Highlights
- Baldur's Gate 3 gives players the freedom to make choices, focusing on character creation and skill proficiency, which greatly impacts gameplay.
- Wisdom Skills like Medicine, Animal Handling, Survival, Insight, and Perception have unique functions and benefits for players, but some skills have more use and impact than others.
- Perception is the most useful Wisdom Skill, allowing players to detect hidden dangers, observe details, and gain important information that can greatly impact the story and gameplay.
Baldur's Gate 3 grants players the freedom of choice in everything they do, pushing the limits of the RPG genre and going above and beyond. The game presents players with various decisions, the most important being the character they create and, more specifically, the Skills they choose to be proficient in, the talents tied to abilities, which determine how good or bad they are at doing particular things. The Skill proficiencies players choose will have a lasting impact on their playthrough, so they must consider their choices and pick carefully.
Baldur's Gate 3 emphasizes the need for many aptitudes but pays special attention to Wisdom Skills, which prove beneficial in numerous situations as there are five — Animal Handling, Insight, Medicine, Perception, and Survival — each serving a unique function. These Skills grant players a keenness and intuition beneficial for navigating the dialogue, combat, the world, etc., proving worthwhile choices. Understanding every Wisdom Skill and its significance to the game is vital, especially for players wanting to make the most of their talents.
5 Medicine
How To Gain Proficiency
Classes | Backgrounds | Feats |
|---|---|---|
Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Wizard | Hermit | Skilled |
Medicine is an understanding of anatomy and physiology alongside the ability to assess and treat injuries and illnesses, potentially to lessen the severity or save a life. This Skill also proves beneficial for identifying causes of death, which comes in handy when players want a sense of what dangers lie ahead and if said death was natural or unnatural. Being proficient in Medicine is helpful for an adventurer, as injuries and illnesses are commonplace.
Medicine seems a must-have, but the existence of restorative magic and potions overshadow much of what it can achieve. The biggest allure of this Skill is the ability to assess and diagnose one's condition, but players will find that the opportunity to do so is scarce, and often they cannot do much beyond a prognosis. So, although a nice touch to a character, Medicine does not hold a light to other Skills, which have far more use in the long run.
4 Animal Handling
How To Gain Proficiency
Classes | Backgrounds | Feats |
|---|---|---|
Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Fighter, Ranger | Folk Hero | Skilled |
Animal Handling is a knack for communing with animals — wild and domesticated — to communicate with them, intuit their intentions, and contain or control them to an extent. Players can calm rampaging beasts, sway animals to act on their behalf, or even make a new furry companion to take on their adventures. Animal Handling deepens the connection between players and critters, tamed or not, opening many avenues involving animals.
Animal Handling is an outstanding talent that is very helpful when dealing with animals, but only then. In that sense, it is a niche Skill players will likely not use as often and not for anything particularly affecting; moreover, it is almost entirely useless to those that can cast Speak With Animals or communicate through other equally effective means. Animal Handling has its uses but lacks impact, making it a fun yet almost inconsequential Skill.
3 Survival
How To Gain Proficiency
Classes | Backgrounds | Feats |
|---|---|---|
Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Fighter, Ranger | Folk Hero, Outlander | Skilled |
Survival is a knowledge of the wilds and all that resides within it, in addition to an aptitude for surviving in even the most unforgiving environments, which amounts to countless skills. Players can do everything from following tracks to hunting game, making it an extensive Skill with many possibilities. Survival is only fitting for an adventurer who often traverses the most dangerous parts of the wilderness while journeying.
Survival proves beneficial, as it has many uses and can save players from otherwise deadly situations or encounters, especially when trekking the more lethal environments of Baldur's Gate 3. However, this Skill more often provides additional information that players could surmise or learn through other means. Survival is useful to players, especially considering the many hostile environments they will explore as they adventure.
2 Insight
How To Gain Proficiency
Classes | Backgrounds | Feats |
|---|---|---|
Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Wizard | Acolyte, Guild Artisan | Skilled |
Insight is the capacity to read the true intentions or emotional state of another by gleaning indications from their body language, facial expressions, speech habits, or changes in their behavior. This Skill allows players to determine if one is telling the truth, decipher another's emotional state, or predict a creature's next move, allowing them to discover much more about a person and their intent just from conversing or being around them.
Insight is a must-have for dialogue as it can reveal information that grants players a better grasp of a conversation, enabling them to choose their words carefully, saving them from saying or doing something that can result in distrust, anger, violence, or all of the above; moreover, this Skill grants players a better understanding of others' overall character. Insight is an outstanding Skill that will serve players throughout.
1 Perception
How To Gain Proficiency
Classes | Backgrounds | Feats |
|---|---|---|
Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Fighter, Ranger, Rogue | None |
Perception is awareness of surroundings and keenness of senses, meaning one's ability to detect through sight, hearing, smell, or similar means. With this Skill, players can see things that are a great distance away or well hidden, hear the footfalls of a skulking creature, or eavesdrop on a conversation from afar. Perception allows players to detect things that would go unnoticed by normal senses, which is especially useful to an adventurer.
Perception is a Skill that players should always take as it is just that helpful. This Skill sees the most use in the game, for it passively detects hidden dangers, unseen presences, hushed voices, etc., and can actively observe structures, creatures, and people more closely to gain more information or uncover obscure details, knowledge that can have a monumental impact on the story or a specific encounter, making it the best Wisdom Skill.
Baldur's Gate 3 is available now on PC, with a PS5 release on September 6 and an Xbox launch to follow.
