The 10 Best Items in BG3 Act 2 (Not Weapons)

he focuses his Asus back again with a Baldur's Gate 3 items video in this video I will be covering the top 10 non-weapon items in Act 2 of the game now just like my other videos in this series I'm doing these items in no particular order so the first one I cover on this list is not necessarily the best item in Act 2 it's not necessarily the worst item in Act 2 just as a whole this is my top 10 list of non-weapon items in act 2. also for this list I am favoring items which do something interesting mechanically that you can build around so that is opposed to items which just give you static flat bonuses to your stats a good example of this is the cloak of protection which you can find in Act 2 it gives you a plus one to your AC and to your saving throws and it's really good and all of my runs and I've done several so far I put the cloaker protection on a member of my composition and it stays on right into the end game so 100 use rate makes it a pretty good item but it's not making it on my top 10 items list because there's nothing to say about it it's just plus one to AC plus one to say big throws so even though those flat bonus items are good I find that items that you really can Center or build around in those builds are better so I'm favoring items like that they're also just better for a YouTube video so you know I can say something interesting about them so if there's an item that doesn't make this list that you think is really good I might agree with you but it just could be an item that's giving you you know plus one by six tier damage or something like that okay so enough disclaimers let's dive into the list now starting with the potent row that's this robe right here I've got on will you can find this robe you get it from alphera after you rescue the tieflings from moonrise towers do note you will not be able to get this robe if you play as the dark urge as far as I know there might be an exploits to still get it but I do not know that exploit so this is a non-dark urge item okay so what does this do well it's a robe that gives you plus one to your armor class so your armor class will be 11 plus your Dex modifier the same as unenchanted leather armor but you don't need the light armor proficiency so that's nice the big feature is giving you is this one right here gregarious Caster your cantrips will deal additional damage equal to your charisma modifier okay so if you're casting Firebolt which does one instance of damage this is going to add your charisma modifier when you get it'll be around plus four and by end game it'll usually be around plus six to the damage that is nice but not amazing where this really starts to shine is on what I've called the best damage dealing strategy in Boulder's Gate 3 which is stacking damage on Eldritch blast eldersplast is a can trip which as it scales it does not add more flat damage to the spell but adds more Rays to the spell and by late game you can get up to three Rays per cast of Elders blasts and yeah you guess it this is going to be adding your charisma modifier to all three of those Rays by liking so if you have a plus six Charisma modifier and you hit all three of your rays which is very likely you will be adding 18 damage to the overall damage of that single cast of Elders blast and that is a lot 18 is a lot of damage in this game and that's just the one cast you can cast this multiple times in a turn but that's not even all that the robe does there's also well-liked and more well fortified at the beginning of the wearer's turn the robe grants them temporary hit points equal to their Charisma modifier so again by late game this is an extra six hit points per turn roughly I mean it's not healing you but it's giving that to you as a shield and that can add quite a bit of durability to your character absolutely amazing item it might make my list of top five items in the game I'm not sure I've just been thinking about that list I'll probably do that once I've covered all three acts but yeah amazing potent Rogue all right next up is the helmet of Arcane Acuity now this is an item I really feel pretty confident will make my top five items in the game list it is so insane and you get it in the Mason's Guild the basement of the Mason's Guild which you can access pretty early into act 2. this helmet while you are wearing it and you deal damage with a weapon attack so sadly that is not monk fists last time I checked has to actually be a weapon and it cannot be a spell like Elder's blast whenever you deal damage with a weapon attack you gain Arcane Acuity okay what does Arcane Acuity do the affected entity has a plus one bonus to its spell attack rolls and spell difficulty class per turn remaining of Arcane Acuity and it doesn't say this but it can stack to a maximum of seven turns so that means if you have a Caster that can also make multiple attacks in a turn you can fairly quickly stack up a plus seven to the DC of your saving throw spells and some of the most debilitating effects in this game of course are saving for spells spells like hold monster hold person uh dominate person banishment slow you get the idea the really really potent crowd control spells in this game uh use a DC and a plus 70 or DC is overwhelming it is not uncommon for me to have a 95 chance of Landing these spells against even some of the most deadly and durable bosses in the game I've cc'd pretty much everything you can think of with the helmet of Arcane Acuity and especially by late game if you build around it you can easily Stack Up Seven Stacks