Baldur's Gate Pacifist Run: The Friendly Arms Inn

The Friendly Arms is well guarded, but there are still a number of dangers you will encounter: Hobgoblins in the north, lurking in along the roads, and another danger waiting near the entrance to the keep (to be discussed shortly).
If you arrived by following the Coast Way from the south, you'll start a short distance from the gates of the fortress-like Friendly Arms Inn, where Gorion suggested you meet his old friends Khallid and Jaheira.

A 1990's CG cut scene shows the gates opening to the Friendly Arms Inn

Hidden Treasure: Ring of Wizardry
If you veer off directly east into the woods, you can find a large pine tree containing a hidden cache near the bottom at X:2555, Y:3759. The secret treasure in the tree is a Ring of Wizardry: This is an extremely useful treasure for a pacifist challenge run, because you'll now be able to memorize and cast twice as many 1st-level spells when your mage puts the ring on.

The Ring of Wizardry is hidden here at the base of this tree along the bottom south edge of the map.

If you chose a specialist mage such as an Enchanter, you'll be able to cast even more extra spells, since specialists can memorize more spells in their chosen school of magic. (Or If you're sure you won't want to ever use a mage even as an NPC ally, you could also sell the ring for thousands of gold pieces at a shop, and put it toward other highly valuable pacifist run treasures you'll find later, like shadow armor and invisibility potions.)

As for the background story about this lost magic ring: If you speak with one of the noblemen lodging in the upper floors of the Inn, you'll learn that a wizard was wandering around asking after a lost ring, but we don't know of any way to find this wizard to give the ring back to him, so you'll get to keep it.

Our Enchanter is now able to cast many more useful spells after putting on the Ring of Wizardry.

Inside the Walls of the Friendly Arms Inn
You can safely go inside the walls main gateway of the Friendly Arms' outer castle-like walls, as long as you don't go too near the entrance yet, where there is a hostile NPC waiting. There is also a quest you can get here and win on a pacifist run, if you have a mage and a thief (or familiar animal like a ferret that can pick pockets):

Entering the Friendly Arms Inn's fortress-like main gates

Joia's Flamedance Ring
There is a house just to the upper left of the entrance where you'll find a woman named Joia, who will tell you that some hobgoblin bandits stole her Flamedance Ring.

The entrance to Joia's house

If you have both a thief with some pickpocketing skill and a mage with the Charm spell, you'll be able to get it back from them without any violence: To do that, you'll have to go back outside the gates and head north.

Joia isn't especially polite at first, but you can still get a nice pacifist run quest to return her ring to her for 400xp.

There are some hobgoblins along the road, but you can probably avoid them easily by staying close to the western wall of the inn (and if you have a thief, being close to the wall will give you more of an advantage when hiding in the shadows).

Our Enchanter's faery dragon turns the group invisible again, but you can still do this quest without turning invisible.

The hobgoblins who stole Joia's Flamedance Ring are a short distance north of the central citadel of the inn.

The hobgoblin thieves are lurking around here...

If you cast Charm on the one with the ring, you can then order him to move up into the woods and have your thief/rogue pickpocket the charmed Hobgoblin bandit repeatedly until the pickpocketing succeeds in stealing back the Flamedance Ring.

A sleep spell succeeds nicely on most of the hogoblins, but the game won't let you pickpocket a sleeping creature unless they also have a Charm spell cast on them...

You can keep repeating your attempts to pick the hobgoblin's thief's pocket as long as the Charm spell doesn't wear off. (You'll be able to pause during the process to save time if you need to, and can check your inventory to make sure the ring is in your thief's pack before leaving.)

A Charm spell succeeds

You can optionally cast Sleep or Color Spray on the other hobgoblins so they won't bother you or attack their charmed friend immediately, and then just Charm the one with the ring to pickpocket him.

You can use the pickpocket skill repeatedly until it succeeds, as long as the hobgoblin with the ring is still charmed.

(Also, note that charmed foes will start battling their cohorts to the death if you let them, so the most peaceful way to deal with this is to send the Charmed hobgoblin lumbering off safely into the woods away from the others. After the Charm spell wears off of the hobgoblin you cast it on in a few moments, the others won't try to attack him anymore.)

After pickpocketing succeeds, we find the Flamedance Ring sitting in our thief's inventory.

