Baldur’s Gate 3 includes a collection of potions called elixirs, which can be used to enhance your characters for a full adventuring day. Many of them can be made using ingredients found throughout the world, while others are only found as randomized treasure, but all are useful in some form or another. From providing damage resistance to preventing the negative effects of surprise rounds, each elixir has its perks, but only one can be active on a given character.

Thus, it’s important to recognize the elixirs that are better than others and which to rely on each day as you journey across the Sword Coast. There are so many elixirs available that, by BG3‘s second act, players should have a stash sizable enough to treat each member of their party after a long rest. Here are five elixirs that earn their keep within the party’s treasure hoar and five that are better left stoppered.

The Elixir Of Arcane Cultivation Falls Off Drastically

An Elixir That Quickly Gets Overshadowed

Starting off with the elixir of arcane cultivation, it’s important to say that this isn’t necessarily a bad potion, especially not at early levels. Drinking it provides an extra first-level spell slot for the drinker to use that day, which can be great if you need an extra cast of magic missile or shield.

The Elixir Of Cloud Giant Strength Is Great For Min-Maxxing Martial Characters

Players Who Like To Optimize Their Characters Should Look At This Potion

On the better side of things is the elixir of hill giant strength, which sets a character’s strength to 21 if it is naturally lower than that. 20 is the typical max for an ability score, and while 21 and 20 are effectively the same as far as rolls are concerned, this potion is excellent in the early and mid-game when players are unlikely to have maxed out their abilities.

There is a better version of this potion, the elixir of cloud giant strength, but it is much rarer and more challenging to make, meaning this is often the better option.

But it’s even better if players decide to have a character respec their stats at Withers and tank their strength, only to have them juice it each day with this potion. Doing so is admittedly against the role-playing elements of the game, but it does allow characters to use those ability score points to improve their dexterity and constitution while retaining a super-high strength. It’s a pretty neat strategy to make a character in the party far stronger than they would otherwise be, and there are enough of these potions to keep the racket going for a while

The Elixir Of Radiant Resistance Is The Worst Of These Defensive Brews

By The Time These Potions Appear, You Won’t Need Them

Baldur’s Gate 3 includes many resistance potions, each providing resistance to a certain damage type for a day. Not all of these are craftable, and in fact, some aren’t even guaranteed to show up in a given game. Of them, the potion of radiant resistance is probably the least useful, just because it isn’t super common for enemies to deal radiant damage.

The most notable radiant enemies are Minthara and Ketheric in BG3, both of which are fought before this elixir starts to appear in the game. Beyond that, there might be a few occasions where an enemy will summon a celestial or cast guiding bolt , but they are so few and far between that it’s hardly ever worth preparing by drinking this. The only other resistance potion that comes close to being as useless as this is the force elixir, but at least that can help players to survive smokepowder explosions.

The Elixir Of Viciousness Is Perfect For A Crit-Fishing Build

A Good Choice For Certain Characters

The elixir of viciousness is a favorite for fighters and rogues of higher levels, increasing the chance for a critical hit by five percent. The effect can stack with other crit-improving features, meaning it can combine with gear like the dead shot bow and subclass abilities like the champion’s improved critical. Players could reach the point where they are getting critical damage closer to a quarter of the time.

This elixir even works for spellcasters, and warlocks using spell sniper or eldritch blast may find it especially useful. It only fails to help if a character mainly uses spells requiring saving throws rather than attack rolls. All in all, it’s an excellent option for most characters to swig down before a fight.

The Elixir Of Barkskin Is Just Not Very Good

This Potion’s AC Enhancement Is Not Worth Much

The elixir of Barkskin has the effects of the spell of the same name, only without the concentration requirement. It sets the drinker’s armor class to 16 for the rest of the day, the equivalent of a chain mail shirt or scale mail with a shield. Getting a boosted AC is excellent, but for most characters, this will be lower than what their AC could naturally be.

