“Avenge the Hag Survivors” is the bloody finale to the Auntie Ethel storyline that starts in Act 1. Getting the best possible outcome for the story requires a little extra work before actually heading off for the big fight.
You should first get the quest after completing “Help the Hag Survivors” in Baldur’s Gate 3 Act 3. The new quest will direct you to the Blushing Mermaid, but first there are some very important items to collect from Old Garlow’s.
There’s a safe behind a desk on the first floor that Mayrina will give you access to if you save her during the course of “Help the Hag Survivors.” Inside are crafting ingredients and a recipe for a grenade Hag’s Bane. Open the Alchemy menu to craft that, and you’ll be ready to start the quest.
Beat on the brats
Auntie Ethel is hiding out beneath the Blushing Mermaid, but before you can fight her, you’ll need to deal with her servants. Once you get to the tavern, make a beeline for the basement. Inside you’ll have to jump onto a small ledge and walk through an illusory wall on your left to reach Auntie Ethel’s lair. At this point you should use stealth to head down a hallway to the left of the entrance.
From here you’ll be standing in a small room between a locked wall panel and a large area where Auntie Ethel’s servants are milling about. I found this to be the perfect spot to start the fight. There’s a large opening in the hallway wall that I used for slinging ranged attacks, and there was enough room in the hallway for my entire party to take cover. Eventually the masked servants tried to rush us, but they were forced to bottleneck themselves to get into the hallway, which made dealing with them pretty easy – thank Selûne for Spirit Guardians.
Once the servants are dealt with, you can loot a key from them that will open the wall panel standing between you and Auntie Ethel. Don’t equip any of the masks they were wearing, or you’ll fall under Auntie Ethel’s control (maybe that seems obvious, but some of us thought the masks looked cool and ended up having to take down our own character). As a final note here, if killing mind controlled innocents goes against your moral code, you can toggle non-lethal damage and take out the servants with melee attacks. Just make sure you deal with them one way or another, or Auntie Ethel will summon them to help her in the next fight.
Mushroom-powered Hags
When you start the fight with Auntie Ethel in the next room, take note of the three clumps of mushrooms that pop up in the initiative order. Those should be your top priority because if Auntie Ethel goes down, the mushrooms can bring her back to life. Unfortunately the mushrooms also heal themselves, but dealing 55 damage in a single round will take out an individual clump.
Once all the mushrooms have been dealt with, you only need to do one more thing before killing Auntie Ethel. Remember that Hag’s Bane we prepped before this adventure began? Throw it at Auntie Ethel, and she’ll puke up Vanra, the girl she kidnapped from her mother Lora in Baldur’s Gate. This way, you get to finish “Save Vanra” and “Avenge the Hag Survivors” at the same time. Luckily if you happened to miss the Hag’s Bane, there’s another way to deal with the problem.
After freeing Vanra, it’s open season on Hags. Use everything in your arsenal to take Auntie Ethel out, or do what I did, and push her into the giant chasm that’s in her lair for some reason. She makes a habit of standing right next to it, so getting in the shove is easy. Afterward you can head back to Old Garlow’s to collect your reward from the survivors.
