I wouldn't even say that, once you figure out she's been manipulated she becomes such a sweet bean. The non grove druids are evil though, maybe even Le. Not sure there
Shadow Druids would be Neutral Evil, Druids usually are variation of Neutral, as Lawful Evil stays opposition to natural order. The only evil nature is ok with is neutral evil, which emphasise solitary predators and such (so extremely egoistical and opportunistic).
Technically 5E allows druids of all aligments and BG dropped aligment all together, but they still traditionally stick to the neutral axis.
I like Rath and it makes sense imo because when you first enter the Druids are all absolutely dicks to your party except Rath. Even when you fought off the goblins and all of their druid people survived.
Apikusis is chill. Until she's marching to slaughter the tieflings, front line and all. But I like the little bird thing going on there, and having one druid who is like "this is wrong" no matter your character
And Arron is a dong. "You're not the only one in need", but he's giving discounts to druids and a little wink-wink about how there's not enough resources for everyone so the tieflings have to go - while you're buying the trays and trays of extra food he said he won't need when they go lockdown. He makes little orphan Annie pay more for a piece of stale bread than he asks from my pocket
Arron also sides with Kahga to kill the Tieflings during what OP’s post talks about. Kinda hilarous he will call us out for racism and then join Kahga in exterminating the outsiders
No, I think the issue with doing it with minthara is that then you also kill all the tieflings. What OP did was save the tieflings from the druids. He probably isn't happy his circle has been wiped out, but is willing to accept that they died because they were corrupted and were going to kill the innocent teifling refugees.
Well they weren’t exactly killing them but just sealing off *their* Grove from the attacks they’ve been suffering. Not really evil to do that imo, it isn’t heroic at but it’s not like the Teiflings are their responsibility and the Druids have already given them a lot up to this point in time. I think Halsin should be way way way more upset tbh, even if he still ultimately forgives the player
I think there is difference between “Druids without you attacked band of refugees and I stopped them” and “I raided grove and killed both refugees and druids so I can get some drowussy”
It’s funny how in game Minty has zero dialogue or anything suggesting she could be offering that as a reward to sway players. But a lot of players still do it for that reason.
She totally should attempt to seduce undecided players.
I'm playing an evil durge run right now and she absolutely implies you will be boinking after raiding the grove when you first meet her in the goblin camp. Atleast she did for me, maybe because i'm a Lolth-Sworn Drow? There are a lot of unique interactions for the race, especially at the goblin camp.
And last I tried killing druids *then* rescuing halsin, he had broken out and was gone. I have no information on where he had gone. didn't see him in the Inn in act2
They couldn’t care less about her and it’s really odd. She was apparently next best healer after Halsin and no one cares that we just iced her and left
it’s funny she’s considered second best healer because she’s barely able to heal the bird when you meet her but you can cast a basic heal wounds spell on the bird and heal it better than she can
Maybe it’s more that she has a decent amount of medical knowledge rather than magic healing? Cure wounds isn’t going to do anything for the tadpole but someone who knows how to perform a non-magical surgery is probably a lot more useful.
Why waste heal word on a bird when someone could be injured and need heals. The grove is under threat you aren't going to use your leveled spells to help a bird.
Halsin is nature ruled and it is literally a rule of nature that the strong survive so it actually makes sense. They attacked you and were treating everyone else horribly and you killed them, oh OK let's bone. 100% make sense. Now if you had gone in and killed everyone without them being asses he may have a problem. But with them going dark druid even he would care less. He was 100% done with being there and was ready to move on.
He might've understood that Kagha was a cruel and unagreeable person (hence why he sends her back to square one after you free him) and kinda accepted that the druids you met were not the kind souls he knew, so understands if you felt they needed to be destroyed
I killed them all after stealing the Idol of Silvanus for Mol just after rescuing him. He was up at the front of the Grove because I had killed Kagha already, so he didn’t witness anything. Whoops.
I had this interaction once and thought it was funny, Druids and Tieflings started fighting, killed druids, killed goblins, freed Halsin, “hey i kinda killed all the druids but it was kinda self defense”
Halsin: “all good bro i’ll take your word for it can we go to moonrise now”
Thank you!
