Baldur’s Gate 3 Balthazar’s Room puzzle guide

There are plenty of secrets hiding in the Moonrise Towers. And this includes one of the grosser locations in Baldur’s Gate 3 with Balthazar’s room. The necromancer has a few secrets hidden away too, if you can get to them. And it’s worth doing so for the surprisingly solid buff you can get out of it. Here’s how to find Balthazar’s room, and solve the Balthazar’s room puzzle in BG3.

How to find Balthazar’s room (BG3)

Balthazar’s Room is located in Moonrise Towers, in the southwest portion of the Shadow-Cursed Lands. Specifically, it’s up on the first floor, near Z’rell’s office. There are two main ways to access Balthazar’s Room in Baldur’s Gate 3: ask Z’rell for a key or sneak in through the side.

To sneak into Balthazar’s room, head for the roots growing along the side of the Moonrise Towers from its front gate, located at (X:-129, Y:-159). From here, you can climb up the side, jump to the nearby scaffolding, and pick the left-hand door lock to access Balthazar’s room.

However, there’s a catch: you must pass a DC 30 Sleight of Hand check. Having someone like Astarion take on this challenge and using buffs like Shadowheart’s Guidance can help raise your bonuses enough to access the room. Once you open the door, you’ll enter Balthazar’s room in its full glory.

Alternatively, you can enter through Z’rell’s office if you convince Z’rell to give you a room key. Upon arriving at Moonrise Towers, climb the spiral stairs past the throne and ascend the winding staircase until you reach the first floor. Once you reach the first floor, you’ll spot Disciple Z’rell in the hallway, where you can ask about Balthazar. After this talk and agreeing to Z’rell’s request to find Balthazar, you’ll gain the key, which you can use to access the room.

How to solve Balthazar’s Room bookshelf puzzle in Baldur’s Gate 3

Once inside, you can rummage around for a few goodies, including a very important item for a different side quest. But to access what we’re here for in this guide, you’ll need to interact with the bookshelf—and maybe a corpse or two.

As the nearby note to acolytes details, you’ll need to serve with a “beating heart” rather than a mind. So on the westward wall, where there are several protruding books, pick the top-right option and a container nearby will open. Take a Heart from one of the nearby dead acolytes (I know, gross) and drop it into the container.

If done correctly, the bookshelf will slide to reveal a secret room. And if done incorrectly, the room will fill with poison gas. Pick right!

Destroy or use the ritual circle in Balthazar’s laboratory

Inside, you’ll find Balthazar’s hidden laboratory where he did some gnarly experiments. You can loot a neat hat and some other trinkets, but the key piece we want to interact with here is the ritual circle on the desk.

Now it pays at this moment to specifically have Gale with you, so if you don’t have him here, go to camp and bring him in. Gale will recognize the runes and identify the circle as an attempt to create Moonlanterns, one of the methods for dealing with the Shadow Curse in this area of Baldur’s Gate 3.

Here, Gale will realize he can reverse-engineer a Moonlantern that could control a Shadow, rather than keep it at bay. But, as he notes, his goddess Mystra may not be peachy-keen on that kind of magic. You have two options: make the special lantern, or destroy the circle.

As cool as having a summonable Shadow is in Baldur’s Gate 3, and it is cool, I highly recommend destroying the circle. Once you do, Mystra blesses Gale with a buff, giving him advantage on Concentration checks. For a Wizard, that’s a big boon.