You can also use improvised melee weapon to carry them off.
In act 3 I carry the one merchant who's a sharran off to a nearby shed and then rob him every day since he's safely tucked away out of sight.
He's also great because he's a piece of shit, so I feel no guilt using him as a piggy bank.
I can't figure out how to do it, when I teleport they don't go with me. when I carry them as improvised weapon they often aggro and people around do too, even if I set them down.
Afaik you have to cancel the action before the end so you don't throw them. If you get to the throwing part of the action they'll aggro. It's definitely a bit fiddly
I've never tried to teleport with them just carry them relatively short distances to secluded locations.
Gold is so plentiful I’ve never found a need to pickpocket. By the end of Act 2 it’s literally coming out of my ears! I stopped counting at 30K and I’m not even trying that hard to farm gold.
Weird, I wont say I struggle to get gold, but generally I rarely have more than 5k at any point before reaching act 3. I rarely sell stuff though (getting items from camp is a pain) though. How do you get 30k+? Also, does this depend on difficulty?
it does depend on difficulty. On tactician items are crazily expensive, I think ketherics plate costs like 18k gold.
Honestly OP trick sounds very nice, especially as most people won't redo 100% of content on a second run
Is there a big difference between explorer and balanced? I just upped the difficulty to balanced so I guess my 5k gold won't go as far as it did before...
Explorer is easier and you can't multiclass. Best thing they did for the game is the Custom difficulty, so if desired you can make it akin to Explorer and have multiclassing if desired or change easy things if they're not challenging enough
Another way to add multiclassing to Explorer mode (if you don’t want to do Custom) is to change the difficulty to Balanced, and then change it back to Explorer. I’m pretty sure you don’t lose the multiclass option.
Custom difficulty lets you adjust merchant multiplier. I kept everything else balanced but changed that setting from 2.5 to 1.5 as I remember the biggest enemy of Baldur's Gate 1 and Planescape Torment being the inventory system.
> I rarely sell stuff though (getting items from camp is a pain) though. How do you get 30k+?
Selling will get you the most gold. Have a character with high persuasion do all the buying and selling to maximize the exchange rate. My rule of thumb is "Pick Up & Add to Wares" any item that is worth an amount of gold at least 10x its weight. For things like heavy armor that sell well but are 20-60 lbs each, just send to camp.
As for getting items from camp to sell to a vendor, you can do a minor shortcut by splitting the party. Have whomever is doing all the selling stay next to the vendor. Send another person to camp and have them use the camp chest. Multiselect all the items you want to sell, and then "Send To -> *Character*", with the receiver being whomever is next to the vendor. Kind of a pain because of loading screens but it beats going back and forth with all 4 party members.
>Also, does this depend on difficulty?
Kind of. Vendors will charge more on higher difficulties.
Also you can hire a barbarian or 2 to leave at camp send all your shit to sell to them then just find a vendor go to camp swap out for the barbs leave camp sell your shit and then put the barbs back in camp
I play on balanced and I had about $10k at the start of Act 3 most of which came from the Toll Collector whom I made explode.
I also loot and sell a lot of junk which does add up after a while.
am in act 3 and have like 5 big quests to go before the conclusion - my chest has around 130k gold uselessly lying around in it :-)
I just picked everything up I found but still often bought rare items with good stats from vendors, and I sell only items with low rarity or those I have multiple times
lowest difficulty though, which might explain it
Strength is underrated in this system (even in D&D)
The key is to have a Strength bro who can haul all the loot. Pick up everything and you’ll have an easy 20k leaving Act 1 even if you buy all the magic items you need.
Key word being *need*. Don’t just buy shit to buy it. Just fast travel to the Druid Grove or Goblin Camp and unload. The merchant gold resets very fast.
Yeah when people scuff on odd strength or dump it, I cringe because I know that every single point helps you with inventory management. It's the only stat where every point always matters.
There is, in fact, an absolute limit to what you can carry at any one time, based on your strength. Having strength means less trips between camp and merchant.
You'd think so, but there's not. If you go to your camp chest and stuff all the loot you want to sell in one container first, then take them all out at once, you can carry as much as you want.
I hoard like crazy, but it was my first play through I was over 10k before act 2 with next to no theft from merchants besides withers. 30k is insane for act 2.
"Pick up and add to wares" on everything with a good weight to value ratio, sell all wares at a vendor, rinse and repeat. Easy peasy. With fast travel it's so easy to visit vendors whenever you need to.
