If you’re like me, eyes—and the thought of violence against them—are your greatest fear. How did I get through the eye needle scene in Dead Space 2? By screaming and crying into the phone at my friend who told me to play it. As such, when Volo, the bard who can hang around your camp in Baldur’s Gate 3, offered to try to help me remove the infectious tadpole from my brain by way of physical extraction through my eyeball, I said “hell no.” But, dear reader, I’m now here to tell you that it’s actually worth considering.
Despite how awful and shudder-inducing it sounds, Volo’s procedure actually has one benefit and not a lot of drawbacks. Yes, you will lose an eye, but it will be promptly replaced with one that has a pretty great perk: seeing invisible enemies.
Is there any benefit to Volo’s eye surgery?
Throughout Baldur’s Gate 3, enemies will use magic to hide from your view, and you’ll have to either fumble around with an area-of-effect spell hoping you manage to do damage and reveal them, or wait until their next turn when they reveal themselves with a sneak attack. Going through with Volo’s procedure won’t fix the tadpole, but you’ll gain an accessory called “Volo’s Ersatz Eye,” which will let you see invisible enemies up to 30 feet away from your character.
The downside to this is purely cosmetic, in that it will change the color of your affected eye. I’ve been told players who used the heterochromia option in the character creator and then let Volo go poking around in their eye socket no longer had two distinct eye colors after the bard was done messing around in there. But I suppose that’s the risk you take when you let an unqualified doofus put sharp things into your eye.
Do keep in mind that if you’re worried about watching the whole thing play out, this isn’t a scene you can just look away from, as there are dialogue options during it you’ll have to get through. So maybe just skip as much of it as you can and then spam the first dialogue option, yeah?
How do I get Volo to come to my camp?
You’ll meet Volo a few times before he shows up at your camp, the first time being in the Druid Grove. But the major deciding factor in whether or not he’ll hang out with your team and eventually offer to tinker with your eye socket is if you rescue him at the Goblin Camp in Act 1. You’ll see him performing (not of his own volition) as you enter the camp. This is before any possible fighting breaks out, but my dude is clearly already in distress.
When you actually get inside the Shattered Sanctum, you’ll find him locked up in a cage in the northeast corner of the throne room. The key to his prison can be found on the goblin jailer Gribbo, who will be watching Volo like a hawk. You have a few options for how to handle this, whether that be through violence and looting the key off Gribbo’s corpse, or by passing dialogue checks and convincing them to free Volo without bloodshed.
Whatever route you take, the freed bard will head to your camp and you can talk to him about possible solutions to the tadpole problem. Whether you choose to accept his help is up to your discretion, but despite his lack of qualifications, he does give you something useful out of the whole transaction.
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