You want the fancy loot from merchants in Baldur’s Gate 3, but you don’t want to roll for pickpocketing dozens of times? We’ll show you a trick.
The merchandise from merchants in Baldur’s Gate 3 is sometimes really tempting – but you lack the right pocket change. Fortunately, there are some methods to access the merchant’s inventory without having to pay gold – and not just theft is an option. The significantly easier variant is a little beating action from the shadows.
How does it work? The most important thing is that you don’t want any witnesses for the whole incident. How you lure away other NPCs is up to you: you can either perform as a bard with a music performance to lure everyone away or resort to simpler methods. The easiest way is to simply cast the spell “Darkness” or “Fog” on the merchant and immediately activate round mode.
Now place all your heroes in the dark area as well and activate “Non-lethal Damage” in “Passive Abilities”. Then use melee attacks (spells and ranged attacks remain lethal!) to beat the merchant down to 1 hit point and knock him out. Now you can loot the entire inventory of the merchant – including the gold he was carrying.
This is a significant difference from killing a merchant. Because if you kill a merchant, a large part of his inventory disappears and is not found on the corpse.
To avoid any problems, leave the darkness or fog cloud afterwards and take some distance so that nobody becomes aware of you.
What is the advantage? The advantage is simple: you can empty an entire merchant’s inventory without rolling multiple times for a successful pickpocket. Because even with good values in “Dexterity”, theft eventually fails and you get caught.
If the merchant is unconscious, however, you can usually just help yourself to his inventory and take all items into your possession without rolling checks.
What is the disadvantage? If you knock out a merchant this way, he will not be available for trade again afterwards. This method of looting is therefore “final”, and you should only use it when you are permanently leaving an area, the merchant is in a hard-to-reach place, or you know at least one other reachable merchant.
Why is gold so important? Most of the time, you have more than enough gold in Baldur’s Gate 3 to buy everything your heart desires. However, especially in the last act of the game, there are a number of merchants offering really strong armor or weapons. The costs can easily go into the high four or even five-digit range. If you then have no money, you have to resort to theft and risk ruining your relationship with the last merchants.
Have you already enriched yourselves with merchants this way? Or do you prefer honesty in trading?
