By design, creativity is rewarded in Baldur’s Gate 3—but some players have pushed that system beyond its intended limit and discovered a way to access infinite arcane power.
It started on Jan. 3 when a redditor shared a clip of an exploit they accidentally discovered involving the Freecast Illithid Power and the Sacred Idol from the Druid’s Grove in Act One. The discovery shared by u/Ant_of_Doom is as simple as it is unlikely: Walking into the aura surrounding the Sacred Idol refreshes the Freecast Passive Ability, which normally only refreshed on a long rest. This discovery spurred a wave of experimentation in the comment section, and it was since discovered that you don’t actually need the Sacred Idol to take advantage of this exploit. In fact, you don’t need anything but the shirt on your back (literally).
Freecast is a powerful ability that can only be picked up by Partial-Illithid characters in BG3, so the exploit does have that transformation as a prerequisite. The ability lets you cast your next spell without consuming any of the associated costs. In other words, you can cast a spell without consuming a spell slot. Normally, you can only do this once per Long Rest, but the exploit that refreshes the ability means you can do it as many times as you want.
In response to the original Sacred Idol post, one commenter shared their discovery that swapping necklaces also refreshes Freecast, which is significantly easier since it doesn’t rely on an item that a large percentage of players may not have acquired. This comment inspired a writer over at PCGamer to run some experiments of their own, and they discovered that it doesn’t have to be a necklace. It can be any piece of equipment—even your underwear.
Yes, changing or removing your underwear in BG3 is a path to achieving spell casting prowess equal to that of Mystra herself. Of course, you can achieve the same effect with any piece of equipment, but if you’re able to use your underwear as your source of power, why wouldn’t you?
After learning about this, I decided to hop on my level 11 Partial Illithid Sorcerer and do some testing of my own. I’m happy to say that I can confirm that the exploit does indeed work as stated, and it doesn’t even stop there. Freecast doesn’t just remove spell slot costs, it removes all costs—including Sorcery Points.
Normally, the only small drawback to the exploit is the fact that swapping out a piece of gear in combat counts as an Action, meaning that if you want to cast unlimited spells, you can only do so every other turn. Sorcerers, however, have a Metamagic ability called Quickened Spell that allows for a spell to be cast as a Bonus Action at the would-be cost of three Sorcery Points. Using this exploit in conjunction with Quickened Spell allows you to cast unlimited spells for free as a Bonus Action while using your Action to swap out your undies and keep Freecast refreshed every turn.