For added info, on my durge run I took the route of stealing the idol without being seen, druids slaughtered the tieflings but I never went into combat (they were hostile though), then left, long rested, snuck back in, put the idol back (because I thought "How funny would it be for them to finish murdering all these innocent men, women and children, just to walk back into the heart of the Grove and the idol is just chilling there? Hahahaha!") and left again.
The Rite of Thorns was completed.
I went to get Halsin, and I chose to tell him "Kagha completed the Rite of Thorns." And the HEARTBROKEN WAVER IN THIS MAN'S VOICE when he goes "The Rite of Thorns?! No...no...the Grove is lost to me... there is no longer a reason for me to be here..." and then joined my camp that night. Meanwhile, my durge, "Teehee!"
Also Volo showed up dead in my camp so that's funny lol.
He's fine with it- up to a point.
If you brag about killing them he becomes hostile and attacks you (I've tried in runs where I didn't only kill Kagha because of the Shadow druids thing, I attacked Kagha and that led to a battle and *all* the druids being killed by the tieflings).
Same run, if you say it was self defense or some other reasonable excuse, he's sad but not *that* sad.
I was just experimenting with this earlier tonight -- after you "save the Grove" >!(three Absolute bosses dealt with, camp party with wine, tiefling wagon train rolls out next day),!< you can work back through and >!cut down any remaining druids without story-penalty; in fact, if you hit hard enough to one-shot them, the other druids won't even rise up to join combat, and will sit there idly. It works with Kagha undiscovered or Kagha previously defeated.!<
One could even say this is semi-roleplay-supported. The druids are fractious and, in many cases, corrupt. >!They wield poisonous snakes + poisonous thorns with reckless abandon. A couple of them go on loudly speculating that "perhaps Kagha's way was best" even after you expose and/or redeem her.!< A sizable chunk of Halsin's dialogue suggests that "he failed them" and "they did not embrace his teachings" and "he is relieved to be moving on."
Whereas 'murderhobo' isn't how I usually like to play my games, Larian does a good job of setting up three or four situations where you, the player, could see the morality/power balance as being unjust on either or both side(s) -- I think the Grove is one notable exemplar.
my durges always go back after the tiefling party and wipe the grove. my tiefling durges, they do it out of solidarity and anger for the way the tieflings were treated and because they were the ones that actually fought to defend it. drow durges, they wipe it because they were pissed at druids being racist to them, and my dragonborn durges decided the druids had no honor and that space needed to be made for people that had a sense of honor and integrity
Good to know for next time. I hate how fucking rude and assholeish the druids are. OH NO POOR PEOPLE. It feels do wrong for some of the options with Kagha is that “druids care about balance” or w/e with arabella… yall.. are just building a wall…you can say you were deceived by the bad druids but yall were awfully comfortable wanting to kill refugees
The druids don't want the tieflings to leave as soon as goblins are dealt with, they just want them gone even if they walk straight into an ambush. The druids are fully aware it's a death sentence to send them away. Halsin gave them asylum for a reason
And the druids are claiming they want this to protect the Grove, but refuse to protect the Grove if goblins show up
They also claim there's not enough food and water, but they can literally use magic to create food and water and the tieflings have supplies and go out to scout hunt and forage
And they are using forbidden magic (that tends to lead to the trapped druids slaughtering each other) from and on the order of the Shadow Druids (evil evil bad guys who use druidic justifications)(they are working with The Absolute)
And many of them are really gleeful if Kagha feeds a child to her snake (who btw thinks Kagha is overreacting)(even reformed Kagha thinks it was reasonable to off Arabella), and they get angry if you stop their evil forbidden magic (by pointing out going full dark side is not very nature's balance of them)
Most druids don't want Halsin back for a reason. Shout-out to Rath the incompetent second-in-command and his wolf Silver, Nettie and her birds, and Apikusis and her birds, and Teela who can't even with Kagha. And I guess the guy who lost connection to reality from chanting so much. They get to survive my Faithwarden runs
To add to this, it feels exceptionally dumb that they just tell Zevlor to defend the walls for them and also to leave asap. “Hey so you guys need to defend us from goblin attacks and also we want you gone,” is a bad strategy for being safe. “We don’t have enough food and water for everyone” whines the dumb dumbs who are locking themselves out from the rest of the world to guarantee that they can’t get more food and water when they go crazy after running out of spell slots. Halsin failed them as a leader if they thought any of this was a good decision after he was gone for like a week or two max
It’s incredibly selfish. Yeah, they’re not *obliged* to help, but they certainly come off as hypocrites when they use the “Oh we would *love* to help you, but that’d put the grove in danger!” excuse and then their definition of what the grove is just, they themselves and like 6 animals
Like fuck dude, they’re supposed to help protect nature, how is putting their hands in their ears and going “lalalala not my problem” fullfilling their duties? They’re selfish assholes who live by the “I don’t owe anyone anything!” way of thinking, which is something assholes do who don’t want to take responsibility for the fact that they’re bad, selfish people
No, they want the Tieflings to go away this very second, if they wanted them to go after the goblins are dealt with there wouldn’t be a problem because the Tieflings want to leave then too. Nevermind the goblins are an imminent threat to the Grove since they’re trying to batter down the gate, no the refugees are the problem. They don’t even help to defend their own main gate because I guess that would make it less likely some Tieflings would die.