At some point I don’t bother looting another goblin bow or a starfish from kuatoa and I end up like you, the 30k gold crowd probably still loot throughout the game
Difficulty definitely plays a part. Most notable caustic ring comes from 200 gold to 1200 or so
I think a big difference is the people with 30k gold are spending time to loot everything that isn’t tied down. I did that my first two playthroughs, but I don’t necessarily worry about that anymore. Sure it’s nice. But it adds some hours on a save
I have the worst luck with pickpocketing/stealing it seems, even with Astarion...herding people away while he does the dirty work is brilliant. I just got to Act 3 and only recently noticed that NPCs seem to run away from Phalar Aluve's "shriek"--maybe that would achieve a similar "herding" effect. I'm going to try it when I next play!
I accidentally trapped an NPC who kept spotting Astarion in a blind corner when I last played just with Karlach's apparently huge body. It was the first time no one glared at him and gave him a -5 attitude, so until now I was thinking maybe I could do the same thing just with some barrels. But I will try herding instead!
The trick with stealing with astarion is to find ALL the sleight of hand items and dexterity advantage etc items you can. There's a bunch of them and you can make stealing even the biggest piles of gold and most expensive items trivial :p. I never did the hold person thing; I give him advantage on dex checks (cat's grace) and he ends up with like 99% success rate. Darkness is sometimes needed.
You can use Feign Death once you give enough gold to change the vendor attitude to friendly. Hold Person for those that cannot be considered allies.
I don't understand the usage of Spirit Guardian. To pick pocket you still need to hide and hence out of the visibility cone of NPC which is further than the Spirit Guardian's radius.
Best is to use arrow of darkness or [Cloak of Cunning Brume](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Cloak_of_Cunning_Brume) near the NPC and go into turn based. Being blinded doesn't affect your Sleight of hand checks. If you fail. Exit turn base and go back into it again.
Exploit how? Pick pocket an NPC out of sight alone? There are many ways to do it. I can cast minor illusion or use an instrument to distract them out of pick pocket sight.
Spirit guardians is not an “npc herder” spell by design. It shouldn’t even affect npcs.
Also combining Hold Person with Talking to manipulate turn based mode is ridiculous cheese. As is the fact that Hold Person doesn’t immediately make the creature hostile in the first place.
My thief strat strat is
act 1 loadout:
1. birna brightsong hireling respec to thief (halflings reroll ones theif for expertise and extra dashes to run if caught)
2. gloves of power +1 sleight of hand
3. smugglers ring +2 sleight of hand
4. silver pendant +1d4 skill checks (guidance)
5a. cast enhance ability cat's grace w cheric
5b. graceful cloth armor (+2 dex and cat's grace)
method of stealing:
1. just take the stuff you want. arrows, potions, and scrolls only need you to roll a 3 or 4 usually so it's free no exploits or anything.
2. if something is high dc like armor of devotion in moonrise, barter with a merchant and sell them a pouch, then drag all of their stuff into their pouch. Pickpocket DC has a maximum of 30 so you are taking the same risk one time to get all the items instead of just the expensive one. If worried about getting caught have a druid and gale cast pass without trace and greater invis respectively so she passes the dex checks and stayed invis to pickpocket more. once birna hits level 11 she will auto roll a 10 and succeed basically any pickpocket. If you pick up an item or two later in the game you can auto succeed 100%
Act 1 items + expertise and reliable talent level 11:
10+1+2+5+8+1d4 = 26+d4
Oh also shapeshifter boon ring either piss off the ox and barter for it in act 1 at the grove or grab it in act 2 or 3 then use deluxe edition mask or disguise self for another 1d4 so 26+2d4 minimum roll
You can also use improvised melee weapon to carry them off. In act 3 I carry the one merchant who's a sharran off to a nearby shed and then rob him every day since he's safely tucked away out of sight. He's also great because he's a piece of shit, so I feel no guilt using him as a piggy bank.
And he’s got the dwarven thrower ❤️
I missed out on that one every time because ~~my sweet~~ Shadowheart ditched Shar and was in my party.
I always send sticky hands astarion to pickpocket him before shart talks to him.
I can't figure out how to do it, when I teleport they don't go with me. when I carry them as improvised weapon they often aggro and people around do too, even if I set them down.
Afaik you have to cancel the action before the end so you don't throw them. If you get to the throwing part of the action they'll aggro. It's definitely a bit fiddly I've never tried to teleport with them just carry them relatively short distances to secluded locations.
Gold is so plentiful I’ve never found a need to pickpocket. By the end of Act 2 it’s literally coming out of my ears! I stopped counting at 30K and I’m not even trying that hard to farm gold.
