Is this the most underrated spell in Baldurs Gate 3?
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- Опубликовано: 8 фев 2025
- Paladin warlock with the darkness spell is maybe the closest you get to a domain expansion just like jujutsu kaisen. In this video i explain the build, and how to use the darkness spell in gameplay.
Music:
Malevolent Shrine『Sukuna vs Mahoraga』- Jujutsu Kaisen S2 Episode 17 OST 呪術廻戦
Various Baldurs Gate 3 OSTs
Outro:
Crazy Dave 2 theme (made by EA)
Going to reclass my open hand monk into way of the shadow now just to yell “INFINITE VOID” before I throw these hands
That’s some John Wick stuff
There are (at least) 3 items in the game that give you blind immunity so with at least a level 2 warlock (and all the items so you’ll be in act 3) you can give a full party of 4 players blind immunity and fight in darkness.
This seems really powerful when you realize beast master rangers get a bird that gives free darkness.
I think Shadowhearts spear has immunity if you side with Shar during the trials. That is if memory serves me right??? LOL
@@Pickle_Maniac yeah I’ve never killed dame aylin and I’ve gotten those other 3 pieces anyway. One ring and two helmets.
@@Pickle_Maniac yep the whole Shar armor set is a really powerful darkness oriented way of combat. I use her with Bard + Life Cleric. Learning Hunger of Hadar and magic missile while supporting and healing the team
yeah this carried me through my first honor run. Only really had issues with devil enemies.
Yes and it lets you cast darkness at will AND does more damage to targets obscured@@Pickle_Maniac
It's worth adding, for anyone who doesn't know, that Pact of the Blade warlock is the one and ONLY class whose Extra Attack stacks with the Extra Attacks from other classes. So in other words, stuff like fighter + barbarian won't let you stack Extra Attacks, but if you go 5 PoB Warlock + 7 any other class with Extra Attack, you can get 3 attacks in one turn
Yeah, underrated /s. People are literally building parties around darkness, not just individual builds. The actual reason people are not doing it too much is because it becomes tedious to just beat those helpless babies that can't even take a turn because really frequently AI just does not know what to do and gives you your turn after his timeout to take a decision expires.
Titles like this makes me think these people live in a vacuum
This is considered The OP strategy in table top. Underrated indeed
I swear I can never get darkness to work, every time I use it they just shoot me while I'm in it lol.
Trying using it against act 2 mobs or Lady Shar (Shadowheart end quest line) lol
4:30 No one wants to admit it, but that spear really is the best weapon in the game.
Unfortunately at the cost of the goodness in Shadowheart.
@@ERBanmech Worth the cost. In addition to all of the gear she gets, Shadowheart stays loyal to Shar, she also gets a Mirror of Loss bonus, and can be recruited as an ally for the final battle, so it seems like a fair trade.
@@ERBanmechmy whole goal with my evil playtrough was "How can I make them worse?" . It was delightful
It's definitely in the top 20
@@ERBanmech It helps if you RP different characters and personalities. I have an EK/Warlock in Act 2 who distrusts Shadowheart. My/Her plan is to just let Shadowheart cook and see if she makes the right decisions, but if she chooses to stay loyal to Shar my Tav is quite literally going to just kill her when her back is turned lol. But yeah, that spear is so good for a Darkness build that it literally is worth letting Shadowheart be evil just for that
You don't even need to spec the party for darkness. Just out down darkness, and on your turn, step out of the darkness, do your thing, go back in. Enemies will still be unable to target you
That charged warhammer is amazing. It will also electrify water that you dip it in. Put that darkness over a wet surface, and dip that hammer for even more fun. As long as you have that ring, and the host of other electric based gear...
Grouped with throwing Karlac, gloom assassin Asterion, and tempest Shadowheart. It was one of my most fun play throughs.
damn, never thought about combining it with water
@@CCritts Right? I dipped by accident and was like "whoa...." I like that the game keeps surprising me.