When you return the Flamedance Ring to Joia, she will thank you and you'll receive around 400 xp (which is a very worthwhile reward while you're still at a low level).

The party gains 400 xp and increased reputation for returning the Flamedance Ring. Joia is also more polite afterward.

The Inner Walls of Candlekeep

The only other major things to note inside the walls besides scenery is the Temple of Wisdom run by Gellana Mirroshade east of the Inn's main keep, and the main entrance to the Inn, up the stairs just left of the temple. 

The Assassin Tarnesh

If you approach the entrance to the Inn, you'll be confronted by a man in a black mage robe who pretends to be friendly, but is actually an assassin holding a recently raised bounty contract on your player-character's head. 

If you let Tarnesh start talking to you, he'll try to assassinate you no matter what dialogue choices you pick...

If you let him confront you he'll cast Mirrored Image and several dangerous spells like Horror, which (if effective) can cause your characters to run around in a panic with no control, after which Tarnesh might kill them with Magic Missile spells— even though the Friendly Arms guards will also promptly rush up to attack him for his crimes. After Tarnesh becomes hostile the Friendly Arms guards will deal out frontier justice and smite him, having warned all travelers that crime and violence are not allowed at the Inn.

However, if you want to stop all those events from happening, you can use either stealth or invisibility to get past Tarnesh without him ever seeing you, or give Tarnesh a runaround without ever actually letting him talk to you, so you can lead him away from the entrance and then circle back yourself:

A halfling thief leads Tarnesh away from the entrance before he has a chance to start the dialogue shown above: Tarnesh will give chase and can be led in a circle around the Temple of Wisdom.

As soon as Tarnesh sees your character from a distance he'll start walking forward to try to begin his dialogue. However, Tarnesh won't ever attack unless he's able to start his dialogue first. So we led him on a chase counterclockwise around the Temple of Wisdom, without letting him get close enough to ever actually start talking. 

Our allies converge at the steps of the Inn, while Tarnesh is still back behind the temple trying unsuccessfully to catch up.

We then had Imoen (who was hiding along the west wall so Tarnesh wouldn't try to talk to her either) and our fleeing halfling converge at the entrance and run up the front steps into the Inn, with Tarnesh trailing behind.

(The pacifist run trick of not letting a character talk to you first and then become hostile afterward can be very effective on a lot of other enemies in Baldur's Gate later on as well.)

Tarnesh won't come inside the Inn after you, but he'll still be waiting outside at the entrance, so you'll have to do this each time you enter and leave the Inn.

Inside the Friendly Arms Inn: Ground Floor

You'll find a number of people you can talk to inside the tavern room of the Inn to learn some things about the Mirrorshades who run the Inn, the Inn's history, and the region in general: 

Bentley Mirrorshade the Innnkeeper is a gnome who runs the Inn and also buys and sells various goods. You can rent a room if you need to replenish or learn new spells. 

You'll learn that there is currently an ongoing iron crisis caused by ore from the Nashkel mines being mysteriously contaminated. You'll also learn that bandits have been plaguing the trade roads to steal all the good iron they can get, motivated by the high price of iron wares in the shortage.

Khalid and Jaheira: 

You'll meet the two allies Gorion told you to seek out in the western side of the room off to a corner. Khalid will be friendly, while Jaheira is more skeptical, but both are trustworthy allies that you could choose to recruit. (Jaheira is a druid who can cast healing spells, and might be useful for a lot of other reasons, but we opted to stick with a paired mage/enchanted and thief for the most part.)

If you take them with you, they'll occasionally try to urge you to hurry up and head for Nashkel immediately, but you won't be forced to go there until you're ready. 

The Friendly Arms Inn: Second Floor

There are some more amusing people to talk to in the  Inn, but only one on this floor who will offer you a quest: Unshey, a dwarf who is irate after "an ogre with a Girdle fetish" attacked him on the Coast Way and stole his Girdle of Piercing. He'll offer you a reward if you return it.

The ogre you'd need to get this back from is the same one on the east side of the crossroads map south of the Inn (see previous section), but unfortunately ogres seem to be immune to Charm spells, so we don't know any purely nonviolent way to get it back from him: Unless the later re-released editions altered the engine, it is not possible to pickpocket hostile creatures even if they're knocked completely unconscious by spells like Sleep or Color Spray. 

