Baldur's Gate 3

[rusty_shackleford]

Dunno if the earliest EA version let you go that far.

It did not.
Ended at the bridge or the boat. You could actually glitch past the boat into grymforge, I posted screenshots of it.

[Maledict]

@Val the Moofia Boss it's not conveyed well, but after clearing the Grymforge map (just read it) you can go back to the first area and then into the mountain pass to do everything there. Both the pass and the forge have entrances to act 2 that cut you off from all act 1 content, but you can freely explore them and go back and forth until you decide to leave.

Really feels like you were initially supposed to choose between routes. Dunno if the earliest EA version let you go that far.

You couldn't go into the mountain pass in the EA.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

► Act1: finished the Underdark. Adamantine forge, ungrateful refugee, the wizard's tower

I go to the forge. Oddly, the pre-battle cutscene shows a huge boss, but then in gameplay he is only a little larger than us.










Yet more frustration with this game. The boss has to be precisely positioned underneath the anvil in the center for it to get hit and take damage. But when I tried kiting the boss across the room, he would often be just out of position and the anvil would drop and not touch him and do damage. Also, the boss can run across a little over half of the radius of the arena, but the arena is just a circle with everything inside and out filled with lava. So my characters can't out run him. He kept killing my guys even when I had them spread out, and people had to be running back and forth reviving people and pulling the lever and turning the wheel to pour the lava to add the debuff to the boss. That was not fun.






I was also not amused by them once again pulling from the worst part of Fire Emblem: reinforcements getting to act on the same turn that they spawn in. Surprise! Half of your team got lowered to 25% HP and Shadowheart can only heal the party for 10 HP total with aid!




Even more frustration. I kept putting the armor and shield mould into the mould chamber, putting the mithral ore into the crucible, and then pulling the lever to drop the anvil. It drops. I walk over. I click the mould chamber ejection lever. Only a mould comes out, no armor or shield. I spent 10 minutes stuck on this reloading over and over, until finally I pulled the anvil drop lever and the platform descended. Why didn't that happen before? Well I THEN had to run over to spin the wheel to pour the lava in, and then I dropped the anvil and then it worked. Very frustrating.




This Adamantine armor has too good effects to pass up, but it looks ugly. So install the transmog enhanced mod and the unlimited dying mods. I also just learned that you could equip helmets but toggle off the visuals. Wish I had known that before I sold all of these helmets. But I have 7k gold now so it's okay if I buy a couple back. There hasn't been anything really worth buying in this game so far.

Apparently the laughing ghost's amulet causes a wisdom check, so I put it on Shadowheart who has the highest wisdom. So far he hasn't talked since I initially acquired it.






I think I have fully cleared out Grymforge, so I sail back to turn in the head.










There are gnomes distraught that their dead friend's body has been embedded with spores and become a puppet soldier of the Myconids. Talking to the Myconid leader, there is no further dialogue options so I can't ask him to relinquish that body for his friends to be buried.








On my way out to finish exploring the Underdark, I swing by that refugee Myconid leader whose clan was wiped out. He is pretty novel so I was wondering if he was going to be involved in anything. He asks to join in slaying the evil dwarves at their fort down by the inlet, but unfortunately I had long since done that. But he wants to see the bodies so I take him there.






He has a cool coral crown on his head. I think this is the first time in the game so far where I have had a guest party member, and the only one in this game so far that is not a human or reskin of human. Shame I can't see him fight with me.






He then reveals that he is bad. He wants me to kill the other Myconid leader I had been helping. The Myconid leader that took Glut in when his home was destroyed. Now he wants a take over. I call him an ingrate and walk off to go warn the other leader, but Glut attacks me. He must be unintelligent, since we are standing in the middle of a camp of evil dwarves that I eliminated while he sat around at the town too afraid to go out and do it himself.










Another bug, this time with his traits not displaying correctly.




I tell the sovereign what happened and leave.






I come across a mushroom circle that leads to a different map. Despite using the spell to triple my jumping distance, I can't climb out of this enclosed area. I then realize there is another hidden wall door like the one at the witch's house, but throwing bombs at it does nothing, and I can't walk through it. Entering into turn based mode and clipping the camera through the walls, it becomes apparent that this is the witch's dungeon, which I had already cleared. So I leave. IDK how you are supposed to get this door open.
















I then reach a castle. There were turrets so to shut them down I had to go back and get the anti-magic blooms that I had left with the karen dwarf merchant. There is a statue you can target, but it took no damage from my attacks so I am not sure how you are supposed to knock it over to crush the turrets.










A lot of time wasted clicking on lots of vases and barrels and chests and crates and bookshelves looking for loot.

I reach the top. After peacefully talking to the robot, there is nothing else of interest here. I tried casting illusion spells to kite them up to the top and knock them down to the bridge below and kill them with fall damage, but they did not react to the illusions. So I buff up and destroy the automatons for exp and to loot their bodies. The "boss" goes down real quick and was underwhelming. He drops a 8-25 damage polearm, but apparently it can stun you and is a DPS loss compared to Sword of Justice.








I finish the quest where you bring mats to the freed illithid scientist and have him brew a potion for you. Bought some magic jewelry off of him and left.


I think I have fully completed the Underdark. The only thing left it seems is to go back to the surface, double check if there are any quests at the Grove, and then go to the place West of the Goblin Town to kill the other two Absolute leaders (mind as well go through the back entrance in the Underdark), find the Nightsong, find Halsin, and then go to the mountain pass and do the Ginthyanki Creche.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

► Act 1: respeccing, Kagha, underground syndicate base

I respecced the characters and optimized people's stat spreads. The respeccing process took far too long. I had to keep alt+tabbing out to read wikis and explanations on how abilities/passives work, whether they stack, etc. And when levelling up, the game doesn't show you if or how many ability score improvement feats you had already taken, so trying to deduce that is frustrating. It is also annoying to select a spell like featherfall, only to then exit the level up screen and see that Gale already had it so now he has two featherfall spells and has wasted a spell slot.






I wanted Nakak to be a spear wielding martialist with some magic and didn't want to keep selecting boring ability score improvement +2 str and having to wield the greatsword anymore. Nakak's polearm mastery and sentinel should hopefully hit enemies that get close to the group and maybe impede their movement.

Shadowheart remains a buffer/healer with a martialist aesthetic wielding a Phalar Aluve, the Adamantine Shield, and using Spirit Guardians. Gale has Amour Agathys, Mage Armour, Mirror Image, and Bracers of Defense. The idea is that those three are going to clump next to Nakak. From my research, it seems that enemy AI targets the lowest AC party members, so they will probably go after either Shadowheart or Gale. Shadowheart will use her sword's ability to grant an AoE damage buff, and cast Spirit Guardians for a persistent AoE. She has been respecced so her concentration won't keep breaking when being hit. We will advance on the enemy and whoever comes near will get demolished.

Wyll has the invisibility cloak and should spend a lot of time invisible and not being targeted. He has misty step to blink to far away high priority targets and to try to kill them, otherwise he clumps with the party so everyone is buffed and we do more damage via opportunity attacks and guardian spirits. Wyll also has slow to cast on enemy mobs to reduce incoming damage.

For Wyll, I wanted to keep him as the fencer he was depicted as in his introduction. But the duelist feat says it remains enabled even if he wears a shield. Is there no feat option for him to be better with just wielding a one handed sword and no shield? That is disappointing.

Nakak and Gale can cast chromatic orb, Shadowheart can lay down glyph of warding or Gale can cast grease to change the terrain or rig bombs, and then that can be detonating with lighting spell for massive damage. But I don't think anyone has a long ranged lightning spell now.

I am running into a frustrating issue where I dye the adamantine splint armour to green with gold trim, but then when I press I to open the inventory/gear screen, it displays my character's green armour having turned blue. And then when I load into another map or reload a save, my armor on the character in the game world also turns blue.






It turns out I hadn't fully explored the map yet. There is an island that is too far away to leap across, so you have to misty step there to pull aggro and then misty step back to fight with the group as the flying mobs follow.




For the second time in the game and the first in... 40 or 45 hours? I get to fight in a "big" (not really) battle alongside other NPCs. I wonder why the devs are so stingy about having you get to participate in larger, more grandiose fights with allies.






Why is the other druid wielding a baseball bat with nails in it?




It is baffling how when the invaders reveal themselves and several other druids come to see the commotion in which they find out that Kagha is a traitor. But then after the fight they all waltz off back to their positions, and only one guy talks to her and doesn't seem upset at all. What!?!? She just tried to overthrow the leader, was going behind the backs of her comrades and possibly friends and endangered them, might have been toying with forbidden magicks, etc. But these people don't care!? It is also frustrating that during the dialogue confrontation with Kagha, there is no line to point out the obvious: the shadow druids secretly approached Kagha and (seem to have) told her not to tell the others. Obvious sinister intent and they probably were going to kill her once her use as a gullible pawn was over.








