Baldur’s Gate 3 Iron Throne Rescue Everyone Guide

This is how I rescued all the prisoners in Iron Throne on tactician difficulty. I decided to compile my tips in a guide to help out those who struggle with this mission, as it can be admittedly painful. I have tried it several times using slightly different approaches, and they all worked out, so I believe there is plenty of space for your own approach. However, my tips will hopefully help, enjoy!

Baldur’s Gate 3 Iron Throne Rescue Everyone Guide

Mission Set-Up

It goes without saying that being level 12, long-rested, and in full party, is most ideal for being successful with this mission. It is absolutely crucial to have high-mobility spells, items and abilities on whoever you choose to bring, here are the ones I found highly useful or even necessary (and used them all myself.

SPELLS

• Arcane Gate: I consider this a must – if positioned strategically (outlined further in this guide), it will be your main mean of escape
• Misty Step: Another must-have – a bonus action giving you heaps of extra movement, have it on as many people as possible (being their spell/feature/given from an item)
• Dimension Door: Similar to Misty Step, but an action (however, you can take another person with you)
• Haste: Another must-have – give this to your most mobile characters (or everyone if you have means to do that)
• Any summons: The more, the better – use summoned creatures as meat shields as your characters will not have much time to deal with Sahuagin enemies
• Other: Anything that enhances jumping (I used Lae’zel’s psionic jump on her), Freedom of Movement, etc. (however, I did not need those)

ITEMS
Again, anything that boosts movement, e.g., jumping potions, potions of speed, haste spores, etc. – if not using for your characters, it may be still necessary to throw these at the prisoners to help them escape. Equip any items that give you extra action/movement economy features or spells (Boots/Amulets with Misty Step, Boots with Long Strider/Fly/Click Heels, etc.).

PARTY MEMBERS
This of course depends on how you built your party – here is the composition of my party members and their builds for you to get an idea:

• My main character (Daegal): pure fiend warlock (pact of chain)
• Lae’zel: pure battle master fighter (any character with action surge will benefit here, but my Lae’zel also hits like a truck and is highly mobile thanks to her psionic abilities and items I gave her)
• Astarion: pure assassin rogue (if dashing is your friend here, which it is, then bonus action dashing is your best friend)
• Gael: pure divination wizard (I think at least a single wizard/sorcerer is a must)

Basically, you want characters that can do as many actions and have as much movement speed per turn as possible, but I would also recommend at least one beefy character (mine was Lae’zel) – this character can THROW the prisoners if they struggle to move fast enough. Not only is this hilarious, but also very effective and a hastened strong character can do this several times per turn, including using HELP action to get them standing up after throwing them (since throwing makes them prone – it also does damage, but only tiny amount).

Buffing up

Here is a summary of what I did before entering the prison by clicking on the submarine hatch:
Summons: First, summon everything you possibly can – for me the following (for the mummies, this needs to be done prior to entering the submersible as you need corpses):

• Daegal summoned an imp familiar, 4 ghouls (Danse Macabre from Necromancy of Thay), mummy (Create Undead is my mystic arcanum), water elemental (eldritch invocation I picked)
• Astarion summoned a mummy (Create Undead from an item)
• Gael summoned a water elemental and a crow familiar

Get your spell slots back now: if you can, get the spell slots you just may have used to summon creatures back by using Gael’s arcane recovery and items that give you similar features (such as Arcane Battery)

Enter turn-base mode and cast spells/consume items: entering turn-base mode ensures you do not waste duration of spells and items you are about to use. I did the following:

• Daegal hastened Lae’zel (using the spell from an item)
• Gael hastened himself
• Lae’zel used her psionic jump ability
• Astarion did not do anything

Note: my Astarion and Lae’zel can both fly (items), but I was actually not long-rested, so this was depleted and I could not activate it. Still, I succeeded without it, but use it if you can.

