20 hours without a single attack: This Baldur's Gate 3 pacifist run relies on speedrunning strats, an OP D&D class trait, and a huge amount of RPG patience

Baldur's Gate 3
(Image credit: Larian Studios)

A genius Baldur's Gate 3 player has managed to complete the entire game without (directly) killing a single NPC, in a perfect example of the freedom offered by Larian's RPG.

In a recent video, YouTuber Proxy Gate Tactician outlined how they made it through an entire playthrough, barely dishing out any direct damage from the deck of the Nautiloid all the way to the Upper City of Baldur's Gate itself. The rules they imposed including not allowing the environment (fire, falling etc) to kill any NPCs, or talking any bosses into shuffling themselves off the mortal coil. They could, however, allow uncontrolled NPCs to do their dirty work for them, which will become important later on.

Their journey began in the character creation screen, where there was a very specific path to take. Proxy rolled up a Duergar Sorcerer, relying on their character's Baldur's Gate 3 class' natural Charisma, as well as spells like Fog and Enhanced Leap. The latter would prove pretty important, as once coupled with a high Strength stat for extra jumping distance, it could be used to simply leap past early combat encounters. If that sounds familiar, it's because it's a mainstay of Baldur's Gate 3's speedrunning meta, in which Gale simply jumps through the entire game. As for the Duergar bit, we'll return to that in a moment.

Proxy survived the Nautiloid crash, and then recruited Gale as the least violent of the early game companions. From there, they did their utmost to either talk their way out of trouble or avoid combat completely, hoovering up whatever XP was available outside of combat to push themselves to level five. At that point, they unlocked the Duergar's racial trait, which allows them to turn invisible at will, a tool that would prove invaluable throughout much of the rest of the game, as Proxy could simply walk undetected through the game.

Act 1 wasn't too difficult, but Act 2 proved far harder. Now chronically underleveled and facing several theoretically mandatory fights, Proxy was forced to use some real shenanigans to progress their fight. That included unlocking Balthazar's vault door with the Knock spell to help skip one of the game's hardest boss fights, and using Flight to dodge a battle required to claim the Umbral Gem that would eventually grant access to that fight. 

It's around this time that the 'pacifist' nature of the run starts to be called into some element of doubt. There are some unskippable fights in Act 2, but during them you're accompanied by Dame Aylin, who's an uncontrolled NPC that fights alongside you. In some nail-biting battles, Proxy buffed the living hell out of this already buff Aasimar, allowing her to take down Moonrise Tower's final bosses and progress the party to Act 3.

Around this point, Proxy spends eight full hours scraping up every bit of XP to eventually finalize his party at level nine for Tav, Gale, and a redeemed Minthara, and ten for Jaheira. It's also around this point that stuff starts to get a bit more glitchy - getting Orin's Netherstone requires trapping her inside the body of a child via a temporary, mid-cutscene fascination with Shadowheart's mysterious artifact. That led to the only attack in the run, a non-lethal strike that let Proxy loot Orin's Netherstone, for a total of four damage in more than 20 hours of gameplay.

Eventually, it wasn't the Netherbrain, but Gortash that caused Proxy the most problem. The third Chosen of the Absolute is very specific about his desire for you to kill Orin, not merely incapacitate her, but given that you can't do that in a pacifist run, he turns on you the second you return to him. There's a lot of potential to hurt Gortash with his own booby-traps in that fight, but he eventually turns invulnerable to that damage. In the end, Proxy got lucky, as a Steel Watcher was caught in its self-destruct cycle, blowing up Gortash before he could shield himself from its damage.

From there, it was a quick invisible sprint to the Upper City, where Proxy's final plan came to fruition. Having stockpiled explosives throughout the entire game, they placed them around the final boss arena, letting its own explosive attacks detonate the bombs, and - after several attempts to prevent the game from crashing - finally completing the game.

It's a baffling achievement, and if you've got 20 minutes to spare, you could definitely do worse than watching Proxy's efforts in their entirety. As challenge runs go, it's seriously impressive, and it makes me very excited to see what the Baldur's Gate 3 community will cook up as the game settles into its long post-launch life.

For a very different challenge, this streamer is one-shotting Baldur's Gate 3 bosses instead.

Ali Jones
News Editor

I'm GamesRadar's news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.

Read more
Baldur's Gate 3 screenshot of a boss turned to gold surrounded by blood
5,000 gold, 2,500 hours, and one priceless scroll: Baldur's Gate 3 player cooks up a "Midas run" by turning the RPG's bosses into solid gold trophies, because "why not"
Elden Ring
Elden Ring streamer puts us all to shame and beats every boss - including the DLC fights - in a single hit in 54 hours, which is less than your average playthrough
A screenshot of Elden Ring boss Godfrey, the first Elden Lord
Elden Ring player becomes the first to beat every New Game+ difficulty back to back without getting hit, in an 8-playthrough run that somehow took under 12 hours
The key art for Baldur's Gate 3 showing dragons and the Nautilus, with Karlach standing in the foreground, weapon in hand
The Making of Baldur's Gate 3: "We really wanted to make it so that even if you don't know D&D or Baldur's Gate, you would still have exciting choices as a player"
MTG
30 years later, Fallout creator Tim Cain is searching for a legendary D&D player who cheesed an entire competitive dungeon with a lightning-fast Monk build
Dark Souls 3
After almost 2 years of attempts, Dark Souls legend completes his brutal 7-game "God Run 3": Demon's Souls to Elden Ring without taking a single hit, all at level 1
Latest in RPG
Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 "is done," but it's been delayed again to October for "bug fixing, stability, and performance"
Assassin's Creed 3 screenshot of Desmond hilding a circular Isu artifact
Assassin's Creed Shadows' modern storyline is kind of non-existent and I couldn't be happier about it
Assassin's Creed Shadows screenshot of an enemy falling backwards through the air away from Yasuke who's just performed a War Kick
Forget the hidden blade: if you're not yeeting enemies in Assassin's Creed Shadows, you're missing out
The Witcher 4 cinematic screenshot showing a closeup of Ciri, protagonist of the new adventure
"We slept under our desks and lived in chaos": Before the Witcher 3 became an RPG phenomenon, CDPR's CEOs had a tough time making the original game
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 studio CD Projekt Red won't make survival games just because they're popular, but Netflix's Edgerunners anime is fueling dreams bigger than RPGs
Fallout 76 screenshot showing an irradiated mutant man-like creature screeching, its sharp canine teeth showing
After 14 years at Bethesda, Skyrim and Fallout veteran made his final settlement in just 2 days – but only because he'd made some rough ones before that
Latest in News
Batman looking over the city during Batman: Arkham City, one of the best PS3 games.
The PS2 Batman Begins game was considered such a "disaster" that Christopher Nolan turned down a Dark Knight-inspired game
Assassin's Creed Shadows Naoe assassinating target with Tanto skill
Assassin's Creed Shadows' first title update is a hotfix with three lines of patch notes and a download size up to 9GB
a victory screen showing someone in a day of the dead mask and another who is an old man looking sad
GeoGuessr is coming to Steam and you can go head-to-head to prove you're the best geographer of them all
Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 "is done," but it's been delayed again to October for "bug fixing, stability, and performance"
Ben Affleck in Air
Ben Affleck isn't in The Odyssey, but he plans to visit the set anyway to watch Christopher Nolan work: "He's one of the greatest filmmaking architects to ever live"
GTA 6 trailer screenshots showing lucia in an interview room
"GTA 6 is basically a huge meteor, and we will just stay clear of the blast zone": Publishers are in a frenzy over when to release their games to avoid Rockstar