BG3

[HoonDing]

Abdel Adrian

[Wormerine]

3 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

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How the **** did a level 1 goblin deal a fatal blow to Ketheric Thorm? Yes, he resurrected immediately, but it did seem that he would be gone if it was not for his immortality trick.

Narrative and gameplay just don't go together in BG3. Narrative designers seem to do their own thing, and system designers another. Wait till you see Halsin and Minsc's stats.

I haven't thought much of the issue you brought up but I did wonder why I found the scene somewhat farcical.

[MrBrown]

https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2023/09/rumour-netflix-interested-in-developing.html

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I got in a fight in the park, killed an evil wizard and raided his vaults, Gale met his ex again, and we hit level 12. Dame Aylin seemed pretty bummed though.

[InsaneCommander]

23 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

 

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It probably was a crit and the goblin maxed out Str (checking the stats might disprove it, but it sounds plausible).

The logic in the cut-scenes in general seems a bit odd sometimes.

Plausible? It actually happened twice in a row. And I don't think a crit would be enough for a lv 11's hp. Perhaps she was playing with karmic dice and had rolled a lot of 1s?

[MrBrown]

Well, it's classic video game stuff, isn't it?

Cutscenes uses "real world" -logic, where people actually just die if you throw a spear through their torso.

When gameplay starts, it's gameplay logic, where they can take dozens of hits.

[InsaneCommander]

 

[InsaneCommander]

I reached the map after the battle with Ketheric and I'm disappointed I can't go to camp. I found a device that lets you insert certain items and I was pretty sure I had other of these items in my camp chest. A reload confirmed that and now I'm considering redoing this area just to check those items.

Spoiler

I'm talking about the suspended brains that can be accessed with the elf head in the Ilithid colony.

I've fought only one combat so far, which was ridiculously easy as all enemies kept falling prone because of Sleet Storm, but it was also a long one.

Also, there was another entrance to this map that I found earlier but I didn't explore. I think it is the one marked on the map as the quests I still have to do. Unless there is a massive corridor going around the area I already explored, it doesn't seem I'll get to visit it. I wonder if there was anything important there.

Edited September 26, 2023 by InsaneCommander

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I recruited the final companions and helped stop a hostile takeover. I'm thinking that I'll try to find Orin or find out what's got Umberlee's priestesses so angry next, but there's also Astarion's and Shadowheart's quests that are pretty obvious where to go.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I explored the sewers, found the society of brilliance, killed an old man beneath the cemetery, and got attacked by vampire spawn when I was trying to sleep. Irresistible Dance is broken as hell, it made what would be a final boss in another game trivial.

[InsaneCommander]

I reloaded and replayed the beginning of the last (?) map of Act 2. Mainly I wanted to bring Wyll for his quest, which was hilarious since finding out who was the asset needing rescue was even better than if it was Raphael. I can't believe they didn't include options to mock the situation. The items I had in my camp chest were not a big deal and the only item of worth in the isolated area was something I'm not using.

Spoiler

I had two more brain jars in my camp and the separated map had a tadpole.

The last battle looked difficult because of the position of the enemies, but there was a recover station nearby and I decided to drink speed potions to be on the safe side, so it ended up ridiculously easy. Not to mention

Spoiler

the Apostle inherited Ketheric's status, including silence, so it became a pathetic foe.

After the battle, Karlach became so furious because she saw one of the bad guys that the game crashed. But she looked tame compared to how one npc reacted earlier.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

16 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

I reloaded and replayed the beginning of the last (?) map of Act 2. Mainly I wanted to bring Wyll for his quest, which was hilarious since finding out who was the asset needing rescue was even better than if it was Raphael. I can't believe they didn't include options to mock the situation. The items I had in my camp chest were not a big deal and the only item of worth in the isolated area was something I'm not using.

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I had two more brain jars in my camp and the separated map had a tadpole.

The last battle looked difficult because of the position of the enemies, but there was a recover station nearby and I decided to drink speed potions to be on the safe side, so it ended up ridiculously easy. Not to mention

  Reveal hidden contents

the Apostle inherited Ketheric's status, including silence, so it became a pathetic foe.

After the battle, Karlach became so furious because she saw one of the bad guys that the game crashed. But she looked tame compared to how one npc reacted earlier.

You naughty Karlach

I got Kethric to kill himself and he still became Myrkul's avatar. Dame Aylin hit him like a Truck while my Murdertwink Bard ****ed him up with Slashing Flourish.

[InsaneCommander]

7 minutes ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

You naughty Karlach

 

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I got Kethric to kill himself and he still became Myrkul's avatar. Dame Aylin hit him like a Truck while my Murdertwink Bard ****ed him up with Slashing Flourish.

 

In my case he was killed by
 

Spoiler

Us, with a devour intellect attack. As for Aylin, she addressed and scared the **** out of Shadowheart after the battle. Luckily my character had turned into a Dilophosaurus and didn't have to take any risks there.

With the Guardian out of his cage, I wonder what kind of mess will the camp turn into now.

Seriously, some people in this game are scarier than the villains, including the new ones and their bosses that were just revealed.

