Disc One Nuke / Baldur's Gate

Baldur's Gate

• Gorion drops the Belt of Antipode - you can pick it up before facing a single challenge. The belt makes you completely immune to cold damage, which is the only type Winter Wolves inflict. A 1st level wizard armed with a pointy stick could farm them solo - the player could go AFK while their character slowly ground the wolf to paste. Each Wolf kill is worth 975 XP and yields a pelt worth 500 GP.
• The first game has a tutorial section in which you learn how to control party members. Many players found they could loot the inventory of party members of valuable items (such as a + 1 shield, a wand of heavens, and healing potions, and nonmagical plate mail), and then export their characters, and simply start a new game with said character—who now starts off with enough armor and money to breeze through until the first major dungeon.
• Several other variants of "export your character, and start a new game with said character".
  • If you run directly to unguarded item X - such as the ring Evermemory - and then by restarting the game, you can pick up a 2nd copy of X in the new playthrough.
  • Use Imoen, Xzar and Montaron as expendible distractions, to kill or simply bypass a meat gate, and gain guarded item Y - and then by restarting the game, you can pick up a 2nd copy of Y in the new playthrough.
  • If you can delve into Black Alaric's Cave and then restart, you can gain several thousand GP in loot and a +1 constitution item each time. The main barrier between Candlekeep and the cave is two groups of Sirines who will always spam Dire Charm. A cleric can waltz past via Sanctuary. Berserker rage can go through (rather than around) them. Stealing the Potion of Clarity in Candlekeep, using an appropriate Familiar or sacrificially burning through companions are also viable options.
• With a little bit of preparation and careful timing, it's possible to use a conversation glitch to keep the tutorial party members themselves. They have unusually high stats and some decent equipment (as mentioned above), plus it's helpful to have a full party of six instead of just yourself and Imoen.
• In a wilderness area to the west of the main road, you can meet up with Drizzt and help him kill some gnolls. By saving the game here and having Imoen attempt to pickpocket him successfully (which is ridiculously easy with the relatively cheap potions that increase your pickpocket stat) before he exits the screen you could end up with both of Drizzt's unique +3 scimitars. (There are also published strategies for killing Drizzt and taking the scimitars from his corpse.)
• Kagain. He's a Stone Wall recruited in the town of Bereghost, which you can visit long before going to Nashkel and getting the plot ball rolling, and even recruited at level 1. In the first game your level cap for most classes is 8 which means every level counts, as does every health roll you gain while levelling up; if you pick him up at level 1, with maximum rolls every level Kagain will finish the game at 120 health thanks to his 20 Constitution. A Charname dwarf can only obtain this Con value by starting with the maximum (19) and then getting the Tome of Bodily Health. Kagain's high Con grants him slow regeneration. His personal mission is to basically go look for a missing caravan situated in a level 1 area. Essentially, he's a really useful character basically served to you on a silver platter right from the start.
• Using a couple of cheap potions, a few valuable items and some Save Scumming, a player could sell an item to a fence, steal it back and then sell it again. With a couple of potions of master thievery, you would almost never be caught.
• There is a chunk of Ankheg-infested farmland in the map just north of the first real haven of the game. Ankhegs are worth quite a chunk of XP, but being correspondingly deadly, a patient and/or lucky player could gain a few levels in short order. You can also sell the ankheg shells for gobs of cash and have good armor crafted from them, though you would need gobs of cash for the latter. All you have to do is avoid the ankheg attacks, which are slow but virtually One Hit Kills at low level—and they have a vicious ranged attack.
  • A better way to get a ton of XP early was to buy a Scroll of Protection From Petrification and then go kill the basilisks near one of the early towns. They gave about 7000 XP each and were fairly trivial as long as you couldn't be turned to stone. If you wanted to solo the game, you could gain a number of levels very quickly this way.
    • To take this to an extreme, you can load up on Stone to Flesh scrolls, then charm-and-protect a Lesser Basilisk, then use the Lesser Basilisk to petrify a Greater Basilisk for 7000 XP. Turn the Greater Basilisk back to flesh. Repeat until glutted.
• Algernon's Cape grants the use of an at-will, instant-cast, virtually-unlimited-ammo Charm spell to a first or second level PC five minutes into the game through a ridiculously easy pickpocket or NPC kill (approximately 4 HP) - yeah, that's a game nuker. An easter egg, to be sure, and serious players who wanted to enjoy the game wouldn't use it, but still. There's nothing quite like turning an enemy party against itself. You could win the whole game with one character, never having to raise a fist. Of course, no kill XP, but then that's what quest completion XP is for.
  • Important to note - unlike the sequels, using items to cast spells doesn't break your hiding / invisibility. This means that you have practically infinite attempts to get the spell to stick. Even better - unlike the sequels, the charm spell lasts for in-game hours. You can charm the entire map with a bit of patience. (An obscure but interesting strategy involves using the cape to bring every single possible party NPC to the final confrontation with the Big Bad).
• There are a few really well hidden secret containers in early maps. The first map after out from Candlekeep has a diamond, worth a good 500 gold; the Lion's Road map has a + 1 ring of protection; the Friendly Arm inn has a ring which doubles the wearer's first-level spell slots if they're a wizard; and though not precisely early, Nashkel still takes place in the first act and has half-weight + 2 plate mail.
• The humble Sleep spell, a level 1 mage spell that's therefore available to mages from the very start of the game, forces opponents with less than 5HD in a large area to save vs. spell or fall asleep for five rounds per level. Sleeping opponents might as well already be dead - they can't take any actions and are automatically hit by any incoming attacks which somehow still won't wake them up, making them easy pickings. As Baldur's Gate is such a low-level game, most non-boss enemies for at least the first half of the game are susceptible to this spell and have low saving throws, meaning that throwing this into a mob of enemies will usually take out most of them. Combine this with the aforementioned ring that doubles level 1 spell slots for a mage and you'll coast through the first half of the game, with only a few high-level enemies or sleep-immune enemies such as undead or slimes able to threaten you at all.
• You can summon unlimited number of creatures and create your own private army of mooks. No wonder it was nerfed in the sequel to a maximum of 5.

