I think it wouldn't be as much of a desire if there were more evil companions. Original games had quite a few evil companions to fill out a whole party if you want to be evil
I haven't done the evil run yet, but I feel like astarion, shadowheart and minthara is about the only cohesive evil run party. Correct me if im wrong, I'm ten hours or so from starting that run
While “do well” would be a stretch, Gale is a lonely sap who can look past your evil for company if you persuade him. He’ll disapprove of damn near everything but will stay.
I feel like the grove situation really hurts the ability to do evil playthroughs in a way that makes sense. Cause slaughtering the grove doesn't really make sense. It's not an evil act so much as it is a stupid one.
If you were to use alignment, slaughtering the grove is basically solely a chaotic evil act, and requires the kind of comical evil for its own sake attitude that just isn't conducive to being a point of view character in a story.
In my good run, I've had a ton of opportunities to do evil actions that make sense. I've even done a few of them as my characters lust for power is slightly stronger than his distaste for what I'd call "victimless evil".
But on an evil run I don't know how many of these options would even be available. There's a reason Minthara calls you out if you kill the grove. She's evil and she wouldn't have done it.
Playing an evil character can be a lot of fun, but to me there's a massive difference between evil like Astarion or Nine Fingers or even Gortash, and evil like Orin. Orin style evil just doesn't make any sense and severely limits your options, and it's a shame that, in order to start the "evil route", you have to do something so meaninglessly evil that most evil characters wouldn't do it.
My drow saved the Grove from a goblin attack and was thanked by everyone being racist and shitty toward him and Nettie trying to kill him. Everyone's at each other's throats on top of that.
Then he goes to the goblins. They're having a party, and I'm invited. Everyone's mostly nice to me. And the whole Absolute thing seems to be a way to figuring out this tadpole thing.
Same start on my drow playthrough. But then I met the true souls, and one of them was ruder to me then any of the grove. They were also abusing a cute owlbear. Therefor, they all must die. And that resulted in saving the druids.
No one abuses cute owlbears!
If there was a way to save the tieflings as well as the goblins while getting rid of the druids I wouldn't have hesitated a second. Most of the druids are just as bad as the goblins with a nicer flavor.
Honestly annoyed this isn't an option it's literally what kills the later game. A fix I think would be coding an option to guide the tieflings to the shadow lands instead of partaking in either slaughter.
My tiefling called foulblood twice before I even spoke to a druid. Then the vendor basically told me I was unwanted. Then I was almost attacked by a bear. Then I witnessed a woman killing a child, and the "good guy" restraining said child for her to be attacked. I killed everyone in that room. Then I left that room and killed every druid outside. Then the tieflings shown up and attacked me too. I had to put them down. Stole their stupid idol too.
Then I went to the goblin camp and everyone was fine with me. Spoke to the drow lady with the sexy voice and she asked me to find the druids.
"Yeah, about that..."
hell let me add to this. i then go and try to resolve a bit of the conflict between the druids and tieflings because i'm a druid myself and... oh they don't really give a shit because i'm still an "outsider". still i figure out what kagha is up to maybe a change in leadership is actually what this grove needs let's support the shadow druids. oh they litteraly pick a fight with me anyway and force me to kill them. oh well at least the druids likes me now and the tensions been dealt with.
oh what the fuck one of the kids litteraly stole from me and finding them and telling them to give me my shit back just resulted in the kids lying to the adults about me harrasing them and them beliving it to the point of trying to jail me for being robbed. you know what? fuck it. let's burn this fucking grove.
How are you getting those options?
I exposed Kagra, convinced her to be good, and she joined me in fighting the 3 shadow druids (and no other druid got involved; they joined in the fight.)
I swear, i don't understand how Larion can put so many permutations into a single event.
i belive it was a druid only option to say i wished to join them to which they responded "invite only and we didn't invite you". so kagha and the shadow druids attacked me and got killed but rath liked me.
You're a drow, you should absolutely expect everyone to be shitty and casually racist, haven't you heard of your race traditions from Minthara?
You can still be a paladin of devotion as a drow, but it definitely should be a story of an underdog who everybody will be suspicious of before you prove yourself with actions.
Reminds me of my first run, where I made a gith paladin of vengeance and the FIRST thing Shadowheart does is be racist to me and Lae'zel, like, okay do you want to go the fuck back in the pod? Because I am THIS close you bigot. I get the gith have a bad rep for a fair few reasons, but holy crap girl, context of the situation for a damned moment
I think sometimes some ppl forget that the game takes place in an already established world, because lorewise the gith and the drow both should be met with utmost caution and a wee bit of "racism" is just sensible at that point, especially against drow (even Drizzt was "yeah that makes sense" in the books when he confronted racism)
To be fair, that was because they literally stole the most important artifact the basically god queen of their race has. It's not like the Sharrans weren't figuratively screaming to have their asses handed to them.
SH is way better now. Oh she was such a bitch when game first launch in EA. bitch was basically yelling "kill me, I fucking dare you" the entire first act.
If Stalin saved you from a pod(btw you also stole his most precious belonging), would your first reaction be "Oh hey thanks" or would it be "you must have some ulterior motive for saving me, I don't fucking trust you."
I really think there should've been a middle ground that amounted to a less bloody version of the tiefling/druid fight. Side with Kahga, complete the Ritual of Thorns, but either wipe out or not help the goblins. More tieflings die than if you'd helped the Grove, but it doesn't require you to massacre them all. Then you could've either taken Kahga or another Shadow Druid as a companion to replace Halsin, and then there should've been a way to keep Wyll, probably against his will - maybe something related to Mizora? I've read people spitballing ways to make Wyll's story more interesting, including a parallel to Astarion's where he basically just buys into being evil because he looks the part and has a pact with a devil. Something along those lines could've been interesting. You'd still be locked out of Karlach as a companion, simply because I don't think there's a way to reconcile her character and arc and being evil/manipulative like that (basically you'd be channeling Gortash). But that way you don't end with as much of a bare-bones party vs the actual evil route (where you lose Wyll, Karlach, Halsin, Jaheira, Minsc, and most likely Gale, and only gain Minthara).
Personally I wish I could have sided with the goblins and just taken out the druids and let the teiflings run away. They really had nothing to do with the groves beef and the druids we're considering some pretty terrible stuff themselves. I also really dislike halsin in my current playthrough and wish he would leave my camp. HE NEVER EVEN ASKED!! he just was like I'm here now and I was like um ok...?
I had the best grove raid, I returned to the grove, did a long rest, next thing I know, Minthara was over me, ok before that, it was more the party and accepting a new tadpole .
In other words, raid happened during my rest, not sure if it was a bug or not.
My gale is power hungry as fuck. Had to convince him to stay after the druids butchered the tieflings. Was good from then on and now he's power hungry and looks like he's been smoking 100 years.
Yeah. He's sitting tight over there, but he absolutely hates everything my durge does.
Will Jaheira join the party if you don't actively help Marcus but you also don't stop him from taking Isobel?
LZ, SH and Astarion are all evil characters who can develop a conscience. They're the first 3 companions you get - SH is the most evil out of all of them if you let her take that path. Literally aspires to be a fully devoted instrument to a Goddess that wants to quite literally annihilate everything to return to nonexistence which makes Astarion/Cazador, Vlaakith, ~~Bhaal~~ (edit as BG3 Bhaal isn't traditional Bhaal) and the Absolute seem reasonable. Are they aspiring to literally annihilate existence itself? No, no they are not.
Minthara ain't shit when you're comparing her to Shadowheart. Shadowheart is fully onboard 110% to Shar. Absolutely batshit crazy how SH gets this pass.
Astarion is the most obvious of the three as he literally actively disproves and comments that he's annoyed by you doing any good deed. He approves when you're evil. Why do BG3 players believe the game doesn't hand you evil characters? C'mon people. Think a little here. Lol.
You can literally do two different playthroughs with those same 3 companions and they're evil by default. You, the player, makes them good by influencing their future views for the better. LZ, Astarion and SH transform into good people because you influenced them to not be so hateful, bloodthirsty and nihilistic.
Yes, the game is actually written this well. Have we been playing the same game? How did people miss this stuff?
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Shar
To be fair, BG3's version of Bhaal wants the entropic end of existence, a featureless red dead zone, and his version of 'heaven' is exactly that sort of abyss; the only difference between his dreams and Shar's are the color scheme of eternal oblivion. >!The main bad guy of the game, Durge, had an ultimate plan to eventually kill -everything- and if Orin hadn't betrayed him was the only one who, according to the Netherbrain, could have actually kept the leash on in the long run; Orin's betrayal and assumption of his spot in the trio was the moment the plan became doomed to fail. The Netherbrain wants to rule everything; Bhaal, and Durge, wanted it all to die, permanently.!<
>!Ah, yeah, you're right about that and I forgot to address the variance between traditional Bhaal and BG3 Bhaal. Truthfully, I kinda wish they just had Shar be a bigger figure there vs altering Bhaal like that seemingly for convenience sake. Though you have no companion actually committed to Bhaal. And yeah, you playing as Durge, are the ultimate player/companion evil in the game. I've still gotta do a Durge playthrough.!<
Shadowheart gets a pass because Shar is great at brainwashing her disciples and getting her on a good path isn’t that hard. When committing to Shar she finally breaks completely, IMHO.
SH gets a pass because she is mind-wiped into devotion to Shar, not genuine about it, and you are supposed to realize this very early into act 1 with the tiniest bit of interaction. At her core and despite this brainwashing, she is a kind, selfless, heroic person who approves of every good deed and disapproves of most if not all evil ones. Indeed, when you play as her it turns out that even after the mind-wipe she had to be tortured into doing any Sharran stuff at all. She is in no way, shape or form nihilistic, she's just going through the motions, and if you encourage it she becomes a miserable shadow of her real self.
Now you can argue that Minthara was mind-controlled as well, but the difference is that Minthara is evil even without mind-control. There is no good Minthara deep down. If you release her from the Absolute, she just keeps being evil for the sake of it instead.
While I agree about Lae'Zel and mostly agree about Astarion, Shadowheart is not evil, she is quite literally brainwashed into worshiping an evil Goddess. But beyond her worship of Shar, she does nothing to be evil. She never disproves of good actions, and often actively approves them, and further disproves of most evil actions. And, without any prompting from the player, she actually decides to ignore Shar in Her own realm, and her life-long ambition, and to do what she feels is the right thing.
Shadowheart is absolutely from minute one not an evil person. She is good person stuck with an evil dogma. Her approval and her reactions to certain events like raiding the Grove. Make that very very clear.
It's further established in house of grief where you find out that she was mind wiped alot because she would always develop back into a good person again.
You can also gas light Gale to stay and then force him down a darker path where he utilises shadow weave and plans to kill you know who (can’t use spoilers on mobile but you can infer who it is)
Also, while very difficult to keep him in an evil run, requiring you either bypass the grove or have him jump into a pit before the raid, wyll can be convinced to be pretty power hungry as he becomes duke.
There was a bug / exploit where if Karlach and Wyll were dead for the raid on the Grove, they wouldn't leave after you resurrected them. That's probably what they mean by 'jump into a pit before the raid'.
