Crafting and alchemy in Baldur's Gate 3 are special mechanics used for creating weapons, potions, elixirs and more besides. Crafting in BG3 is a pretty limited and contextual system by design, based around specific items in specific places, but alchemy is much more broad and universal, creating constant little consumables from plants, fungi, ingredients, monster parts and more besides. They're systems you'll definitely want to understand and exploit, especially considering it's possible to get fairly far into Baldur's Gate 3 without realising just how they work and how useful they can be. For aspiring alchemists and blacksmiths, here's everything you need to know about alchemy and crafting in Baldur's Gate 3.
How does crafting and alchemy work in Baldur's Gate 3?
Alchemy and crafting in Baldur's Gate 3 are separate systems and fairly different from each other. If you want to create new items, you basically have three options:
- Crafting: Using specific items in certain forges to create set weapons, armor and equipment.
- Alchemy: Creating consumables and new items by combining ingredients in the alchemy interface.
- Combination: Highly context specific process by which items are combined in the player's inventory, such as using dye on armor.
We'll go through each of them below, and what you need to know about them.
Crafting weapons and armor
Crafting in Baldur's Gate 3 isn't really a system like it is in Skyrim, instead being more tied to quests where the player usually finds a rare item and brings it to a specific forge to complete a set recipe, such as the Grymforge in the Baldur's Gate 3 Underdark region requiring a mould for the item you want to make and some raw ore to process it into rare Adamantite equipment, or finding Sussar for the forge in the Blighted Village. Sadly, you can't make whatever Baldur's Gate 3 weapons you want in these places - there'll likely be a few set options that you pick from. If you want a specific weapon, your best bet is to search among traders (or go monster killing until you find it).
Alchemy and potion making
Alchemy in Baldur's Gate 3, on the other hand, is a much more versatile system. Players can find various organic ingredients as they explore, and use them when out of combat in the Alchemy interface, accessed by pressing H.
From there, players will see all the recipes they've learned (recipes can be obtained from books or notes found across the game). To make a potion or other item, players will usually first have to create a specific "extract", done by destroying 3 of the same item. Those extracts are then used to create the various alchemical consumables, which include potions, explosives, elixirs and weapon coatings.
Combining items and dyeing gear
The final variation of crafting gear is combining items, which is very context specific and done from your inventory, most usually when dyeing gear. Any item you can combine has a "Combine" option, whereupon you'll then be shown an empty space to place an item. If they're compatible, you'll be allowed to combine them to create something new, like dyed gear! There are also times where you'll find hilts, blades and various other pieces that combine to make something new, though there's always a specific combination and no alternatives - i.e., you can't mix and match pieces.
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