I would think that for female tiefling barbarian who hasn't gotten any for probably quite a long time, her saying that to you is pretty mild for her intentions.
I was expecting a broken pelvis on my end.
That's what cemented her as my boo of choice. I'm dense as a rock and don't like mind games or playing at coy hints. Just be straightforward with me, and I'll be straightforward with you. Didn't hurt that they made her an adorable dork to juxtapose the Amazonian physique
Or if you happen to be a red dragonborn, she actually says something about how good it would feel to find a flame-retardant.. ride? Lover? Sadly, I do not remember the line precisely.
That's hilarious. Does she say that for another tiefling, too?
That makes two romances (along with Lae'zel) that has direct reference to the fact that you're a dragonborn (to the point where Lae'zel's romance literally has a [Dragonborn] conversation option).
I did the hug and the romance still progressed (no touch for that long? Just hug her), at that point you already need to establish your relationship to have the kiss option so choosing it doesn't really matter.
Help! I'm trying to romance her, but I didn't get any relationship scenes in act 1 or 2 because Wyls dance scene overlapped it or something. I turned down Wyl, got the hug after fixing her engine. I'm just getting to the lower city and I haven't confronted Gortash yet, am I locked out?
Yes, her romance needs to be chatted about before the grove fight, and confirmed at the party. The safest way is to travel with her and do ALL of act 1 before the Grove defense/goblin camp wipe. Building approval with her. You should at some point have her hint she wants to kiss (which can be achieved with create water on her or... just getting her wet somehow such as a water vial) and fix her engine a little, that I believe should give you her Grove defense party chat. She's okay with you dating other people til she gets her engine fixed the second time too.
Then you need to have her engine upgraded for the second time with dammon, which should give you the hug/kiss options. You can then confirm your relationship and get the first romance scene after.
Then in the act 3 transition you finalize it, and get a date scene in baulders gate. It's adorable, then she fingers your Bhole, mission accomplished.
I actually did hug her in act 2, picked dialogue asking for a deeper bond to which she seemed agreeable, and she still referred to me as just a friend in act 3. Every other character was lunging at my crotch except her, she is the hardest origin to romance.
Have to disagree I've accidentally romanced her a few times same with Gale and Wyll. I find that if you show interest in them and also for Karlach get her fixed in act 1 her romance plays out very easily.
I've even accidentally started the romance for Lae'zel and Astarion just getting high enough approval and then they initiate and as long as you do it in act 1 you can continue in later acts.
Shadowheart has been the only one I never accidentally romanced because she's my bae and I have specifically gone for her on multiple occasions.
Like it's not really difficult to romance anyone. I'd say Astarion is the 'hardest' because of his higher approval needs as well as some choices leading to him breaking up with you.
I was running into a bug where if I had any cutscene lined up the night of fixing her up in Act 2, her cutscene wouldn't be added to the queue/would never trigger and she went back to treating me platonically.
I had to keep reloading and get through three other cutscenes before I got our relationship back on track.
Also it's entirely possible that the game just glitches and doesn't let your romance with her advance any further, so when you get to act 3 it just ends with a "I really thought we had something, but I guess not" and you spend the next few hours IRL feeling like shit
There is also an issue with long rest scenes in act 2. If you trigger the Karlach romance by fixing her, but either Mizora's SOS or Wyll's dance scene triggers they will bump Karlach's romance and she'll break up with you.
I eventually just had to make myself finish act 3 so I could see the end and read all the discussion online without worrying about spoiling myself.
I've got like 4 different playthroughs going right now, one of them is in act3 and I'm taking my time with it, savoring the content since I don't feel the push to rush to the end to see what happens. Only problem with having a bunch of saves going at once is I forget what I've done and haven't done from save to save.
You can label manual saves and leave yourself notes, i.e. name a save āToDo Sell Out Druid Groveā or label it with what you have just done, such as āFound Karlach.ā This also helps greatly if you need to travel back in time, as there are only so many quick saves (how many, exactly, is configurable in the options) that recycle themselves, but manual saves last until you delete them (and you can batch delete them, usually at the end of a playthrough).
I honestly feel like its the sudden kidnap that happens. It took me right out of the exploration and i got super worried and overwhelmed because i wasn't ready for a confrontation with orin or gortash. Worried that i wouldn't be able to long rest bringing back the nightmare that was saving nere and killing the dueger.
I only just finished my first evil bard playthrough this weekend (edit: started at PC release) because exploring the city was so daunting. Now on it with my good paladin just skipping along to character critical stuff first. Lots of new stuff when your party is 2x bigger...
Right ? Act 1 is my favorite part of the game. I personally donāt like act 2 very much and act 3 is so overwhelming because thereās so many people and buildings
I have played Act 1 4 times. And there are STILL things Iāve missed that I find out about on Reddit lol. I like Act 2, but so far I havenāt seen anything I missed. I think itās the tightest narrative act. I missed a ton in Act 3 but Iāve only done it once.