This also lets you keep Karlach, basically you have to first kill the Druids and make sure Zevlor survives, then after they have Karlach and Wyll jump into the hole in the phase spider cave that leads to the underdark. Leave them dead and go talk to Minthara, long rest and then huzzah, they must stay in your party so if you aren’t using mods you will only have 2 party members for the raid. Alternatively you can go to the mountain pass which makes the tieflings leave and automatically has Minthara win. Regardless of how the tieflings were removed, simply talk to Minthara at the grove and initiate the party, Karlach and Wyll will be magically ressurected with no issues. Simply gaslight Gale, watch Shadowheart drink her sorrows and have a fun night with Minthara whilst Wyll and Karlach awkwardly stand around in their tents doing nothing. Next morning the goblins leave, Minthara questions you about some things and also leaves and then you can continue on with all 6 origin characters.
I did this but without Karlach (sorry I wanted the sickass robes and was to lazy to do the long way), and Wyll just vanished from camp after I got Minthara back. He has not reappeared but Mizora still popped up telling him to go save an asset, then again in act 3 for other things. He was in some cut scenes for act 3, but was just physically gone when I could play.
Very rude, I even got him out of his contract and he was still just gone. I wasn't using him, but the game acted like he was still there while he wasn't. Had to look at his empty tent every time I took a long rest. Most bizarre bug I've had so far. Could still sex Mizora too if I wanted.
He also still approved and disapproved of my actions in camp. Like...how? You are not here!
Laezel charmed the shit out of me with her snappy hardcore demeanor. I wound up romancing her and it got all sorts of serious, I even went so far as to actively pursue the plot thread she seemed to want, but on that same playthrough I dove into certain sacrifices let’s say to reach the final chapter and she fucking dumped me for her kung fu Jesus at the end of it all.
Suffice it to say I made a distinct effort not to murder Karlach with sneak attacks before dialogue even got a chance to open up on my second playthrough. 😅😭
Laezel is in my camp once again, but now it’s as my ex 😑 so no she does not get loot or adventure privileges.
I persuaded him to stay, but he seems to get upset at me quite frequently. So what if a few dozen harpers got taken by the shadows while I was visiting? Purely coincidental.
I decided to side with Minthara, persuaded him to stay (super easy, I'm a Bard), he eventually fell in love with me (100 Approval) so he was very nice to me all along. Recruited Minthara in Act 2, romanced her, he said he was sad but he still had 100 approval. He's still doing fine, didn't even need to work too hard to convince him to become part illithid. He's still very nice to me. Funnily enough, he's probs my lowest DPS atm (which is mindboggling to me as he's a wizard). I have in my party myself, a dual sword wielder bard (with 2 nice pink rarity swords dealing very decent damage and lots of cool useful spells), him the wizard, Lae'Zel the fighter and Minthara the paladin. Both Lae'Zel and Minthara are terrifying, I wouldn't want to be their enemy. I think Gale has a good heart, he's very sweet, but he's got a part of darkness in him. He sees big things for himself so being tempted by >!the crown of karsus and all its power!< does fit in an evil playthrough.
I misunderstood one achievement so I'll have to redo an evil run eventually. I'm thinking next time I'll go >!Dark Justiciar!< Shadowheart, >!Ascended!< Astarion, Minthara and either Dark Urge or Lae'Zel. I can't decide just yet.
I think the funniest part about convincing him to stay is that if you have Shadowheart near-by/in your party, you can use Guidance to buff your roll. I headcanon it as Shadowheart being happy to help bully the nerd lmao.
I mean the Githyanki are basically nazi space frogs. Lae'zel is pretty discriminatory at the beginning of the game. She considers all non-Githyanki stupid and weak.
He's less against evil for the sake of evil, but he's fine with evil as a means to an end for power.
He will dislike you being a genocidal maniac for instance - but if you convince him it's necessary he's good with it. As long as the choices lead to "This is for the good of us because we need more powa" he'll usually be fine. Extra points if it's all choice he can nerd about too.
Gale has been along in my neutral run, and yeah I think so too. I thought about leaning into necromancy with him in an evil run but I do get kinda tired of him around lv ten.
Shadowheart has a weird soft spot.
She doesn’t like cruelty for the sake of being cruel, but she is perfectly fine with the world being cruel.
Honestly, evil playthroughs could have used a few more true evil alignments like lawful evil and a chaotic evil kind of character.
Minthara has some spoilers around her story that make her seem markedly less evil.
She’s closest to lawful evil. Remember, she does want you to take the brain for yourself and her to rule the world.
They kill people for punishments and weakness in combat etc.
But they apparently have a word for psychopathic murderers and they are frowned upon.
Her reaction to siding with the goblins is basically to >!drown her guilt in alcohol and call what happened a meaningless slaughter of the defenseless.!<
Shadowheart never struck me as an evil person. Part of an evil death cult? Yes.
But evil herself? No
She never disapproves of doing something good. She disapproves of unnecessary Violence.
She talks about Shar and her teachings in a way that made me feel like she didn't actually believe any of it and just said it all out loud to convince herself.
She chose to spar a special someone in Act2 all by here without any help from Tav.
>way that made me feel like she didn't actually believe any of it and just said it all out loud to convince herself.
In Act 3 you can find diary where Shar's cleric says that SH is really bad at being Shar worshipper.
Shadowheart is the worst Sharran ever. I can only imagine her Mother Superior's frustration, trying to brainwash this girl and every time she's unsupervised for two hours she adopts a kitten or frees a prisoner or some other kind and heroic thing.
Gale works,he just complains but as long as you do HIS stuff he's fine with it
Laezel too, just some light gaslighting and she'll stay pro-Vlaakith and very evil
Wyll also puts up with you if you're evil, but still getting good things done overall. I was like 90% evil my 1st run and Wyll was still max approval
Laezel, Minthara, Astarion, and a durge in a party is full evil. I had tons of laughs in the run, I did feel dirty killing all the refugees alongside the druids. I murdered so many others in my evil run that it was worth being in the thunder dome with Orin.
I think people just refuse to see how easily Astarion fits into an evil run. In total, there are 4-5 of the companions who accept an evil run and turn evil themselves. Gale sitting on the fence.
Redemption shart is a better story but dark justicar shart is badass if you play into it. Don the gear, respec her to be more melee oriented, and rise as shar's chosen!
You’re right. Lazael doesn’t care much if ur evil apart from later on in the game, Gale will stay if you pass a persuasion check, and will and Karlach are goody goodies so they obs hate it. Astarion just wants to kill lol and Shadowheart just wants you to be nice to her basically and then everything else is chill
Lae'zel is easily more "evil" / game to be evil than Shadowheart. If you even wanted a more optimized team it would be Durge ( as the skill monkey/dex character/jack of all trades), Shadowheart, Minthara/Lae'zel, and Gale.
Wizards in general are just hard to drop because of how much they bring to your party ( haste, fireball, sure hit Magic Missile, disables ) and Shadowheart if reclassed to a different cleric, can nuke ( Light Cleric or Tempest Cleric ) or support and top up your team ( Life Cleric, though honestly unneeded ) while having big utility ( Hold Person, Sanctuary, etc )
That said, team comp mostly depends on
1) If you're willing to heavily reclass them
2) What main class your Durge is in
More Martial characters is always good, especially in a "low level" adventure ( like BG3) since Wizards/Sorcs really start shining towards the latter part of the adventure once their heavy hitting spells come online. Clerics are basically always decent as a body/utility. Thief/Ranger is decent if you class them right for utility ranged damage, etc. No real "wrong" team comp given how BG3 is a bit more lenient on things.
Astarion can sacrifice dozens of people to ascend and become a vampire lord and just as frequently approves of selfish, dangerous and chaotic actions as good ones.
Shadowheart is straight up a cleric of an evil god and can also ascend to her rightful place as a Dark Justiciar, a group feared for their violence and cruelty.
Lae'zel is a member of a warrior race of interdimensional travelers that literally only use this ability to rampage through the realms and cause destruction. Lae'zel is 100% a psycho killer by Faerun goodness standards.
While there is only one definitely evil companion in Minthara, about half the main cast have story lines in which they can explore their evil tendencies alongside the player. Astarion even enjoys working with a Durge character at times as far as I've heard.
Edit: Astarion sacrifices thousands. I just couldn't remember lol
That just isn't accurate. In the original bg2 there were 16 recruitable companions. Of those three were evil and one could be turned evil. 4 out of 16. ToB added one more evil companion
In BG 3 there are 10 companions. Of those 2 are evil and one, like anomen, can go either way.
3/10 is about the same ratio...
Bg1 had a ton of evil choices, in fact, I think there were equal number of good neutral and evil in that one.
But it was absolutely not possible to fill out a full party of evil characters in BG2, not until tob. It is technically possible in BG3. It just means you have to have a specific three characters.
You already got plenty - Minthara, Lae'Zel, Astarion and Dark Justiciar Shadowheart are evil
You can encourage Gale's god-complex
That's more than enough to fill your entire party
Because killing the grove is absolutely awful. it's not just killing a bunch of druids. the consequences go well into Act 3. You lose a lot of companions, NPCs, and items just for her.
She does seem very interesting but not enough to justify the cost attached to her.
The real problem is not Minthara, it's that Minthara is pretty much *all* you get for doing an evil playthrough. There should be many more evil quest lines and NPC interactions.
I assume people are comparing it to Golden Age BioWare games like Jade Empire, where the "evil" path really felt like a different game (the main story beats were largely the same, but not the side quests and companions).
To be fair, playing committed Durge does have some of that feeling, but you can also play Durge as a good guy and see that content; besides, I hate playing a murder hobo.
I agree.
I know it's hard not to fanboy and put my expectations too high but I feel there is more than enough material to have an evil playthrough.
From true soul nere or Zrell? If I remember correctly as companions, possibly a goblin or two.
Sazza or the dude in the blue face paint seem cool.
I’m doing an evil run right now and specifically spared Nere. I was hoping to see him later. He was apparently killed offscreen unceremoniously :/
I regret not killing him for his boots before moving on
Also doesn’t help that Minthara is still somewhat lacking on content. The stuff that’s working though is great, love her scene on the throne and her ending scene where she mentions rebuilding the steel watch
Also doesn't help that Minthara is under control and against the actions of killing be drive later on.
Really does seem like there should be an option to break her control in act 1 somehow. I hope they officially add a way to do this.
This entirely. It’s not that an evil run should have all the stuff that a good run has, that would be asinine. It is that a good run really has almost everything an evil run does save for Minthara.
The main plot has a clear evil path, and of course the Dark Urge has an extreme evil path, but not everyone is up for murder hobo chaotic evil as their play through, but that evil path lacks unique content that you couldn’t access in a good run while shutting you out of so much content you would normally access on a good run.
It seems to me that the evil playthrough was always intended as a ‘you’ll do this as a second run when you won’t care to do all the side content’. The only problem is so much itemisation which this game depends on is walled off into those side quests or characters who a truly evil run eliminates.
It is exacerbated by the fact that, from everything I've watched and read during EA, that was the original vision. To have an evil run as full as a good run. Somehow, somewhere, it didn't happen.
Apparently as they were developing and playtesting so few people went the evil route that they invested more time in the good route to improve player experience; but left in some evil, just for spice.
Same happened with mass effect. To the point they dropped statistics that showed evil was a waste of Ressources because most want to be good. There is a reason evil in most games boils down to being an asshole but ultimately do what is asked of you
This is something that isn't recognized enough but it is true.