Edited September 27, 2023 by InsaneCommander

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I explored a sPoOkY palace and ended up fighting the owner, Cazador, who turned out to be much less intimidating and more of a prick. Astarion wanted to take over but I talked him out of it, and he seemed to appreciate that.

Spoiler

I had to reload several times for the Cazador fight and ended up having to google. You can Help (that's an action I have never used until this point) to Astarion break free but you have to do it within 3 turns or Cazador disintegrates him. Cazador himself can hit extremely hard as by default he adds 7d10 Necrotic Damage to all of his attacks, including spells, but Irresistible Dance works 100% of the time and effectively CCs him for 10 turns so long as you keep concentration. The bigger problem is that Cazador can still activate the ritual even while dancing, the Ghasts can make the party nauseous, and the skeleton mage tries to put you to sleep. In the end I killed the skeleton mage and made a mad dash to free Astarion, then used the dance spell on Cazador and wiped out the adds before having the whole party gang up on him. Shadowheart's Divine Guardians was essential because it killed the bats and I am a big dummy because I forgot to prepare Daylight but even still she carried the fight with healing and Radiant damage.

 

18 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

In my case he was killed by
 

  Reveal hidden contents

Us, with a devour intellect attack. As for Aylin, she addressed and scared the **** out of Shadowheart after the battle. Luckily my character had turned into a Dilophosaurus and didn't have to take any risks there.

With the Guardian out of his cage, I wonder what kind of mess will the camp turn into now.

Seriously, some people in this game are scarier than the villains, including the new ones and their bosses that were just revealed.

Our allies are much more frightening than villains.

Spoiler

 

[InsaneCommander]

The camp at this location is the smallest one so far. And now there is even an option to say it's too crowded (spoilers removed from the picture):

Interesting that Volo, Withers and these new additions don't stay near each other.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

23 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

The camp at this location is the smallest one so far. And now there is even an option to say it's too crowded (spoilers removed from the picture):

Interesting that Volo, Withers and these new additions don't stay near each other.

You can get a permanent room in a tavern when you arrive in the city.

At the Elfsong, which also has the Emperor's old hideout in it

[InsaneCommander]

Back to camp, I had the first uneventful night ever, unless you count the tangled vines that appeared where I slept. I didn’t notice this before. Must be a Druid thing. Or my character is smarter than I thought and knows that people like to sneak in.

The lack of visitors was probably because of how crowded the place is. Not to mention that Isobel’s partner is there now and even I am scared of her. Perhaps some of the uninvited guests will stop coming to the place now.

I avoided talking to Halsin since he seems to be in love with me and I don’t need another horny companion pressing for sex. At least Jaheira is not into romance and Isobel and her partner seem to be content with each other.

 

Spoiler

My first attempt to talk to Aylin about Shadowheart failed. All she did was rant about Thorm furiously. Funny how eventually the only option available was “Leave”. I guess my character feels as disturbed as I do. This is realistic, but I fear she might be mad. I don’t think this will end well.

Later, she did reveal the truth about Shadowheart’s past. Perhaps Selunites should stop with some stupid rituals.

 

Oh, and Volo has already tried to do his procedure on me at least half a dozen times.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

A day for final family reunions in temples. First I took Shadowheart to meet the Sharrans and found a familiar face, and then my Bard met his dad and....sister/niece/cousin in an underground area. I'm pretty sure there's only a handful of things left

Spoiler

The quest related to some artist I freed in Act 1, finding some unnatural aquatic thing that spills oil, raiding Raphael's house, blowing up the Steel Watch, and finally confronting Gortash. The Emperor told me to hurry the **** up after I killed Orin though so maybe I'll set off a timer.

 

1 hour ago, InsaneCommander said:

Back to camp, I had the first uneventful night ever, unless you count the tangled vines that appeared where I slept. I didn’t notice this before. Must be a Druid thing.

It's Halsin sexually harassing you.

[Hawke64]

7 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

Back to camp, I had the first uneventful night ever, unless you count the tangled vines that appeared where I slept. I didn’t notice this before. Must be a Druid thing. Or my character is smarter than I thought and knows that people like to sneak in.

The lack of visitors was probably because of how crowded the place is. Not to mention that Isobel’s partner is there now and even I am scared of her. Perhaps some of the uninvited guests will stop coming to the place now.

I avoided talking to Halsin since he seems to be in love with me and I don’t need another horny companion pressing for sex. At least Jaheira is not into romance and Isobel and her partner seem to be content with each other.

 

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My first attempt to talk to Aylin about Shadowheart failed. All she did was rant about Thorm furiously. Funny how eventually the only option available was “Leave”. I guess my character feels as disturbed as I do. This is realistic, but I fear she might be mad. I don’t think this will end well.

Later, she did reveal the truth about Shadowheart’s past. Perhaps Selunites should stop with some stupid rituals.

 

Oh, and Volo has already tried to do his procedure on me at least half a dozen times.

She is a paladin and a very passionate one. I would have liked to have both, the paladin and the cleric, in the party. Of course, the hirelings were fine, but they could not fly or righteously stomp the evil-doers.

