The BEST DRUID in Baldur's Gate 3 - Honour Mode Build Guide

hello my friends and welcome back to another balers Gate 3 build guide hope you're all doing well today we're covering my pick for the best Druid build in balers Gate 3 this is an exciting one because patch five just came out and so we will be making this build for Honor mode although of course it will still work for tactician or lower difficulties um and this will be a part of my basic builds Series so this is intended to Showcase and maximize the strength of Druid as a class a rule for these builds is we have to take the majority of our levels in Druid although in this case you're highly incentivized to stay in Druid for all 12 levels and so we will be doing that there's a couple things that are really exciting about building for Honor mode um and a couple changes that are specific to honor mode that I will mention the biggest change that we have to take into account when making these builds is that we can no longer reliably acquire Ethel's hair uh if you don't want know what that means it's a spoiler so don't worry about it um and so any builds that are based on that are no longer 100% reliable to achieve because it's in Iron Man mode and and you might not get it um so for that reason I already tried to avoid using it but for these builds going forwards I will always be avoiding using it in my build guides except in very specific cases all right so before we begin I'd also like to quickly thank jonov Holt again for the 59 croner donation thank you so much my friend I really appreciate it so let's Dive Right In and make an honor mode character uh we are of course using jira as the example character but Druids are I think a maybe the best main character um because they can fit into if you don't care about dialogue skills because they can fit into any party and fill basically every role in the game Druids are thanks to above in patch five one of the best damage dealing melee characters in the game they're a full spell Caster with access to excellent utility spells as well as great control and damage they have summons and they also tank better than any other character in the game because they effectively have three health bars every short rest the reason for this is that when you wild shape into a wildshape form you have the full hit points of the wild shape form and enemies have to reduce you to zero hit points in that form before they can start damaging your actual character's hit points at all which means that you basically have three full health bars they have to get through and can end up with pretty solid defenses as you go uh regardless meaning that you have great sustainability great damage tons of utility as a character fits extremely well into any party this I think is one of the top tier builds now for Honor mode as well as for any tactician playthrough it's a great build for jira or hon as well as for a main character all right let's get into building so the first thing that we have to do of course is fix these stats because the starting stats for Druid are pretty bad um and we're actually going to take a fairly specific stat spread because of a choice that we're going to make later on which I'll talk talk about when we get there we need to start with 16 wisdom and unlike almost every other build that I make we are going to start with 15 Constitution and then 16 dexterity with our remaining two points you probably want to place these into intelligence because there's a couple uh enemies in the game that have intelligence targeting saving throw effects but if you're a main character maybe you want them in Charisma just to give you slightly better d dialog skills or you could put them in strength to give you better jumping and carry weight the last two points aren't incredibly important but uh intelligence is probably the most optimal pick um if you are confident that you can get Ethel's hair you could do 17 wisdom and that's also a great split as well um but for Honor mode I don't think you can reliably ensure that you'll get that CU you might fail the dialogue check or accidentally kill her for our skill selection there's nothing that we particularly need here except for perception um as a high wisdom character perception is you're going to be the best character in the game to do perception checks and so it's very good to have access to that if you're a main character of course you might want to take a background that gives you a dialogue skill of some kind just so you have some access to that um though Druids are not going to win any prizes for Charisma regardless so I wouldn't worry too much about passing your dialogue checks you for your second skill it really just doesn't matter at this point so kind of take whatever I think the one that comes up most often is Insight but medicine also occasionally comes up animal handling you can solve every check in the game that uses animal handling with the speak with animal spell as far as I'm aware maybe there's one or two that you can't and um survival is only used to dig up chests which you can do just by digging in the area that they're in even if you don't pass the survival check so that is all totally irrelevant those those skills are just almost never worth taking for our Kant trip select you are definitely going to want guidance especially on honor mode where you cannot save scum skill checks the ability to add a D4 to every ability check that you make is incredibly powerful super strong ability maybe the best spell in the game secretly um every party should have access to guidance and you often want multiple instances of guidance so that you can add multiple different stacking things to a um to a character for example if you have enhan ability on a character then you want to have guidance on a different character so that you can use both at once you don't just want to