this is NOT a spoiler-free guide
i tried to add as much detail and observations as i could, that includes spoilers on various game events and consequences of player's different choices

kill the adamantine golem without using the forge hammer.
basically that, your task is just to hit him until he dies. but he is not the easiest boss, and your party is usually not as highlevel as you probably want, so he can be a handful.

some advice for non-cheese strats:
- one companion should be on the lava duty and turn it on every time it dries out, so the golem would always have the overheat condition - otherwise he is invincible!
- the last successfully attacked character before golem's turn will become his primary target, so plan accordingly
- golem has a wide range attack so make sure he can't hit all your companions at one stomp

what i did was spread everybody across the arena, when he was trying to come for somebody far, lae'zel's opportunity attacks made her the next primary target, so he was stuck with her, and she was stuck with him for the most time.
make sure he has his overheat and, well, hit him until he dies, it is what it is

video on that fight and unlocking the achievement on tactician:

Kill the Spider Matriarch before her eggs hatch - why do they have so many legs?


the idea is simple: be sneaky and throw something bomb-like on each pile of eggs, so they would be damaged all at once. i like to use something with fire, so the burning will make sure that each egg dies.
i did this on tactician, and i am not sure if any other difficulties are the same, but on tactician there is this ever-present obstacle:
- even if you are NOT touching the webs, when you throw something to the egg pile, the web alarm will play no matter what;
- after a few seconds the phase spider will teleport to the place where you triggered the alarm;

so i strongly recommend to drink an invisibility potion after each throw, that will guarantee that the spiders will not find you and start the battle before you destroyed every egg.

when you destroyed the eggs, fight the spiders. the achievement will unlock after the fight is done.

video guide:

Defeat Commander Zhalk on the nautiloid.

this is the only achievement i did NOT on a tactician, because on tactician the commander attacks twice, and only once on normal. i am sure there is a way to kill him on any difficulty, but i got tired and wasn't in a mood for the savespamming.

so, some advice for this fight on normal

- DO NOT START AS SHADOWHEART because she is the only origin who will face the commander having only lae'zel at her side. if you start as lae'zel, you will meet some replacement gith on her place, but if you start as shadowheart, there is nobody in her pod, so her max party would have less companions than any other origin or tav, and you need all the help you can get

- collect every purple inflammable thing you can, place everything around the commander and set him on fire

this will probably injure him badly, but not kill, so you need to finish him with every character available for you. knowing that he is lvl 5 while you are lvl 1, you probably will miss a lot, and that's where the normal difficulty comes through - if he can't hit twice in a row he has less chances to wipe out everyone in 1 turn

Make the ultimate sacrifice: become a mind flayer to defeat the Netherbrain.

everything is easy here - you just need to accept the proposition to become a mind flayer near the end of act 3.

however, the achievement will unlock only after you kill the final boss, watch all the endings and get to the credits. if you turned to mind flayer and expected to get it right there, you will not and it is not a bug. just wait for the credits.

how it was for me:

Multiclass into every class in one playthrough without asking Withers to change your character.

can be easily done with the hirelings after you've reached lvl 12

hire anybody from withers, he will be lvl 1, then lvl up each time picking a different class up until lvl 12

video instruction

Pet Scratch and the owlbear cub at the same time - the greatest joy an adventurer could ask for.

this achievement was bugged when i got it and i don't remember anything about it being fixed in the patch logs, so here is what you do to make sure you get it

- get scratch to the camp
- get owlbear to the camp

the owlbear will come several times, every long rest you can have a cutscene with him: first he will ask for food, the next night he will ask to heal him, and after that you can get the scene for the achievement

the bug was that if during the achievement scene you have the speak with animals buff it will not unlock.
so when you got the night where the owlbear asked you for healing make sure not to cast that buff on yourself until the scene on the video appears:

