You Can’t Kill The Act 1 Dragon In Baldur’s Gate 3
In Baldur’s Gate 3’s first act, you can find a githyanki squad hunting for those that survived the mind flayer ship’s crash, believing them to have stolen an artefact of import to their people. They’re hunting you. Luckily, before you fight them, their dragon leaves, but players have been trying to kill the thing since launch in hopes of bountiful XP and wondrous treasure. You can’t.
In a video titled, „I’ve had enough Baldur’s Gate 3“, gamesvideos2023 sneaks behind the dragon from the mountain pass exit, places a bunch of explosive barrels, and lights them on fire. The expectation is that the dragon will die like most things do when coming into contact with 20 explosive barrels. Granted, it’s a fire-breathing dragon, but it oughta put a dent in its scales at least, right?
Nope, it flies off as it always does. Any damage or attack just sends the dragon off into the sunset, since you’re not supposed to fight it.
This isn’t the first time that players have tried to fell the dragon with explosive barrels. Back in August, noisyturtle posted to the Steam forums asking players if they’d found a way to kill it. Some pointed out that you can use Disarming Attack or Command to get a legendary silver greatsword, but others chimed in to say that no matter what they did, blowing the thing up didn’t work.
Another player, Bobgob629, posted a clip on the game’s subreddit three months ago showing them killing the dragon. It had glitched, never leaving as it was scripted to, and as such, it didn’t fight back. It just sat there and took blow after blow until it died. For your efforts, you get a paltry 250xp… because you’re not meant to kill it. There have been plenty of patches since then so this bug has likely been ironed out, and it’s unclear what triggered it in the first place.
„After I had talked to the githyanki, he told one of them to attack me, but they all just stood there,“ Bobgob629 said. „I attacked them and they didn’t do anything, including this dragon.“
While this was a three-month-old bug, someone in the comments did say that they tried the barrel technique, once again corroborating that this particular method doesn’t work.
If you’re hoping to prove your mettle by slaying a dragon first thing, becoming a famed adventurer right off the bat, sorry to burst your bubble. Best I can offer you is an old hag that likes to call you petal.