I just saved all of you guys from getting shanked in your sleep by shapeshifting rats, but this character is still acting standoffish with me? Wait a minute, if the invading druids were able to crawl around in plain view of the other druids as shapeshifted rats undetected, then why did they even need Kagha then? They could have ripped everyone's throats out while they are asleep and then took over the location.




I remember when exploring the Underdark, I came across some place with crates stacked by the "Zhentarim" or something, but didn't find any NPCs. So I looked up what that was about.

This is a man, but the last option says "read her mind". A missed line from the Realms Restored mod?






Well, I turned in the missing shipment, but only got a crossbow when I don't have any ranged physical characters to use it. I thought I was going to get a ton of money or something.




This is the highest roll I have seen yet.




Wait, this guy caught the attraction of a woman who seems to have really loved him given that she was willing to marry a commoner instead of another aristocrat or wealthy merchant, but he is thinking "eh maybe this other woman in the past loved me more and I should go back to her" what?!?






I give this guy 200 gold (out of the 4k gold I am carrying around, its peanuts) but Shadowheart gets mad about that?




I didn't want to go on a killing spree here as hopefully this organization might be able to help me out in act 3 when it comes to infiltrating the city or something. But there are a couple storage rooms. I park Shadowheart by the storage room door and have Gale use illusions to try to kite the mobs away out of sight. It is frustrating because once you cast illusion, a mob can't be kited again for a few seconds, but the mobs seem to break away and lose interest at different intervals. They don't all lose interest in sync. So some mobs are walking back while others are still staring and unable to be kited. And when you have so many mobs clumped together, it is hard to find an empty place to spawn an illusion to kite the mobs already walking back before they get out of the radius of the illusion.






Seems the only thing left to do is go to the temple west of the Goblin Town and then go to the Mountain Pass to the Ginthyanki Creche. Only question is whether or not walking through the front from Goblin Town or going up the ladder from the Underdark will be more fun.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

► Act 1: Goblin fort exterior and interior part 1

This is I think the first play session I have had with no major frustrations.

I try entering the Goblin base from the rear entrance from the Underdark's Selunite Temple. Unfortunately, it does not seem like you can shove open the door or throw a bomb at it to break it, and there is no button or lever that I could find. Guess I have to walk in through the front?








What is funny is how I entered turn based, had Wyll climb up behind the goblin scout on the rocky peak, one shot him from behind, and then when I clicked the scout to loot him, there was an option to pick him up/steal him, and add him to Wyll's inventory. So I had Wyll do that and climb back down and then drop the body from his inventory out of sight of the other goblins, and then exit turn based. And no one noticed. Very weird.










I walk up to the goblins and talk to them, but they have nothing interesting to say, so I dispatch them.

Further up the road are three more goblins sitting at a table. It is weird that when you talk to them while they are seated, the dialogue cutscene shows them standing away from their seats, and then when the dialogue ends they are back in their seats.








I found a back entrance to the Mountain Pass, so we'll see if this winds up actually being useable. So far I have seen two back entrances in this game so far (the entrance to the underdark from the spider boss' area in the cave underneath the town well, and the entrance to the goblin base from Selunite Outpost in the Underdark) and one of them didn't work.




There is no option to tell this guy to just start running and that I will cover his escape. As soon as the cutscene ended, I entered turn based and had Shadowheart cast sanctuary on him so he wouldn't get killed by stray goblin grenades or killed of retailation, but then once I attacked the goblins it seems that the sanctuary buff on him kept ticking down like in real time and then wore off while I was still wrapping up the goblins, which was annoying.








I just killed... how many goblins walking through the roadblock outside this fort area, and then this main courtyard? Now I walk 30 feet to a side area to find more goblins, and they are talking to each other and greet me as if I hadn't just slaughtered everyone right over there.




And then it happens AGAIN. I walk over 30 feet to another group that would have seen my kill the group of goblins in the prior screenshot, but they don't aggro and let me talk to them.





I have just killed 20 to 30 goblins in this camp, and this one guy is acting as if he had only seen me kill ONE goblin like a criminal, as if I am not clearly an enemy massacring them all? Why isn't he running away or trying to warn the others?




Likewise, I have killed so many gobs, but then I loot and this one gob I didn't see is standing there as if I am a house visitor who needs to be given the stink eye so I don't pocket anything.




I throw a bomb to break down the fort door and enter.




I realized that since Gale is a wizard and his staff weapons are useless, I can have him instead equip the club of giant strength to increase his STR to 21 and carry weight. I can then have him right click explosive barrels and add them to inventory, then place them down in the world, cast illusion to group a lot of adds together, and then have throw a barrel down at them. Is this the "barrelmancy" I have heard people talk about? The damage seems pretty mediocre, though, so I cast featherfall and then leap down to kill them.

(EDIT: In retrospect, since most of these goblins are not hostile, I probably could have gone down, placed a bunch of barrels, climbed back up, use illusion to bait the mobs together, throw a fireball down, and all of the explosions would have killed them. Is that the strat people are talking about?)




ANOTHER goblin is trying to arrest me. What is going on? Did these guys not hear the sounds of all of the goblins dying in the courtyard? Did not one goblin run in from there to warn them of me? Is there no goblin in a watchtower who saw my massacre outside? Did no one hear an explosion when I lobbed a bomb to get in here? Was me dropping barrels on a pack of these guys and then leaping down and slaughtering more goblins clearly not an act of war?






This game needs something like Mount & Blade's morale mechanic where if you kill a group of soldiers very quickly, it will cause "shock" amongst the enemy or frieghten and cause them to run for their lives. M&B, the Trails series, and Spore also had mechanics where if you were powerful enough, enemies would run away from you on sight. It makes no sense for this one, shirtless little goblin to be charging us when we are standing in the middle of many other goblin bodies. How is he going to succeed where they failed?




I open the door directly south of this room to find guards idle. I am starting to sound like a broken clock. They should have heard the explosions and cries of death going on behind them. This game doesn't have a sound propagation system like in Thief, or guards programmed to run away and warn others like in Thief or Deus Ex? And in other games too like Shadowrun Dragonfall and Hong Kong, or Warframe, etc, once you started a ruckus in a base, someone would run and sound the alarm and everyone would be put on alert or enemy reinforcements would be coming your way.




I was trying to read the Zhentarim as just being an extralegal smuggling operation that I could maybe work with like the Tenshudo, rather than a bonafide hard crime syndicate into slavery. Maybe I should go back and wipe out that base. Anyway, killed these guys.





Strange with the camera framing of the NPC being obscured by the MC's pauldrons, and then the MC clipping into the camera. Did the developers not do what Square Enix does with FF14 where they test every cutscene and their variations of camera placements for every race (ie small Lalafells to big Hrothgar) to make sure that there are no cinematography issues?






The flamboyant flagellant was funny.

The voice acting for the spiders was neat. But I talked to them from outside the pit behind an iron gate, but in the dialogue cutscene it shows me inside the pit and somehow gives me the option to attack. I'd imagine if I had clicked that option, it would have led to an odd situation where we are in combat but the enemy is on the other side and can't get to us.






I open the iron gate to release the spiders. They hold position for a few minutes, so I go around talking to more inexplicably passive goblins, but then the spiders suddenly attack the goblins and the last Absolute leader in the other room, so I rush over to jump in.






It'd have been nice if the cleave ability did more damage instead of a measly 8 damage max, and had longer reach with a polearm. The MC's AoE options are to just use firebreath once, and then that's it. He has to single target swing at each enemy one by one.




This is the ONE mob in this entire Goblin base area and fort interior that has aggroed me on sight rather than allowing me to just walk up and talk to her. I even tried blinking behind her out of her aggro cone right clicked her to talk to her, but no talk option came up, and then when I stopped crouching she immediately aggroed.








Well so far, except for this last mob I killed, all of the goblins in this base have been level 2 or maybe 3. I thought this was going to have been higher level stuff and that you were supposed to go level up on the side content in preparation for this climatic raid.

[rusty_shackleford]

mob

Minthara is a potential companion. Originally only for evil playthru, people cried enough that they made her also available for other playthrus if you knock her out

[DrSneed]

Minthara is hot

[rusty_shackleford]

Manthara

[Oyster Sauce]

Manthara

You have to take the good with the bad

[rusty_shackleford]

"waow it's the most beautiful woman ever" and it looks like this

[Val the Moofia Boss]

mob

Minthara is a potential companion. Originally only for evil playthru, people cried enough that they made her also available for other playthrus if you knock her out

She appears to be one of the managers or officers in a bandit army that massacred a town, employs ogres which eat people, massacred an inn and took captives, boiled the captives in a stew, sells people into slavery, etc. People must be insane if they want to RP a moral character and yet somehow tolerate her getting off scott free let alone marry an amoral woman.

[Oyster Sauce]

"waow it's the most beautiful woman ever" and it looks like this

Pobody's nerfect

[Bhaalspawn Jr]

► Act 1: Goblin fort exterior and interior part 1

This is I think the first play session I have had with no major frustrations.

