Baldur's Gate 3

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Why are you playing as gay lizard men?

I usually play as cool inhuman beastmen if that is an option. The bear in Tekken, the wolf guy in Vantage Masters, Tauren and Pandaren in WoW, Charr in GW2, etc. But they need to be cool. Khajit and Argonians aren't cool.






These Dragonborn are kinda cool-ish. I found a digitigrade legs mods but I am afraid of installing more mods during my playthrough and whether or not it will conflict with some outfit alteration mods I already have installed like Dignify.

[buttfucker 3000]

Which BG3 party members are generally regarded as the best story wise? I wonder if I should install that mod that just plays all party member cutscenes regardless of whether or not they are in your party.

They are all really bad.

Lae'zel shows a change after you earn enough friendship points with her and while still brutally honest and abrasive, is nevertheless loyal to you. I hated her sassy attitude in the beginning but ended up really liking her by the end. Specially because she is the only one of the party members that doesn't have a secret that she is hiding from you. She is just an earnest githyanki warrior trying to remove the tadpole to stay alive as per the knowledge she has due to her upbringing. I wouldn't call her "great" but certainly was the best of the bunch who all keep trying to "one up" each other with their snowflake main character syndrome.

Gale is alright, if a little bit pretentious. If you use the mod that makes him straight (which everyone should) then he shouldn't be a degenerate houndog salivating for your hide and should just be a nice wizard pal.

Wyll is alright if you use the Wyll's of Toril mod to make him a Baldurian instead of a ******. He is kind of a poser but at least he is genuinely heroic in the sense that he tries to do the right thing unlike the other edgelords in your party.

Shadowheart is an emo goth all the way to the very end until you finish her personal quest, then she mellows out but its not really worth all the hassle. She is not bloodthirsty like Astarion so if you are playing a heroic character you can bring her along without having to suffer her nagging too much. Just never push her on her secrets and let her keep the facade and she won't dislike you/***** too much.

Karlach is a straight up redditor. Talks like one too. She has a good melee class, but so does Lae'zel and Lae'zel is considerably less insufferable. Karlach's one good trait is that she is also heroic so she won't be bitching if you are not an evil murder hobo. That's it. It's her only redeeming feature. If you can tolerate the word choices she uses, are playing a heroic character and are looking for another melee character besides Lae'zel, then I guess she is alright.

Astarion is a ****** and as a vampire that tried to feast on my character, he got stake in the heart just like all filthy bloodsuckers deserve, as Lathander intended. From what I've read he is really evil, emo and pretentious. Some find his humor hilarious but I just don't fraternize with evil monsters.

Halsin is just as much of a horndog as Gale, if not more so. Make sure to get that mod or else he is insurable. With the mod, he is somewhat boring with nothing really interesting to add or say. Once you learn that he was only added as a companion due to crazy fujoshi fans wanted him to bear rape them, it all makes sense. I guess he is inoffensive enough.

Jaheira is just as bossy and naggy as she was in BG 1 and 2. I don't particularly care for her that much. I am one of those few that actually liked Khalid and was sad to see him so unceremoniously disposed in BG2.

Minsc is a caricature of the original and Matt Merzer does a parody impression of Jim Cummings. If original Minsc was seasons 1 to 9 Homer Simpson, then BG3 Minsc is late season Homer Simpson, completely flanderized without all the nuance his character once had.

I am being extremely charitable here, I still stand by my statement that they are all really bad but if you decide to engage with the game's companions on the game's terms, then those three, in that order and with those mods, are decent enough. Also, there's a way to have a party of 6 like in the original BG games but it really destroys the difficulty curve, even playing on Tactician.

In terms of "story" content:

► Show Spoiler

Shadowheart has the Macguffin, so much so that she WILL join your camp at some point, no matter what you do. I think she then can die after Act 1 but I don't remember. Her story is not really tied to the Macguffin so I am not sure why the game is so heavy hand it about it. She has some story presence at the end of Act 2 when you go to Shar's temple but that's pretty much it.

Lae'zel has a LOT of dialogue when you visit the githyanki creche, if you let her join your camp, make sure to bring her when you go there. She is also tied to a super important end game character. I think Larian really wanted us to play as her, as the githyanki and mindflayers are the plot they really wanted to tell.

Wyll has a lot of dialogue when you reach Baldur's Gate but outside of his personal quest that is related to his father, who was basically the regent of BG, there's not much to his character in terms of story content.

Gale has a bomb in his chest and can be used at 2 points during the story to end the game in a non-standard game over sort of ending. Outside of that I don't really think he has much of a presence in the plot.

Astarion, was dead when I went to meet Cazador, the man that turned him vampire. I assume he has a role in that part of the story but he died early in Act 1 so... who knows. Not really that important, from the looks of it.

Karlach has a strong tie to one of the 3 main bad guys but is just a few lines of background context and an overly dramatic rant/temper tantrum when you kill him in Act 3. I don't think is really worth it to bring her along.

Halsin has a lot of lines in Act 2 related to the source of the darkness but that's pretty much it.

Jaheira has somewhat a good amount of content in BG but nothing really too big in relation to the plot. Just, she knows the movers and shakers and they know her, as the leader of the Harpers. I think it makes sense to bring her along during Act 3 when you reach Baldur's Gate but not critical the actual plot. The same is true for Minsc to a much, much diminished capacity.

All in all, I don't really think any character is crucial to the plot so bring whoever you like best or whoever has the class features that better suit your party composition.

Pretty sure Gale is already straight, and he's easily the most tolerable of the origin companions.

[Oyster Sauce]

Which BG3 party members are generally regarded as the best story wise? I wonder if I should install that mod that just plays all party member cutscenes regardless of whether or not they are in your party.

They are all really bad.

Lae'zel shows a change after you earn enough friendship points with her and while still brutally honest and abrasive, is nevertheless loyal to you. I hated her sassy attitude in the beginning but ended up really liking her by the end. Specially because she is the only one of the party members that doesn't have a secret that she is hiding from you. She is just an earnest githyanki warrior trying to remove the tadpole to stay alive as per the knowledge she has due to her upbringing. I wouldn't call her "great" but certainly was the best of the bunch who all keep trying to "one up" each other with their snowflake main character syndrome.

Gale is alright, if a little bit pretentious. If you use the mod that makes him straight (which everyone should) then he shouldn't be a degenerate houndog salivating for your hide and should just be a nice wizard pal.

Wyll is alright if you use the Wyll's of Toril mod to make him a Baldurian instead of a ******. He is kind of a poser but at least he is genuinely heroic in the sense that he tries to do the right thing unlike the other edgelords in your party.

Shadowheart is an emo goth all the way to the very end until you finish her personal quest, then she mellows out but its not really worth all the hassle. She is not bloodthirsty like Astarion so if you are playing a heroic character you can bring her along without having to suffer her nagging too much. Just never push her on her secrets and let her keep the facade and she won't dislike you/***** too much.

Karlach is a straight up redditor. Talks like one too. She has a good melee class, but so does Lae'zel and Lae'zel is considerably less insufferable. Karlach's one good trait is that she is also heroic so she won't be bitching if you are not an evil murder hobo. That's it. It's her only redeeming feature. If you can tolerate the word choices she uses, are playing a heroic character and are looking for another melee character besides Lae'zel, then I guess she is alright.

Astarion is a ****** and as a vampire that tried to feast on my character, he got stake in the heart just like all filthy bloodsuckers deserve, as Lathander intended. From what I've read he is really evil, emo and pretentious. Some find his humor hilarious but I just don't fraternize with evil monsters.

Halsin is just as much of a horndog as Gale, if not more so. Make sure to get that mod or else he is insurable. With the mod, he is somewhat boring with nothing really interesting to add or say. Once you learn that he was only added as a companion due to crazy fujoshi fans wanted him to bear rape them, it all makes sense. I guess he is inoffensive enough.

Jaheira is just as bossy and naggy as she was in BG 1 and 2. I don't particularly care for her that much. I am one of those few that actually liked Khalid and was sad to see him so unceremoniously disposed in BG2.

Minsc is a caricature of the original and Matt Merzer does a parody impression of Jim Cummings. If original Minsc was seasons 1 to 9 Homer Simpson, then BG3 Minsc is late season Homer Simpson, completely flanderized without all the nuance his character once had.

I am being extremely charitable here, I still stand by my statement that they are all really bad but if you decide to engage with the game's companions on the game's terms, then those three, in that order and with those mods, are decent enough. Also, there's a way to have a party of 6 like in the original BG games but it really destroys the difficulty curve, even playing on Tactician.

In terms of "story" content:

► Show Spoiler

Shadowheart has the Macguffin, so much so that she WILL join your camp at some point, no matter what you do. I think she then can die after Act 1 but I don't remember. Her story is not really tied to the Macguffin so I am not sure why the game is so heavy hand it about it. She has some story presence at the end of Act 2 when you go to Shar's temple but that's pretty much it.

Lae'zel has a LOT of dialogue when you visit the githyanki creche, if you let her join your camp, make sure to bring her when you go there. She is also tied to a super important end game character. I think Larian really wanted us to play as her, as the githyanki and mindflayers are the plot they really wanted to tell.

