The Dank Crypt in BG3 has a lethal grease and fire trap, and a door that’s seemingly impossible to open.
The Baldur’s Gate 3 Dank Crypt is probably one of the first dungeons you’ll come across in this Dungeons and Dragons game, with a button-operated exploding gas trap early on, a door that seemingly won’t open no matter what you do, and hordes of undead guarding a second button with the lich Withers on the other side. We’ll take you through a basic walkthrough of the Dank Crypt in Baldur’s Gate 3 below, including how to get past the trap, how to open the door, and what treasure and loot you can find along the way.
Dank Crypt Walkthrough in Baldur’s Gate 3
The Dank Crypt dungeon in Baldur’s Gate 3 is broken up into three areas:
- The exploding grease trap and Sarcophagus
- The connecting treasure room and Bedchamber Ornate Door
- The Dead Scribes battle and Withers’ secret tomb
We’ll go through them in order, starting with the entrance to the Dank Crypt on the Ravaged Beach, which is just to the North of where you land after escaping the Mind Flayers’ Nautiloid Ship.
Best Dank Crypt Party and Level Requirements
If you’re planning on going into the Dank Crypt, you’ll want to have your party at level 2 at least, as there’s a few noteworthy threats in there. It’s not impossible to do at level 1, but you will definitely struggle. Speaking of which, the best Baldur’s Gate 3 party to bring with you is one focused on combat and a little bit of trap/lockpicking (there’s not much chance for stealth or social situations). The following characters will help a lot:
- Lae’zel (equipped for melee combat/tanking attacks)
- Astarion (with at least one trap disarming kit and lockpick)
- Shadowheart (with healing spells)
- Gale (With crowd control and AOE damage spells)
Otherwise, you’ll want all the non-essential essentials ready and distributed – magic items, healing potions, weapons and armor, and ideally have at least a short rest before going in, pus making sure your magic users have at least a few spells slots to fuel the variety of Baldur’s Gate 3 spells that can help you.
How to Get Into the Overgrown Ruins Ancient Door Into the Dank Crypt
The main entrance to the Dank Crypt is an “Ancient Door” next to the Overgrown Ruins waypoint, just at the Northeast end of the Ravaged Beach. The door is locked, but you can attempt a lockpick check here, if you have a lockpick.
There are three other entrances, all at the Chapel Entrance up the hill North from you, but they’re all much more dangerous. The bandits ransacking the area from the first two of these entrances are pretty tough, and you’ll want to be level 3 or up before you consider taking them on.
- The Ornate Door: At the back of the Chapel Entrance, past Taman and Gimblebock, is a door you can get through, if you talk your way around Andorn. That being said, you’ll have to fight him and the other bandits once you’re in.
- The Collapsing Floor: There’s a cracked stone floor with a rock hanging over it, where the bandits Taman and Gimblebock are talking outside. Shooting the coiled rope drops the rock, breaking the floor and forming a hole that you can leap down into the Bedchamber section. Jumping down without Feather Fall means you’ll probably take some damage, and you’ll immediately have to fight the other bandits below.
- The Wooden Hatch: East of the Chapel Entrance is a little cliffside path – follow it to the end to find a wooden hatch. This leads you into the back of the Dank Crypt, and while you avoid the bandits in doing so, all it really does is have you approach the Dank Crypt from a different side, starting in the tomb, and won’t make things any easier if your goal is to get all the loot.
We’ll approach this assuming you’re going through the Ancient Door by the Overgrown Ruins. You can go via the Hatch as a good second alternative, but all that really happens is that it’s the same challenges in reverse order (unless you specifically just want to get to Withers and the Amulet of Lost Voices).
How to Get Past the Dank Crypt Trap Around the Sarcophagus
Once you enter the Dank Crypt by the Ancient Door, you’ll notice a Sarcophagus ahead. If your characters pass some perception checks, they’ll notice Grease traps (marked in orange above) dotted around the room, at the locations marked above. They might also notice a button on an eastern pillar, though that’ll require another perception check. Here’s the basics of how this trap works, and how you can get past it.
- Opening the Sarcophagus gets you an “Engraved Key” and “The Watcher’s Guide”, a magic spear that grants the wielder advantage to hit targets they just missed.
- However, it also triggers the trap: all the vents immediately expel grease, and if you’re in turn-based mode, on the next round fiery darts fly out of the East and West walls, igniting the grease. The grease vents expel more grease every few rounds, so this will keep happening, no matter how long you wait.
- To disarm the trap, you have several options, some of the best of which are:
- Press the button on the pillar at any point after the trap is triggered
- Use a disarm toolkit on the vents individually
- Block the vents with the crates or other objects so they can’t expel grease
- Use a Create/Destroy Water spell to temporarily put out the fire and wash away the grease in certain areas
The button is obviously the easiest one, but if you haven’t passed the Perception check to see it, others can work too. If you’re too far away from the button to do it safely, Gale or Lae’zel could use the Mage Hand spell, or you can simply shoot it with a bow or crossbow!
To get to the next room, you’ll need to use the Engraved Key on the Heavy Oak Doors to the North.
The Bedchamber and Ornate Door
In this connecting room you’ll have the opportunity to grab some treasure:
- A gilded chest that holds a Ruby Ring on the East wall
- A book called “On Death & Resurrection” to the right of that chest
- An opulent chest to the West that holds 20 Gold
- Another opulent chest opposite that one that holds three spell scrolls
There’s also two sets of doors: a set that heads North, and a smaller door to the West. We’ll cover the West door first, but scroll down to the section on the tomb for more info on where the North door leads.
Going through the West door takes you to a new area called “Bedchamber”, where there’s an Ornate Door ahead of you with voices on the other side – and no sign of how to open it.
Actually, this door is opened from the other side, which is an area accessed by the first two alternate paths through the Chapel Entrance we talked about. If you go through the broken floor or the outside Ornate Door, you’ll encounter the bandits and have to fight them, but there’s also a statue of a wizard – and a skull behind it that’s a secret button. Press that to open the door. There is no way to open it from the Dank Crypt side, at least as far as we know at time of writing.
At this point your only option is the North Heavy Oak Door back in the treasure room. Let’s cover what’s through there now.
The Entombed Warriors of Jergal and Withers’ Tomb
After going through the North Heavy Oak Door, there are some things to do immediately:
- Go to every corpse of an Entombed Warrior or Entombed Scribe and take everything off them, even if it’s not worth anything to you (you can abandon it later).
- Head into the little room to the West. Read The Book of Dead Gods, open the heavy chest for spell scrolls, and loot the sarcophagus for a Soul Coin.
After this, head back to the main room with the statue. In the North west corner of the room, a successful perception check will reveal a button. Pressing it will open a door, but also animate the Entombed dead. However, because you took all their loot and weaponry earlier, they’ll be easier to fight!
Once they’re dead – properly dead – head through the door the button opens to find a secret tomb. Open the Heavy Chest to get 93 Gold and The Amulet of Lost Voices, an incredibly good item that allows the wearer, when equipped, to cast the Speak With Dead spell on any corpse they find!
The last thing to do is to open the new sarcophagus – which triggers a cutscene where an intelligent undead named Withers appears. Withers will ask you some cryptic questions but won’t attack, and after dialogue is over, he can be found at your campsite. Withers is actually an NPC who can reanimate and resurrect your allies, though he’ll ask for 200 Gold per life restored.
And that’s all the main elements of the Dank Crypt! You can head back out the way you came, or go East from the Jergal statue into the little underwater river to find the hatch we mentioned as your third option for getting in/out of the area.