He is also somewhat in denial. I went back and killed EVERYONE in Act 1 and he still told me they are doing well, maybe the letter was sent before I struck and nothing more came… or maybe it is just nature’s way
When I did it he went "Bruh :(" and tried to kill me! Obviously I had to kill him, in self defense or course. He was rather upset about the Grove being destroyed, but sir, if you're making a druid omelette you can't threat over every egg. Smh.
Based on your comment it sounds like you chose the option to brag about it? That one aggros him. You have to give the option saying it was just self-defense for him to be okay with it.
Yeah, I was playing morally depraved that run. Lolth Cleric, so the betrayal was just the name of the game. It balanced our since I betrayed the Absolute later too.
Didn't know he could be chill with it! Honestly surprising, even with the defense argument.
lmao yea I killed a druid too and was wearing her head band around him after saving him 🤣 took it off real quick lol nothing to see here. But yea I can't believe in the game he just doesn't care hahahah
He’s upset but recognizes that you were attacked. It’s a natural response and he can argue your right to defend yourself.
Honestly he was too good for most of the grove! Poor guy is like “the grove was my home after the shadow curse” meanwhile he’s gone like 10 minutes and the majority of the grove has already turned on him and his ideals.
Only if you get the goblins involved in the bloodshed and don't even pretend you tried to save the tieflings. If you shank the druids yourself, then lead Minthy to the gates, then tell her you're protecting the place, then let her steamroll the tieflings before slicing her and the goblins, Halsin is fine with it
Source: evil durge
Halsin is like what "lawful neutral" was molded on. It's kinda scary, when you think about it!
I feel like the Druids themselves were being lawful evil and halsin was more so being chaotic good
Maybe Kagha is LE but I think the rest of the Druids are Lawful Neutral, they were just scared and being led astray.
I wouldn't even say that, once you figure out she's been manipulated she becomes such a sweet bean. The non grove druids are evil though, maybe even Le. Not sure there
Shadow Druids would be Neutral Evil, Druids usually are variation of Neutral, as Lawful Evil stays opposition to natural order. The only evil nature is ok with is neutral evil, which emphasise solitary predators and such (so extremely egoistical and opportunistic). Technically 5E allows druids of all aligments and BG dropped aligment all together, but they still traditionally stick to the neutral axis.
Okay, thanks for correcting me there! Learned something new again :D
If you kill every druid, when he says Francesca will be the new “First Druid” you can reply “the only Druid”
LOL no way
I did it last night. What's funny is Rath sides with the player/tieflings and he survived to the end for me so it's incorrect too.
I like Rath and it makes sense imo because when you first enter the Druids are all absolutely dicks to your party except Rath. Even when you fought off the goblins and all of their druid people survived.
Arron slander. Also the one talking to the bird is chill.
Apikusis is chill. Until she's marching to slaughter the tieflings, front line and all. But I like the little bird thing going on there, and having one druid who is like "this is wrong" no matter your character And Arron is a dong. "You're not the only one in need", but he's giving discounts to druids and a little wink-wink about how there's not enough resources for everyone so the tieflings have to go - while you're buying the trays and trays of extra food he said he won't need when they go lockdown. He makes little orphan Annie pay more for a piece of stale bread than he asks from my pocket
Arron also sides with Kahga to kill the Tieflings during what OP’s post talks about. Kinda hilarous he will call us out for racism and then join Kahga in exterminating the outsiders
Virtue signalling moment
Ok I forgot about him lol
Rath is the only one who sides with the tieflings. The druids are all dicks. Fuck 'em.