in a single turn and still be able to cast a spell that is with a certain ring you get I'll save that one for when I cover act 3 items but any full Caster that has extra attacks synergizes so well with this item and the item is so good you want it in every single run so the obvious candidates for this item are swords bards swords bards can stack it up really well with slashing flourish which allows them to attack multiple targets actually just allows them to make multiple attacks with a single attack which is kind of weird to say but uh yeah you can really quickly stack it up with them warlocks they're not exactly full casters but they're kind of equivalent with their pack magic and if you go pack to the blade you'll get extra attack as well so a haste of warlock can stack up the full Stacks in a single turn and then of course Eldritch Knight can by late by level 11 you're making three attacks you can stack up to full Stacks in a single turn all of these builds are really good because of the helmet of Arcane Acuity you'll be landing fight-changing CC effects with near 100 certainty so amazing helmet of Arcane Acuity next up is the Hat of fire cutie and I kind of group these together yeah I have it right here had a fire Acuity I group these together because any item in the game which gives you Arcane Acuity is going to be really good Arcane Acuity is just so so crucial and so powerful and so helmet of Arcane Acuity is one of them had a fire cutie is another uh there's also one that gives you Acuity when you deal Thunder damage and there's a pair of gauntlets the gauntlets are the worst Acuity items in my opinion but they can still be useful so with a hat of fire cutie whenever you deal fire damage you will gain Arcane Acuity for two turns the reason this is one of the better Acuity items is because of the spell scorching Ray any class that can cast a spell scorching right they hit all of the rays which you can do fairly easily will suddenly stack up to Max Arcane Acuity all in one turn so again another great strategy but it's not just scorching Ray Fireball wall of fire those spells like that when you can hit multiple targets you'll get Max Arcane Acuity Stacks with the hats very very quickly you can find the Hat of fire Acuity you can loot it off of the strange aux in the last Light in it's in the Damon Smithy I tried really hard to get it off of the strange aux in act one but it is not possible you have to wait till Act 2 to confront the strange Ox to get this hat so bear that in mind all right that was the Hat of fire Acuity next up is the Luminous gloves and actually this is another whole set of items I have these on Shadow heart in this run here we go you can find the Luminous gloves in The Potter's chest it's a chest in a dilapidated shed very close to where the Ambush happens the Harper Ambush with your guide to moonrise Towers it's like the first big event of act two so hopefully you know where that is Luminous gloves whenever the wear deals radiant damage the Target that they deal with damage to will receive one turn of radiating orb radiating orb the affected entity has -1 to their attack rolls per remaining turn and it also sheds bright light in the area surrounding it now rating orb should stack just like most of the effects in this game it should stack seven turns maximum but it is currently bugged and you can stack much higher than that um I stacked this as high as 15 I'm sure you can go even higher but just think about if a minus 15 to your attack rolls that can turn an almost guaranteed hit into an almost guaranteed Miss I'm sure they'll fix that soon even a -7 to an enemy's attack rolls is a severe debuff to their ability to deal damage with attacks and of course there's a lot of enemies you'll face in this game whose primary way of dealing damage is with attacks so the big question is how easy is it to stack radiating orb and how quickly can you stack it and the answer is you can stack it very very quickly these gloves are one way so this will give one turn every time you deal radiant damage and if you're dealing radiant damage on your attacks and you're hasted and making multiple attacks in a turn you can stack it up extremely quickly but the Luminous gloves aren't the only radiant items in the game there's also this the Luminous armor this is a a suit of armor I actually didn't get in my first two runs of the game and for that reason it did not make my list of the best Act One items because you find it in act one and it's really a shame because it is hands down the best item in act one and it didn't make my list so I'm correcting that now luminous armor whenever you deal radiant damage it will cause a radiant shock wave it's the same as the Luminous gloves except the radiant orb is in a three meter AOE and you can imagine if the targets are clustered and you deal AOE radiant damage you will proc this on all of them and all of them will proc this on the ones around them a single cast of sacred flame I fully stacked you know seven stacks of this on all Targets in a small cluster that's how good this can be yeah so these two together as you can see both of them are in radiant damage and this really skews the effectiveness of radiant damage I find just if something deals right in damage especially on a weapon attack just look twice at it and then there's the Rings you can find these in act two the big one is core station ring you can find the core station ring in the tunnels underneath the last Light in or you fight those little Fey monsters that look like zerglings with this ring whenever they