How to Solve the Chamber of Strategy Puzzle in Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3)

The Chamber of Strategy in Baldur’s Gate 3 is part of Wyll’s quest, involving a chess puzzle. After rescuing Wyll’s dad from the Iron Throne, you’ll need to solve this puzzle to gain the dragon Ansur’s support. Here’s how to solve the Chamber of Strategy puzzle in Baldur’s Gate 3.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Chamber of Strategy puzzle solution

In order to solve the Chamber of Strategy Puzzle in Baldur’s Gate 3, you need to score a checkmate against the purple king in two turns. This is a fun, if a little too easy, little challenge for those familiar with the rules of chess. However, there’s a far simpler way to beat this puzzle if you’ve never played chess before.

How to easily beat the Chamber of Strategy Chess Puzzle the easy way

To get through this challenge without even touching a chess piece, simply attack the king with Lightning spells. You’ll notice that the King is immune to all kinds of damage except lightning, to which he is vulnerable. You may need to hit him more than once, but you’ll soon be able to claim the victory and keep marching on.

How to beat this Baldur’s Gate puzzle the “right” way

In case you do want to test your knowledge of chess, most of the puzzles are quite easy to solve.

All you need to do is just be good at chess. If you have Gale in your party, you can also consult him for help, but he’ll more or less tell you exactly what to do, so if you’d like a bit of a challenge I recommend trying yourself first. Note that there are several different states for this puzzle, so you’ll more than likely get a different solution than I did.

The solution puzzle that I got, displayed in the below screenshot, is to move your Rook to the g8 square (that’s the square the purple bishop holds in the screenshot). When the bishop takes your rook, move your queen to g7. Protected by the knight on h5, your queen will deliver checkmate.

So, your options are to play some actual chess or zap the purple kind with some lightning. Both options have their merits, and from what I can tell there are no additional rewards whichever way you choose.

Either way, the victory is yours, and you even learned some chess along the way. Take the win, and head on over to the Courage, Justice, and Insight chambers to continue on your path to Ansur.

If you’d prefer to learn some of the basics of chess, I’ve included a section below on how the pieces move to help you solve this puzzle in whichever way you choose — regardless of whether you’ve ever played chess before.

Chamber of Strategy rules, explained

Managing the board in Baldur’s Gate 3 is simple enough. You have three tries to correctly checkmate the purple King within two moves, or mate in two. Click on a piece to select it, as though you’re putting your hand on it, and again on a valid spot to move it. Note you can right-click to deselect. If you make an incorrect move, one life in the back will disappear, and the board will reset.

All the pieces work the same as in real-world chess, so don’t worry about the characters calling it “lanceboard.” It’s just what people call the game in the world of Faerûn. Whether you call it a chess puzzle or “BG3‘s lanceboard puzzle,” it’s the same thing in the end. This is good ol’ fashioned chess, and the best news is, we can win either the smart way or the fun way.

How Chess Pieces Move

If you’re not too familiar with Chess, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Here are all the ways chess pieces can move on a chessboard, including the ones in this puzzle:

• Pawn – Forward one square, with the option to move forward two squares on its first move only. Can capture diagonally forward one square.
• Knight – Moves in an L-shape. Two squares in a direction, then one more square perpendicular to that, or one square, and then two. The knight is also the only piece that can jump over other pieces.
• Bishop – Move an unlimited amount of squares diagonally, unless blocked by another piece.
• Rook – Move an unlimited amount of squares horizontally or vertically, unless blocked by another piece.
• Queen – Move an unlimited amount of squares diagonally, horizontally, or vertically, unless blocked by another piece.
• King – Moves one square in any direction.