Stack all of your skill Buffs onto one character um for our second skill you definitely want a combat oriented cantrip for our second cantrip uh there are really two choices here those are Thorn Whip or produce flame produce flame does slightly more damage and has some utility in that it creates light and Thorn whip can be used to reposition enemies I slightly prefer Thorn whip because repositioning enemies is quite powerful but uh choosing between these two it's really more a matter of taste all right that is our level one build let's jump to level two notice the giant cow in the background that's actually because if you are a main character the I believe the optimal race to pick for this build is dgar because you can use the dwars in large and then wild shape to be a really really big bear if you want to um and that is pretty useful and of course starting every combat invisible is really powerful for Druids because you want to start every combat with a concentration spell and then turn into a wild shape form I'll talk a little bit about how Druids will typically fight uh later on in the video as well all right at level two we have to make the single most important selection that we're going to make during this build and that is what subass are we going to go Druids are very interesting for sub classes because all three are really good um most characters most classes in the game have at least one that's significantly weaker than the other two and many have one subass that's way out ahead of the other two but all three Druid subclasses are really strong for various reasons for an optimized character on heroic mode specifically I think you are going to be best off with circle of the moon but if you're playing on tactician or lower I actually recommend circle of the land the reason for this is that on heroic on honor mode excuse me I keep saying heroic on honor mode um haste is Works differently than it does on lower difficulty settings and one of the best things that Circle of the land gets is access to haste I'll do a full circle of the land Druid guide later on but for this build we're going to focus on Circle of the Moon circle of the Moon gets you two really important things one it gets you new wild shaped forms and the bare form is at this level better than the other forms you have access to it's going to be your best combat um form so you'll usually want to turn into a bear and it gets you bonus action wild shaping uh this is really powerful because when you are in Wild shape you can continue to concentrate on a spell what this means is that Druids will typically want to start their fights by casting a highlevel concentration spell and then wild shaping in the same turn if you were a land Druid then typically you'd want to cast haste on yourself in the wild shape because it requires an action but as a moon Druid you can cast any concentration spell and then wild shape in the same turn you won't do anything else in your first round of combat because you won't be able to use like the bonus action attacks of some wild shaped forms but you get to get a head start on being in Wild shape while also having your concentration spells up which is very powerful for that reason also I should also mention what our prepared spells are at this level we are going to focus on having good concentration spells available at at least one of each level to make sure that we can always spend our resources optimally at the beginning of fights so what we're going to take here for level one is you will always want access to Healing word on every character that can get it long Strider is very important um this is it's not included in the tool tip for reasons I don't understand but long Strider is a ritual spell meaning it does not require a spell slot to cast so you can cast this on your whole party basically having access to this on any character in your party means that your whole party moves 10 feet faster um for the entire day that's an incredible buff and extremely useful especially on difficult modes where you might might need to quickly get out of a combat if it's starting to go south uh to prevent you from dying you will also very likely want ice knife this is both a good combat option and has a bunch of utility because it leaves a a field of ice on the ground uh if you cast this under an enemy and then they try to walk on it they may trip and fall prone and if an enemy Falls prone on their turn as opposed to you knocking them prone on your turn they lose the rest of their turn it costs them their entire turn if they trip and fall so ice knife is secretly an incredibly strong crowd control spell that can really take enemies out uh you will also very likely want access to fog Cloud fog cloud is really good if you have other ranged characters and also good for any fights where you are trying to stay in um Druid form rather than in Wild shaped form um because you can stand your party inside of it enemies cannot shoot you because the you are heavily obscured and any enemies that come in after you will be blinded and have disadvantage on their attack roles and then if you have a ranged character you can step out of it make an attack and then step back into it on your turn fog cloud is some of the best uh damage prevention in the game as a result it's very similar to darkness which is also one of the most abusive spells in the game for uh the same reason for our last spell there's a couple utility options that are worth considering here um entangle is very good it's a concentration spell that inflicts a very powerful debuff um fairy fire can give you advantage on attack roles and also against invisible enemies it's mandatory to have this so if you know you're going up against enemies that have invisibility fairy fire is the best way to counteract that and Creator destroy water has a lot of utility throughout the game