Executing the Mission

Here is the map from Fextralife – the positions of some NPCs are slightly different (the screenshot has been clearly taken after getting som prisoners moving), so I indicated the starting position for those by arrows:

I do not remember who did EXACTLY what on which turn, but generally I proceeded as follows:

TURN 1

• Astarion was the first in initiative – down the ladder and immediately killing a sahuagin standing right there (I suggest getting rid of this one – it is easy, and everyone will be running here so you cannot ignore this enemy). Then rushing towards section A in the picture (he did not have an action left to do the lever for the prison nearby – there are two locked prisoners in this middle section, but deal with these at the end when coming back from elsewhere, it only takes one action for these prisoners to save themselves). He reached the top lever of section A using Dimension Door (item), but had no action left to interact with it.
• Lae’zel – down the ladder, action 1 to interact with the lever in the middle section next to the corridor leading to section A (contrary to what I wrote above – you can do this one now or later), then had enough movement (from Haste and jumping) to reach section A enough to get rid of 2 sahuagins here with action 2 (I recommend killing these – she used action surge to eliminate both immediately).
• Gael – down the ladder, then action 1 to cast ARCANE GATE (portal 1 right next to the ladder, portal 2 as far as you can reach from here towards section A), then start rushing towards section C (even with Haste he could only get to section C, but could not do anything yet as action 2 was used for dashing). I also sent all undead summons and familiars to follow Gael, since section C is where the most minions will be spawning and you want to keep them there!
• Daegal – down the ladder, then start rushing towards section B (followed by both elementals) and start killing the sahuagin champion (both enemies here must be killed).

TURN 2

• Astarion released prisoners from the top cell (prisoners will use the arcane gate), then started rushing back to the middle section.
• Lae’zel released prisoners from the bottom cell (prisoners will use the arcane gate), then started rushing back to the middle section.
• Gael released a Gondian from the cell in section C (leave the undead horde hanging in section C), then helped the lady strapped to the chair in section C (action 1), then ran from section C towards where Omeluum was, Misty Step-ed as close to the door as possible, interacted with the lever to open the door (action 2), and had enough movement to go inside, grab the Mind Flayer Jar, and stand next to Omeluum. He did this all without Sahuagin champion that roams the corridor noticing, but if it does notice you, ignore it. Also, ignore all that comes after rescuing the prisoners if you do not have Omeluum there and just start heading back to the middle section.
• Daegal with the elementals finished off both sahuagins in section B, then rushed towards the cells but did not have enough resources to do anything else.

TURN 3

• Astarion at this point was not much help anymore, so I just got him back to the submersible through arcane gate (forgetting about the second still locked cell in the middle section – I did it in the last turn, but it is better to do it now).
• Lae’zel used all her movement and actions to reach section B (also going through arcane gate) to assist there in the next turns.
• Gael freed Omeluum – on his upcoming turn, I used Omeluum’s spell to teleport himself and Gael back to the submersible. Gael remained there, while Omeluum moved down the ladder and started rushing towards section B. By now, the only enemies left should be in section C and your undead horde and familiars should keep them occupied there. Also, all prisoners from the middle section and sections A and C should be now in safety (except for one in the middle I kept forgetting about lol).
• Daegal opened both cells of section B (Duke and prisoners), then threw potion of speed at the Duke, then started rushing back to the middle section.

TURN 4

• Lae’zel threw potion of speed at both prisoners in section B, then THREW the gnome prisoner as far towards the middle section as possible, then rushed towards her and helped her standing up, then did this one more time (I almost died laughing). Then she used the rest of her movement to start heading back to section B.
• Duke’s turn – leave the cell, if you had Wyll break his pact with Mizora, she will show up now, trying to kill the Duke by spawning spiders around him and commanding him to kneel. Do not worry, spiders cannot hurt the Duke – just use jumping and dashing to get Duke as close to the middle section as possible. Also, both elementals were still in section B dealing with the spiders anyway.
• Omeluum interacted with the lever to release the last prisoner in the middle section (the one I kept forgetting about, after reading this guide you will not make the same mistake so you will not have to worry about it), then rushed towards section B.
• Daegal kept rushing towards the middle section, but could not reach the ladder.

LAST TURN

• Lae’zel THREW the last remaining prisoner closer to the ladder and helped him standing up, then climbed to safety.
• Duke climbed to safety, at this point all the NPCs are safe.
• Omeluum could not reach Daegal (his movement speed is crap), so just teleported himself to safety.
• Daegal could not reach the ladder, so he blew up, but that is OK since you do not have to rescue your own characters and they will just respawn at the beach in Baldur’s Gate. Mission accomplished.

Conclusion

You can see that even after making mistakes on tactician difficulty, I still managed to pull this off. If you try to avoid these mistakes (do not forget about prisoners lol and head to iron Throne long-rested), you will have even easier time. Remember, your own party does not have to get back to the submersible, so if you do not have as many summons as I did, just use your characters to fight sahuagins (or more specifically keep them occupied so they do not start attacking the prisoners). I hope this guide helps those who struggle with this mission. Cheers!