If you want to play Baldur’s Gate 3 by smashing everything in front of you, like I’m trying to do with my Half-Orc Fighter, you will eventually run into Sturdy structures that seem to take no damage at all. It feels like they’re indestructible. But their health bar is still there, daring you to try and take it down to zero. There is a way to break these walls, and all you need is to hit them harder and smarter.
Here’s everything you need to know about breaking Sturdy, Medium Toughness, and Greater Toughness structures in Baldur’s Gate 3.
What is Toughness in Baldur’s Gate 3?
Toughness indicates how an object or structure will react to damage from characters if it is attacked in Baldur’s Gate 3. The higher their toughness, the higher the damage threshold you need to reach to deal damage to the structure. Any damage below the threshold is completely negated, and any damage above it is dealt in full.
Let’s say you want to destroy a Guardian Statue in the Undeground Passage instead of disabling it. It’s a Sturdy structure, which means its damage threshold is 10. If you attack it and roll for 9 points of damage, the Guardian Statue will take 0 damage. If you roll for 10 points of damage, the statue will lose all 10 health points. That means once the threshold is exceeded, there is no damage mitigation from toughness.
Walls and Structures Toughness in Baldur’s Gate 3, Listed
There are four levels of toughness objects, and structures can have in Baldur’s Gate 3:
| Toughness level | Indicator | Damage threshold | Examples |
| No Toughness | No toughness indicator means no toughness | 0 damage | Shabby Doors |
| Sturdy | “Sturdy” text and an icon with a wall and a small shield under its health bar | 10 damage or more | Guardian Statues |
| Medium Toughness | “Medium Toughness” text and an icon with a wall and a big shield | 22 damage or more | The Selune Chest |
| Greater Toughness | “Greater Toughness” text and an icon with a wall and a bigger shield | 50 damage or more | Gargoyle Heads in the Dank Crypt |
An excellent way to fully understand a structure you’re trying to take down is by examining it. Right-click it with your cursor or select it with your controller and open the interaction menu. On the new window, you will see all information about the structure, including its resistances and weaknesses.
The Best Way to Break Sturdy Walls and Structures in Baldur’s Gate 3
To break sturdy walls and structures, find their weakness by examining them and then hitting them with that weapon type or element. For example, if the structure is weak to Bludgeoning attacks, hit it with a hammer, club, or mace to deal double the damage you normally would. That will increase your chances of reducing its health.
When you see the Resistances tab of a structure in Baldur’s Gate 3, there are four pieces of information you can get from the weapon type and element icons you find there:
- A yellow border means the structure is immune to that type of attack.
- Two blue arrows pointing up means the structure takes half the damage from that attack.
- One red arrow pointing down means the structure takes twice the damage from that attack.
- No icon means the structure takes unmodified damage from that attack.
In the Gargoyle Head trap example above, you can see it is immune to Slashing, Acid, Poison, Fire, Lightning, Cold, Psychic, Caustic, and Radiant damage. It resists Piercing and Force damage while having no weaknesses. That means one way you could try to hit it is with Bludgeoning damage since it would be an unmodified attack.
Learning you can blow up tough things is a path with no return. My favorite part of the experiments I ran to write this piece was when I blew up the Selune Chest instead of following the whole Perception-Religion process to break its seal. All items were still there on the floor, and I got the cool photo you can see below.