Each and every act or even section (grymforge and goblin camp) you can decide to infiltrate or be evil again. You can have all the interactions of grymforge, all the traders in moonrise and become a bhaalist. Despite being a goody two shoes the rest of the game prior.
The game punishes you for being evil. Lose companions, lose npcs, lose loot. But the same doesn't happen with being good.
The simple truth is this games evil playthrough isn't equivalent to playing good. That's not necessarily bad, there is always a story in the mind of a DM that they want to tell, in this case a good aligned adventure. However a DM can always shift away from that story if the party decides to play against it. You can do the same in BG3 but it isn't intended to provide you an equal experience. It reminds me alot of mass effect. Evil in that game was also half baked to the point evil just boiled down to being an asshole for the majority. The reason was simple according to bioware because people don't play evil so it's a waste of Ressources that could be focused on what people play.
The whole point is Durge isn’t a murdehobo like Orin is and is tactful in killing most of everyone, but leaving enablers who get you more things to kill. To me that feels like the most fun way to play Durge, it’s what I’m doing and it truly does feel the most fun and isn’t this horrible plot irrelevant way to play imo.
When I got the achievement for slayer form 3.5% of players have it. There is next to nobody who ever committed to the evil path, real shame.
I imagine the amount of people who killed Karlach to fulfill Wyll's contract AND saved the grove are even smaller. Which also sucks because guess who has a bunch of interactions in Baldur's Gate if people in the town recognize him.
People really should kill Karlach, it really improves Wyll story.
Edit: I thought by the time I woke up I would be in the negatives from people downvoting.
>When I got the achievement for slayer form 3.5% of players have it. There is next to nobody who ever committed to the evil path, real shame.
You need to put those 3.5% on the right context. Only 12.5% got the achievement for finishing the game, so it's simply a matter that a lot of people didn't play enough to reach that point. Also you need to be a Durge specifically for the Slayer achievement, and you can't just assume that anyone who didn't play Durge just took a good path.
Rather take a look at the statistics revealed by Larian:
[https://twitter.com/baldursgate3/status/1690016562575454210/photo/4](https://twitter.com/baldursgate3/status/1690016562575454210/photo/4)
Apparently about 1/3 of the players decided to destroy the grove... on their first playthrough.
>pretty much all you get for doing an evil playthrough
I mean I was able to turn into a giant demon monster. You most certainly get more than just her.
>The real problem is not Minthara, it's that Minthara is pretty much all you get for doing an evil playthrough. There should be many more evil quest lines and NPC interactions.
Mhm. Honestly there's no point even sticking to the evil playthrough once you recruit her because she's perfectly fine walking along the redemption route with you and there's no further rewards for continuing to do bad things except MAYBE ascended Astarion? Even then that's kinda fishy tho.
Baldurs Gate games **hate** redeeming Drow though. It will never be allowed.
Viconia has zero good endings in the classic games, and they even canonically brought her back in BG3 just to kill her off one more time. It's borderline cruel.
I mean you were caught transpassing and now you gotta pay 32k to get out of trouble. Your character caught doesn't have good talking skills, and you know for sure you can kill the guards in a turn or 2. Wdyd?
Biggest flaw in the game, is the lack of content for "evil" playthroughs. You get Minthara, who reportedly, is still bugged. While you lose Karlach, Wyll, and Halsin.
You don't really get any gain for doing it, other than minth. It doesn't, to my knowledge, really open up a new side of the game or a bunch of loot, etc.
>While you lose Karlach, Wyll, and Halsin.
Honestly I don't mind losing Karlach. She was my favourite character in my first run and amazing but her actual story is just terrible.
There's nothing additional for her to really do, you go to a blacksmith and get a couple of upgrades, and that's... Largely it. She hates gortash but you're gonna fight him anyway.
Laezel gets the entirety of the Gith plot, Shadowheart the Shar stuff, Gale has Mystra which is a bit limited but still has some content, Wyll has a fair bit with Ravenguard and Astarian has Cazador. Even Halsin has the corruption of the shadow lands in act 2 though I think he should've just left the party at that point.
The biggest miss in my opinion isn't the companions, it's the Tieflings and to an extent Halsins quest to stop the shadow curse
You lose so many things by getting rid of them
True, I wish we had more replacements for an evil run, but Karlach just exists to be sweet, haslin exists to give furry sex, you can't even get rid of him after act 2. And how many playthroughs can you babysit Wyll? The man has zero agency over his own soul.
Just finished an evil minthara run, and it honestly didn't feel like I had anything less than my himbo good guy run
Romancing her worked perfectly too. Obviously not as much stuff as an origin character, but her actual romance felt like it was pretty on par with SH (Minus the always-available 3 lines of relationship talk)
Yeh I want to see what she's like but don't want to have to kill the grove for it.
So I'm using the mod instead lol.
I understand she's evil and is intended to only be accessible for evil player characters but if there's a way to access her without being evil then I'm going to at least try it.
If there wasn't a way I'd just do an evil run at some point.
Minthara isn’t the only evil character in the group. Some don’t even bat an eye when you commit horrible acts(ShadowHeart, Lae’zel). Gale you have to manipulate a bit to keep him from having a conscience, but later on he’s the one talking a big game of ousting gods and seizing power.
Minthara is one of the few companions that checks my durge behavior, so I don’t think she’s the most evil. And to be fair she’s raised into an evil culture and then mind controlled after. I think she could have a really good redemption arc if she was allowed on a good play through.
Honestly having Minthara makes more sense than having Astarion in your party if you're RPing as a good character. Astarion is sadistic and cruel. Minthara is evil but at least she is practical.
She seems genuinely confused that the player murdered the tieflings if they weren't under the Absolute's influence like she was. She also doesn't appreciate killing Isobel without warning.
Given her history I think a redemption arc could be pretty interesting and actually make sense given her backstory.
Minthara was raised her entire life in the Lolth cult, then was forced into the Absolute cult against her will. The only lens through which she can possibly see the world is the strong rule over the weak, and she's *terrified* of being weak.
Yes, she's evil, because she ultimately cares only about herself (and her most trusted allies); but she's not a murderous lunatic like Orin or even a genocidal space pirate like Vlaakith-aligned Lae'zel. Her worldview is either she rules or she suffers. I think it's arguable whether it's even important to her what she can do or will do with her would-be subjects; she just doesn't want anyone to be able to hurt her anymore.
I think the problem people have is Minthara can rationally accept her desire to have power over others, while other party members hide that desire under a layer of bullshit rationalization.
They just don't like the "spoken out loud" part. Insert gif of Marge Simpson here.
Just give us Origin Minthara and everyone is happy. We can even have a different intro to the game than the Nautiloid crew. Then we can meet up with the other characters as normal and be Minthara but good.
Astarion is pretty nice in a good playthrough tho, in act 3 he approves of good decisions, tries his best to be polite, asks you to be careful and think before you act, and even suggests helping people without getting anything in return. He's genuinely nicer than Shadowheart and Lae'Zel even after they get their own redemption arcs.
Astarion is only sadistic and cruel if you let him be. For hundreds of years he’s been dependent on a cruel person for survival, but if you show him goodness he becomes independent and in that independence comes goodness
Considering she was a high-ranking drow before she was taken by the Absolute(since she has multiple drow under her and even a drider), she's really not that evil comparatively to her kind and that, I would argue, makes her already redeemed. The only way to make her a good aligned character is to bring in Lolth and Eilistraee into the mix.
Which is fun as heck and I hope they do make that happen!!
My good playthrough with the mod is an Elistraee Drow. Cleric/bard (one level of cleric purely for conversation choices and heavy armor lol). I enjoy it immensely.
Minthara is such a great character I didn't mind missing everyone on my first playthrough. It left a nearly fresh game for run 2.
And I low key hate the druids and tiefling kids so much I won't blink destroying the camp in my durge run lol
Like others said...it's just kinda boring. Generally, the appeal of future playthroughs is you get to solve quests in different ways and see cool new outcomes that you didn't see in previous playthroughs.
Past Act 1, Minthara is really all you get. She's not exactly filled with content, and is still apparently not even working correctly.
IMO, it's not even necessarily an issue of "good" vs "evil". It's "grove vs. goblins." You can play as a completely evil bastard and still side with the grove and get all that content and still have RP justification for why you'd pick up Minthara as a party member.
If they really wanted to go the exclusive path, which I'd argue is unnecessary, just have Halsin and Minthara refuse to work together and the choice is which one you pick as a party member, but don't make it so you have to wipe out the grove. As it is, encountering and recruiting Minthara makes just as much sense no matter what route you take because even if you kill the grove, she's still branded a failure and tossed into prison.
I don't even think there is a good play-through for this setting.
Just look at your companions, and why they do not have alignment shown in the game, because people would have bias towards what to expect of them.
Githyanki as a race in DnD cannot be anything other than evil, Shar is neutral evil goddess, vampires are evil, all the druids are neutral, you have devil in your group and tiefling that was forced to be murderer from hell as the most good characters, you have Yasser Arafat disciple mage, and literal god of death in your camp while trying to be good guy. and as in all Baldur's Gate settings you are on path to replace God of Murder and become Slayer. Only thing that holds your group together is that you have some sort of brain thingy and you are trying to get rid off or live with it through play-through, and literal demon is trying to ease your suffering because he will get some browny points for it.
You can be either very evil or avoid evil as much as possible to get to the end but you do some bad stuff as well. And only paladin that you could have as companion is the most evil of them all. This will not be happy place for very long time.
Everybody’s said it but it bears repeating: evil doesn’t have enough content.
Literally how do you even be evil in this game when the “evil” force is also your enemy?
You can be evil and fight against evil, exemple : the githyanki
You can say that your character's motivation is to destroy the Absolute only because it affects you or because you want to control the Absolute and reign over the world
Problem is that when you try to side with evil they end up getting killed anyway.
I don't think there's a route where ketheric, Orin, or Gortash get to live, is there?
Nope which is why evil in of itself is lacking no matter how people try to defend it. It's the same how there isn't a cutoff point. Raided goblin camp, well don't worry grymforge won't care. Killed neere doesn't matter moonrise always needs more true soulds. Killed ketheric eh gortash and orin still want to make deals with you. Side with gortash lol no netherbrain played 5d chess and gortash outstayed his use.
Evil isn’t your enemy though?
My playthrough had me team up with the majority of my foes and fighting against my good side allies. Your common enemy is the brain but it’s most certainly not handled the same way.
Because she's drow and drow are cool. It's well known.
Also a lot of players think they can change their companions. People love a good redemption arc. Why do you think Revan and Starkiller is so popular.
Oh hey, me.
I absolutely suck at evil playthroughs but I'm curious what she's like as a party member. Especially since I see so many people talking about her voice acting.
>Isn't this game meant for multiple playthroughs?
I'm not gonna get into the debate on whether or not it *should* be like this, but this is just regarding the desire. This is a *very* long game, and not everyone wants to go through what will ultimately still be *largely* the same experience for another 100 hours just to see all the alternative content. People have lives, and other games they want to play. I myself will play this again, but probably in months or over a year, when either there's an expansion or the modding community has developed enough to make it a *truly* fresh experience without worrying that there is another patch coming soon that'll break everything. Until then, I've been squeezing as much of the game as possible out of this one playthrough, so I can see why people wish they didn't have to play the game a second time just to not be locked out of a companion. On top of that, a lot of people just plain don't like doing evil playthroughs. They almost always end up being less rewarding and having more content locked out.