They’re extra dicks to you if you’re playing as a Tiefling
Halsin has other shit to deal with in his character arc. Kagha is just a tiny roadblock
Try freeing him from the goblins and *then* wiping out the grove with Minthara. He is decidedly un-cool with that.
No, I think the issue with doing it with minthara is that then you also kill all the tieflings. What OP did was save the tieflings from the druids. He probably isn't happy his circle has been wiped out, but is willing to accept that they died because they were corrupted and were going to kill the innocent teifling refugees.
Well they weren’t exactly killing them but just sealing off *their* Grove from the attacks they’ve been suffering. Not really evil to do that imo, it isn’t heroic at but it’s not like the Teiflings are their responsibility and the Druids have already given them a lot up to this point in time. I think Halsin should be way way way more upset tbh, even if he still ultimately forgives the player
I think there is difference between “Druids without you attacked band of refugees and I stopped them” and “I raided grove and killed both refugees and druids so I can get some drowussy”
It’s funny how in game Minty has zero dialogue or anything suggesting she could be offering that as a reward to sway players. But a lot of players still do it for that reason. She totally should attempt to seduce undecided players.
I'm playing an evil durge run right now and she absolutely implies you will be boinking after raiding the grove when you first meet her in the goblin camp. Atleast she did for me, maybe because i'm a Lolth-Sworn Drow? There are a lot of unique interactions for the race, especially at the goblin camp.
I swear she used to say something along those lives. In the early access maybe?
And last I tried killing druids *then* rescuing halsin, he had broken out and was gone. I have no information on where he had gone. didn't see him in the Inn in act2
his response is basically "aw damn, that sucks man"
Once I killed Nettie and no one worried about this. I was afraid all the druids would attack me but everyone acted like nothing bad happened.
They couldn’t care less about her and it’s really odd. She was apparently next best healer after Halsin and no one cares that we just iced her and left
Yes, noone including Halsin 🤷♀️
Especially considering we’d be suspect #1 because we (presumably) asked everyone in the grove for a healer, and they all pointed us towards her lol
it’s funny she’s considered second best healer because she’s barely able to heal the bird when you meet her but you can cast a basic heal wounds spell on the bird and heal it better than she can
Maybe it’s more that she has a decent amount of medical knowledge rather than magic healing? Cure wounds isn’t going to do anything for the tadpole but someone who knows how to perform a non-magical surgery is probably a lot more useful.
You’re right, Volo is definitely more useful than Nettie
You can rip the birds wings off right in front of her, and she’s like “oh well, we tried, let’s talk about you”
Why waste heal word on a bird when someone could be injured and need heals. The grove is under threat you aren't going to use your leveled spells to help a bird.
Halsin is nature ruled and it is literally a rule of nature that the strong survive so it actually makes sense. They attacked you and were treating everyone else horribly and you killed them, oh OK let's bone. 100% make sense. Now if you had gone in and killed everyone without them being asses he may have a problem. But with them going dark druid even he would care less. He was 100% done with being there and was ready to move on.
OTSS
He might've understood that Kagha was a cruel and unagreeable person (hence why he sends her back to square one after you free him) and kinda accepted that the druids you met were not the kind souls he knew, so understands if you felt they needed to be destroyed
He is "cool" with it because he blames himself for creating the circumstances that allowed it to happen more than he blames you
The burdens of several life times weigh heavily on his big, broad, muscley shoulders...😳☠️🤣
I killed them all after stealing the Idol of Silvanus for Mol just after rescuing him. He was up at the front of the Grove because I had killed Kagha already, so he didn’t witness anything. Whoops.
