Astarion can literally get blood from a stone in Baldur’s Gate 3

Baldur’s Gate 3 keeps giving me little surprises. In Act 3, you’re able to purchase a statue from Boney and Stoney from the Circus of The Last Days for your camp. Doing this will run you a costly 5,000 gold, but that’s a small price to pay for an immortalised tribute to your handsome hero, surely?

Astarion, your party’s very own vampire spawn, can also feed on you or your enemies. Doing so gives him the Happy buff, a +1 bonus to attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws. This will all become relevant in just a moment.

While this buff isn’t that hard to get, it’s a bit of a pain—either you let him use your character like a juicebox (which’ll hit you with the “Bloodless” debuff), or you have him gnaw on someone with his bite attack. The latter’s unwise if you’re keeping Astarion out of melee range, since he needs to get danger close to bite someone.

Well, turns out there’s a third option. If you buy the statue from Boney and Stoney, Astarion can use it as a proxy for your character’s neck. I have Angry_Stranger of the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit to thank for this discovery—though I did load up my own save and test it, just in case, and yep. Disturbingly, Boney and Stoney’s statue of you has blood in it.

This is likely due to the fact that the statue’s a fully-fledged clone of your character, just with 10 in all of its stats and a measly 1 HP. It also appears to copy your equipment—mine made note of my paladin’s magic shield and Killer’s Sweetheart ring. Still, I like user Kyuubi_McCloud’s response in Angry_Stranger’s thread: “Bloodless. Really?” to which another player replies: “Technically the truth”. 

While this is pretty funny, I’m of two minds about whether this is actually worth the 5,000 gold price point from a powergaming perspective. A +1 bonus to attacks, checks, and saves without even taking up an item slot is very powerful. If you’ve got Astarion in your party, you want him Happy—and the statue is a fuss-free way to obtain it. On the other hand: 5,000 gold. That could buy any number of powerful magic items in Baldur’s Gate 3’s third act.

Still, if you’ve got the statue kicking around in camp, and Astarion’s in your party anyway, you might as well let him get blood from a stone until Larian patches it out. Unless it’s intended, and Stoney and Boney have actually trapped some poor sod in rock to be Astarion’s eternal meal. Just make sure he doesn’t chip a fang.