Baldur's Gate 3 Beginner's Guide: Where to Start and What to Know

Baldur's Gate 3 is a big roleplaying game built on the Dungeons and Dragons ruleset, and the opening hours can feel like a lot to take in. There's character creation, a wall of stats, a combat system that quietly rolls dice behind the scenes, and a map with no quest marker telling you where to head next. It all clicks into place once you've got the basics down, and a handful of early choices make the rest of the run go a lot smoother.

The aim here is to get you past the stuff that trips up new players. That means how to pick a race and class without overthinking it, how the dice and turns actually work, how resting and camp supplies keep your party on its feet, how your companions feel about you, and where to point your feet in Act 1. Nothing fancy, just the foundation.

Choosing Your Race and Class

Character creation is where most new players freeze, because the screen drops 11 races, a pile of subraces, and 12 classes on you all at once. The good news is that almost none of it is permanent. A little way into the game you'll recruit an undead camp follower (Withers) who can respec your whole build for 100 gold a pop, so you're never truly stuck with a bad call. Pick what sounds fun, then fix it if it isn't working out.

The 11 races, briefly

The playable races are Human, Elf, Half-Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Gnome, Tiefling, Dragonborn, Half-Orc, Githyanki, and Drow. Each one comes with small bonuses and a couple of sub-options. Humans get a little of everything and stay flexible. Tieflings shrug off fire and pick up a few free spells. Half-Orcs hit harder when they land a critical hit. Githyanki get medium armor training and a trait that briefly lets them borrow proficiency with a whole set of skills. None of these will make or break your game either way.

What a race actually changes

Mostly it comes down to a handful of things: movement, darkvision, and resistances. A Wood Elf or Wood Half-Elf gets a little extra movement each turn, which sounds small until you keep ending up one step short of the enemy you wanted to hit. Tieflings resist fire, Dwarves and certain Halflings resist poison, and Dragonborn pick a damage type to resist based on their ancestry. Darkvision lets you see in dim caves without taking a penalty, which matters more than you'd guess early on.

A few races have small twists stacked on top. Halflings can reroll a natural 1 (so they basically never fumble), and Gnomes get better saving throws against magic. It's all useful but none of it is mandatory. If you just want a safe default, the movement and darkvision perks are the ones you'll actually feel in a fight.

The 12 classes, grouped by what they do

Here's the full list: Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard. Rather than describe all twelve one by one, it helps to sort them by what they actually do in a fight.

• Weapons up front: Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin, Ranger, Monk
• Sneaky, skill-heavy burst damage: Rogue
• Spell power from a pool that refills each day: Wizard, Sorcerer, and Warlock
• Support and healing: Cleric, Druid, and Bard (Bard also dabbles in offense)

Warlock stands out from the other casters. It gets only a couple of spell slots early on, but those slots come back on a short rest instead of a long rest. So you cast, rest a bit, then cast again. It's a different rhythm and a lot of players love it for that.

Picks that are kind to beginners

If you want the path of least resistance, Fighter is hard to mess up. You swing a weapon, you've got a pile of health, and your job in a fight is simple. Ranger and Paladin are forgiving too. On the magic side, Warlock and Sorcerer are friendly because you're not juggling as many spell slots at once. Bard is the all-rounder pick, decent at a little of everything plus they can talk the party out of trouble.

Race-wise, pair any of those with a Wood Half-Elf for the movement, or a Human if you just want balanced stats and don't want to think about it. You'll do fine.

A concrete example: a Wood Half-Elf Fighter with a greatsword and the Defense fighting style will carry you through all of Act 1 without you needing to crack open a build guide. It's that forgiving. Casters are a little squishier early on, so if you'd rather not worry about positioning, lean toward a martial class for the first run.

Understanding the D&D 5e Rule Set

BG3 runs on the 5th edition D&D rules. That means whenever you swing a sword, cast a spell, or try to talk your way past a guard, the game rolls a 20-sided die behind the scenes. You almost never see an actual die, but that's what's happening, and you can watch the result scroll by in the combat log. Knowing a few rules makes that log start to make sense.

The d20 and how checks work

Most rolls come down to this: roll a d20, add your modifier, and beat a target number. If you swing at a goblin with a +5 to hit and the die lands on a 12, your total is 17. If the goblin's Armor Class is 15, you hit. The same logic covers jumping a gap, picking a lock, or lying straight to someone's face. The target number changes, the math doesn't.