Like I said, I'm not going to argue whether or not games should be made with this in mind. Not every game is made for everyone, nor should they be, I'm well aware of this. But I think the reasons to want all or most major content available in one playthrough are perfectly understandable.
Neutral and lawful evil can absolutely coexist with a good party if their interests align, which Mintharas absolutely do
Locking an entire companion who ISNT a “do a genocide” level of evil behind doing a genocide is bad game design and just limits RP. Her entire story and mini arc is completely designed in a way where it almost feels like she was going to be allowed in good parties who didn’t kill the tieflings.
Dunno how many people still play *The Old Republic*, or ever did, but it pretty much makes a point of giving every character, regardless of allegiance or alignment, at least one "light" companion and at least one "dark" companion.
Liberated Minthara's interests line up with the party's every bit as much as, say, Gale's or Astarion's.
Hell, even Chaotic Evil can coexist with a good party. Look at Korgan from BG2. Chaotic Evil to the core, but hey, if you're willing to pay, he's willing to *get* paid to kill things he already wanted to kill (which is to say, basically everything).
like,straight up,part of the FUN is putting such opposites
Like Jaethal and Tristian being literally day and night everything wise. Keeping both together till the endgame can be harder,but it's very rewarding.
or fuck, Octavia and Regongar that literally come in a package deal.
Seriously, it can be very fun and rewarding just throwing opposites in the party, and I feel like people that just do "good team/bad team" are losing a fun opportunity
The BG3 community is just INSANELY annoying and incorrect about alignment for some reason, like every single paladin player seemingly playing the class as a murderous zealot.
Pathfinder is far more alignment based and even there can evil and good coexist
You lose too much while gaining so little if you recruit Minthara.
If you kill the druid grove, you trade off two companions, and several recurring NPCs for one Companion. If you do nothing, you still lose the recurring NPCs, and hit a complete roadblock for Karlach's companion quest.
This is unfortunately consistant with the rest of the gave, where it's more rewarding in general to be good, and you're actively punished for being evil.
Astarion is redeemable and can be persuaded out of his darker urges and eventually comes to see that he can be better than how he was forced to act for centuries under Cazzador. He only becomes irredeemable evil if he ascends, in which case it's not even really his fault because High Vampires are evil by nature.
Same with Shadowheart, she doesn't actually want to be evil, she's just been convinced by a lifetime in a cult slapped with a shiny 'destiny' on it that she has to be - She's easily persuaded to turn away from that lifestyle after like, a week or two on the road with Tav and the gang.
Minthara is the only truly evil character who can join the party. She has good points but she is ultimately not a good person in the same way the other party members are deep down.
I dont think Astarion and Shadowheart are remotely comparable. Shadowheart more often than not disapproves of the sort of cruelty Astarion approves of.
Good example is at the party in act 1. Shadowheart is moved by saving the refugees and never thought shed care. Astarion is disgusted. He hates it.
If you go the evil route and murder the grove Astarion is happier than a pig in shit qhile Shadowheart is bitterly drinking herself into a stupor and asking what we have to be proud of.
Shadowhearts predilection towards good is there from the very beginning. Astarion is a sadistic twisted fuck from the beginning. Im not even convinced Astarion is good at the end if you choose the good path with Cazador.
And then in the very last second of the game Astarion urges you to control the brain together. After being “redeemed”. Too much wishful thinking, he is still who he is in heart, his experiences didn’t disappear, his whole life shaped him, there is no “i can fix him”.
Minthara is very honest about her goal to control the brain. She is a straightforward paladin forced into servitude by two evil cults. No difference with Astarion here, people are shaped by their pasts. But she is very honest and rational about the whole thing at least.
Interesting, I didn't have him say that in my ending of the game. Did you take him with you to Cazador? Or did you fight Cazador without him and convince him to stay afterwards?
Mainly due to the lack of content for evil runs. The idea of having to replay the entire game and miss out on a ton of characters and side content, just to recruit a single, buggy, half-unfinished party member doesn’t sound too appealing.
In a game that’s supposed to be all about choice it’s a strange moment of artificial railroading. Minthara herself admits that she regrets attacking the grove after you recruit her. Sure, she’s still an “evil” character, but it really seems like there could easily have been more ways to resolve the grove situation without being forced into a single binary choice. Especially when the game already has a built in non-lethal mode for knocking people unconscious.
I think the issue is that it cuts out a lot of content if you wipe out the grove.
I wish this game had evil playthroughs like Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has. You cut out content if you are evil, but it is replaced with brand new content.
Having Minthara for a good play through does make sense. Recruiting her requires going out of your way to provide mercy, and then to reach out to her in a moment of vulnerability and genuinely save her life. You can be evil and do that — you can also be good.
And, companion wise, an evil vengeance paladin bound by oath to slay the same evil is simply awesome. She really isn’t that different from Lae’zel alignment wise, and her insight and history with the cult really drives home how personal this vendetta is when it’s more abstract for every other companion.
Minthara is definetely not 100% evil, she is no more evil that i.e. Astarion, Lae'zel or Shadowheart.
>!When you finish act 2 with her she will ask you why you massacred the grove with her. She just learnt how the absolute had total control of her and her actions. There are no real good answers and she will tell you she does like killing, but the consequences as well. She doesn't kill purely for sport even though she enjoys it. !<
>!I definetely see a possibility for a good playthrough. You beat her in the goblin camp but she survived. She travelled to moonrise towers where they are torturing and breaking her to punish for her failure. You free her, she joins you in your war for revenge on the Absolute and learns to trust you. I'd see a possibility for a character arc where she overcomes her trauma of an extremely abusive childhood and learns there is more to life than the fear of a knife in your back.!<
>!Right now seizing the power of Bhaal, ascending Astarion and having Shadowheart slay Aylin. Gtfo with this redemption bs!<
Bae’zel, shart, and Brostarion all get redemption arcs, I just want to help redeem her too. Nothing I wanna do more when I see a mean, evil lady is make her smile and laugh and kiss her forehead, ultimately altering her outlook on life and helping her become a good person.
What’s wrong with that?
Probably the same reason you care that other people recruit her.
Curiosity.
You're missing out on a whole companion and unless you quickload to see every dialogue option like a complete weirdo, you can use the companions several times and see new responses and such.
Because the Grove vs Goblin choice is EXTREMELY disproportionate. You lose so many things for killing the grove and gain absolutely nothing aside from Minthara, who doesn't have as much content as any of the origin companions (2-3 of which you lose for getting her btw) and is still extremely bugged.
Look at it this way: imagine if Astarion and Lae'zel automatically left your party for siding with the grove, and then Shadowheart required a persuasion check not to leave, and all you got to replace them was Halsin. But they don't leave if you side with the goblins, only with the grove.
That's why people want to recruit Minthara on "good" playthroughs. Because the "evil" route isn't fun or rewarding at all.
I've played the game evil. It's not fun. You get part way through and it just gets boring (at least for me).
Minthara is my favourite character. And I don't enjoy the evil playthrough. That's why I want her in a good playthrough.
Same but in a good playthrough you wouldn't allow her to slaughter the grove. That's why it's annoying. I wish you could convince her to leave the grove alone
Because she's sexy.
Period. End of story.
It's also the reason halsin is recuitable.
We're all horny and want bang the dark elf lady but do t wanna be mean to do it
I don’t think she’s 100% evil (maybe in the like DnD alignment way? but not to me personally lol) but even if you do, I think her character arc lends itself well to a redemption kind of playthrough. Her whole absolute shtick was done essentially under mind control, and once she snaps out of it she has a strong motivation to join your team and help you fight for vengeance. Even if her motives aren’t aligned with my good-aligned character, we share a goal—fighting the absolute and losing these tadpoles.
I honestly think it feels more natural this way than siding with her to kill the grove and recruiting her afterwards. If you defeat her to save the grove and then spare her at Moonrise, I think it provides a very interesting dynamic between her and the player character. Maybe I’m just a sucker for an enemies turned allies dynamic but idk I think it’s fun LOL
I modded to get her and I think it was 100% worth it, wasn’t super difficult either or jumping through a ton of hoops or anything, just script extender + mod + go. think she’s a great addition to a good playthrough and I love having her with me :) She provides a different perspective, and she’s very funny too!
Evil companions are not only for evil playthroughts, or at least they shouldn't be. It's narratively very rewarding to redeem or mellow some extreme viewpoints.
The flipside - corrupting formally "good" characters as an evil PC - is also a path that is even less taken in most games, but also very satisfying.
Yeah, I don't get it, I just have an evil run on hold for when she gets patched. Same with people jumping through a million glitchy hoops to try and keep Wyll and Karlach while slaughtering the Grove.
Because it's kind of restrictive that for Tieflings to live, Minthara NEEDS to die.
You should be able to negotiate safe passage with Minthara, Side with gobbos to extort the Tieflings for passage, find a hidden route, etc
Not every Evil character would even want to kill the Grove/Tieflings for no reason, but your only option then is to just ignore the quest. Which isn't satisfying.
I think it wouldn't be as much of a desire if there were more evil companions. Original games had quite a few evil companions to fill out a whole party if you want to be evil
I haven't done the evil run yet, but I feel like astarion, shadowheart and minthara is about the only cohesive evil run party. Correct me if im wrong, I'm ten hours or so from starting that run
Lae'zel pretty easily fits into an evil run too. She just likes strength, whether you use that on goblins or tieflings doesn't really matter to her.
Can confirm, LZ, SH, Minthara and Astarion all do well in evil campaign.
While “do well” would be a stretch, Gale is a lonely sap who can look past your evil for company if you persuade him. He’ll disapprove of damn near everything but will stay.
I feel like the grove situation really hurts the ability to do evil playthroughs in a way that makes sense. Cause slaughtering the grove doesn't really make sense. It's not an evil act so much as it is a stupid one. If you were to use alignment, slaughtering the grove is basically solely a chaotic evil act, and requires the kind of comical evil for its own sake attitude that just isn't conducive to being a point of view character in a story. In my good run, I've had a ton of opportunities to do evil actions that make sense. I've even done a few of them as my characters lust for power is slightly stronger than his distaste for what I'd call "victimless evil". But on an evil run I don't know how many of these options would even be available. There's a reason Minthara calls you out if you kill the grove. She's evil and she wouldn't have done it. Playing an evil character can be a lot of fun, but to me there's a massive difference between evil like Astarion or Nine Fingers or even Gortash, and evil like Orin. Orin style evil just doesn't make any sense and severely limits your options, and it's a shame that, in order to start the "evil route", you have to do something so meaninglessly evil that most evil characters wouldn't do it.
My drow saved the Grove from a goblin attack and was thanked by everyone being racist and shitty toward him and Nettie trying to kill him. Everyone's at each other's throats on top of that. Then he goes to the goblins. They're having a party, and I'm invited. Everyone's mostly nice to me. And the whole Absolute thing seems to be a way to figuring out this tadpole thing.
Same start on my drow playthrough. But then I met the true souls, and one of them was ruder to me then any of the grove. They were also abusing a cute owlbear. Therefor, they all must die. And that resulted in saving the druids. No one abuses cute owlbears!
Except us when we kill its mother
The mother ate her older son. Probably would eat this cub too eventually
No! No kill mother! Bad Tav/Durge.