If you got the girdle back with a rougher "indirect" method like charming nearby creatures to dispatch the ogre for you, you'd be able to take several girdles (one being a cursed "Girdle of Gender"), and return the Girdle of Piercing to Unshey for some gold, a copy of his latest historical book, and 800 xp. (We found plenty of nonviolent xp from other quests elsewhere though, so there's no real pressure.)

The Friendly Arms Inn: Third Floor

You can meet a gnome from Beregost named Landrin on this floor. She'll tell you that her house in Beregost has been overrun with giant spiders, and she gives you a quest to go and get some of her things from the house and bring them back to her room here at the Inn. 

She'll also ask you to kill the largest spider in the house and bring back its body as proof. If you don't want to kill the spider, you can still go get her "Worn Out Boots" and bottle of wine, both of which you can take from the chests in her house in Beregost, and return them each individually for several hundred xp each, along with some gold. (If you resorted to a rougher indirect method like charming an assassin who tries to kill you in Beregost into killing the biggest spider for you, you can also bring the dead spider back for a few hundred more experience points and a little more gold— but it won't make a big difference in the long run, if you prefer to take the most peaceful approach.)

You'll also meet another humorous nobleman on this floor who will ask you to perform cleaning services on his pair of "Golden Pantaloons." You can either honestly return these for 100 xp immediately (since there's no way to actually do the other things he requests to the pantaloons),  or reportedly also steal them and combine them with some similar items in the expansion pack to Baldur's Gate II.

When you've done all you wanted to do at the Inn, you can go anywhere you want, but our recommendation would be to head north of the Inn to the farm and riverside areas near the bridge to Baldur's Gate (featured in our next post), since there are some purely nonviolent quests you can complete there for a total of over 3000 xp...

Baldur's Gate Pacifist Run: Journey to the Friendly Arms Inn

This section covers both the map east of Candlekeep along "The Way of the Lion" (the road leading roughly east/northeast), and the crossroads further east where the Way of the Lion joins the "Coast Way" leading north and south.

Gorion's battle with Sarevok and his evil minions. (You won't be given the choice to do anything but run from this regardless of whether you're on a pacifist run.)

After you left Candlekeep, you'll have seen a cut-scene in which your player character's ward Gorion was attacked by a sinister enemy and several henchmen, most of whom Gorion slew with magic, before himself being slain by their leader, whose name is Sarevok. (Here your player character is scripted to flee from the scene regardless of whether you're doing a pacifist run, so unfortunately there isn't any way to save Gorion.)

You'll start out along the road on the southern side of the map, and almost immediately will see your player character's friend Imoen rush up and tell you she is sorry, and wants to join you. (You'll have the option of asking any NPC ally to temporarily leave later on, but we found that pairing a mage and a thief as a team had the best results, so Imoen can be a good choice if your main character is a mage.)

You can probably find a spot to rest pretty easily to memorize spells on this map...

As for the dangers: If you want to avoid combat on this map, you'll either have to spend some time actively running away from gibberlings and other creatures (which is not very difficult), or else use some stealth or spell-casting assets if you have a mage and/or thief.

Our mage's Fairy Dragon casts "Invisibility 10' Radius," turning all three allies invisible as a gibberling lopes forward to attack us...

If you happen to be playing a version of the game that lets you cast Invisibility 10' with a Fairy Dragon familiar, you'll have an easy advantage— at least until you try to have one character pick up some items (which will remove the invisibility). But if you don't have a fairy dragon, you can either rely on stealth, simple running away (which should work pretty easily), or start to experiment with nonviolent spells like Sleep, Charm, or Color Spray.

By turning the "Party AI" interface button off, you can quietly stealth past creatures like this nice black bear (or else your NPC allies might default to start attacking any perceived threat).

One other pacifist run note applying to the whole game: If you're bringing any NPC allies with you, make sure to turn "Party AI" off with the buttons on the lower right, because if those are left on the game will usually default to a script causing your allies to automatically start attacking any foe. (If not turned off, this could even accidentally kill fairly harmless innocents who just get annoyed with you occasionally— such as someone your rabbit tried to pickpocket, or an NPC like Mellicamp the Chicken, if you happened annoy him later in the game.)

There are a number of optional things you can do on this map:

If you head a little way east and a longer stretch northward (where it's possible to slip between wolves in the west and gibberlings in the east), you can return to where Gorion battled Sarevok and his minions, and find some gold and treasures, along with a letter from the wizard Elminster among Gorion's items. 

