One of Baldur’s Gate 3’s longest questlines involving Oskar the Artist, which runs from Act One and into Act Three, is super unrewarding and simply not worth the effort, given how many hours it takes to complete.
While the BG3 campaign is quite long, with the fastest competition time being around 60 hours, there is one questline in BG3 that spans from Act One into Act Three. When you pick up the quest, Free the Artist, in Act One, you must wait until Act Three to complete it. And when you do, the only thing you’re rewarded with is a randomized painting, and in some cases, it can be of the last companion you’ve dismissed or even a hireling.
There are already 12 Hirelings you can hire directly from Withers for 100 gold, and each of them has their own unique talents, abilities, and classes, ensuring you can have the most well-rounded group possible. They’re good to have, but by the time BG3‘s third act rolls around, you’ve likely already got the best options.
So, getting another Hireling from a painting as a reward for this long-winded quest is not worth it. Even if you were to get a portrait of your companion, it would have made more sense for us to be able to gift it to them and earn substantial favorability.
A change like this would make all the hours finding Oskar, freeing him, and completing 16 objectives (not including sub-quest objectives) worth it, but alas that’s not the case.
After completing this questline, many players wish they’d let Oskar die back in Act One.
Unless you’re interested in a one-of-a-kind painting from Oskar, then this quest is really just not worth the time. The only people we can see being tempted by this after learning how bad the payoff is are completionists who need every objective ticked off. But in terms of the rewards matching the time taken, it’s better left forgotten.
This questline is one I’ve avoided in my BG3 re-runs because it’s tedious and far too unrewarding to be worth the effort to complete. Killing him is so much easier.