I try entering the Goblin base from the rear entrance from the Underdark's Selunite Temple. Unfortunately, it does not seem like you can shove open the door or throw a bomb at it to break it, and there is no button or lever that I could find. Guess I have to walk in through the front?








What is funny is how I entered turn based, had Wyll climb up behind the goblin scout on the rocky peak, one shot him from behind, and then when I clicked the scout to loot him, there was an option to pick him up/steal him, and add him to Wyll's inventory. So I had Wyll do that and climb back down and then drop the body from his inventory out of sight of the other goblins, and then exit turn based. And no one noticed. Very weird.










I walk up to the goblins and talk to them, but they have nothing interesting to say, so I dispatch them.

Further up the road are three more goblins sitting at a table. It is weird that when you talk to them while they are seated, the dialogue cutscene shows them standing away from their seats, and then when the dialogue ends they are back in their seats.








I found a back entrance to the Mountain Pass, so we'll see if this winds up actually being useable. So far I have seen two back entrances in this game so far (the entrance to the underdark from the spider boss' area in the cave underneath the town well, and the entrance to the goblin base from Selunite Outpost in the Underdark) and one of them didn't work.




There is no option to tell this guy to just start running and that I will cover his escape. As soon as the cutscene ended, I entered turn based and had Shadowheart cast sanctuary on him so he wouldn't get killed by stray goblin grenades or killed of retailation, but then once I attacked the goblins it seems that the sanctuary buff on him kept ticking down like in real time and then wore off while I was still wrapping up the goblins, which was annoying.








I just killed... how many goblins walking through the roadblock outside this fort area, and then this main courtyard? Now I walk 30 feet to a side area to find more goblins, and they are talking to each other and greet me as if I hadn't just slaughtered everyone right over there.




And then it happens AGAIN. I walk over 30 feet to another group that would have seen my kill the group of goblins in the prior screenshot, but they don't aggro and let me talk to them.





I have just killed 20 to 30 goblins in this camp, and this one guy is acting as if he had only seen me kill ONE goblin like a criminal, as if I am not clearly an enemy massacring them all? Why isn't he running away or trying to warn the others?




Likewise, I have killed so many gobs, but then I loot and this one gob I didn't see is standing there as if I am a house visitor who needs to be given the stink eye so I don't pocket anything.




I throw a bomb to break down the fort door and enter.




I realized that since Gale is a wizard and his staff weapons are useless, I can have him instead equip the club of giant strength to increase his STR to 21 and carry weight. I can then have him right click explosive barrels and add them to inventory, then place them down in the world, cast illusion to group a lot of adds together, and then have throw a barrel down at them. Is this the "barrelmancy" I have heard people talk about? The damage seems pretty mediocre, though, so I cast featherfall and then leap down to kill them.

(EDIT: In retrospect, since most of these goblins are not hostile, I probably could have gone down, placed a bunch of barrels, climbed back up, use illusion to bait the mobs together, throw a fireball down, and all of the explosions would have killed them. Is that the strat people are talking about?)




ANOTHER goblin is trying to arrest me. What is going on? Did these guys not hear the sounds of all of the goblins dying in the courtyard? Did not one goblin run in from there to warn them of me? Is there no goblin in a watchtower who saw my massacre outside? Did no one hear an explosion when I lobbed a bomb to get in here? Was me dropping barrels on a pack of these guys and then leaping down and slaughtering more goblins clearly not an act of war?






This game needs something like Mount & Blade's morale mechanic where if you kill a group of soldiers very quickly, it will cause "shock" amongst the enemy or frieghten and cause them to run for their lives. M&B, the Trails series, and Spore also had mechanics where if you were powerful enough, enemies would run away from you on sight. It makes no sense for this one, shirtless little goblin to be charging us when we are standing in the middle of many other goblin bodies. How is he going to succeed where they failed?




I open the door directly south of this room to find guards idle. I am starting to sound like a broken clock. They should have heard the explosions and cries of death going on behind them. This game doesn't have a sound propagation system like in Thief, or guards programmed to run away and warn others like in Thief or Deus Ex? And in other games too like Shadowrun Dragonfall and Hong Kong, or Warframe, etc, once you started a ruckus in a base, someone would run and sound the alarm and everyone would be put on alert or enemy reinforcements would be coming your way.




I was trying to read the Zhentarim as just being an extralegal smuggling operation that I could maybe work with like the Tenshudo, rather than a bonafide hard crime syndicate into slavery. Maybe I should go back and wipe out that base. Anyway, killed these guys.





Strange with the camera framing of the NPC being obscured by the MC's pauldrons, and then the MC clipping into the camera. Did the developers not do what Square Enix does with FF14 where they test every cutscene and their variations of camera placements for every race (ie small Lalafells to big Hrothgar) to make sure that there are no cinematography issues?






The flamboyant flagellant was funny.

The voice acting for the spiders was neat. But I talked to them from outside the pit behind an iron gate, but in the dialogue cutscene it shows me inside the pit and somehow gives me the option to attack. I'd imagine if I had clicked that option, it would have led to an odd situation where we are in combat but the enemy is on the other side and can't get to us.






I open the iron gate to release the spiders. They hold position for a few minutes, so I go around talking to more inexplicably passive goblins, but then the spiders suddenly attack the goblins and the last Absolute leader in the other room, so I rush over to jump in.






It'd have been nice if the cleave ability did more damage instead of a measly 8 damage max, and had longer reach with a polearm. The MC's AoE options are to just use firebreath once, and then that's it. He has to single target swing at each enemy one by one.




This is the ONE mob in this entire Goblin base area and fort interior that has aggroed me on sight rather than allowing me to just walk up and talk to her. I even tried blinking behind her out of her aggro cone right clicked her to talk to her, but no talk option came up, and then when I stopped crouching she immediately aggroed.








Well so far, except for this last mob I killed, all of the goblins in this base have been level 2 or maybe 3. I thought this was going to have been higher level stuff and that you were supposed to go level up on the side content in preparation for this climatic raid.

Having fun, bro?

What difficulty are you playing on? Anything below Tactician in the early stages of the game is pretty much easy mode.

[DrSneed]

"waow it's the most beautiful woman ever" and it looks like this

My evil wife

[roldet]

Game actually gets much easier after level 5. You don't have to do them but gnoll cave fight, anders fight, hag fight, spider fight etc are hard especially if you are not familiar with game system.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

► Act 1: Goblin fort exterior and interior part 1

This is I think the first play session I have had with no major frustrations.

I try entering the Goblin base from the rear entrance from the Underdark's Selunite Temple. Unfortunately, it does not seem like you can shove open the door or throw a bomb at it to break it, and there is no button or lever that I could find. Guess I have to walk in through the front?








What is funny is how I entered turn based, had Wyll climb up behind the goblin scout on the rocky peak, one shot him from behind, and then when I clicked the scout to loot him, there was an option to pick him up/steal him, and add him to Wyll's inventory. So I had Wyll do that and climb back down and then drop the body from his inventory out of sight of the other goblins, and then exit turn based. And no one noticed. Very weird.










I walk up to the goblins and talk to them, but they have nothing interesting to say, so I dispatch them.

Further up the road are three more goblins sitting at a table. It is weird that when you talk to them while they are seated, the dialogue cutscene shows them standing away from their seats, and then when the dialogue ends they are back in their seats.








I found a back entrance to the Mountain Pass, so we'll see if this winds up actually being useable. So far I have seen two back entrances in this game so far (the entrance to the underdark from the spider boss' area in the cave underneath the town well, and the entrance to the goblin base from Selunite Outpost in the Underdark) and one of them didn't work.




There is no option to tell this guy to just start running and that I will cover his escape. As soon as the cutscene ended, I entered turn based and had Shadowheart cast sanctuary on him so he wouldn't get killed by stray goblin grenades or killed of retailation, but then once I attacked the goblins it seems that the sanctuary buff on him kept ticking down like in real time and then wore off while I was still wrapping up the goblins, which was annoying.








I just killed... how many goblins walking through the roadblock outside this fort area, and then this main courtyard? Now I walk 30 feet to a side area to find more goblins, and they are talking to each other and greet me as if I hadn't just slaughtered everyone right over there.




And then it happens AGAIN. I walk over 30 feet to another group that would have seen my kill the group of goblins in the prior screenshot, but they don't aggro and let me talk to them.





I have just killed 20 to 30 goblins in this camp, and this one guy is acting as if he had only seen me kill ONE goblin like a criminal, as if I am not clearly an enemy massacring them all? Why isn't he running away or trying to warn the others?




Likewise, I have killed so many gobs, but then I loot and this one gob I didn't see is standing there as if I am a house visitor who needs to be given the stink eye so I don't pocket anything.




I throw a bomb to break down the fort door and enter.




I realized that since Gale is a wizard and his staff weapons are useless, I can have him instead equip the club of giant strength to increase his STR to 21 and carry weight. I can then have him right click explosive barrels and add them to inventory, then place them down in the world, cast illusion to group a lot of adds together, and then have throw a barrel down at them. Is this the "barrelmancy" I have heard people talk about? The damage seems pretty mediocre, though, so I cast featherfall and then leap down to kill them.