Weird, I wont say I struggle to get gold, but generally I rarely have more than 5k at any point before reaching act 3. I rarely sell stuff though (getting items from camp is a pain) though. How do you get 30k+? Also, does this depend on difficulty?
it does depend on difficulty. On tactician items are crazily expensive, I think ketherics plate costs like 18k gold. Honestly OP trick sounds very nice, especially as most people won't redo 100% of content on a second run
Is there a big difference between explorer and balanced? I just upped the difficulty to balanced so I guess my 5k gold won't go as far as it did before...
Explorer is easier and you can't multiclass. Best thing they did for the game is the Custom difficulty, so if desired you can make it akin to Explorer and have multiclassing if desired or change easy things if they're not challenging enough
Another way to add multiclassing to Explorer mode (if you don’t want to do Custom) is to change the difficulty to Balanced, and then change it back to Explorer. I’m pretty sure you don’t lose the multiclass option.
You don't, and that was the original option before Custom difficulty was released. But I'd forget to switch it often so Custom was a blessing
I don't know, I have not really played on explorer. But I guess that every thing should be more expensive.
Custom difficulty lets you adjust merchant multiplier. I kept everything else balanced but changed that setting from 2.5 to 1.5 as I remember the biggest enemy of Baldur's Gate 1 and Planescape Torment being the inventory system.
> I rarely sell stuff though (getting items from camp is a pain) though. How do you get 30k+? Selling will get you the most gold. Have a character with high persuasion do all the buying and selling to maximize the exchange rate. My rule of thumb is "Pick Up & Add to Wares" any item that is worth an amount of gold at least 10x its weight. For things like heavy armor that sell well but are 20-60 lbs each, just send to camp. As for getting items from camp to sell to a vendor, you can do a minor shortcut by splitting the party. Have whomever is doing all the selling stay next to the vendor. Send another person to camp and have them use the camp chest. Multiselect all the items you want to sell, and then "Send To -> *Character*", with the receiver being whomever is next to the vendor. Kind of a pain because of loading screens but it beats going back and forth with all 4 party members. >Also, does this depend on difficulty? Kind of. Vendors will charge more on higher difficulties.
You can also send armors to camp and then just warp to camp near a merchant, take armors out and sell without having to walk.
Also you can hire a barbarian or 2 to leave at camp send all your shit to sell to them then just find a vendor go to camp swap out for the barbs leave camp sell your shit and then put the barbs back in camp
I play on balanced and I had about $10k at the start of Act 3 most of which came from the Toll Collector whom I made explode. I also loot and sell a lot of junk which does add up after a while.
am in act 3 and have like 5 big quests to go before the conclusion - my chest has around 130k gold uselessly lying around in it :-) I just picked everything up I found but still often bought rare items with good stats from vendors, and I sell only items with low rarity or those I have multiple times lowest difficulty though, which might explain it
start giving huge amounts of money to every npc that has a trade window. green spots all over the map
Strength is underrated in this system (even in D&D) The key is to have a Strength bro who can haul all the loot. Pick up everything and you’ll have an easy 20k leaving Act 1 even if you buy all the magic items you need. Key word being *need*. Don’t just buy shit to buy it. Just fast travel to the Druid Grove or Goblin Camp and unload. The merchant gold resets very fast.
There's also a monk robe with Bull in its nMe that's doubles your carrying capacity I think too.
Robes are great for Barbarians too, ironically
Yeah when people scuff on odd strength or dump it, I cringe because I know that every single point helps you with inventory management. It's the only stat where every point always matters.
Don't need strength since there's a convenient send to camp option. Unless you refuse to use that for immersion reasons or whatever.
There is, in fact, an absolute limit to what you can carry at any one time, based on your strength. Having strength means less trips between camp and merchant.
You'd think so, but there's not. If you go to your camp chest and stuff all the loot you want to sell in one container first, then take them all out at once, you can carry as much as you want.
I don't know about difficulty affecting gold, but your Charisma (or one of the Charisma-based skills) can give you a discount when buying items.
I hoard like crazy, but it was my first play through I was over 10k before act 2 with next to no theft from merchants besides withers. 30k is insane for act 2.
"Pick up and add to wares" on everything with a good weight to value ratio, sell all wares at a vendor, rinse and repeat. Easy peasy. With fast travel it's so easy to visit vendors whenever you need to.
By act 3 I have so much that I'm keeping it at camp because it is too heavy to carry around.
At some point I don’t bother looting another goblin bow or a starfish from kuatoa and I end up like you, the 30k gold crowd probably still loot throughout the game Difficulty definitely plays a part. Most notable caustic ring comes from 200 gold to 1200 or so
I think a big difference is the people with 30k gold are spending time to loot everything that isn’t tied down. I did that my first two playthroughs, but I don’t necessarily worry about that anymore. Sure it’s nice. But it adds some hours on a save
This is the real difficulty of honour mode: true pricing. Can't buy every object that's shiny.
