Throughout your adventures, you may have picked up a broken Moon Lantern and wondered if there’s any way to repair it or put it to use. We’ll show you how you can fix the broken Moon Lantern in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Where to Find a Broken Moonlantern
You can find several broken moon lanterns throughout your journey in BG3. You’ll likely pick one up off of True Soul Nere’s corpse in the Grymforge, but you’ll find far more broken moon lanterns than you’ll know what to do with on the very table you’ll use to fix it within Balthazar’s study in Moonrise Towers. Of course, in order to get to Moonrise Towers, you’ll first need to find a working moon lantern, obtained as your naturally progress through the main story, to traverse Act 2’s Shadow Lands.
Can You Fix the Broken Moon Lantern in Baldur’s Gate 3?
Yes, you can fix the broken moon lantern in BG3, but it won’t become a fully working moon lantern like you might expect. Instead, when you fix the broken moon lantern, it will become a Shadow Lantern. This unique lantern won’t actually dispel darkness as a normal moon lantern would but rather grants the user access to a unique summoning spell: Conjure Shadow Lantern Wraith, a level 6 Necromancy spell that summons a Shadow Wraith until your next Long Rest.
To fix the broken moon lantern in BG3, you’ll need to unlock Balthazar’s hidden room on the first floor of Moonrise Towers and use Gale to merge the broken moon lantern with a dead pixie. You can also fix the broken moon lantern yourself if you can pass a DC30 Arcana check, but Gale will still need to be in your party for you to interact with the ritual circle used to fix the broken moon lantern.
Once you get to Moonrise Towers, you can follow the steps below to fix the broken Moon lantern:
- Head through Moonrise Towers until you reach Balthazar’s Study on the first floor. To gain access, you’ll need to lockpick a door (X:-131 Y:-184) by succeeding a DC15 Sleight of Hand check. There are guards patrolling the area, so you’ll want to make sure you’re hiding before you lockpick and do it during the brief window where the guard is out of the room.
- Locate the western bookshelf at coordinates (X: -145, Y: -170) and interact with the top right-most protruding bookshelf labeled “Musty Tomes.” If you’re playing on console, you may need to hold down the interact button to access the bookshelf through the Search Results menu, as the bookshelf is located just a tad higher than your cursor can reach. Make sure this is the only bookshelf that you interact with in this room. If you pull any other protruding books, poison gas will spread through the room and you won’t be able to use the altar.
- Once the Ancient Altar beside the bookshelves clicks, pick up the heart on the nearby table or from the corpse of Balthazar’s dead apprentice, and insert the heart into the altar.
- Enter the secret room, pick up the dead pixies and broken moon lantern on the table, and interact with the ritual circle on the table.
- Gale will talk a bit about shadow magic and mention some trepidation about upsetting Mystra. You’ll want to choose to either encourage him to fix the broken Moon Lantern or opt to do it yourself. If you have Gale fix the broken Moon Lantern, he’ll be able to do it without needing to pass any checks. If you choose to fix the broken Moon Lantern yourself, you’ll need to get through Gale’s protests then pass a DC30 Arcana check.
- Place the broken Moon Lantern and dead pixie inside of the combination menu. Despite there being two dead pixies and several broken moon lanterns on the table, you’ll only be able to do this once.
Alternatively, instead of fixing the broken moon lantern, you can have Gale destroy the ritual circle, granting him a temporary buff, Mystra’s Benevolence, which gives him advantage on Concentration checks until the next Long Rest. But there’s no drawbacks to fixing the broken moon lantern in BG3, so you’ll get far more out of it than destroying the ritual circle.
You can also click the images below to see each part of this process.
Once you finish these steps, you’ll successfully fix the broken Moon Lantern in BG3 and have your very own Shadow Lantern. If you were hoping for a fully working Moon Lantern to fight off the shadow curse, the Shadow Lantern unfortunately won’t do the job. It’s made of the very shadows you’re trying to fight off.
Chances are, you’ll likely stumble across a working moon lantern by the time you get to Moonrise Towers, but in case you don’t have one, you can read on below to find out how to get a working moon lantern in BG3.
Where to Find Working Moon Lanterns in Baldur’s Gate 3
The Moonlantern is a crucial quest item that you can find in Moonrise Towers and Grymforge. This item is part of the Lift the Shadow Curse quest, which you’ll get after getting to the Last Light Inn. To enter the Shadowlands, you’ll need a way to resist the Shadow Curse, which gives you necrotic damage per turn—and that’s where a Moonlantern comes in handy.
The Moon lantern only becomes quest relevant once you meet Jaheira at the Last Light Inn. You’ll receive the quest to fix it so that you can resist the curse.
Here are the Moon Lanterns we’ve found in our playthroughs. So far, we’ve found three:
- Defeat Kar’niss and loot his body or convince him to give you his.
- Search Balthazar’s room in Moonrise Towers for a Moonlantern.
- Side with Nere to get a working Moon lantern. If you kill Nere, his Moon lantern becomes a broken Moon lantern.
During your travels in the Shadow-Cursed Lands, you’ll initially have to use torches, spells, or other light sources to venture through the area without taking damage. While this is effective at first, you’ll eventually have to find other means to protect your party against the curse.
Once you’ve spent time in this area and met the Harpers, you’ll find two situations to pick up a Moon Lantern. The first is during a fight against the drider Kar’niss, while the second requires you to visit Moonrise Towers and search Balthazar’s room on the main floor. You can also pick up a Moon Lantern late in Act 1 from Nere. You can loot a broken one from his dead body, or you can get a working one if you decide to side with him.
Should You Free the Pixie From the Moon Lantern?
Here’s the short answer: yes, you should free the pixie from the Moon Lantern. So you may have noticed some screaming coming from your functioning Moon Lantern. This is because there’s a pixie inside, and now you have to decide whether you’ll free it or not. You can check out our full guide on this very situation.
If you free the pixie from the Moon Lantern, it will give you a blessing that will allow you to explore the Shadowlands unhindered. It will also help you out again later on in the game. If you don’t release the pixie, you can use the lantern to explore the Shadowlands, but you’ll be limited by the radius of its lighting. What you choose is ultimately up to you, but you’ll definitely get more out of freeing the pixie.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is available on PC and PlayStation 5, and soon on Xbox Series X|S. To learn more about the game, check out how to use the Adamantine Forge in BG3, or click the game tag below to discover our growing content list.
