A Baldur's Gate 3 player has discovered hidden mini-quests you can only get by leaving the most important items in the game in an exploding building or at the bottom of the ocean

Baldur's Gate 3 was our 2023 Game of the Year and highest-scoring review in over a decade and a half for a whole host of reasons, but its open-ended player freedom and attending reactivity to all of our potential choices is certainly up there. A year out from release, Proxy Gate Tactician on YouTube has uncovered a particularly absurd edge case reaction involving the Netherstones and late-game Iron Throne and Steel Watch Foundry dungeons.

The Netherstones are Baldur's Gate 3's Triforce-y magical McGuffin, and you need all three to progress to the end of the game. Larian's not in the business of restricting player control with unkillable NPCs or undroppable items, so you're free to take the stones in and out of your inventory. To avoid a potential soft lock on losing the stones forever, chucking them into a bottomless pit or something triggers a unique game over where the Absolute wins and you immediately turn into an Illithid.

But Proxy Gate Tactician wanted to see if there were any reactions to more specific ways of losing the stones, i.e. dropping them off in a dungeon you can only visit once in the entire game. The underwater Iron Throne, which you explore in a timed quest before it explodes, certainly fits the bill. Surprisingly, it's not an instant game over or soft lock if you leave the stones down there, and Larian actually built a mini quest that lets you find them again. They always show up back at the southeast docks of the Lower City, but the exact details change depending on your actions:

And that's not all: The game also has a unique response for if you drop the stones in the Steel Watch Foundry before blowing it up, a similarly ill-advised move that you'd only pull if you were trying to break the game. A gaggle of Kobolds spawns to the south of the burning factory, with one of them having looted your stones from the rubble. You have five turns to kill them once you trigger the encounter, or else you'll be hit with that unique «Lost the Netherstones»