(EDIT: In retrospect, since most of these goblins are not hostile, I probably could have gone down, placed a bunch of barrels, climbed back up, use illusion to bait the mobs together, throw a fireball down, and all of the explosions would have killed them. Is that the strat people are talking about?)




ANOTHER goblin is trying to arrest me. What is going on? Did these guys not hear the sounds of all of the goblins dying in the courtyard? Did not one goblin run in from there to warn them of me? Is there no goblin in a watchtower who saw my massacre outside? Did no one hear an explosion when I lobbed a bomb to get in here? Was me dropping barrels on a pack of these guys and then leaping down and slaughtering more goblins clearly not an act of war?






This game needs something like Mount & Blade's morale mechanic where if you kill a group of soldiers very quickly, it will cause "shock" amongst the enemy or frieghten and cause them to run for their lives. M&B, the Trails series, and Spore also had mechanics where if you were powerful enough, enemies would run away from you on sight. It makes no sense for this one, shirtless little goblin to be charging us when we are standing in the middle of many other goblin bodies. How is he going to succeed where they failed?




I open the door directly south of this room to find guards idle. I am starting to sound like a broken clock. They should have heard the explosions and cries of death going on behind them. This game doesn't have a sound propagation system like in Thief, or guards programmed to run away and warn others like in Thief or Deus Ex? And in other games too like Shadowrun Dragonfall and Hong Kong, or Warframe, etc, once you started a ruckus in a base, someone would run and sound the alarm and everyone would be put on alert or enemy reinforcements would be coming your way.




I was trying to read the Zhentarim as just being an extralegal smuggling operation that I could maybe work with like the Tenshudo, rather than a bonafide hard crime syndicate into slavery. Maybe I should go back and wipe out that base. Anyway, killed these guys.





Strange with the camera framing of the NPC being obscured by the MC's pauldrons, and then the MC clipping into the camera. Did the developers not do what Square Enix does with FF14 where they test every cutscene and their variations of camera placements for every race (ie small Lalafells to big Hrothgar) to make sure that there are no cinematography issues?






The flamboyant flagellant was funny.

The voice acting for the spiders was neat. But I talked to them from outside the pit behind an iron gate, but in the dialogue cutscene it shows me inside the pit and somehow gives me the option to attack. I'd imagine if I had clicked that option, it would have led to an odd situation where we are in combat but the enemy is on the other side and can't get to us.






I open the iron gate to release the spiders. They hold position for a few minutes, so I go around talking to more inexplicably passive goblins, but then the spiders suddenly attack the goblins and the last Absolute leader in the other room, so I rush over to jump in.






It'd have been nice if the cleave ability did more damage instead of a measly 8 damage max, and had longer reach with a polearm. The MC's AoE options are to just use firebreath once, and then that's it. He has to single target swing at each enemy one by one.




This is the ONE mob in this entire Goblin base area and fort interior that has aggroed me on sight rather than allowing me to just walk up and talk to her. I even tried blinking behind her out of her aggro cone right clicked her to talk to her, but no talk option came up, and then when I stopped crouching she immediately aggroed.








Well so far, except for this last mob I killed, all of the goblins in this base have been level 2 or maybe 3. I thought this was going to have been higher level stuff and that you were supposed to go level up on the side content in preparation for this climatic raid.

What difficulty are you playing on? Anything below Tactician in the early stages of the game is pretty much easy mode.

I am playing on tactician as that was recommended to me. I hear that I am missing out on seeing custom boss moves/abilities that are on legendary, which is disappointing. But combat in this game looks visually mediocre anyway so it's not a big deal, and I really hate the constant savescumming.

Having fun, bro?

Eh. It's okay. I am waiting for it to "get good" and become this amazing, industry changing supergame people were talking about. But apparently I am mostly done with act 1 and the game supposedly goes downhill after that. I am not seeing it, so I might drop after finishing act 1. The next Trails game releases in a week and I want to be playing that day 1 and get my review on it out. Maybe I'll come back to this after finishing Trails.

As I have been documenting in my posts, the game is incredibly wonky and often very frustrating to play. It is an aggregate number of issues that brings down the experience.

• The UI is ugly and dated, and does not clearly convey the information I need.
• A lot of the mechanic terms are unclear and I have to keep alt+tabbing out to understand how haste actually works or if this ability actually consumes a spell slot, etc.
• Going through the respec screens is laborious and then I find out that I didn't fill all of my preparation slots and can't fill them at camp and have to either go through the whole respec process again or wait until I level up in however many more hours.
• I killed Karlach and then played for several hours going through the Witch's dungeon, only to then long rest and a demon shows up at the camp and says that Karlach is not dead and then she turns Wyll into a demon. I spent time installing mods and trying out console commands trying to switch quest flags on and off and spawn Karlach heads, only for Wyll to still be doomed. I had to reload and redo several hours of gametime, which was very infuriating.
• The Grymforge colossus bossfight was very frustrating.
• I kept hearing Rusty talk about how amazing the "reactivity" in this game is, but so far I have been killing lots and lots of evil dwarves and goblins and then nobody notices. There are also other quests where things don't happen as you would expect and there aren't dialogue options that say the obvious thing that I want to say.
• The narrator is so far mostly redundant and doesn't say anything I can't already see on my screen. I would rather that the main character had been voiced in conversations instead.
• The dialogue cutscene cinematography is sterile. Characters also stand in place in most cutscenes. I heard they had a motion capture stage for this game, which would make you think they would follow Avatar's cue and take this seriously with people moving around the sets and touching stuff, but they don't. They do the thing where people are supposed to be handing items to other people in cutscenes but they're not actually handing an item over. Etc.
• Music is forgettable.
• The party members do not talk to each other. There is no party. There is just me and my 3 buddies who I talk to individually alone.
• The combat is visually mediocre compared. This has always been one of my issues with WRPGs, but in 2026 it's just hard to believe that with this amount of money they can't be bothered to step up their game, especially with the Eastern RPGs killing it with their combat presentation (and also much better UIs).
• I can only take three party members with me some reason, so some people have to stay behind and I am missing out on what they might say for various situations. There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to have more than 3 other people following me around, be they offscreen like in the later Trails of Cold Steel games or fighting in the back but doing no damage like in FF7 Rebirth.
• The art direction is very boring. If they were going to make a big budget RPG out of a WotC setting then I would have rather that they had picked MTG. This game's forgettable aesthetics is what got me to open my folder of MTG art and post some stuff in the art thread in the first place, wishing that this game looked so much better like that.
• There is no real compelling story. You are just meandering around to different isolated quest areas. I think the big bad satan guy showed up 40 hours ago or something and that was it
• The world feels bad with how tiny the grove is (there are no houses for the other druids), there is a dead town a 20 seconds walk away from the Grove, and then the goblin fort another 20 second walk from that, and then the witch's house a 20 second walk south of the town, etc.
• The game uses basic D&D classes which to me are very generic and not appealing. It is also hard to distinguish the difference between respeccing Gale as 8 different varieties of "wizard" or whatever, vs being a "sorceror", and so on. I am having to use grok and gemini to try to describe what I want to do and get a list of possible build options and explanations of the differences in nuances. I have never had to do this much outside research on classes before in a game, as in other games I just pick whichever really appeals to me (nothing really appealing here) or the differences in mechanics are upfront and easy to pick between.
• Various other stuff not coming to mind atm

[Val the Moofia Boss]

One thing I will say is that so far I like how the game is serious. I had heard something about "Larian" humor but I cannot recall any comedic scenes off of the top of my head. The only nasty thing so far was the goblin having sex with the ogre in the barn, but that was it.

Shadowheart having sarcastic or condescending tone of voice for 50+ hours is wearing on me.

[Oyster Sauce]

[*]I kept hearing Rusty talk about how amazing the "reactivity" in this game is, but so far I have been killing lots and lots of evil dwarves and goblins and then nobody notices. There are also other quests where things don't happen as you would expect and there aren't dialogue options that say the obvious thing that I want to say.

I keep telling you not to cheat and savescum in the reactivity game but you keep doing it

[Val the Moofia Boss]

[*]I kept hearing Rusty talk about how amazing the "reactivity" in this game is, but so far I have been killing lots and lots of evil dwarves and goblins and then nobody notices. There are also other quests where things don't happen as you would expect and there aren't dialogue options that say the obvious thing that I want to say.

I keep telling you not to cheat and savescum in the reactivity game but you keep doing it

For combats earlier in the game, I kept making one or two moves and then getting into a really bad situation and then one or two people die and then it's going to be a wipe, so I had to reload. Fighting the three ogres way back when was the breaking point for me because I slogged through that entire fight having to constant rez people and burning through my limited, expensive rez scrolls, only for then to get into the extremely aggravating situation where my guys were dead on a fire aoe and I couldn't push them out and the game was softlocked. 40+ hours later, I am now level 6 so I am doing well in most fights with nobody dying, but I also don't like when my spells miss and still consume my limited spell slot charges, and then I have to long rest which means going through the buffing process all over again, and every long rest makes my potions of animal speaking wear off and I have a limited number of those. So I would rather just quicksave and reload if my hold person spell doesn't go off and conserve my resources for longer.

