Baldur’s Gate 3 – How to Start Act 1 Optimally

A guide to where cool stuff is in the prologue so you can start Act 1 optimally.

Nautiloid in Hell: The Optimal Start Guide

Сrеdit gоеs to kodfish6 !

Room 1

Step 0: Character creation, pick whatever class, race, or origin, idc im not your mom.

Step 1: Wake up after getting wormed, ponder what it means to be wormed.

Step 2: Loot the dead Mindflayer in front of you and the chest behind him (also grab the chest itself, this is a surprise tool that will help us later), there is also a staircase behind where you woke up leading to a platform that has a table with a single onyx on it grab that because ez money then continue up the platform to loot another chest (grab the actual chest itself too)

Step 3 (optional): Touch the tadpole nursery and make it explode, this has no benefits but I think its funny.

Room 2

Step 1: Only loot here is the dead Gobbo that will have some gold on him, besides all the runeslates that sell for 1gp if you really wanna pinch those pennies.

Step 2: SAVE, go up to the elevator and help the brain get born (investigating first doesnt lock you out of freeing the brain baby, then you can make a medicine check with advantage) if all else fails and you dont wanna save-scum then continue on to room 3 and come back with Lae’zel to try to strength the brain baby out, if THAT fails and your morals prevent you from save scumming then it should be OK, stuff later on is just gonna take longer, dont mutilate the brain puppy bc it probably wont survive anyways.

Room 3

Step 1: Wipe the floor with these imps, then loot every corpse you can find (if your strength isnt high feel free to use Lae’zel as a packmule)

Step 2: Reminisce about the beta Nautiloid In Hell layout, sure maybe it was longer but I miss seeing the full on fight between thralls and demons.

Room 4 and Room 4.5

Step 1: Ignore what Lae’zel says and immediately push the third button on the right, then loot the cultist bodies for stuff to sell later.

Step 2: See Shadowheart, dont worry your gonna free her in a minute but lets clear this room out first. Next to her is a backpack with some stuff in it that you can use as some impromptu container for your trash (if clutter bothers you as much as it does me) grab the container full of purple stuff too if you want, its not gonna help in the next fight but might be useful later.

Step 3: Press the Alt key to pull up tooltips, grab what you can from the table in the corner then move upwards into the next sort of room.

Stage 4: Loot the corpse at the top for the rune slate that will get Shadowheart’s pod open as well as the chest (and just to be safe grab this chest as well) and also the corpse at the entrance for the key to the box on the table in the last room.

Stage 4.5 (optional): Press the button, you know you want to, its just a single button and its right there and it turns a lady into a squid, how cool is that?

Stage 5: Ignore Shadowheart’s pleas and open the box with the key for stuff! yippie! (grab this small box if you wanna be EXTRA safe)

Stage 6: FINE I guess ill rescue you Shadowheart, use your new rune slate and mind powers to open the pod (if your a barbarian, you can try to force the hatch open, the only difference this makes is that you dont have to long rest to get your mind powers back after the crash) on your way towards the next room grab the purple goo canister if you want to.

Editors Note: You could attack the brainpuppy in this room to get some extra tiny exp if you really care, im not sure if this aggros your brainpuppy or not.

Room 5

This is it, the moment you have been preparing your whole 10 minutes of life towards.

Stage 1: Heal with the blue tentacle thing if you need to, then get everyone situated behind the door leading to the helm.

Stage 2: This is where all those chests that you have been forcing Lae’zel to carry come into place (literally) place the chest in such a way that it blocks the small passageway, double check to see if your blockade works by trying to get to the other side. If you cant move there you should be in the clear.

Bonus: equip everyone with ranged weapons if they dont have them already

Stage 3: SAVE, for all you anti-save scummers this is where your beliefs will be really put to the test. Enter the helm room, ASAP get Shadowheart to cast Shield Of Faith on the Mindflayer, let mindpuppy deal with the imp on the left and Lae’zel with the demonpuppy on the right while you go around to every corpse and loot them.

• You both do and dont want the Mindflayer to get hit, your party isnt gonna be able to take on the main demon dude themselves and your gonna be relying on the Mindflayer to bring him down to at LEAST 30 before your party killing the demon guy is even slightly possible. After the demon guy is dead the Mindflayer will turn hostile so thats why you want him to get hit a little bit.
  
• If your gonna savescum, quicksave before the mindflayers turn and make sure he can land his attack (and hopefully stun) off.
  
• Have Lae’zel continue up the right to loot any corpses up on that platform and deal with the crossbow imp if its still there, or take some potshots at the demon guy. There is a Void Bulb in the right enclave that is worth grabbing.
  
• Quicksave if your scum and get Shadowheart close enough to cast Guiding Bolt on the demon guy, hopefully it lands, sick your brainpuppy on the demon guy as in my experience it will be the one thing to actually be able to hit him most of the time (also is usually the demon guy’s 2nd priority if Mindflayer goes down) (there are also a couple of purple goo containers to pick up if you so choose)
  
• Let the fight playout, try to get shots where you can and hope for a crit, if Mindflayer is around 30ish hp stop trying to hit the demon guy and start chucking healing potions at the Mindflayer.
  
• Laugh at demon’s inability to move furniture as the two backup demons are stuck behind the chest barricade.

Stage 4: Hopefully both the demon guy and mindlfayer are dead grab the demon guys cool sword and the gem all mindflayers seem to have on them, now you can procede closer to the helm, look at the timer to see how many turns you have until crash, if its 4 or below then quickly kill and loot the demons and corpses that appear as well as grab the Caustic Bulb on the left table and the other stuff to sell, the table on the right you can loot a Voidbulb and cry that you cant get the other 2 items on that table bc collision. If you have more than 4 turns left have someone make a mad dash on the left staircase to the table at the end of that platform to loot more stuff.

Stage 5: Pilot the squidship and Inform your therapist your kleptomania is not getting any better. but at least your starting Act 1 at level 2 and you have a cool sword.