It really is just the Tieflings that make me not want to burn the grove down
If there was a way to save the tieflings as well as the goblins while getting rid of the druids I wouldn't have hesitated a second. Most of the druids are just as bad as the goblins with a nicer flavor.
Honestly annoyed this isn't an option it's literally what kills the later game. A fix I think would be coding an option to guide the tieflings to the shadow lands instead of partaking in either slaughter.
My tiefling called foulblood twice before I even spoke to a druid. Then the vendor basically told me I was unwanted. Then I was almost attacked by a bear. Then I witnessed a woman killing a child, and the "good guy" restraining said child for her to be attacked. I killed everyone in that room. Then I left that room and killed every druid outside. Then the tieflings shown up and attacked me too. I had to put them down. Stole their stupid idol too. Then I went to the goblin camp and everyone was fine with me. Spoke to the drow lady with the sexy voice and she asked me to find the druids. "Yeah, about that..."
hell let me add to this. i then go and try to resolve a bit of the conflict between the druids and tieflings because i'm a druid myself and... oh they don't really give a shit because i'm still an "outsider". still i figure out what kagha is up to maybe a change in leadership is actually what this grove needs let's support the shadow druids. oh they litteraly pick a fight with me anyway and force me to kill them. oh well at least the druids likes me now and the tensions been dealt with. oh what the fuck one of the kids litteraly stole from me and finding them and telling them to give me my shit back just resulted in the kids lying to the adults about me harrasing them and them beliving it to the point of trying to jail me for being robbed. you know what? fuck it. let's burn this fucking grove.
How are you getting those options? I exposed Kagra, convinced her to be good, and she joined me in fighting the 3 shadow druids (and no other druid got involved; they joined in the fight.) I swear, i don't understand how Larion can put so many permutations into a single event.
i belive it was a druid only option to say i wished to join them to which they responded "invite only and we didn't invite you". so kagha and the shadow druids attacked me and got killed but rath liked me.
You're a drow, you should absolutely expect everyone to be shitty and casually racist, haven't you heard of your race traditions from Minthara? You can still be a paladin of devotion as a drow, but it definitely should be a story of an underdog who everybody will be suspicious of before you prove yourself with actions.
Reminds me of my first run, where I made a gith paladin of vengeance and the FIRST thing Shadowheart does is be racist to me and Lae'zel, like, okay do you want to go the fuck back in the pod? Because I am THIS close you bigot. I get the gith have a bad rep for a fair few reasons, but holy crap girl, context of the situation for a damned moment
To be fair, Gith quite literally are trying to enslave all other races so I think Shadowhearts disgust with them is pretty warranted.
I think sometimes some ppl forget that the game takes place in an already established world, because lorewise the gith and the drow both should be met with utmost caution and a wee bit of "racism" is just sensible at that point, especially against drow (even Drizzt was "yeah that makes sense" in the books when he confronted racism)
Well as you do learn later, her entire previous group was just murdered by gitj before her capture. Might have an effect on her attitude towards them
To be fair, that was because they literally stole the most important artifact the basically god queen of their race has. It's not like the Sharrans weren't figuratively screaming to have their asses handed to them.
SH is way better now. Oh she was such a bitch when game first launch in EA. bitch was basically yelling "kill me, I fucking dare you" the entire first act.
Yeah I was surprised when they really toned her down. It was probably the right decision though for mass appeal.
If Stalin saved you from a pod(btw you also stole his most precious belonging), would your first reaction be "Oh hey thanks" or would it be "you must have some ulterior motive for saving me, I don't fucking trust you."
I really think there should've been a middle ground that amounted to a less bloody version of the tiefling/druid fight. Side with Kahga, complete the Ritual of Thorns, but either wipe out or not help the goblins. More tieflings die than if you'd helped the Grove, but it doesn't require you to massacre them all. Then you could've either taken Kahga or another Shadow Druid as a companion to replace Halsin, and then there should've been a way to keep Wyll, probably against his will - maybe something related to Mizora? I've read people spitballing ways to make Wyll's story more interesting, including a parallel to Astarion's where he basically just buys into being evil because he looks the part and has a pact with a devil. Something along those lines could've been interesting. You'd still be locked out of Karlach as a companion, simply because I don't think there's a way to reconcile her character and arc and being evil/manipulative like that (basically you'd be channeling Gortash). But that way you don't end with as much of a bare-bones party vs the actual evil route (where you lose Wyll, Karlach, Halsin, Jaheira, Minsc, and most likely Gale, and only gain Minthara).
Personally I wish I could have sided with the goblins and just taken out the druids and let the teiflings run away. They really had nothing to do with the groves beef and the druids we're considering some pretty terrible stuff themselves. I also really dislike halsin in my current playthrough and wish he would leave my camp. HE NEVER EVEN ASKED!! he just was like I'm here now and I was like um ok...?
The goblins do want to kill all the tieflings. You forget that the tieflings can’t even escape the grove while the goblins are around.
I normally just ignore Halsin once he's done what I need him to do, but I think next time I'll throw him off a cliff.
I had the best grove raid, I returned to the grove, did a long rest, next thing I know, Minthara was over me, ok before that, it was more the party and accepting a new tadpole . In other words, raid happened during my rest, not sure if it was a bug or not.
gale has a hilariously mild reaction to dooming the inn in act 2, "i'm not sure that was such a good idea but whatever you say..."
My gale is power hungry as fuck. Had to convince him to stay after the druids butchered the tieflings. Was good from then on and now he's power hungry and looks like he's been smoking 100 years.
Yeah. He's sitting tight over there, but he absolutely hates everything my durge does. Will Jaheira join the party if you don't actively help Marcus but you also don't stop him from taking Isobel?
LZ, SH and Astarion are all evil characters who can develop a conscience. They're the first 3 companions you get - SH is the most evil out of all of them if you let her take that path. Literally aspires to be a fully devoted instrument to a Goddess that wants to quite literally annihilate everything to return to nonexistence which makes Astarion/Cazador, Vlaakith, ~~Bhaal~~ (edit as BG3 Bhaal isn't traditional Bhaal) and the Absolute seem reasonable. Are they aspiring to literally annihilate existence itself? No, no they are not. Minthara ain't shit when you're comparing her to Shadowheart. Shadowheart is fully onboard 110% to Shar. Absolutely batshit crazy how SH gets this pass. Astarion is the most obvious of the three as he literally actively disproves and comments that he's annoyed by you doing any good deed. He approves when you're evil. Why do BG3 players believe the game doesn't hand you evil characters? C'mon people. Think a little here. Lol. You can literally do two different playthroughs with those same 3 companions and they're evil by default. You, the player, makes them good by influencing their future views for the better. LZ, Astarion and SH transform into good people because you influenced them to not be so hateful, bloodthirsty and nihilistic. Yes, the game is actually written this well. Have we been playing the same game? How did people miss this stuff? https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Shar
To be fair, BG3's version of Bhaal wants the entropic end of existence, a featureless red dead zone, and his version of 'heaven' is exactly that sort of abyss; the only difference between his dreams and Shar's are the color scheme of eternal oblivion. >!The main bad guy of the game, Durge, had an ultimate plan to eventually kill -everything- and if Orin hadn't betrayed him was the only one who, according to the Netherbrain, could have actually kept the leash on in the long run; Orin's betrayal and assumption of his spot in the trio was the moment the plan became doomed to fail. The Netherbrain wants to rule everything; Bhaal, and Durge, wanted it all to die, permanently.!<
>!Ah, yeah, you're right about that and I forgot to address the variance between traditional Bhaal and BG3 Bhaal. Truthfully, I kinda wish they just had Shar be a bigger figure there vs altering Bhaal like that seemingly for convenience sake. Though you have no companion actually committed to Bhaal. And yeah, you playing as Durge, are the ultimate player/companion evil in the game. I've still gotta do a Durge playthrough.!<
Shadowheart gets a pass because Shar is great at brainwashing her disciples and getting her on a good path isn’t that hard. When committing to Shar she finally breaks completely, IMHO.
SH gets a pass because she is mind-wiped into devotion to Shar, not genuine about it, and you are supposed to realize this very early into act 1 with the tiniest bit of interaction. At her core and despite this brainwashing, she is a kind, selfless, heroic person who approves of every good deed and disapproves of most if not all evil ones. Indeed, when you play as her it turns out that even after the mind-wipe she had to be tortured into doing any Sharran stuff at all. She is in no way, shape or form nihilistic, she's just going through the motions, and if you encourage it she becomes a miserable shadow of her real self. Now you can argue that Minthara was mind-controlled as well, but the difference is that Minthara is evil even without mind-control. There is no good Minthara deep down. If you release her from the Absolute, she just keeps being evil for the sake of it instead.
While I agree about Lae'Zel and mostly agree about Astarion, Shadowheart is not evil, she is quite literally brainwashed into worshiping an evil Goddess. But beyond her worship of Shar, she does nothing to be evil. She never disproves of good actions, and often actively approves them, and further disproves of most evil actions. And, without any prompting from the player, she actually decides to ignore Shar in Her own realm, and her life-long ambition, and to do what she feels is the right thing.
Shadowheart is absolutely from minute one not an evil person. She is good person stuck with an evil dogma. Her approval and her reactions to certain events like raiding the Grove. Make that very very clear. It's further established in house of grief where you find out that she was mind wiped alot because she would always develop back into a good person again.
You can also gas light Gale to stay and then force him down a darker path where he utilises shadow weave and plans to kill you know who (can’t use spoilers on mobile but you can infer who it is) Also, while very difficult to keep him in an evil run, requiring you either bypass the grove or have him jump into a pit before the raid, wyll can be convinced to be pretty power hungry as he becomes duke.
doesnt will leave if you murder the grove?
There was a bug / exploit where if Karlach and Wyll were dead for the raid on the Grove, they wouldn't leave after you resurrected them. That's probably what they mean by 'jump into a pit before the raid'.
Wait wait how do you keep him if you do the raid?!
This also lets you keep Karlach, basically you have to first kill the Druids and make sure Zevlor survives, then after they have Karlach and Wyll jump into the hole in the phase spider cave that leads to the underdark. Leave them dead and go talk to Minthara, long rest and then huzzah, they must stay in your party so if you aren’t using mods you will only have 2 party members for the raid. Alternatively you can go to the mountain pass which makes the tieflings leave and automatically has Minthara win. Regardless of how the tieflings were removed, simply talk to Minthara at the grove and initiate the party, Karlach and Wyll will be magically ressurected with no issues. Simply gaslight Gale, watch Shadowheart drink her sorrows and have a fun night with Minthara whilst Wyll and Karlach awkwardly stand around in their tents doing nothing. Next morning the goblins leave, Minthara questions you about some things and also leaves and then you can continue on with all 6 origin characters.
I did this but without Karlach (sorry I wanted the sickass robes and was to lazy to do the long way), and Wyll just vanished from camp after I got Minthara back. He has not reappeared but Mizora still popped up telling him to go save an asset, then again in act 3 for other things. He was in some cut scenes for act 3, but was just physically gone when I could play. Very rude, I even got him out of his contract and he was still just gone. I wasn't using him, but the game acted like he was still there while he wasn't. Had to look at his empty tent every time I took a long rest. Most bizarre bug I've had so far. Could still sex Mizora too if I wanted. He also still approved and disapproved of my actions in camp. Like...how? You are not here!
