How to free Shadowheart (woman in the pod) in Baldur’s Gate 3

When you first begin your adventure in Baldur’s Gate 3, you will be on a nautiloid ship where you just had a tadpole crawl up your eye. At some point, you and a Githyanki character will escape and eventually stumble across another character who is stuck in their pod. This character will cry out to you and beg you to find a way to free them.

If you stopped to talk to the character, you will learn their name is Shadowheart and you might be compelled to free them to start your Baldur’s Gate 3 journey.

For those so inclined, you need to find a way to release the pod and let Shadowheart. If you don’t, then Shadowheart will be lost forever but if you do, your party will gain an extremely useful Cleric. I know I have used Shadowheart’s healing abilities more times than I count just throughout Act 1.

Freeing Shadowheart from the pod in Baldur’s Gate 3

First off, you need to advance past Shadowheart’s pod and go through the sphincter past her location. Through this sphincter, you will find another room. Immediately on your right, there will be a dead thrall — loot their body to find a Gold Key, but don’t turn back. Keep going forward all the way to the end of the room and find another dead thrall on the ground.

Once again, loot their body and you will find an Eldritch Rune. Pick this up and make your way back to Shadowheart. Directly to the right of Shadowheart, there is a console you can touch. Interact with it, and you will be prompted to insert the Eldritch Rune into its socket. After this happens, you can do one of two things.

The first is to use an Arcana check to bypass having to use the rune at all. Wizards and Sorcerers will be most apt at passing this check. If you don’t want to rely on Arcana, then you can touch the console, and a dice roll will occur. This dice roll has a very easy difficulty check, so you should be able to pass it first try. Once you do, the console will start humming to life, and Shadowheart’s pod will be free, allowing you to speak to her and have her join your party in Baldur’s Gate 3.

Related: How many endings are there in Baldur’s Gate 3?

As a side note, you can use the Gold Key you found on the first dead thrall to open a locked reliquary sitting on a table across from Shadowheart’s pod.