I will be the first to admit that Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the first — if not the first — tried and true dice-and-probability-based RPGs I have ever played. As I proceeded through this masterpiece of a game, there were moments where I needed to change the way my brain worked. It’s very much a strategy-focused title, and let’s just say I’m used to being a powerhouse tank.
That brings us to the Emerald Grove. It’s one of the first environs you’ll find yourself visiting in the game, and if you’re playing a morally good character, you’ll be tasked with defending it from a legion of goblins, bugbears, and other baddies from across Faerun. It’ll also (probably) be your first real challenge in the game, and it’ll project what you can expect from future encounters.
I had such a bad time trying to brute force my way through this siege, but I am stubborn, so I kept trying where others might have given up — or, at least taken a break. So, I changed up a few things here and a few things there, and voila! I may have ended up with half of my party dead or dying, but I somehow managed to overcome this behemoth.
The druids owe me big-time
So, there are multiple ways to go about completing this quest, so I will just talk about how I did it. In the preamble to defending the grove, you’ll need to pay a visit to the Goblin Camp located on the mid-western side of the map. In this camp will be three leaders the game tells you to kill, but you don’t really have to kill them (if you don’t want to). I only killed one of them prior to the actual fight — which may have made things harder for me, in all honesty.
I made semi-quick work of True Soul Gut first, but fighting Nightwarden Minthara proved to be a challenge my level three Barbarian was not at all ready for. It also goes without saying that I didn’t dare take on the gauntlet that is Dror Ragzlin until a little bit later. So, I did anything I needed to do — freed the human captive, freed the druid Halsin, leveled up — before I told her where the grove was and headed back for what felt like the biggest battle of the first act.
No reason for success
I joked on Twitter that this fight felt like the video game equivalent of a One Piece battle. I say this because on one side you’ve got an enemy force of like 15-20 baddies including goblins, bugbears, spiders, drow, and on the other side there’s me — the Baldur’s Gate Baby who might as well be made of rubber.
It’s not helpful that, to start the fight, you need to ascend the gate, meaning you start the battle on the high ground, which — despite what Obi-Wan said, is not really much of an advantage. But, I was still learning how to play Baldur’s Gate 3. I didn’t know until about 3-to-5 attempts that you can have your party members scattered across the battlefield.
This was where I found a twinkling of success, however unlikely it was. In addition to my own original character (do not steal), my party consisted of Wyll, Shadowheart (long may she reign), and Astarion. I decided to place Shadowheart atop the gate and serve as my healer, dishing out any buffs I had accrued at that point. Wyll was assigned to the left flank, my barbarian on the right, and just to be a silly lil’ guy, I put Astarion on the platform that Minthara spawned on.
It’s also important to note that before the battle, I grabbed as many oil barrels as I could find and threw them on the ground surrounding the gate. In this fight, you’ll need as many advantages as you can muster, and given the enemy will not hesitate in sending kamikaze goblins with explosive barrels strapped to their backs, you should probably plan for that.
As soon as the battle begins, have whoever you placed near Minthara begin wailing on her. I think, even if killing her won’t stop the other enemies from advancing, she should still be the number one priority. I was unable to kill her immediately — but I at least kept her focused on my barbarian and Astarion.
Wyll was mostly focused on front-line cleanup — when Minthara sends out the kamikaze goblins, use your left flank fighter to keep them busy. Ideally, by the time you’re ready to explode them, there will be several other monsters in the area and you can kill many, many birds with one explosive barrel. It may hurt/kill your left flank, but it’s a risk you’ll have to take to remove those pieces from the board.
Aside from that, just keep inflicting damage on both Minthara and her minions by any means possible. Every single time it’s Shadowheart’s turn, make sure you’re healing, protecting, or reviving someone. If you’re anything like me, the last person left alive in your party will be Shadowheart. But, that’s just because she’s better than almost everyone else and she knows it. Or because she’s a cleric.
In any case, I hope this strategy is helpful. Defending the grove is a helpful sub-quest that sets your expectations for future defense missions — I’m looking at you, the mission where you have to defend a portal from about 30-50 shadow abominations. I don’t regret defying the odds and befriending both the druids and the tieflings. Now — in my second, evil playthrough?
I’ll probably join Nightwarden Minthara.
