How to Get Past the Moon Puzzle in the Defiled Temple in Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3)

If you decided to take the path of heading through the Underdark in Baldur’s Gate 3, you’ll pretty quickly run into one of the first puzzles in the game. After making your way through the Goblin Camp and into the living quarters of the Goblin Priestess, you’ll enter an area inside the Defiled Cathedral that has some moonlight hitting a series of dials on the floor. Across on the other side of the room is a locked door you can’t get past. I tried to figure out the puzzle for a while, but thanks to failing a check when I walked in the room, nothing helpful was revealed, and spinning around the dials proved fruitless. If you find yourself in a similar boat to me, don’t worry I found a way to get past that may be super useful to you as well so that you don’t even have to worry about the puzzle.

How to Get Past the Moon Puzzle in the Defiled Temple in Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3)

Instead of wasting your time trying to figure out what rotates where on the moon puzzle, you can skip that part entirely to unlock the door and proceed. Just another example of the flexibility of Baldur’s Gate 3. What you’ll want to do is walk across the room past the puzzle and up to a handle sticking out of the wall on the right-hand side.

Your characters will roll an insight check as you near it. It’s quite an easy one to pass, and as long as one character clears this check, they’ll notice that it’s actually a lever there on the wall. If you head up to the lever, you can actually right click on this and it will give you the option to lockpick it. As long as you have some Lockpicking Kits on you and a character or a party member who has some decent skills in that area, you’ll be able to easily unlock the door and head on through without having to waste your time on the puzzle at all.

That’s how you can bypass the moon puzzle in the Defiled Temple altogether in Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s very cool that there are seemingly so many solutions to different problems that you can find throughout the game, it really helps bring the experience to life and boy is it some clever game design.

For more on BG3, check out our guides on how to respec your party members, as well as fixing any save bugs that might pop up. And if you’re just starting out, watch Destructoid’s excellent beginner’s guide to Baldur’s Gate 3.