Heads up: Pact of the Blade extra attack and extra attack from Fighter/Paladin/Etc doesn't stack in Honour Mode specifically. But it works in other modes.
Yepp, just lost a honor mode save, after uploading the video. Noticed it against Ketheric lol
@@CCritts craaaaap 😬
then go level 4 fighter and lvl 1 great old one.
You lose devil sight but can get it with gear.
In exchange you can get the champion fighter sublass for more smite crits
I play on tactician, just checked, it doesn't work.
@@Mr.Funnyman273 oh damn, maybe they updated it again. It used to be only didn't work in Honour Mode. Did you try Balanced as well? Though if it works there that's kind of irrelevant since Balanced is already pretty easy.
Fun fact the skeletons during the myrkul fight cant heal him if hes shrouded in darkness... probably obvious to some but it was a huge advantage for me on my first playthrough
Darkness is also amazing against large enemies because even if you dont have immunity, you can just cast it on the large enemies to make them blind
I feel like Darkness is overrated. It's situationally useful, but I feel like too many enemies can attack through it.
you would be surprised how few enemies have devils sight. The ones with dark vision doesnt count. But you can also be get RNGed through their blinded status which happens
Nobody is gonna find this any ways. I whisper domain expansion to myself whenever I cast darkness.
I used Darkness + a restraining spell on those githyanki near the road to Baldur's Gate, and before I lifted the curse... Thid caused them to be blinded, restrained and damaged by the curse every turn.
I did this but with Fog Cloud on Myrkul's Apostle...I think I'd like Arrow of Darkness better since it doesn't require concentration. But nevertheless, great video~ I love Paladins the most~
Darkness arrows: …. He does know I exist…. Right?
To be fair there are like 5 ways that give you the ability to see in Magical Darkness too.
Darkness is OP AF.
if you cast darkness in stealth and outside of combat, then go turn based mode, then start a fight with your other character inside, make it so hes gonna be first in initiative queue, then hide with this character with bonus action, then switch to your darkness caster to get him back to turn based mode again (it turns off for some reason sometimes), then comeback to your character that is in the fight and only make his turns and never click on the darkness caster again, attacking with your in-fight character and hiding in the end of the turn with a bonus action - the darkness will last for infinite amount of turns and all the enemies that cant see in a magic darkness will not even try to go inside and mostly skip their turns, waiting for you to finish them off
this has something to do with how broken combat participation and stealth are and makes me wanna use stealth and darkness a lot less now
you don't need to let Shadowheart kill NS. It's handy for the weapon but it also withdraw the chance to fuxk, uh I mean "romance" her. There're enough blindness immunity items to make a party. eversight ring at act2, steel walker helm at the steel walker factory and a helm from house of hope. and for some reason, the ring and the steel walker helm act exactly like devil's eyes, not only grant immune to blindness, also let you do ranged attack in and out of darkness.
True, honestly i completely forgot about the steel watcher helm. But, Sharrs spear unlimited casting of Darkness is just so reliable, besides the bonuses you get from the armor is also good. But i understand what you mean about the romance part lol. I did have a hard time going the dark route even for the sake of the video haha
Another piece of gear that would totally wreck with this build is the bhaalist armor which gives nearby enemies pierce vulnerability which doubles piercing damage would make shars spear of night the highest damaging weapon in the game
damn, never thought about that. I was searching the wiki for more potential chemistry items before this playthrough, this does sound nuts though
Oh I did this. I had a gloomstalker ranger.
Turns out if you shoot from insise darkness, your location will remain hidden.
And as long as you have good enough stealth, you can just keep shooting enemies.
Thats why I comsider Shadowhearts special Spear, that she gets for killing nightsong, to be the best single item in the game
It lets you cast Darkness at will, makes you immune to it, and does extra damage to obscured targets
I’m always afraid to use it because I’m thinking of it like an fps game where it’s a smoke grenade so I don’t really remember I have the ability to dispel it whenever I need too.
