It turns out you can keep Baldur's Gate 3's heartbreaking temporary companion permanently: You just have to beat half the game without resting, kill her and your main character, and stuff them in someone's pocket

Baldur's Gate 3's Patch 7 deputized a well-liked side character, the Tiefling bard Alfira, to full companion status. The only problem is that it's only temporary, and in the most "cursed monkey's paw" way imaginable. Cenalexis_01 on the Baldur's Gate 3 subreddit figured out how to make it permanent, though, and the exploit requires the sort of obscene, beautiful abuse of Baldur's Gate 3's open-ended systems I've come to relish seeing. Spoilers ahead for the Dark Urge origin.

One of the defining scenes of BG3's Dark Urge (Durge to their friends) origin is their unwilling murder of Alfira. Partway through Act 1, she'll show up to your camp during a long rest and the Durge will unavoidably kill her⁠—though it is possible, through shenanigans, to make stand-in Quil Grootslang show up and take the fall instead. Patch 7 made it so that Alfira even joins your party and can be leveled up for a brief window, sparking some hope she was a surprise new companion added in the patch, but no dice: It was just meant to twist the knife a bit more.

But as cenalexis_01 has demonstrated, you can have Alfira as a full companion if you really want, it just entails twisting Baldur's Gate 3's game logic into a succulent Bavarian pretzel. Judging from cenalexis_01's guide, this doesn't require the same acute input juggling and precision as the old Sheepthara exploit, but keeping Alfira as a companion does demand a serious act and a half-long commitment for a very questionable result.

First, you have to complete the goblin vs. grove quest in the grove's favor and reach the path to the Shadowlands (cenalexis_01 specifies the Grymforge) without long resting⁠—not a horrible ask depending on your build, but definitely annoying and it will play havoc with most of the companion quests. At this point, you have to trigger Alfira's arrival at the party camp⁠ before going into Act 2, kill the Durge, and stuff their body in a character's inventory⁠—cenalexis_01 did this in co-op multiplayer, but it should still be doable with companions.

At this point, you can complete the long rest, as the Durge's incapacitation and imprisonment will prevent him or Sceleritas Fel from killing Alfira. You may recall that Baldur's Gate 3's inspired decision to let you store dead player characters in containers or the inventory screen has resulted in some of its crazier exploits, like the Shadowboxing skip favored by speedrunners.

This gets us past the first hurdle and Alfira will be in your party come morning, but there's still some work to do unless you want to keep Durge in the literal pocket dimension for the rest of the game. The exploit then requires triggering Alfira's Act 2 quest by bringing her to Last Light and talking to her at her spot by the bar as if nothing was amiss and this was just a normal playthrough⁠.

You then have to complete that quest by saving the tieflings from Moonrise Tower (all without resting, unless Durge is in the shadow realm), collect Alfira's quest reward, then kill her anyway and shove her in your inventory like you did with Durge. At this point, you can finally long rest until you trigger the version of the Durge murder scene with Quil Grootslang. After that, Alfira can be revived at Withers like a normal companion, which isn't possible when her death is triggered by the story.

Wow, what a huge pain. Well is it worth it? Absolutely not! Alfira will still be there, tagging a long and usable in combat, but she'll be a zombie companion with no further dialogue or story content, not unlike Withers' hirelings, and avoiding all those long rests will likely bork your companion quests and romances. But it's still doing the impossible, bypassing every guardrail Larian put in place to only technically get what you want in a way you really can't enjoy, and that's just videogames to me, baby.