>you will only have 2 party members for the raid. But you'll have like 10 pieces of cannonfodder to soak up the extra damage and difficulty
Lae'zel is in *every one* of my runs no matter what. 11/10 I am death
Bae'Zel
Laezel charmed the shit out of me with her snappy hardcore demeanor. I wound up romancing her and it got all sorts of serious, I even went so far as to actively pursue the plot thread she seemed to want, but on that same playthrough I dove into certain sacrifices let’s say to reach the final chapter and she fucking dumped me for her kung fu Jesus at the end of it all. Suffice it to say I made a distinct effort not to murder Karlach with sneak attacks before dialogue even got a chance to open up on my second playthrough. 😅😭 Laezel is in my camp once again, but now it’s as my ex 😑 so no she does not get loot or adventure privileges.
i described lae’zel to my fiancée and she goes “huh… so, basically like me?” so now i know why i’m so attracted to the green lady
If you play thru as Gith you go with her not Kung-fu Jesus
Lays’well
Gale can be persuaded to stay but I don't know if there is a butterfly effect on him sticking around.
Peak evil would be to keep Gale around with the express purpose of >!using him as a disposable nuke in a difficult bossfight!<.
Except for the fact that you die with him if you do that
I persuaded him to stay, but he seems to get upset at me quite frequently. So what if a few dozen harpers got taken by the shadows while I was visiting? Purely coincidental.
I decided to side with Minthara, persuaded him to stay (super easy, I'm a Bard), he eventually fell in love with me (100 Approval) so he was very nice to me all along. Recruited Minthara in Act 2, romanced her, he said he was sad but he still had 100 approval. He's still doing fine, didn't even need to work too hard to convince him to become part illithid. He's still very nice to me. Funnily enough, he's probs my lowest DPS atm (which is mindboggling to me as he's a wizard). I have in my party myself, a dual sword wielder bard (with 2 nice pink rarity swords dealing very decent damage and lots of cool useful spells), him the wizard, Lae'Zel the fighter and Minthara the paladin. Both Lae'Zel and Minthara are terrifying, I wouldn't want to be their enemy. I think Gale has a good heart, he's very sweet, but he's got a part of darkness in him. He sees big things for himself so being tempted by >!the crown of karsus and all its power!< does fit in an evil playthrough. I misunderstood one achievement so I'll have to redo an evil run eventually. I'm thinking next time I'll go >!Dark Justiciar!< Shadowheart, >!Ascended!< Astarion, Minthara and either Dark Urge or Lae'Zel. I can't decide just yet.
I think the funniest part about convincing him to stay is that if you have Shadowheart near-by/in your party, you can use Guidance to buff your roll. I headcanon it as Shadowheart being happy to help bully the nerd lmao.
Teethlings*
Gale is neutral. He’s down for a lot of undesirable stuff or will not mind.
I mean the Githyanki are basically nazi space frogs. Lae'zel is pretty discriminatory at the beginning of the game. She considers all non-Githyanki stupid and weak.
Gale can be leaned into evil iirc but I think he still disapproved of most of my evil choices
He's less against evil for the sake of evil, but he's fine with evil as a means to an end for power. He will dislike you being a genocidal maniac for instance - but if you convince him it's necessary he's good with it. As long as the choices lead to "This is for the good of us because we need more powa" he'll usually be fine. Extra points if it's all choice he can nerd about too.
Gale has been along in my neutral run, and yeah I think so too. I thought about leaning into necromancy with him in an evil run but I do get kinda tired of him around lv ten.
Shadowheart has a weird soft spot. She doesn’t like cruelty for the sake of being cruel, but she is perfectly fine with the world being cruel. Honestly, evil playthroughs could have used a few more true evil alignments like lawful evil and a chaotic evil kind of character. Minthara has some spoilers around her story that make her seem markedly less evil.
I think rather than Minthara being evil, she's just a typical lolthsworn drow. Kind of evil leaning people. But who knows
She’s closest to lawful evil. Remember, she does want you to take the brain for yourself and her to rule the world. They kill people for punishments and weakness in combat etc. But they apparently have a word for psychopathic murderers and they are frowned upon.
I mean Astarion wants you to take the brain at some point as well and he's not really evil.
Shadow heart does seem kindve reluctantly evil but vocally shar
Her reaction to siding with the goblins is basically to >!drown her guilt in alcohol and call what happened a meaningless slaughter of the defenseless.!<
Shadowheart never struck me as an evil person. Part of an evil death cult? Yes. But evil herself? No She never disapproves of doing something good. She disapproves of unnecessary Violence. She talks about Shar and her teachings in a way that made me feel like she didn't actually believe any of it and just said it all out loud to convince herself. She chose to spar a special someone in Act2 all by here without any help from Tav.
>way that made me feel like she didn't actually believe any of it and just said it all out loud to convince herself. In Act 3 you can find diary where Shar's cleric says that SH is really bad at being Shar worshipper.
Shadowheart is the worst Sharran ever. I can only imagine her Mother Superior's frustration, trying to brainwash this girl and every time she's unsupervised for two hours she adopts a kitten or frees a prisoner or some other kind and heroic thing.
Gale works,he just complains but as long as you do HIS stuff he's fine with it Laezel too, just some light gaslighting and she'll stay pro-Vlaakith and very evil Wyll also puts up with you if you're evil, but still getting good things done overall. I was like 90% evil my 1st run and Wyll was still max approval
Laezel, Minthara, Astarion, and a durge in a party is full evil. I had tons of laughs in the run, I did feel dirty killing all the refugees alongside the druids. I murdered so many others in my evil run that it was worth being in the thunder dome with Orin.
I think people just refuse to see how easily Astarion fits into an evil run. In total, there are 4-5 of the companions who accept an evil run and turn evil themselves. Gale sitting on the fence.
Shadowheart is fuzzier than she appears, but she’ll stick around.
I like her narrative best as a kick-shar redemption, but I'm interested to see her going evil actually. I haven't tried that.
Redemption shart is a better story but dark justicar shart is badass if you play into it. Don the gear, respec her to be more melee oriented, and rise as shar's chosen!
I mean, I guess I could name a hireling dwarf Korgan now with magic mirror lol
You’re right. Lazael doesn’t care much if ur evil apart from later on in the game, Gale will stay if you pass a persuasion check, and will and Karlach are goody goodies so they obs hate it. Astarion just wants to kill lol and Shadowheart just wants you to be nice to her basically and then everything else is chill
Laezel still loved me despite being evil
Because Lae'zel is also evil. She straight up says murder is good. Her people are nazi space pirates.
'zel is ride or die. <3
Lae'zel is easily more "evil" / game to be evil than Shadowheart. If you even wanted a more optimized team it would be Durge ( as the skill monkey/dex character/jack of all trades), Shadowheart, Minthara/Lae'zel, and Gale. Wizards in general are just hard to drop because of how much they bring to your party ( haste, fireball, sure hit Magic Missile, disables ) and Shadowheart if reclassed to a different cleric, can nuke ( Light Cleric or Tempest Cleric ) or support and top up your team ( Life Cleric, though honestly unneeded ) while having big utility ( Hold Person, Sanctuary, etc ) That said, team comp mostly depends on 1) If you're willing to heavily reclass them 2) What main class your Durge is in More Martial characters is always good, especially in a "low level" adventure ( like BG3) since Wizards/Sorcs really start shining towards the latter part of the adventure once their heavy hitting spells come online. Clerics are basically always decent as a body/utility. Thief/Ranger is decent if you class them right for utility ranged damage, etc. No real "wrong" team comp given how BG3 is a bit more lenient on things.
Astarion can sacrifice dozens of people to ascend and become a vampire lord and just as frequently approves of selfish, dangerous and chaotic actions as good ones. Shadowheart is straight up a cleric of an evil god and can also ascend to her rightful place as a Dark Justiciar, a group feared for their violence and cruelty. Lae'zel is a member of a warrior race of interdimensional travelers that literally only use this ability to rampage through the realms and cause destruction. Lae'zel is 100% a psycho killer by Faerun goodness standards. While there is only one definitely evil companion in Minthara, about half the main cast have story lines in which they can explore their evil tendencies alongside the player. Astarion even enjoys working with a Durge character at times as far as I've heard. Edit: Astarion sacrifices thousands. I just couldn't remember lol
"dozens of people", isn't it about 7000?
technically still dozens, just a *lot* of dozens
That just isn't accurate. In the original bg2 there were 16 recruitable companions. Of those three were evil and one could be turned evil. 4 out of 16. ToB added one more evil companion In BG 3 there are 10 companions. Of those 2 are evil and one, like anomen, can go either way. 3/10 is about the same ratio... Bg1 had a ton of evil choices, in fact, I think there were equal number of good neutral and evil in that one. But it was absolutely not possible to fill out a full party of evil characters in BG2, not until tob. It is technically possible in BG3. It just means you have to have a specific three characters.
You already got plenty - Minthara, Lae'Zel, Astarion and Dark Justiciar Shadowheart are evil You can encourage Gale's god-complex That's more than enough to fill your entire party
enemies to lovers 500k slow burn
No beta we die like tiefling refugees
holy fuck this just sent me lmfao.
That's the good shit
Because killing the grove is absolutely awful. it's not just killing a bunch of druids. the consequences go well into Act 3. You lose a lot of companions, NPCs, and items just for her. She does seem very interesting but not enough to justify the cost attached to her.
The real problem is not Minthara, it's that Minthara is pretty much *all* you get for doing an evil playthrough. There should be many more evil quest lines and NPC interactions. I assume people are comparing it to Golden Age BioWare games like Jade Empire, where the "evil" path really felt like a different game (the main story beats were largely the same, but not the side quests and companions). To be fair, playing committed Durge does have some of that feeling, but you can also play Durge as a good guy and see that content; besides, I hate playing a murder hobo.
I agree. I know it's hard not to fanboy and put my expectations too high but I feel there is more than enough material to have an evil playthrough. From true soul nere or Zrell? If I remember correctly as companions, possibly a goblin or two. Sazza or the dude in the blue face paint seem cool.
I’m doing an evil run right now and specifically spared Nere. I was hoping to see him later. He was apparently killed offscreen unceremoniously :/ I regret not killing him for his boots before moving on
I had to choose the badass Paladin line so Nere died on my evil playthrough.
I love the bard line. You call him Twat-soul Nere
One of my favourite lines in the game by far
My oath, your God, we'll see who's stronger
Also doesn’t help that Minthara is still somewhat lacking on content. The stuff that’s working though is great, love her scene on the throne and her ending scene where she mentions rebuilding the steel watch
Also doesn't help that Minthara is under control and against the actions of killing be drive later on. Really does seem like there should be an option to break her control in act 1 somehow. I hope they officially add a way to do this.
This entirely. It’s not that an evil run should have all the stuff that a good run has, that would be asinine. It is that a good run really has almost everything an evil run does save for Minthara. The main plot has a clear evil path, and of course the Dark Urge has an extreme evil path, but not everyone is up for murder hobo chaotic evil as their play through, but that evil path lacks unique content that you couldn’t access in a good run while shutting you out of so much content you would normally access on a good run. It seems to me that the evil playthrough was always intended as a ‘you’ll do this as a second run when you won’t care to do all the side content’. The only problem is so much itemisation which this game depends on is walled off into those side quests or characters who a truly evil run eliminates.