um it's often worth just having access to this because there's a bunch of other things we can do for a default I think you're going to want entangle D level three we get access to our level two spells and so there's a couple here that I think are really worth mentioning um one just got buffed and we're actually going to change our spells fairly significantly here uh one just got buffed and that is heat metal which no longer randomly expires um heat metal is very good against any character you can use it on although it it is worse for Druids so we won't be taking it but I just wanted to mention that it was recently buffed the reason it's worse is that uh spells like heat metal and moon beam you can still concentrate on but in Boulders Gate 3 while you're wild shaped you cannot reactivate these spells so if you have moon beam concentrated you can't move it even though you should be able to um in tabletop D and you can move your moon beam fire your call lightning reactivate heat metal that kind thing but in Boulders Gate 3 it's not possible in Wild shape form so you want to avoid concentration spells that require you to continue to activate them turn after turn in favor of concentration spells that are powerful regardless the best of these is Flaming sphere enemies will focus this it makes the attacks not you so you don't have to uh uh have it do stuff [Music] um you you don't have to reactivate it so you can use it in Wild shaped form the uh Spike growth is very good as well this is a very powerful Field Effect that can be used against enemies that can't jump or enemies that you have trapped in a corridor it's a huge AOE and is extremely strong as well and hold person while I'm not as big a fan of hold person in Boulders gate as I am in tabletop because enemies get to save when you cast it and then again at the beginning of their turn before or you cast before they um actually skip a turn hold person is still an extremely powerful effect and also you benefit very strongly from it because you are going to be making melee attacks as a moon Druid character uh so those will be critical hits so I would likely take these two um there's a couple other options that you can use for your default setup but I think these are going to serve you best [Music] overall at Drew level four we get to see two things one we get uh new wild shaped forms and I think the bear is usually still better than the Deep peroe although the dire Raven's ability to Blind is actually pretty interesting in some fights it's got very low Health but can be useful um the Deep Ro charge lets you do some additional damage but generally I think you're going to prefer the bare form for most combats we do however get a feat and there's a specific feat that interacts extremely power f with Druid as of patch five and that is Tavern brawler when you make an unarmed attack you add your strength modifier twice both to hit and damage um this is extraordinarily powerful for wild shapes of course because all of the wild shapes except for our meridon forms at level 10 have our unarmed attacks meaning that they benefit from The Tavern brawler damage in Dungeons and Dragons and in Boulders gate there's a concept called bounded accuracy which basically means that your chance to hit should never be too high or too low this breaks that rule um allowing you to get close to 100% hit chance because you are doubling your chance to hit or you're doubling your strength modifiers effect on your chance to hit as well as its chance on damage so you get to break that rule and also we get to increase our strength or Constitution letting us get up to 16 Constitution that's great because it gives us more hit points and the ability to concentrate on stuff while we're not in um wild shaped form and so on but most importantly this is going to double our strength modifier for attacks and damage it does mean that our wisdom is a little lower than it would be for another Caster class at this level but it's definitely worth the lower saf DCS in my opinion especially because so many of your solid concentration spells things like flaming sphere or Spike growth do not have any saves associated with them so you don't need to have high wisdom for those for our second can trip uh here I I think there's a couple options you can certainly take produce flame for the the utility but you already have a damage option so I would take resistance this will come up occasionally and especially on heroic mode if you know you're going to or I I keep doing that honor mode if you know you're going to need to make a save in advance you should take resistance um because then you can pre-cast it have a bonus to that save and that's very important given that you can't reload so there are some saves in the game you really don't want to fail Druid level five gets us access to third level spells as well as wild strike meaning that all of our wild shaped forms can attack twice now um this is super powerful it's the same as extra attack but remember that we are getting double damage from Tavern brawler so these double attacks are applying the bonus damage even more often or even more bonus damage uh compared to other characters that get extra attack something like a fighter will will only be applying their strength bonus once we're applying it twice uh for our level three spells there's actually not a lot that you really benefit from at level three because the best of these concentration effects at level three is call lightning which you can't really use as a druid because you can't reactivate it so you can't you can't subsequently cast the later um casts of call lightning normally this gives you 10 turns of uses of call lightning but for a druid it doesn't so it's significantly worse than it would be for other characters so at this point I think you want plant growth it's a non-concentration spell