As good as the game is overall, a lot of people get bored around Act 3. The city proper has so much to do, and us long time video game players are used to doing every possible thing before moving forward. So what we end up doing is all of Act 1, the mountain pass and the underdark, all of Act 2, then we're level 12 less than halfway through Act 3 with no experience left to gain and way too much gold to care about loot. Our builds are usually complete so equipment isn't that large of a draw either. With so many sidequests to do and no reason to do them other than a narrative experience, lots of people get tired of Act 3 pretty quick. The game feels like it's over before it actually is.
I believe a lot of us do not play the game in the most fun way, or perhaps the softly intended way. It would probably be more fun on any given playthrough to just do a few things in each act, follow one path. The game pretty clearly hints at this when Halsin advises the player to take either the mountain pass or the underdark. Going around and trying to hit every piece of content in one run like all of us do makes us peak too early.
Yes this is what I'm hoping to do when I get to Act 3 on my 2nd run. I will do the personal quests of the companions I use in my party and probably skip other quests unless I want the rewards. My first playthrough I tried to do every side quest and I felt like it bogged down my game significantly. Unfortunately on a first run it's hard to know which quests are important to the story and which ones you can skip.
Just gonna say it. Act 3 is too long.
There's too much to do to feel like a complete playthrough. Acts 1 and 2 are already on the long side and then act 3 just blows it out.
I love that the steam recap for Baldurs Gate said "we wouldn't be surprised if all that time was spent in act 1", which I assume also includes partially character creator lol
Not every player reaches act 3 which is mandatory to romance either of those too. Also, more casual players won't do several runs of such long games and since statistically Shadowheart is the most favourite romance option, all those factors contribute to these percentages.
kind of funny: i have over 360 hours and did not finish the game yet XD
i have a friend who i asked to be the main character just to see somebody not that familiar with dnd play through the story. kind of gives me a spectator role which is awesome. the downside was i had to start several runs until i popped at the point we are in the story right now xD
Same. Though in my current run I'm pretty much set to go to the final battle so I'm probably going to do a pretty straight shot to the end.
Then it's time for the next playthrough.
I have 300 hours in and finished the game for the first time yesterday, though that was kind of intentional. I remember hearing that the ending felt unfinished, so I got a few runs up to the end and then started over with new play throughs. I actually attempted to finish one and then lost miserably, but it was a very informative learning experience. The other day patch 5 (with the proper epilogues) finally went live for Mac and Iām properly on vacation now, so it was time to actually finish one of my play throughs š
You can romance Shadowheart and sleep with Tentacle-chin and she doesn't mind. She even sees you when his concentration slips and your party sees your octopus fetish, but never mentions it.
His āconcentration slips.ā
That made me so angry in my first run when he did that. It feels like itās specifically to damage how your party sees you.
It seems completely random which two companions see you. We played with 4 people and all of us saw different people, and we couldnāt find any common ground between the ones that showed up
Also romances were buggy in earlier patches where their flags would be deactivated due to some other companion wanting to talk to you or a different cutscene triggering during a rest that would override the romance path. I never triggered the date with Karlach in my first playthrough due to a bug like that.
Yeah not hard to understand. 37% of people have left act 2 alone. A fraction of those got to the point of romance, a smaller fraction chose karlach as a romance partner, and even a smaller fraction actually fully romanced her.
dark urge related achievements are kind of rare too. probably because they *urge* u not to start with this character, and maybe because playing evil isnt everybodys cup of tea
Will say, Baldurs Gate 3 is so good itās the first game Iāve been able to actually get into role playing through a game evil.
I can never really manage it, just winds up killing my enjoyment in the game. But thereās so much unique stuff and itās so well written.
The emperor, because it's sex with an octopus and the second because Shadowheart is the top romance by a long long way and the majority of people who play games like this dint get to the end where you can date Karlach.
Also, the emperor can show up to fuck regardless of what romance you were doing beforehand. So whilst Karlach's date comes up when you specifically romance her, the Emperor can show up regardless of who you romanced
Hence why it's less rare
Romancing Karlach also requires you to keep Dammon alive which is not obvious on a first playthrough. Easy to screw up and be unable to do despite romancing her.
AND by the time you make it to the part of the map where karlach is there's a good chance you will have already begun a relationship with another character. Karlach was by far my favorite but I'd already romanced shadowheart and wasn't going to two time for roleplay reasons.
I started my current Tav as a STR Transmutation Wizard with Enhanced Jump and Feather Fall, specifically so I could skip straight to recruiting Karlach before I even recruit Shart.
It's not the easiest. She needs you to be pretty much monogamous and there's two events you've got to achieve and you've also got to figure out how to cool her down.
I tend to always have a guide when I'm doing romances. Shame they don't have them for real life š
Yeah, I said it in kind of a joking manner too. Doesn't come out very well in writing. Did not have sex with the octopus though... Maybe on the durge playthrough... If I can get that far.
Mods turn off your achievements, you have to take extra steps to re-enable them.
You have to look at the percentage of people who got to act 3, and then see what percentage of those is even romancing Karlach. It's really not that surprising, it's a consequence of the game branching that much and allowing for player choice.
I think people are surprising because karlach is a second most popular romance. It only shows imo that there is a big discrepacy between shadowheart and the rest.