Ability modifiers come from your six stats: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Every two points above 10 adds +1 to that stat's modifier, so a 16 Dexterity gives you +3. High numbers make you good at related things, low numbers make you bad at them. That's the whole system in a sentence.

Advantage and disadvantage

This is the single most important combat idea in the game. Advantage means you roll two d20s and keep the higher number. Disadvantage means you roll two and keep the lower one. That's a big jump in your odds of landing a hit, so it matters a lot more than a point or two of stats.

You pick up advantage from all kinds of things: attacking from high ground, hitting an enemy who's already busy with someone else, or striking while hidden. You eat disadvantage when you fire a bow with an enemy right in your face, or swing through thick fog. The general rule is to fight dirty. Shove someone off a ledge, shoot from a rooftop, gang up. The math rewards it.

One wrinkle worth knowing: if you have both advantage and disadvantage on the same roll, they cancel out. You don't roll three times. You just roll once, normally. So stacking buffs doesn't help once you're already advantaged.

Action, bonus action, and reaction

Each turn in combat hands you a few things to spend: one action, one bonus action, one reaction, plus your movement.

• The action is your main move, like one attack, one spell, or a dash to cover ground.
• The bonus action is the smaller add-on that some abilities unlock. A Rogue can use a bonus action to hide right after attacking, and certain spells cost only a bonus action.
• The reaction happens off your turn when something sets it off, like an enemy wandering past you (you get a free swing) or getting hit by a spell you can counterspell.

Beginners tend to underuse the bonus action. If you end your turn with one still sitting there, you've left something on the table. It's worth checking what your class can actually do with it.

Spell slots and cantrips

Casting runs on a budget. Cantrips are your free spells, the ones you can fire off every single turn forever at no cost. They're weaker, but they never run dry. Real spells cost spell slots, and you only get a small handful of those per day. A 1st-level slot casts a 1st-level spell, and a higher slot lets you cast a stronger, "upcast" version of it.

When you burn through your slots, you're down to cantrips and whatever weapon you brought along until you rest. That's the whole economy of playing a caster, and it's a big reason why resting matters so much.

Proficiency and your bonus

There's a small number called your proficiency bonus that gets tacked onto anything you're trained in. It starts at +2 at level 1 and ticks up as you gain levels. It shows up on attacks with weapons you know, on saves for stats you're strong in, and on skills you picked during creation. You don't manage it by hand, just know that the stuff you're proficient in is noticeably better than the stuff you aren't.

Camp Mechanics and Long Rests

Resting is how you heal up and refill your resources, and BG3 makes it a little more involved than "press a button to sleep." There are two kinds of rest, a resource called camp supplies, and a camp you can poke around in. Get comfortable with all of it, because leaning on rests the right way keeps a run from stalling out.

Short rest vs long rest

A short rest is free and quick. It tops up the party's health a bit and refreshes some class abilities, and it costs nothing. You get two of them to spend between each long rest, so use them after a scrape before you reach for the big reset.

A long rest is the full reset. It heals everyone back to full and brings back every spell slot and class resource. It also rolls time forward to the next day. You'll want one before any major fight.

Camp supplies and what they cost

Long rests aren't free. Each one eats camp supplies, which are just the food and drink you pick up off the ground across the map. Cheese, bread, wine, the usual loot junk. The cost depends on your difficulty.

| Difficulty | Camp supplies per long rest | |---|---| | Explorer / Balanced | 40 | | Tactician | 80 | | Honour | 80 |

On Balanced that's pretty much cheap as dirt. You'll be swimming in food by the second hour. On Tactician and Honour it's tighter early on, so you actually have to think about whether a given rest is worth the supplies. If you're short on food, you can take a partial rest instead, which only gives back half your spell slots and a little health. It's better than nothing in a tight spot, but it's not a full reset.

What a long rest actually does

Mechanically, a full long rest tops everyone to full health, refills all spell slots, resets your short rest count back to two, and clears most temporary conditions. It's the closest thing the game has to a clean reset, so lean on it. The one thing to remember is that it doesn't undo story choices, so don't rest expecting to rewind a bad decision in dialogue.

Resting moves the story forward

Here's the part a lot of new players miss: long resting isn't just a heal button. A big chunk of the companion conversations and story beats only fire when you head to camp for the night. If you blow through Act 1 barely resting because you're trying to hoard supplies, you'll skip entire character arcs and lock yourself out of quests. Rest often. The camp is where a lot of the best stuff happens, not the battlefield.

