This page offers a guide on how to find Philomeen’s hiding spot in the Grymforge in Baldur’s Gate 3. You’ll find details on how to start the quest Find Explosives and where to go to locate Philomeen’s secret hideout.

How to Start Find Explosives Quest¶

There are a couple of ways to start this quest, depending on who you want to side with. First you need to have entered into the Grymforge and been told about the cave collapse that’s trapped True Soul Nere and a bunch of deep gnomes. Here, they’ll mention that they need to figure out a way to clear the debris to reach Nere.

You can either speak to Brithvar and he’ll tell you to speak with the gnome crew mining the rubble, or you can just directly speak with the gnomes and first eavesdrop on their conversation. If you met Thulla in the Mycanoid Colony, you can mention her name here, or you could make an ability check to intimidate or persuade them to disclose details about Philomeen and her smokepowder. Here, you can choose to side with the gnomes and convince them to tell you about Philomeen’s hiding spot.

Where is Philomeen’s Hiding Spot?¶

The hiding spot in question is found in the northeast region of Grymforge. To get there, first fast-travel to the Underdark - Grymforge waypoint and proceed down the stairs to the right. Walk past the water and proceed to the left of the set of stairs to find a large locked set of double doors.

There are a couple of Duergar throwing some dead deep gnomes into the water and you can talk with them if you choose or just ignore them and lockpick the double doors. To do this you’ll need some thieves’ tools and pass a dexterity check with 14 or more on a d20 roll.

When you pass through into the next room, head to the far left corner of the room and one of your party members should spot a button the left wall that you can press to open up a secret door in the wall.

Pass through and continue down the corridor to pass through another set of double doors. You’ll be ambushed by three Level 5 Ochre Jellies with 52 HP. These guys are ooze enemies and are resistant to slashing damage. If you have party members that do slashing damage, you’ll notice that oozes have resistance to that kind of damage. If you have some ranged weapons or weapons that do bludgeoning or piercing damage, consider swapping out your weapons before or during the fight. You should also use your spellcasters to do the bulk of the damage if your fighters do mostly slashing damage. Try to avoid walking in the green ooze on the floor as your characters will take poison damage.

After defeating the three Ochre Jellies, proceed up the stairs and follow the cliff edge to the northeast and jump across the chasm. You’ll come across another locked door, but you can just head to the left side and pass through into the building via a crumbled opening in the wall.

You should spot Philomeen standing at the back of this room, and as you approach you’ll trigger dialogue with her. She’s very stand-offish and will threaten to blow herself and the smokepowder. If you don’t want her to blow up, you’ll need to calm her down.

You’ll get several ability checks to choose from to try and calm her down. Make sure to pick the one that best suits your abilities and proficiencies, especially if you want to succeed in getting her to stand down.

Succeeding at Calming Down Philomeen¶

If you succeed you can ask her for a vial of the smokepowder and you can return to the caved in tunnel and use it to explode the rubble. She won’t give you a lot of the smokepowder, but the runepowder vial she gives you will be plenty! Just open up your inventory, select the smokepowder and aim your throw at the rubble. Then, use firebolt or any other fiery spell or arrow to set the powder ablaze!

Failing to Calm Down Philomeen¶

If you fail, she’ll destroy the smokepowder and blow up (probably causing a TPK), and you’ll have to find another source of smokepowder. Fear not, there’s more smokepowder to find. Locate the backpack near by and loot it for the hand-drawn map. Open it up and your map will be updated with another secret stash of smokepowder.

Attacking Philomeen¶

If you’re feeling particularly evil or you want to side with the duergar, you can choose to attack Philomeen and then take the entire barrel of smokepowder. But if you choose to do this, then you’ll have to pass a dexterity check of DC20 to not explode the barrel!

Bug: Philomeen isn’t there at her hiding spot?¶

We encountered a bug during our playthrough that meant that when we found Philomeen’s hiding spot, she was no where to be found. This is a known bug in the community and hopefully, it might be hotfixed soon.

There are two ways you can solve this solution: you can either reload to a save before the Jelly enemies and redo the fight and hope she spawns in (do not long rest as this will kill Nere and the gnomes inside the caved in passage), or you can just take the loss and locate the backpack in the hide out and loot it for a hand-drawn map. As mentioned above, this map offers an alternative location in the southern region of Grymforge where you could get some gunpowder.

Looking for more stuff to do in the Underdark? Check out some of our other Underdark related pages:

• All Adamantine Forge Items
• Find the Mushroom Picker Walkthrough
• Help Omeluum Investigate the Parasite