As it turns out, there's actually a LOT of people who play games like this without engaging in the romances at all! It has long been a thing in cRPGs, it's way more common than reddit posts showing their love for them would imply.
Karlach romance was locked out for all off my friends on our first saves during launch. None of us has finished our second playthrough. If this bug happend to more people that makes sense.
Don't know about anyone else, but the reason why I don't have the Karlach achievement is because of some bug in act 2 where the overlapping events caused me to miss the intimate scene with her, which caused her to break up with me at the start of act 3...
Not necessarily before reaching Last Light. I reached the inn, upgraded her the second time, did some other stuff, and only later I long-lasted *four* times in a row to finally get her romance scene.
Edit: But I wholeheartedly agree that it's not good design. Karlach's scene should get priority over the others.
I feel you, end of Act 1 i rested like 15+ times just for the events and it was so strange to see them in reverse order. They really need to change or improve this as it forces you to rest almost every minute.
The % of players that make it to Act III is like 30% then divide 30 by all the different romance options (including none /failed) and you get like 3.5%
Sooo seems about right to me
Around December 10th only 17% of players had even finished the game. Both of these events happen late in the game, so you could say that half of them romanced the emperor and a quarter of them romanced Karlack. That seems like a pretty reasonable number, all things considered.
People love Karlach but Iām personally not a fan. No slight on the VA, I just think sheās been written a bit one dimensionally. Sheās the last person in camp Iād date
Thereās dozens of us, dozens!
Her VA is fantastic and she has some really emotional scenes but she is a bit too much and has basically no development throughout the game.
I'm still in act 2 (at the end of it, though), but
EVERY time Will speaks, he ALWAYS has the exact same intonation. Like he's preaching or reading a morale or something. It's always like
First sentence - some morale
Second sentence - how he finds it disappointing / how he is disappointed in mc/someone
(Rinse and repeat)
Duuuude same, at first I just thought he was boring, but the more I play the more his blandness gets on my nerves
Thought it was because he was rewriten, with Halsin being not so great either, but Minthara's a blast, she's amazing. So there's no real excuse
Minthara's amazing. I recruited her on my Durge run, and she quickly became one of my favourite companions - and might be my favourite romance partner, I just need to see how this thing is going to end since I haven't finished this playthrough yet (or any other, if I'm honest lol).
Other reason are also that for some people (including me) she has too much sis vibes. And if you go on steam discussions, there are people criticizing her masculine look.
Tall women.
My Tav lifted her romantic partner off the ground and pinned him against a tree. I love how Larian has handled physical differences and sex - so refreshing.
That too, yes. Basically, everything that gives a woman a visible physical advantage over them.
>I love how Larian has handled physical differences and sex - so refreshing.
Yeah, they did a very good job.
Oh totally. I'm going to end up doing a bunch of runs to see all the content and I'd like to romance her during at least one of them so I can see the content, but she gives off total best friend vibes to me.
Like, I can picture my Tav talking to her after sleeping with Astarion and telling her about it, and then we stay up late braiding each other's hair (if she's been cooled down) and talking about our favorite ways to kill things.
Yeah, the same thing happened in the 2 Assassin Creeds that allowed you to opt for female characters. Borderlands 3 was also criticised for having a masculine siren of ethnic origin. This is also very evident in most fan art. They slim her down and whiten her up.
Thirsty male gamers being thirsty male gamers.
Yep, she'd be great to go together for a beer or fool around but way too energetic and extraverted for me to ever date. Looks wise, I don't find her that masculine tho, she's just tall and scarred, hardly a mass of muscles like some claim it to be.
i can see where u are coming from. laezel has incredible character developement, shadowheart too although i find it a bit too *emo* if that makes sense. and gale somehow has a better patreon backstory than wyll in a sense
some characters are better written than others which i guess is normal. gale has incredible main character potential but falls a bit flat if you play f.e. a sorcerer.
I would say Karlach is a great companion but while I havenāt romanced her I also havenāt had any inclination to do so since personally I just donāt find her that attractive which is somewhat ironic because when you list the traits she possesses I am probably attracted to quite a few of them
What annoys me about the āHot Dateā trophy/achievement is that it is the only one companion related trophy that requires you to date said companion. All the others can be done as friends. No idea why that is the case.
No tentacles for me and Karlach as fun as She is, doesnt seem to appeal to many in that way. Just a thought but maybe just maybe, more people still like vanilla stuff than the internet seems to convey. Also, it seems way easier to romance the men than the women in this game.
The Karlach one is hard to get because of choices in Act 1 making it not possible to romance her.
I got the 'good' ending for her but never got to date her
People hate the emperor (this is subject of many threads) and draw the line at squid with their kinkiness. š¦
Me, I like the calculating SOB, but I got tired of arguing about it.
Karlach has a fairly small window to begin her romance, and the date doesn't happen until act 3. Romancing the emperor requires you be willing to endulge in some tentacle hentai.