I also don't like how story stuff is locked behind ability checks. I am missing out if I just fail the checks.

There is just a lot of RNG that makes reloading the preferable way to mitigate it.

[Bhaalspawn Jr]

► Act 1: Goblin fort exterior and interior part 1

This is I think the first play session I have had with no major frustrations.

I try entering the Goblin base from the rear entrance from the Underdark's Selunite Temple. Unfortunately, it does not seem like you can shove open the door or throw a bomb at it to break it, and there is no button or lever that I could find. Guess I have to walk in through the front?








What is funny is how I entered turn based, had Wyll climb up behind the goblin scout on the rocky peak, one shot him from behind, and then when I clicked the scout to loot him, there was an option to pick him up/steal him, and add him to Wyll's inventory. So I had Wyll do that and climb back down and then drop the body from his inventory out of sight of the other goblins, and then exit turn based. And no one noticed. Very weird.










I walk up to the goblins and talk to them, but they have nothing interesting to say, so I dispatch them.

Further up the road are three more goblins sitting at a table. It is weird that when you talk to them while they are seated, the dialogue cutscene shows them standing away from their seats, and then when the dialogue ends they are back in their seats.








I found a back entrance to the Mountain Pass, so we'll see if this winds up actually being useable. So far I have seen two back entrances in this game so far (the entrance to the underdark from the spider boss' area in the cave underneath the town well, and the entrance to the goblin base from Selunite Outpost in the Underdark) and one of them didn't work.




There is no option to tell this guy to just start running and that I will cover his escape. As soon as the cutscene ended, I entered turn based and had Shadowheart cast sanctuary on him so he wouldn't get killed by stray goblin grenades or killed of retailation, but then once I attacked the goblins it seems that the sanctuary buff on him kept ticking down like in real time and then wore off while I was still wrapping up the goblins, which was annoying.








I just killed... how many goblins walking through the roadblock outside this fort area, and then this main courtyard? Now I walk 30 feet to a side area to find more goblins, and they are talking to each other and greet me as if I hadn't just slaughtered everyone right over there.




And then it happens AGAIN. I walk over 30 feet to another group that would have seen my kill the group of goblins in the prior screenshot, but they don't aggro and let me talk to them.





I have just killed 20 to 30 goblins in this camp, and this one guy is acting as if he had only seen me kill ONE goblin like a criminal, as if I am not clearly an enemy massacring them all? Why isn't he running away or trying to warn the others?




Likewise, I have killed so many gobs, but then I loot and this one gob I didn't see is standing there as if I am a house visitor who needs to be given the stink eye so I don't pocket anything.




I throw a bomb to break down the fort door and enter.




I realized that since Gale is a wizard and his staff weapons are useless, I can have him instead equip the club of giant strength to increase his STR to 21 and carry weight. I can then have him right click explosive barrels and add them to inventory, then place them down in the world, cast illusion to group a lot of adds together, and then have throw a barrel down at them. Is this the "barrelmancy" I have heard people talk about? The damage seems pretty mediocre, though, so I cast featherfall and then leap down to kill them.

(EDIT: In retrospect, since most of these goblins are not hostile, I probably could have gone down, placed a bunch of barrels, climbed back up, use illusion to bait the mobs together, throw a fireball down, and all of the explosions would have killed them. Is that the strat people are talking about?)




ANOTHER goblin is trying to arrest me. What is going on? Did these guys not hear the sounds of all of the goblins dying in the courtyard? Did not one goblin run in from there to warn them of me? Is there no goblin in a watchtower who saw my massacre outside? Did no one hear an explosion when I lobbed a bomb to get in here? Was me dropping barrels on a pack of these guys and then leaping down and slaughtering more goblins clearly not an act of war?






This game needs something like Mount & Blade's morale mechanic where if you kill a group of soldiers very quickly, it will cause "shock" amongst the enemy or frieghten and cause them to run for their lives. M&B, the Trails series, and Spore also had mechanics where if you were powerful enough, enemies would run away from you on sight. It makes no sense for this one, shirtless little goblin to be charging us when we are standing in the middle of many other goblin bodies. How is he going to succeed where they failed?




I open the door directly south of this room to find guards idle. I am starting to sound like a broken clock. They should have heard the explosions and cries of death going on behind them. This game doesn't have a sound propagation system like in Thief, or guards programmed to run away and warn others like in Thief or Deus Ex? And in other games too like Shadowrun Dragonfall and Hong Kong, or Warframe, etc, once you started a ruckus in a base, someone would run and sound the alarm and everyone would be put on alert or enemy reinforcements would be coming your way.




I was trying to read the Zhentarim as just being an extralegal smuggling operation that I could maybe work with like the Tenshudo, rather than a bonafide hard crime syndicate into slavery. Maybe I should go back and wipe out that base. Anyway, killed these guys.





Strange with the camera framing of the NPC being obscured by the MC's pauldrons, and then the MC clipping into the camera. Did the developers not do what Square Enix does with FF14 where they test every cutscene and their variations of camera placements for every race (ie small Lalafells to big Hrothgar) to make sure that there are no cinematography issues?






The flamboyant flagellant was funny.

The voice acting for the spiders was neat. But I talked to them from outside the pit behind an iron gate, but in the dialogue cutscene it shows me inside the pit and somehow gives me the option to attack. I'd imagine if I had clicked that option, it would have led to an odd situation where we are in combat but the enemy is on the other side and can't get to us.






I open the iron gate to release the spiders. They hold position for a few minutes, so I go around talking to more inexplicably passive goblins, but then the spiders suddenly attack the goblins and the last Absolute leader in the other room, so I rush over to jump in.






It'd have been nice if the cleave ability did more damage instead of a measly 8 damage max, and had longer reach with a polearm. The MC's AoE options are to just use firebreath once, and then that's it. He has to single target swing at each enemy one by one.




This is the ONE mob in this entire Goblin base area and fort interior that has aggroed me on sight rather than allowing me to just walk up and talk to her. I even tried blinking behind her out of her aggro cone right clicked her to talk to her, but no talk option came up, and then when I stopped crouching she immediately aggroed.








Well so far, except for this last mob I killed, all of the goblins in this base have been level 2 or maybe 3. I thought this was going to have been higher level stuff and that you were supposed to go level up on the side content in preparation for this climatic raid.

What difficulty are you playing on? Anything below Tactician in the early stages of the game is pretty much easy mode.

I am playing on tactician as that was recommended to me. I hear that I am missing out on seeing custom boss moves/abilities that are on legendary, which is disappointing. But combat in this game looks visually mediocre anyway so it's not a big deal, and I really hate the constant savescumming.

Having fun, bro?

Eh. It's okay. I am waiting for it to "get good" and become this amazing, industry changing supergame people were talking about. But apparently I am mostly done with act 1 and the game supposedly goes downhill after that. I am not seeing it, so I might drop after finishing act 1. The next Trails game releases in a week and I want to be playing that day 1 and get my review on it out. Maybe I'll come back to this after finishing Trails.

As I have been documenting in my posts, the game is incredibly wonky and often very frustrating to play. It is an aggregate number of issues that brings down the experience.

