What great hero doesn’t know the importance of strategy (except for Minsc, of course, who a space hamster purely commands)? But for us, we’ll need to exert a bit of clever thinking for the Chamber of Strategy. Here’s how to easily solve the Chamber of Strategy puzzle in Baldur’s Gate 3.
How to Get to the Chamber of Strategy
You’ll find the Chamber of Strategy in the Wyrmway after saving Grand Duke Ravengard from the Iron Throne as a part of Wyll’s The Blade of Frontiers quest. Ravengard will have informed you about the dragon Ansur and tasked you with finding the entrance to the dragon’s lair.
During Wyll’s companion quest, the Blade of Frontiers has a difficult choice to make, and it may result in the Duke’s untimely demise. If this is the case, there’s no need to worry about losing access to the Wyrmway. You don’t actually need the Legend of Ansur book that the Duke hands you to find the dragon’s lair and take part in its various trials such as the Chamber of Strategy; however, the book may help you with the many challenges ahead.
If you have not yet reached the Wyrmway, the entrance is in the Wyrm’s Rock Prison. When you enter the prison, turn left right before the cells. At the end of this stone hallway, you’ll see two dragon heads facing each other in a slight nook on the left-hand wall.
You’ll need to damage the heads with a lightning spell or a lightning arrow, and then the entrance should materialize. Follow the path, and you’ll come to a circle that branches off in several directions. The Chamber of Strategy is through the door directly to the right of the large center-most door you’re trying to enter.
Baldur’s Gate 3: How to Solve the Chamber of Strategy in the Wyrmway (BG3)
Speak to the statue of Balduran in the Chamber of Strategy, and he’ll instruct you to take the Black King Piece in two turns. There’s an entire chessboard here, and you’re meant to move the pieces to capture the king.
But what if there was a much easier way to do things?
Examine the Black King Piece, and you’ll notice that it has resistance to everything… except lightning damage. It takes double lightning damage.
You know what that means. Bring one or two warlocks and have them use Witch Bolt on the Black King piece. Scrolls are also fine, so long as they’re enough damage to take down the Black King Piece in two turns. It doesn’t have that much health, so you should be okay.
To do this effectively, you’ll need to enter Turn Base mode. To do this, look at your hotbar at the bottom of the screen if you’re on PC, or press L2 to enter the character menu if you’re on PS5. You’ll see a gold circle with an hourglass in it. Press it, and you’ll automatically enter turn base mode.
This is necessary because if you do it outside of turn base mode, your character will lose concentration and stop the spell, thus allowing the Black King Piece to recover its health. Keeping it in Turn Base mode will mean you can hit it with every scroll or spell caster in your party with time to spare.
How to Get a Checkmate in the Chamber of Strategy Puzzle
So, you want to use your noodle to solve the Chamber of Strategy puzzle rather than brute-forcing it. That’s admirable (even if you are just trying to look up the answer). But there are several different variations of the Chamber of Strategy puzzle, and the one you get will be random. Therefore, we can’t tell you exactly how to checkmate the black king piece. But we can give you a general idea to steer you in the right direction.
If you have Gale with you in your party, you can talk to him while in front of the chessboard for some expert help. He’ll tell you the exact moves you should take to checkmate the Chamber of Strategy puzzle.
Chamber of Strategy Rules
The Chamber of Strategy will give you three chances to get a checkmate in two turns. If the piece you move on your first turn will not result in a checkmate on the second turn, the board will reset and knock off one of your three chances. So, if you move a piece on your first turn, and the board doesn’t reset, you made a good move and can comfortably contemplate your second move.
If you’re unfamiliar with Chess, checking means putting your opponent’s king at risk (the black king in the Chamber of Strategy’s case). When this happens, your opponent can only make a move to get their king out of check. Otherwise, the game is forfeit.
Checkmating means putting your opponent’s king in a threatened position it can’t get out of. Your ultimate goal here is to get a checkmate, which you’ll do by using your pieces’ specific movement pathways to threaten the black king piece and block its movement.
If you are unfamiliar with each piece’s movements in Chess, BG3 will help you by highlighting on the board all the directions your selected piece can move.
Chamber of Strategy Puzzle Solution
If you have a queen you can use on your board; you’ll want to pay close attention to it because a queen can move in any direction.
So, the queen has plenty of avenues to block the black king’s path. In the Chamber of Strategy puzzle variation we had, we needed to move our queen to first check the king and then move it again directly in front of the king to checkmate it.
Just try to visualize all the pathways of the pieces on the board (select each piece without moving it to give yourself actual visual queues) and which pathway can be moved to a position that threatens the king. If you find a piece that can check the king, you should take it, forcing the king to defend himself.
The second move should become much more obvious after that. You shouldn’t have too many pieces you actually need to fuss with, considering you’re only making two movements. After a few minutes of staring at the board, you’ll likely solve the puzzle and can boast you beat the Chamber of Strategy with your ol’ noggin.
All Wyrmway Trials in BG3
Now that BG3’s Chamber of Strategy has been vanquished, it might be time to tackle the Chamber of Justice or Chamber of Courage, depending on your challenges. Each of these chambers represents the traits an ideal ruler should have: the traits that Balduran himself was said to have before he vanished from the public eye forever.
Here are all the Wyrmway Trials in Baldur’s Gate 3, with quick solutions for each:
