The Daughter of Darkness is one of the best companion storylines in Baldur’s Gate 3 with some memorable moments and engaging quests. One of those quests is the Gauntlet of Shar trials. The Soft Step Trial section of this quest is quite challenging and will put your character’s skills to the test along with your patience and tolerance for the game.
As the name suggests, the Soft Step Trial is a stealth challenge, and if you’re not a fan of that approach, it’s going to be tough. Here’s a walkthrough to help you beat the puzzle.
How to Pass the Soft Step Trial in Baldur’s Gate 3
This trial needs you to sneak through a maze filled with traps. If that wasn’t enough, you also have to sneak past shadows that upon detection will teleport you back to the start of the maze. As fun as all this may sound, you’ll also have to be wary of several saving throws failing, which can trigger menacing traps. There are also several levers in the maze that are meant to change the layout of the maze, so it is best not to fiddle with them.
The Baldur’s Gate 3 Soft Step Trial is a solo mission intended for Shadowheart, but you can choose any character in your party to take the challenge. The character just needs to have high enough perception and dexterity ability scores to pass the saving throws and disarm checks. Given the challenges involved in this trial, it is best to choose Astarion unless your main character is a master of stealth. So, you can ungroup him for the quest. He has to offer his blood at the altar at the entrance to proceed with the challenge.
As soon as you enter the maze you are prone to be within the line of sight of a shadow creature. The shadows have a specific line of sight which is only triggered when they are facing you. You can see their line of sight represented in red.
Patience is vital here. The shadow near the entrance is in the adjacent room to the left. You can wait out the line of sight before proceeding to the left into yet another small corridor.
As you enter the corridor, if you pass a perception saving throw, you can notice the grease trap in the area. This area is also patrolled by a shadow moving horizontally toward the end. Wait out the shadow and disarm the trap at the end before proceeding to the right. As you pass the corridor, you enter a room that is in direct line of fire of a flaming device, which shoots fire ball in timed successions.
Passing the room will lead you to a staircase to the left, which leads to a lever with a level 10 dexterity check trap. Disarming the trap and unlocking a gate will lead you to an idol of Shar. You can collect an Umbral Gem. Once you’ve done that the Platter on which the gem was placed glows due a transpositional flux. You can interact with it to get back to the start of the maze, essentially finishing the quest.
An alternate route is to head to the right of the maze from the start and sneak past a shadow to access a button at the far end, which will open up the wall. It will take you directly to the fireball machine corridor and then the stairs, thereby bypassing the grease traps. Beware of the shadows in the area though.
That’s how you can beat the Soft Step Trial puzzle in Baldur’s Gate 3. To make your playthrough more interesting, you could consider using Baldur’s Gate 3 mods. Since we are on the topic of puzzle solutions, make sure to check out our guides to the Stone Disc Moon Door puzzle, Chamber of Justice puzzle, and Silent Library puzzle for breezing through BG3.