It is even cooler if you cast sunlight as a cleric and just flashbang your screen with radiance
You can decide to stop concentrating on any spell whenever you want. Just click the little x on the spell you're concentrating on above your character portrait.
I really enjoyed watching your video.
Great content, well presented.
Thank you!
Just subscribed.
Appreciate it alot, thank you friend
This is a tactic that goes back to 2nd Edition. When I was a kid in the early 90s we played Underdark campaigns. Using darkness was a very common tactic. Darkness was not stupid like it is in 5E either. This is literally a Drow racial tactic. It was supposed to work with their superior dark vision and balance out the fact that sunlight torches them.
I kept the spear on my Durge even though he was primarily an archer, solely for blindness immunity
I must be doing something wrong.
Facing the paladins of Tyr.
I cast darkness. The paladins accept that challenge without issue.
They march right in and continue to curb stomp my party.
The main paladin took 2 members with 1 shot a piece in the 2nd round, alone.
The Spider Matriarch didn't enter the darkness. She didn't need to.
Her minions teleported to the edge of the spell, entered, then ended the party.
Eldritch blast... I have no idea if it's good or not. I have entire fights where my Warlock was a paperweight.
100% misses with Eldritch blast for the 1st couple of levels. No joke. I had to switch to melee if I wanted him to contribute to fights.
Basically, it's a three member party at this point. 😊
nice upload
I ran a similar loadout on Wyll during my run. I swapped the burst damage of Paladin for fighter for the extra 6th level feat and the easier crit from champion. I used the extra feat on spell sniper so i could have easier crits on Eldritch blast.
With Serevok's helm and the crit elixer, if my math is correct, Melee crit on 17's and Eldritch blast crit on 16's (or 17 if champion doesn't touch it). It made triggering GOO's fear rather consistent.
LOVE the opening...
Monk / Warlock Way of Elements. Use water whip and thorn whip to pull people into the darkness.
On PC at least, you can mod the heinous Illithid face away. I modded away half of it, leaving the side with my replacement eye ugly, and then modded the eye to look like an Illithid's, keeping one side of my character's face just the way I originally created it.
Darkness/Devil Sight combo is OP as fuck, I love it! :D
One thing what I don't like, that there is no option for cast it to an item (like it is in the official rulebook), so that's why I use the 5e Spells Adjust mod to have this opportunity, but sadly it's not works like the "cloud" version, you can still be targeted by ranged attack just with disadvantage.
You can get advantage other ways. So spending concentration on haste is more damage overall. And to have the whole 4 man party blind immunity takes either valuable item slots, which you can use for better items in the later game, or they need to multiclass into warlock, which only worth on some special builds. Yes, darkness also impose disadvantage for the enemy, but that doesn't really matter in BG3, where you have unlimited healing pots, can dress every characters in heavy armor only by 1 level dip to cleric, and can do long rest as many times as you want, etc. So spending concentration on the highest dmg option (like haste) is more valuable.
I know what you mean, you could use darkness arrows though, not too hard to stock up a good supply for fighters and rangers. Regardless though I don't think darkness is as awesome as everyone makes it out to be.
I disagree with "better items". If you have enough stealth, you can just shoot from inside the darkness and kill all the enemies while they just stand there unable to start combat.
Like Haste is more GENERALLY strong. But Darkness and Greater Invisibility quite literally break the game because enemies just stand there.
Haste just sounds better because most people run Dex dumping paladins
Since when is Darkness underrated? Darkness warlock with agonizing and repelling blast is one of the most powerful and well known builds in the community. There are whole party compositions built around this one spell.
I would say it is underrated in the way of not utilizing in fighting inside it, but ofcourse players with more hours in the game know about it. I would say using it and fighting inside it with high AC and devils sight is better than repelling and agonizing. especially in Honor mode where i see cheese as okay
I see where you're coming from. And my typical strategy with darkness warlock is to additionally have effects from other party members like Wall of Thorns. Nobody can hit or get to my party so we all just stay at range in most fights. @@CCritts
The darkness is so OP it feels unfair at some point.