Wyll has a lot of dialogue when you reach Baldur's Gate but outside of his personal quest that is related to his father, who was basically the regent of BG, there's not much to his character in terms of story content.

Gale has a bomb in his chest and can be used at 2 points during the story to end the game in a non-standard game over sort of ending. Outside of that I don't really think he has much of a presence in the plot.

Astarion, was dead when I went to meet Cazador, the man that turned him vampire. I assume he has a role in that part of the story but he died early in Act 1 so... who knows. Not really that important, from the looks of it.

Karlach has a strong tie to one of the 3 main bad guys but is just a few lines of background context and an overly dramatic rant/temper tantrum when you kill him in Act 3. I don't think is really worth it to bring her along.

Halsin has a lot of lines in Act 2 related to the source of the darkness but that's pretty much it.

Jaheira has somewhat a good amount of content in BG but nothing really too big in relation to the plot. Just, she knows the movers and shakers and they know her, as the leader of the Harpers. I think it makes sense to bring her along during Act 3 when you reach Baldur's Gate but not critical the actual plot. The same is true for Minsc to a much, much diminished capacity.

All in all, I don't really think any character is crucial to the plot so bring whoever you like best or whoever has the class features that better suit your party composition.

Pretty sure Gale is already straight, and he's easily the most tolerable of the origin companions.

He was furious at me because I didn't have gay sex with him

[buttfucker 3000]

They are all really bad.

Lae'zel shows a change after you earn enough friendship points with her and while still brutally honest and abrasive, is nevertheless loyal to you. I hated her sassy attitude in the beginning but ended up really liking her by the end. Specially because she is the only one of the party members that doesn't have a secret that she is hiding from you. She is just an earnest githyanki warrior trying to remove the tadpole to stay alive as per the knowledge she has due to her upbringing. I wouldn't call her "great" but certainly was the best of the bunch who all keep trying to "one up" each other with their snowflake main character syndrome.

Gale is alright, if a little bit pretentious. If you use the mod that makes him straight (which everyone should) then he shouldn't be a degenerate houndog salivating for your hide and should just be a nice wizard pal.

Wyll is alright if you use the Wyll's of Toril mod to make him a Baldurian instead of a ******. He is kind of a poser but at least he is genuinely heroic in the sense that he tries to do the right thing unlike the other edgelords in your party.

Shadowheart is an emo goth all the way to the very end until you finish her personal quest, then she mellows out but its not really worth all the hassle. She is not bloodthirsty like Astarion so if you are playing a heroic character you can bring her along without having to suffer her nagging too much. Just never push her on her secrets and let her keep the facade and she won't dislike you/***** too much.

Karlach is a straight up redditor. Talks like one too. She has a good melee class, but so does Lae'zel and Lae'zel is considerably less insufferable. Karlach's one good trait is that she is also heroic so she won't be bitching if you are not an evil murder hobo. That's it. It's her only redeeming feature. If you can tolerate the word choices she uses, are playing a heroic character and are looking for another melee character besides Lae'zel, then I guess she is alright.

Astarion is a ****** and as a vampire that tried to feast on my character, he got stake in the heart just like all filthy bloodsuckers deserve, as Lathander intended. From what I've read he is really evil, emo and pretentious. Some find his humor hilarious but I just don't fraternize with evil monsters.

Halsin is just as much of a horndog as Gale, if not more so. Make sure to get that mod or else he is insurable. With the mod, he is somewhat boring with nothing really interesting to add or say. Once you learn that he was only added as a companion due to crazy fujoshi fans wanted him to bear rape them, it all makes sense. I guess he is inoffensive enough.

Jaheira is just as bossy and naggy as she was in BG 1 and 2. I don't particularly care for her that much. I am one of those few that actually liked Khalid and was sad to see him so unceremoniously disposed in BG2.

Minsc is a caricature of the original and Matt Merzer does a parody impression of Jim Cummings. If original Minsc was seasons 1 to 9 Homer Simpson, then BG3 Minsc is late season Homer Simpson, completely flanderized without all the nuance his character once had.

I am being extremely charitable here, I still stand by my statement that they are all really bad but if you decide to engage with the game's companions on the game's terms, then those three, in that order and with those mods, are decent enough. Also, there's a way to have a party of 6 like in the original BG games but it really destroys the difficulty curve, even playing on Tactician.

In terms of "story" content:

► Show Spoiler

Shadowheart has the Macguffin, so much so that she WILL join your camp at some point, no matter what you do. I think she then can die after Act 1 but I don't remember. Her story is not really tied to the Macguffin so I am not sure why the game is so heavy hand it about it. She has some story presence at the end of Act 2 when you go to Shar's temple but that's pretty much it.

Lae'zel has a LOT of dialogue when you visit the githyanki creche, if you let her join your camp, make sure to bring her when you go there. She is also tied to a super important end game character. I think Larian really wanted us to play as her, as the githyanki and mindflayers are the plot they really wanted to tell.

Wyll has a lot of dialogue when you reach Baldur's Gate but outside of his personal quest that is related to his father, who was basically the regent of BG, there's not much to his character in terms of story content.

Gale has a bomb in his chest and can be used at 2 points during the story to end the game in a non-standard game over sort of ending. Outside of that I don't really think he has much of a presence in the plot.

Astarion, was dead when I went to meet Cazador, the man that turned him vampire. I assume he has a role in that part of the story but he died early in Act 1 so... who knows. Not really that important, from the looks of it.

Karlach has a strong tie to one of the 3 main bad guys but is just a few lines of background context and an overly dramatic rant/temper tantrum when you kill him in Act 3. I don't think is really worth it to bring her along.

Halsin has a lot of lines in Act 2 related to the source of the darkness but that's pretty much it.

Jaheira has somewhat a good amount of content in BG but nothing really too big in relation to the plot. Just, she knows the movers and shakers and they know her, as the leader of the Harpers. I think it makes sense to bring her along during Act 3 when you reach Baldur's Gate but not critical the actual plot. The same is true for Minsc to a much, much diminished capacity.

All in all, I don't really think any character is crucial to the plot so bring whoever you like best or whoever has the class features that better suit your party composition.

Pretty sure Gale is already straight, and he's easily the most tolerable of the origin companions.

He was furious at me because I didn't have gay sex with him

Woah that's weird

[rusty_shackleford]

silly me for thinking I'd learn a useful cantrip or something

[Trickster]

interesting ****. so this user openly posted her de-niggafied Wyll on surodmg's server about two hours ago, replacing him with Xavier from Love and Deepspace. i see no **** screeching about d*versity in sight. what in matrix bug i just witnessed?

They are cowards. One reason why women are woke cultists is the fear of being cut off from their social group, receiving the cult's disapproval, and being canceled. Wokies are hyper-conformists who view themselves as the moral mainstream while casting any critic as a social pariah (a rich irony for supposed "We wuzz marginalized") 'Therefore, they will never go against popular things like Love and Deepspace. They will find a hundred justifications: "safe horny" "empowering women," etc. This is how it was with Bayonetta, whom they initially accused of sexism; but when they failed to cancel it and the game became a cult hit, they tried to appropriate it, proclaiming her a "feminist icon" and a "lesbian". Their ideology is just a pile of lying excuses for their own vile nature.

Case in point: "Safe horny" didn't prevent them from banning the Ser Aelin mod, which was obviously woman-oriented. Because woke ideology is an openly conformist, hypocritical mixture of nonsensical urges (I can't even call them ideas), whose adherents are faceless gremlins who can only attack and brigade those who are isolated, unpopular, and weak.

[Cipher]

Pretty sure Gale is already straight, and he's easily the most tolerable of the origin companions.

Incorrect. All the NPCs that can be in your party are written to always be "player sexual" meaning they will thirst for the Player no matter his or her sex, given that you can create ****** in the character creator. Some are more thirsty than others, before the "Better Romance Mod" that lets you disable romances altogether or make the characters straight, meaning Gale and Halsin will only thirst for a female Main Character, you can easily stumble upon their romance chains if you are just mildly friendly with them.

Take Gale, for example. In his 2nd convo, he tells you about how magic works and the Weave and such. If you inquiry about it he will elaborate and, at some point, offers to show you a "magic light show". If you happen to agree, the magic light show ends with Gale and your character gazing lovingly at each other, triggering the romance.

At another point later, he tells you that throughout his life he has had many acquaintances but not true friends and asks you if he can consider you as such. One would imagine that you can agree to be pals with the Wizard, but that assumption would be wrong.

You have 4 options:

1.- "No, we are not friends."

2,. "Yes... I actually consider you something of more of a friend."

3.- Some other flirty dialogue, but this one is very overt and explicit, unlike the one above.

4.- End the conversation right then and there, without answering.

So, according to the writers, you are either straight up allies by chance and explicitly not friends, you thirst for the Wizard or nothing. That's it.


Halsin is even worst. If you so much as look his way during the celebration after cleansing the Goblin camp of the filth, he instantly thirst for you and you trigger the romance. He even says that he is a horndog, in many more words.

