How to escape from prison in Baldur’s Gate 3?

In Baldur’s Gate 3, as in life, you can’t just go around civilized society looting corpses. I mean, I’d argue that the corpses in Baldur’s Gate 3 are probably carrying more lootable stuff than in our reality, but that is neither here nor there. That said, when you live life on the edge, a day is gonna come when you’ll get caught and thrown into prison for your absolute degeneracy — in Baldur’s Gate 3.

When that time comes, what’ll you do? Will you accept responsibility for your crimes and do the time? Of course not. You’re gonna escape from prison, duh (in Baldur’s Gate 3).

Prison Break (in Baldur’s Gate 3)

In each act, there is one particular place where, if you’re caught doing the unthinkable, you’ll be locked away. In Act 1, there’s the Hollow and the Goblin Camp. In Act 2, there’s Moonrise Towers, and in Act 3, there’s the Heapside Prison underneath the Basilisk Gate Barracks. It would seem that each of these jails has similar mechanics for getting out: you’re put into a cell, all of your items are confiscated, and you’ll have to find some means of escape — after all, you have a world to save! You can’t waste any time here!

One way of escape would be to pick the cell door lock, but you’d need to have a character in your party with high Sleight of Hand, or you might be at it for a while. It might also be difficult to do this with your imprisoned character, given all of your items are confiscated. So, you could switch to a character with Invisibility or Greater Invisibility and use them to unlock the door, but then you’d have to deal with the guards, which might be a gigantic inconvenience given one of your characters doesn’t have their items.

In some cases, there are alternative methods of freeing yourself from imprisonment, but so long as you have lockpicks and some semblance of stealth, that should theoretically be enough. It’s worth noting that when you escape from prison illegally (i.e. stealthily), you’ll be affected by a “Fugitive” effect that will cause any guards outside who see you to attack. 

Thankfully, it’s not something you need to cure or anything — the “Fugitive” effect lasts for only nine turns, so you could probably just sit in a safe space and wait it out if you aren’t in a rush. And then, maybe think twice before you loot corpses or fight soldiers without a care in the world. Or just keep a steady supply of gold on-hand for bribes.