Become Bhaal's ultimate weapon - become his Slayer


this achievement is only accessible for the dark urge run.
you need to help alfira finish her song so she comes to the camp, then durge would kill her - this is scripted and i am pretty sure you will not miss it.
after that you will get the quest to kill isobel. you can do it only in act 2 and keep in mind, that when isobel dies, the whole last light inn population will turn hostile (except jaheira if you talk your way out).

after that do the long rest, watch the scene and get the achievement

Kill the red dragon in the Upper City

this can be unlocked during the last big fight before the brain itself - among other enemies there will be the dragon, you just need to kill him any way you like

this is how i unlocked this achievement (tactician, first playthrough, so not much planning was made)


now, having finished the game several times here are my notes on how this fight can be done more quickly/cheesy

- first, you don't really need to do any fight before this final one. don't waste your allies, just cast invis on somebody (for example astarion, if he is a thief subclass and have 3 dashes per turn), send him forward straight to the entering point for the final battle. he will sneak there successfully, click on the brain and enter - the rest of the party will be teleported with him to the final

- collect shadowpowder barrels through the game, bring to the end battle as much as you can and drag and drop all your barrels in front of the dragon. the grand explosion will at least half dragon's hp and end the emperor or other enemies under his wings

- keep in mind that after your first attack to the dragon each round he will retaliate and cast the fireball on the attacker. so make sure you don't shoot the dragon from the crowd

Play fetch with Scratch - the best boy in the Realms.


to get this sacred knowledge, see my other guide

Kill Orin while her cultists are performing their ritual chant.

basically, this is "kill orin asap" achievement
the main obstacle here is that orin has bhaal's blessing "unstoppable", so i believe in the latest version of the game you need to hit her 12 times in a round before you can deal serious damage to her

when i unlocked that it was 10 instead of 12, got lucky i guess.
my fight with orin:


anyway, current version isn't any different from before: make sure you have any way to hit her this much times per round.
some examples:
- magic missile max possible level
- eldrich blast
- barrel/bomb chease - drag and drop 12 bombs or barrels and explode at once, i believe each exploded object will take away 1 lvl of the unstoppable buff

after the unstoppable buff is gone, orin is easy - she has not much hp even on tactician, so after you removed all her bhaal's blessings, cast hast on a fighter/paladin and just hit her 85 times per turn, you definitely will be done before her cultists would finish their song

when orin dies, you probably will face a battle with some of her followers. they will enter the battle having a sanctuary on them so you will not have a chance to attack them directly until they attack you and lose their sanctuary.
however you can still deal the damage to them by aoe stuff - for example fire bomb near them will deal damage to them. best stuff for the cases like that is shadowpowder arrow - these are so good! always deal some damage in the area and also kick enemies, just delightful.

Reign with terror: take control of the Netherbrain and bend the world to your will.


pretty hard to miss - just take the control.
to this moment i have finished the game several times and always had an option to chose becoming the absolute.
however, the achievement will unlock only when you reach the credits, so you need to wait a bit for it.

how it was for me

Save every tiefling refugee you can throughout the game in a single playthrough.

this one took me a while, because there are so many events in play and so many ways to mess this up!

the goal is to make sure that all possible tiefling refugees will live till the end of the game. this does NOT include sazza the goblin of other prisoners you'll meet during the game. just tieflings from the druid grove.

gathered everything there is to know here:

p.s. if you are a lae'zel origin, you'll find that those refugee tieflings who would cage her if she was a companion are lying dead at the place where you usually recruit lae'zel after the nautilod. this is fine - you can't do anything to save them and they do not count for the achievement. i unlocked this achievement playing as lae'zel and they were dead.