You funny ahh dog I gotta try this sometime. Maybe pact of the blade warlock until level pre level 8 for that semi martial playstyle
Did you respec Shadowheart for more points into agility? Because I think standard Shadowheart cant hit anything with her spear. On my first gameplay she was so unreliable with the spear of sharr
Yeah I pretty much just use her for support spells and respec her into Life domain because Trickery just doesn't work very well.
Yes, i did have some free points to get her agility 16. Charisma is key though and with aunt ethels hair you can easily get 20 charisma fast. Combined with pact of the blade you rarely miss.
WE WANT MORE 🦍🦍🦍
More coming 🦍🦍
Because the KI of the enemies is not matching up accordingly, it becomes too easy (even for one who exploits warding bond for honour mode) and most fights get to laugh at. With the raphael fight as an exception.
If you save your barrelmancy for Raphael he’s a bit of a joke too though
Darkness is the zubat or geodude of this game, every ennemy you face has it so you don't want it on your team
Plus it's annoying I can't shoot arrows through that
Ye, but thats why devils sight came in so handy. Can just spam eldritch attacks out of it and through it
I just did the house of grief fight with Lightheart and thought to myself how annoying the multiple darkness clouds were. Can't wait to do my 2nd playthru as Durge and do some funky magic shit, I was thinking of an Ice themed build.
ive heard the sub zero roleplay buils is pretty fun. There are so many ice spells in the game
@@CCritts I was thinking a Sorlock maybe using Sleet Storm as my big nerd emoji domain expansion and pushing people back into it with repelling eldritch blast. No clue what I'll do beyond that, just gonna try the other classes I didn't use before.
Haha good video, don't know the game though xD only like the host
Issue is others you face have the same skills and then it's equal fight in black cloud. Then after you are dead, you can't have a teammate cast a revive or throw potion as you are dead in a cloud unless it was the caster that died. Either way it's value is act 1, tower act 2 which is the last 5%, and a few fights in act 3 if you have initiative otherwise you're just wasting a turn to do an action for damage.
you can always end your own darkness cast so not really a big problem
You can get the Silver Sword of the Astral Plane in act 1, use Command: Drop or Disarming Attack on Kith'rak Voss when he see him at the Mountain Pass, you'll need to be invisible and you may need to savescum :')
Wait so the entire party is built around darkness and has levels in warlock?? What about healer?
I did it for just because of the video, in reality you only need 2 and the rest can absolutely be a cleric and a good Evocation mage
Who needs healing when enemies can't see you 😂
Hunger of hadar is way better than darkness in my opinion
I gotta try this
Pretty fun, highly recommend
Im already playing warlock paladin just gotta respec
Darkness on the high priority targets and fog cloud on the stooges. Spam ranged.
Also is it just me or is frost ray like an ice Kamehameha? I rarely use fire bolt and my ranged weapons are starting to surpass cantrips even on a wizard at level 5
Ye, it is absurd how much damage gale does with the cantrip outfit you get from Alfira in act 2. Firebolt and frost ray just went overboard with high intelligence lol
@@CCritts OO can't wait to get that 😳
I don't use it because dissipating the clouds crashes my game
oof i feel you man. I played this game 2 times on my old shitty laptop. But if you ever get the chance to get a better pc, its a whole different experience
@@CCritts I still have poured 500 hours with this laptop, and I'm still adding more. I love this game, but right now, the fight against Viconia is a calvary for a very different reason.
The actions required you could have already killed everything
i dont cast darkness because i can instead kill or immobilize the enemies with better spells. Its not that its bad (it is though), there are just much better spells.
Yeah the spell just breaks the AI and trivialises 99% of the fights. It's really not a very fun way of beating every fight if the AI doesn't fight back now is it...
