The Baldur’s Gate 3 Necromancy of Thay looks like an evil tome and can be found underneath the Blighted Village. This dark book that is reminiscent of the Necronomicon requires you to explore a mysterious cellar and disarm several traps protecting it, so it’s clearly valuable enough to the necromancer who once owned it. Once you grab it, you’ll find that you can go down the path of either unlocking the tome with a missing stone or destroying it. Here’s how to find the key to unlock the Necromancy of Thay and how to burn it to the ground if you so choose in BG3.
Should you destroy or unlock the Baldur’s Gate 3 Necromancy of Thay?
In general, you should unlock the Necromancy of Thay.
This is because destroying the book doesn’t provide a lot of rewards. The only thing you get for doing so is gaining approval from the githyanki companion Lae’zel, which is extremely hard to do. That said, most necromantic tomes aren’t exactly a good thing to have around, so if you do wish to destroy it, you can drop it on the ground and deal radiant damage to it. A Guiding Bolt from Shadowheart will do the trick.
However, if you do choose to figure out how to unlock the Necromancy of Thay, you fortunately don’t have to look far. The well in the center of the Blighted Village will lead to the Whispering Depths (alternatively, you can enter through a cracked wall in the blacksmithy) which is full of annoying phase spiders. Along with the Phase Spider Matriarch, these spiders can blink in and out of existence (if they give you trouble, you may want to drop the difficulty). Once you deal with them, you’ll find a Dark Amethyst in a pile of bones in her lair. This is the keystone that you can fit into the tome.
Once you unlock it, you can choose to read it. This will challenge your character to several Wisdom saving throws (the highest has a DC 20) that you’ll need to beat to read through the Necromancy of Thay. Success grants you the Speak With Dead spell, which has a lot of utility in the game, without having to waste a spell slot on it. This will also provide Inspiration for many backgrounds.
An alternate outcome is handing the tome to the wizard Gale for quite a bit of approval in a unique cutscene back at camp. This might not sound like much, but you actually might already be able to use Speak With Dead for free if you found the Amulet of Lost Voices back in the Dank Crypt near the beginning of the game.
