bg3 karlach

PSA: If You Want Karlach in Your Baldur’s Gate 3 Party, Don’t Do This (BG3)

Avoid making the same mistake I did.

While many Baldur’s Gate 3 players have been able to add Karlach to their party, it’s possible to get locked out of recruiting her entirely. We’ll tell you the one mistake to avoid if you want to recruit Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3.

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Who is Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3?

Karlach is one of the BG3 fandom’s favorites. This spunky upbeat devil-red Tiefling is a Barbarian at heart and can bench-press musclemen for breakfast. She’s got an Inferno Engine in her chest, which is crucial to her quest line and also grants her special abilities, such as Infernal Fury.

You’ll first meet Karlach in the northernmost part of the map at Risen Road. Her coordinates are X:110, Y:499. Wyll’s questline coincides with her, so if you have him as a companion, you’ll naturally run into Karlach. If you are playing multiplayer, you won’t be able to select both Wyll and Karlach at the same time, due to questing reasons.

Warning:

Spoilers incoming!

Karlach’s questline is fairly important to the main story. Her ending involves you making a crucial choice of deciding whether to turn her into a Mindflayer, damning her to the Astral Plane, or having Wyll save her as the best possible choice. You have to find a cure for Karlach’s infernal engine, which will kill her if nothing is done about it.

Where Can I Find Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3?

bg3 map
Screenshot by Prima Games

If you’re hoping to add Karlach to your story as soon as possible, you’ll want to make a trip to the Forest near the Risen Road coordinates (X:111, Y:503) and find her near the river. If you’ve done things correctly and didn’t make the same mistakes that we did, you can recruit her into your party and bring her along for the ride of your life. However, if you did commit the mortal sins that we have, her heart of Gold will instantly harden, telling you where to go and how to get there.

What Should You Avoid Doing to Make Karlach Angry in Baldur’s Gate 3?

If you’re hoping to add this big, red woman to your team, you need to seek her out as quickly as possible or ensure you don’t follow the orders of Zevlor.

Since Baldur’s Gate 3 is our first real experience with CRPG-styled gaming, we’ve just been pushing through and doing what we think is right. When you go to Emerald Grove, also known as the Druid Camp, you’ll run into a Tiefling named Zevlor. He’ll task you with a simple goal; eliminate the Druid leader, so they can continue living their lives peacefully. You can take a much more civil approach to this situation, but our Rock Gnome Rouge mind said to use violence to solve the problem.

We figured, sure, why not eliminate her? That seems like a great option. It turns out, however, that the death of one leads to the death of many, with the Tieflings eliminating every other Druid in the camp, leaving it desolate and empty. However, it seems that word spreads fast. We had never seen nor spoken to Karlach in my time in BG3, but she knew exactly what we did.

Even after trying to cast the spell of Rizz on her (trying different Checks and succeeding), she still wanted nothing to do with us. We tried everything in my bag of tricks, from save-scumming so we could kill her, resurrect her, and try again, but the luck of the dice was not on our side. We even left the area, changed our appearance to that of a Tiefling with a spell, and tried again. She could still see through our disguise, but we could not change her disgust with us.

It’s a shame that we won’t be able to have her join our adventure, but we also understand why she would be upset with us. Is it dramatic to say that we’re about ready to start our adventure over so we can bring her on to our team? Asking for a friend.

No matter if you’re a master of nailing the Critical Roll, or you’re someone who doesn’t even know what the Karmic Dice system is, be sure to check out our Baldur’s Gate section below to get your hands on countless different tips and tricks that can help you avoid situations like this from happening in your adventure.


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About the Author

Shaun Cichacki

As a fan of RPGs, Action & Retro titles, Shaun has been gaming since he was a young boy. With an overwhelming obsession involving Metal Gear Solid and Pizza Tower, you know you're in for a wild ride when it comes to things he's writing about.