Characters that wear heavy or medium armor or use a shield will almost certainly be able to match or beat a 16 AC with ease, and even wizards can cast mage armor to easily reach a 15 or 16. Odds are that this elixir will do nothing to help, especially once the party is at a higher level with better magical gear. It’s almost always better to find something else to drink rather than consume this elixir.

The Elixir Of Vigilance Trivializes Certain Encounters

The Alert Feat In A Bottle

Getting surprised and ambushed can be deadly in Baldur’s Gate 3, which is why features that help characters avoid it are so powerful. Those include feats like alert and the effects of the elixir of vigilance, which makes a creature immune to being surprised and gain a +5 bonus to their initiative rolls.

That means that not only will your characters not lose a turn when being ambushed, but they may also go before their ambushers, turning the tables on them. Granted, on repeat playthroughs, players may not get ambushed as often. But there are still several unavoidable surprise attack fights that may spell death, and this elixir helps prevent that.

The Elixir Of Darkvision Is Largely Useless

Dark Areas Don’t Pose Too Big Of A Problem In Baldur’s Gate 3

Next is the elixir of Darkvision, which, just like the Darkvision spell, is almost completely useless. It gives a character Darkvision if they would not normally have it, which is already a big “if” since nearly half of BG3‘s playable races in the game possess the feature already. And even in the event that creatures don’t have Darkvision, torches or the light spell can alleviate the problems that nonmagical darkness can cause.

And honestly, even when not using either of those things, dark areas don’t pose a huge problem. Most things are still quite visible on screen, and there are enough light sources around to activate that this issue is often trivialized.

The Elixir Of Battlemage’s Power Is Incredibly Strong On Casters

Magic Users Are Best Served By This Potion

The elixir of battlemage’s power grants three stacks of arcane acuity in BG3, one of the best stackable buffs in the game. Each stack on a character gives them a +1 bonus to their spell attack rolls and spell save DC, so for three stacks, that is a truly enormous upgrade. Usually, with arcane acuity, stacks would naturally go down when the character is hit or ends their turn. But with this elixir, three stacks are replenished at the beginning of each turn.

This means that the elixir can stack with other sources of arcane acuityand keep the buff going for an entire day. There are high-level magic items that are less powerful than this potion, which can crafted readily with the right ingredients. It’s one of the best buffs in the game, and every caster should take advantage of it.

The Tadpole Elixir Does More Harm Than Good

The Only Elixir That Actively Hinders Its Drinker

At the very least, most elixirs don’t cause harm to the creature that drinks them. The tadpole elixir is the one exception to that rule because this elixir’s negative effects can often outweigh its positives. Drinking this potion gives creatures disadvantage on constitution, wisdom, and intelligence saving throws, meaning they will often fail rolls to avoid the negative effects of spells.

Initially, consumption of the potion does provide a new and somewhat useful tadpole power, but it is often better to drink it and then have a long rest to get rid of the negative effects because playing with this elixir active is not great.

As for what it does to help, it’s not much. After using a tadpole power, the drinker gains advantage on attack rolls for three turns. That’s all. It would be one thing if this elixir supplied extra uses of tadpole powers or replenished them more often, but the advantage for three rounds after using an action to use a tadpole power is just awful. This elixir is hardly worth using, even without its penalty to saving throws, which makes it insultingly bad.

The Elixir Of Bloodlust Is Powerful At Every Level

Combat Success Begets Success With This Potion

Finally, the best elixir in the game for any class is the elixir of Bloodlust. The effects of this elixir are quite simple: upon killing a creature, the drinker of this elixir gains five temporary hit points and an extra action that turns. The temp HP is negligible, but the extra action is crazy, opening up massive potential for increased damage. Martial characters could use that action to dash or to take an extra attack, while casters could throw out a whole other spell.

Things like the potion of speed are valued so highly because of the extra action they grant, but unlike that potion, this elixir has no downsides. As long as your character is constantly killing on the battlefield, they will constantly be gaining more actions. It can create a cyclical loop of combat effectiveness, as having more actions will inevitably result in higher lethality, making this elixir the best in Baldur’s Gate 3.