In my opinion, the Better Romance mod is obligatory. Even if you wish to engage (for some reason) with the romance system, instead of disabling it, with the companion characters you are going to get ****** trapped without it.

[rusty_shackleford]

Take Gale, for example. In his 2nd convo, he tells you about how magic works and the Weave and such. If you inquiry about it he will elaborate and, at some point, offers to show you a "magic light show". If you happen to agree, the magic light show ends with Gale and your character gazing lovingly at each other, triggering the romance.

this is actually after they changed it, before it would just trigger a romance scene because you agreed to learn a magic trick

[Trickster]

Take Gale, for example. In his 2nd convo, he tells you about how magic works and the Weave and such. If you inquiry about it he will elaborate and, at some point, offers to show you a "magic light show". If you happen to agree, the magic light show ends with Gale and your character gazing lovingly at each other, triggering the romance.

this is actually after they changed it, before it would just trigger a romance scene because you agreed to learn a magic trick

"Wanna see a magic trick? Here is your ***, and here's my ****!"

[maidenhaver]

The "Weave" xDD

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Act 1 to toll house and gnoll horde

► Show Spoiler

Realistically this should be the end of the game, or at least the end of the line for the MC.

There are five other people here and only one of them has to wake and then notice that I am not in my bed. I have gone on monthly Boy Scout overnighter hiking trips numerous times and at night, it's really really quiet, and you can pretty loudly hear people's footsteps in the dirt outside your tent or them moving stuff around. And then logistically, you're just going to have some people awake. Some people who can't fight asleep easily or people who wake up randomly at night, people needing to go use the bathroom, people getting cold and putting more layers on, people taking walks to admire the moonlit landscape, etc. It would be possible for the MC to heft the body and walk out far enough away from camp without causing too much noise. But didn't Mythbusters find out that it'd take 2 hours to dig a grave? Again all it takes is one person seeing you are not there. And then there would be all of the blood and trail of blood to clean up, and it is night, and that'd take a lot of time and you might not find it all. And even if you somehow do clean the blood, they could use magic and probably find her.

I can be as honest as possible and bet on the graciousness of their hearts, but I think if these people put it to a vote they would vote to execute me out of selfpreservation. I can't be banished and allowed to wander by myself until I transform and then go eat or kidnap more people.








Isn't this guy afraid he's going to be next?




Really game?






This looks really cheap/tacky.




Pregnant hyena: this is the second time that the MC has attacked something by stomping with his foot. Does he not use his weapon in cutscenes?

I am half anticipating a twist where the demon mass murderer is going to turn out to be a good girl or something and the game will encourage me to break my word and turn against the paladins to defend her.




I had a frustrating experience with the gnoll horde/stolen crate quest. After I visited the toll house, I was exploring the surrounding area when I came across a cave entrance. I went up the cave disarming the traps, and came across a bridge and leapt across it, and then stumbled upon humans who turned out to be fighting against gnolls. I was instructed to kill the gnoll leader (I presume it'd be a similar situation as the goblin camp chief where you kill him and the other mobs will flee). But he was so far back and there were so many gnoll archers and gnolls who could lob grenades that my level 3 characters just couldn't survive long enough.

So I instead had to send people back across the chasm bridge. I thought that you were supposed to lure the enemies there and then have them run through a gauntlet of burning oil, explosive barrels, and falling rocks, all while pelting them with arrows. But then the mobs would stop at the bridge and wouldn't leap across. For some reason the bridge on my side kept disappearing. I was continuously quicksaving and reloading trying to figure out why it was happening but didn't. Meanwhile, the archers can two shot my guys, and they can shoot further from uphill than my guys can shoot fireballs at them from downhill. So I had to send my guys down to the front of the cave entrance, hoping that the mobs would path around and come down from the bottom. (Is this how this setpiece was meant to be played? With the rocks falling down hill? Now that I think about it, it didn't make sense for the mobs to leap across the bridge and come downhill, as the first rock falling would roll downhill and cause the other rock to fall, so you'd only get one rock hitting the gnolls).






The mobs moved up on the surface, but then they wouldn't come down to the cave entrance. They would just stand on the surface above me. I had Gale step out of the cave entrance, cast chain lightning on the boss, and then step back into covers so he couldn't get pelted with arrows. Then it was many turns of waiting. It sure would have been nice if this game had a turbo mode to fast forward through all of the mob turns.








Eventually I had to run my guys out cover into broad daylight to bait more adds to come down, and then killed them. The chain lightning on the boss expired and he moved too far away overhead out of line of sight for Gale to chain lightning him again. So I had to send my guys up over the surface to run to the other entrance where the two foolish human NPCs were while the MC sat at the bottom of the cave to keep the boss in turn based combat so that it wouldn't reset to full HP.






My guys reached the upper cave entrance and had them enter turn based, and then I was able to move the MC far enough down South that he broke out of turn based combat. He then ran in real time all the way up to right behind the boss. Then I bursted him down.








How was this supposed to have been done?

[Cipher]

Act 1 to toll house and gnoll horde

► Show Spoiler

Realistically this should be the end of the game, or at least the end of the line for the MC.

There are five other people here and only one of them has to wake and then notice that I am not in my bed. I have gone on monthly Boy Scout overnighter hiking trips numerous times and at night, it's really really quiet, and you can pretty loudly hear people's footsteps in the dirt outside your tent or them moving stuff around. And then logistically, you're just going to have some people awake. Some people who can't fight asleep easily or people who wake up randomly at night, people needing to go use the bathroom, people getting cold and putting more layers on, people taking walks to admire the moonlit landscape, etc. It would be possible for the MC to heft the body and walk out far enough away from camp without causing too much noise. But didn't Mythbusters find out that it'd take 2 hours to dig a grave? Again all it takes is one person seeing you are not there. And then there would be all of the blood and trail of blood to clean up, and it is night, and that'd take a lot of time and you might not find it all. And even if you somehow do clean the blood, they could use magic and probably find her.

I can be as honest as possible and bet on the graciousness of their hearts, but I think if these people put it to a vote they would vote to execute me out of selfpreservation. I can't be banished and allowed to wander by myself until I transform and then go eat or kidnap more people.








Isn't this guy afraid he's going to be next?




Really game?






This looks really cheap/tacky.




Pregnant hyena: this is the second time that the MC has attacked something by stomping with his foot. Does he not use his weapon in cutscenes?

I am half anticipating a twist where the demon mass murderer is going to turn out to be a good girl or something and the game will encourage me to break my word and turn against the paladins to defend her.




I had a frustrating experience with the gnoll horde/stolen crate quest. After I visited the toll house, I was exploring the surrounding area when I came across a cave entrance. I went up the cave disarming the traps, and came across a bridge and leapt across it, and then stumbled upon humans who turned out to be fighting against gnolls. I was instructed to kill the gnoll leader (I presume it'd be a similar situation as the goblin camp chief where you kill him and the other mobs will flee). But he was so far back and there were so many gnoll archers and gnolls who could lob grenades that my level 3 characters just couldn't survive long enough.

So I instead had to send people back across the chasm bridge. I thought that you were supposed to lure the enemies there and then have them run through a gauntlet of burning oil, explosive barrels, and falling rocks, all while pelting them with arrows. But then the mobs would stop at the bridge and wouldn't leap across. For some reason the bridge on my side kept disappearing. I was continuously quicksaving and reloading trying to figure out why it was happening but didn't. Meanwhile, the archers can two shot my guys, and they can shoot further from uphill than my guys can shoot fireballs at them from downhill. So I had to send my guys down to the front of the cave entrance, hoping that the mobs would path around and come down from the bottom. (Is this how this setpiece was meant to be played? With the rocks falling down hill? Now that I think about it, it didn't make sense for the mobs to leap across the bridge and come downhill, as the first rock falling would roll downhill and cause the other rock to fall, so you'd only get one rock hitting the gnolls).






The mobs moved up on the surface, but then they wouldn't come down to the cave entrance. They would just stand on the surface above me. I had Gale step out of the cave entrance, cast chain lightning on the boss, and then step back into covers so he couldn't get pelted with arrows. Then it was many turns of waiting. It sure would have been nice if this game had a turbo mode to fast forward through all of the mob turns.








Eventually I had to run my guys out cover into broad daylight to bait more adds to come down, and then killed them. The chain lightning on the boss expired and he moved too far away overhead out of line of sight for Gale to chain lightning him again. So I had to send my guys up over the surface to run to the other entrance where the two foolish human NPCs were while the MC sat at the bottom of the cave to keep the boss in turn based combat so that it wouldn't reset to full HP.






My guys reached the upper cave entrance and had them enter turn based, and then I was able to move the MC far enough down South that he broke out of turn based combat. He then ran in real time all the way up to right behind the boss. Then I bursted him down.








How was this supposed to have been done?

Spoilers for BG3 Act 1:

► Show Spoiler

Yup, they just let it slide. All of them, even the evil ones, for some reason. Well... we know the reason, is because the writers are stupid woketard hackfrauds. No consequence whatsoever. I played as a Paladin so I resisted the Urge at every turn. I am unsure what happens if you give into the urge and if your companions leave or not. Thankfully, this is the only forced situation where your character will give into the urge no matter what, I guess that's why there's no consequences, but its still garbage writing.