wear deals spell damage while illuminated themselves they will inflict radiant orb upon the target so you can just cast the light spell on yourself and now when you cast magic Missile when you cast Eldritch blast anything which targets multiple targets you can and Deals damage all of them you will be spreading radiant orb on all of them and all of these sources stack together finally there is the callus glow ring this one doesn't deal radiant orb unless you mix it with the other items but the callus glow ring you can find in the vaults in Sharp's Gauntlet that's the dc30 locked door very close to where you meet Balthazar with this ring the wearer will deal an additional two points of damage against creatures that are illuminated so of course rating orb illuminates them and if you you have these other radiating orb items they will be illuminated when you deal damage to them which means you're going to deal an additional two points of radiant damage which will proc the effects from the Luminous gauntlets or the Luminous armor and give you even more radiating orbs or radian orbs in the AOE with the armor so yeah especially against clustered up enemies if you cast a spell like Spirit Guardians which is the best spell with this item set you can just run around and very quickly get plus seven or more because of the bug stacks of radiating orb on all the enemies you're facing so you're not on top of all the damage that you deal and now their attacks basically miss you every time so honestly this is so good it makes fights a cakewalk against certain kinds of enemies and my rule set I'll probably be banning these as a full set and just make it so you're only allowed to take one radiate radiating orb item that is how insane this is um anyways you should definitely play with them all though it's extremely fine just put them on a cleric caspier Gardens run around the map awesome all right I've said enough about those moving on to number five on our list it's the circle of Bones here it is circle of Bones you can loot this off of Balthazar if you fight him in the shadowfell I don't want to give any spoilers but uh balthazar's little mini boss that you fight while you wear this circlet all Undead within six meters are resistant to bludgeoning slashing and piercing damage now of course you'll fight a lot of Undead which means you'll be giving this resistance to them and that's a shame but what makes this so good is if you use it with your Undead summons I've talked before in some of my early exploration videos about what I call a zombie apocalypse composition where you have multiple members of your team comp which cast anime dead and then you spread as many infinite Buffs to them as you can so like what I call an infinite buff is any buff that applies to every single Target in AOE with no limit and this is one of them right every single Undead within six meters are getting resistance to bludgeoning slashing and piercing damage which is a massive boost of their survivability it's a 50 reduction in physical damage and what's really cool is one of the major strategies with anime dead is to use your summons as a meat Shield so that you don't need a front line anymore and you can run four backline damage dealers and casters this makes your meat Shield even better because now they're resistant to physical damage and on top of that you'll get a free cast of anime dead once per long rest so good um so yeah just stack this on any Undead summon comp it is absolutely amazing it really makes the comp tick next up on the list brain drain gloves okay these are ones I'm excited about you find these really late Knack too sadly um you find them in the necrotic library in the kind of tunnels underneath moonrise Towers after you have confronted catherick with the brain drain gloves whenever you deal psychic damage you will also inflict two turns of mental fatigue on the target mental fatigue is like the uh mind save version of reverberation reverberation debuffs the physical saves dexterity Constitution strength mental fatigue debuss the mental saves wisdom intelligence and Charisma and the mental saves are kind of the better ones to debuff because they have wisdom there right this gives you the ability to debuff wisdom saving throws really easily so what you do with the brain drain gloves is you put these on any character that deals psychic damage on their weapon attacks and then you just make multiple weapon attacks with haste on a Target and full stack mental fatigue it Stacks to a maximum of seven turns now is it difficult to get psychic damage on your attacks it is absolutely not pretty much any character in the game can do it this is Minsk and my act 3 build and he has the strange conduit ring this is a ring you get in act one while concentrating on a spell the wears weapon attacks will deal an additional 1-4 psychic damage awesome I mean that's a decent damage boost for the ring slot and you pretty much get it all the time because you are usually if you're maximizing your build concentrating on some kind of spell even if you're a fighter that gives no spells in the game there are items or Scrolls that you can use to to occupy your concentration slot so for example the grimforge helmet which we talked about in my first video in the series allows you to cast Hunter's Mark that's a concentration spell voila now you're doing one by four psychic damage but even if that doesn't work there is a tadpole power yeah it's this one psionic overload this is a tadpole power you get once per short rest while you have it on yourself your attacks will