that's very similar to spike growth um in that it creates a field effect but this one quarters enemy movement speed which is very powerful especially if you have them locked in a field it's also a good way to uh create a gigantic fire surface if that's something that you do want to do although for a level three spell I think that's usually a pretty weak use of an action as well as a resource and then um a couple other things if you have an ally that wants bark skin you can have bark skin um that is a concentration spell that you can be concentrating on it's not good to cast this on yourself for your wild shaped forms typically this won't be very useful because many wild shaped forms already have high base AC and this will just overwrite that so you'll only gain like one or two points of AC maximum from casting bark skin on yourself I think it's best on on bare form which has low AC the bark skin on bare form is pretty useful um but then of course you'll if you lose concentration on it then uh you'll lose the AC that being said there's not a lot else at this level that you might want so you might want to take bark skin if you are just if you need something to concentrate on throughout the day typically in combat though you are going to want to cast a concentration spell and then wild shape so you're not going to want to have a dayong concentration spell and you're better off with something like Spike growth again remember that you can always change your spells outside of combat at any time meaning that uh this prepared spell list is just guidelines if this is not set in stone at all in fact you can and should be changing your prepared spells very frequently throughout the day because the game lets you do that at this level you get access to Panther and Owl bear owl bear is slightly worse for Moon Druids than for other Druids because one of the big advantages of owl bear is that you have a bonus action damaging leap um which let you make an attack as a bonus action in the same turn that you spend an action to Wild shape into it Moon Druids don't benefit from that but it's still the best combat form that you'll have access to at this level is just a really solid form and it's the only I believe 20 strength wild shaped form and it can go up to 22 strength with the rage meaning that it can benefit plus six from Tavern brawler obviously that's ridiculously strong plus six to both attack and damage from Tavern brawler in owl bear form is great and it means that you're going to to want to stay in owl bear form for most of the game this is going to be your default form for every combat you also get Primal strike which gives you magical attacks this is unique to Moon Druids and one of the major reasons to become a moon Druid is actually this feature there are a lot of enemies who are resistant to non-magical damage and this lets you overcome that which is great dreid level seven we get access to level four spells and this is where things get really exciting for Druids most characters get their power Spike at level three spells Druids actually get their major power Spike at level four spells which is interestingly different from where other characters end up so there's a lot of really strong spells that we're going to want to potentially concentrate on at this level or just have access to the first of these is conjure Woodland being this is a dayong summon that also has another summon and can itself cast in tangle which means that you are basically doubling your concentration spells per fight if you have conjur Woodland being out super powerful great uh to be able to just have summons running around all the time extremely important spell for Druids and I highly recommend taking it wall of fire single-handedly solves several encounters and is also one of the best spells to concentrate on before you turn into wild shape um you can trap enemies in it by getting in melee with them in your wild shape forms and at least at the very least trap enemies in it in so far as you'll get an attack of opportunity against them if they try to leave the wall of fire uh many wild shaped forms have ways to knock enemies prone and if you trap them in the wall of fire that's also very good a couple other really solid control spells polymorph is good it's a save or just be out of the combat for five turns which is pretty nice you have to be careful not to damage it but it's very good but in general I would go with confusion this hits a group of enemies for three three full turns of disable um it's not 100% and I have had some inconsistencies with confusion actually working uh sometimes enemies will just act normally but they did say they bug fixed a lot of stuff like this so I'm trusting laran to have fixed it any bugs that were still outstanding with confusion and when it's working it's one of the best spells in the game in terms of cing enemies uh crowd controlling enemies another one that's really worth preparing in a lot of fights is freedom of movement because um knocking an ally out of stun is actually often worth an action and of course you can have this running all day it doesn't take concentration so this is also just a valuable dayong buff though it's competing with um conjure Woodland being for your fourth level spell slots for day long Buffs and ice storm is also very good mostly not for the damage but because it creates a gigantic ice field for the same reason ice knife is good enemies slipping and falling on the ice storm field are going to lose their turns as well my default setup is going to be something like this because I I actually do value having access to freedom of movement but again you're going to want to change your spells prepared based on what you think you're going to encounter that day here you get uh saber-tooth tiger which is pretty nice I think um this one is unique and this gives you shred armor