How to permanently lift the Shadow Curse in Baldur’s Gate 3

Baldur’s Gate 3 has a lot for you to partake in its massive world. One of these quests is the quest that lifts the Shadow Curse from the area you spend time in during the second Act of the game. It’s a rather long process that takes beating the entirety of Act 2, so here’s our guide on how to permanently lift the Shadow Curse in Baldur’s Gate 3.

How to permanently lift the Shadow Curse in Baldur’s Gate 3

The first thing you’re going to want to do is speak to Halsin in camp upon reaching Moonrise Towers in Act 2. When you speak to him, make sure to talk to him about the Shadow Curse itself, as this will start the quest that allows you to lift it permanently.

Screenshot by PC Invasion

The next step to lifting the Shadow Curse is actually something that circumvents us coming back here later, if you’re currently at Moonrise Towers, head just north-west of there to the House of Healing and we can get an item needed to wake Art Cullagh, which is the next step. When you get here, you’re going to want to head in and deal with Malus Thorm. Once you deal with him, loot his body to get the Battered Lute, this will be able to wake Art Cullagh and continue this quest.

Art Cullagh and the fight by the water

After you’re done in the House of Healing, and wake Art Cullagh, who you can find in the Last Light Inn, he’ll mention needing to see Halsin to talk to him about something, so go to camp and talk to Halsin and send him to Art Cullagh. Once they’re finished with their conversation, the next step to being able to lift the Shadow Curse in Baldur’s Gate 3 is to follow Halsin down to the waterside next to the Last Light Inn, where he will have to head into a portal while you defend it for a few rounds.

This fight can be very hard, and took me two tries to beat. My advice for this fight is to aim for the archers, with my party setup of my main character (Rogue), Shadowheart, Karlach, and Lae’zel, I couldn’t find a way of taking every enemy out in this fight. So I made sure the ranged damage to the portal was taken out, and it left the physical attackers with a distance to run before they could hit the portal, and it led to me winning the fight, barely. There’s probably more efficient ways of beating this fight, but this is what worked for me when I did this quest to lift the Shadow Curse in Baldur’s Gate 3.

Thaniel’s Shadow

After you complete this fight, Halsin will bring a person back from within the portal. Then Halsin will mention how he needs to find Thaniel’s shadow, which after a few speech options, gave me the marker on the map. I’m unsure whether this appears for everyone, so if it doesn’t, you can see the location on the map above. But once you have that objective go there, and talk to Thaniel’s Shadow.

I had Halsin in my party when I did this as it was thematic to the quest, but I’m unsure if that’s a necessary step, but he’s great in the upcoming fight that I had, so it’s worthwhile regardless. When you talk to Thaniel’s Shadow, there are a few options, but the one I did by selecting only the first option every time ended up in a fight with the Shadow in a dome guarded by “Mummy” and “Daddy” and other weak shadow creatures. Each enemy you destroy takes life off of the dome that Thaniel’s Shadow is in, meaning you can focus on them and not on the dome. This is a pretty easy fight, so I’d recommend doing this method if you can as it’s pretty quick.

The final step to permanently lift the Shadow Curse

Screenshot by PC Invasion

After this fight, Thaniel’s Shadow will talk to you, and then once again you can select the first option at every opportunity presented to you and he should return to Thaniel and then we’ll almost be done with permanently lifting the Shadow Curse in Baldur’s Gate 3. I then went to camp and spoke to Halsin and Thaniel, although I’m not sure whether this is a required step for completion of the quest, expecting the Shadow Curse to finally be lifted, but there was one final step, defeating Ketheric Thorm. This means completing Act 2 in its entirety. This can take a while, but upon leaving for the next area and Act 3, the Shadow Curse will be lifted and the quest completed.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is available for purchase on Steam.