For the gnolls, I don't know... I approached from the east and I saw the gnoll band charging at the cave and I just stayed in high ground from the east and pelted them with arrows, grenades and spells. I don't think it was that hard of an encounter. I think I was Level 4 or close to Level 4, maybe that made the difference.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I just had an extremely frustrating time where now I might have to redo several hours of playtime because of a bug that there is apparently no mod to fix.

► Act 1 Karlach and Witch quest

Having looted the gnolls and tossed the chest into my inventory, I teleport back to the grove to vendor stuff and long rest. I have 1,700 gold now but I didn't see anything really worthwhile on sale. Now I need to find this Mr. "NF" fella to get more money.

Given that I don't intend to become a serial killer, this will probably be the last thing I get from this guy. It didn't look good on me so I gave it to Wyll.




At the Grove, I notice that there is a door I can go through. It leads to a prisoner area.

I am not a fan of this wishy washy "accountability is bad because we can't hurt people's feelings" ********. She is part of bandits that massacred the village and is almost certainly not an "innocent" camp follower. Execute her.






Teleporting back to the Toll House and going down by the river, I enter turn based mode to kill Karlach, but as my characters approach to melee range we get yanked into a cutscene where we approach peaceably. Before I even get an option to exit out of the cutscene and begin attacking her, we get tadpole visions and the narrator saying "she is a victim, not an agent of evil". This is then almost immediately followed by her boasting about how good of a killer she was for 10 years in an army that ravages worlds. But now Wyll is thinking "hrmmm maybe she isn't evil?". What?!?!








She also accuses the knights of being satan worshippers, but the cutscene gives me no dialogue options to really walk this through or to further interrogate her. The only options I get are to either accept her, let her go, or fight her.






There is no way I can just take her claims at face value (and even if she is right about the knights being evil, she herself is evil too so it's not like we'd let her off the hook either). So it's a "he said she said" situation, and I trust the knights who journeyed far and lost men along the way over the demon boasting about how many people she has killed. Anyway, for a supposed alien supersoldier who is infamous, has 10 years of experience, etc, she was only level 3 and wound up going down really fast.








Strangely, Anders is level 5 (and has two soldiers in his retinue), while Karlach was alone and only level 3. Why did this guy need me to go kill her? Going by the game's UI, he could have easily taken her head by himself. Thanks for the sword.








My suspicion is that this northern part of the map has static higher level mobs, so I need to teleport back to the Southern part of the map around the goblin and do low level stuff over there to get more exp and hit level 4.

I encounter the witch. I don't want to waste limited spells and potions on fighting all of her brainwashed men, so I have Gale cast illusion spells to kite them and their line of sight cones away while we sneak past.




Gale casts feather fall on the group and we leap down to the bottom.




The witch teleports out of thin air as we approach the control panel for the jail cell, and then ports in 3 or 4 masked men. She also ports the captive woman into a jail cell and sets it on fire. The goblins running away when I killed the goblin chieftain, and then being instructed by the two dumbass humans who stood their ground that the gnolls would leave if I killed the gnoll leader, has led me to believe that you should go for the head honcho in this game. So I focus on bursting down the witch. I buff up and coat my blade in wyvern poison. Frustratingly, Gale could not cast Hold Person on the boss because she is not classified as a humanoid, but as a hag (she totally is a humanoid).






In one turn, the MC bursts down the witch to half HP.






On my next turn, I killed her. But then one of the masked men I was trying to save died from a DoT because I had melee them, so I had to reload an earlier save and redo the fight, having Shadowheart incapacitate one. I am not quite sure how I am supposed to save the woman in the jail cell. I have frost arrows but I would presume that they would further damage it and call it to fall, and/or damage her. I have bottles of water in my inventory but I am not sure if throwing them at the jail cell will extinguish the fire.




This time, when the MC went on his second turn to finish off the witch, it wasn't enough damage to kill her and I got pulled into a cutscene. The woman gets teleported out of the jail cell.








The witch then spawns... I think 7 or 8 shadow clones/mirages of her across the entire room? It was a ridiculous number. And they can apparently can all use the hard CC spell person, and they imprisoned 3/4ths of my team. Rules for thee but not for me. I had to do a lot of savescumming to get through this part.




The summoned axe finisher her off.




At the time the boss died, I was at low HP and had a DoT on me, so I almost immediately died. Which was frustrating because as soon as the boss dies, the rescued woman then runs to the nearest party member to talk to. More savescumming trying to heal up in time and run to greet her.

I then talk to the other freed men, only to realize that two of them are masked and not freed and still appear to be tempered/brainwashed/enthralled. Need to rip their masks off. Unfortunately there is no dialogue option when talking to them to rip the mask off of their face, nor does a mask appear in their inventory when you pickpocket them. I tried entering into combat to KO them and loot the mask off like I did with a NPC earlier, but this aggroed another person who didn't have a mask, even when I had Gale use the distract spell to lure the masked NPCs away into a private room and closed the door. Eventually I gave up and left.

Going outside, I meet the widow again. There is a dialogue option for a wand that I hadn't realized that I had picked up (I knew I had looted a staff off of the witch, but not a wand). I wondered if it would be a true resurrection spell like the revivfy scrolls I have, but it only revived the husband as a zombie. I was going to kill him, but then the wife seemed satisfied with it, and given that this is the same franchise as the Dragonlance novels then I am pretty sure this setting doesn't have a real God or a Heaven. I read Icewind Dale many years ago and completely forgot the plot and don't remember there being a real God or Heaven in that book either. So this doesn't seem particularly disordered by the standards of the setting.










I checked back inside the Witch's lair for the other survivors, and to see if there were still masked men in there who needed to be KOed and their masks ripped off. I wasn't sure if the masked men who fought me down below were a different group or the same ones I snuck past who got ported down below.

Well that was a neat adventure. Time to long rest to heal up before going back to the Grove to vendor stuff... huh?









WHAT? We killed Karlach! I talked to Wyll about it! I cut her head off and turned it in to Anders and he gave me his sword! What is going on?




NOOOOOO







I reload to just after I finished doublechecking the Witch's lair. I fast travel to the Toll House and check to verify Karlach's dead body is still there and hadn't despawned or had come back to life and ran off.




Still there. I long rested and it happened again. I then asked Grok and Gemini what was going on. Apparently I have to enter the day time camp and talk to Wyll after killing Karlach and I will get a conversation about it which will update Wyll's quest, and then I go to the night long rest and the devil will act as if Karlach was killed.



There is no conversation about Karlach...

According to Grok/Gemini, I was supposed to have done this while I still had Karlach's head in my inventory (how was I supposed to know that?), before I turned it in to Anders.

So I go to the Toll House to check if Anders is still there. Maybe I can talk to him, or pickpocket the head, or kill him and loot the head (he's level 5 and I have no spells left so that would be pretty hard). But he's gone.





So now it seems I am pretty screwed. Grok and Gemini said that there is fix mod for this. I can only run a script that will cosmetically fix Wyll after he transforms. So I am going to have to redo this all again?

[rusty_shackleford]

Many of the encounters have no 'right' way to do them, which is something I enjoyed. It feels similar to the Gothic games in that you feel like you're sorta breaking the game but it's intended.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The saga continues.

► Act 1: Wyll, Anders, huntsman, Astarion, Gale, burning inn

After wasting an hour trying to save Wyll by following instructions from grok and geimini inputting .osi commands to clear and check flags and spawn Karlach heads in my inventory, I gave up and just wound up having to redo the entire last play session. Some different things happened this time, though.

I reload several hours ago to back when we went to kill Karlach. This time I enter turn based mode and shoot a fireball from across the brook, never giving her a chance to suck us into a dialog cutscene. Shadowheart casts Hold Person and then Wyll and I burst her down and that's it.










To make sure I don't get surprised by a bug several hours from now, I immedietely enter longrest.




I don't understand why Wyll is bothered by this. Karlach has horns and fought in a devil army just like this devil in front of us, the one that accosted us on the bridge to the toll house, and the devil commander that boarded the mindflayer ship and tried to kill us at the start of the game. I wonder if there is quest designer incompetence here and the game thinks I saw the Karlach conversation cutscene in which Wyll and I got mindflayer visions and the narrator telling us she is innocent when that didn't happen in this timeline.




Mizora gives us a robe, though it is of little use to Wyll as he is a swordsman so he wants armor like padded gambesons or brigadines etc. Only Gale wears robes, but the Infernal robe has the same def of 10 that Gale is already wearing, and looks pretty ugly on him. The only thing the robe gives is fire resist, but so far incoming fireballs have been very infrequent. It is worth 1,600 gold. Mind as well vendor it, but the none of the two vendors in this game I have come across yet have 1,600 gold, so I'll have to wait to find a richer merchant.

I go to sleep but don't consume supplies to longrest. In the morning, I realize that my buffs have expired, and that I will need to consume more spell slots to rebuff. Mind as well just consume supplies and longrest again for real. This time, something new happens.









If you only drink from animals, then why did you just try to snack on me?

