Baldur’s Gate 3: Soft Step Trial Guide

Baldur’s Gate 3 is possibly the best game of 2023, but it’s far from the easiest. One of its toughest challenges lies in the Gauntlet of Shar, which tests your mettle in every way. While some trials test your combat ability, others test your mind, with the Soft Step Trial being among the toughest. Here’s how to get past the Soft Step Trial in Baldur’s Gate 3.

Baldur’s Gate 3: Soft Step Trial Guide

The Soft Step Trial is a clever little challenge that asks you to do your best Solid Snake impression. In it, you’ll sneak toward a gate and unlock it to complete the trial. To get there, we’ll need our best stealthy party members.

How To Complete the Soft Step Trial

Make sure you have lockpicks in your inventory, as the final gate you need to open requires them if you can’t complete the trial properly. Ideally, you should take Shadowheart to the Soft Step Trial. She’s the one who cares about Shar, so giving her a chance to complete it will gain her approval.

This is valuable if you want to romance her at some point. First, separate yourself from the rest of the party because this is borderline impossible to complete with more than one active character.

Once you’ve got your sneaking specialist, activate Sneak and start making your way through the maze. While it starts out simple enough, the biggest obstacle you’ll face is two shadow monsters on the floor. These foes patrol the maze back and forth. Staying out of their vision cone is paramount to success. If you get caught, you’re immediately sent back to the beginning of the maze, forced to start over again, which can get old very fast.

Go slow, as the movement of the shadow monsters is very erratic. It’s not a large maze, but the threat of getting caught will make this nerve-wracking. We need to get a key that can open the gate, or we’ll be in for some serious trial and error lockpicking to open the gate at the end.

To get the key, enter through the middle door and hug the wall to your left until you get to a lever. Pull it, opening up a wall nearby, and cross into the cell where you’ll loot the key. It should be next to a skeleton and in plain sight.

Once we’ve got it, we have to get to the gate. The hallway to the gate is on the far right of the maze and has a shadow monster patrolling it as well. Luckily, this one goes up and down and is pretty easy to predict. Follow the steps up to the gate.

Using the key, the gate will unlock, and inside, you’ll find the Umbral Gem you’re looking for. However, if you don’t want to bother getting the key — and you have a good lock picker on hand — you can skip to the gate. But you’ll try your luck against a very difficult lock.

Is There an Easy Way to Complete the Soft Step Trial?

If you want to find the easy way out of this trial, there’s one way. If you come with plenty of invisibility potions on hand, you can get through the trial completely undetected. I heavily recommend this if you have any trouble with the above method, and there’s no shame in doing so.

There’s no combat needed in this trial, but it’s incredibly tough and can take a lot of time. Be patient and follow the above steps, and you’ll succeed.

That covers how to complete the Soft Step Trial in Baldur’s Gate 3. This hit CRPG has plenty of challenges to overcome, so check out our BG3 guides section for more tips.