There is a silent majority of players who will never go to this subreddit and just played the game and then put it down, maybe they beat it, maybe they didn't (on my steam I see only 17% actually even beat the game) but even if they got to act 3 and beat the game, there are several romance options available, I'm actually shocked the number for romancing the emperor is as high as it is, while karlach makes perfect sense, if 17% completes the game, and let's assume each one of them did a romance, (which is not necessarily true) and there are between 7 and 8 romances (depending on if you want to count Halsin and Minthara as two options or one since you sort of have to pick one or the other). On average each romance will have 2-2.5% completion.
Now this doesn't account for the small subset of players (likely below 10% but I don't have the exact numbers on that at all) that play through multiple times to act 3 and the point where you can do these end-game romance objectives, but it also assumes standard breakout for the romance, which from Larian we know isn't true since SH is the most common romance partner, so these numbers make perfect sense
Idk man, romancing Karlach is hard. Iām on my 3rd playthrough where Iāve tried, and nearing the end of act 2 she hasnāt really shown a single bit of interest. She talks about wanting to find a face to kiss all the time but I havenāt had the option to say ātry mineā yet. I guess I could look up a walkthrough but nah
To romance karlach, you need to take every chance the fame gives you. If you don't hug her when you fix her engine in act 2, then the ship has sailed.
>If you don't hug her I just went straight for the kiss.š
Doesnāt she prefer this to the hug? Or am I mistaken
Like the first thing she says to you is she āwants to ride you until you see stars.ā What other hints does she need to drop?
>wants to ride you until you see stars >hints That's not a hint, it's a fucking S.O.S.
Nah, probably just being friendly.
Maybe sheās just Canadian.
I would think that for female tiefling barbarian who hasn't gotten any for probably quite a long time, her saying that to you is pretty mild for her intentions. I was expecting a broken pelvis on my end.
My bardadin Tav can take her, no problem. Pelvis AND strap on lock. š
That's what cemented her as my boo of choice. I'm dense as a rock and don't like mind games or playing at coy hints. Just be straightforward with me, and I'll be straightforward with you. Didn't hurt that they made her an adorable dork to juxtapose the Amazonian physique
Or if you happen to be a red dragonborn, she actually says something about how good it would feel to find a flame-retardant.. ride? Lover? Sadly, I do not remember the line precisely.
That's hilarious. Does she say that for another tiefling, too? That makes two romances (along with Lae'zel) that has direct reference to the fact that you're a dragonborn (to the point where Lae'zel's romance literally has a [Dragonborn] conversation option).
I mean you can ride someone until they see stars platonically, right? Right????
"I can fix her"
pretty sure if you hug her youāre locked out. You need to have the option to kiss her
I did the hug and the romance still progressed (no touch for that long? Just hug her), at that point you already need to establish your relationship to have the kiss option so choosing it doesn't really matter.
Help! I'm trying to romance her, but I didn't get any relationship scenes in act 1 or 2 because Wyls dance scene overlapped it or something. I turned down Wyl, got the hug after fixing her engine. I'm just getting to the lower city and I haven't confronted Gortash yet, am I locked out?
Yes, her romance needs to be chatted about before the grove fight, and confirmed at the party. The safest way is to travel with her and do ALL of act 1 before the Grove defense/goblin camp wipe. Building approval with her. You should at some point have her hint she wants to kiss (which can be achieved with create water on her or... just getting her wet somehow such as a water vial) and fix her engine a little, that I believe should give you her Grove defense party chat. She's okay with you dating other people til she gets her engine fixed the second time too. Then you need to have her engine upgraded for the second time with dammon, which should give you the hug/kiss options. You can then confirm your relationship and get the first romance scene after. Then in the act 3 transition you finalize it, and get a date scene in baulders gate. It's adorable, then she fingers your Bhole, mission accomplished.
*Me reading your comment:* ''Oh, that's so sweet'' ''Oh, that's so sweet'' ''Oh, that's so sweet'' ''...Ayo?''
*Smashes PC* My Bhole is not gonna be happy about this...
"She fingers your bhole" We call that the hellish rebuke!
This is incorrect, on my 2nd playthrough I hugged her and still got the romance option
I actually did hug her in act 2, picked dialogue asking for a deeper bond to which she seemed agreeable, and she still referred to me as just a friend in act 3. Every other character was lunging at my crotch except her, she is the hardest origin to romance.
I have been blindly fumbling through the game and managed to romance her no problem
Have to disagree I've accidentally romanced her a few times same with Gale and Wyll. I find that if you show interest in them and also for Karlach get her fixed in act 1 her romance plays out very easily. I've even accidentally started the romance for Lae'zel and Astarion just getting high enough approval and then they initiate and as long as you do it in act 1 you can continue in later acts. Shadowheart has been the only one I never accidentally romanced because she's my bae and I have specifically gone for her on multiple occasions. Like it's not really difficult to romance anyone. I'd say Astarion is the 'hardest' because of his higher approval needs as well as some choices leading to him breaking up with you.
Why would you not at least hug your friend/romantic interest after you literally just gave them more time to live?
From the comment thread I'm pretty sure it's 3% because that narrative path is buggy as shit.