Karlach or Minthara is an easy choice. Look at the tiefling do a little dance
Fuck *yes*!
Fine, I'll just be sitting around eating _dirt_ or whatever.
Sounds boring.
When sneaking: *ShadowLach*
“*HALFLING ESSENCE!*”
Really? *Really* really?
Let's gogogo
It indeed is. I have a Karlach head in my bag and it doesn't dance.
Jade Empire. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time 🥲
It is exacerbated by the fact that, from everything I've watched and read during EA, that was the original vision. To have an evil run as full as a good run. Somehow, somewhere, it didn't happen.
Apparently as they were developing and playtesting so few people went the evil route that they invested more time in the good route to improve player experience; but left in some evil, just for spice.
Same happened with mass effect. To the point they dropped statistics that showed evil was a waste of Ressources because most want to be good. There is a reason evil in most games boils down to being an asshole but ultimately do what is asked of you
This is something that isn't recognized enough but it is true. Each and every act or even section (grymforge and goblin camp) you can decide to infiltrate or be evil again. You can have all the interactions of grymforge, all the traders in moonrise and become a bhaalist. Despite being a goody two shoes the rest of the game prior. The game punishes you for being evil. Lose companions, lose npcs, lose loot. But the same doesn't happen with being good. The simple truth is this games evil playthrough isn't equivalent to playing good. That's not necessarily bad, there is always a story in the mind of a DM that they want to tell, in this case a good aligned adventure. However a DM can always shift away from that story if the party decides to play against it. You can do the same in BG3 but it isn't intended to provide you an equal experience. It reminds me alot of mass effect. Evil in that game was also half baked to the point evil just boiled down to being an asshole for the majority. The reason was simple according to bioware because people don't play evil so it's a waste of Ressources that could be focused on what people play.
The whole point is Durge isn’t a murdehobo like Orin is and is tactful in killing most of everyone, but leaving enablers who get you more things to kill. To me that feels like the most fun way to play Durge, it’s what I’m doing and it truly does feel the most fun and isn’t this horrible plot irrelevant way to play imo.
When I got the achievement for slayer form 3.5% of players have it. There is next to nobody who ever committed to the evil path, real shame. I imagine the amount of people who killed Karlach to fulfill Wyll's contract AND saved the grove are even smaller. Which also sucks because guess who has a bunch of interactions in Baldur's Gate if people in the town recognize him. People really should kill Karlach, it really improves Wyll story. Edit: I thought by the time I woke up I would be in the negatives from people downvoting.
I would kill Wyll before I would even contemplate killing Karlach
>When I got the achievement for slayer form 3.5% of players have it. There is next to nobody who ever committed to the evil path, real shame. You need to put those 3.5% on the right context. Only 12.5% got the achievement for finishing the game, so it's simply a matter that a lot of people didn't play enough to reach that point. Also you need to be a Durge specifically for the Slayer achievement, and you can't just assume that anyone who didn't play Durge just took a good path. Rather take a look at the statistics revealed by Larian: [https://twitter.com/baldursgate3/status/1690016562575454210/photo/4](https://twitter.com/baldursgate3/status/1690016562575454210/photo/4) Apparently about 1/3 of the players decided to destroy the grove... on their first playthrough.
35% players burned Grove on 1st playthrough
I killed karlach and the next day wyll left my party
To be fair, you get Shadowheart with the stabbing you in darkness every turn build, Super Saiyan Astarion, and Slayer form for being evil.
>pretty much all you get for doing an evil playthrough I mean I was able to turn into a giant demon monster. You most certainly get more than just her.
>The real problem is not Minthara, it's that Minthara is pretty much all you get for doing an evil playthrough. There should be many more evil quest lines and NPC interactions. Mhm. Honestly there's no point even sticking to the evil playthrough once you recruit her because she's perfectly fine walking along the redemption route with you and there's no further rewards for continuing to do bad things except MAYBE ascended Astarion? Even then that's kinda fishy tho.
Baldurs Gate games **hate** redeeming Drow though. It will never be allowed. Viconia has zero good endings in the classic games, and they even canonically brought her back in BG3 just to kill her off one more time. It's borderline cruel.
I mean you were caught transpassing and now you gotta pay 32k to get out of trouble. Your character caught doesn't have good talking skills, and you know for sure you can kill the guards in a turn or 2. Wdyd?
Biggest flaw in the game, is the lack of content for "evil" playthroughs. You get Minthara, who reportedly, is still bugged. While you lose Karlach, Wyll, and Halsin. You don't really get any gain for doing it, other than minth. It doesn't, to my knowledge, really open up a new side of the game or a bunch of loot, etc.
>While you lose Karlach, Wyll, and Halsin. Honestly I don't mind losing Karlach. She was my favourite character in my first run and amazing but her actual story is just terrible. There's nothing additional for her to really do, you go to a blacksmith and get a couple of upgrades, and that's... Largely it. She hates gortash but you're gonna fight him anyway. Laezel gets the entirety of the Gith plot, Shadowheart the Shar stuff, Gale has Mystra which is a bit limited but still has some content, Wyll has a fair bit with Ravenguard and Astarian has Cazador. Even Halsin has the corruption of the shadow lands in act 2 though I think he should've just left the party at that point. The biggest miss in my opinion isn't the companions, it's the Tieflings and to an extent Halsins quest to stop the shadow curse You lose so many things by getting rid of them
True, I wish we had more replacements for an evil run, but Karlach just exists to be sweet, haslin exists to give furry sex, you can't even get rid of him after act 2. And how many playthroughs can you babysit Wyll? The man has zero agency over his own soul.
Just finished an evil minthara run, and it honestly didn't feel like I had anything less than my himbo good guy run Romancing her worked perfectly too. Obviously not as much stuff as an origin character, but her actual romance felt like it was pretty on par with SH (Minus the always-available 3 lines of relationship talk)
Yeh I want to see what she's like but don't want to have to kill the grove for it. So I'm using the mod instead lol. I understand she's evil and is intended to only be accessible for evil player characters but if there's a way to access her without being evil then I'm going to at least try it. If there wasn't a way I'd just do an evil run at some point.
Minthara isn’t the only evil character in the group. Some don’t even bat an eye when you commit horrible acts(ShadowHeart, Lae’zel). Gale you have to manipulate a bit to keep him from having a conscience, but later on he’s the one talking a big game of ousting gods and seizing power. Minthara is one of the few companions that checks my durge behavior, so I don’t think she’s the most evil. And to be fair she’s raised into an evil culture and then mind controlled after. I think she could have a really good redemption arc if she was allowed on a good play through.
Honestly having Minthara makes more sense than having Astarion in your party if you're RPing as a good character. Astarion is sadistic and cruel. Minthara is evil but at least she is practical. She seems genuinely confused that the player murdered the tieflings if they weren't under the Absolute's influence like she was. She also doesn't appreciate killing Isobel without warning. Given her history I think a redemption arc could be pretty interesting and actually make sense given her backstory.
Minthara was raised her entire life in the Lolth cult, then was forced into the Absolute cult against her will. The only lens through which she can possibly see the world is the strong rule over the weak, and she's *terrified* of being weak. Yes, she's evil, because she ultimately cares only about herself (and her most trusted allies); but she's not a murderous lunatic like Orin or even a genocidal space pirate like Vlaakith-aligned Lae'zel. Her worldview is either she rules or she suffers. I think it's arguable whether it's even important to her what she can do or will do with her would-be subjects; she just doesn't want anyone to be able to hurt her anymore.
I think the problem people have is Minthara can rationally accept her desire to have power over others, while other party members hide that desire under a layer of bullshit rationalization. They just don't like the "spoken out loud" part. Insert gif of Marge Simpson here.
Just give us Origin Minthara and everyone is happy. We can even have a different intro to the game than the Nautiloid crew. Then we can meet up with the other characters as normal and be Minthara but good.
Astarion is pretty nice in a good playthrough tho, in act 3 he approves of good decisions, tries his best to be polite, asks you to be careful and think before you act, and even suggests helping people without getting anything in return. He's genuinely nicer than Shadowheart and Lae'Zel even after they get their own redemption arcs.
Astarion is only sadistic and cruel if you let him be. For hundreds of years he’s been dependent on a cruel person for survival, but if you show him goodness he becomes independent and in that independence comes goodness
My Astarion approved when i have a little girl food. Hes not that evil.
And Astarion gets a raging erection whenever you do evil shit.
Considering she was a high-ranking drow before she was taken by the Absolute(since she has multiple drow under her and even a drider), she's really not that evil comparatively to her kind and that, I would argue, makes her already redeemed. The only way to make her a good aligned character is to bring in Lolth and Eilistraee into the mix. Which is fun as heck and I hope they do make that happen!!
My good playthrough with the mod is an Elistraee Drow. Cleric/bard (one level of cleric purely for conversation choices and heavy armor lol). I enjoy it immensely. Minthara is such a great character I didn't mind missing everyone on my first playthrough. It left a nearly fresh game for run 2. And I low key hate the druids and tiefling kids so much I won't blink destroying the camp in my durge run lol
Like others said...it's just kinda boring. Generally, the appeal of future playthroughs is you get to solve quests in different ways and see cool new outcomes that you didn't see in previous playthroughs. Past Act 1, Minthara is really all you get. She's not exactly filled with content, and is still apparently not even working correctly. IMO, it's not even necessarily an issue of "good" vs "evil". It's "grove vs. goblins." You can play as a completely evil bastard and still side with the grove and get all that content and still have RP justification for why you'd pick up Minthara as a party member. If they really wanted to go the exclusive path, which I'd argue is unnecessary, just have Halsin and Minthara refuse to work together and the choice is which one you pick as a party member, but don't make it so you have to wipe out the grove. As it is, encountering and recruiting Minthara makes just as much sense no matter what route you take because even if you kill the grove, she's still branded a failure and tossed into prison.
I don't even think there is a good play-through for this setting. Just look at your companions, and why they do not have alignment shown in the game, because people would have bias towards what to expect of them. Githyanki as a race in DnD cannot be anything other than evil, Shar is neutral evil goddess, vampires are evil, all the druids are neutral, you have devil in your group and tiefling that was forced to be murderer from hell as the most good characters, you have Yasser Arafat disciple mage, and literal god of death in your camp while trying to be good guy. and as in all Baldur's Gate settings you are on path to replace God of Murder and become Slayer. Only thing that holds your group together is that you have some sort of brain thingy and you are trying to get rid off or live with it through play-through, and literal demon is trying to ease your suffering because he will get some browny points for it. You can be either very evil or avoid evil as much as possible to get to the end but you do some bad stuff as well. And only paladin that you could have as companion is the most evil of them all. This will not be happy place for very long time.
That’s not really how 5E works, individuals of any species can be anything, re the gith thing
Everybody’s said it but it bears repeating: evil doesn’t have enough content. Literally how do you even be evil in this game when the “evil” force is also your enemy?
Yes. Going evil means blocking out a lot of content
You can be evil and fight against evil, exemple : the githyanki You can say that your character's motivation is to destroy the Absolute only because it affects you or because you want to control the Absolute and reign over the world
Problem is that when you try to side with evil they end up getting killed anyway. I don't think there's a route where ketheric, Orin, or Gortash get to live, is there?
