Baldur's Gate 3 is a huge game with over 300 hours of content and thousands of ways to make it to the end. With so much to explore and NPCs to interact with, it's easy to miss out on content or magic items, even across multiple playthroughs.
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Although some secret encounters will usually have clues stashed around that point the way, others can be entirely missed with as little as a failed perception check. If you are looking to get the most out of your Baldur's Gate 3 experience, make sure you don't miss out on these hidden encounters.
10 The Festering Cove
Tucked away in the Underdark among a field of torch stalks is the entrance to The Festering Cove, which is home to a tribe of kuo-toa worshiping the god BOOOAL. As it turns out, BOOOAL is a redcap using the kuo-toa's power of belief to become godlike.
There are many different ways of dealing with the kuo-toa, including convincing them to turn on the redcap and make you their new god. Either way, you can find a doodle of a kuo-toa carved into the sand by the water's edge that makes the whole trip worth it.
9 Akabi The Genie And Nyrulna
In the Circus of Last Days in Wyrm's Crossing, you can play a game of Spin the Wheel with Akabi the Genie, who offers some interesting prizes, including a bag that instantly rots food that is put inside, or a teleporting ring that leaves you nude after use.
What's much less likely to happen, is that you need to spot Akabi cheating you out of the jackpot with a successful perception check, followed by another check to distract him in order for him to send you gods-know-where, surrounded by dinosaurs and thick jungle. At the end of this detour you can find Nyrulna, a legendary trident locked in a chest.
8 Lorroakan's Vault
Teased as early as Act One, Lorroakan is a powerful wizard who owns Sorcerous Sundries in Baldur's Gate and lives in a tower filled with gold, scrolls, and powerful magic items. Although some can be found after confronting Lorroakan over the fate of the Nightsong, others are very well protected.
In a locked room guarded by ever vigilant animated armors, accessed by interacting with a book on a nearby shelf, is a portal that leads to Lorroakan's vault. Inside, you can immediately find some gold and magic gloves, but the rest is hidden behind a perception check and a locked wall, which requires a rather complicated puzzle to be solved to safely obtain the legendary loot.
7 Finding Dribbles' Parts
At the Circus of Last Days in Wyrm's Crossing is a doppelganger disguised as the circus' prized clown, Dribbles. The circus owner, a necromancer with an eye for savings, tasks you with bringing back the real Dribbles so that she can resurrect him after revealing the fake.
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The only problem is that he is separated in seven parts and spread throughout multiple areas in Wyrm's Crossing and Baldur's Gate, with no clues or quest markers guiding you. To especially stone-turning players, you might eventually come across all seven, but for many others, there will always be one or two just out of sight, and Dribbles unfortunately still dead.
6 The Necromancy Of Thay
One of the more powerful artifacts in the game, and not likely to be approved by any party member as you crack open its secrets, the Necromancy of Thay is a unique item with a powerful reward that takes more than a little exploration and a lot of back-to-back checks to obtain and open.
You can find the book itself by discovering a cellar in the Blighted Village and passing a speech check with a magic mirror, with the clue to open it hidden in a casket in the previous room. Even after surviving the pair of traps protecting the tome, you can't open it without a gem found in another cellar in the Blighted Village, sitting at the bottom of a cave surrounded by giant, deadly spiders.
5 The Spider Hole
As you and your party explore random areas and crawl across the ground looking for every morsel of hidden treasure, the spider hole in Act One can be easily missed by not walking right up to it and failing a perception check to spot it.
Inside a crevice by the lookout tower just north of the nautoloid crash, a colony of tiny spiders protect a sack filled with coin and a unique grenade item that summons spiders to fight for you. Even after spotting the loot, you can fail an additional check trying to grab it, and risk getting bit by a bunch of angry spiders.
4 Kagha's Secret Note
The impromptu leader of the druid grove in Halsin's absence, Kagha makes her introduction by threatening to kill a little girl and is downright malicious about the plight of the tiefling refugees. As you look around the grove you might also notice a handful of rats that follow her and aren't particularly talkative.
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When you are wading through the swamps in the southern portion of the map, you might come across a group of wood woads and mud mephits, and tucked inside the nearby tree is a note that requires a high perception check to find while being right up against it. You can then use this note to confront Kagha and reveal the rats to be Shadow Druids working with her to undermine the Emerald Enclave in a unique cutscene.
3 The Mystic Carrion's Heart
The Mystic Carrion is a mummy lord in Baldur's Gate that uses his services to commune with spirits and act as a medium for the people of the city. While more than a little shady, Mystic Carrion also has some very powerful magic items worth the many hoops it takes to kill him.
Other than being tucked away in a locked building requiring a perception check to find the entrance to, his quests involve saving a painter in Act One, finding a random note in a five-story mansion, finding the location of his lost servant, finding the location of his stashed jars, and finally finding a note that reveals where his heart is. None of which use map markers to guide you.
2 Rescuing Omeluum
First found in the Underdark on an expedition with the Society of Brilliance, Omeluum is an awakened mind flayer determined to study his fungi and better the lives of Underdark residents. You can later find the Society of Brilliance headquarters in Baldur's Gate, but noticeably Omeluum has gone missing, and no one knows why.
With no way of discovering it until you happen to stumble upon it, you can find Omeluum trapped in an underwater prison called the Iron Throne as it begins to collapse. With a six round timer, you are tasked with saving a dozen Gondian gnomes as well as Duke Ravengard, while Omeluum is on the opposite side of the compound behind multiple locked doors and an army of sahuagin. If you do manage to save him, you can find him back at the society with a decent magic item reward.
1 True Love Rings
A sliver of warmth and light in the otherwise bleak Shadowlands are two rings that allow you to cast Warding Bond on the other ring's wearer. Finding the rings requires a great deal of exploration and randomly coming across the two skeletons who possess it.
One can be found inside the House of Healing and the other to the east of it, slumped up against a tree in the graveyard. This interaction is one of the more impressive uses of environmental storytelling within the game and the journals found on each skeleton is enough to bring a tear to your eye.
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