Baldur's Gate 3 player discovers a secret bad ending when a crucial story item is lost

Based on Dungeons & Dragons, the developers of Baldur's Gate 3 wanted to ensure that they make an effort to consider every single decision made by players, no matter how foolish it may be. There are certain safeguards in place to prevent players from getting stuck or discarding important items they may urgently need. However, Larian somehow anticipated that some people are just too committed to chaos, punishing those who lose a specific key story element with a secret bad ending. If you don't want spoilers, look away now.

In the final act of Baldur's Gate 3, you are tasked with collecting three Netherstones that allow you to confront the major villain, the Absolute. These items are crucial to the game's storyline, and the game goes to great lengths to ensure that you do not lose them. The game reprimands you if you remove one from your inventory and randomly place it in a chest. You are not even allowed to throw them like other items in the game, for fear of accidentally throwing one into a chasm or something similar.

However, Baldur's Gate 3 players have never been too keen on following the rules, and YouTuber BOB_BestOfBugs decided to find out what happens when you ensure that a Netherstone becomes completely inaccessible (thanks to PC Gamer). They simply bypass the inability to throw the Netherstone by placing it in a jar and throwing the jar instead. Once they throw it into a pond from the end of a pier, the Emperor scolds you for your foolishness, and things quickly go downhill.

You are immediately transported to the Absolute, who wastes no time and mercilessly transforms you and your entire party into mind flayers. You are then faced with a "Game Over" screen and forced to restart from your last save point, with a devastating sense of shame for your efforts. If you want to attempt to reach this ending yourself, be aware that sometimes you have to lose two Netherstones, so be careful not to get your game stuck in the process.

Throwing a Netherstone into a pond is quite foolish, almost as foolish as taking a jester along who does nothing but cause chaos in a grand adventure. But it's interesting that Baldur's Gate 3 takes such a ludicrous outcome into account and strives to punish you for it. There might even be other bad endings like this one that we haven't discovered yet. However, I'm confident that another daring adventurer will come along to fail where others thought it was impossible.