deal an additional 1.4 psychic damage and you will take 1x4 psychic damage every turn it's a great trade because you're taking one instance of damage but you're probably making more than one attack in a round and all of those attacks with the brain train gloves are going to be debuffing their wisdom save so I mean there's also other weapons in the game some of the gift Yankee weapons will deal psychic damage on hit so you can put these on Lazelle so yeah amazing and just also consider for a moment the math a full stacking brain drain gloves and Arcane Acuity with seven stacks of each that is a 14 point swing and their ability to make a saving throw for pretty much every single character enemy that you can fight in this game a 14 point difference in Saving throws is going to make them fail in 95 percent of rolls so if you're patient enough and you stack up these very powerful Buffs and you make builds that can stack them up quickly you can hit every control spell reliably so yeah that's brain drain gloves and then number seven on our list is the yawn T scale mail that's this armor right here you can buy the on T scale mail from quartermaster Tali in the last Light in she's the one out right outside of the inn by the bridge when you enter this is medium armor scale male has 15 uh 15 Armor class but what's really interesting about it is it has this exotic material feature now a few armors in the game will have this and pretty much all of them are really good this is one of the better ones in Act 2. with exotic material you get to add your full dexterity modifier to your armor class additionally it will not impose disadvantage on stealth check rolls which can be good if you're doing a stealth build but for most of the times you use this armor it's not really a factor medium armor usually only allows you to add up to plus two of your dexterity modifier to your armor class but with the Auntie scale mail you can add the full up to plus five or higher so add up 20 dexterity a plus five modifier you have a 20 armor class just from wearing this armor with your Dex mod but then on top of that it gives you ambusher which is a plus one bonus to your initiative roles now we talked about this in my weapons video when we cover the soul breaker Greatsword if you are unfamiliar with bg3 and you come mostly from a tabletop 5V background initiative in Boulder's Gate 3 is rolled on a die 4 rather than a die 20. so a plus one bonus to your initiative roles is a 25 percentage Point increase to your chance of winning initiative and because of this the fact that it's rolled in a die 4 and the variance is so low it's really easy to get every member of your party consistently winning initiative on every single fight take the alert feed and start stacking other bonuses like dexterity Etc I find that between a plus seven and a plus 10 to your initiative roles is what you're looking for and if you're building around the Yanti scale Mill by having a class that has proficient in medium armor then investing in dexterity that will give you a plus five to your initiative roles right there from dexterity this is giving you another plus one you're at plus six you take the alert feet you're now at plus 11 you're pretty much winning every time with such a low investment you know it's just dexterity which is a stat you probably want anyways this armor and the alert feet and you're moving first every time it's extremely powerful so yeah I use Yanti scale mail and most of my runs I do end up replacing it sometimes with some later game items because they do a lot of the same things but better but for Act 2 it definitely deserves a mention to cover the last three items on our list I had to load into a different save because I missed them in that other run I was doing so this is the last three here starting with Sentinel Shield it's good that we're covering this one right after Yanti scale mail because it's similar right so this is Shield gives you plus Studio Armor class and while you are wearing it you gain heightened awareness heightened awareness gives you a plus three bonus to your initiative an advantage on perception checks so the plus three bonus to your initiative I mean wow just insane we just talked about your auntie scale mail which was giving you a plus one this is giving you three times that I really like this on my casters any Caster that has a shield proficiency because I find that it's difficult to get initiative on casters but really any class where you're finding it difficult to get bonuses to your initiative Sentinel Shield is amazing on them and it really is something to build around in my opinion because as soon as you start winning initiative every round you can start building around strategies that are good for winning initiative every round on top of that uh yeah perception checks are very common you have an advantage in all those and then you also get Shield bash this is something a lot of shields give you and Central Shield's one of them when a foe hits you with the melee attack you can use your reaction to not get prone unless they succeed a dexterity saving throw it's worth doing for sure especially by late game because what happens is when an enemy attacks you and you knock them prone uh for some reason it just ends their turn right there so if they had multiple attacks they hit you on the first one and you succeed in knocking them prone it will actually cancel all the rest of the attacks they would have made that turn and you know then they're also prone you'd have advantage on your attacks against them for next turn so