Maybe true, in Honor Mode however, i would kinda think its ok. Besides you lose the extra attack multiclassing gives you. So at that point i would take every advantage i get. But in this case in tactical mode i can see your perspective
Played assassin-warlock drow on start. But playstyle with darkness is too boring and repetitive
I played with darkness all game. I even got all my party to see in the dark. Nice strategy but you get use to it and fails when you need burst instead of cc. I will not give spoilers, you already know those bosses. On my second run now I prefer moon druid cc more versatile compared to darkness.
I just don't use it cuz I'm one of the people whose game crashes when concentration breaks on this spell.
really? What is the reason behind that?
Who doesn’t use darkness?😊
Me and many others since the game is already easy enough on tactician mode. Even on honor mode, after level 6 (you should be at this level when you clear about 80%-90% of act 1) you wouldn’t have trouble with enemies and bosses anymore.
me
@@shell6467 Honor mode gets DRASTICALLY harder in Act 3. Take any advantage you can get for your first run
@@elijahbanks1947 I’m still in act2 for honor mode so i’m not sure how much harder act 3 will be but darkness still wouldn’t be one of the top pick for me if I need advantages against enemies. There’re various way that is far better than darkness to give me major advantages against act3 enemies and bosses. Sharpshooter assassin with arrow of many targets can easily trivialize regular group of enemies in act 3. If I need tank I can go just full AC build or pick moon druid barbarian with blade ward from gold dwarf hirelings, bardalin alone can already put in 100+ of damage in a single turn. If the boss is resistance to almost every damage I can just use perilous stakes on it and have gloomstalker assassin or lv11 fighter with sharpshooter start the fight. If the boss is weak to certain type of attack like steel watch titan to lightning, I would just respec 3 members to be tempest cleric/sorcerer with one tank or healer. Any build above level 6 can pretty much breeze through act2 with buffs like elixir, aid, or potions so it wouldn’t be weird if it would be the same for act3
idk man, i may not be the best but Honor mode so far for me has been ROUGH, but ive seen people do some crazy stuff with builds so i can see it being easier for others@@shell6467
Resilient is mathematically provably better than warcaster.
It's not underrated. It's cheese. You can abuse fog clouds and rogues the same way - its a bit slower but still works perfectly. Give everyone 2 levels of rogue. put down fog cloud - have everyone hide in fog with their bonus. Have everyone leave fog and attack outside of fog. Repeat. Honestly Larian needs to patch all this. Both Darkness and Fog Cloud cheese the game. I don't care if that is the D & D rule.
D & D is cheese, so its a feature, not a bug.
True, the AI does seem to have problem playing against it. But imo, cheesing sometimes is just as fun as cheesing in a DnD game.
Personally I feel like darkness is overrated. Sure it's a good spell and works well for what it is but the majority of the time you use it enemies literally just walk out of it and now you're back to the regular game. I feel like the people making these guides forget all enemies can move on their turn or something.
Ive expereinced differently. The AI either brute forces or wastes their turn walking away and stares at you. You go out of darkness hit them then move back
Because it crashes my games 😂😂😂
I dont use darkness beacuse AI dont know what to do vs this. Its simply top strong.
i love me some good cheese in this game, but to each their own ofcourse
No one thinks it's underrated. It's beyond broken with the flaws in the AI. Are you living under a rock?
Ye the AI does get kinda screwed up. But cheese is fun when it is DnD. But people are different of course
why we are not using it : the whole team neds point in Warlock to not FUCKING RUIN THE TURN OF EVERYONE ELSE AFTER YOU
EZ
and dont think of BLIND imunity , darkness is magic and goes throught it , beside SHAR's spear
you're better of using Hunger of adar , it blind and does damage AND YOU CAN HIT FROM OUTSIDE OF IT NO WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ???? :0
Ye but DOMAIN EXPANSION feeling though
shhhhh
Nah people figured this shit out day 1
I played this day one and i DIDNT KNOW. and I am a people
@@Siljekvia you not knowing it doesn't mean it isn't well known lol
I think that people familiar with 5e D&D knew this day one. We've been doing it for years, after all. People that don't normally play ttrpgs don't (usually) think in these terms, maybe? It is fun to watch people come into this fresh...