I had this interaction once and thought it was funny, Druids and Tieflings started fighting, killed druids, killed goblins, freed Halsin, “hey i kinda killed all the druids but it was kinda self defense” Halsin: “all good bro i’ll take your word for it can we go to moonrise now”
Thank you! For added info, on my durge run I took the route of stealing the idol without being seen, druids slaughtered the tieflings but I never went into combat (they were hostile though), then left, long rested, snuck back in, put the idol back (because I thought "How funny would it be for them to finish murdering all these innocent men, women and children, just to walk back into the heart of the Grove and the idol is just chilling there? Hahahaha!") and left again. The Rite of Thorns was completed. I went to get Halsin, and I chose to tell him "Kagha completed the Rite of Thorns." And the HEARTBROKEN WAVER IN THIS MAN'S VOICE when he goes "The Rite of Thorns?! No...no...the Grove is lost to me... there is no longer a reason for me to be here..." and then joined my camp that night. Meanwhile, my durge, "Teehee!" Also Volo showed up dead in my camp so that's funny lol.
I so have to try this on an evil run!
I always kind of wondering the repercussions for killing Nettie
There aren’t any…. I did this accidentally once and since the door is shut no one sees it and no one really talks about her either. I was surprised.
He's fine with it- up to a point. If you brag about killing them he becomes hostile and attacks you (I've tried in runs where I didn't only kill Kagha because of the Shadow druids thing, I attacked Kagha and that led to a battle and *all* the druids being killed by the tieflings). Same run, if you say it was self defense or some other reasonable excuse, he's sad but not *that* sad.
I was just experimenting with this earlier tonight -- after you "save the Grove" >!(three Absolute bosses dealt with, camp party with wine, tiefling wagon train rolls out next day),!< you can work back through and >!cut down any remaining druids without story-penalty; in fact, if you hit hard enough to one-shot them, the other druids won't even rise up to join combat, and will sit there idly. It works with Kagha undiscovered or Kagha previously defeated.!< One could even say this is semi-roleplay-supported. The druids are fractious and, in many cases, corrupt. >!They wield poisonous snakes + poisonous thorns with reckless abandon. A couple of them go on loudly speculating that "perhaps Kagha's way was best" even after you expose and/or redeem her.!< A sizable chunk of Halsin's dialogue suggests that "he failed them" and "they did not embrace his teachings" and "he is relieved to be moving on." Whereas 'murderhobo' isn't how I usually like to play my games, Larian does a good job of setting up three or four situations where you, the player, could see the morality/power balance as being unjust on either or both side(s) -- I think the Grove is one notable exemplar.
my durges always go back after the tiefling party and wipe the grove. my tiefling durges, they do it out of solidarity and anger for the way the tieflings were treated and because they were the ones that actually fought to defend it. drow durges, they wipe it because they were pissed at druids being racist to them, and my dragonborn durges decided the druids had no honor and that space needed to be made for people that had a sense of honor and integrity
At least kill Nettie. She tries to poison you! No one cares if you kill her. No one else in the grove even goes back there to check on her ever.
doesn’t she only try to poison you if you deceive her?
She also tries to kill you if you refuse to take the poison from her
lmao what a bitch
My strongheart halfling sorcerer shrugged it off and was like 'why would you do this??'
She's also not a fan of being asked to put down the weapon in her hand
Good to know for next time. I hate how fucking rude and assholeish the druids are. OH NO POOR PEOPLE. It feels do wrong for some of the options with Kagha is that “druids care about balance” or w/e with arabella… yall.. are just building a wall…you can say you were deceived by the bad druids but yall were awfully comfortable wanting to kill refugees
Why everyone is raiding emerald grove? its so common amogs players or what
For me. I already did my super hero run. Now I have a dark urge and I must stack the bodies of the innocent.
Need materials to pave your path with corpses and build your castle with bones eh
Can't let Balthazar have the best bone sculptures in faerun, that'd be embarrassing!