Shield bash is actually a good ability that's worth doing it I pretty much use it every opportunity I can so yeah Central Shield honestly one of the best shields in the game and there's some really good shields in this game uh I forgot to mention where you can get this you can buy it off of LAN tarv who is a hobgoblin vendor in the moonrise Towers you can find them in the first main hall when you're walking down the stairs from the front door he will be to your right so that's the Sentinel Shield next item on our list is risky ring you can buy this again in Moonrise Towers from a Raj obladra I hope I'm pronouncing that right she says it in the game but I can't remember anyways risky ring when you are wearing this ring you gain advantage on attack rolls full stop all attack rolls while you're wearing the ring which is insane um it's so good but the drawback is you will also receive disadvantage on all saving throws and that's actually a really big disadvantage so you're getting something awesome and you're trading a pretty big debuff and I love items like this I'm such a sucker for this because if you can find a way to make the disadvantage you're getting not the major factor then you just get that full amazing advantage on all your attacks pretty much for free and so the big thing to do this use this ring on is any class that can reliably avoid aggro Rogues are the main one here it's really good on Rogues you're so you're getting advantage on your attacks which means you will always be able to proc a sneak attacks and then you can use bonus actions to hide to avoid uh being targeted so you probably won't be hit with any spells and that's the main use of risky ring but it can be good on all sorts of builds and that's what's fun about it is trying to build so you can benefit the most from the advantage and suffer the least from the disadvantage absolutely amazing I mean this just does so many things to your DPR my only problem with it is it's almost invalidates like the major feature that barbarians get so now you can just play a fighter which has much better late game scaling and you get Feats much more consistently with fighter throughout the game and still get advantage on every tack without Reckless attacks right so anyways risky rings and saying have fun playing around with it let me know what builds you guys use it on in the comments and that brings us to the last item on our list last but definitely not least it's the gloves of the automaton you can buy these from barcus root in the last Light in if you do the quest in act one that saves them so you have to save him at the Windmill in the blighted village and then you have to save the Gnomes in Grim Forge if you do those things he will appear in the last Light in at the very beginning of act two he's a Trader and you can buy these gloves from him so what do they do the big thing it gives you is circuitry interface you are considered a construct for 10 turns whenever you use this ability your weapon attacks all have advantage and you have resistance to lightning damage so for 10 turns once per short rest at the cost of your bonus action you get advantage in all your attack rolls just like with risky ring again incredible resistance to lightning damage is nice like yeah we won't say no to that and then you're considered a construct and that is actually kind of a really good boost but it's hard to know what it all does um one thing it does is it it allows you to use the unique glaive that you can loot off of Bernard without getting stunned so it's a plus one glaive that deals an extra 1x6 lighten damage which is pretty good the problem is that it stuns you if you aren't a construct or it could stun you if you aren't a construct but with circuitry interface you don't have to worry about that anymore and you can use it you know without that worry so that's that's okay but not incredible the big thing is that when you are a construct you are immune to a lot of conditions in the game uh at least so I've heard I actually haven't got the chance to play around with this very much but there are some spells that only work against uh living targets for example like the cantrip Chill Touch only against organic things does that spell work okay well when your construct you're no longer organic and you're immune to it also spells like whole person have to Target persons not constructs so if you switch over to a construct you get the idea I believe the poison condition in all kinds of things like that I have I don't have an exhaustive list because I guess I haven't got to test it but you should test it yeah it makes you immune to these conditions and that is something you can build around too and Lasting 10 turns is pretty much an entire encounter the only problem is that it's refreshing once on a short rest it's a really good boost but once you've used it you're not really getting any other use out of these gloves so use it once and then swap out to a better pair of gloves later that is gloves of the automaton and that is my top 10 non-weapon items in act two of course as is tradition I have some honorable mentions the first is the boots of Arcane bolstering very interesting pair of boots I would like to play around with more really tests these could break open The Meta but more likely they're not that good here's what they do uh while you're wearing these you gain rapid Caster each time you dash you will gain Arcane charge for two turns so this is a very Niche condition that hasn't gotten a lot of support from larion there aren't a lot of items that use it it also is