After finishing Act 1 and entering the Shadowlands in Baldur’s Gate 3, you’ll immediately notice the Shadow Curse. If you travel through the Shadowlands without a way to negate Shadow Curse, you’ll end up taking unnecessary damage. To avoid that, here are all the ways to cure Shadow Curse in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Note: Don’t be nervous about a softlock if you have no way of getting through the major Shadow Curse sections. I thought that happened to me, but I found a way around the softlock — check out the guide to learn for yourself.
Best ways to cure Shadow Curse in Baldur’s Gate 3
To avoid confusion, I identify two variations of Shadow Curse in Baldur’s Gate 3: the minor Shadow Curse and the major Shadow Curse. The minor Shadow Curse is the type that affects you outside of Last Light Inn but before traveling west toward Moonrise Towers. Minor Shadow Curse will damage you, but it can be negated fairly easily. The major Shadow Curse is what blocks the Moonrise Towers and it deals much more damage much more often.
Here is every way to negate Shadow Curse in BG3:
- Moonlantern
- Pixie bell
- Blessing of Selune
- Torch/Light Spells
How to negate minor Shadow Curse in Baldur’s Gate 3
Screenshot: PC Invasion
The best way to gain protection against minor Shadow Curse is to get Blessing of Selune. This is the blessing you get when you’re in the Last Light Inn area. However, if you successfully defend Isobel and defeat Fist Marcus, you’ll earn a permanent buff applied to your entire party that constantly negates minor Shadow Curse. This is great because it means you can carry your powerful weapons around instead of torches.
Which brings me to the next best minor Shadow Curse cure: torches! Torches are the next best thing to negate minor Shadow Curse if you don’t have Blessing of Selune. Only one party member needs to carry a torch if you’re all grouped together, but one torch holder makes fights harder because if your party gets separated — which they will — anyone not near light will suffer Shadow Curse damage every turn.
You can also use light spells like Light, Fearie Fire, and Dancing Light. I don’t recommend using spells over torches because they wear off over time and torches don’t. However, you should definitely use light spells when your torch bearer gets separated.
How to negate major Shadow Curse in Baldur’s Gate 3
Gaining protection from major Shadow Curse is much harder. The only way to negate major Shadow Curse in Baldur’s Gate 3 is to use a Moonlantern or a Pixie bell.
Note: If you have no way of getting past the major Shadow Curse, check out my guide on how to get through a potential softlock. You can make it to Moonrise Towers really easily without a Moonlantern or a Pixie bell and get Balthazaar’s Moonlantern there.
There are three ways to get a Moonlantern in Baldur’s Gate 3: through Kar’ness, through Nere, and through Balthazaar. Get the Moonlantern from Kar’ness in the Mountain Pass or by ambushing him in the Shadowlands. You can get a Moonlantern from Nere in Grymdark by killing him or stealing it from him. You can also get a Moonlantern in Moonrise Towers, but you have to traverse a bit of major Shadow Curse to get there (it’s not that bad at all).
Once you have a Moonlantern, you can choose to keep the Pixie trapped to have a working Moonlantern or free the Pixie and receive a bell which you can use in your inventory to negate major Shadow curse.
You can also permanently remove Shadow Curse from Shadowlands by completing the Lift the Shadow Curse sidequest, which I highly recommend you do because it makes exploring the Shadowlands much easier.
That is every way to counter minor and major Shadow Curse in BG3. Now, you can check out what the 15 best spells in the game are.