Shadows of Amn

• After importing a character from the first game, if you quickly pause just before hearing the character gasp, you can drop their entire inventory, and thus prevent it from being swiped by a script. This allows you to keep some powerful end-game items from the first game (including the Plate Mail/Two-Handed Sword +3 from Tales of the Sword Coast), which are easily good enough to see you through most of the game.
• It's possible to venture into the Throne of Bhaal bonus dungeon, Watcher's Keep, during Chapter 2 of Amn and pick up ridiculously powerful gear. Granted, the enemies are far beyond the current party level at that point, but using Yoshimo to sneak past enemies and loot everything on the first floor will net you the best scimitar in the game (Usuno's Blade), the best bastard sword (Foebane), the second-best darts (Crimson Dart +3, returns when thrown), a Quiver of Plenty (unlimited +1 arrows), a Case of Plenty (unlimited +1 bolts), a Golem Manual (summon a Flesh Golem for 10 rounds each day), an Ammo Belt, a +2 Large Shield, Paladin's Bracers and a +3 Long Bow. This gear is also good enough to get you through Amn, if not further. If that's not enough, one of the adventurers outside the Keep sells the best crossbow in the game, Firetooth.
• With a little luck, you can get the lich in the Crooked Crane inn to waste its spells. Send a single character with a Cloak of Non-Detection and some invisibility item in first. Wait until the lich casts Time Stop and Meteor Swarm then go invisible and exit the room. Wait around for awhile and the lich's protective spells will expire making him killable even for an unleveled party. Aside from the nice XP (no lich in the game gives less than 22,000), the lich's loot includes Daystar, a sword that lets you cast Sunbeam, a high level spell which nukes Undead en masse...and Undead are among the most common enemies in the game.
  • Even better, using a cheap Protection From Undead scroll will allow a character to walk right by, grab Daystar, and kill the Lich with it. The scroll will cause the Lich to completely ignore the character, even after it's been attacked.
• In a rather innocuous house in the temple district you'll encounter a hostile group of mercenaries, one of whom carries the Celestial Fury - a +3 Katana that has a 5% chance to inflict 20 extra Lightning damage on a hit, with each hit also stunning the enemy for 6 seconds unless they make a saving throw against spells. It's a tough fight early on (especially since they're using said katana against you), but if you manage it you've got a kickass weapon that can carry you through the main game and a good chunk of the expansion too.
• There is an incredibly easy exploit one can use to get more or less infinite money using nothing but a potion and a gem. First, go into your inventory and drink a potion that isn't in a quickslot. Then, without leaving the inventory screen, swap the potion with a single gemstone. Leave the inventory and unpause. Your character will appear to use an item, but nothing will happen. If you go back into your inventory, you'll notice the "1" in the gem's icon has disappeared. Do the process again and the game's math engine will have an aneurysm. You can now sell your sixty five thousand (!!!) gems for more money than you could ever possibly spend. Enjoy.