just really badly implemented because what it says here in the tooltip is not actually what it does what it says is while you are threatened you have a plus one bonus to the damage of your spells and it's like who cares right like big whoop doesn't matter but that's not actually what it does my understanding is that it's not a plus one but it's actually your proficiency bonus it adds your proficiency bonus to the damage of the Spells so of course by act two you're looking at plus three damage to your spells by act three it'll be plus four that's actually you know damage we can write home about imagine plus four damage to all of your Eldritch blast Rays on top of all of the other bonuses that you're giving them I mean it's insane damage and the the spell I I'm really interested for this on is uh spirit Guardians which we talked about with the the radiating orb items spear Guardians is so good one of the better strategies in the game in my opinion I find it very frustrating to play without it and it's a spell that actually already benefits from using Dash right like you cast it and then the next turn you want to use your action to dash so you have more movement to run around and proc it on more Targets this should in theory add damage to it but only when you're threatened so I don't know if that's really going to um to get it threatened each time you proc It On Target yeah I don't really know but still in theory you could add a lot of damage under these kind of Niche conditions now the conditions are so Niche that you it's probably not worth building around but I like the idea of it I'm going to play around with it and really test it in a future run and I just wanted to mention it now in case in the future it turns out to be super op I want to be here saying I told you so so yeah that belongs in the honorable mention the other one I have on my list is the circlet of mental anguish I don't think yeah I don't think I've picked it up on this run but I have in my other one circlet of mental anguish you get it in the necrotic Library the same place where you get the brain drain gloves it's interesting what it does is anytime a Target fails a saving throw that's one of its mental saves against one of your spells you will heal one die for hit points I mean if you're familiar with my other videos you know where I'm going with this I think it could be really powerful to combine with the period of wound closure which will maximize that 1x4 heel to just four every time and then you just have to find a way to reliably and efficiently get a mental saving throw spell on enemies and then you can start healing a lot of hit points and around and the very clear strategy for this is again Spirit Guardians one of the best spells in the game it's a wisdom saving throw to resist and you can hit it on multiple Targets in a turn the ones that save are going to heal you for four hit points if you could do that on 10 targets that's 40 hit points healed in a round right so that could really give that Frontline cleric some some serious durability in theory now in my actual game it just doesn't work with Spirit Gardens and I don't know if that's intentional or just a bug but if it doesn't work with Spirit guardians or there isn't another spell to to proc it on multiple targets efficiently in a turn then it probably isn't that good of an item but it's interesting enough I thought it deserved an honorable mention all right I'm recording this in post because I forgot to do it in the actual recording I'm going to list all the items now and their locations as just a quick reference sheet so number one on our list was potent robe you can get this as a reward from alphera after rescuing the tieflings from moonrise Towers number two is the helmet of Arcane Acuity you can find this in the Mason's Guild the secret basement of the Mason's Guild number three was the Hat of fire Acuity which you can loot off the strange Ox if you confront the strange Ox in act 2. does not work if you confront them in Act One the strange docs is found in Damon Smithy in the last Light in number four is the Luminous gloves which you can find in the Potter's chest that is a shed very close to where the Harper ambushes at the very beginning of actu I also mentioned the coarsegation ring which you can find in the last Light in tunnels and the callus glow ring which is in the dc-30 vault in Char's Gauntlet number five on our list was the circle of Bones which you can loot from Balthazar if you confront Balthazar in the shadowfell number six is the brain drain gloves which you can find in the necrotic library in the tunnels underneath moonrise Towers you can only access this after your confrontation with Catherine so it's at the very end of the ACT number seven is Yanti scale mail which you can buy from quartermaster tally in last night light in number eight is the Sentinel Shield which you can buy from land tarv in Moonrise Towers number nine was the risky ring which you can buy from a Raj and moonrise Towers number 10 was the gloves of the automaton which you can buy from barcus root in the last Light in and that's the full list honorable mentions were the boots of our King bolstering you can buy those from a Raj and the circle of mental anguish which you also find in the necrotic library in the same location as the brain train gloves that's it for this video thank you so much for listening guys I will catch you next time

Channel: Aestus_RPG

Views: 21,204

Keywords: BG3

Id: apSk7c5cJz4

Length: 34min 55sec (2095 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 19 2023