speak to his goblin captor and you can either attack them, or try to pass a speech check to worm the key to the cage out of their possession.
Whatever your choice, speak to Volo again after unlocking his prison. He will thank you for your efforts and offer to meet up again at your camp. Agree, and he will sip his invisibility potion to escape.
Next time you make camp, speak to Volo there. He will thank you again for your efforts in saving him, then the conversation will turn towards the predicament of your party. Allow Volo to examine you and he will ask for some time to think about what he can do to help.
Finish the conversation though and the first portion of the quest is complete and you get some great clothing for a bard class character.
Should you let Volo perform surgery on your eye?
After your next rest, speak to Volo again and he will have had time to ruminate on what he can do about the mind flayer tadpole in your head.
He will offer to perform a procedure to remove it, and it’s your choice whether you trust Volo, or see him as a charlatan.
If you refuse the procedure, obviously things continue how they are.
If you let Volo perform the procedure on your eye however, things don’t go as planned, but aren’t necessarily bad.
Without spoiling the ins-and-outs of the interaction, if you proceed through all of the warnings and pass the checks to push on to the end, your character will gain the tag “one-eyed”, but Volo will produce a magical artifact that not only fixes your vision, but enhances it.
With Volo’s ersatz eye, your character will be able to see invisible characters, stopping them from ambushing, sneaking up on, or sneaking away from you.
However, it’s worth noting that this stops you from taking any other quest path which requires you to have two real eyes - including Auntie Ethel’s quest. (For the same reason, you also can't take either quest at all if you're playing Wyll as your origin character, since he only has one eye to begin with.)
Pretty much all of your companions also think this is a really stupid idea and will disapprove. So it also might not be the best course of action if you’re trying to stay in the good graces of someone in particular.