What's the most you've ever overreacted to an annoyance in a game? I'll quicksave before murdering an NPC who sent me on a fetch quest to the dungeon I just came from, sure, but Baldur's Gate 3 player jakethebrick_ took things to a whole new level: Killing off the Lower City's somewhat obnoxious street performers with a doom stack of over 100 oil, firewine, smokepowder, and runepowder barrels, producing the biggest explosion I've ever seen in the game.
If you've been sleeping on abusing BG3's many explosive barrels—the forbidden art of "barrelmancy"—it's time to up your game. They're heavy, but you can easily right click and send them to your camp stash, building up a war chest of the things to deploy ahead of difficult fights. It's how I always take out early boss Dror Ragzlin these days, but I'm also saving some smokepowder barrels for Raphael's fight in my current Honour run: They should help with taking care of his pesky soul pillars.
i’ve been hoarding every single barrel and explosive i could find since act 1. all for this moment. #BaldursGate3 #BG3 pic.twitter.com/xjjWR1aKccSeptember 8, 2024
As for the performers, you probably remember them from just outside Sorcerous Sundries. They're a bit of local color that helps the world feel a little more vibrant, but their act—casting a couple cantrips in sequence once every minute or two—can get old on your fortieth trek from one end of the Lower City to another. Divinity: Original Sin 2 had that "Keeping it together, Bree?" lady in Driftwood, Original Sin 1 had Mr. "No one has as many friends as the man with many cheeses!" And BG3 has these guys. I wouldn't trade them for the world, but sometimes you just have to vent.
So, revenge. "I've been hoarding every single barrel and explosive I could find since Act 1. All for this moment," jakethebrick_ declared on Reddit and X, "The Everything App." I counted at least 100 in their explosive edifice, and jakethebrick_ also confirmed that there were a few jars of the extra-potent, plot-critical runepowder in the mix. After setting it all up amongst the placid NPCs, it was just a matter of taking cover under a Globe of Invulnerability and setting the thing off with an Alchemist's Fire.
And boy does it turn the game into a slideshow—the goddamn opening of Akira but at about 3 fps, with a sea of damage numbers inside the Big Boom. "I'm honestly surprised the game didn't crash bc I was expecting it to," jakethebrick_ admitted in the comments on Twitter. "Very satisfying tho. 100% worth it."
Elsewhere in the thread, they declared: "The culmination of 100+ hours of gameplay. I hate those fucking fraud ass wizards."
