Remove the dark curse in Baldur's Gate 3 - A side quest in the Blighted Lands. The heroes awaken Art Kulakh from a coma and learn that the spirit of the local land, a boy named Thaniel, is subject to a dark curse. Fist asks to bring the druid Khalsina, capable of helping Thaniel escape from the influence of darkness.
Completing this quest allows you to recruit Halsin and is one of the possible plot threads leading to the denouement of the second act associated with the antagonist Ketheric Torm. From the guide you will learn how to start the quest Break the Dark Curse, where to find Thaniel and Oliver in Baldur's Gate 3, and what needs to be done to reunite them.
How to start the quest “Remove the Dark Curse”
To begin the quest to lift the dark curse, complete two quests from Acts XNUMX and XNUMX:
- Goblin camp and invite him to the camp. He will travel with the main characters, but will not be playable.
- Complete the quest "Awaken Art Kulah».
Having awakened from sleep, Art Kulakh will ask the heroes to find Khalsin. Go to your camp and talk to the druid. Tell him about the incident at the Last Light tavern and he will immediately go to visit Art Kulah to find out details about the spirit of the local land.
Return to the tavern, talk to Halsin in the bedroom where Art Kulah lies. Agree to help and the task will be activated.
Where to find Thaniel
Go to the shore of the lake near the Last Light tavern and talk to Halsin there. The Druid will introduce the situation and ask the heroes to protect the magical portal from enemies affected by the dark curse while he explores the Realm of Shadows. Don't contradict him and just agree with the plan.
Protect the portal
As soon as Halsin enters the portal, monsters and shadows affected by darkness will spawn. The heroes' task is to protect the portal from enemy attacks until the druid returns. If the portal is destroyed, the "Remove the Dark Curse" quest in BG3 will fail and Halsin will not be able to be recruited. Conditions for winning the challenge:
- You need to keep the portal in working order for three turns.
- You just need to kill all the enemies.
The number of health points at the portal depends on the difficulty level of the game:
- On Tactics difficulty - 71 HP.
- On Traveler difficulty - 142 HP.
The portal cannot be healed directly, but you can increase its health with skills such as Mass Healing Word. Shadowheart, although this may be a bug.
The peculiarity of the battle is the huge number of opponents. Not all of them are strong and durable, but there are also quite tenacious ones with 50+ HP. The roster of enemies consists of undead and monsters:
- Wights and Shadows.
- Shadow-corrupted harpers, firefists, githyanki, ravens.
- Shadow Tentacles.
A few key tips on how to quickly get rid of enemies and protect the portal:
- Concentrate the damage of your heroes on crossbowmen: they strike from afar and in almost all playthroughs are the cause of the destruction of the portal.
- Since there will be a lot of enemies in the arena and they will definitely cluster together, use heroes with massive attacking skills. Availability merchants scrolls with AoE magic: they will be very useful in battle. The main strategy of the battle is for each hero to deal maximum area damage.
- A mace will be a great help the cloisters of Rosimorn: The active AoE ability “Light of Lathander” hurts several enemies at once with beam damage, which dark-stricken enemies really don’t like.
After three turns or when all enemies are killed, Halsin will emerge from the portal with Taniel and offer to chat in the camp.
Talk to Halsin
In the camp, Halsin will tell you that part of Taniel disappeared and was swallowed up by darkness. The druid will suggest looking in the desecrated lands for places where herbs still grow and signs of healthy nature remain. He will ask you to explore one of these locations that he encountered earlier - the ruins of a house not far from the tavern harpers.
How to remove the dark curse in Baldur's Gate 3
In this section, we’ll look point by point at how to defeat Oliver and reunite him with Taniel.
Find Oliver
In search of Thaniel's lost soulmate, head to the ruins of a house in the Shadowbound Battlefield area. In the game, you can find Oliver and play hide and seek with him before activating the quest “Remove the Dark Curse.” This will not lead to failure of the task, just like losing hide and seek.
The guy is standing in the middle of a destroyed house. Enter the ruins of the building to find Thaniel's Shadow in Baldur's Gate 3, after which the dialogue will start automatically. Oliver will offer to play hide and seek, to which you need to respond with a remark "Do you want to play? OK".
Play hide and seek with Oliver
The first round of hide and seek is easy: go out into the yard and go behind the cart standing near the path leading to the house. Oliver will be a little annoyed, but he can be invited to play a second round by choosing the line “Let's play again.”
The second round is complicated by the introduction of ghosts patrolling the area. If you catch their eye, a fight will begin. The round can be completed no battle. For this:
- Enter the house alone, leaving three other heroes at the teleportation point nearby.
- As soon as the second round of hide and seek begins, turn-based mode is automatically activated. Apply invisibility by drinking a potion or casting a spell on yourself, and squat into the house.
- Wait until Oliver reaches a certain point in the house. After this, a dialogue with him will become available.
