Baldur’s Gate 3: How to Disable Guardian Statues

Knowing how to disable Guardian Statues in Baldur’s Gate 3 is important. It can be the difference between living and dying in the Underground Passage. Your first encounter with these effigies can be overwhelming. If you aren’t careful, you can light barrels of oil on fire. Prioritizing deactivating them will save your party a lot of pain.

How to Disable Guardian Statues in BG3

Guardian Statues are found in the Underground Passage that connects the Forest to the Emerald Grove. Inside, you’ll find a group of Goblins, Guardian Statues, and the captured Goblin, Sazza. Guardian Statues have corresponding runes. Use Turn-based combat to slow the statues’ attacks. You need to touch the rune that matches a statue to disable it, so the Eagle Statue is disabled by touching the Rune of the Eagle, for example. There are two methods you can use to do this.

Deactivating the Guardian Statues Without Activating Them in BG3

First, you can be stealthy. The Guardian Statue won’t attack you if it doesn’t notice you. So if you have spells like Invisibility or Fog that can be used to stealth across, you can get to the rune without triggering it. You can also summon Mage Hand and have that run to the rune and activate it.

Deactivating the Guardian Statues After Activating Them in BG3

Second, you can just go for it. This was the method I used unintentionally because I ran past a statue and triggered it when I didn’t know what it was. In this case, you need to activate turn-based combat. This will prevent the statue from hurling fire at you constantly. The statue’s turn is an environmental turn, and it will shoot multiple firebolts. However, this is easier to tank while you send your characters to the rune.

There are a total of three statues (Bear, Eagle, and Wolf). For me, the Eagle was the most annoying because I went down the cliff instead of around, which let me skip the Wolf entirely and hit the Bear’s rune before it activated.

Now, you can disable the Guardian Statues in Baldur’s Gate 3 and get through the Underground Passage with a lower risk of casualties so you can continue on your journey to get answers about that brain tadpole wiggling in your skull. From here, you can check out our BG3 guide hub for topics like how to craft healing potions or where the Owlbear Egg is.