Go on a date with Karlach - now that's playing with fire.


you need to have a romance with karlach to unlock this.

saw several times that there is a necessary dialog where you must to lie to karlach to unlock this - however, i did it without deception checks

main recommendation except obvious romance related ones (do all quests, check for new dialogs every long rest) - this one special dialog before entering the city - i think this one might be essential for the achievement.

detailed videoguide:

defeat the toll collector without her using gold against you - excellent budgeting

i think you can probably get this in a fight if you kill the toll collector before she does something, or if you put away all your gold before the fight.

you also definitely can get it if you throw deception checks - so make sure to talk with her with you most charismatic/proficient character and have inspiration points in hand if you fail the throw.

i told her that she should leave and be free and got the achievement.
footage on that got botched, but you can still see the what choices in the dialog tree got me there

Use one enemy as an improvised weapon against another.


this achievement got me confused. you kill birds with one stone by throwing it, right?
however, throwing enemies on one another does not work. i even thought this was a bug.

what larian had in mind was not throwing but using as a melee weapon action.


this is what NOT TO DO


this is the RIGHT WAY

some of my viewers though wrote me that even the melee way didn't work, so it may actually be bugged - if this happens, report it.
i got the achievement a few patches ago

Find and summon the quasit Shovel. Or is her name... Fork? Maybe Basket?

you need to find the summon quasit scroll and either use it or learn as a wizard and cast that spell.

the scroll location is the blighted village in act 1.
find the apothecary - this house has a waypoint on it's wall.
find a hatch to it's basement and open a secret door there, using the lever hidden behind some crates (x:-704; y:-353)
go to the tunnel. the scroll will be inside of one of the coffins (x:-666; y:-330).

use the scroll and enjoy the show

i personally recommend to learn the scroll with gale or any other available wizard, so you can summon this charming quasit more than 1 time.

Earn a hundred gold from playing sweet, sweet music in a single playthrough.

to get this sacred knowledge see my other guide

Coat the streets of Baldur's Gate in blood - become an Unholy Assassin of Bhaal.

you need to complete the bhaal's tribunal to do that, and you need someone's hand for the trial.

🤘 if you already killed gortash, you can use his hand.
🤘 if you didn't, you can use one of the hands from dolor's collection, sarevok will never know that you actually did not killed those
🤘 dribble's hand works either!
🤘 the only option i never got to try was gale's hand, i wonder what will happen there. if you tried that, please tell your tale in the comments!

after the hand stuff you need to kill valeria, and the achievement is yours.
how it was for me:

Claim your Throne of Blood: take control of the Netherbrain for Bhaal and break the world.

be a dark urge and do dark urge things.
i completed everything i could choosing the most evil variants and in the end this ending was my only option.
the interesting part is that this ending beats everything else. for example i had a contract with raphael and never bothered to get it back - in the end raphael got nothing! after the bhaal ending i never got raphael's cutscene, i guess he will never see that crown if we truly embrace our dark urge.

Defeat Gortash in Wyrm's Rock without activating any traps

if you are going for this achievement, the first thing you need to do is to stop the steelwatch. gortash has ridiculous amount of steelwatchers on every level of the wyrm's rock and when they are gone, this location is way way easier.

after you dealt with the steelwatch, everybody at wyrm's rock will become hostile, which is very good, because you can lure enemies out of the room, then disarm everything on the way. rinse, repeat.

if the wyrm's rock is hostile, gortash will be on the roof in his office, and if i understand correctly, your goal is to avoid the traps on every level before you kill gortash. if so, these are my notes on every level of wyrm's rock:

- the entrance part of the wyrm's rock has some traps on the walls. these never detonated for me, even when i fought enemies in front of them, so they could be bugged. just to be safe, approach wyrm's rock from the lower city entrance, lure all possible enemies to the bridge and kill them there. after that you can safely try to destroy the traps, or just don't do your next fight in front of them

- the first floor (before the audience hall) has no traps, so just kill everyone inside that room, then go upstairs

- the audience hall (second floor) has very many traps. as soon as you come, some traps will put bombs under your feet. the bombs are going to explode on the next turn, so what you need to do is pick up the bombs, then return to the first floor. the enemies will follow you there, so you can deal with them without worrying about any traps. i usually disarm the entrance traps on my way back, just in case.
when everyone is dead, you can easily pass and disarm traps if you want.
note on the traps: every gortash-specific trap that looks like a golden pipe on the wall will explode after the successful disarming and cast some sort of a fireball as a good bye. so the character who will be the antiminer can drink the resist fire potion and ignore the consequences of disarming the traps.
note on the bombs you pick up: these had a funny bug (or feature?) - if you go long rest having these bombs in your inventory, they will explode in your camp. so make sure to get rid of them before going to sleep: use the bombs in a battle or just sell. i was wondering if these can nuke some traders i sold them to, but no luck - the traders can hold these as much as they want. i think the event that triggers those is going to rest, and since nobody but you can do that, you can't entertain yourself with terrorist acts. alas, life is unfair.

