Hirelings in Baldur's Gate 3 explained
BG3 Hirelings are resurrected warriors you can recruit from Withers
Baldur's Gate 3 Hirelings are NPCs who you can hire and recruit as temporary party members, and while they can't increase the maximum amount of people in the party you can have at any one time, it does meant that you can have practically any Baldur's Gate 3 class in the team ready to go. Hirelings are supplied by Withers, the undead observer who hangs around if you can find the Crypt he's waiting in - but I get ahead of myself. Here's everything you need to know about Hirelings and how they can be put to use.
How do you get Hirelings in BG3 and what do they do?
Hirelings are resurrected warriors that can fight alongside you. Once you unlock Withers at your camp, either by completing the BG3 Dank Crypt dungeon or just by waiting it out, you'll be able to pay the mysterious man to recruit an extra pair of hands to help out. Simply speak to Withers and hand over the coin to choose your Hireling.
Being undead soldiers, if your Hirelings die in battle, they die for good. You'll have to recruit a new one if that happens, but luckily, Withers has quite a few on hand.
So, what are Hirelings actually useful for? We have no shortage of Baldur's Gate 3 companions, so why would we want to swap one of them out for a Hireling? Well, the Hirelings are useful just in case one of your cohort ends up dead for good and you need to make up the ranks. Sure, Withers can resurrect party members in Baldur's Gate 3, but only under certain conditions. If any of your party end up dying by your hand (a very real possibility if you're playing a BG3 Dark Urge) or if they are killed by one another, Withers could refuse to resurrect them at all. That makes his supply of Level 1 undead soldiers just that much more useful.
You can also use Hirelings to try out different playstyles before asking withers to help you out with a class respec in Baldur's Gate 3. Monks, Paladins, and Sorcerors don't feature in your core group of companions, so if you're curious about the powers they might hold, taking a Hireling out for a test drive could prove very educational. At the end of the day, though, Hirelings are temporary foot soldiers that you can take or leave in Baldur's Gate 3.
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Jasmine is a staff writer at GamesRadar+. Raised in Hong Kong and having graduated with an English Literature degree from Queen Mary, University of London in 2017, her passion for entertainment writing has taken her from reviewing underground concerts to blogging about the intersection between horror movies and browser games. Having made the career jump from TV broadcast operations to video games journalism during the pandemic, she cut her teeth as a freelance writer with TheGamer, Gamezo, and Tech Radar Gaming before accepting a full-time role here at GamesRadar. Whether Jasmine is researching the latest in gaming litigation for a news piece, writing how-to guides for The Sims 4, or extolling the necessity of a Resident Evil: CODE Veronica remake, you'll probably find her listening to metalcore at the same time.