- Talk to Oliver.
The boy will thank you for the game and give you a reward. If during the second round the ghosts notice the heroes, the battle will begin.
Defeat Oliver's parents
In battle you will have to fight with shadow enemies: Dad, Mom and Dog. Use radiant damage, which Mom and Dad really don't like. They can also be stunned: use the skill Lae’zel Stunning Strike to increase your chances of hitting the enemy. Sometimes the ghostly parents will teleport to rooftops or away from the heroes: use Mist Step or Laesel's high jumps to quickly close the distance with evasive enemies.
Having dealt with the opponents, approach Oliver. He will not be offended for destroying the shadows and will even give out a prize, despite the actual loss of the heroes in the second round of hide and seek. In both cases of ing, with and without a fight, the reward will not be different: the guy will give Ring of Shadows.
Convince Oliver to return to Thaniel
This part of the quest is activated regardless of winning the game of hide and seek. Talk to Oliver and invite him to reunite with Taniel. The boy will refuse, open the Portal of Shadows and hide in it. Go inside and prepare for the final battle. If you played with Oliver before activating the quest “Remove the Dark Curse”, he will be standing in a different place, near the cart near the house.
The main task in the final battle is break the Night Dome, surrounding Oliver. The boy constantly casts small shadow spirits called Buddy with 1 HP. Destroying each spirit removes 10 HP from Oliver's Dome. Thus, concentrate your attacks on the Buddies and win without difficulty. Character attacks also remove the dome's health.
Destroying the dome will activate a dialogue in which you will need to convince Oliver to reunite with Thaniel. There are several ways to do this. Select the following replicas sequentially:
- “You have what you want, but you don’t have the one you need—Thaniel.”
- “No one is to blame here. The curse tore you apart - but now you can be reunited."
- “Of course he will. You are bound to each other forever."
The spirit of the shadow lands will melt and agree to reunite with Taniel.
Talk to Taniel
Return to camp and ask Thaniel about his condition. The spirit will tell you that the curse will not disappear until its creator, Ketheric Torm, dies. The quest will end when you defeat Torm, at the end of the second act.
We hope the guide helped Remove the dark curse in Baldurs Gate 3 and reconcile Oliver with Thaniel. If you have any questions, ask them at comments to Article. Read other useful Baldur's Gate 3 guides in the appropriate section of the site.
I first found Oliver, then killed the Keterik and in the end Halsin simply said that the curse can be removed with the help of Thaniel. and that's all. The quest to find taniele is hanging. but Taniel can’t be found
Found Oliver before the quest. After hide and seek, during the attack of ghosts, I hit the AoE and killed. Then Kerrick Torm is killed.
Afterwards I come with a haltsin to Oliver’s house, there is no reaction from the druid at the boy’s corpse.
Bug? after killing Torm, the quest did not start, although I found and talked to the druid Halsin in the Towers, the task is hanging at the stage - I need to defeat Keteric Torm. At the time of writing this comment I have not yet left the zone of the second act, it is possible to update when I go to the third, there is some kind of cut-scene they say
An interesting note from me, who apparently screwed up this quest :)
I didn’t ask Oliver about Thaniel at the very beginning and after the game he just told me to get out of here :))))))
And nothing changes.
So, it looks like you can lose the quest like this)
Hello. I've completed this quest several times. In one of the scenarios, he played hide and seek and killed Oliver’s shadows before activating the quest “Remove the Dark Curse” itself, i.e., at the moment when the heroes knew nothing at all about Taniel. Then, many hours later, I went and started the quest “Remove the Dark Curse.” I returned to Oliver when Halsin asked me to do this, and the guy opened the portal for me without any problems. Perhaps they caught a bug.
If Oliver stands and refuses to talk, then try hitting him with something: a torch, an attack spell, a non-lethal blow. Just don't kill me. I saw online how this option helped many people: Oliver comes out of his stupor and, without saying anything, creates a portal and runs into it. Just save before you try.
A life hack for protecting the portal that I managed to come up with and successfully use: 1. Use the Darkness spell on the area close to the portal. 2. Go invisible with all characters. 3. Stand next to the portal, blocking it so that even in close combat enemies cannot reach it. 4. Skip moves. 5. Profit :)
I don’t recommend it, it’s a good experience farm, hit the enemies lining up so kindly with massages and get experience with these normal pies
even easier life hack smear yourself with shit and start twisting the nipples at the portal. LAN I'm laughing just do 2x oath of criminals tame 2 shadows with 89 hp and just throw ilithid bombs tie-downs, if you pumped up in ilithid abilities also extermination of the weak and damage from pushes then in theory in general gg VP I just don't know what's complicated here threw a tie-down, and into the crowd a flask with holy urine and from above with the light of lathander. if not finished off throw a couple more cans. rub just kill with a tie-down