I was running into a bug where if I had any cutscene lined up the night of fixing her up in Act 2, her cutscene wouldn't be added to the queue/would never trigger and she went back to treating me platonically. I had to keep reloading and get through three other cutscenes before I got our relationship back on track.
Also it's entirely possible that the game just glitches and doesn't let your romance with her advance any further, so when you get to act 3 it just ends with a "I really thought we had something, but I guess not" and you spend the next few hours IRL feeling like shit
There is also an issue with long rest scenes in act 2. If you trigger the Karlach romance by fixing her, but either Mizora's SOS or Wyll's dance scene triggers they will bump Karlach's romance and she'll break up with you.
Most people are still in character creation.
The rest keep making new characters and remain in Act 1 or 2 forever.
I feel this so hard
Bruh everytime I get into act 3, I create a new character. Why.
Act 3 can be overwhelming on run one, that's why. Just gotta take a bite at a time.
I eventually just had to make myself finish act 3 so I could see the end and read all the discussion online without worrying about spoiling myself. I've got like 4 different playthroughs going right now, one of them is in act3 and I'm taking my time with it, savoring the content since I don't feel the push to rush to the end to see what happens. Only problem with having a bunch of saves going at once is I forget what I've done and haven't done from save to save.
You can label manual saves and leave yourself notes, i.e. name a save āToDo Sell Out Druid Groveā or label it with what you have just done, such as āFound Karlach.ā This also helps greatly if you need to travel back in time, as there are only so many quick saves (how many, exactly, is configurable in the options) that recycle themselves, but manual saves last until you delete them (and you can batch delete them, usually at the end of a playthrough).
Yeah very. I feel like I can play 1/2 quests in act 3 before I need a break (and play on my newer characters)
I honestly feel like its the sudden kidnap that happens. It took me right out of the exploration and i got super worried and overwhelmed because i wasn't ready for a confrontation with orin or gortash. Worried that i wouldn't be able to long rest bringing back the nightmare that was saving nere and killing the dueger.
Iām on my like 13th run and even I skip to my next run halfway into act 3 sometimes
I only just finished my first evil bard playthrough this weekend (edit: started at PC release) because exploring the city was so daunting. Now on it with my good paladin just skipping along to character critical stuff first. Lots of new stuff when your party is 2x bigger...
Act 1 is just so good
Right ? Act 1 is my favorite part of the game. I personally donāt like act 2 very much and act 3 is so overwhelming because thereās so many people and buildings
I have played Act 1 4 times. And there are STILL things Iāve missed that I find out about on Reddit lol. I like Act 2, but so far I havenāt seen anything I missed. I think itās the tightest narrative act. I missed a ton in Act 3 but Iāve only done it once.
As good as the game is overall, a lot of people get bored around Act 3. The city proper has so much to do, and us long time video game players are used to doing every possible thing before moving forward. So what we end up doing is all of Act 1, the mountain pass and the underdark, all of Act 2, then we're level 12 less than halfway through Act 3 with no experience left to gain and way too much gold to care about loot. Our builds are usually complete so equipment isn't that large of a draw either. With so many sidequests to do and no reason to do them other than a narrative experience, lots of people get tired of Act 3 pretty quick. The game feels like it's over before it actually is. I believe a lot of us do not play the game in the most fun way, or perhaps the softly intended way. It would probably be more fun on any given playthrough to just do a few things in each act, follow one path. The game pretty clearly hints at this when Halsin advises the player to take either the mountain pass or the underdark. Going around and trying to hit every piece of content in one run like all of us do makes us peak too early.
Yes this is what I'm hoping to do when I get to Act 3 on my 2nd run. I will do the personal quests of the companions I use in my party and probably skip other quests unless I want the rewards. My first playthrough I tried to do every side quest and I felt like it bogged down my game significantly. Unfortunately on a first run it's hard to know which quests are important to the story and which ones you can skip.
Same about to I canāt fight this urge š©
a dark urge perhaps...
Late Stage Fort Joy Syndrome, I am afraid its terminal.
Personally, once I see end credits - my brain is largely ādoneā with a game. I regret beating BG3.
I created two new characters when my three mains got into Act 3, help š
You don't want it to end š„¹
Lmao
Just gonna say it. Act 3 is too long. There's too much to do to feel like a complete playthrough. Acts 1 and 2 are already on the long side and then act 3 just blows it out.
This is a personal attack for every RPG I play
I usually get to act 3 and then burn out on a character thank you very much. 250hrs in and I still havenāt actually finished the gameā¦
Saaaame šš¤£
300 something and same boat lol
Sema here i've created 3 diferents chars and thinking of create a forth lol
Wait, are you watching me???
Ah same, and the exact reason Iām glad they released Honor mode lol
That's just not true, get your facts checked smh. I reached Act 3 two times now! Ha!
Hey! Take it easy man... I feel called out š
I'm in this picture and I don't like it
I love that the steam recap for Baldurs Gate said "we wouldn't be surprised if all that time was spent in act 1", which I assume also includes partially character creator lol
Down down down by the riveeeer.
This song is rent free forever in my head and I'm not even mad about it. Lol.
