Baldur’s Gate 3 is a huge game. You could easily spend around 100 hours or more per game wandering around Faerûn, so Act 1 does a hell of a job introducing us to everything the game has to offer. But even though this introduction can take dozens of hours, some players are still lost, especially when it comes to companions.
On the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit, players are sharing all the different companions they’ve missed, accidentally walking past major characters without even realizing it. Gale and Astarion seem to be the biggest offenders, as fans find it easy to pass by them as soon as they leave the starting area, without ever really having a reason to go back and pass them.
This whole thing was started by Reddit user DaethChanter, who said they accidentally played an entire game without Astarion because they didn’t come across his intro cutscene after crash landing on the Nautiloid .
It turns out they are far from alone. Astarion and Gale can be found near the Nautiloid, but not in places that are obvious enough to some players.
“You’d be surprised by how many players miss Gale, Lae’zel, or even Shadowheart on their first runs and come here to ask when they’re supposed to show up,” says AlbionPCJ.
While Gale is a bit more understandable, since you might see the unstable portal and think, “Alright, that’s a problem for another time,” it’s hard to see how anyone could miss Shadowheart. Well, it turns out she’s not always fully conscious after the short Nautiloid tutorial.
“If she dies fighting on the Nautiloid, she will just be a dead NPC on the shore at the start of the game,” Neoalfa explains. “If you don’t realize you have the Revival Scroll on you and use it on her, she stays dead for the entire game. Same for Lae’zel.”
In Lae’zel’s case, you also have other chances to miss her. After you woke up from your Mind Flayer kidnapping ordeal, she abandoned you and Shadowheart. Later, you may find her imprisoned by frightened Tieflings and she must be freed from her cage before she can join you again. If you had to keep her locked up Or If you miss this scene entirely, then you will have to go through the main story without a Githyanki.
Of course, some companions are easy to miss by design. Minthara will only join you if you agree to wipe out a refugee camp, something many of us would avoid on a first playthrough. This might be about to change, according to some datamined dialogue, but it won’t remove all decisions that can exclude companions from your party. Returning to the refugees and killing them will eliminate Wyll and Karlach, and possibly Gale if you can’t convince him to stay. That’s not even talking about characters who can die in battle the first time you encounter them – looking at you, Jaheira.