You need a healer.

First Published October 12, 2023, 08:33

Shadowheart is probably the very first companion that you'll come across in Baldur's Gate 3. Unless you've dramatically messed up at some stage in the tutorial, she'll show up as you're waking up on the beach and you'll be able to recruit her to your cause. But with so many options for her as a cleric, you'll be forgiven for feeling rather overwhelmed by the whole thing. That's where we come in with an explanation of the best path to take Shadowheart on as people who have beaten the game eight times, so strap in.

Table of Contents

Best Shadowheart Build

Best Subclass

The best subclass for Shadowheart (or Shart, if you're so inclined) is easily the Life Domain. You want to spec Shadowheart specifically into healing just because she's easily your most powerful option, but you will need to wait until Withers has joined your camp in order to respec the character from Trickery to the Life Domain.

The Life Domain specializes in healing above all else, so don't rely on Shadowheart to output a huge amount of damage against your enemies. Instead, keep her in the periphery of a battle with spells prepared to boost you and your allies when you're going down. 

Best Feats

• Durable - You want your healer to be able to stay up regardless of how many hits to the face they take. Durable increases your Constitution by 1 and makes it so that you regain full hit points every time you take a Short Rest.
• Heavily Armoured - You gain Armour Proficiency with Heavy Armour and your Strength increases by 1. Similar to Durable, this increases your survivability a considerable amount.
• Mage Slayer - Occasionally enemies will get extremely close to you, so having Mage Slayer means that you can stop them from casting spells by attacking them and hopefully breaking their concentration.
• War Caster - You want to be able to keep your spells going regardless of what hits you, and War Caster helps with this by giving you advantage on Saving Throws to maintain Concentration.

Best Spells

At level twelve you want the following spells equipped to Shadowheart:

• Guiding Bolt
• Shield Of Faith
• Healing Word
• Inflict Wounds
• Heal
• Spiritual Weapon
• Warding Bond
• Hold Person
• Mass Healing Word
• Freedom of Movement
• Flame Strike
• Planar Ally
• Hero's Feast

You can fill the remaining spell slots with whatever spells you favor, but these are the ones you should absolutely have.

Shadowheart Proficiencies 

• Light Crossbows
• Shortbows
• Hand Crossbows
• History
• Religion
• Insight
• Medicine

Best Equipment

By the endgame, you want to be using the following equipment for Shadowheart:

• Helldusk Armour
• The Reviving Hands
• Helldusk Boots
• Amulet of Greater Health
• The Blood of Lathander
• Viconia's Walking Fortress

A lot of this equipment you can't get until you hit Act 3 of the game, so until then just use whatever you can get your hands on, but specifically try and use items that increase your Constitution. As previously mentioned, your healer isn't exactly going to be any good at healing if they're dead, so you want them to be the last person standing in any given situation.

Make sure that you're backing up Shadowheart with a melee companion that can protect her from the bigger hits, and a ranged companion that can keep people as far away as possible. If somebody gets too close to Shadowheart and there's nobody there to help her, then she might go down quite quickly if you haven't specced him correctly or if you're in the early game. 

Written by Ryan Easby

Ryan is a freelancer, writing for sites such as Fanbyte, PCGamesN, RetroDodo & more. He’s also been featured in the Daily Star, giving a five-star review to Midnight Suns. When he’s not playing a Kaizo Mario hack or replaying a Pokemon game, you can find him engrossed in a single-player story title like Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy VII Remake. If he’s not playing a game, he’s probably unraveling the timeline of a comic book.

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