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Staying true to its Dungeons and Dragons roots, Baldur’s Gate 3 is teeming with total party kills– now more than ever thanks to its Honor Mode. With that in mind, we take a look back at some of the hardest bosses in BG3. We’re almost certain they have forced you to reload a save either due to a wipeout or because your in-game goth girl Cleric GF fell down a chasm during the fight, whichever’s worse.
Grym
This fight here is the first true test of your observation skills and ingenuity. Because if you just keep charging headfirst like a Barbarian in The Adamantine Forge boss fight, you’ll get hammered flat. And as it turns out, that’s also what you need to be doing against Grym, the Forge golem.
Be honest now, you would have gotten stuck here for a while if you hadn’t read a guide online, wouldn’t you? It’s one of the least straightforward fights in the game since Grym just shrugs off any conventional attack. Even if you finally got that lightbulb moment of using the Forge hammer, it might take a couple of retries to get the timing and alignment right.
Auntie Ethel
What makes Auntie Ethel one of the hardest bosses in BG3 is how it’s not just a plain boss fight. You also have to prevent Mayrina from getting reunited with her dead husband. Kill Auntie Ethel slowly enough and there goes a couple of questlines tied to Mayrina.
It doesn’t help that Auntie Ethel likes to stall the fight using her Hag illusions and boss arena chokepoints. You might even have to reload the whole fight despite winning if you still lose Mayrina after Auntie Ethel croaks her final breath. Consider the fight as a DPS check for your whole party.
Gortash
Gortash might be higher on the list depending on when you choose to engage him. If you choose to ruin his ceremony, that fight is a deadly marathon you likely can’t win. But you can make it easier by destroying the Steel Watchers first. After that, you can just wipe the whole keep clean with Fireball.
However, Gortash still has a few tricks up his sleeve, such as traps in his office a whole brigade of disposable grunts, and troublesome spellcasters. By the time you get to Gortash, you’re already worn down. Adding to the fight’s difficulty is how you’re not allowed to return to camp unless you walk all the way back to the drawbridge.
Yurgir
Getting trapped in a dungeon with an Orthon Fiend is a claustrophobe’s nightmare, and Yurgir makes it a hellish experience. Fighting him conventionally is one of the toughest challenges in Act 2. He even abuses Invisibility despite his size, and the number of minions he has is enough to fill you with despair.
Granted, you can talk him into killing himself. But if that fails (and there’s a high chance of failure), you’ll be forced to reload regardless or deal with an even angrier Orthon. If you manage to blitz him down, you still have to deal with the Displace Beast and several minions positioned in multiple layers of verticality. You’ll end up wasting your turns moving to them.
Ketheric Thorm/Myrkul
Consider yourself lucky if you got Nightsong to back you up in this fight. Ketheric Thorm in Act 2’s climax is one of the most unfair among the hardest bosses in Baldur’s Gate 3. You’ll have to fight Ketheric Thorm multiple times. Being the sore loser that he is, he’ll invoke Myrkul, his bony sugar daddy, to join the fight.
That’s after Ketheric wears you down and possibly even incapacitates a couple of your party members. The boss fight reinforces just how menacing and vexing it is to deal with necromancers. It’s like there’s no end to Ketheric’s reinforcements. Once you defeat Myrkul, it’s not uncommon to anticipate another undead shenanigan, which thankfully didn’t happen.
Sarevok
The developers really brought back an old boss from the previous Baldur’s Gate games. You can bet that they made him a pain to fight. Sarevok is what you can consider a quintessential Fighter among the hardest bosses in BG3; he hits hard, and he’s hard to hit.
You can forget about killing him first if you don’t ambush him or if you lack ways to generate Advantage. You’ll then be forced to deal with his echos, which, when killed, will then empower Sarevok. It’s a cycle of pain and suffering that will push you to rethink your tactics and approach to the fight.
Cazador
Cazador is a vampire lord, and vampires are undead. By now, you’re well aware of just how painstaking it is to deal with undead overlords in Baldur’s Gate 3 thanks to Ketheric. If you bring Astarion to the fight (and you most likely will and should), get ready to fight with just three party members since he’ll chain Astarion up.
To make matters worse, you have to beat Cazador in a few turns or Astarion’s gone. You can then scramble to free Astarion (which is often a mistake) or focus on defeating Cazador with a handicap in a couple of turns. Pick your poison.
Netherbrain
For most of the hardest bosses in BG3, you can just reload and ambush the enemies with the Warlock’s Invisibility spell, for the final boss fight, however, you’re gonna have to fight fair. Well, you will be forced to fight fair while the enemy brings its dragons, Mind Flayers, and other freaky minions.
It’s the fight of the century and cheesing it is harder than usual since it’s also time-based. By the end of the fight, you will have lost several party members already as the Mind Flayers and even the tentacles just keep on coming. Winning the fight in such a sorry state, however, will reward you with enough dopamine to last for a week.
Ansur
With Ansur, you finally get to fight a dragon– in a dungeon! And it’s not just any dragon, it’s an undead dragon whom you shouldn’t ambush during the first encounter lest you miss an important piece of story dialog. He has a spell or ability that grants him resistance to all damage types. As if that’s not enough, he can fly to avoid some of the damage.
Once he starts lifting off, you’re also in trouble. That’s also the windup for his nova attack that will more often than not one-shot your spellcasters, leaving your melee characters to pick up the pieces. Still, the juice is worth the squeeze since he drops the most powerful Greatsword in the game.
Raphael
Those who have been itching to fight Raphael since Act 1 might just regret their animosity. As it turns out, Raphael is at the top of the hardest bosses in BG3. He has the highest HP pool and he punishes Paladins with how he reflects Radiant damage.
The developers also made sure that you can’t ordinarily cheese this fight with an ambush. The mockingly high 666 HP, hordes of demonic enemies, and multiple tanky magic pillars that give him power will show you why Raphael is a devil you don’t deal with. If that’s not enough, his personally written boss music will spell your doom.
