Baldur’s Gate 3 portal trick most players miss makes tough Act 2 fight a breeze

Defending the portal in Baldur’s Gate 3 is unavoidable if you want to lift the Shadow Curse, but it’s also one of the toughest fights in the game. Thankfully, a player has discovered an easy way to work around some of the issues you may run into. 

When Halsin asks you to help him defend the portal to the Shadowfell in Act 2 of Baldur’s Gate 3, he isn’t subtle about the challenge the battle ahead presents. 

What’s most difficult about this fight, though, isn’t necessarily that you might die easily. It’s the fact that the portal he goes through – the one you need to protect – has little health comparatively, and a lot of the enemies will bypass you entirely to attack it. 

It’s also usually impossible to heal the portal. Overall, it’s just a challenging fight for survival that can co awry very quickly if you aren’t paying attention. 

Interestingly, though, one player has found a workaround so that you can heal the portal. “[Warden of Vitality] works by applying an aura around the Paladin, and any friendlies standing in said aura receive a status effect called Warden of Vitality that allows them to be targeted by the heal. This includes Halsin’s portal!” ‘Lazzitron’ explained on Reddit. 

Before heading into this fight, you need to make sure you’re playing with or as a Paladin. At Level 9, you’ll get the Level 3 spell Warden of Vitality, which heals anyone within 30 feet of you for 2d6 across 10 turns. 

If you’re struggling with this fight and don’t have a Paladin, remember that you can respec your character through Withers if you need. And, if you don’t want to continue as a Paladin, you can always change back to your original class.

Otherwise, if you don’t feel like going through all that effort, you can also achieve the same healing effect with Mass Healing Word. It seems that while the portal can’t be specifically targeted for healing, it will still get healed from any AoE spells. Just make sure you’re standing in range for the portal to get healing too.

It’s a smart way to deal with the damage the portal gets, and it makes the fight itself slightly easier to deal with. Plus, it needs no concentration, which means you can’t get knocked out of it. 

It is important to note, though, that this may not be intentional and could be patched out of the game in future. So, if you want to give it a try, make sure to do it soon!

When it comes to the enemies, the best spell you can use is Spirit Guardians. This does require concentration, but it means that the shadow enemies you fight will be essentially useless. Either way, with these tricks, you can make sure Halsin returns to the real world safely easily enough.