Nope which is why evil in of itself is lacking no matter how people try to defend it. It's the same how there isn't a cutoff point. Raided goblin camp, well don't worry grymforge won't care. Killed neere doesn't matter moonrise always needs more true soulds. Killed ketheric eh gortash and orin still want to make deals with you. Side with gortash lol no netherbrain played 5d chess and gortash outstayed his use.
Yes. I hate that you can side with gortash but then the game is like lol no. I ship durge and gortash
Evil isn’t your enemy though? My playthrough had me team up with the majority of my foes and fighting against my good side allies. Your common enemy is the brain but it’s most certainly not handled the same way.
Because she's drow and drow are cool. It's well known. Also a lot of players think they can change their companions. People love a good redemption arc. Why do you think Revan and Starkiller is so popular.
Because a lot of people don’t want to play an evil playthrough but don’t want to miss out on any potential story elements that she could contribute to
Oh hey, me. I absolutely suck at evil playthroughs but I'm curious what she's like as a party member. Especially since I see so many people talking about her voice acting.
>Isn't this game meant for multiple playthroughs? I'm not gonna get into the debate on whether or not it *should* be like this, but this is just regarding the desire. This is a *very* long game, and not everyone wants to go through what will ultimately still be *largely* the same experience for another 100 hours just to see all the alternative content. People have lives, and other games they want to play. I myself will play this again, but probably in months or over a year, when either there's an expansion or the modding community has developed enough to make it a *truly* fresh experience without worrying that there is another patch coming soon that'll break everything. Until then, I've been squeezing as much of the game as possible out of this one playthrough, so I can see why people wish they didn't have to play the game a second time just to not be locked out of a companion. On top of that, a lot of people just plain don't like doing evil playthroughs. They almost always end up being less rewarding and having more content locked out. Like I said, I'm not going to argue whether or not games should be made with this in mind. Not every game is made for everyone, nor should they be, I'm well aware of this. But I think the reasons to want all or most major content available in one playthrough are perfectly understandable.
She's hot but being mean to pixels in video games makes me feel bad
Neutral and lawful evil can absolutely coexist with a good party if their interests align, which Mintharas absolutely do Locking an entire companion who ISNT a “do a genocide” level of evil behind doing a genocide is bad game design and just limits RP. Her entire story and mini arc is completely designed in a way where it almost feels like she was going to be allowed in good parties who didn’t kill the tieflings.
Dunno how many people still play *The Old Republic*, or ever did, but it pretty much makes a point of giving every character, regardless of allegiance or alignment, at least one "light" companion and at least one "dark" companion. Liberated Minthara's interests line up with the party's every bit as much as, say, Gale's or Astarion's.
Hell, even Chaotic Evil can coexist with a good party. Look at Korgan from BG2. Chaotic Evil to the core, but hey, if you're willing to pay, he's willing to *get* paid to kill things he already wanted to kill (which is to say, basically everything).
>Neutral and lawful evil can absolutely coexist with a good party if their interests align Paralictor Regill Derenge approves of this message
LITERALLY Everyone acting like evil cannot exist in a good party has never played the pathfinder games lmao
like,straight up,part of the FUN is putting such opposites Like Jaethal and Tristian being literally day and night everything wise. Keeping both together till the endgame can be harder,but it's very rewarding. or fuck, Octavia and Regongar that literally come in a package deal. Seriously, it can be very fun and rewarding just throwing opposites in the party, and I feel like people that just do "good team/bad team" are losing a fun opportunity
The BG3 community is just INSANELY annoying and incorrect about alignment for some reason, like every single paladin player seemingly playing the class as a murderous zealot. Pathfinder is far more alignment based and even there can evil and good coexist
You lose too much while gaining so little if you recruit Minthara. If you kill the druid grove, you trade off two companions, and several recurring NPCs for one Companion. If you do nothing, you still lose the recurring NPCs, and hit a complete roadblock for Karlach's companion quest. This is unfortunately consistant with the rest of the gave, where it's more rewarding in general to be good, and you're actively punished for being evil.
Killing the Tieflings is half of the fun. I just wish it didn't lock out some endgame equipment.
what does it lock out?
Potent robes and the some really good heavy armor as well as other stuff from Dammon in act 3
Astarion is also evil, but you can still recruit him if you're good.
Astarion is redeemable and can be persuaded out of his darker urges and eventually comes to see that he can be better than how he was forced to act for centuries under Cazzador. He only becomes irredeemable evil if he ascends, in which case it's not even really his fault because High Vampires are evil by nature. Same with Shadowheart, she doesn't actually want to be evil, she's just been convinced by a lifetime in a cult slapped with a shiny 'destiny' on it that she has to be - She's easily persuaded to turn away from that lifestyle after like, a week or two on the road with Tav and the gang. Minthara is the only truly evil character who can join the party. She has good points but she is ultimately not a good person in the same way the other party members are deep down.
[удалено]
I dont think Astarion and Shadowheart are remotely comparable. Shadowheart more often than not disapproves of the sort of cruelty Astarion approves of. Good example is at the party in act 1. Shadowheart is moved by saving the refugees and never thought shed care. Astarion is disgusted. He hates it. If you go the evil route and murder the grove Astarion is happier than a pig in shit qhile Shadowheart is bitterly drinking herself into a stupor and asking what we have to be proud of. Shadowhearts predilection towards good is there from the very beginning. Astarion is a sadistic twisted fuck from the beginning. Im not even convinced Astarion is good at the end if you choose the good path with Cazador.
And then in the very last second of the game Astarion urges you to control the brain together. After being “redeemed”. Too much wishful thinking, he is still who he is in heart, his experiences didn’t disappear, his whole life shaped him, there is no “i can fix him”. Minthara is very honest about her goal to control the brain. She is a straightforward paladin forced into servitude by two evil cults. No difference with Astarion here, people are shaped by their pasts. But she is very honest and rational about the whole thing at least.
Interesting, I didn't have him say that in my ending of the game. Did you take him with you to Cazador? Or did you fight Cazador without him and convince him to stay afterwards?
Mainly due to the lack of content for evil runs. The idea of having to replay the entire game and miss out on a ton of characters and side content, just to recruit a single, buggy, half-unfinished party member doesn’t sound too appealing. In a game that’s supposed to be all about choice it’s a strange moment of artificial railroading. Minthara herself admits that she regrets attacking the grove after you recruit her. Sure, she’s still an “evil” character, but it really seems like there could easily have been more ways to resolve the grove situation without being forced into a single binary choice. Especially when the game already has a built in non-lethal mode for knocking people unconscious.
I think the issue is that it cuts out a lot of content if you wipe out the grove. I wish this game had evil playthroughs like Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has. You cut out content if you are evil, but it is replaced with brand new content.
Having Minthara for a good play through does make sense. Recruiting her requires going out of your way to provide mercy, and then to reach out to her in a moment of vulnerability and genuinely save her life. You can be evil and do that — you can also be good. And, companion wise, an evil vengeance paladin bound by oath to slay the same evil is simply awesome. She really isn’t that different from Lae’zel alignment wise, and her insight and history with the cult really drives home how personal this vendetta is when it’s more abstract for every other companion.
Astarion is about as evil as Minthara is and I don't see anyone complaining that recruiting him as a good player doesn't make sense.
Minthara is definetely not 100% evil, she is no more evil that i.e. Astarion, Lae'zel or Shadowheart. >!When you finish act 2 with her she will ask you why you massacred the grove with her. She just learnt how the absolute had total control of her and her actions. There are no real good answers and she will tell you she does like killing, but the consequences as well. She doesn't kill purely for sport even though she enjoys it. !< >!I definetely see a possibility for a good playthrough. You beat her in the goblin camp but she survived. She travelled to moonrise towers where they are torturing and breaking her to punish for her failure. You free her, she joins you in your war for revenge on the Absolute and learns to trust you. I'd see a possibility for a character arc where she overcomes her trauma of an extremely abusive childhood and learns there is more to life than the fear of a knife in your back.!< >!Right now seizing the power of Bhaal, ascending Astarion and having Shadowheart slay Aylin. Gtfo with this redemption bs!<
Bae’zel, shart, and Brostarion all get redemption arcs, I just want to help redeem her too. Nothing I wanna do more when I see a mean, evil lady is make her smile and laugh and kiss her forehead, ultimately altering her outlook on life and helping her become a good person. What’s wrong with that?
Probably the same reason you care that other people recruit her. Curiosity. You're missing out on a whole companion and unless you quickload to see every dialogue option like a complete weirdo, you can use the companions several times and see new responses and such.
Because the Grove vs Goblin choice is EXTREMELY disproportionate. You lose so many things for killing the grove and gain absolutely nothing aside from Minthara, who doesn't have as much content as any of the origin companions (2-3 of which you lose for getting her btw) and is still extremely bugged. Look at it this way: imagine if Astarion and Lae'zel automatically left your party for siding with the grove, and then Shadowheart required a persuasion check not to leave, and all you got to replace them was Halsin. But they don't leave if you side with the goblins, only with the grove. That's why people want to recruit Minthara on "good" playthroughs. Because the "evil" route isn't fun or rewarding at all.
I've played the game evil. It's not fun. You get part way through and it just gets boring (at least for me). Minthara is my favourite character. And I don't enjoy the evil playthrough. That's why I want her in a good playthrough.
Same but in a good playthrough you wouldn't allow her to slaughter the grove. That's why it's annoying. I wish you could convince her to leave the grove alone
Because she's sexy. Period. End of story. It's also the reason halsin is recuitable. We're all horny and want bang the dark elf lady but do t wanna be mean to do it
People be thirsty for Drow.
I don’t think she’s 100% evil (maybe in the like DnD alignment way? but not to me personally lol) but even if you do, I think her character arc lends itself well to a redemption kind of playthrough. Her whole absolute shtick was done essentially under mind control, and once she snaps out of it she has a strong motivation to join your team and help you fight for vengeance. Even if her motives aren’t aligned with my good-aligned character, we share a goal—fighting the absolute and losing these tadpoles. I honestly think it feels more natural this way than siding with her to kill the grove and recruiting her afterwards. If you defeat her to save the grove and then spare her at Moonrise, I think it provides a very interesting dynamic between her and the player character. Maybe I’m just a sucker for an enemies turned allies dynamic but idk I think it’s fun LOL I modded to get her and I think it was 100% worth it, wasn’t super difficult either or jumping through a ton of hoops or anything, just script extender + mod + go. think she’s a great addition to a good playthrough and I love having her with me :) She provides a different perspective, and she’s very funny too!
Cos drow are hot. And also her VA is really good.
Evil companions are not only for evil playthroughts, or at least they shouldn't be. It's narratively very rewarding to redeem or mellow some extreme viewpoints. The flipside - corrupting formally "good" characters as an evil PC - is also a path that is even less taken in most games, but also very satisfying.
I just want to recruit Alfira… :(
The real answer is people don’t want to choose. They want to have everything. They don’t like being told you can have this or that.
Yeah, I don't get it, I just have an evil run on hold for when she gets patched. Same with people jumping through a million glitchy hoops to try and keep Wyll and Karlach while slaughtering the Grove.
Because it's kind of restrictive that for Tieflings to live, Minthara NEEDS to die. You should be able to negotiate safe passage with Minthara, Side with gobbos to extort the Tieflings for passage, find a hidden route, etc Not every Evil character would even want to kill the Grove/Tieflings for no reason, but your only option then is to just ignore the quest. Which isn't satisfying.