How to defeat Arcane Turrets & complete Arcane Tower in Baldur's Gate 3
I found the Arcane Tower in Baldur's Gate 3 Act 1 to be a deceptively tricky place with many useful items and important sidequest details. Getting through here is hard, but I know the exact steps you need to take if you're looking to conquer the area.
Baldur's Gate 3 contains many challenging areas, but few that kick you in the teeth as hard and as often as the Arcane Tower found in the Underdark.
If the Arcane Turrets don't stop you, the puzzles, challenges, and potential enemies just might bring the game to a screeching halt. Here's everything you need to know to traverse the Arcane Tower.
How to defeat Arcane Turrets
On your approach to the Arcane Tower in Baldur's Gate 3, you'll need to defeat a handful of Arcane Turrets - and to do this, you'll have to deal at least 10 damage in a single attack, as the Sturdy effect will nullify any damage otherwise.
What makes this even harder is their vast number of resistances, which either halve the incoming damage or completely nullify it.
Click to enlargeHowever, while you can progress through the Arcane Tower and defeat any of the Arcane Turrets along the way, I discovered that completing the tower itself disables all of the surrounding turrets, letting you avoid any tricky combat encounters.
Arcane Turret weakness & resistances
Here is a full list of the Arcane Turret's resistances:
- Fire damage halved
- Piercing damage halved
- Poison damage nullified
- Psychic damage nullified
- Slashing damage halved
As you can see, it's quite a tricky fight to navigate, but any lightning damage you deal to an Arcane Turret is doubled, making it quite a handy form of offence.
How to complete the Arcane Tower
Click to enlargeFollow our step-by-step guide below to find out how to complete the Arcane Tower in Baldur's Gate 3 and fix the elevator:
- Either sneak, run past, or defeat the Arcane Turrets outside of the Arcane Tower and jump over to the mushrooms to the south of the main entrance at X:3 Y:297 (shown in the image above)
- Navigate and jump across the mushroom path until you reach the ones growing from the Tower itself - to jump down from these, you will have to take a small health penalty
Click to enlarge- Continue into the garden and pick up a Sussur Flower from underneath the glowing blue tree - you only need one to complete the Arcane Tower
Click to enlarge- Head back east from where you came and there will be a locked door into the tower. You can either use a lockpick to break in (I used Astarion for this because he has the necessary skills), or squeeze through a hole that is revealed by a perception check at X:52 Y:302
Click to enlarge- Once inside the room, walk up to the engine and interact with the plate at its front. This should prompt you to combine materials, and all you need to do is insert one Sussur Flower to power the engine
Once you have done this, not only will the Arcane Tower receive power again - activating the elevator and all of the lights - but all of the Arcane Turrets in the surrounding area will be disabled.
Now you can explore the Arcane Tower freely, taking the elevator after the stairs to the right of the engine to have a look around the Tower's four floors.
What's inside the Arcane Tower?
You can find a number of things inside the Arcane Tower, ranging from items that complete existing quests, to ones that start new adventures. Here is everything that you can do within the Arcane Tower:
- Find the Timmask Spores and Tongue of Madness needed to complete the 'Help Omeluum Investigate the Parasite' quest
- Speak to (or fight) Bernard - the robot on the top floor
- Start the 'Discover the history of Prince Orpheus' quest by finding 'Orpheus, Prince of the Comet, Part One: Betrayal' and deciphering it with 'The Careful Art of Tir'su Ciphers'
If you want to ensure that you don't have to fight Bernard, you must recite lines of prose back to him. Only certain classes appear to be able to do this though (from my testing it seems the Bard and Warlock are two of them), so make sure that you have the right character speaking to the robot - you might even get a hug out of it.
Check out our Baldur's Gate 3 homepage for more guides. We've also covered the Strange Ox, how to find the Nightsong, the best mods, how to find the Adamantine Forge, and how to defeat Auntie Ethel.
