Baldur’s Gate 3’s most annoying NPCs annihilated in viral nuke detonation

A Baldur’s Gate 3 player has wrought vengeance on the titular city’s most frustrating NPCs. The barrel nuke they used to do so may have been overkill.

Player agency is baked into the DNA of Baldur’s Gate 3 thanks to its roots in the popular tabletop RPG Dungeons & Dragons. Larian has given us a plethora of tools and it’s up to us to decide what we do with them.

If you set your scruples aside, the innate rules of the gameworld can be used to circumvent challenges or add an unlikely subclass to your favorite companion. Tricks with Baldur’s Gate 3’s physics have been rife since the game’s launch but the perennial favorite is what fans of the game like to call ‘barrelmancy’.

In a stunning display of this forbidden art, one player has crafted the in-game equivalent of a nuclear bomb. Was it done to trivialize a particularly challenging combat encounter? No. X user jakethebrick_ used the biggest explosion we’ve ever seen in the game to take care of a small group of noncombative street performers.

For some context, the Wizards outside of Sorcerous Sundries in Baldur’s Gate’s Lower City are well-known to most players. They sling cantrips back and forth but they cast them so loudly and frequently, it can become a little grating. We may be underselling how annoying they are given the response of jakethebrick_.

They stacked over 100 smokepowder, runepowder, firewine, and oil barrels into a towering mega structure outside of Sorcerous Sundries. “I’ve been hoarding every single barrel and explosive I could find since Act 1,” they explained. “All for this moment.”

They protected their party by casting Globe of Invulnerability and lit the fuse with Alchemist’s Fire. The resulting explosion created a retina-searing flash and slowed their game’s framerate to the single digits. “I’m honestly surprised the game didn’t crash,” jakethebrick_ admitted in the comments.

At the very least, it was a satisfying revenge which the Xuser confirmed was “100% worth it”. Not content with experiencing it for themselves, they linked their save file in the comments complete with a full inventory of explosive barrels. Do with that information what you will.