The Owlbear fight is a challenging early encounter in every Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough. It has the ability to one-shot you if you are weak, and it also has a cub fighting alongside it.
You’ll encounter the Owlbear roughly around 1-2 hours into the game if you go straight for it, so you would likely be around level 2.
If you chose another path and leveled up, this fight would be much easier. This guide will detail an easy strategy to fight the Owlbear, even at the bare minimum level.
Cave Location
The Owlbear can be found inside the “Cave Mouth” location on the map. There are no prerequisites to enter.
You can freely go inside the cave and look for the Owlbear.
Owlbear Dialogue Encounter
You’ll enter a dialogue with the beast once you are near the Owlbear’s nest.
You have four choices. The first three choices are ability checks with the corresponding attributes.
- Animal Handling
- Survival
- Performance
If you fail, you can try each choice once until you succeed.
If every ability check fails, you’ll enter a battle with the Owlbear. The fourth option is basically just facing the beast immediately.
If you succeed in the ability check, the fight won’t begin. However, if you approach her, you’ll immediately start the battle.
So, why fight the Owlbear in the first place?
Owlbear Rewards
Apart from the obvious experience points, you’ll be getting a good uncommon armor piece to boost your early game progression. You can take this from the pile of skeletons on the ground.
You’ll be able to get some random loot and gold from the other skeletons.
The biggest reward, however, is often overlooked. Approach the nest and look for the Owlbear Egg. It doesn’t have any icon on your cursor, so you have to click it as it is, and your character will immediately take it.
You’ll be able to see the Owlbear Egg inside your camp supplies pouch. Use this to sell to a trader for a lot of gold.
Fight Strategy
Before you interact with the Owlbear, make sure to save your progress manually. You can restart the battle if you don’t have your desired result.
I’d say if you use more than two scrolls for resurrection, you can do better. These scrolls are quite expensive and hard to find.
Once you start the battle, all your characters will start in a chokepoint. If you are level 2, you need to use all your strongest spells. If they aren’t replenished from a short/long rest, you’ll need to rest before you fight.
At the start of the fight, move back a little and use your ranged attacks and spells.
You want to move back so that the little Owlbear cub can’t reach you on the first turn. When you move back, spread your characters away from each other.
The Owlbear will jump to your characters and disable (prone) everyone around the Owlbear. If all your characters are clumped up, your whole party might be disabled.
Use all your attacks and spells and focus on the Owlbear. If your characters are 10-12HP, use a potion if you have it.
Assume that the Owlbear will deal an average of 14 damage with each attack. Focus on defeating the Owlbear quickly, and the fight should be over.
You might have to sacrifice some of your characters if you are level 2 because this is a level 3 fight.
The goal is to have your characters downed and not dead. If your character is down, you have three turns to finish the battle until they bleed to death.
I suggest ignoring your downed characters and focus on eliminating the Owlbear. Once you beat the Owlbear, get your downed characters up, and you will have saved some scrolls of resurrections.
The fight will end upon beating the Owlbear. The cub will stop fighting and mourn for her mother.
You have to choose between eliminating the cub or letting it be. If you eliminate the cub, you get more experience. However, if you let it live, you’ll get to see a cutscene of the cub eating its mother.
Don’t worry, the cub will just eat the mother and not attack you. You can even manually attack it after the cutscene.
