Baldur’s Gate 3 takes the average player 130 hours to finish it in its entirety, yet a few fans have discovered a dark way to shave off the hours for the world record.
Spoilers for the game will follow.
ImTaiyl, a streamer and speedrunner, used the standard strategy to use Gale’s abilities Enhance Leap and Feather Fall in combination to move across the map.
This allows the player to avoid large stretches of Act 1, however, it’s this new trick that relies on the cleric companion Shadowheart that is the key to success. Check it out below:
ImTaiyl then kills Shadowheart and puts her body in a box in camp.
Setting the box on fire seems to be a crucial part of the speedrun though the streamer clicks through everything so quickly that it’s difficult to see what exactly they’re selecting. What it does do is manage to skip all the way to the end of Act 2.
The credits roll once Gale dies by detonating the Netherese Destruction Orb in his chest, killing everyone in the vicinity and causing those infected with illithid parasites into mind flayers.
It isn’t the most uplifting ending to Baldur’s Gate 3 but it did award ImTaiyl with the world record of three minutes and 57 seconds. The streamer even surprised themselves with the result.
“This was a long time coming and blows my mind that this run has gotten this fast,” they said. “[It’s] been a heck of a ride and [I’m] not stopping anytime soon.”
Without Gale, the record stands at 49 minutes 55 seconds from ogam. On the other hand, the fastest time to sleep with a companion character was set at two minutes and four seconds, from maeeeeee’s efforts to woo Lae’zel.
In other news, Larian Studios announced a new ending for Karlach following fan feedback that concluded that she didn’t receive a fitting epilogue for her character.