How to learn spells in Baldur's Gate 3

(Image credit: Larian)

Spells, magic, the ol' secret saucery—with hundreds of magical abilities available in Baldur's Gate 3, it's no wonder you'd want to know how to learn new spells. Most of them are acquired through levelling, but the wizard class has its very own OP trait that lets you transcribe and acquire spells from scrolls that you find, adding them to your spellcaster's repertoire.

This effectively lets you use Gale to pilfer spells from other schools of magic, and yes, that is as strong as it sounds. The only real drawback is how costly the process is, considering that if you don't find the right scroll, you'll have to buy it, and then pay even more gold to unlock the ability. Either way, here's how to learn new spells for your wizard in Baldur's Gate 3.

How to learn new spells and equip them

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Baldur's Gate 3 learning spells by clicking scrolls — You can learn spells by right-clicking scrolls (Image credit: Larian)

First thing's first: for your wizard to learn a new spell, you're going to need a scroll. Usually, these magical items provide a single cast of that named spell for any of your characters, but as all-round practitioners, wizards can transcribe a scroll and add it to their Spellbook. This consumes the item and costs a sum of gold, but lets you use the spell whenever provided it's prepared and you have adequate slots. To learn a spell from a scroll you need to:

Select your wizard's portrait and press I to open their Inventory, or press tab to open Party View and then select your wizard.
Right-click on the scroll you want to learn.
If you can learn the spell, the second option in the menu will list the price
Simply click it to acquire the spell.
Use Prepare Spells and un-select a spell to fit your new ability in if you want it available right away.

If you want to see all spells available for your wizard to learn, press tab for Party View, head to the Spellbook, then click the Learn More spells option next to Prepare Spells on their character column. This provides a more in-depth list of all available scrolls you can use to get spells as well as what level they are. As mentioned, acquiring new spells is expensive, but it is cheaper if those spells belong to your own school of magic, which is listed at the top of that spell learning menu.

Sean's first PC games were Full Throttle and Total Annihilation and his taste has stayed much the same since. When not scouring games for secrets or bashing his head against puzzles, you'll find him revisiting old Total War campaigns, agonizing over his Destiny 2 fit, or still trying to finish the Horus Heresy. Sean has also written for EDGE, Eurogamer, PCGamesN, Wireframe, EGMNOW, and Inverse.