Good to know, thank you.

Lots more adventuring tonight. I finished Astarion's quest, and faced down his master Cazador. Cazador's plot to make himself a Daywalker vampire ala Blade was already looking pretty horrific. But it was a lot worse than imagined. However, with friends like Minsc and Boo at our sides, evil was most handily smoted.

This quest - and Astarion - were really well done. There is not much to recommend him at first. He's pretty much straight up Chaotic Evil. But my K-Pop facelift makes him more likeable. Also, as you get to know him, it becomes very plain that he is a victim himself, of Cazador. He was never even allowed to feed on, much less kill any of the people he hunted for over a century. He had to bring them all back to Cazador. He has never actually fed on anything other than animals. H really strikes me very much as the victim of an insanely abusive relationship, which is quite accurate really. It was portrayed with extraordinary depth and emotion.

The final confrontation between him and Cazador was really good. You have an opportunity to redeem him, or go the opposite route and embrace the evil. It should be no surprise what route January guided him on. It made for a very satisfying and cathartic ending.

Besides the choices of Astarion going fully evil or good, there is a second choice to make as well, concerning the other vampire spawn in Cazador's lair. You have to decide to kill them all, or set them free (on the condition that they keep their fangs to themselves). There are no really good choices here. You get to meet them first. They are people. They have names, histories, personalities. They are all victims like Astarion was. Killing them is clearly mass murder. But the alternative is loosing a lot of vampires on the world. And who knows how many deaths they will precipitate?

January again followed her conscience. She could not kill them, even though they were vampires. Everyone deserves a second chance. That brought a familiar feeling of loss. She broke her Oath. Again. Sigh.

In the past I just reloaded and tried a different route. I just did not feel like doing that all over again. So I went back to camp and met the Oathbreaker Paladin waiting for me there. He explained that he does so for every paladin who breaks their oath. He can guide you in the new path as an Oathbreaker. Or he can redeem you and let you reaffirm your Oath.

January paid the man 1,000 gold, and redeemed her Oath. She is not going to be become an Anti-Paladin any time soon. The little ceremony of her doing so was again, nicely done.

I just met this guy, and already I do not like him

Neither does Astarion

Redemption

January retakes her Oath - to defend life itself, to protect all that is good and natural, and repel wickedness wherever it threatens

Reaching for the Light

Ugh, lawyers

Servants of Bhaal

Didn't I kill this guy in a previous game?

We will just have to kill him again

Miniature Giant Space Hamster!

I am closing in on the finale of the game. Just a few more quests left to go.

Showdown in the Bhaal temple

The devil has 666 hit points

*Important Safety Notice*

It seems that Larian made a little stealth update in one of the recent patches. They removed the need to use a Mod Fixer to make mods work. However, the same fix causes the game to lock up whenever you need to make a dice roll if you still have a Mod Fixer. So for example, if you want to pick a lock, or make a Persuasion attempt. So delete your old Mod Fixers. That means physically removing them from your Mods folder, thanks to how the game works.

I beat the game like a red-haired Tiefling stepchild.

Act III in the game takes place in Baldur's Gate, and it is huge. I would guess it took about as long to go through Act III as it did for me to do Acts I and II combined. Every building has something go on inside it, usually related to one quest or another, even if you do not know it until later.

The endgame was good. It was very exciting, not to mention challenging. There are about 4-5 basic endings you can choose, depending on your actions at various points. Mainly they boil down to the Good vs Evil camps. Either you destroy the Elder Brain, or you take control of it and become the Absolute.

The Good route has some more wrinkles in how you go about it. I am going to try to avoid getting too spoilery. You can stick with your Guardian the entire way. But that means betraying the Gith, and killing someone that is very important to the destiny of the Gith races (not Lae'zael). Or you can betray the Guardian and side with the Gith. If you go that route someone has to turn into a Mind Flayer. Either you, the special Gith person in question, or Karlach.

So either way you go the Good route, you have to betray someone, which I did not like. I hope they change that in a patch, and make it possible for the Guardian and the Gith to cooperate, instead of being forced to choose between them. It leaves a sour note to the ending of an otherwise grand adventure.

I think they set up Karlach to be the go to for most people to pick becoming a Mind Flayer if they sided with the Gith. But that was just unthinkable for me. I suspect a lot of other people agree. She seems to be the most beloved of all the companions. She certainly was for me. She is awesome! Even more so than Minsc (way hotter to... and I do mean that literally).

