Prolific Baldur's Gate 3 speedrunner who turned Shadowheart into a 10,000-pound bear to set a 20-minute category record says the RPG's community spent months figuring the strategy out

The Baldur's Gate 3 speedrunner who turned Shadowheart, into a 10,000-pound bear to set a new category record says the strategy took months of preparation. 

To get you up to date, speedrunner Mae managed to beat Baldur's Gate 3 in just 20 minutes thanks to a strategy that relies on turning Shadowheart into a big ol' bear to one-shot Act 2 baddie Ketheric Thorm before continuing with the rest of the game. 

When it comes to the Any% All Acts category, that's a record – you may recall a three minutes and 31 seconds record that involves killing Shadowheart and stuffing her into a box, though that only applies to the standard Any% category, in which you can complete Baldur's Gate 3 without playing through every act.

Now, Mae has revealed more about the preparation that went into that run. Speaking to PCGamer, the speedrunner says the eventual 'Shadowbear' strategy was workshopped for months. The end result involves training Shadowheart as a Druid for a few levels so they can turn into a bear before casting enlarge so they can one-shot Ketheric by jumping on them, but getting there took oodles of community iteration.

"That one was theorized by community members as early as August," Mae says. "It was only in December that we were able to finally put the pieces together to make it work in a way that was faster than previous routes." 

Mae also reveals the community toyed with the idea of "getting a ton of crates and stacking them to create a 'top rope' of sorts for us to drop the People's Elbow onto Ketheric," which puts me in mind of the time a Druid main flattened the unluckiest NPC in the game with an 820-damage Owlbear divebomb off a castle wall. Alas, replicating that would have been too time-intensive for Mae, so we won't see a Shadowheart-style bear do their best impersonation of The Rock.

What you can see, though, is the run itself, which we've included above. If you want a better idea of all the moving parts, you can watch Mae's AGDQ run below, which makes for some excellent viewing. 

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