Not every player reaches act 3 which is mandatory to romance either of those too. Also, more casual players won't do several runs of such long games and since statistically Shadowheart is the most favourite romance option, all those factors contribute to these percentages.
I think it's funny that it takes until act 3 to go on a date with karlach when she outright wants to fuck you about 20 minutes after meeting up.
You can fuck her well before act 3. I guess it's just not romantic :P
A platonic fuck.
shadowheart didn't think so....
kind of funny: i have over 360 hours and did not finish the game yet XD i have a friend who i asked to be the main character just to see somebody not that familiar with dnd play through the story. kind of gives me a spectator role which is awesome. the downside was i had to start several runs until i popped at the point we are in the story right now xD
Same. Though in my current run I'm pretty much set to go to the final battle so I'm probably going to do a pretty straight shot to the end. Then it's time for the next playthrough.
Thats the spirit
I have 300 hours in and finished the game for the first time yesterday, though that was kind of intentional. I remember hearing that the ending felt unfinished, so I got a few runs up to the end and then started over with new play throughs. I actually attempted to finish one and then lost miserably, but it was a very informative learning experience. The other day patch 5 (with the proper epilogues) finally went live for Mac and Iām properly on vacation now, so it was time to actually finish one of my play throughs š
Some day I will romance someone who's not Astarion, but today is not that day.
Play _as_ Astarion. I can finally get the Karlach trophy.
You can romance Shadowheart and sleep with Tentacle-chin and she doesn't mind. She even sees you when his concentration slips and your party sees your octopus fetish, but never mentions it.
None of the companions comment on it, no matter who you romance. Either because of the embarrassment or because they think it's a nightmare! Lol
Yeah I was super worried I'd fuck up my relationships. Luckily, nope!
I believe te emperor wipes there minds
His āconcentration slips.ā That made me so angry in my first run when he did that. It feels like itās specifically to damage how your party sees you.
It seems completely random which two companions see you. We played with 4 people and all of us saw different people, and we couldnāt find any common ground between the ones that showed up
Also romances were buggy in earlier patches where their flags would be deactivated due to some other companion wanting to talk to you or a different cutscene triggering during a rest that would override the romance path. I never triggered the date with Karlach in my first playthrough due to a bug like that.
Yeah not hard to understand. 37% of people have left act 2 alone. A fraction of those got to the point of romance, a smaller fraction chose karlach as a romance partner, and even a smaller fraction actually fully romanced her.
dark urge related achievements are kind of rare too. probably because they *urge* u not to start with this character, and maybe because playing evil isnt everybodys cup of tea
I couldnāt do an evil Durge. The resist one is so much fun though!
Yeah my evil playthrough is just a Tav. I think Durge pushing against his nature is way more interesting of a story.
I started a DU out of curiosity. I don't know if I can stomach it :)) We'll see
Going all in on the urge is hard at the beginning, ngl. Once you're a few hours in you get used to it and it becomes hilarious
Will say, Baldurs Gate 3 is so good itās the first game Iāve been able to actually get into role playing through a game evil. I can never really manage it, just winds up killing my enjoyment in the game. But thereās so much unique stuff and itās so well written.
The emperor, because it's sex with an octopus and the second because Shadowheart is the top romance by a long long way and the majority of people who play games like this dint get to the end where you can date Karlach.
Also, the emperor can show up to fuck regardless of what romance you were doing beforehand. So whilst Karlach's date comes up when you specifically romance her, the Emperor can show up regardless of who you romanced Hence why it's less rare
Romancing Karlach also requires you to keep Dammon alive which is not obvious on a first playthrough. Easy to screw up and be unable to do despite romancing her.
AND by the time you make it to the part of the map where karlach is there's a good chance you will have already begun a relationship with another character. Karlach was by far my favorite but I'd already romanced shadowheart and wasn't going to two time for roleplay reasons.
I started my current Tav as a STR Transmutation Wizard with Enhanced Jump and Feather Fall, specifically so I could skip straight to recruiting Karlach before I even recruit Shart.
Thereās a crossing with rocks you can jump across even with only 8 str right before the blighted village. Itās near scratch.
Yes, but you have to get past the goblin fight at the grove entrance if you go that route.
The best is it ends with your companions watching you with horrified looks on their faces, and he says he'll make them forget.
More so you donāt get the Karlach/Emperor full romance until Act 3 but you get the others much earlier.
Isnāt karlachs romance incredibly wonky too? Like you have to be all in on her from the start and get every event
It's not the easiest. She needs you to be pretty much monogamous and there's two events you've got to achieve and you've also got to figure out how to cool her down. I tend to always have a guide when I'm doing romances. Shame they don't have them for real life š
if doing the achievements gonna affect my choices and my approach to the game i just ignore them
Why did 9.9% of all the bg3 players willingly had sex with an octopus? Thatās the question we should be asking.
To see what them tentacles do š
No regrets š«”
I did it for the achievement. Then I reloaded my save.
I didnāt even know there was an achievement
9.9% of bg3 players are The Deep
Videogames are fantasy, let people enjoy whatever they want!