I am half debating killing him, but since you didn't lynch me earlier for sleepwalking and killing a woman, I guess I will let you off this time. Would've been nice if that was a dialog option I could pick.




Anyway, we head back to Anders and give him the head. He gives me the sword. This time, since so I know that they will vanish, and Karlach has said that they actually serve a devil, I have decided that I want some exp. Thanks guys.




I teleport back to the town and head South to redo the Witch quest. I come across two goblin warriors. Strangely, they do not aggro. Has he not heard that I killed everyone inside? Anyway, more exp.






On the way to redo the witch quest, I come across a huntsman.






This is pretty important. How about we all go back to the camp together and ask Astarion about this and get this resolved? That way I protect Astarion if he is innocent, huntsman gets the info he needs, if Astarion turns out to be bad then we can be there to help save the huntsman, etc. But no, the only option is to either tell him no or tell him where my camp is so he can go there without me accompanying him.




He might snipe Astarion while I am gone. So I immediately go to the day time camp to verify that Astarion hasn't died.




Astarion tells me about himself. Now he sounds much more like a good guy, magically enslaved to an evil vampire lord. Before it seemed like he was a threat and might have been lying. Strangely, it seems like the hunter never turned up after I told him where the camp was.

I see Gale has an exclamation mark so I run over to see the next part of his story. This then leads into an odd scene where Gale and my character stare at each other a little weirdly while soft grand piano music is playing, even though I had installed recommended mods such as Better Romance and Better Alphabets which I heard was supposed to prevent this from happening. Maybe it was too baked into the cutscenes and couldn't be excised, but it's just so weird.












I redo the witch's dungeon. This time one of the masked men adds died. Again. But I can't be bothered to redo savescumming over and over on this long, bullocks boss fight for the fourth time. Hope this doesn't count as having killed them all if this becomes relevant again.

There was also another strange bug. One of the witches' shadow clones spawned near an edge, and then cast hold person on Gale. I had Wyll use Eldritch Blast to hit the shadow clone to dispel it and to release the hold on Gale, but it knocked the shadow clone over the edge into the chasm, but then it snapped back to its prior position. After I killed the witch, all of the other shadow clones disappeared, but that one still remained. When I attacked it, it did not dispel on one hit like the other do, and I once again aggroed the living masked men. So I had to reload and just let that one be. This game is awfully buggy/unpolished.




Back to looking for low level quests and mobs to exp on. Gale eats a 3rd magical artifact and gives us the low down. Weirdly, he admits that he loves a goddess. So why was there the fireworks scene that turned out to be a romance lead in before this? That'd make him a certain adulterer. Is this supposed to be appealing to female players, knowing that the guy they romance is disloyal and might drop them for the next appealing woman that comes his way? Strange design choice.






I discover that the well in town leads to a spider den. A brief scouting shows that there are several medium-large sized spiders in there as well as some other medium-large sized mobs. They are level 3 (my party is level 4) but them being big monsters feels rather threatening, so I decide to come back later.




Heading West of the Northern bridge, I come across a burning inn. This segment was a little tedious because there are fire aoes everywhere and tight paths, which makes it tedious to micromanage the turn based movements of all of the other party members. The guards running in made me think that I had very little time and that I needed everyone to spread out and search for survivors and any objects I should snag before the building collapses. But it seems that there was no timer and I could have just had everyone else wait outside while I leisurely explored the place alone.








Found the widower's money and gave it back to him.

So far, the party members have been very uninvolved in what's happening and in the quest cutscenes and NPC dialogues. It seems that they only ever chime in on their personal quests or at camp. They also never talk to each other during cutscenes or quests. I have only ever seen them talk to each other two times in cutscenes, once when La'zel and Shadowheart met and then when our party met Astarion. Very disappointing.

[Finarfin]

Try to find your favorite comment




Most people have absolutely no idea what the demographics of people who play RPGs is.

The entire game is porn-brained, not romantic in either the modern or classical sense, but as it is Laezel is the best romance in the game and I will die on that hill. If they made laezel look like this:






instead of a frogwoman, shart would be some weird ****** ****** who is also just a moody **** most of the time. Laezel's romance is the only one that has an actual arc and significant character development. Then theres the fact that laezel stomps the **** out of everything in the game while shart is just a mediocre healbot unless you respec.

Also laezel is a fascist, clearly, shes the choice for any self-respecting racist bodybuilder.

You can probably mod Lae'zel to look more human. I used to play with a mod that made her look less gith and more "human with paint and prosthetics on"

[Cipher]

I just had an extremely frustrating time where now I might have to redo several hours of playtime because of a bug that there is apparently no mod to fix.

► Act 1 Karlach and Witch quest

Having looted the gnolls and tossed the chest into my inventory, I teleport back to the grove to vendor stuff and long rest. I have 1,700 gold now but I didn't see anything really worthwhile on sale. Now I need to find this Mr. "NF" fella to get more money.

Given that I don't intend to become a serial killer, this will probably be the last thing I get from this guy. It didn't look good on me so I gave it to Wyll.




At the Grove, I notice that there is a door I can go through. It leads to a prisoner area.

I am not a fan of this wishy washy "accountability is bad because we can't hurt people's feelings" ********. She is part of bandits that massacred the village and is almost certainly not an "innocent" camp follower. Execute her.






Teleporting back to the Toll House and going down by the river, I enter turn based mode to kill Karlach, but as my characters approach to melee range we get yanked into a cutscene where we approach peaceably. Before I even get an option to exit out of the cutscene and begin attacking her, we get tadpole visions and the narrator saying "she is a victim, not an agent of evil". This is then almost immediately followed by her boasting about how good of a killer she was for 10 years in an army that ravages worlds. But now Wyll is thinking "hrmmm maybe she isn't evil?". What?!?!








She also accuses the knights of being satan worshippers, but the cutscene gives me no dialogue options to really walk this through or to further interrogate her. The only options I get are to either accept her, let her go, or fight her.






There is no way I can just take her claims at face value (and even if she is right about the knights being evil, she herself is evil too so it's not like we'd let her off the hook either). So it's a "he said she said" situation, and I trust the knights who journeyed far and lost men along the way over the demon boasting about how many people she has killed. Anyway, for a supposed alien supersoldier who is infamous, has 10 years of experience, etc, she was only level 3 and wound up going down really fast.








Strangely, Anders is level 5 (and has two soldiers in his retinue), while Karlach was alone and only level 3. Why did this guy need me to go kill her? Going by the game's UI, he could have easily taken her head by himself. Thanks for the sword.








My suspicion is that this northern part of the map has static higher level mobs, so I need to teleport back to the Southern part of the map around the goblin and do low level stuff over there to get more exp and hit level 4.

I encounter the witch. I don't want to waste limited spells and potions on fighting all of her brainwashed men, so I have Gale cast illusion spells to kite them and their line of sight cones away while we sneak past.




Gale casts feather fall on the group and we leap down to the bottom.




The witch teleports out of thin air as we approach the control panel for the jail cell, and then ports in 3 or 4 masked men. She also ports the captive woman into a jail cell and sets it on fire. The goblins running away when I killed the goblin chieftain, and then being instructed by the two dumbass humans who stood their ground that the gnolls would leave if I killed the gnoll leader, has led me to believe that you should go for the head honcho in this game. So I focus on bursting down the witch. I buff up and coat my blade in wyvern poison. Frustratingly, Gale could not cast Hold Person on the boss because she is not classified as a humanoid, but as a hag (she totally is a humanoid).






In one turn, the MC bursts down the witch to half HP.






On my next turn, I killed her. But then one of the masked men I was trying to save died from a DoT because I had melee them, so I had to reload an earlier save and redo the fight, having Shadowheart incapacitate one. I am not quite sure how I am supposed to save the woman in the jail cell. I have frost arrows but I would presume that they would further damage it and call it to fall, and/or damage her. I have bottles of water in my inventory but I am not sure if throwing them at the jail cell will extinguish the fire.




This time, when the MC went on his second turn to finish off the witch, it wasn't enough damage to kill her and I got pulled into a cutscene. The woman gets teleported out of the jail cell.








The witch then spawns... I think 7 or 8 shadow clones/mirages of her across the entire room? It was a ridiculous number. And they can apparently can all use the hard CC spell person, and they imprisoned 3/4ths of my team. Rules for thee but not for me. I had to do a lot of savescumming to get through this part.




The summoned axe finisher her off.




At the time the boss died, I was at low HP and had a DoT on me, so I almost immediately died. Which was frustrating because as soon as the boss dies, the rescued woman then runs to the nearest party member to talk to. More savescumming trying to heal up in time and run to greet her.

I then talk to the other freed men, only to realize that two of them are masked and not freed and still appear to be tempered/brainwashed/enthralled. Need to rip their masks off. Unfortunately there is no dialogue option when talking to them to rip the mask off of their face, nor does a mask appear in their inventory when you pickpocket them. I tried entering into combat to KO them and loot the mask off like I did with a NPC earlier, but this aggroed another person who didn't have a mask, even when I had Gale use the distract spell to lure the masked NPCs away into a private room and closed the door. Eventually I gave up and left.