and regeneration which is pretty pretty solid uh as well as an additional feat so here of course we're just going to boost our wisdom at this point our safet C's are starting to become more important because we have access to things like confusion and and so on um wall of fire even although wall of fire works even if they fail the save or even if they succeed the save but increasing our save DCS is really important at this point and we already are doing massive melee damage because of Tavern rler at Drew level 9 we get access to fifth level spells there's not a whole lot here that is a major shift in what we're going to be doing a couple that are worth mentioning are wall of stone it's a concentration spell that this one similar to wall of fire there are some encounters this just solves by trapping two groups of enemies on either side of it and letting you attack them you know half at a time or you can use it to lock a powerful enemy in a corner um for example if you have another character cast wall of fire while an enemy is standing in a corner you can then use wall of stone along the corner to trap them in it um especially if you're inside a room that doesn't let them jump over the wall of stone that can be a very powerful effect that just traps them in a box of fire causing them to just slowly tick out you do have to have a pretty specific circumstance for that to work but it's there are some encounters that this will just solve by itself uh condra Elemental you can definitely use this I typically think you're just going to want conjure Woodland being but Elementals are also good and um insect plague does have some uses so this is what I would probably consider this is typically worse than wall of fire in terms of damage output but is going to also create difficult terrain which is good against some characters and the disadvantage on perception Tech checks doesn't matter but this is an okay damage field I think most of the time you're going to be better off with wall fire so you may want to go back for one of the spells that we didn't take at earlier levels another one that's worth mentioning also especially on honor mode is protection from energy there are some fights that this will help a lot with because you know you're going to be facing certain Elemental type enemies Druid level 10 this is what we're really here for because at 10th level Druid you get improved wild strike allowing you to attack twice with every action now the reason that this is less powerful um the land Druids also get this but the reason that land Druids suffer on honor mode now is that haste can no longer benefit from these extra attack features so in your hasted action you'll only be able to make one attack so you only go from three to four attacks rather than on tactician mode or lower where you go from three to six attacks by having access to haste that's why I think on tactician or lower you're going to be better off with a land druid and on honor mode you're going to be better off with a moon Druid um because making three attacks for every action of course is extremely strong you also get access to Dilophosaurus which is actually a pretty nice um a pretty nice wild shaped form it gives you a ranged attack which is kind of useful as well as the meridon forms that are unique to mundri now the meridon forms are less good for you because Tavern brawler is so powerful though they do still have some pretty cool stuff and it's worth mentioning that the Earth meridon does not have a weapon unlike the other three and does still benefit from Tavern brawler it only has 18 strengths though so it's not going to be quite as powerful as the uh owl bear in terms of using Tavern brawler but it's still just a very good character it's got a lot of hit points and has a bunch of extra abilities burrow is a nice bonus action damage and it gets to attack three times dealing um plus eight damage on every attack so that's always very nice anyways plus eight damage from two uses of your 18 strength on this character whereas owl bear is doing plus six damage or plus 12 damage on every attack so it's getting a little more damage from Tavern brawler but a little less from its native abilities there are also some cool uses just for all of the abilities of these meridon forms that that can be used for utility rather than pure damage um if you are a dgar you won't need the invisibility from the air madon but the fact that it exists is kind of nice uh raging Vortex silencing is quite useful for certain characters um and also notice that this is not a concentration effect so you can just have a 10 turn uh 10 turn long Field Effect with no concentration that's pretty cool if you can keep enemies trapped in it um Muk to metal is okay you get uh increased Armor class but that's not particularly valuable the the main advantage here is that you get healing Vapors from water madon um which also you can use as a poison effect if you use it on enemies uh but healing nearby allies with the healing Vapors can be very useful because this is won't take turns in subsequent turns of combat you only have to spend the action on it once and explosive icicle also creates an ice surface yet at 60t range um which again we've talked about how good the ice surfaces are so very much worth having access to this in general though you're still going to want to be an owl bear in most of your combats and in some you'll want to be an earth meridon if you need uh slightly less damage but the addition of some extra utility for our cantrip selection it really doesn't matter what we take at this point I guess take produce flame because you can use it to produce light but um none of those will have any utility starting it at level 10 at this point there is actually an interesting split because we've gotten the best thing that we can get from Druid if you don't want to increase