A player from the MeinMMO community explains how you can steal from merchants in Baldur’s Gate 3 using a simple trick without losing them. We show you how to do it.
In Baldur’s Gate 3, there is a clever method to outsmart shrewd merchants and acquire both their gold and unique items without permanently scaring them off.
A member of the MeinMMO community has clever strategies to access the merchants’ inventory without sacrificing your hard-earned gold – yes, even to increase your own gold reserves.
How exactly does it work? A clever player with the pseudonym procra from the MeinMMO community has revealed a method for sneakily stealing from your merchants without losing them afterwards. They will still be willing to do business with you.
The procedure from procra is as follows:
- Make sure you have Astarion or a character with high dexterity in your group.
- Move a short distance away from the merchant and activate turn-based mode.
- Save the game once.
- Stealthily approach the merchant with Astarion and perform a pickpocket. For example, select the gold and succeed in the dexterity check.
- If the theft was successful, you can close the window.
- If you unfortunately get caught, simply reload the previously saved game.
- Turn the real-time mode back on. Ensure that your party members are far enough away not to rush the thief and expose them.
- Open the map and travel to another waypoint, preferably to a separate zone like the Zhentarim hideout.
- Wait for a while before returning to the robbed merchant. It may take up to 15 minutes for them to give up the hunt for your thief.
- Return to the robbed merchant and prefer to leave Astarion at the camp to avoid raising any uncomfortable questions.
- Now you can fulfill your wishes and purchase whatever you like. The merchant now has gold in their inventory again, even if it might be less than before.
- You can start over and repeat the process.
You can also use this method if you prefer to steal items directly instead of gold. An observation that procra made concerns the difficulty of stealing gold compared to items. In other words, it’s easier to steal armor worth 1200 gold than to actually snatch 1200 gold from the merchant’s pocket.
What other methods are available? There are also alternative methods to completely empty the merchants’ inventory non-violently while ensuring that the merchants are still available to you.
procra presents another alternative:
- For example, cast the spell ‘Sleep’ on the merchant with Gale. If you use a higher spell slot, you can also put merchants with more hit points to sleep.
- Activate turn-based mode for that, as the sleep spell only works for 2 rounds – which passes by quickly in real time.
However, note that this method does not work on all NPCs. Some merchants have positioned their stalls so cleverly that you can never sneak up unnoticed and cannot escape the line of sight of the surrounding NPCs.
And the Zhentarim are well aware of these tricks and could thwart your plans. You are now well-equipped to outsmart the world of merchants.
Baldur’s Gate 3: How to completely rob merchants without pickpocketing