Going outside, I meet the widow again. There is a dialogue option for a wand that I hadn't realized that I had picked up (I knew I had looted a staff off of the witch, but not a wand). I wondered if it would be a true resurrection spell like the revivfy scrolls I have, but it only revived the husband as a zombie. I was going to kill him, but then the wife seemed satisfied with it, and given that this is the same franchise as the Dragonlance novels then I am pretty sure this setting doesn't have a real God or a Heaven. I read Icewind Dale many years ago and completely forgot the plot and don't remember there being a real God or Heaven in that book either. So this doesn't seem particularly disordered by the standards of the setting.










I checked back inside the Witch's lair for the other survivors, and to see if there were still masked men in there who needed to be KOed and their masks ripped off. I wasn't sure if the masked men who fought me down below were a different group or the same ones I snuck past who got ported down below.

Well that was a neat adventure. Time to long rest to heal up before going back to the Grove to vendor stuff... huh?









WHAT? We killed Karlach! I talked to Wyll about it! I cut her head off and turned it in to Anders and he gave me his sword! What is going on?




NOOOOOO







I reload to just after I finished doublechecking the Witch's lair. I fast travel to the Toll House and check to verify Karlach's dead body is still there and hadn't despawned or had come back to life and ran off.




Still there. I long rested and it happened again. I then asked Grok and Gemini what was going on. Apparently I have to enter the day time camp and talk to Wyll after killing Karlach and I will get a conversation about it which will update Wyll's quest, and then I go to the night long rest and the devil will act as if Karlach was killed.



There is no conversation about Karlach...

According to Grok/Gemini, I was supposed to have done this while I still had Karlach's head in my inventory (how was I supposed to know that?), before I turned it in to Anders.

So I go to the Toll House to check if Anders is still there. Maybe I can talk to him, or pickpocket the head, or kill him and loot the head (he's level 5 and I have no spells left so that would be pretty hard). But he's gone.





So now it seems I am pretty screwed. Grok and Gemini said that there is fix mod for this. I can only run a script that will cosmetically fix Wyll after he transforms. So I am going to have to redo this all again?

The saga continues.

► Act 1: Wyll, Anders, huntsman, Astarion, Gale, burning inn

After wasting an hour trying to save Wyll by following instructions from grok and geimini inputting .osi commands to clear and check flags and spawn Karlach heads in my inventory, I gave up and just wound up having to redo the entire last play session. Some different things happened this time, though.

I reload several hours ago to back when we went to kill Karlach. This time I enter turn based mode and shoot a fireball from across the brook, never giving her a chance to suck us into a dialog cutscene. Shadowheart casts Hold Person and then Wyll and I burst her down and that's it.










To make sure I don't get surprised by a bug several hours from now, I immedietely enter longrest.




I don't understand why Wyll is bothered by this. Karlach has horns and fought in a devil army just like this devil in front of us, the one that accosted us on the bridge to the toll house, and the devil commander that boarded the mindflayer ship and tried to kill us at the start of the game. I wonder if there is quest designer incompetence here and the game thinks I saw the Karlach conversation cutscene in which Wyll and I got mindflayer visions and the narrator telling us she is innocent when that didn't happen in this timeline.




Mizora gives us a robe, though it is of little use to Wyll as he is a swordsman so he wants armor like padded gambesons or brigadines etc. Only Gale wears robes, but the Infernal robe has the same def of 10 that Gale is already wearing, and looks pretty ugly on him. The only thing the robe gives is fire resist, but so far incoming fireballs have been very infrequent. It is worth 1,600 gold. Mind as well vendor it, but the none of the two vendors in this game I have come across yet have 1,600 gold, so I'll have to wait to find a richer merchant.

I go to sleep but don't consume supplies to longrest. In the morning, I realize that my buffs have expired, and that I will need to consume more spell slots to rebuff. Mind as well just consume supplies and longrest again for real. This time, something new happens.









If you only drink from animals, then why did you just try to snack on me?

I am half debating killing him, but since you didn't lynch me earlier for sleepwalking and killing a woman, I guess I will let you off this time. Would've been nice if that was a dialog option I could pick.




Anyway, we head back to Anders and give him the head. He gives me the sword. This time, since so I know that they will vanish, and Karlach has said that they actually serve a devil, I have decided that I want some exp. Thanks guys.




I teleport back to the town and head South to redo the Witch quest. I come across two goblin warriors. Strangely, they do not aggro. Has he not heard that I killed everyone inside? Anyway, more exp.






On the way to redo the witch quest, I come across a huntsman.






This is pretty important. How about we all go back to the camp together and ask Astarion about this and get this resolved? That way I protect Astarion if he is innocent, huntsman gets the info he needs, if Astarion turns out to be bad then we can be there to help save the huntsman, etc. But no, the only option is to either tell him no or tell him where my camp is so he can go there without me accompanying him.




He might snipe Astarion while I am gone. So I immediately go to the day time camp to verify that Astarion hasn't died.




Astarion tells me about himself. Now he sounds much more like a good guy, magically enslaved to an evil vampire lord. Before it seemed like he was a threat and might have been lying. Strangely, it seems like the hunter never turned up after I told him where the camp was.

I see Gale has an exclamation mark so I run over to see the next part of his story. This then leads into an odd scene where Gale and my character stare at each other a little weirdly while soft grand piano music is playing, even though I had installed recommended mods such as Better Romance and Better Alphabets which I heard was supposed to prevent this from happening. Maybe it was too baked into the cutscenes and couldn't be excised, but it's just so weird.












I redo the witch's dungeon. This time one of the masked men adds died. Again. But I can't be bothered to redo savescumming over and over on this long, bullocks boss fight for the fourth time. Hope this doesn't count as having killed them all if this becomes relevant again.

There was also another strange bug. One of the witches' shadow clones spawned near an edge, and then cast hold person on Gale. I had Wyll use Eldritch Blast to hit the shadow clone to dispel it and to release the hold on Gale, but it knocked the shadow clone over the edge into the chasm, but then it snapped back to its prior position. After I killed the witch, all of the other shadow clones disappeared, but that one still remained. When I attacked it, it did not dispel on one hit like the other do, and I once again aggroed the living masked men. So I had to reload and just let that one be. This game is awfully buggy/unpolished.




Back to looking for low level quests and mobs to exp on. Gale eats a 3rd magical artifact and gives us the low down. Weirdly, he admits that he loves a goddess. So why was there the fireworks scene that turned out to be a romance lead in before this? That'd make him a certain adulterer. Is this supposed to be appealing to female players, knowing that the guy they romance is disloyal and might drop them for the next appealing woman that comes his way? Strange design choice.






I discover that the well in town leads to a spider den. A brief scouting shows that there are several medium-large sized spiders in there as well as some other medium-large sized mobs. They are level 3 (my party is level 4) but them being big monsters feels rather threatening, so I decide to come back later.




Heading West of the Northern bridge, I come across a burning inn. This segment was a little tedious because there are fire aoes everywhere and tight paths, which makes it tedious to micromanage the turn based movements of all of the other party members. The guards running in made me think that I had very little time and that I needed everyone to spread out and search for survivors and any objects I should snag before the building collapses. But it seems that there was no timer and I could have just had everyone else wait outside while I leisurely explored the place alone.








Found the widower's money and gave it back to him.

So far, the party members have been very uninvolved in what's happening and in the quest cutscenes and NPC dialogues. It seems that they only ever chime in on their personal quests or at camp. They also never talk to each other during cutscenes or quests. I have only ever seen them talk to each other two times in cutscenes, once when La'zel and Shadowheart met and then when our party met Astarion. Very disappointing.

► Show Spoiler

You did the right thing by killing Karlach. Now, commit to righteous heroism and slay the filthy bloodsucker Astarion.

For the masked folks that are in the hag's lair: There's no way to save them. Even if you somehow avoid killing them and kill the witch, they won't go back to normal, their minds are already too far gone. Unless they patched it, but that was the case on my playthrough.

Sad to hear you had to redo so much just to avoid getting Wyll deformed into a devil. This is the price of not having actual time flowing like in the original Baldur's Gate. Keep in mind, most quests are not time sensitive, but some will be. So, if you go to camp they will progress. I don't remember of the top of my head which ones are and it would be a spoiler anyways so just keep that in mind. If you don't want to jeopardize the result of an active quest that seems urgent, don't go to camp. On the other hand, as you saw with the Mizora ******** bug, after some plot developments and personal quest advancements, go to camp and talk to everyone. It's a very bad system but hey, this is the best "videogaming experience" of a life time, amirite reddit?

[MrTwinkls]

There is a mod that shows if you have available events in camp to not miss them and to not waste time by resting when there are none. The game lets itself be broken too easily.

[Cipher]

There is a mod that shows if you have available events in camp to not miss them and to not waste time by resting when there are none. The game lets itself be broken too easily.

I thought that's only if you are already at the camp, showing which NPCs you need to talk to.

Does that alert you when not in camp that you should go to the camp?

EDIT: Nevermind, I clicked and found the answer. Good mod.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

► Village basement, village well/cave, meeting space orc captain

Honestly I have been losing less interest in playing the game each day, so my playthrough hasn't advanced very far since when I last left off.