If Halsin does not have an exclamation mark above his head, he is not looking for sex at the moment. I don't think that he has anything else to do in Act 3, but might be mistaken.

Spoiler

Discovered it when I was spamming Long Rests to get Gortash to move to a more assassination-friendly area.

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

3 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

I would have liked to have both, the paladin and the cleric, in the party.

Base on what I've been spoiled on and seen, I think that we need more evil party members more than that.....which would be pretty cool though. Without spoiling anything much, evil loses out on two of the origin party members and three of the extras, while only gaining a Drow dommy mommy Paladin. I don't think it needs to be 1 to 1 but it sucks that the roster for the evil gang is just a bit more than half of what the heroes get. Give us an evil Sorcerer and a murder Monk Larian.

I have never used hirelings in a party-based crpg unless it's forced. Not going to knock it, but it just isn't my thing.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I helped out a haunted married couple and some zombies, did a jail break, blew up a factory, and killed a dictator. We're at the end game now, with Wyll's quest, Raphael, and finding the rest of Dribbles being the only things left to do. I get the feeling Raphael's fight is going to be the hardest. But at this point I feel like I'm fighting the inventory more than anything, carrying around over 40 weight measurements of gold and a **** ton of potions. Also I don't use coatings much but I am really kicking myself over not using elixirs during the early game. I also have not used Wyll's Mystic Arcanum once lmao. Also I frequently forget that some spells require concentration, I think the game should have an option to warn you if you're doing something that'll break concentration.

Gortash was easier than his mega steel watcher because you guessed it, dancing. The mega watcher was easy though because Wyll used Hold Monster. Both just got wrecked. For some reason I didn't need the runepowder bomb during the quest so I threw it in Gortash's study and blew up my party's hit points. Shadowheart needed the room in her inventory.

[InsaneCommander]

More camp scenes. Aylin didn’t wanna talk, said she wants to be with Isobel. And I’m not picking the “I didn’t get to know you yet” option with Halsin.

The Guardian story advanced a lot.

 

Spoiler

I got a game over trying to free the prince. After reloading and helping the emperor, it is a quest. Good enough. I already suspected the Guardian was a mindflayer. Not sure when I was supposed to start doing it, but when he said it was unusual for the brine pools to be empty of tadpoles it became unavoidable.

The astral tadpole was sent to the camp chest with the other twenty or so. There must be a lot of Ilithid powers in the game. I’ll leave those for my next playthrough.

I saw on YouTube that there is a cutscene when you go meet with the Guardian. I didn’t see it in my game. Once again, I wonder how much content is bugged.

Approaching Baldur’s Gate I met a child with a missing mom and mysteriously it’s not a quest. If it was a scam, then the amateur left with only a few goodberries.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, InsaneCommander said:

I saw on YouTube that there is a cutscene when you go meet with the Guardian. I didn’t see it in my game. Once again, I wonder how much content is bugged.

I think a lot of stuff is tied to taking Long Rests so if you're able to do a lot of stuff you can miss scenes. Like Dark Urge has one that requires you to rest almost immediately after escaping the prologue area.

For me it's not a big deal because

Spoiler

The Guardian/The Emperor's arc makes a lot of sense from what I've seen so far. I think the first Guardian scene would benefit from being coded as the first or second rest event (for my DU that was a couple of DU specific scenes iirc) but I can see if they wanted to wait a bit for all of the origin characters to meet up and there is a pretty big gap between Shadowheart (if freed on the ship) and Karlach in terms of location.

 

[InsaneCommander]

3 minutes ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

I think a lot of stuff is tied to taking Long Rests so if you're able to do a lot of stuff you can miss scenes. Like Dark Urge has one that requires you to rest almost immediately after escaping the prologue area.

Eventually I started doing two long rests in a row, one right after another, just to see more scenes. But this scene I'm talking about now is the one that happens when you finish a battle and enter a portal. I replayed this part and again I didn't see the scene.

Also, just met the first mechanical guard. I saved the game and started a battle just to see how tough it is. By doing this, I ended up revealing a spoiler.

Spoiler

I talked with a journalist that was loving the mess I caused and she turned into Orin.

 

[Bartimaeus]

21 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

Eventually I started doing two long rests in a row, one right after another, just to see more scenes. But this scene I'm talking about now is the one that happens when you finish a battle and enter a portal. I replayed this part and again I didn't see the scene.

You saying this really reminds me of an old N64 RPG called Aidyn where party members would have dialogues/cutscenes in really random places and as a result of inscrutable party composition choices that you could never really predict (i.e. if you had certain companions in your party together, dialogues could trigger if you happened to be in the right place at the right time...but otherwise, you might never see or even know that they exist) - on top of said joinable party members often not being where they're supposed to be and randomly disappearing from the game because of...reasons that you'll never find out. It was always unclear if it was because the game was buggy or if the developers intended for characters to just up and vanish on some kind of criteria, but regardless, the result was that if you wanted a party member to stick around, recruit them early and keep them the whole game, because kicking at least a couple of them out for even a second could result in you never seeing them ever again.

Edited October 1, 2023 by Bartimaeus