Baldur's Gate III

• In Baldur's Gate III, if you manage to kill or otherwise loot the weapon of the devil commander, Zhalk, during the combat encounter at the helm of the nautiloid. His greatsword is easily the most powerful weapon you'll find for a long time, being a magical greatsword that deals an extra 1d4 fire damage. However, your companions will explicitly discourage you from doing this, and for good reason. The whole thing is timed, even with the Mindflayer helping, Zhalk has high AC and tons of hit points, two more high-level cambions arrive to assist if you take too long killing him, and if he dies before the mind flayer it turns on you. Tricks like using Command to make him drop the sword, then grabbing it and running give you an easier way out.
• In Chapter 1, you can get a Warped Headband of Intellect early on by killing Lump the Enlightened. This automatically increases the wearer's Intelligence stat to 17 if it's lower than that. It won't help most Wizards, despite Int being their main stat, because it will likely be roughly that high anyways (Gale starts with 17 Int by default, for example) but characters who use Intelligence as a secondary stat like Arcane Trickster rogues and Eldritch Knight fighters will get a huge boost to their casting without having to sacrifice their other stats.
• Speaking of Lump, he himself can become this if you hire him by clearing the appropriate skill checks, which will resulting him giving you a horn you can use to summon him and his underlings at will. They can provide considerable muscle to help even the odds in more challenging encounters.
• The Blood of Lathander mace you can find at the Rosymorn Monastery at the end of Act 1 is likely to be the first legendary tier item that you find and one that you'll probably hold onto until late game. The mace has built in additional radiant damage, a built in light source which can be turned on and off but comes with the innate ability to blind undead and fiends which will be very useful in Act 2 since it is full of them. Finally it has a free use of Sunbeam, a level 6 spell, that can be used once per long rest.
• If you don't have Lae'zel in your party when meeting the Githyanki patrol in act 1 (as she'll run it and trigger a cutscene), and access to a source of invisibility like a potion, you can steal Kith'rak Voss' Silver Sword of the Astral Plane by using Command: Drop and grabbing it immediately. It's a +3 Legendary item that deals 1d6 bonus psychic damage (2d6 if the wielder is a Githyanki), can inflict stun, and gives Githyankis like Lae'zel advantage to all mental saves, resistance to psychic damage and immunity to charm. Sure whoever gets it off him gets a cutscene with Voss and will get murdered by the patrol, but if they have the sword on them when they die, Withers can resurrect them with the blade for a measly 200 gold. The sword makes Zalk's infernal greatsword look like a butter knife. The other downside, storywise, is that due to Sequence Breaking, Lae'zel will talk about Act 3 spoilers long before players even know who these characters are.
• Dual Wielding hand crossbows is considered to be one of the earliest ways to attack twice long before players get to level 5. Bonus points if players choose to play a Thief Rogue who can use their bonus actions to attack twice or a College of Swords Bard who can use Ranged Slashing Flourished attack to attack as many Bardic Inspirations as the character has. Combine this with Sharpshooter, high dexterity stat, and high ground, and characters can deal massive amounts of damage early on.
• Near the climax of Act 1 at the Githyanki Creche is the Zaith'isk device where Lae'zel claims that it would get rid of the parasite in the party's brains. What it does is that by passing the DC checks of the machine (and the game barely prompts you about the passive ability), all Illithid actions can be used as bonus actions with the "Awakened" passive feature. It's actually better for the player character to sit in it than Lae'zel as Lae'zel's DC checks are very high compared to the player's. While some of the actions you get for acts 1 and 2 are decent, the powers players get in act 3 (assuming they took the Astral Tadpole) can be spammed as bonus actions, including the very powerful and Friendly Fire Proof action, "Black Hole".
• Some of the Illithid powers are bonkers even early on that most builds outright don't even include any of them because they're just too powerful.
  • "Luck of the Far Realms" guarantees that an attack roll can be changed into a critical hit if the player chooses to. While it only works once per long rest to balance it out, this makes Paladin smites really powerful especially if combined with Great Weapon Master which will outright kill most of Act 1's bosses. Even its prerequisite, "Favourable Beginnings", is a very useful passive feature that makes the first attack roll or ability check against any creature gain a bonus equal to the character's proficiency bonus.
  • "Ability Drain" reduces the target's ability by one after a successful attack roll for three turns and it highly depends on what attack was used^note Melee attacks reduce strength stat, range attacks reduce dexterity, and spells reduce whatever spell casting ability the spell caster uses (intelligence for wizards, charisma for bards, sorcerers, paladins, and warlocks, and wisdom for druids and clerics). per turn. Suddenly an enemy who would normally have a +5 to their attack rolls using their strength stat now only has a +4 to their attack modifier or strength saving throw, making it easier for them to get shoved into the chasm.
  • "Perilous Stakes" is considered as the boss killer spell in the game. What it does is that it heals the target for 2d8 whenever it attacks, but then makes the target Vulnerable to all damage for three turns. This means that all damage is doubled against the target and the target can't save against it because it is supposed to heal the target to begin with. Stack that with summons and bosses will die before they even can get any turns. And just like the two powers above, it only costs two parasites to unlock it (though its prerequisite, "Transfuse Health" isn't that great).

---