Highlights
- A player discovered a hidden path to recruit Karlach early on in Baldur's Gate 3's opening act.
- It normally takes around a dozen hours to recruit Karlach by leveling and gearing up, due to challenging encounters on the Risen Road.
- The shortcut found in the Emerald Grove cave allows players to reach Karlach earlier, but jumping across the river requires assistance or a high Strength ability.
One Baldur's Gate 3 player has found a hidden path to recruiting Karlach early on during the game's opening act. The discovery that they later shared on social media is yet another example of the tremendous attention to detail exhibited by Baldur's Gate 3.
Warning! Minor spoilers for Baldur's Gate 3 Act 1 ahead.Karlach is only found at the end of the Risen Road that players can explore during Act 1. And while getting to the Risen Road in Baldur's Gate 3 is a fairly straightforward endeavor, the area itself is full of encounters with Bugbears and other types of enemies that could prove to be quite a challenge at low levels. As a result, many players normally take around a dozen hours to recruit Karlach, which is how long it approximately takes to level and gear up to the point that the Risen Road no longer poses a substantial challenge.
Alternatively, it turns out there's a hidden pathway to reaching Karlach's location much earlier than that. The shortcut, discovered by Reddit user SweetAndSourSoap, is found in the Emerald Grove cave doubling as the office of Zevlor, the leader of local Tiefling refugees. Climbing the sole ladder in that Baldur's Gate 3 location will allow players to press forward toward the very edge of the cave's other exit, from where Karlach can already be spotted. And while the river that separates her from the Emerald Grove hollow isn't passable on foot, it is possible to jump across it.
The stream is still wide enough so that most characters won't be able to make the leap without some assistance. For example, SweetAndSourSoap revealed that they had to drink the Baldur's Gate 3 Potion of Glorious Vaulting in order to reach Karlach from the Emerald Grove grotto. One alternative solution would be to cast Jump, a level 1 Transmutation spell that triples a given character's leaping reach. This incantation is available to the Druid, Ranger, Sorcerer, and Wizard classes, as well as the Eldritch Knight subclass of Fighters.
Jumping distance in Baldur's Gate 3 is governed by the Strength ability, meaning that characters with a high enough investment in this stat might be able to reach Karlach from the Emerald Grove cave all on their own. However, it is unlikely that the player will manage to do so at such an early point of the game's lengthy campaign. The same goes for teleportation spells like Misty Step. By the time those become available, the party should already be plenty capable of steamrolling all mobs along the Risen Road to reach Karlach without missing out on any XP from battling.
Baldur's Gate 3 is out now for PC. A PS5 version releases on September 6, and an Xbox Series X/S version is expected to launch in late 2023.
