Baldur's Gate 3 Best Beginner Druid Builds
Sep. 23, 2023Baldur’s Gate 3 Best Beginner Druid Builds
In thisBaldur’s Gate 3 Druid Build Guide, I’m going to be showing you the 3 Best BeginnerDruidBuilds that you can use to put together an effective Druid early on in the game. I wanted to give some early-gameBuildsfor those of you who are near the beginning of the game. This is going to reach up to Level 6.
For each of the DruidSubclass, you can level them up to Level 6. Two of them are SingleClassBuilds and one is slightly Multiclassed, which I’ll explain when we get further into thisBaldur’s Gate 3Build Guide.
First, let’s take a look at 6 levels ofCircle of Spores, which is a single Class Build. The reason is that we want the benefit we’d gain at Level 6, particularly,Fungal Infestation. Fungal Infestation works very similarly toAnimate Dead. It’s going to allow you to raise a corpse to create a fungal zombie to then create more of their species by killing creatures. Doing so lets you grow your army larger than ever before.
But what’s great about Fungal Infection compared to Animate Dead is you can use 4 charges to immediately raise 4 zombies before taking aLong Rest. Or if you’re aNecromancerWizard, you’ll only be able to raise 2 corpses. The downside though is that these fungal zombies have far less health than the ones you gain from Animate Dead. However, if they get killed or take enough damage, instead of instantly dying, they won’t go down once. They’ll be immune to being killed from one killing blow. So they’re a little bit harder to kill.
Additionally, you get to control them individually except for any of the other zombies they create. What’s really nice about this is that you can use Animate Dead with this as well since you’ll gain the Animate DeadSpellat Level 5. Doing so will allow you to pick up a regular zombie and 4 Fungal Infestations minimally, that are running around as part of your group.
Other things you can do in this BG3 Circle of Spores Druid Build is to useSymbiotic Entityto give yourself damage protection or temporary HP. This will also let you deal more damage if you make melee attacks plus, it’ll improve the damage of yourHalo of Spores, which you can use as aReactionevery turn. Typically, enemies aren’t going to get to you because your zombies will block them so you shouldn’t take too much damage.
Because of this, you’ll be able to cast Spells from the back line while your zombies move up and attack your enemies. But one thing I would say is that I don’t recommend this Baldur’s Gate 3 Circle of Spores Druid Build for co-op play because you’ll end up controlling all these minions yourself or at least the ones you summoned directly from corpses. Players in your group won’t probably wait for you to take 5 or 6 turns every round.
The next BG3 Build we’re going to take a look at isCircle of the Moon Druid. I have 6 levels here and I’ve decided not to multiclass because of thePantherandOwlbear Wild Shapes, which you gain no matter which Subclass you take. But it’s really important if you’re focusing onWild Shapebecause these are very very strong.
You’ll gain an HP increase while you’re in Wild Shape form, making you more durable. There’s alsoPrimal Strike, which is going to allow you to make your attacks magical for the purposes of overcoming Physical Resistance inCombat. So if an enemy has Physical Resistance of some kind, your attacks will cut through that to deal full damage.
So there are a couple of ways you can play this Baldur’s Gate 3 Circle of the Moon Druid Build at the start of combat. You can either shift immediately with yourBonus Actionto enter the Wild Shape form and then go attack 2x because you’ll have Wild Strike at this point.
Or what you could do is throw out some sort ofConcentrationSpell such asSpike Growth,Moonbeam, orEntangle, enter Wild Shape using your Bonus Action, and then get ready for the next round where you’ll be able to attack. You could then use your Bonus Action forLunar Mendor something else. Keep in mind that you’ll have to maintain Concentration by makingConstitution Saving Throwswhen you get hit. Druids have a lot of Concentration Spells so being able to cast one while you’re fighting can be really nice.
When you have a group, you’re not the only target attacked at every round so you generally need to move forward by pressing the enemy with your Owl Bear or Panther over and over to keep the pressure up. Remember that once your health pool is gone, you’ll just have to shift back into your regular form so you don’t have to worry about dying. The worst case scenario is if you shapeshift with 2 charges left and you get pulled out of your form, you can enter the Wild Shape form again with a Bonus Action and then keep attacking. You’ll essentially get a lot of damage out of this Build.
For the last Build, I have 5 levels ofCircle of the Landand 1 level ofMonk, and the reason for this instead of taking 6 levels is that at Level 6, you basically gain the ability to move throughDifficult Terrainwithout beingSlowedby half your movement speed. And as a Baldur’s Gate 3 Circle of the Land Druid, you’re usually casting from the back line so you don’t really need to worry about this so much. The benefits that you gain from the Monk are more important than gaining that.
2 Ki points here are going to give you 2 uses ofFlurry of Blowsas a Bonus Action. This is nice if an enemy comes up to you and you want to deal some extra damage but you don’t want to use aSpell Slot.
YourWisdomwill also be added to yourArmor Classif you’re not wearingArmor. This can be really huge because, on a Druid, you tend to have a lot of Wisdom, particularly if you’re primarily Spellcasting like we are with Circle of the Land. You’ll probably have 18 or 20 Wisdom as you move through the game and that can add up to 5 Armor Class on top of what you already have from yourDexterity Modifier. You can also use aShieldto add more to your Armor Class to become a very, very tanky Druid with this setup.
Again, at this level, there’s no real reason to take Druid to 6 other than the difficult terrain although if you’re at Level 7, there might be more. But what I really want to do with this Build eventually is to go for 9 levels of Circle of the Land and then 3 levels of Monk.
That’s going to give you all the Circle of the LandDruid Spellsthat you can possibly get while gaining things from the Monk such asStep of the WindandPatient Defenseat Level 2. Those are really strong and you also gainUnarmored Movementso you can move faster if you’re not wearing Armor. This is good for positioning when casting Spells.
Also at Level 3, if you takeWay of the Four Elements Monk, you’ll get to pick some Spells you can use with your Ki that also makes use of your Wisdom Modifier to eventually gain even more Spellcasting. These will be replenished on aShort Restso you could probably lead with those in combat, save your Spell Slots, and then take a Short Rest in between encounters.
So that wraps up our 3 early-game Druid Builds. I hope you guys found this useful and I hope you can see why it’s not really great to multiclass a couple of Druid Subclasses early on, particularly at Level 6. Remember that at every odd level of the Circle of the Land Druid, pretty much up through Level 9, you’re going to gain more Spells, making Level 6 the best level to multiclass.
But if you were making this a Level 7 Build, you might just want to go all the way with Circle of the Land Druid. You can either take some Monk as you level up or wait until the end to take it. I think getting 1 level of Monk early on would be better, which would delay your later Spells by just a little bit, to gain the extra Armor Class from Wisdom because as a Circle of the Land Druid, you’re really going to crank up Wisdom to make sure that your Spells connect. Having a higher Wisdom also increases the amount of Prepared Spells that the Druid has.
As always, if you have further tips, please leave them in the comments below for other players for anything I might have missed. If you have questions, leave them there as well and I’ll get to them as soon as I can.
Stay tuned for more Baldur’s Gate 3 content.
Auberon
Writer at Fextralife. I really like vanilla ice cream.