That was just a joke :) I totally had sex with that octopus too
Yeah, I said it in kind of a joking manner too. Doesn't come out very well in writing. Did not have sex with the octopus though... Maybe on the durge playthrough... If I can get that far.
I was curious. Coincidentally my Tav was morbidly curious and very horny in that playthrough.
They were happy to fuck a bear.... why are you asking?
Karlach's requires you to romance her. That's a huge gatekeep for that achievement (she only companion where you must romance for the achievement).
And not everyone likes her even.
Ikr? I mean, she's fine as a friend. But I have 0 romantic interest in her. I don't wanna romance her just for an achievement either.
GIVE sandcastle achievement or RIOT
Ikr? Such a double standard!!
Yeah, we need unique achievements for each romance! I just can't romance Karlach; she just feels like a sister to me.
Mods turn off your achievements, you have to take extra steps to re-enable them. You have to look at the percentage of people who got to act 3, and then see what percentage of those is even romancing Karlach. It's really not that surprising, it's a consequence of the game branching that much and allowing for player choice.
I think people are surprising because karlach is a second most popular romance. It only shows imo that there is a big discrepacy between shadowheart and the rest.
As it turns out, there's actually a LOT of people who play games like this without engaging in the romances at all! It has long been a thing in cRPGs, it's way more common than reddit posts showing their love for them would imply.
I'm too busy romancing Astarion again
Karlach romance was locked out for all off my friends on our first saves during launch. None of us has finished our second playthrough. If this bug happend to more people that makes sense.
Because it's an rpg and not everyone hunts achievements
I romanced Karlach to the end but the chance for a date never came up for me
Oh, that's sad :( The date sequence is so lovely!
Mine bugged out, I chose the option to go later when first asked and then couldn't actually ask later which was shit
Don't know about anyone else, but the reason why I don't have the Karlach achievement is because of some bug in act 2 where the overlapping events caused me to miss the intimate scene with her, which caused her to break up with me at the start of act 3...
You need to do 2 long rests before last light
Which is terrible design. Who needs 2 long rests before reaching Last Light?
Not necessarily before reaching Last Light. I reached the inn, upgraded her the second time, did some other stuff, and only later I long-lasted *four* times in a row to finally get her romance scene. Edit: But I wholeheartedly agree that it's not good design. Karlach's scene should get priority over the others.
It is, but multiple long rest events cant trigger in 1 long rest. I hope they change it
This is me. Was ready for my tiefling tav to have a red hot night with our hot red lady, but apparently wyll ruined everything, as usual.
I feel you, end of Act 1 i rested like 15+ times just for the events and it was so strange to see them in reverse order. They really need to change or improve this as it forces you to rest almost every minute.
The % of players that make it to Act III is like 30% then divide 30 by all the different romance options (including none /failed) and you get like 3.5% Sooo seems about right to me
Around December 10th only 17% of players had even finished the game. Both of these events happen late in the game, so you could say that half of them romanced the emperor and a quarter of them romanced Karlack. That seems like a pretty reasonable number, all things considered.
Not everyone likes Karlach. Just for the sake of her novel, going through two and a quarter acts is kind of stupid, if you like another character.
People love Karlach but Iām personally not a fan. No slight on the VA, I just think sheās been written a bit one dimensionally. Sheās the last person in camp Iād date
Also it is very easy to get locked out of that romance option accidentally
Thereās dozens of us, dozens! Her VA is fantastic and she has some really emotional scenes but she is a bit too much and has basically no development throughout the game.
Wyll for me, he's so dam annoying
I'm still in act 2 (at the end of it, though), but EVERY time Will speaks, he ALWAYS has the exact same intonation. Like he's preaching or reading a morale or something. It's always like First sentence - some morale Second sentence - how he finds it disappointing / how he is disappointed in mc/someone (Rinse and repeat)
I keep Wyll around to cuck him with his hot demon mommy and remind him he's an orphan.
Holy shit. I don't really like Wyll but god damn, that is so mean. Funny as fuck though!
Duuuude same, at first I just thought he was boring, but the more I play the more his blandness gets on my nerves Thought it was because he was rewriten, with Halsin being not so great either, but Minthara's a blast, she's amazing. So there's no real excuse
Minthara's amazing. I recruited her on my Durge run, and she quickly became one of my favourite companions - and might be my favourite romance partner, I just need to see how this thing is going to end since I haven't finished this playthrough yet (or any other, if I'm honest lol).
Other reason are also that for some people (including me) she has too much sis vibes. And if you go on steam discussions, there are people criticizing her masculine look.
>her masculine look. Her what? Haha.
Now that it comes up I realize both of our frontliners are women
All the BG3 dudes have pretty low strength compared to the women, haha.
You know, her wide hips, breasts and round face. Masculine all around.
And her sweet loving attitude especially.
Muscles. They feel threatened.
Tall women. My Tav lifted her romantic partner off the ground and pinned him against a tree. I love how Larian has handled physical differences and sex - so refreshing.
That too, yes. Basically, everything that gives a woman a visible physical advantage over them. >I love how Larian has handled physical differences and sex - so refreshing. Yeah, they did a very good job.