your wisdom to 20 you could actually leave Druid and take two levels in another class um there are some that are really powerful for this the best option is probably Fighter for Action Surge and a defensive fighting style both of those things will work in Wild shaped form so it's very powerful to have access to those um I recommend just sticking with Druid getting your wisdom to 20 and getting access to six level spells in particular wall of thorns which is great damage quarters enemy movement speed so it's a a combined plant growth and Wall of fire um extremely powerful spell it by itself helps to keep enemies trapped in it and it also does tons of damage when they are trapped in it so this is a great spell and a great start to every combat also having Heroes Feast on some characters in your party uh you want access to this somewhere whether from a druid or a cleric because there are a couple encounters that it will be critically important to have access to this spell for in act three um especially again on honor mode where if you get stun locked by enemy fear effect you will just lose lose so it's going to be really really important to have access to Heroes Feast on somewhere in your party and this is a very good candidate CU you want to get to level uh 20 any or level 20 if only we could get to level 20 you want to get to level 12 for 20 wisdom anyways you won't prepare Heroes Feast every day or cast it every day but there are some boss fights in particular that it's critically important for and that you will want to have access to it uh four and of course at level 12 we just max out our wisdom maxing out our save DCS and everything else we get to then prepare some extra spells and of course the the really important one is wall of thorns I actually like to have Sunbeam prepared as well because you are starting to run out of prepared spells that really matter to have access to at this point enhanced leap is also very good you may want to go back for that so stuff like that um but Sunbeam is very good if you are in a fight where you aren't using a wild shaped form and can just keep activating Sunbeam and there's a couple uh encounters that this is just extremely good against because of it being radiant damage um and there are some enemies that are just naturally vulnerable to radiant damage so you may want to bring Sunbeam for those those fights as well uh just something to keep in mind as well all right my friends this has been the guide to the Druid a typical combat turn for you is going to look like testing whatever your oh we don't need that one I was just testing with a a dgar whether enlarge worked on your uh enlarge worked on your wild shaped forms and the answer is it does which is really fun you can become a gigantic bear if you're a dgar by casting en llarge Before You cast wild shape dgar enlarge is also not concentration so you get to do that and a concentration spell um your typical combat turn on a druid is going to look like casting a very powerful concentration spell I think often that's going to be wall of fire and then using your bonus action in order to turn into a wild shaped form usually an owl bear once you're in your owl bear form you are going to be able to do three attacks every round with Tavern brawler um plus your bonus action attack and all of those will apply that dealing massive amounts of damage every turn so we both break bounded accuracy and do additional damage every turn so notice that we're going to do uh the animation on owl bear is very slow so that was 27 damage from our first attack and from our second attack the Wardrobe has slashing so or has slashing resistance so it's getting haved 27 damage again and from our third attack only 20 damage because we rolled pretty badly and then we also get a bonus action attack um which we can Ed to make the crushing flight here which is going to deal an additional um Tavern brawler application for uh some significant additional damage plus 20 so you're going to be doing somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 damage around on a typical round of combat uh and that's without any Buffs or additional effects going on plus the full effect of your concent ation spell is continuing to tick down at least until you take enough damage to lose concentration on it all right my friends I hope that you've enjoyed this look at the Druid the Druid is also extremely item agnostic so we don't actually need any specific gear you're going to want a shield and good medium armor uh I guess I should just quickly say that before people get confused uh but you really don't need any specific gear except stuff that works in Wild shape and it will say on it this works in Wild wild shape also stuff that increases your spell DC is very good all right I've tried to do this outro a couple times but thank you for watching my friends I really hope that you've enjoyed this video I'm really excited to bring you honor mode um videos going forwards I'm really glad that they did that and as always if you have enjoyed the video do please feel free to take a moment to leave a comment or like the video uh I appreciate you taking the time to do that it really helps out with the algorithm I I hate having to um harass everyone to do that every time but it it really does make a difference in terms of view count so if you want other people to benefit from these guides then please take the uh time to do that and of course you can subscribe to my channel for more of this and other strategy game content cheers my friends I'll catch you next time

Channel: Cephalopocalypse

Views: 54,006

Keywords: Etarran, Cephalopocalypse, Baldur's Gate 3, Larian, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Build, Guide, Strategy, Tactics, Tutorial

Id: wkpCpgzZ_PU

Length: 35min 43sec (2143 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 03 2023