Baldur’s Gate 3 – Optimized Hybrid Dual Wield Bladelock Build

Guide to Hybrid Dual Wield Bladelock Build

By Rookie.

Any race works so pick your favorite, main recommendations are drow or wood elf (non-half). Any background you like.

Hag hair not needed, but still nice to have.

Starting Stats:

• 8-16-14-8-12-16
• or 8-16-14-8-10-17 if using hag hair

Choose any skill profs you want your character to have.

Level #1

• Patron: Fiend
• Cantrips: Eldritch Blast + utility of your choice (minor illusion, friends, mage hand, light, blade ward)
• Spells: Hex, Command

Level #2

• Invocations: Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast
• Spells: Armor of Agathys or Hellish Rebuke

Level #3

• Pact: Pact of the Blade

(For now we are still prioritizing using eldritch blast but it grants us a close range backup option if we are forced into melee)

• Spells: Cloud of Daggers (switch hex for something else)

Level #4

• Feat: Dual Wielder

We will be dual wielding stat sticks to make our eblast stronger. If you are using hag hair use it to get your charisma from 17 to 18. Otherwise it will stay at 16.

• Spells: Hold Person or Blindness
• Cantrips: pick an extra utility

Level #5

Our eblast gets its second beam, our pact weapon gets its extra attack.

• Invocation: Devil Sight.
• Spells: Hunger of Hadar, trade Dagger Cloud for Fireball.

Level #6

Dark One’s Own Luck: use it to succeed on important checks. will come in more use later.

• Spells: Counterspell.

Act 1 Gear Check:

The best stat sticks to hold are spellsparkler to gain lightning charges off of our eblast and phalar aluve for its melody aura ability. Choose phalar as your pact weapon and put it in your main hand so that it can serve as a passable melee fallback option. If you have longsword proficiency from your race (githyanki, full high or wood elf) you can pact the staff instead. Sparkswall robe from Grymforge goes greatly with spellsparkler.

Bracers of defense can provide a sizable boost to our defenses if we’re not wearing anything tagged as armor. If going that route I would also recommend having a teammate/camp buffer that can cast mage armor on you so that you don’t have to waste your invocation on armor of shadows.

In your ranged slot either have bow of awareness for +1 initiative or dual hand crossbows +1 to have a weak but free bonus action ranged attack (works slightly better for full drow). After clearing the gith creche you might be interested in daredevil gloves and arcane synergy ring or diadem. We will also want to take the Gauntlets of the Growling Underdog and stash them for later use.

Level #7

• Spells: Banishment or Wall of Fire
• Invocations: Entirely up to you.

Level #8

• Feat: +2 charisma
• Spells: Get the one you’ve missed out on at lv7

Level #9

• Spells: Hold Monster or Cone of Cold
• Invocations: Minions of Chaos

Level #10

Eblast gets its third beam.

• Fiendish Resilience: Very useful if you know what you’re about to fight. Leaving it at piercing when unsure is a good bet.
• Spells: The one you’ve missed out on at lv9
• Cantrips: pickup another utility

Act 2 Gear Check:

You unquestionably want and need the potent robe, at least for now. Spineshudder Amulet is also a great pickup. Otherwise you can also pick up generically useful minor gear like cloak of protection or evasive shoes, but overall the rest of the items are the same as in act 1.

Level #11

We get a third pact magic slot. huge.

• Mystic Arcanum: any you want but imo create undead has the most value in the long run. Even if the mummy doesn’t do much she’s a distraction.
• Spells: Any you want. Prioritize things that can upcast.

Level #12

After we gain all the necessary act 3 gear to shift to a more melee weapon centric version of this build, we make a big respec to rebuild our character to fit that vision.

We change our starting stats to 8-16-15-8-8-17, regardless of if we used hag hair or not.

For our three feats, we pick GWM, +2 charisma and Resilient: Constitution. Otherwise, we make all the same choices we’ve made before the respec. We choose lifedrinker as our lv12 invocation.

We use Shar’s mirror of loss to get our charisma to 22. If we missed out on hag hair we will also try to get the patriarch’s memory to substitute it.

The gear we will be using is:

• Head: Helmet of Grit
• Cloak: w/e
• Chest: Bhaalist Armor (crucial)
• Gloves: Growling Underdogs
• Boots: w/e
• Necklace: Spineshudder
• Ring 1: Ring of Arcane Synergy
• Ring 2: w/e

• Main Hand weapon: Crimson Mischief
• Offhand weapon: Belm

Ranged weapon: either dual hand crossbows or a stat stick of your choice (bow of awareness, hellrider longbow, deadshot, darkfire shortbow, gontr mael).

Extra: Harmonic Dueller. Keep it in your inventory and use it as a pre buff before entering a tougher fight. (the buff stays after switching it out for your real weapons.). You can use dark one’s own luck to make it more likely you succeed on the performance check.

Elixir: Bloodlust. Farm merchants for them if you need to. Since it doesn’t grant extra attack in honor mode you can instead use it on eldritch blasting to activate the synergy ring. (the game is even kind enough that you don’t need to do it in this order. Eblasting first and then attacking with the bloodlust action will still grant you the extra attack).

The plan is to only make attacks with Crimson Mischief itself, so turn auto dual wield toggle off. (2 main action attacks, belm’s perfectly balanced strike will use mischief, if you get a crit or kill gwm will grant you a second bonus action attack with the bonus action granted to you by the helmet of grit).

Alternatively, Duelist’s prerogative can function in a similar fashion, it will be just slightly weaker.

Gameplay Tips

If you do not wish to bother with the helmet of grit and one handed gwm cursed tech, simply use the birthright hat and pick a luxury feat of your liking instead of gwm (alert, lucky, mobile or +2 dex).

If you did get the hag hair for this build, there is a way of getting to natural 24 charisma.

You will need to get to base charisma of 20, so starting 16 and two +2 cha asi’s or starting 17, a half feat and +2. Then milk the mirror to give you both patriarch’s and another +2 cha.

Final result 20+1 hag hair +1 patriarch +2 mirror for 24. (this does mean you need to sacrifice either gwm or res con, so adjust your stats accordingly).

If you want to, this build can also be molded into a mystic scoundrel / acuity helm user. Simply put those both on and give up the gwm tech bit. (get a luxury feat or the 24 base charisma setup as mentioned above). Then just stock up on a large amount of scrolls that can work with the ring (hypnotic pattern, fear, confusion, phantasmal killer, hold monster, etc).