Baldur’s Gate 3: Should You Help The Brain Creature On The Mind Flayer Ship in BG3?

Baldur’s Gate 3 is filled with intricate optional paths and tasks that can create extremely different playthroughs based on just a few changes. One of those is a choice players make early on in the Nautiloid.

This encounter can lead to players dropping a brain on the floor and leaving it sitting there, useless between their feet, or creating an Intellect Devourer to help them fight. This guide explains how to get the Intellect Devourer in BG3 to make reaching the Nautiloid Helm a little easier.

Related: Baldur’s Gate 3: How to Prepare Spells in BG3

Should You Help the Brain Creature On The Mind Flayer Ship in Baldur’s Gate 3

Yes, players should absolutely help the brain creature on the Mind Flayer ship. This creature is also known as an Intellect Devourer, and the ship is called a Nautiloid. If players help it, they’ll gain a companion for this small section of Baldur’s Gate 3 as they make their way to the ship’s helm. This is important because there are some tough enemies ahead, and the Intellect Devourer can make quick work of them with its sharp claws.

How to Get the Intellect Devourer in the Nautiloid in Baldur’s Gate 3

To get the Intellect Devourer in Baldur’s Gate 3, players need to interact with the dead body in the Nautiloid and choose the correct actions and roll successfully on specific skills. The body in question is in the first chamber players enter when they awaken on the Nautiloid.

While players explore the chamber, they hear a voice calling for help. Following the voice leads to the dead body in a chair, which players will quickly realize isn’t calling out at all. The thing calling out is the body’s brain, which is strangely animated.

The brain asks to be freed before its captors return, though it’s never made clear who that is. By following the dialogue tree, players will come to three skill checks. We’ve outlined what these are below.

1. [Investigation] – Inspect the exposed brain
2. [Strength] – Break the Skull
3. [Dexterity] – Gently prise the brain from the skull.

Before doing anything, players need to roll the Investigation option. This will reveal a swelling in the brain, and from there players will have a chance to choose from the two remaining options. The one that worked for us was Dexterity, for which players must succeed in an active roll. Upon further testing, we discovered the Strength roll will also work, but recommend the Dexterity roll because it feels more gentle.

Once players have rolled and removed the brain, they’ll see that there’s a way to cripple it and make it more submissive and likely to follow them. Players can roll a Dexterity check to mutilate the brain, but it’s not necessary. We didn’t mutilate the brain, and it still obeyed us just fine until we lost it at the end of this scene.

Regardless of whether players cripple the brain or not, it will drop to the floor and transform into the Intellect Devourer. This creature believes the player character is a thrall, a servant to the Mindflayer on this Nautiloid. As long as it believes that, it will help them in battle and won’t attack them.

From this point on, the Intellect Devourer will help players reach the Helm of the Nautiloid. However, for story reasons we won’t spoil, the creature is lost soon after reaching that point of the ship. It’s worth making the most of its company while it’s available because the battles ahead can be tough.