Baldur’s Gate 3 – How to Deal with New Bulette

Guide on How to Deal with New Bulette

By Cat of a EUphoria.

The Bulette has a new Honor Mode condition called Diamond Scales. It grants 100 temporary HP which cannot be regenerated by burrowing and requires at least 15 points of damage to affect it.

For most builds, it seems brutal; however, that’s why I’ve decided to write a short explanation on which tools to use against it:

• Great Weapon Master feat: Additional damage with a high-strength character will deal way more than the 15 points of damage needed. Low accuracy can be offset by strength elixirs and Barbarian’s Reckless Attack.
• Sharpshooter feat: Same thing, but this time with our favorite Titanstring Bow, club, or elixir of strength. Additional damage can be gained from archery gloves bought from a trader in the goblin camp, and accuracy from sneaking’s advantage is easily gained each round by a Rogue or Gloom Stalker.
• Wet condition with Chromatic Orbs: Double the damage from an already okay damage spell will shred on a successful hit. Damage types that benefit from wet are lightning and ice. I strongly recommend ice since it may make the Bulette go prone (only +3 to Dex saves while your spell save DC will be at 13-15, so it’s a 50/50 chance) and unable to jump (Bulette jumping may cause prone to your characters). To apply wet, throw bottles of water with a character that has nothing better to do or use Mage Hand (upgraded Arcane Trickster’s Mage Hand has actual use here because you don’t need to perfectly precast it, and you can throw the bottle just before your Wizard/Sorcerer’s orb attack).

All this can be done at level 4. If you fight the Bulette at level 5 and higher, you can easily spam Glyph of Warding with wet. Additionally, you can concentrate as a Wizard or War Priest on Enchanted Weapon for one of your melee characters.

As a last note, you can cast Animal Friendship on the Bulette to target its low Wisdom saving throw and below 3 Intelligence, avoiding the fight for a moment.

Note: Not really a build, but you can count all the mentioned things as an optimal Bulette counter party.

All Guns Blazing Edition

• Staff of Arcane Blessing ->
• Wet -> Witchbolt Tier III -> Luck from the Far Realms ->
• Dread Ambusher Ranged ->
• Soul Coin’d Staggering Flurry ->
• 2x Ice Arrows ->
• Option 1: Haste pot -> Spike Growth ->
• Hex -> Repelling Blast
• Option 2: Thunderous Smite + Smite Tier 2 pop up -> Smite Tier 2

Staff is from Magus Tower basement, can be cast before bulette shows up during turn-based mode. Wet from Mage Hand water bottle throw or Quickened Create Water on Lightning Lord/Sorc Cleric. Max cast Witchbolt, self-explanatory.

Gloomstalker Dread Ambusher to get rid of last scale’s tick then followed by Monk’s flurry, be sure to stagger first. 2 Ice arrows to create ice surface and make prone check if Bulette is not prone already. Gloomstalker can use haste pot to create Spike Growth for your Warlock to push Bulette on it with Repelling Blast or finish Bulette with smiting depending on your choice.

If you are not OTK’ing with that, you are on 500% HM.

Previous/normal team I described was Barbarian, Ranger, Sorcerer, Cleric. In this one, you swap out Barb for Monk and Cleric for Warlock/Paladin, why?

1st team can independently work on removing Bulette’s scales regardless of what others are doing. This setup is a scale’s oneshot, allowing for other better DPS classes to come in. Barb is a hard hitter at this point in game but Monk is way better sponge killer, not to mention combat utility.

He also will be concentrating on a Bless in this setup (the Staff grants Bless spell). Warlock may seem odd here since everything about Warlock is mediocre, however Repelling Blast on Spike Growth is for absolute style points, first Hex then repel for those floating numbers.

Paladin’s smite is a waste on Bulette’s scales since damage riders act as different instances of damage and won’t contribute together towards breaking 15 points. This is 2 points in illithid powers and optional 1 haste pot.

If you really want to power game, switch Warlock for Paladin and double smite (Thunderous, normal on pop up; no Spike Growth also).

You may ask why the staff? What’s so good about it?

So your Witchbolt hits, whole oneshot idea relies on that, and Monk can carry said staff to precast Bless. Yes, this is overkill 2 or 3 times.