How to Save the Distressed Patient in Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3)

If you go roaming during Baldur’s Gate 3’s second act, you’ll stumble across the House of Healing, a former hospital whose inhabitants have been transformed into the living dead. Well, not quite all. There’s one living patient left. Unfortunately, they’re strapped to an operating table at the mercy of an undead surgeon. So if you’re wondering just how to save the distressed patient in Baldur’s Gate 3, I’ve got the answer.

To Save the Distressed Patient You Need Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 1

You can save the distressed patient as long as you’ve got the patched version of Baldur’s Gate 3. Before patch 1, you couldn’t save them, no matter what you did. And if you’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 offline, never updating it, that may still be the case.

So, first, you need to make sure the platform you’re playing on, PC or console, has the latest patch. If you’re online, you should be prompted to install the patch, or it may even have downloaded in the background. Once you’ve done that, you can get to saving the distressed patient.

Here’s How to Free the Distressed Patient

The simplest way to free the distressed patient is to attack the surgeon, Malus Thorm, before you speak to him. This will give you an advantage in combat, particularly if you use ranged attacks to shoot at him from the raised balcony.

If you talk to him, certain dialogue options have him tearing at the patient’s eyes (or eye sockets, it’s tough to tell), which can’t be pleasant. And while you can talk Thorm into letting his nurses kill him, he’ll first murder the distressed patient.

Don’t use any area effect weapons on the surgery area. This may seem obvious, but I threw a fire bomb, setting fire to the patient. Malus Thorm is a tough fight, so you might have to save scum a little.

Once you’ve killed Thorm, you can take the key off his body and then, when you interact with the distressed patient, free them. Pre-patch, the Knock spell also let you unlock the restraints, so that may also work post-patch. But given that the key is right there, that seems like a waste of magic.

When you’ve freed the patient, they’ll flee, running around frantically. I tried following them, adding to their trauma, but they just vanished in front of my eyes. Given what’s been done to them, and the fact they’ve just run into the Shadow-Cursed Lands, I don’t think it’ll end well for them.

That’s how to save the distressed patient in Baldur’s Gate 3. And if you want to know what else Baldur’s Gate 3 patch 1 does, here are the patch notes. 

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