After the inn, I went West and came across a squad of level 5 space orcs. I decided to instead go down south and do the lower level content to try to hit level 5. I decided to go check out the underground stuff in town.




I found an evil book. It has someone's skin or soul absorbed into it. It screaming at me not to destroy it means that I should very definitely destroy it. Gale becomes unusually amoral and gets mad that I want to destroy the evil book. Unfortunately, my sword and fireballs and psychic swords can't hurt it. Guess I have to pocket it for now.










I enter the well to the cave. When I reached the vista, I initially wondered if this was the Underdark, but then it turned out that there just wasn't high ceiling walls rendered because the game designers intended for this to be seen from a top down view, so it seemed larger than it actually was.




It is neat that there is a new underground camp scene, though there is no apparent road or tunnel out.

Astarion looks and sounds much more like a normal person in this scene. His face in daylight doesn't look as good (maybe it looks better here because his brows are furrowed?).






Proceeding onwar-goodness gracious what is that thing




That is far and away the largest enemy I have seen in this game yet. I briefly wondered if I had ventured too far into the Underdark and reached a high level area, but then it turned out to be just level 5 and had the same 150ish HP pool as Anders and the Gnoll leader, so I mind as well try.

Annoyingly, every turn the boss is constantly teleporting the large arena, which means that my martialist could only ever hit the boss towards the end when it teleported to near my character. Wyll at least had misty step but he could only do that twice, and frustratingly he can't misty step onto the webbed bridges. The boss also does not walk before or after teleporting, so my booming blade bombs did not go off.







No good loot on the big monster.

Still not level 5 yet.

They're still there huh.







The narrator suddenly chimes in to say that the captain is lying, apparently from an unprompted perception check. I didn't have to click a dialog line choice or click a dice roll. I don't think I have ever seen this before. I wonder how many other checks or additional lines like these I haven't seen.




Guess we have a big bad now?




Oh, does this lead to the final dungeon of act 1? I thought that going further West behind the goblin camp and killing the other two leaders of the absolute, finding Halsin, and finding the Nightsong would have been the next main story step, not the Githyanki crech. I don't understand how I am supposed to be any higher level than I already am. I think I have explored almost the whole map except for the place behind the camp. There is no more optional content I think. I guess I go kill the other two leaders, find Halsin, see what happens to the grove, and then come back to the Creche?






I think part of me losing interest in the game is how there is no really gripping plot or urgency or motivation to keep me going to find out what happens next. The game initially begins with you getting infected with the tadpole and on a countdown until you turn into a monster. But then the vast majority of my playtime since has been just meandering around doing chores for people or going on selfcontained little vignettes. It seems there are a lot of subplots that happen in isolation from each other. The tadpole plot. The Ginthyaki artifact plot. The Dark Urge plot with the goblin. The Grove plot. The Absolute/goblines/3 leaders plot. The duke getting abducted by drow. That's the main story. And then you have a lot of isolated party member plots like Wyll hunting Karlach or Gale's subplot or Astarion being tracked by a huntsman and a vampire overlord. Etc. It's just weirdly constructed.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

► Act 1: the Spectator boss, Drow band

I was baffled and worried that I had cleared out the map and yet I was getting the "you are underlevelled" warning popup, so I looked up online. Seems like the Underdark is the only thing left to do before progressing the plot, so I go back down to the spider cave and leap down further.

I get a nice cutscene of levitating down, though unfortunately the party members do not fall with you like in The Banner Saga 3.






Fought some minotaurs. Found a lot of crates. A voice started speaking and Gale said it was a Myconid, but upon fully exploring the crate area, I found no other being.






Found a fort, went up a ladder which I think leads to one of the next main plot destinations where you are supposed to kill the other two Absolute leaders, find Halsin, and then report back to the Grove that you have cleared the threat. I don't want to progress the plot yet till I am sufficiently levelled, so I climb back down.






I find the sword in the stone, but it seems to be inferior to Anders' sword. This magic sword requires you to spend a turn to grant an AoE buff, but it has a really short 20 foot radius. Meanwhile, the MC and Wyll are going to be sprinting or teleporting across the map to get into melee range, and hopefully whacking mobs every turn and dealing high damage rather than wasting turns. So I give it to Shadowheart since she does pretty wimpy damage anyway. No real opportunity loss there having her waste a turn on the buff and if we step out of the buff radius.




I then come across some petrified people, which then triggers a boss fight. I get that infuriating Fire Emblem thing of a boss spawning out of nowhere and getting the first turn, and he wiped my party before I even got to move. So I had to reload to the fort, buff up, and shoot the statues from a distance to spawn the boss, then shoot the boss to pull it.






The boss is also really annoying in how he gets like 3 or 4 actions PER TURN, and has a humongous movement distance. So he'd unpetrify a tempered drow, shoot a laser beam and kill a drow I just damaged to free from the enchantment, then paralyze Gale, then shoot somebody, and then fly way out of the MC's and Wyll's reach. I had to do a lot of savescumming, and much of my playtime was watching the loading screen or redoing actions, trying to meticulously explore every option and hope the RNG was in my favor. Not fun.

The first drow the boss frees, Dhourn, only has 20 HP, and unfortunately right before I killed the boss, the boss would always hit Dhourn for a 20 to 26 HP laser beam and one shot him. I even tried summoning Scratch hoping to bait an action from the boss, but it didn't work.




With the boss dead, I talk to the other guy who was freed but wasn't oneshotted. He namedrops Dhourn, and then says he will free the others.




I feel a little bad and wonder what I am missing with Dhourn dead, so I reload to before I pulled and try the boss again hoping to save Dhourn. This took even more savescumming.




In one timeline, I used a knockback arrow to blow the boss off the cliff, but he didn't die. Guess he has a levitation passive not listed in his examine menu?






Trying to save Dhourn was very difficult because my only healer, Shadowheart, had no spell slots left to cast on healing spells or sanctuary, so I had to shuffle potions between inventories and have her throw potions at him, even wasting one of my only two medium sized/greater healing potions to top him off in one turn. Wyll had to waste a turn he could have spent dealing damage to cast the Protection from Good and Evil on him. I tried using the scroll that gives you 7 temporary hitpoints, but apparently it can only be cast on yourself.




After enough savescumming, the RNG goes into my favor and the boss misses not one but two laser beams on Dhourn before moving away to futilely chomp at Wyll, so then we kill the boss.




This guy seems unusually friendly. I thought Drow were supposed to kill non-Drow on sight?




Annnnd it turns out I wasted all of that time and items not for a happier outcome for him to want to kill us. All of the other Drow aggro too.




Unfortunately, it then becomes apparent that my quicksaves were being automatically deleted. I was taking so many of them, but didn't make a proper save before the boss fight began. My last proper save was before I entered the Underdark. So there is no way for me to go back to the better timeline when I had first beaten the boss, Dhourn was dead, and the other Drow I talked to was friendly and was going to revive the others.

Wyll throws him off the ledge.




I have no way of reviving the other petrified Drow, and there is no telling if they will aggro either. Mind as well kill everyone for exp.

[rusty_shackleford]

I suspect the outcome may be different if you're also drow, but perhaps not

[Norfleet]

But they need to be cool. Khajit and Argonians aren't cool.

But at least they have wares if you have coin.

[Oyster Sauce]

► Act 1: the Spectator boss, Drow band

I was baffled and worried that I had cleared out the map and yet I was getting the "you are underlevelled" warning popup, so I looked up online. Seems like the Underdark is the only thing left to do before progressing the plot, so I go back down to the spider cave and leap down further.

I get a nice cutscene of levitating down, though unfortunately the party members do not fall with you like in The Banner Saga 3.






Fought some minotaurs. Found a lot of crates. A voice started speaking and Gale said it was a Myconid, but upon fully exploring the crate area, I found no other being.






Found a fort, went up a ladder which I think leads to one of the next main plot destinations where you are supposed to kill the other two Absolute leaders, find Halsin, and then report back to the Grove that you have cleared the threat. I don't want to progress the plot yet till I am sufficiently levelled, so I climb back down.






I find the sword in the stone, but it seems to be inferior to Anders' sword. This magic sword requires you to spend a turn to grant an AoE buff, but it has a really short 20 foot radius. Meanwhile, the MC and Wyll are going to be sprinting or teleporting across the map to get into melee range, and hopefully whacking mobs every turn and dealing high damage rather than wasting turns. So I give it to Shadowheart since she does pretty wimpy damage anyway. No real opportunity loss there having her waste a turn on the buff and if we step out of the buff radius.




I then come across some petrified people, which then triggers a boss fight. I get that infuriating Fire Emblem thing of a boss spawning out of nowhere and getting the first turn, and he wiped my party before I even got to move. So I had to reload to the fort, buff up, and shoot the statues from a distance to spawn the boss, then shoot the boss to pull it.






The boss is also really annoying in how he gets like 3 or 4 actions PER TURN, and has a humongous movement distance. So he'd unpetrify a tempered drow, shoot a laser beam and kill a drow I just damaged to free from the enchantment, then paralyze Gale, then shoot somebody, and then fly way out of the MC's and Wyll's reach. I had to do a lot of savescumming, and much of my playtime was watching the loading screen or redoing actions, trying to meticulously explore every option and hope the RNG was in my favor. Not fun.