I also figured out who the weird undead guy Withers is (the one you respecs your character and whom you can hire adventurers from). At an early point he asks you what the value of a mortal life is. Later I read an in-game book, where a certain god did the same thing.



There is a post credits cutscene in which he pretty much gives it away.


Battling an Undead Dragon

This guy is in our side. Seriously, he is.

They don't have Beholders in this game, but they do have Spectators

January has the three Netherstones

The first battle against the Elder Brain

Needless to say, you cannot win the first encounter with it

The Elder Brain is loosed upon the world

With the Crown of Karsus fueling it, it can complete the Illithid Grand Design, the enslavement of the entire multiverse

It brought more Nautiloid ships as backup

But the Army of Light has dragons

It also has this guy, who is kicking a lot of butts for Goodness

Time for the final assault upon the Elder Brain

The Crown of Karsus, which at one time destroyed all magic, and with it the Netherese Empire

Regicide

The fall of the Elder Brain

The Army of Light victorious

I am not going anywhere without you Karlach

Lol that’s hilarious!


I just met Karlach, lol

I haven’t been playing any games much. I get about 2 hours in before I have to get ready for work in the morning and that’s about it.

Congrats of finishing the game! Thanks for your insights throughout. Not gonna play it now but great to know where to find some good tips/perspectives. Just in case, you know.

Nice to see Minsc still buttkicking for goodness.

Um. . . don't want to thing too hard on where netherstones come from.

Always good to have dragons on your side!

Karlach has absolutely beautiful ears.

The game does not seem to be ideal for archers. Usually your team archer in an RPG is a Ranger. But BG3 Ranger class does not seem to have much of any archery based abilities. I was pretty unimpressed with it overall. But maybe I just was not giving it as much of a chance as I should. You could go with a Fighter and pick the Archery combat style (it gives you a bonus to hit, plus allows you do the equivalent old Power Attack feat, taking a penalty to hit in exchange for a bonus to damage). The main thing is that Fighters get a lot of extra attacks in this game, way more than anyone else. I made Minsc a Fighter, and I think he was attacking 4 times a round by the end.

Bows are also nerfed compared to Crossbows, which do more damage, and have no reload speed penalties at all. There is a mod that evens bows out with them however.

Magic works pretty well, especially for a D&D game. Wizards, clerics, paladins and the like will have a lot of spells that they know. When Clerics and Paladins level up they automatically learn all the spells for the next level. Wizards pick a few they can learn every level up. But they can also learn spells from scrolls, which more than makes up for that.

They still have to prepare spells from their full list in order to cast them, with a smaller number of prepared spells than total. However, unlike the older games you do not have to prepare the same spell multiple times in order to cast it that many times. You can only prepare a spell once, then you can can cast it as many times as you have spell slots.

Spell Slots are the old how many times you can cast a spell of each level per rest. As you level up you get more Spell Slots. The max seems to be 4 per spell level. But it goes pretty far.

So for example Magic Missile is a 1st level spell. You only prepare it once. But if you have 4 Spell Slots, you can cast it 4 times.

In addition to this all spellcasting classes get bonus spells, which do not need to be prepared. They are always castable. They still use a Spell Slot when you cast them. Well usually they do, there might be a few freebies once per long or short rest. I don't remember for certain. What those bonus spells are depends on your subclass. For example, a Light Domain Cleric gets Ray of Fire, Fireball, and Flame Strike as bonus spells as they level up.

Then there are Cantrips. In the old days they were just really weak spells. Now they are pretty cool. Cantrips do not have to be prepared, and they do not use a Spell Slot. So you can always cast them anytime, as often as you like. They are not overly powerful. But the damage ones do scale up. As a High Half Elf January automatically received a Firebolt Cantrip. It started doing 1d10 damage. But by the end of the game it was doing 3d10.

Many spells can also be Upcast. You can use a higher level Spell Slot to cast them, and get more damage by doing so. Typically you are adding a 1d8 or 1d10 to damage for each level up you go. So you can cast a 1st level spell with a 5th level slot and do insane damage. The Ray of Fire spell is normally just ok. But when you upcast it, it becomes a magical minigun.

The Short Rest Tweak mod and the Action Resources Replenish After Combat mods essentially make spellcasting per encounter. Your Spell Slots replenish after every battle, and you can cast spells continually while out of combat. That also makes spellcasters much more spell castinging.

Sorcerers of course do not have to prepare spells. All their spells can be cast at any time. But as before they get a lot fewer of them, and they can't learn them from scrolls. Sorcerers also get access to Meta Magic feats, which the other spellcasters do not (it seems like Wizards ought to get it too). These are various feats that allow you to do things like cast spells even when silenced, double the range of your spells, cast two spells when normally you can only cast one, etc... There is even one that allows you to recover expended spell slots during combat.