• The UI is ugly and dated, and does not clearly convey the information I need.
• A lot of the mechanic terms are unclear and I have to keep alt+tabbing out to understand how haste actually works or if this ability actually consumes a spell slot, etc.
• Going through the respec screens is laborious and then I find out that I didn't fill all of my preparation slots and can't fill them at camp and have to either go through the whole respec process again or wait until I level up in however many more hours.
• I killed Karlach and then played for several hours going through the Witch's dungeon, only to then long rest and a demon shows up at the camp and says that Karlach is not dead and then she turns Wyll into a demon. I spent time installing mods and trying out console commands trying to switch quest flags on and off and spawn Karlach heads, only for Wyll to still be doomed. I had to reload and redo several hours of gametime, which was very infuriating.
• The Grymforge colossus bossfight was very frustrating.
• I kept hearing Rusty talk about how amazing the "reactivity" in this game is, but so far I have been killing lots and lots of evil dwarves and goblins and then nobody notices. There are also other quests where things don't happen as you would expect and there aren't dialogue options that say the obvious thing that I want to say.
• The narrator is so far mostly redundant and doesn't say anything I can't already see on my screen. I would rather that the main character had been voiced in conversations instead.
• The dialogue cutscene cinematography is sterile. Characters also stand in place in most cutscenes. I heard they had a motion capture stage for this game, which would make you think they would follow Avatar's cue and take this seriously with people moving around the sets and touching stuff, but they don't. They do the thing where people are supposed to be handing items to other people in cutscenes but they're not actually handing an item over. Etc.
• Music is forgettable.
• The party members do not talk to each other. There is no party. There is just me and my 3 buddies who I talk to individually alone.
• The combat is visually mediocre compared. This has always been one of my issues with WRPGs, but in 2026 it's just hard to believe that with this amount of money they can't be bothered to step up their game, especially with the Eastern RPGs killing it with their combat presentation (and also much better UIs).
• I can only take three party members with me some reason, so some people have to stay behind and I am missing out on what they might say for various situations. There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to have more than 3 other people following me around, be they offscreen like in the later Trails of Cold Steel games or fighting in the back but doing no damage like in FF7 Rebirth.
• The art direction is very boring. If they were going to make a big budget RPG out of a WotC setting then I would have rather that they had picked MTG. This game's forgettable aesthetics is what got me to open my folder of MTG art and post some stuff in the art thread in the first place, wishing that this game looked so much better like that.
• There is no real compelling story. You are just meandering around to different isolated quest areas. I think the big bad satan guy showed up 40 hours ago or something and that was it
• The world feels bad with how tiny the grove is (there are no houses for the other druids), there is a dead town a 20 seconds walk away from the Grove, and then the goblin fort another 20 second walk from that, and then the witch's house a 20 second walk south of the town, etc.
• The game uses basic D&D classes which to me are very generic and not appealing. It is also hard to distinguish the difference between respeccing Gale as 8 different varieties of "wizard" or whatever, vs being a "sorceror", and so on. I am having to use grok and gemini to try to describe what I want to do and get a list of possible build options and explanations of the differences in nuances. I have never had to do this much outside research on classes before in a game, as in other games I just pick whichever really appeals to me (nothing really appealing here) or the differences in mechanics are upfront and easy to pick between.
• Various other stuff not coming to mind atm

Glad you're having a great time.

Sarcasm aside, I had nearly the complete opposite experience for my first playthrough. Loved everything about it (except for the woke **** that gradually reared its ugly head). Only thing I agree with is the savescumming. Would have been better if they had made it that you couldn't save during combat or dialogue or even entire sections. You just have to get out of the habit of hitting quick save over and over. I'm doing a playthrough with my brother right now and he NEVER saves our game. It's his first playthrough and he plays DnD irl, so he wants that authentic experience. It's led to some fun and unexpected scenarios, especially since he's playing as the Dark Urge.

I personally don't think the game goes downhill after Act 1. Act 2's not as good, but it has a roller coaster of a finale, and Act 3 is the best imo. The game really does get better the more you level and gain additional abilities. Hope you start enjoying it more, brother.

[roldet]

Meanwhile Jap games with better combat presentation and "non-dated" UI;

[Val the Moofia Boss]

► Act 1 seemingly finished, alt evil timeline

I head into the prison. Like with the spiders, I talk with them on the other side of the iron bars, but this time the cutscene actually shows me on the other side of the iron bars rather than inexplicably acting as if I was inside.




Why can't he turn into a rat or a small bird and go through the bars and escape?




The jailbreak was underwhelming. Doesn't seem like there are any other prisoners in this base.




Clearing out the room for loot, I enter what appears to be a jail cell, but the game thinks I am a prisoner rather than the only remaining living being in this entire facility.




It seems that's it. Only thing left to do is go back to the Grove.




I think this is the first time - after 50+ hours on this save file - I have seen a large world state update in the game with a lot of NPCs getting ready to move out. Disappointing. Versus a Trails game where ALL of the town NPCs are updating with the plot progression every few hours.




More NPC dialogue cutscenes where the camera positioning wasn't adjusted for various race/armor combinations.






Okay. Just a few minutes ago in the goblin fort prison, Halsin said that it was foolish of him to have left the Grove to go on a mission himself. And NOW he is saying that he is going to once again leave the Grove to go on a mission himself. What? Pick a lane man. Is it foolish for you to be going out or not? I am thinking that it would make more sense if Kagha had come with us instead, either because she has been banished or because she is assigned as the Grove's agent for this investigation/quest.










In the Grove treasure room, I get a spear. It looks meh compared to Merregon Halberd but now I have an actually decent bonus action that can yank enemies into my death ball.




Another new area, though it's a pretty small cavern. I guess this is really for evil characters so that they can infiltrate the Grove without having to fight 30+ tieflings and druids.




Well, it seems like that's it. There is nothing left to do in act 1 on the surface, or in the Underdark, or in Grymforge. All three exits - the northwestern Mountain Pass, the Southwestern Mountain Pass, and the Grymforge elevator - all have a point of no return warning message. So it seems like I need to long rest to party with the tieflings, get Halsin, and then go through a mountain pass to act 2.




======

ALT EVIL TIMELINE

Because the spiders I released aggro the red Absolute lieutenant and I joined in the fight when it was opportunistic, which in turn might have made Minthara hostile to me, I decided to reload an earlier save to see the conversations I missed.

Wyll says this out loud while we are surrounded by goblins and evil men. Would they not immediately turn on us for that?






This is bizzare. Minthara talks as if she has sufficient forces. But I had massacred all of the goblins in the town, on the roads to this fort, all of the goblins in the courtyard area/fort exterior, and over half of the goblins inside this base. The only Absolute members left are the red troll and his half dozen goblins in the other room, and Minthara and the goblin in this room. That's maybe 8 people, 6 of which are cannon fodder. They have no hope against a Grove of 30+ druids and Tieflings. It is also weird that Wyll acts as if we can't just mop up these remnants ourselves, as if there is still an army of goblins that I hadn't massacred.






Where did this army come from?




I like how Wyll turns against you on the spot. But it is bizzare that Gale and Shadowheart do not.








Wow. The music is even being dramatic during this moment as the giant spiders approach the gate.








That was as far as I went before I quit this timeline. I wonder if there is a cutscene of the goblins and spiders eating the kids.




The story for the heroic route is disappointing. You just kill Minthara in the base and that's that. Boring kill ten rats sidequest. Whereas if you chose to be evil, you get a big movie battle sequence and a much more dramatic story with a betrayal and the sad music. The heroic route didn't get effort poured into it like that.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

► Act 1 finished? For real? Tiefling party, Shadowheart impropriety, Githyanki Creche

I long rest to get the NPCs to visit.




I thought I had mentioned this in an earlier post, but why was the blood circle in our camp not cleaned up after the murder? Why is it still here and wet after 10+ days? Zevor and Halsin should be all over this thinking we are satanic cultists or something.

It is also bizzare that all of the party members - except for Wyll - are standing in front of their tents, rather than interacting with the guests or doing stuff like, Gale showing magic tricks, Wyll and Astarion exchanging stories with the other soldier Tieflings, maybe Shadowheart asking the women about their lives are like, etc.


I have literally never - not once - had Astarion in my party for this entire 60 hour long playthrough so far. And yet he is talking as if he had fought. Maybe while raiding the goblin base, there could have been a cutscene showing your inactive party members fighting at the Grove.




Given how finnicky WRPGs are and this game especially, I had to do some outside research. Apparently if I want to romance Shadowheart, I have to do something here. But I am not liking this. She's drinking alcohol, and wants to "meet up late at night". Given the kind of people who made this game (Western, secular, adulterous), it is highly likely something dubious happen then, which is not what I want. I want to court her and let this possibly lead to marriage, not have casual sex/one night stand. I don't touch the goods until I buy them. So I try play up the camaraderie of the party here.






Huh? We have never - not once - talked to Karlach in this timeline. In the original timeline we did, and then we killed her, and then Mizora acted as if we didn't and turned Wyll into a demon so I lost several hours of playtime having to reload and just attack her before we could get sucked into a cutscene conversation with her. Why would you think Karlach was a "victim"?




Very suspicious. I'd rather just go to bed. But Grok and Gemini and the wiki Shadowheart Romance walkthrough is saying that I have to go to her here or that's it and there is no opportunity to do so later. Arrrgggh






All of these options sound dubious. I try to pick the least dubious ones.






Hm, it might have been nice if there were a few illustrated CGs here to show us a glimpse of what your homeland and life there was like.



Noooooo what are you doing




I have the mod installed that prevents people from being nude, so initially wasn't sure if there was just a one night stand. But it seems like there wasn't? So were they just sleeping on the COLD rocks at night?




"Shadowheart disapproves" what did you want from me? To be an immoral man?




Shadowheart, we FOUND the dead bodies of the Dark Justiciars in Grymforge. We LOOTED their dead bodies and I gave you Dark Justiciar armor. Why are you acting as if you haven't already found Dark Justiciars down in Grymforge?






Hrm... I am not sure I agree with what the writers are thinking here. The Grove appears to be a pseudo clan, a small village of about a dozen or two dozen people. It is not a large nation of thousands+ of people. In a small scale clan/village environment, democracy - as in people interacting with each other - is much more effective, and the chieftain must lead by building consensus, not by ruling by fiat. Rule by fiat becomes possible when the population becomes too large for all of the people to be interacting with each other in a timely manner, and thus democracy becomes unfeasible. So you need a head honcho to declare "this is what we are doing, there will be no discussion about it". Kagha appeared to have been well liked in the Grove. I am not sure Halsin can just call in this stranger and then appoint her as dictator and that everyone there will just go along with it. They could easily just elect one of their own as their leader, couldn't they?






