Free the Artist Walkthrough in BG3: Rewards & Painting | ... (2024)

The Free the Artist questline is an optional side quest, which players can unlock depending on their actions with the Zhentarim Hideout in Act 1. If you managed to intimidate, threaten, or haggle the price of the Artist from the crooks in Act 1, then you can get the side quest by visiting Lady Jannath’s Estate. It turns out this quest is fairly tedious, and so, here’s a closer look at the Free The Artist quest of BG3’s Act 3, featuring potential rewards, and a closer look at the painting.

Free The Artist Walkthrough for Baldur’s Gate 3¶

As you arrive at Lady Janneth’s Estate, you will find a Dragonborn Butler at the door. He will inform you he is on holiday, so he can’t actually stop you from entering the residence. When you enter, explore at will, but, be careful, as poltergeists occupy the area and will throw furniture at you. So, loot at caution. If you have a see invisible potion on you, or some other form of See Invisible spell, you can use that, as it makes the rest of the Free the Artist Quest much easier to do.

Now continue up the stairs to the right of the ground floor, and head into the bedroom where you can find the Artist you rescued in Act 1, along with the wife of his. If you speak to the wife, she’ll let you know that something is wrong with him, and now it’s your job to find out what it is. Now you need to go right, and find the staircase that leads up to the next floor. Be weary that there’s plenty of possessed furniture, which you can fight the ghosts once you destroy the furniture piece they possess.

Read More: Thrumbo and the Mystic Carrion Quest

Free The Artists’ Painting & Cursed Skull Puzzle in Baldur’s Gate 3¶

As you start getting closer towards the attic, you’ll find there are things called Cursed Skulls that are very Sturdy, which, when triggered, cast Thunderwave, and can launch your party down the stairs. They will take damage, as Thunderwave is a spell, combined with a lot of fall damage potential as our party gets launched several stories down the building if you’re not careful.

For this, we recommend taking the following spells, abilities or tactics like:

• Dimensional Door,
• Misty Step, Disintegrating Night Walkers, or the boots you get from the Investigate the Murders quest will do nicely here, as will the Shar boots you get from the Nightsong quest, or other mobility themed spells.
• Arcane Gate
• Enhance Leap or any other triple jump themed spell.
• It is also possible to use your spellcasters to kill the skulls, as Martial characters will not be able to get close to actually hit the Cursed Skulls. We recommend using some high-level spell slots to damage the skulls at the very top or the bottom of the stairs. The rest can be easily avoided by using Jump near the floor railings, as they typically are not in range of the skulls.
• Fly is another good move. If you began to evolve your Illithid Powers, then you can have access to Fly, which cheeses a lot of the stairway possible. You may also use Potion of Fly to bypass these Cursed Skulls.

Once you reach the top, you will enter the attic. The attic is filled with paintings, and you must place the right painting on the Easel. Grab the Oskar painting from the floor and place it in the Easel. This will not open a secret door behind the easel, away from all the paintings calling you names and telling you to leave. Once inside, you will find another painting on another easel. Simply walk up to it and hit it with the Torch of Revocation, which you should have if you did the Philgrave Mansion Mystic Carrion quest.

Once you burn the painting, you will release the poltergeist haunting the mansion. Now you can return downstairs and speak to the Artist and his newlywed wife.

Free the Artist Rewards in BG3¶

As you head back into the master bedroom, you will find Oskar is now free from his possession. Instead, the poltergeist is here to give the newly wedded couple grief one final time. Depending on what you do here, you get two different rewards for completing the Free the Artist quest. You can either forcefully evict the unwanted supernatural entity, and let the couple live on in peace. Or, you can let the Poltergeist kill Oskar and conclude the quests that way.

If you let Oskar live, the reward you get is a painting at the end, which you can inquire about. This gives you a special cutscene, which paints the UI portrait of any of your party members, either in the party or in the camp. We got Lae’zel, despite our Dark Urge Dragonborn being the one to speak to Oskar and be in the cutscene. This painting does absolutely nothing and is just a vanity joke item. Hopefully, you can frame it in Camp at some point to make up for its 30g sell back value despite the potential thousands of gold some players can jump into getting this quest and completing it in the first place.

On the other hand, if you let the Poltergeist kill him, then you get a Ring. The Ring is called Till Death Do Us Part. This item allows the wearer to resurrect when they go down. However, they are debuffed with a Shadowy curse, so it needs decursing if you intend to use it, which you can do via the Remove Curse spell.

Overall, the rewards for this quest are not very good, so, pick whichever ending you think serves best here. Due to the hassle, letting Oskar die is a fitting end to the tale for messing everyone around. And, it doesn’t seem to affect anything towards the ending, thanks to you getting no allies from this quest either. This concludes this Baldur’s Gate 3 Free the Artists quest walkthrough. Hopefully, you better know the rewards, solutions, options, and best watts to get around the yeeting skulls.