Summary
- Every choice in Baldur’s Gate 3 has consequences, even minor ones, and can impact future events in the game.
- Killing Yurgir in the game has no major consequences, but sparing him upsets Astarion and Raphael and limits the player character’s relationship options.
- To beat Yurgir in Baldur’s Gate 3, players can try passing dialogue checks to convince him to kill his minions or take his own life, making the fight easier.
Yurgir may not be the most unambiguously good character in Baldur’s Gate 3, but the choice over whether to kill him can still cause internal conflict. Almost every choice matters in Baldur’s Gate 3, from the most minor selection of wording to decisions between life or death. To make matters more complicated, every single decision has some kind of consequence, and it’s often the most minor ones that come back to bite the party later in the campaign.
Yurgir appears primarily as part of the quest “Kill Raphael’s Old Enemy” but figures in other quest lines as well. He’s an orthon, a giant, muscular devil of a class usually consigned to battle. Raphael is, to most of the party’s dismay, a recurring character throughout the game. He’s a cambion and loves to strike unfair deals. Players may have already encountered him when he offered to remove their Illithid Tadpole or if they’ve repeatedly refused to help Gale in Baldur’s Gate 3. Things come to a head, though, if the party agrees to help him track down Yurgir in exchange for information about the mysterious runes carved into Astarion’s back.
You Should Kill Yurgir In Baldur’s Gate 3
Ultimately, there’s no real reason not to kill Yurgir in Baldur’s Gate 3, unless the player character is merciful to a fault. It’s not like Yurgir is a paragon of good—he’s a demon and far from a gentle giant. There are no major consequences for killing him, but there are for sparing him.
Letting Yurgir live will upset Astarion and Raphael and lock the party out of finding out the true meaning of the runes on Astarion’s back. That doesn’t completely prevent them from completing Astarion’s quest line, but it can prove a major setback in the player character’s relationship with Astarion and will most likely put an end to that romance option in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Yurgir has made his own deal with Raphael in Baldur’s Gate 3; he’s been assigned to kill all the Dark Justiciars at the Gauntlet of Shar in exchange for his freedom. He’s done well so far, with only one Justiciar left; however, he can’t find the last one and is trapped until he can do so.
As a result, he swears revenge against Raphael, which is why the cambion wants him gone. It’s a desperate, dire situation, and it makes sense for certain characters to want to help him. Even if it risks drawing Raphael’s ire, saving Yurgir is the most explicitly good choice, if not the smartest one. Either way, it’s important to be prepared for what comes next.
How To Beat Yurgir In Baldur’s Gate 3
Once the party has traversed the better part of the dungeon and solved all the puzzles around the Gauntlet of Shar in Baldur’s Gate 3, they’ll come face to face with Yurgir himself. He’s angry and will come at them ready for a fight from the very beginning of the interaction. The easiest way to start the fight is to pick the “attack” option, but it is possible to make the fight easier—or even skip it entirely—by passing a series of dialogue checks.
If the Baldur’s Gate 3 party inquires about the details of Yurgir’s contract, he’ll recite it for them. Passing an Insight check opens up a line of questioning, at the end of which the player character can point out that Raphael’s terms only apply so long as Yurgir has an audience. That refers to his merregon minions—pass a 16 difficulty class (DC) Charisma check, and he’ll slaughter them. A 21 DC Charisma check can convince him to kill his displacer, a panther-like creature, too. Finally, there’s a dialogue option to convince Yurgir that only death can free him—pass a final 21 DC Charisma check, and he’ll take his own life.
Failing any of these checks, however, will result in Yurgir becoming immediately and irreversibly hostile. Even if the player character has low Charisma, though, it’s worth a shot – passing just one of these checks will make the ensuing fight, one of the hardest in Baldur’s Gate 3, immeasurably easier.
Yurgir opens the fight by firing crossbow bolts from an elevated position, which gives him an additional bonus to his attack rolls. Hiding beneath the ledge by the door can prevent him from landing his shots, eventually drawing him out. It takes time for him to get there, which means a few free turns for ranged attackers to get a leg up.
Yurgir also throws bombs at the party. However, these can be thrown back to take off a significant chunk of his HP. Meanwhile, the merregons will attempt to put out braziers, since darkness gives ranged attacks a disadvantage in Baldur’s Gate 3. Kill them if they try, or relight the fires after they’re put out with spells or throwables.
How To Save Yurgir In Baldur’s Gate 3
If, instead of attacking him, the party decides to save Yurgir in Baldur’s Gate 3, they’ll have to go through a series of steps. For a 16 DC Charisma check, he’ll let the party help him look for his last target. The last Dark Justiciar can be found to the west of the central room in the dungeon, just next to the main elevator where the party earlier fought a squad of skeletons.
In that western room, there’s a cragged rock—climb down it, and then climb down another one from the lower level. At the bottom, there’ll be a book entitled One Becomes Many. Reading it will spawn a rat; killing the rat will cause a swarm to appear.
Killing the rat swarm in Baldur’s Gate 3 is fairly easy with any number of AoE spells. Eventually, all except one of the rats will go down, and that final rat will reveal itself to be the final Dark Justiciar. The last Justiciar is a far easier foe than Yurgir; the only thing the party really needs to watch out for is his sleep spell. Return to Yurgir and, to Astarion and Raphael’s disappointment, he’ll be freed, at least for the moment.
Still, no matter how the encounter with Yurgir ends, he goes on to a worse fate: he either dies in the Gauntlet, reappears in Raphael’s House of Hope and is subject to the cambion’s “reeducation” program, or escapes his deal only to strike a new one. Of course, the party doesn’t know that information going into the interaction, so the right choice is whatever the player character would be most likely to do. Neither choice comes with an easier result, though, so whatever happens, it’s important to be prepared for the encounter with Yurgir in Baldur’s Gate 3.
This story originally appeared on Screenrant