Baldur’s Gate 3 is full of powerful bonuses and items that can make your character incredibly potent. Because of the method of bargains, learning, and quest making it only makes sense that something out of the bunch might catch your eye. Luckily for you, it’s easy to establish a powerful character quickly through certain bonuses included in this list. Keep in mind that everything here is optional, and some will come with dangers and other restrictions to keep in mind.
However if you have the right tools, and the creative mindset to think outside the box, you can easily bend the rules. So whether you pick and choose from this list for some of the best abilities for yourself, or use it as a capture sheet, here are ten of the best general permanent bonuses to get your hands on in Baldur’s Gate 3. Most of these can be acquired through acts one and two, with only the last couple being towards act three of the game. Best of luck hunting, and may the dice roll in your favor!
Looking for more Baldur’s Gate 3 content from Keengamer?
- Baldur’s Gate 3 | All Bard Cantrips Ranked
- Baldurs Gate 3: Githyanki Overview
- Baldur’s Gate 3 Classes Ranked From Worst to Best
- All Baldur’s Gate 3 Races Ranked from Worst to Best
- Baldur’s Gate 3: Paladin Class Overview Guide (Best Oaths and Classes)
Paid the Price – A Risky Deal
First on our list is the lowest of the best general bonuses you can acquire. Giving you a hag-touched eye you get an advantage on intimidation for a few drawbacks. For one, the player will have a disadvantage in perception as well as against attacking hags. This being said you can easily make up for this at higher levels. Additionally, you can have access to one of the coolest cosmetic enhancements in Baldur’s Gate 3! Giving the player a pale eye on their choice of eye can create a unique upgrade that allows you to stand out. However, with this cool factor and bonus to intimidation aside you will have to keep in mind it is highly flawed.
Obtaining Paid The Price is as simple as interacting with Auntie Ethel in her teahouse. There she will make a deal with you that allows you to trade an eye for the release of the tadpole. Of course, this will not go as planned resulting in her abandoning you to the bowels below. Follow her down below and you can obtain another bonus from her after a subsequent fight. That being said, however, this cosmetic upgrade can make a lot of intimidation checks go easily as you gain an advantage on them outright.
Auntie Ethel’s Hair – A Pleasant Reward
The second bonus you can get from Auntie Ethel comes when you follow her through her fireplace to the spot below. Notably, you shouldn’t just attack her outright as she can only do this within her inner recesses. This is also a good way to avoid the redcap fight in an enclosed area. Once you follow her down and engage her in combat, you can spare her after a certain point and she’ll offer you a deal. Take it and you’ll get a stat bonus for your choice of one stat. This has a temporary means of being doubled however will remove this permanent bonus from your character if you do so.
Auntie Ethel the Green hag.
By consuming the potion “broken promises” you can get double the stat increase but goes away after a long rest. Aunt Ethel’s hair can be used on any stat you choose but only works on one character. Because of this, you are better off going with whatever best suits your character. Very interestingly this stat can be used to exceed an individual stat above twenty. So make sure to mix this with a combination of other stats to exceed your natural abilities and become a real menace. You can acquire this bonus by beating Auntie Ethel in the bowels of her tea house. To do so you’ll have to defeat the masked opponents and also get past her potent magic.
Volo’s Ersatz Eye – Medical Compensation
The second ocular enhancement you can get through interactions with others is Volo’s Ersatz Eye. This special item comes after saving him from the goblin camp and allowing him to perform surgery on you. Once he takes your eye out, he will replace it with this special artifact that endows the player with the ability to see invisibility up to nine feet away from them. Keep in mind that creatures who succeed in a dexterity save can stay invisible, but otherwise, this is a great way to avoid surprises. Of course, you can choose the opposite eye as the one you’ll get for the hag touched to get two unnatural eyes.
In this case, you will become able to see multiple spectrums of magic, as well as be less susceptible to certain spells. If Volo dies you can still pick up the eye in case of a situation where you lose one. You might be able to find an alternative method of putting the eye in however the most surefire method of doing so is allowing Volo to perform the deed. Very importantly, you will have to go through a series of saves that also come with a rather gruesome depiction. So make sure when you choose this upgrade that you’re ready to deal with the incoming imagery.
Volo the Bard and his Magic Eye.
Loviastar’s Love – God’s Painful Touch
While being mostly inclined to players who fall below a certain amount of health, Loviastar’s Love is a great bonus for any player. Being able to give them an advantage on saving throws for wisdom and an additional two on attack rolls, it has a wide range of versatility. In long drawn-out dungeon crawls this can be used to protect against the many dangers and gives you the advantage of damaging things. Meanwhile, wisdom saves are something that can be a pain to maintain as not a lot typically gives bonuses to it. So something that can instantly be a treasured bonus to anything that has to deal with say wisdom-based spell casting.
Keeping in mind that wisdom-based spell casting is most closely associated with things like clerics, this can be a real difference-maker in and out of a battle. You can acquire the Loviastar’s Love permanent bonus by enduring his followers’ beating. To get an additional bonus on the rolls to receive this unique gift, make sure to take off any armor you’re wearing at the time. This way you can get an additional four on all rolls during the interaction. Outside of this, the follower beats you a few times which you must endure with constitution and willpower. If successful you will be endowed with this unique blessing for the rest of your character’s playthrough.
Necromancy of Thay – Forbidden Knowledge
The necromancy of Thay bonus is a multifaceted set of bonuses that come about from the book of the same name. Being a Necronomicon of sorts, reading a single page of it grants the speak with dead perk one per day naturally. Beyond this, you can receive bonus points on your wisdom stat that can greatly help with certain spellcasting. Beyond this, you can get more spells later on from it such as the danse macabre feature that works phenomenally for spellcasters. Unfortunately, this book is centered around so many bonuses that they can all fit under different categories of usefulness. However, in the case of the forbidden knowledge bonus, you have a lot to offer.