Companion Approval Basics

You don't play BG3 alone. Through Act 1 you'll pick up a rotating cast of companions, and each one quietly keeps a score on how much they like you. The system is called approval, and it shapes who sticks around, who bails, and how parts of the later story play out.

Who you meet in Act 1

You can recruit up to six core companions across Act 1: Shadowheart (a guarded cleric), Astarion (a smooth-talking rogue with a secret), Gale (a chatty wizard), Lae'zel (a blunt, fight-happy gith), Wyll (a charming warlock weighed down by his pact), and Karlach (a big-hearted barbarian with an engine where her heart should be). Two more, Halsin and Minthara, can join depending on which side of a major early choice you take, and you generally can't get both.

How approval works

Every companion has their own outlook, and they react to what you do. Help a stranger in trouble and Karlach and Wyll will warm up to you. Be cruel, and Lae'zel or Astarion might approve instead. You'll see little approval or disapproval pop-ups in the corner when a companion reacts to a choice, and you can check the exact number in each character's sheet.

You don't have to keep everyone happy at the same time. They're not all going to agree with you, and bending over backwards to please all of them is a recipe for going nowhere. Lean toward the ones whose outlook fits your character and let the rest sort itself out.

What approval actually does

High approval unlocks more of a companion's personal story, opens up romance paths, and keeps them loyal when the big decisions land. Push it low enough for long enough and a companion may decide they've had enough and walk away for good. For the most part you won't hit that extreme unless you're going out of your way to antagonize someone at every turn.

Don't sweat disapproval

A point or two of disapproval here and there is no big deal. The swings that really matter are the big story decisions, not the small talk choices. Play your character the way you want to play them, and the companions who fit will stick around. If someone's just not clicking, you can always leave them at camp and bring a different face along.

Exploration Tips for Act 1

Act 1 is the most open part of the game. After the opening stretch on the ship, you crash onto a beach with nothing telling you where to go. That freedom is great once you know the lay of the land, and pretty rough if you don't. Here's how to get your bearings without getting clobbered.

Start at the Emerald Grove

Head north from the crash site and you'll hit the Emerald Grove, a small druid camp crowded with tiefling refugees. This is your first real hub. There are shopkeepers here to buy gear from, a pile of side quests, and some of your earliest big story calls. It's also the safest area on the map, which makes it a solid home base while you figure the game out.

Grab every companion you can

Companions are scattered just off your path in the early hours, and you'll bump into several within the first stretch of beach and forest. Pick them all up, even the ones you don't plan to use. They hang out at camp, and you can swap them in and out anytime. A full bench gives you options for different fights and locks in their storylines before things get complicated.

Difficulty ramps up to the west

Here's a useful rule of thumb: the further west you travel from the crash site, the meaner the fights get. The Grove and the area around it are gentle. The Blighted Village and the Goblin Camp out to the west are a real step up. If you wander into a scrap and get wiped in two rounds, that's the game telling you to come back later with more levels, not that you're bad at it.

Aim for level 4 or 5 first

Most experienced players suggest being around level 4, and ideally closing in on 5, before you take on the Goblin Camp leadership or push into the harder zones. The jump from level 4 to level 5 is a big one in 5th edition, since a lot of classes get a major power spike there. Fighters, Paladins, and Rangers all pick up a second attack per turn at level 5, which roughly doubles their damage. Clearing the softer side content first gets you there the safe way.

Two ways out, and you can do both

Act 1 has two main exits into Act 2: down through the Underdark, or west over the Mountain Pass to the githyanki Crèche. You don't have to pick one and lose the other. Most players push through one as far as the point of no return, then backtrack and mop up the other before moving on. Both paths are stuffed with loot, levels, and story, so skipping either leaves a ton on the table.

Save early and often

BG3 has an autosave, but don't lean on it. Manual save before every fight you're unsure about, before big dialogue calls, and anytime something odd happens, because the game is famous for letting plans go sideways in wild ways. Quicksave is your friend here. Ten seconds of saving can save you an hour of redoing a fight you never meant to start.

If you take only one habit away from all this, make it talking to every companion at camp before you wrap up each long rest. A big chunk of the story in this game lives in those fireside chats, and it's easy to rest your way right past them if you only ever head to camp to patch up.