I double checked the walkthrough. Apparently, because I did not kiss Shadowheart, this morning is the really actual last chance to go down the romance path with her. And I HAVE to say that I should have kissed her. It's either say that or I am locked out of the route for the rest of the game. Really not liking how the devs don't give you any other option here.




I have been recommended to go to the Northwestern Mountain Pass to the next map and do the Githyanki Creche, and then come back and do act 2. Huh? I thought that this map was act 1, and that going to the next map is where act 2 takes place, and that you wouldn't be able to go back to act 1 and therefore the act 1 map here. This seems unintuitive. Now I need to do more research to parse what is going on. For this segment, I take Gale out of the party and insert La'zel.




A purple elf. Is that a Drow? Aren't Drow supposed to be legendarily hated? Nobody makes any comment about it.




A worthwhile attempt. I am half expecting that they will turn out to be Jem'Hadar - space soldiers specifically bred for war - and that they will have warlike tendencies no matter what, but it's worth a shot, and maybe we will have saved someone from being enslaved in an evil empire of space marauders. La'zel seems like she might turn on me if I do this, which I don't mind.








It is disappointing that there is no option to run in and try to save them, even if it would have resulted in the base going on high alert and locking you out of strolling through the basement like how you were allowed to stroll around the goblin base.








I am level 6, half way to this game's level cap, and I still do not have a good, baseline, spammable AoE attack. Cleave deals pitiful damage and has too short of a range, and my Dragonborn fire breath doesn't actually do that much more damage either and can only be used once rather than spammed for aoe situations.




I accidentally clicked on Shadowheart, and surprisingly she has dialogue about this location. But the other party members do not. I wonder why the devs couldn't have been bothered to do something like Mount & Blade where the NPCs will just automatically start talking about whatever place you are visiting if it is relevant to them.




I have no idea how you are supposed to reliably roll that high. The maximum a die can roll is 20, and so far I haven't seen any way to stack modifiers higher than 5 or 7. I once rolled a 32 on Wyll during a charisma check but I don't know how he did that.




This mob was locked behind an enchanted door, and turned out to be level 7. I thought I was in for another miserable boss fight like the Tormentor. So I chugged elixirs and accuracy oils and spent two turns pre buffing before rushing in, only to burst down the mob before he could hurt us. So I guess maybe the Tormentor was a one off badly designed boss in how he got 3 or 4 turns in a row.




Given how La'zel indicated that she would turn on me and the Drow woman if I seriously attempted to take an egg to have it be raised by normal people, it is odd that La'zel is not interjecting and telling the scientist what I really intend to do with the egg. There is also no option for me to say the truth either. While I mean well for the egg and want it to be raised by normal, sane people, I will not be personally raising it. I am finding it another home and Creche might men home, selecting that would really mean that I am actually looking for another Githyanki military installation, which I am not.






The two humans Shadowheart and Wyll oddly express no wonder or amazement or curiosity at being able to walk around an alien invader base. Ofcourse, BG3 party members rarely talk but here it is even more conspicuous. La'zel also doesn't enthusiastically try to show off her people's culture to Shadowheart and Wyll either.


The artists couldn't have been bothered to give the egg some translucency?




It is nice that you are allowed to be confident enough to say to their face that you have the artifact but that you are not giving it to them.










I thought when I clicked on "I am returning it" that I would then get the option to say whether or not I am giving it to the queen, or returning it to the actual people who originally created the artifact.




Nice, we were able to get some answers about the dream visitor, and now have an opportunity to get more answers, and to plan our next steps and buff up for when we bust out.






It'd have been cool if some of the rocks in background were spinning.




I don't see how this information could really threaten the queen in any timeframe relevant to us. We don't have a radio transmitter that can broadcast this to the galaxy, and who would be able to pick up on our broadcast? Other Githyanki warships or bases crewed by indoctrinated fanatics? You might get one or two doubters thinking about it, but not the numbers you need on a mass scale for a revolution. Maybe mages could portal to occupied worlds and try to form rebellion, but this information wouldn't really help rebels discontent with being under space orc boot do what they were already going to do in the first place.






Does she still say this if you played a deceitful character and you had her in your party to witness you lie or a lot, or not do what you said you would do to NPCs?






Time to buff up and break out.








It is nice how this time - unlike the evil dwarves in Grymforge and the goblin base - that the whole facility goes on alert, rather than the ridiculousness of me going from room to room each time finding the people there not hostile to me when they should have heard the death screams and explosions going off in the adjacent room.








You weren't even there.




I failed all of these ridiculously high roll checks but La'zel didn't die as the narrator said she would.






Cleared out the creche. Heading back to drop off the egg.




Is this a steel cable? I am not sure a fiber **** of this distance could hold a heavy wooden carriage.




I realize that the Drow might be lying about her benign intentions with the egg, so I equip the detect thoughts amulet and cast it before talking to her. But no detect thoughts option comes up. So I hand her the egg. I get a paltry 400 gold. La'zel surprisingly does not draw her blade on either of us like she said she would, and insists that I can still take the egg back. But when clicking on the Drow again, there is no option to further press her. So I leave.




I need to go back to the grove to vendor all of this crap, but when I attempt to fast travel out, I am forced into a long rest.





I want to believe that this guy is genuinely a weary old man who has been biding his time for freedom and has benign intentions. But I know from when you meet him earlier in the act 1 map that if you hand over the prism, he orders the other Githyanki soldiers to kill you anyway. And then here, he is standing over me with his sword drawn, as if he was going to shank me in my sleep. If he truly wanted to come in peace, then he could have not drawn his sword. Suspicious. Being accompanied by a ninja with a crossbow also doesn't help either.








Gale, Astarion, and Halsin have disappeared so I can't ask their thoughts on the matter.




The vendor NPC is gone. Guess I just have to go to the next act map then.




... Is act 1 actually over now? For real? Can I go now?

[rusty_shackleford]

Did you do the temple?
I can't remember if it's before or after the githyanki creche

[edit]
maybe it's part of the same area, if so, you missed a good bit!

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Did you do the temple?
I can't remember if it's before or after the githyanki creche

[edit]
maybe it's part of the same area, if so, you missed a good bit!

Which temple? The goblin base east of the wiped out town in act 1? The Selunite temple in the Underdark where the Tormentor boss and the petrified Drow were? Or another temple in the same map as the Githyanki Creche?

[rusty_shackleford]

Did you do the temple?
I can't remember if it's before or after the githyanki creche

[edit]
maybe it's part of the same area, if so, you missed a good bit!

Which temple? The goblin base east of the wiped out town in act 1? The Selunite temple in the Underdark where the Tormentor boss and the petrified Drow were? Or another temple in the same map as the Githyanki Creche?

Same map as the creche, it's apparently Rosymorn Monastery.

► Show Spoiler

There's a bunch of enemies everywhere, puzzles, etc., If you just went in and out to the creche, you missed a ton of content.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Did you do the temple?
I can't remember if it's before or after the githyanki creche

[edit]
maybe it's part of the same area, if so, you missed a good bit!

Which temple? The goblin base east of the wiped out town in act 1? The Selunite temple in the Underdark where the Tormentor boss and the petrified Drow were? Or another temple in the same map as the Githyanki Creche?

Same map as the creche, it's apparently Rosymorn Monastery.

► Show Spoiler

There's a bunch of enemies everywhere, puzzles, etc., If you just went in and out to the creche, you missed a ton of content.

The creche is in the temple so I had to go through it to reach the basement. There was hardly anything in it of note.

[rusty_shackleford]

Which temple? The goblin base east of the wiped out town in act 1? The Selunite temple in the Underdark where the Tormentor boss and the petrified Drow were? Or another temple in the same map as the Githyanki Creche?

Same map as the creche, it's apparently Rosymorn Monastery.

► Show Spoiler

There's a bunch of enemies everywhere, puzzles, etc., If you just went in and out to the creche, you missed a ton of content.

The creche is in the temple so I had to go through it to reach the basement. There was hardly anything in it of note.

You missed a bunch, including a legendary weapon + a boss on the roof.

[Trickster]

► Act 1 finished? For real? Tiefling party, Shadowheart impropriety, Githyanki Creche

I long rest to get the NPCs to visit.




I thought I had mentioned this in an earlier post, but why was the blood circle in our camp not cleaned up after the murder? Why is it still here and wet after 10+ days? Zevor and Halsin should be all over this thinking we are satanic cultists or something.

It is also bizzare that all of the party members - except for Wyll - are standing in front of their tents, rather than interacting with the guests or doing stuff like, Gale showing magic tricks, Wyll and Astarion exchanging stories with the other soldier Tieflings, maybe Shadowheart asking the women about their lives are like, etc.


I have literally never - not once - had Astarion in my party for this entire 60 hour long playthrough so far. And yet he is talking as if he had fought. Maybe while raiding the goblin base, there could have been a cutscene showing your inactive party members fighting at the Grove.