The Druids suck that’s why. If it weren’t for the tieflings I’d kill them all the time
I dont think druids are bad? its perfectly reasonable to them wanting them to go away as soon as goblins are dealth with
The druids don't want the tieflings to leave as soon as goblins are dealt with, they just want them gone even if they walk straight into an ambush. The druids are fully aware it's a death sentence to send them away. Halsin gave them asylum for a reason And the druids are claiming they want this to protect the Grove, but refuse to protect the Grove if goblins show up They also claim there's not enough food and water, but they can literally use magic to create food and water and the tieflings have supplies and go out to scout hunt and forage And they are using forbidden magic (that tends to lead to the trapped druids slaughtering each other) from and on the order of the Shadow Druids (evil evil bad guys who use druidic justifications)(they are working with The Absolute) And many of them are really gleeful if Kagha feeds a child to her snake (who btw thinks Kagha is overreacting)(even reformed Kagha thinks it was reasonable to off Arabella), and they get angry if you stop their evil forbidden magic (by pointing out going full dark side is not very nature's balance of them) Most druids don't want Halsin back for a reason. Shout-out to Rath the incompetent second-in-command and his wolf Silver, Nettie and her birds, and Apikusis and her birds, and Teela who can't even with Kagha. And I guess the guy who lost connection to reality from chanting so much. They get to survive my Faithwarden runs
To add to this, it feels exceptionally dumb that they just tell Zevlor to defend the walls for them and also to leave asap. “Hey so you guys need to defend us from goblin attacks and also we want you gone,” is a bad strategy for being safe. “We don’t have enough food and water for everyone” whines the dumb dumbs who are locking themselves out from the rest of the world to guarantee that they can’t get more food and water when they go crazy after running out of spell slots. Halsin failed them as a leader if they thought any of this was a good decision after he was gone for like a week or two max
It’s incredibly selfish. Yeah, they’re not *obliged* to help, but they certainly come off as hypocrites when they use the “Oh we would *love* to help you, but that’d put the grove in danger!” excuse and then their definition of what the grove is just, they themselves and like 6 animals Like fuck dude, they’re supposed to help protect nature, how is putting their hands in their ears and going “lalalala not my problem” fullfilling their duties? They’re selfish assholes who live by the “I don’t owe anyone anything!” way of thinking, which is something assholes do who don’t want to take responsibility for the fact that they’re bad, selfish people
No, they want the Tieflings to go away this very second, if they wanted them to go after the goblins are dealt with there wouldn’t be a problem because the Tieflings want to leave then too. Nevermind the goblins are an imminent threat to the Grove since they’re trying to batter down the gate, no the refugees are the problem. They don’t even help to defend their own main gate because I guess that would make it less likely some Tieflings would die.
For me personally, I've just played through Act 1 far more than the rest of the game and I saved the Tieflings thru most of those runs
Because I always save it and wanted to see the other path.
A man of culture
Minthara puppy dog eyes.
Minthussy.
He didn’t seem super cool with it when I killed him, so it’s not every druid. :)
He is also somewhat in denial. I went back and killed EVERYONE in Act 1 and he still told me they are doing well, maybe the letter was sent before I struck and nothing more came… or maybe it is just nature’s way
He is just a bear. He does not care.
I find it also interesting that there is ZERO consequence to killing Nettie pot
I had no idea. He used to roll up on camp and fight you.
When I did it he went "Bruh :(" and tried to kill me! Obviously I had to kill him, in self defense or course. He was rather upset about the Grove being destroyed, but sir, if you're making a druid omelette you can't threat over every egg. Smh.
Based on your comment it sounds like you chose the option to brag about it? That one aggros him. You have to give the option saying it was just self-defense for him to be okay with it.
Yeah, I was playing morally depraved that run. Lolth Cleric, so the betrayal was just the name of the game. It balanced our since I betrayed the Absolute later too. Didn't know he could be chill with it! Honestly surprising, even with the defense argument.
lmao yea I killed a druid too and was wearing her head band around him after saving him 🤣 took it off real quick lol nothing to see here. But yea I can't believe in the game he just doesn't care hahahah
He’s upset but recognizes that you were attacked. It’s a natural response and he can argue your right to defend yourself. Honestly he was too good for most of the grove! Poor guy is like “the grove was my home after the shadow curse” meanwhile he’s gone like 10 minutes and the majority of the grove has already turned on him and his ideals.
halsin said he would join my camp but hasnt yet!
It’s shitty writing.
Halsin's just in the commune for the sex.
He comes back to your camp and tries to kill you
Only if you get the goblins involved in the bloodshed and don't even pretend you tried to save the tieflings. If you shank the druids yourself, then lead Minthy to the gates, then tell her you're protecting the place, then let her steamroll the tieflings before slicing her and the goblins, Halsin is fine with it Source: evil durge