If you backtracked and followed the western sea cliffs down (or up, if coming from the bottom of the map) to the middle area, you can find a nobleman named Chase. (Watch out for several bears you may run into on the way, though they were easy to avoid.) Chase claims he's going to jump into the sea, but he'll cheer up very quickly if you talk to him. He'll divulge that he dropped a diamond from one of his rings, but as far as we know there's no way to find it and then give it back to him... 

Talking with the nobleman Chase. (As far as we could tell, there is no way to give him back his diamond even if you find it.)

You can find the diamond further ahead inside a tree beside the road at the coordinates X:4418, Y:1956, but since there doesn't seem to be a way to give it back to Chase, you can keep it and choose to sell it later for around 500 gold. 

This is where a bird has hidden away the missing diamond...

One note: Baldur's Gate is not like many RPGs in which most or all friendly or neutral NPCs will attack monsters (which only happens occasionally in a minority of cases, like with the guards at the Friendly Arms Inn). This can lead to some surreal situations in which relaxed talkative NPCs ignore large groups of foes/monsters chasing you as though they weren't even there, but helps avoid sad situations like accidentally having NPCs like town guards slay some wild animals that were chasing you. (You also shouldn't have to worry about Chase being killed by bears, if one happened to follow you at this point.)

As for other encounters on the map: 

If you either just followed the road east (or returned to it later) you can meet a friendly merchant named Kolssed who lost his business in Nashkel after troubles at the iron mines and the ride of banditry in the region.

Further ahead you'll meet a pair of dubious characters named Xzar and Montaron (both evil alignment) who will offer you a healing potion and then try to make you feel obliged to join them on a trip to Nashkel to try to claim a bounty in Nashkel. (We gave them the miss for various reasons, but if you want to you can let them join you as NPC allies.)

Past this, the road will wind a little on the way north, and you'll find some trees on either side near the end where you can spot the tiny hiding place of the hidden diamond midway up the trunk on the left side. 

Holding down the Tab key will usually make hidden caches like this visible with a blue outline if you're having trouble finding it.

Finally, there is a messenger named Binkos who says he's going to warn Baldur's Gate about banditry. 

The main road exits the map in the east.

If you came from the main road in the west, you'll still be on the road called the Way of the Lion, but will find it soon joins the north/south "Coast Way."

You'll meet the famous Wizard Elminster here, who will have one of many conversations with you about Gorion, your quest, and your future.

Encounter with Elminster the Wizard

The Friendly Arms Inn is north up the coast way (on the next map), and if you continued heading south you'd eventually reach Beregost. 

Hidden Treasure

If you head directly northeast of your starting position by going off the path, you'll have to avoid some Xvarts (hostile goblin-sized blue humanoids), but they're easy to deal with either with nonviolent spells like Sleep or Color Spray, or just by running away.

Our mage successfully casts a charm spell to stop a Xvart from attacking...

There is a small clearing with a large stone in it, and if you search the middle of the rock (X:1006, Y:1114), you can find a Ring of Protection that is a nice thing to have to increase your own defense, as well as being worth some gold. (If you started as a thief with decent stealth, you may be able to do this without even being spotted, especially at night.)

The hidden ring of protection is at the rock shown above under the cursor

If you want to head to the Friendly Arms Inn and follow our optional path, there probably isn't much advantage to exploring the southern or eastern portions of the map yet, other than to be chased by various foes— but you'll return later on the way to Beregost, unless you choose your own nonlinear course.

If you do explore this map and head to the north following the road, you'll meet a ranger named Aoln who will tell you the area is dangerous (among other things). 

The Ogre: If you headed through the dried ground and the evergreens to the southeast , you'll find a large ogre who robs travellers. He is involved in a quest you can get from the Friendly Arms Inn to recover a stolen girdle (though we're not aware of any way to solve it without killing the ogre, since ogres  appear to be immune to the Charm spell and this one starts out hostile, making it impossible to pickpocket him).

If you headed even further south, you could find a morbid ruin of a caravan with some bodies and a few gold pieces in a nearby container. Nearby there is a young boy who will be rude to you, and also another messenger from whom you can learn there is likely going to be a war between Baldur's Gate and the southern city of Amn.

For our purposes, we first headed north to the Friendly Arms Inn, for reasons explained in the next section...