Given how finnicky WRPGs are and this game especially, I had to do some outside research. Apparently if I want to romance Shadowheart, I have to do something here. But I am not liking this. She's drinking alcohol, and wants to "meet up late at night". Given the kind of people who made this game (Western, secular, adulterous), it is highly likely something dubious happen then, which is not what I want. I want to court her and let this possibly lead to marriage, not have casual sex/one night stand. I don't touch the goods until I buy them. So I try play up the camaraderie of the party here.






Huh? We have never - not once - talked to Karlach in this timeline. In the original timeline we did, and then we killed her, and then Mizora acted as if we didn't and turned Wyll into a demon so I lost several hours of playtime having to reload and just attack her before we could get sucked into a cutscene conversation with her. Why would you think Karlach was a "victim"?




Very suspicious. I'd rather just go to bed. But Grok and Gemini and the wiki Shadowheart Romance walkthrough is saying that I have to go to her here or that's it and there is no opportunity to do so later. Arrrgggh






All of these options sound dubious. I try to pick the least dubious ones.






Hm, it might have been nice if there were a few illustrated CGs here to show us a glimpse of what your homeland and life there was like.



Noooooo what are you doing




I have the mod installed that prevents people from being nude, so initially wasn't sure if there was just a one night stand. But it seems like there wasn't? So were they just sleeping on the COLD rocks at night?




"Shadowheart disapproves" what did you want from me? To be an immoral man?




Shadowheart, we FOUND the dead bodies of the Dark Justiciars in Grymforge. We LOOTED their dead bodies and I gave you Dark Justiciar armor. Why are you acting as if you haven't already found Dark Justiciars down in Grymforge?






Hrm... I am not sure I agree with what the writers are thinking here. The Grove appears to be a pseudo clan, a small village of about a dozen or two dozen people. It is not a large nation of thousands+ of people. In a small scale clan/village environment, democracy - as in people interacting with each other - is much more effective, and the chieftain must lead by building consensus, not by ruling by fiat. Rule by fiat becomes possible when the population becomes too large for all of the people to be interacting with each other in a timely manner, and thus democracy becomes unfeasible. So you need a head honcho to declare "this is what we are doing, there will be no discussion about it". Kagha appeared to have been well liked in the Grove. I am not sure Halsin can just call in this stranger and then appoint her as dictator and that everyone there will just go along with it. They could easily just elect one of their own as their leader, couldn't they?






I double checked the walkthrough. Apparently, because I did not kiss Shadowheart, this morning is the really actual last chance to go down the romance path with her. And I HAVE to say that I should have kissed her. It's either say that or I am locked out of the route for the rest of the game. Really not liking how the devs don't give you any other option here.




I have been recommended to go to the Northwestern Mountain Pass to the next map and do the Githyanki Creche, and then come back and do act 2. Huh? I thought that this map was act 1, and that going to the next map is where act 2 takes place, and that you wouldn't be able to go back to act 1 and therefore the act 1 map here. This seems unintuitive. Now I need to do more research to parse what is going on. For this segment, I take Gale out of the party and insert La'zel.




A purple elf. Is that a Drow? Aren't Drow supposed to be legendarily hated? Nobody makes any comment about it.




A worthwhile attempt. I am half expecting that they will turn out to be Jem'Hadar - space soldiers specifically bred for war - and that they will have warlike tendencies no matter what, but it's worth a shot, and maybe we will have saved someone from being enslaved in an evil empire of space marauders. La'zel seems like she might turn on me if I do this, which I don't mind.








It is disappointing that there is no option to run in and try to save them, even if it would have resulted in the base going on high alert and locking you out of strolling through the basement like how you were allowed to stroll around the goblin base.








I am level 6, half way to this game's level cap, and I still do not have a good, baseline, spammable AoE attack. Cleave deals pitiful damage and has too short of a range, and my Dragonborn fire breath doesn't actually do that much more damage either and can only be used once rather than spammed for aoe situations.




I accidentally clicked on Shadowheart, and surprisingly she has dialogue about this location. But the other party members do not. I wonder why the devs couldn't have been bothered to do something like Mount & Blade where the NPCs will just automatically start talking about whatever place you are visiting if it is relevant to them.




I have no idea how you are supposed to reliably roll that high. The maximum a die can roll is 20, and so far I haven't seen any way to stack modifiers higher than 5 or 7. I once rolled a 32 on Wyll during a charisma check but I don't know how he did that.




This mob was locked behind an enchanted door, and turned out to be level 7. I thought I was in for another miserable boss fight like the Tormentor. So I chugged elixirs and accuracy oils and spent two turns pre buffing before rushing in, only to burst down the mob before he could hurt us. So I guess maybe the Tormentor was a one off badly designed boss in how he got 3 or 4 turns in a row.




Given how La'zel indicated that she would turn on me and the Drow woman if I seriously attempted to take an egg to have it be raised by normal people, it is odd that La'zel is not interjecting and telling the scientist what I really intend to do with the egg. There is also no option for me to say the truth either. While I mean well for the egg and want it to be raised by normal, sane people, I will not be personally raising it. I am finding it another home and Creche might men home, selecting that would really mean that I am actually looking for another Githyanki military installation, which I am not.






The two humans Shadowheart and Wyll oddly express no wonder or amazement or curiosity at being able to walk around an alien invader base. Ofcourse, BG3 party members rarely talk but here it is even more conspicuous. La'zel also doesn't enthusiastically try to show off her people's culture to Shadowheart and Wyll either.


The artists couldn't have been bothered to give the egg some translucency?




It is nice that you are allowed to be confident enough to say to their face that you have the artifact but that you are not giving it to them.










I thought when I clicked on "I am returning it" that I would then get the option to say whether or not I am giving it to the queen, or returning it to the actual people who originally created the artifact.




Nice, we were able to get some answers about the dream visitor, and now have an opportunity to get more answers, and to plan our next steps and buff up for when we bust out.






It'd have been cool if some of the rocks in background were spinning.




I don't see how this information could really threaten the queen in any timeframe relevant to us. We don't have a radio transmitter that can broadcast this to the galaxy, and who would be able to pick up on our broadcast? Other Githyanki warships or bases crewed by indoctrinated fanatics? You might get one or two doubters thinking about it, but not the numbers you need on a mass scale for a revolution. Maybe mages could portal to occupied worlds and try to form rebellion, but this information wouldn't really help rebels discontent with being under space orc boot do what they were already going to do in the first place.






Does she still say this if you played a deceitful character and you had her in your party to witness you lie or a lot, or not do what you said you would do to NPCs?






Time to buff up and break out.








It is nice how this time - unlike the evil dwarves in Grymforge and the goblin base - that the whole facility goes on alert, rather than the ridiculousness of me going from room to room each time finding the people there not hostile to me when they should have heard the death screams and explosions going off in the adjacent room.








You weren't even there.




I failed all of these ridiculously high roll checks but La'zel didn't die as the narrator said she would.






Cleared out the creche. Heading back to drop off the egg.




Is this a steel cable? I am not sure a fiber **** of this distance could hold a heavy wooden carriage.




I realize that the Drow might be lying about her benign intentions with the egg, so I equip the detect thoughts amulet and cast it before talking to her. But no detect thoughts option comes up. So I hand her the egg. I get a paltry 400 gold. La'zel surprisingly does not draw her blade on either of us like she said she would, and insists that I can still take the egg back. But when clicking on the Drow again, there is no option to further press her. So I leave.




I need to go back to the grove to vendor all of this crap, but when I attempt to fast travel out, I am forced into a long rest.





I want to believe that this guy is genuinely a weary old man who has been biding his time for freedom and has benign intentions. But I know from when you meet him earlier in the act 1 map that if you hand over the prism, he orders the other Githyanki soldiers to kill you anyway. And then here, he is standing over me with his sword drawn, as if he was going to shank me in my sleep. If he truly wanted to come in peace, then he could have not drawn his sword. Suspicious. Being accompanied by a ninja with a crossbow also doesn't help either.








Gale, Astarion, and Halsin have disappeared so I can't ask their thoughts on the matter.




The vendor NPC is gone. Guess I just have to go to the next act map then.




... Is act 1 actually over now? For real? Can I go now?

Seeing the scene from your playthrough during the celebration night at the Druid Grove got me thinking: unfortunately, RPGs don't offer many opportunities to properly friendzone characters. Although, in BG3, the writing for turning down Lae'zel and her later callbacks to it is much better developed than it is for SH.

[rusty_shackleford]

@Val the Moofia Boss
There's a ton of missable content, especially if you aren't trying to go everywhere. Always be looking for elevated areas.
Also, you probably missed a weapon at the top of the wizard's tower in the underdark. One of the chairs(? stool, maybe?) has much higher HP/defense, you break it and its leg is a good weapon.

---

I will agree that being able to do both paths to act 2 is silly. Nothing suggests this should be possible, and I suspect it wasn't really intended to be done.