Can you beat Baldur's Gate 3 without levelling up? Yes, but not without some extra “ridiculous or cheesy strategies"
Dec. 17, 2023Permanently Level 1
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BeatingBaldur’s Gate 3without leveling up your character sounds like an impossible feat, but one content creator has proven it’s more than possible.
“In this video, I’m going to attempt to beat Baldur’s Gate 3 on the hardest difficulty without leveling up,” Youtuber Fracture explains. “This presents a lot of different challenges. I barely have enough health to survive a slip and fall in grease. My spell casting can, at best, be described as a two pump chump. And it’ll just keep getting worse and worse as I progress through the game.”
Fracture chose to play as the wizard class for the handy spells, with a Githyanki character who generally has an easier time talking their way out of tough situations since, you know, fighting is a struggle when you’re a lowly Level One. To make matters worse, Fracture is also playing on the Tactician difficulty - which was previously the game’s “hardest” before developer Larian introduced Honour mode. So, maybe we’ll get a redux one day.
“In general, I’m not planning on trying to just skip past all the content to technically beat the game,” the content creator explains. “I want to actually play and beat the game,” even if that includes using “ridiculous or cheesy strategies.”
Over the playthrough’s almost two-hour runtime, Fracture meticulously sidesteps many combat encounters and does everything humanly possible to make his character as persuasive as possible. And the result is a video that’s stuffed with hilarious missteps and moments that make you think ‘Oh, I didn’t know you could dothat!’
Fracture is no stranger to tough, self-imposed challenges, though. We previously covered his (successful) attempt atbeating the game without resting even once, a playthrough that showcased some equally creative problem-solving. But what could possibly one-up this?
Baldur’s Gate 3’s creative problem-solving is no accident, since the game was actually inspired by Arkane and Hitman.
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Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that’s vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he’ll soon forget.
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