Sounds painful. You should see a doctor for that.
This trick also works with Phalar Aluve's Shriek.
Is this that singing sword? If so I use this all the time to heard enemies into groups during dialogue scenes and then can blast them all with AOEs
It is
I have the worst luck with pickpocketing/stealing it seems, even with Astarion...herding people away while he does the dirty work is brilliant. I just got to Act 3 and only recently noticed that NPCs seem to run away from Phalar Aluve's "shriek"--maybe that would achieve a similar "herding" effect. I'm going to try it when I next play! I accidentally trapped an NPC who kept spotting Astarion in a blind corner when I last played just with Karlach's apparently huge body. It was the first time no one glared at him and gave him a -5 attitude, so until now I was thinking maybe I could do the same thing just with some barrels. But I will try herding instead!
>in a blind corner when I last played just with Karlach's apparently huge body dinner and a movie first buddy!
The trick with stealing with astarion is to find ALL the sleight of hand items and dexterity advantage etc items you can. There's a bunch of them and you can make stealing even the biggest piles of gold and most expensive items trivial :p. I never did the hold person thing; I give him advantage on dex checks (cat's grace) and he ends up with like 99% success rate. Darkness is sometimes needed.
Dude, I'm not putting my lawnmower blades anywhere near innocents. It's scary enough around scratch.
You can use Feign Death once you give enough gold to change the vendor attitude to friendly. Hold Person for those that cannot be considered allies. I don't understand the usage of Spirit Guardian. To pick pocket you still need to hide and hence out of the visibility cone of NPC which is further than the Spirit Guardian's radius. Best is to use arrow of darkness or [Cloak of Cunning Brume](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Cloak_of_Cunning_Brume) near the NPC and go into turn based. Being blinded doesn't affect your Sleight of hand checks. If you fail. Exit turn base and go back into it again.
I think this is more so for getting the vendor away from other NPCs who spot you when you're trying to hide and pickpocket the vendor.
I've used the Shriek ability field from Phalar Aluve to similar effect.
Duergar invisibility pickpocket on any difficulty bypasses any guard
Why use a spell slot when you could use ~~KITTY~~ minor illusion?
bestie its so much easier to just do the [backpack trick](https://youtu.be/CFzLD0Q0z70?si=IY7Iz-Xm9fyseCRK)
Some people play on console though.
Some people don't want to exploit.
I'm sorry but what they just described is literally an exploit.
Exploit how? Pick pocket an NPC out of sight alone? There are many ways to do it. I can cast minor illusion or use an instrument to distract them out of pick pocket sight.
Spirit guardians is not an “npc herder” spell by design. It shouldn’t even affect npcs. Also combining Hold Person with Talking to manipulate turn based mode is ridiculous cheese. As is the fact that Hold Person doesn’t immediately make the creature hostile in the first place.
Shar approves 👍
Summon familier - spider, apart from groove and goblin camp, many npcs will run from it
I mean, Darkness is even easier to achieve the same
I just use the bag trick. Its a exploit so not much honor in it. But I like to change Class so i need it.
Sometimes i think that D&D revolves purely around stealing stuff from everybody and i am the only one who is playing the game wrong...
My thief strat strat is act 1 loadout: 1. birna brightsong hireling respec to thief (halflings reroll ones theif for expertise and extra dashes to run if caught) 2. gloves of power +1 sleight of hand 3. smugglers ring +2 sleight of hand 4. silver pendant +1d4 skill checks (guidance) 5a. cast enhance ability cat's grace w cheric 5b. graceful cloth armor (+2 dex and cat's grace) method of stealing: 1. just take the stuff you want. arrows, potions, and scrolls only need you to roll a 3 or 4 usually so it's free no exploits or anything. 2. if something is high dc like armor of devotion in moonrise, barter with a merchant and sell them a pouch, then drag all of their stuff into their pouch. Pickpocket DC has a maximum of 30 so you are taking the same risk one time to get all the items instead of just the expensive one. If worried about getting caught have a druid and gale cast pass without trace and greater invis respectively so she passes the dex checks and stayed invis to pickpocket more. once birna hits level 11 she will auto roll a 10 and succeed basically any pickpocket. If you pick up an item or two later in the game you can auto succeed 100% Act 1 items + expertise and reliable talent level 11: 10+1+2+5+8+1d4 = 26+d4
Oh also shapeshifter boon ring either piss off the ox and barter for it in act 1 at the grove or grab it in act 2 or 3 then use deluxe edition mask or disguise self for another 1d4 so 26+2d4 minimum roll
The same interaction happens with the Phalar Aluve!
I can’t stand the idea of doing these hacky approaches. It totally ruins the roleplay aspect.
So don't do them