We're well into the "absolutely absurd challenge runs" phase of Baldur's Gate 3's life as a popular videogame, and this one is, well, minimal. In its own way. YouTuber Bouch wanted to know if you can beat Baldur's Gate 3 without a race or class, which is to say: Armed with nothing but an intricate, deep knowledge of Baldur's Gate 3's plot, structure, and game world.
How do you do that? Well, it starts with the magic of modding. You mod in a race that's just, you know, nothing. No bonuses for being an elf or a dwarf or whatever. Then you mod in a class that's just... also nothing. No magic spells. No barbarian rage. No especially stabby sword thrusts, because the sad no-class can't even use weapon special attacks. That leaves you with very, very little to see your very normal self to victory over world-shaking evils: Mostly just exploitable tools and innate spells of magic items you find around the game world.
Turns out that just fiddling with your magic items is enough to save the world. (And eating plenty of mind flayer tadpoles.)
That really is pretty much how Bouch pulls it off. Though a couple lucky NPC spellcasts come in handy, and there's a lot of just, you know, pushing people off of ledges while hiding. Oh, those and exploiting an absolute shedload of silly speedrunner exploits to leap through walls and across chasms and skip various really, really hard fights.
"This one was honestly easier than I thought it would be," said Bouch, "especially compared to the last one I did."
The last one? That was apparently replacing every enemy in the game with a copy of a rather hard boss: the visage of the death god Myrkul.
Bouch's channel description is "I play games in dumb ways." To which I say, yep, you do. You play games in silly ways. I have no idea what inspired this playthrough, but I sure am glad someone did it.