This book contains many bonuses to necromancers including speaking to the dead, a wisdom bonus, and the danse macabre spell.
You can find the necromancy of Thay book within the ornate mirror sanctum in the blighted village. From there all it takes is a bit of lock-picking and trap unarming before you can acquire the book. Then go under the well and beat the spider matriarch, find the corrupted gem, and insert it into the book. Once this happens you can begin reading a small part of the test that allows you to obtain these bonuses. Be prepared to do a large amount of will saves when you open the book or else it’ll close, ending the opportunity.
Find Familiar: Scratch – The Best Boy
One of the absolute best summoning spells you can gain as a character is the find familiar spell. To this end, two versions of this spell are incredibly specialized to permanent bonuses. The first is finding Scratch, a white dog that is designated as the best boy in the realm. Finding his master slain along your journey towards the owl bear cave in act one, this dog will happily follow you back to your camp if you give him your scent. Unlike most of the situations regarding familiars, Scratch has the unique ability to sniff out magic secrets.
This means he can overlook any kind of perception loss you may have gotten from certain cool-looking eyes. Outside of this, you get an amazing dog that can help you in combat and can be summoned infinitely. Outside of this, Scratch will become a permanent companion at your camp that you can talk to with the speak with animals spell. Very importantly he is one of two major pets that can join your party and can fetch with his shiny red ball. Unlike the other summons that you can find in the wild as a permanent bonus, this one doesn’t require any kind of negotiation or special action.
Scratch the best boy in the realm.
Find Familiar: Cheeky Quasit – Faust?
The other summonable bonus that you can acquire is that of the Find Familiar: Cheeky Quasit. An interesting case as it comes from a scroll, this bonus has a few limitations and exploits available. Once summoned you can communicate with this creature to have it teach you its spell permanently. However there is a component cost, and conditions that must be met which makes this a very limited means of going around it. Instead, by becoming a wizard of a summoning school you can take the scroll and learn it as a spell to use in your journeys. Because of this, you could potentially gain this as a bonus that stays with you throughout the game even if it dies.
The Quasit in question ranges in name between shovel, basket, and fork- each having a similar personality and move set. However, each of these creatures is essentially able to act like the warlock’s level 3 find a familiar spell which can make the game a whole lot more hilarious. Interestingly other members can not learn the contract from a Quasit once the deal has been made. You can find this scroll in the apothecary’s basement in the blighted village around the coffins.
Potion of Everlasting Vigour – Vitamins
One of the best bonuses you can get for general character building is the Potion of Everlasting Vigour. This item can be used to permanently increase your strength by two points, allowing you to exceed twenty. As the maximum you can have in a character is 24 on a stat, this is an easy way to shoot up there quickly. The best means of using this is to just put it on a character that either needs a bit more carry weight, or on one you wish to make overpowered. When paired with items and other bonuses you can easily make a wizard incredibly strong, or a fighter godlike. However, in doing this, you are going to lose respect with your resident vampire, Astarion.
Cheeky Quasit.
To acquire this potion you’ll have to find a certain NPC by the name of Araj Oblodea. She wants to be bitten by a vampire, however Astarion doesn’t want to bite her. He reasons that her blood smells bad, however, if you convince him to she will give you this potion. As a note, if you can take this potion for yourself she will later give you another one with more potent combat abilities later on. Overall unlike her second bonus, this one can be used on nearly any character to make them all the better in and out of combat.
The Tharchiate Codex: Blessing – Necromancer’s Dream
Once you get into the mainstay of Baldur’s Gate you should make your way up to Ramazith’s Tower. You’ll need to complete the seriously dangerous path to get there, but the book will be found through an intricate puzzle. Once you get into it, read the book and you’ll be endowed with a few curses which can be broken with the subsequent level three spell. Upon succeeding in finishing the book you’ll be given an additional twenty temporary HP every morning when you wake up. This is a permanent bonus that allows you to become all that much more bulky during a conflict.
That being said the puzzle is difficult, requiring you to go through a proper set of doors. Additionally, once you’ve finished the book you can unlock the greater secrets of the Necromancy of Thay book. To this end, you can acquire some of the most powerful bonuses for necromancer play styles and summoners alike. Altogether, this set of books allows the player to become a much more competent combatant and general adventurer. These points can translate well when navigating in harsh environments, traps, or weather conditions.
-source: Toyhouze
Mirror of Loss – A Means of Gain
Finally, if you want to make the most of your forbidden knowledge along with all of your stats, take a gamble with the Mirror of Loss. This device located in the house of grief allows the player to sacrifice knowledge of themselves and the book of Thay to it. In this case, you can receive both a plus one for charisma and a plus two for your chosen stat. In this way, you can get three bonus points to your character permanently including strength. If you mix this with the bonus to your strength from the potion then you have max strength in the game with a natural twenty. Along with everything else, you could potentially bring two of your stats to twenty besides this becoming incredibly powerful.
Overall though, this mirror has a few caveats. For one, you will need to have the remove curse spell which will remove all of the lost knowledge curses from your character. After this you can openly just be left with the bonus “Patriar’s Memory” and the bonus to your chosen stat. This means you don’t have any losses so long as you keep Gale and Shadowheart around you during this part of the journey. Outside of this, the Mirror of Loss may be the best way to gain important bonuses once you reach Baldur’s Gate!
A powerful book of magic to assist the Book of Thay.