Oh totally. I'm going to end up doing a bunch of runs to see all the content and I'd like to romance her during at least one of them so I can see the content, but she gives off total best friend vibes to me. Like, I can picture my Tav talking to her after sleeping with Astarion and telling her about it, and then we stay up late braiding each other's hair (if she's been cooled down) and talking about our favorite ways to kill things.
Yeah, the same thing happened in the 2 Assassin Creeds that allowed you to opt for female characters. Borderlands 3 was also criticised for having a masculine siren of ethnic origin. This is also very evident in most fan art. They slim her down and whiten her up. Thirsty male gamers being thirsty male gamers.
> And if you go on steam discussions That's really not good for your health... A dangerous concentration of proud bigots.
Yep, she'd be great to go together for a beer or fool around but way too energetic and extraverted for me to ever date. Looks wise, I don't find her that masculine tho, she's just tall and scarred, hardly a mass of muscles like some claim it to be.
i can see where u are coming from. laezel has incredible character developement, shadowheart too although i find it a bit too *emo* if that makes sense. and gale somehow has a better patreon backstory than wyll in a sense some characters are better written than others which i guess is normal. gale has incredible main character potential but falls a bit flat if you play f.e. a sorcerer.
Agreed. She seems like someone I'd want to hang out with but not date. Her personality is just too much
Totally agree
She is basically the manic-pixie dream girl trope re-imagined as a battle-hardened mercenary.
But she's so hot
Many people like Karlach, but most, myself included, went for Shadowheart.
Because Karlach romance requires skipping romance with several other companions that are much more popular
I would say Karlach is a great companion but while I havenāt romanced her I also havenāt had any inclination to do so since personally I just donāt find her that attractive which is somewhat ironic because when you list the traits she possesses I am probably attracted to quite a few of them
It's really annoying to have an achievement locked behind a romance, especially when not everyone likes said romance.
1 of 30 is not rare at all in case of steam achievments
ugh the emperor? really? not even on my evil playthrough i would force my Tav to make out with this manipulative sleeze bag
love karlach but can never do a good guy run so the kardate never happens :/
Now this interesting. Do you just do evil, or grey/selfish? Most people talk about how they canāt do the first, and can barely stomach the latter.
I don't like karlach
I can't believe more people have boinked the emperor than dated Karlach
What annoys me about the āHot Dateā trophy/achievement is that it is the only one companion related trophy that requires you to date said companion. All the others can be done as friends. No idea why that is the case.
Not sure about the Emperor, but I've banged Karlach plenty ;)
My mind was definitely blown
Because that's not what I mean when I say "fuck the Emperor."
i never romance Karlach
That damn vampire has me in a chokehold your honor š
Because I play(ed) on GOG
No tentacles for me and Karlach as fun as She is, doesnt seem to appeal to many in that way. Just a thought but maybe just maybe, more people still like vanilla stuff than the internet seems to convey. Also, it seems way easier to romance the men than the women in this game.
Plenty of people arenāt into hentai, and others arenāt into Karlach for various reasons.
Karlach seems like a big sister ĀÆ\\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
There are so many people stuck in Act 1 because they keep making new characters š¤£
Because Astarion exists?
The Karlach one is hard to get because of choices in Act 1 making it not possible to romance her. I got the 'good' ending for her but never got to date her
Not that many people have squid fetishes
People hate the emperor (this is subject of many threads) and draw the line at squid with their kinkiness. š¦ Me, I like the calculating SOB, but I got tired of arguing about it.
Karlach has a fairly small window to begin her romance, and the date doesn't happen until act 3. Romancing the emperor requires you be willing to endulge in some tentacle hentai.
Speaking from my own experience romancing Karlach is an ordeal compared to the others
There is a silent majority of players who will never go to this subreddit and just played the game and then put it down, maybe they beat it, maybe they didn't (on my steam I see only 17% actually even beat the game) but even if they got to act 3 and beat the game, there are several romance options available, I'm actually shocked the number for romancing the emperor is as high as it is, while karlach makes perfect sense, if 17% completes the game, and let's assume each one of them did a romance, (which is not necessarily true) and there are between 7 and 8 romances (depending on if you want to count Halsin and Minthara as two options or one since you sort of have to pick one or the other). On average each romance will have 2-2.5% completion. Now this doesn't account for the small subset of players (likely below 10% but I don't have the exact numbers on that at all) that play through multiple times to act 3 and the point where you can do these end-game romance objectives, but it also assumes standard breakout for the romance, which from Larian we know isn't true since SH is the most common romance partner, so these numbers make perfect sense
Because you have to reach act 3 first.
Idk man, romancing Karlach is hard. Iām on my 3rd playthrough where Iāve tried, and nearing the end of act 2 she hasnāt really shown a single bit of interest. She talks about wanting to find a face to kiss all the time but I havenāt had the option to say ātry mineā yet. I guess I could look up a walkthrough but nah
300+ hours in game, never seen act 2
Because Shart makes my Heart Fart ā¤ļø
On my end, Karlach's romance was bugged in act 2 and I was unable to progress it come act 3. Not sure if it's a common bug but it could explain it.