- the roof itself has lots of small hidden traps on the way to gortash's office. these are not gold-pipe looking, just some buttons on the floor, shooting fire, and you need a successful roll to find them. i am not sure if these count for the achievement, but just to be safe keep in mind that the floor is trapped and come forward slowly, avoiding the middle part of the way. these traps are easy to find and to disarm

- the office hall has several traps. the ones in front of the entrance are easy to disarm if you are sneaky. there are also bomb dropping ones high on the walls. these can be skipped if you are not fighting in front of them. if they drop bomb, just pick it up.
the office hall is the part where you have a chance to cheese and lure all gortash's guards, kill them, and then fight gortash alone. without his steel watch and human resources he is nothing and he knows it.
here is a video how i lured out his guards

now, gortash is alone and sad. lure him to the hall too, and kill somewhere between these rooms or in the corner, so the traps would not interfere.
this is how i unlocked the achievement

i assume the fights on the way to the roof could be skipped if you sneak your party under the invis spell and reach the door to the roof. but i personally never tested that strat here so i can not warn you if some of the enemies on your way can dispell your invisibility. let me know if you know.

defeat the apostle of myrkul before it consumes any necromites

the easiest way imo:
- save nightsong, let her help you, and let kethrick fight you without isobel's help to him, that means that the last light inn should not be destroyed and isobel should not be kidnapped
- convince kethrick that there is still hope for him
on the top floor of moonrise tower find kethrick's diary, letter from his wife, read these.
when you'll fight him first time on the roof, pick dialog options all about how he still can redeem himself, and what would your wife think of you now, and it's never too late even for you kethrick - all these. he will fight you anyway, but when you finally get to him on the nautilod underground, you can continue convincing, and if you succeed, he will end his human form by jumping to the green hole, and you can start that fight with the final boss stage. otherwise you'll need to fight kethrick's human form first!

if you skipped to the final bossfight, you'll face him fresh and ready, and it is going to be easier for you to kill the apostle before he consumes anybody.

now what does it means exactly, after a few rounds of fighting you as it usually goes, the skeletons he is summoning each round will stop focusing on you and start going to him so he could eat them and heal a bit.

your task naturally is to kill him asap and prevent him from eating anybody

notes on that fight:
- free the nightsong so she could help you, but keep in mind that the annoying illithid near her can stun you and nightsong both. get rid of him quickly, if he lives he will mess up everything, because of his control ability.

- if you are close to the apostle, he puts a bonechilled debuff on you, this spell makes you unable to be healed (or drink a health potion). however his arena has several spots where you can leave the area of his debuff, so go to these spots after you done with hitting him and heal there.

- if apostle lived long enough to start demanding free lunches, keep an eye on the skeletons who will start running towards him, and prevent them from going up to apostle's arena, that's where he can eat them.

my fight and unlocking this achievement here:

Romance the Emperor.

the most attractive trait is a big intellect amaright or amaright?

you have a chance to unlock it after the visiting of the emperor's old home. there will be a cutscene when you go to the long rest, you'll get to spend time with the emperor one on one. pick the most flirty options to get this.
when he asks if you want him to change form, refuse and have sex with him in the illithid form. the achievement unlocked for me right after i asked him to not change his form and be his mind flayer self.
how i unlocked the achievement:


interesting bit is that this cutscene is also your only chance to make the emperor drop the act and confess his true intentions. boy oh boy does he has something to hide.
if you never bought his story about his wholesome alliance with the duke stelmane, you were absolutely right

dialog choices that make him confess in this video:

