Baldur’s Gate 3 has recently revealed its list of races, subraces, and classes that will be available on day one of Early Access. While this list is expected to expand across Early Access, and the full game itself is still in development, it leaves us to wonder if Duergar will be overlooked again as a playable race for this game.

The list of playable races for the launch of Early Access includes:

  • Human
  • Githyanki
  • Elf – High Elf and Wood Elf
  • Drow – Seldarine Drow and Loth-Sworn Drow
  • Half-Elf – with High, Wood, and Drow varieties
  • Dwarf – Gold and Shield
  • Halfling – Lightfoot, and Strongheart
  • Tiefling – Asmodeus, Mephistopheles, Zariel

For the classes, you will be able to play Cleric, Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, Warlock, and Wizard and each will have two subclasses currently available. Anyone familiar with D&D will know that multiple subclasses continue to grow for each class, so it will be interesting to see which Baldur’s Gate 3 ultimately includes.

It is disheartening to see such an interesting choice as Duergar not currently on the list. It has been noted that Drow and Githyanki are rare to the Sword Coast so their interactions with NPCs will be very unique. That would be expected for those playing Duergar, as well. Even the MMO Neverwinter recently added Gith and Aasimar as a playable race, but Duergar still remain mindless horde enemies. However, if you know your Duergar lore well, you will know they have very interesting ties to Mind Flayers which would make playing one especially interesting in Baldur’s Gate 3. 

For a brief overview, Mind Flayers took control of Clan Duergar and kept them away from the rest of the Dwarves. They broke free on their own, but the rest of the Dwarves and their god refused to take Clan Duergar back, believing they had been permanently tainted. It makes for a very interesting story to play a Duergar that, as is the hook for Baldur’s Gate 3, has a Mind Flayer tadpole in their brain.

For now, we will have to wait and see if Duergar is released later on in Early Access or when the game fully releases. Let’s hope so, given just how much potential the race has.