The first drow the boss frees, Dhourn, only has 20 HP, and unfortunately right before I killed the boss, the boss would always hit Dhourn for a 20 to 26 HP laser beam and one shot him. I even tried summoning Scratch hoping to bait an action from the boss, but it didn't work.




With the boss dead, I talk to the other guy who was freed but wasn't oneshotted. He namedrops Dhourn, and then says he will free the others.




I feel a little bad and wonder what I am missing with Dhourn dead, so I reload to before I pulled and try the boss again hoping to save Dhourn. This took even more savescumming.




In one timeline, I used a knockback arrow to blow the boss off the cliff, but he didn't die. Guess he has a levitation passive not listed in his examine menu?






Trying to save Dhourn was very difficult because my only healer, Shadowheart, had no spell slots left to cast on healing spells or sanctuary, so I had to shuffle potions between inventories and have her throw potions at him, even wasting one of my only two medium sized/greater healing potions to top him off in one turn. Wyll had to waste a turn he could have spent dealing damage to cast the Protection from Good and Evil on him. I tried using the scroll that gives you 7 temporary hitpoints, but apparently it can only be cast on yourself.




After enough savescumming, the RNG goes into my favor and the boss misses not one but two laser beams on Dhourn before moving away to futilely chomp at Wyll, so then we kill the boss.




This guy seems unusually friendly. I thought Drow were supposed to kill non-Drow on sight?




Annnnd it turns out I wasted all of that time and items not for a happier outcome for him to want to kill us. All of the other Drow aggro too.




Unfortunately, it then becomes apparent that my quicksaves were being automatically deleted. I was taking so many of them, but didn't make a proper save before the boss fight began. My last proper save was before I entered the Underdark. So there is no way for me to go back to the better timeline when I had first beaten the boss, Dhourn was dead, and the other Drow I talked to was friendly and was going to revive the others.

Wyll throws him off the ledge.




I have no way of reviving the other petrified Drow, and there is no telling if they will aggro either. Mind as well kill everyone for exp.

Stop cheating

[Val the Moofia Boss]

► Act 1: character weirdness, neat Myconids, tree roots fight, evil dwarves, karen dwarf

Not that much exciting stuff happened this time.

La'zel sees that I have a headache or a stomachache and the holds a knife to my throat. Given how fast people seem to turn into mindflayers, then she should have realized after 5 or 10 seconds that I wasn't in danger.








Kinda weird to have you make your character, and then be told by the game to make a second character called "the guardian", who then you don't see for 30 to 40+ hours and forget about, and then she reappears and she might be an antagonist.






It is neat that there is a third camp scene, which is also a second underground camp scene. I wonder why there weren't different surface camp scenes either, like camping in a dungeon, by the beach, on the norther side of the map, etc.




Again, it is very bizzare that the other party members are not talking to each other. The only conversations that happen in this game are between me and one other person, and then very rarely maybe a party member will interject once and that's it. This is something that would be a group wide meeting with everyone talking to each other.




It is also very odd that characters will suddenly tell me (in front of two other people) that they trust me. Out of the blue.






I decided to go exp on the Myconids, but once I had eliminated the first pack, more were coming and I started to realize that they weren't just random monsters on the road for me to kill, but that this was some sort of fort. And then I saw some sort of trader NPC who then aggroed. Then I realized that this might be some sort of town or hub. So I reloaded and walked in to see what I was missing.






The place is generally interesting. I talk to a zombified dwarf, but since he has no soul, talking to the dwarf actually causes the hivemind leader to telepathically describe him to you and show you what he did.






There is also some sort of outcast survivor, which was sad. Maybe there will be a story event later where he gets to lead a colony expedition.




Extremely offputting how she craps on her husband.




Towards the tree, I am able to pick off a bird by itself, but the other two and a mage aggro together. The birds already hit very hard, so I had to resort to baiting the mobs up a cliff and then knocking them off to keep them from getting too many turns and to do more damage to them.








This boss is very annoying in that he has a huge AoE slam that wipes the party. So you have to space out the whole party pretty far so that only one person can get hit. Also, at half HP he has a chance of becoming invulnerable and tunneling away. No good loot.




I featherfall down into the back of the dark dwarf fort. Oddly, I get a cutscene that presumes that I walked in through the front.






One of the dwarves is annoying in that he has a counterspell react that can trigger from far away, making more waste one of my limited spell slots. And it seems to refresh whenever the dwarf gets a turn.




With this battle, the team finally reached level 5, and I got my first armor upgrade with Chain Mail, though it has a flat front/chest so it doesn't look as good as the scale mail.




Level 5 was also huge as now the MC and Wyll can make a second normal attack swing each turn. DPS doubled. Unfortunately, Gale and Shadowheart can pick tier 3 spells but only Gale gets a single tier 3 spell slot charge, while Shadowheart has none. So nothing really changes for them.

Having replaced some of Shadowheart's spells, she can use Guiding Bolt again so I we can try out Radiant damage on the evil book. It destroys it. 3 shadow adds spawn but the MC and Wyll singlehandedly dispatch them in one turn, something that would have required the team multiple turns to do before.




We find the missing husband in a minefield of exploding flora, and toss him a teleport scroll to get out. The MC as a Dragonborn does a weird smiling animation.










We escort the man back. Neat view.






The wife continues her bitching. This is rather dispiriting to have in my videogame which I am supposed to be playing for leisure or for a more poignant world, not to hear stuff people already ***** about in real life.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

So far, I am not sure what is the point of the narrator. 98% of the time, he is just describing stuff that is conveyed by the visuals. *Character looks at a book* Narrator: "You look at a book". He doesn't do any interesting narrator stuff like saying "and then the next time these people met, it was not as friends but as sworn enemies!" or poems and so on. He only has only been relevant a handful of times when describing non-audio visual stuff like how the tad pole effect feels in your head.

[Rand]

Gale becomes unusually amoral and gets mad that I want to destroy the evil book.

He just wants to eat it.
I'm sure an animated evil book's magic is completely neutral to absorb.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

► Act 1: Grymforge

Having killed the evil dwarves, we return to the Myconid leader. He tells us about another person who has been murdering his people. A Drow.







We go back to the evil dwarf fort and hop into their boat.






A boat of more evil dwarves rolls up alongside. More exp. I leap over to their ship and throw more guys off.








We arrive at some sort of ancient installation called the Grymforge, currently occupied by even more evil dwarves who are enslaving gnomes. Obviously I eliminate each pack of evil dwarves I come across.

I now get into another issue I have with this game, which is that there is a lot of loot. I am constantly stripping bodies of their armor and knives, clicking on chests to take cheeses for long rest fuel, constantly holding down the ALT key to see item names and clicking to pick up silver trays, etc. Then I get encumbered, and have to fast travel back to the surface, walk through the gate to the grove, and spend times looking through my huge inventory trying to identify which trash I picked up on this outting and vendor the stuff for pennies. I have done this over and over and over. It is not fun. I have barely bought anything this entire game (there are expensive armors that cost 2k but they are barely better than my starter armor), and I have only just hit 5k gold.


At a long rest, there La'zel abruptly confronts Shadowheart. It has been several long rests since I met the Ginthyaki dragonrider captain, we learned that they were looking for Shadowheart's artifact, and then when we approached the mountain pass and got a psychic visit from the big bad and were saved by the artifact, and Shadowheart and La'zel talked about that. So it is odd that La'zel is now getting mad about that again several nights later.




Well this is pleasantly surprising, though it is odd that none of the other party members arrive at this commotion. It is also strange that the characters have their own private tents spread out across the camp, but then people sleep in a circle right next to each other.




Back to clearing out the Grymforge. I come across a dwarf who is unusually moral compared to those around him. He gives me a rare crafting mat. I decide to let him live. To draw him away from the other evil dwarves near him without aggroing him, I have Gale cast minor illusion and kit Kith across the map, and then dispatch the other dwarves. Strangely, I kited Kith past the dead bodies of several of other dwarves I had killed along the way, but he does not react at all.






In last area, we buff up and storm in to save the gnome slaves.












Blew up the rubble to save the trapped miners. But then the evil Drow comes running out, and in a cutscene he throws one of the gnomes into the lava. We easily kill him.












I reload the game trying to save the innocent gnome before she is thrown into the lava. As soon as the rubble explodes, I enter turn based and immediately attack the Drow before he can walk out and yank me into a cutscene. Unfortunately, it seems that as soon as I attack Nere, the female gnome inside the mine vanishes, and then after you kill Nere the other gnome is still crying at the lava's edge as if she had been thrown in.












I go back and check on Kith to make sure he didn't accidentally die during all of this evil dwarf slaying. He was still at where I had kited him to, far away from the chief's area. He still is not reacting despite walking past all of the dead bodies of every other dwarf and being the only dwarf left alive in Grymforge.




This is just really strange. Not as much reactivity as I had been led to expect there would be.

[Oyster Sauce]

@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.

[Oyster Sauce]

@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.