Baldur's Gate Overgrown Ruins guide

Right at the start of your adventure in Baldur's Gate 3, exploring the Overgrown Ruins lets you get to grips with the harsh realities of the road ahead: tough dialogue rolls, difficult combat encounters and easy-to-miss hidden puzzles.

Before you venture forward, there are two things to remember. First, quicksave often if you want a specific outcome. While you can use Inspiration to re-roll some checks, no one likes having their best-laid plans fall apart because of bad RNG, so reload when you're frustrated. Second, make sure you have a full party of 4 characters. Search the surrounding area for your friends before venturing into the Overgrown Ruins. Otherwise the combat will be very hard.

Baldur's Gate 3 Overgrown Ruins guide

Approaching the Overgrown Ruins from the West, make a quicksave and enter the bandits' argument. You can either fight them or convince them to leave with a persuasion, deception or intimidation check. Companions like Gale and Shadowheart will be impressed if you can trick them into leaving without a scrap.

Once they're dealt with, interact with the locked door at the bottom of the Ruins to speak to the rest of the bandits. You can trick them again with another deception or performance check to open the door. Otherwise, shoot down the foundation block above the cracked stone the first bandits were crowded around to make a route down into the crypt.

Inside the Overgrown Ruins, you’ve got a tough fight against a load of bandits to contend with. If you blagged your way in, then you have the luxury of fighting one bandit alone first before surprising the rest by pulling the lever next to the kitchen to open a passageway to them.

Look carefully and you will see that there are some exploding barrels in the middle of the room where the bandits are. Shoot them with a fire ball to even the odds. Once they’re dead, loot the bodies and search the area.

On the locked door that advances the “explore the ruins” objective, you can just bust it down with a melee weapon or go into the back room and pull the skull lever in the far corner. In the now open room, there’s a door at the back that leads to the “Dank Crypt”.

How to search the fire-trapped sarcophagus in the Dank Crypt

In this new area you find loot in the opulent and gilded chests around the room.

Then, through the set of heavy oak doors you can open, there’s a fire trap room on the right. I recommend splitting your party by toggling group mode on the left-hand side of your screen for this part so you can just use one character.

In front of you as you enter there's a gas trap hidden in the floor, walk close to the pillars to avoid it.

In the sarcophagus in the middle of the room is a magic weapon and a key to the other set of doors on the other side of the crypt. Once you loot the sarcophagus the room will flood with flammable oil and set on fire, so be ready before you interact with it.

To get out of the room unscathed, approach the sarcophagus from the side and press the button on the pillar once the oil is released and turn-based mode triggers - you might need to save scum this so you don’t fall over. With the flame trap turned off, grab everything from the tomb, including a useful Soul Coin which will give some characters Inspiration.

Now's a great time to take a short rest because there’s another tough fight ahead. Use the key you found in the sarcophagus and make your way through the second set of large doors.

Through the ornate side door on your left is a sarcophagus with a soul coin and the book of dead gods on the side. Interact with the book of dead gods and you get a tough arcana check or a strength check to open it. With the arcana check passed, you get a less difficult religion check. As the name would suggest, the book is a list of old gods. Gale gets an inspiration point if you can pass both of the checks.

Now, turn your attention back to the main chamber. In the back corner there's a button that opens a secret tomb. But when you try to open the door, skeletons will attack you. They're tough, but focus on taking out one at a time so you can remove their action from the queue. If you split your damage too much, enemies will overwhelm you.

After they're defeated, one of the will be carrying the heavy key. Go into the back room they attacked you to keep you out of and open the heavy chest to get the Amulet of Lost Voices. This is an incredibly useful item which lets you interrogate corpses for information - just like in the recent Dungeons and Dragons movie. Equip it to your character and then open the main sarcophagus.

Out slides Withers, a truly interesting and mysterious undead. Answer his questions to the point where he's satisfied and he says you will meet again. When you take a long rest, Withers will be at your camp providing a ton of services like reviving dead characters and changing your class.

With the Overgrown Ruins fully explored, you can now leave through the underground river cave on the far side of the crypt. There's a ladder here which leads back outside and onto adventures new!