Rescue all the prisoners from the depths of Moonrise Towers in one playthrough.

as far as i understand, to get this you need to have both gnomes and tieflings imprisoned, and then save everyone.
if that is correct, you need to side with the grove at the act 1 and your tieflings should be alive to be imprisoned later.
the gnomes will be there anyway.

second, the prisoners must have somewhere to go, so don't kill nightsong and have last light inn operating as usual.

my main recommendation here is KILL THE GUARDS BEFORE THE PRISON BREAK
trying to save the prisoners while guards are alive is painful, because the prisoners are buggy, they can't fight normally, they die all the time and get stuck all the time.
also, killing is good.

now, this location main difficulty with enemies is that the flying eyes will summon help from upstairs. if you are not ready for that this may overwhelm you, however they are not actually that bad.

first, you can kill the enemies in separate batches. for example, two priests in the torture chamber can be killed there without anyone else noticing.

second, if you got caught and the eyes called someone, they will go from the main way to the prison - you can keep your distance and make them waste their turns to running towards you through strategically placed cloudkill for example.
the prison is basically a long corridor, so use it, let them separate and walk a long walk. the prison tower is a nice spot for that strat - let them come one by one to the top and meet their fate.

third, the eyes themselves are annoying. they have a lot of resistance to anything, but you have a chance to oneshot them with your first attack on them if you are lucky to get a crit and overdamage their damage decrease.
usually though they survive and then most of your attacks will deal 0 damage to them
i thought maybe they got some sort of protection buff after the first hit, but found nothing like that. if i just continued to hit them, eventually some attack will go through, i assume you just need to roll a lot to hit them successfully.
also, prison is a wonderful location with a chasm. the best way to easily remove the eyes is to push them to the chasm - that's instakill for them, no need to hit them and roll the dice until your retirement, so if there is an opportunity to push them down - do it.

after every possible enemy is dead you can safely go for wulbren's tools, give it to him and watch how he will escape both gnomes and tieflings.
they will reach the hidden boat together. come with them to the last light inn and the achievement will be yours

this is how i unlocked it:

some bugs i experienced here:
- if you killed the guards and decided that you can just open the doors to release everyone - don't do it. they will stuck in the prison without an option to talk to them. i got this on my first playthrough though, this may be fixed already, but i did not tested it myself.
to avoid this, first give wulbren his tools, wait till he makes a tunnel, after that go open the cages and follow to the tunnel.
- sometimes wulbren will stuck in front of tiefling's camera wall. he is supposed to break it, instead he will just be there and doing nothing, also without an option to talk to him.
if that happened to you, break the wall yourself using a bluntweapon. blood of lathander would do for example.
i got this bug, broke the wall, and this fixed everything - the gnomes unstuck and ran to the boat finally, and they and tieflings successfully departed to the inn.

In the Wyrmway, wait until the dragon is mid-flight, then knock it out of the sky - KAPOW.

everything about this dragon, his trials and the fight see in my separate guide here.

kill the surgeon before he performs surgery on you in combat

this is easy to miss, because you need to fight the surgeon to get it, and you probably want to make him end himself through various glorious dialog options. alas, we can not have all the fun and achievements at a single run.

so, what means the "performing surgery" thing? that is a mini event during a fight, when the surgeon will be like "sister! give me the scalpel!", grab it from the sister and attack you with it, causing different stuff.
that is what you need to avoid.

and the easiest way imo is to convince the sisters to end each other during the dialog, and then fight the surgeon alone.
he can not do the surgery sequence without the assistance!
he will try to revive sisters for that very reason during that fight, but you will kill him pretty quickly when he is alone, so no surgery will happen today.

this is how i unlocked the achievement:

this were my notes on some achievements, but not all of them. feel free to ask about those that not included in this guide.
also please share your notes, bug experiences, fun strats in the comments, i would love to read those!