The Sorcerer/Paladin is an Uber multiclass. The reason is Paladin's level up their Spell Levels and Spell Slots slowly. And their main attack is a Smite, which is basically a spell that enhances your weapon attack and adds more damage. But each smite uses a Spell Slot. So you use them up quickly, especially at low levels.

One thing about this game is that you only have one set of Spell Slots for all you spells, even across different classes. So a Cleric/Wizard has just one set of Spell Slots for the spells of each class. So when you add in some Sorcerer levels, that gives your Paladin much more Spell Slots, and at higher levels. In the late game January was using her Smite at level 5, making multiple attacks, and easily dishing out over a 100 points of damage in one round if I really wanted to. This really cuts Boss enemies down to size quickly.

Also, the Counterspell is really cool. Make sure all your spellcasters who have access to it take this spell. If an enemy tries to cast a spell at you or a nearby party member, your Counterspell will go off and interrupt their casting. That stops them from casting the spell. This will save your group from many fireballs and lightning bolts. Best of all you can still act normally later in the round if have not acted yet. And you can still do this after taking your actions for the round. But I think it does use a Spell Slot every time. That is not really a big deal though.

Misty Step is also a really handy low level spell. I think it is 2nd level. It allows you to teleport a short distance, to any place you can see. There is a lot of jumping up and across to places in their game. But some locations are too far to jump. But you can still Misty Step there. It is also a way to move a huge distance. You can use your full movement for a round. Then you can Misty Step even further ahead, about the same distance. And on top of that you can expend your main action to use the Dash ability (which everyone gets), and once more double your base movement. This came in really handy in covering vast distances in the late game, where there are some timed missions, and you have to get things done fast.

Dimension Door is a 4th level spell that does the same, but allows you to take one other party member with you. Arcane Gate is a 6th level spell that is even better. It allows the caster to create a gateway, placing each end where they want it. Then anyone can go through the gate and pop from one side to the other. This helped a lot in the final battle when I had to cross a battlefield that was filled with ensnaring tentacles and a dragon. I had Gale create a Gate around most of it.

Thanks for all those neat details!

I feel like Assy is no slouch at range with a longbow and sneak attacks, at least at this early level. I try to always keep him at range.

I have been thinking about doing a crossbow character version of my Fallout character, Désirée. Probably go archery fighter with some levels in either Ranger (for the spells), or Rogue, for sneak attack. Or better yet, just go with Eldritch Knight for fighter subclass to get access to spells and then take Rogue to get sneak attack!

This post has been edited by TheCheshireKhajiit: Sep 7 2023, 03:07 AM

Assy really did not impress me with his Sneak Attack damage. He was usually only doing 20-30 points of damage at best. But that did not come near the total damage my paladins, barbarians, and fighters could dish out in a round. They were averaging 60-100 points a turn due to their extra attacks, and just doing more per single attack.

It might be because I dual-classed Assy as a Ranger, so he only got to around 6-7th level as a Rogue, and about the same as a Ranger. I was hoping the Ranger class would come with some sick archery powers, like flaming arrows, or double arrows, etc... that other games give their Rangers. But he got none of that.

Maybe if I try to stick him to pure Rogue he will work better? Or if I leave him his one level in Rogue, and go Fighter for the rest of the game. He would still get the sneak attack, and get lots of extra attacks that way.

I was unimpressed with Wyll as a Warlock too. I think it is because I made him Pact of the Blade, and tried to make him both a melee fighter and a spellcaster. Maybe I should have taken one of the other Pacts, and gone a pure spellcaster route with him? I don't know.

*****

I also made a few new discoveries in the last few days starting (and restarting, and restarting) Blood Raven. If you start as a magician class, and then multi-class as a Fighter, you do not get all the starting Fighter proficiencies (the armor, shield,and weapon ones). You don't get any extra profiencies. So you have to take them all with your Feat choices later, which are few and far between with the vanilla rules.

So start as a Fighter (or Barbarian, or Paladin), and then multi-class as a spellcaster later. Otherwise you will be hamstrung.

My original intent was to play Blood Raven with the Dark Urge Origin. What I had read was that while you have a mysterious past and get prompted to do all sorts of evil things, you had the choice to not do those things and play a good character. Nope. That is a lie. Near the end of Act 1 you will murder Alfira (the Tiefling bard at the Druid Circle). There is a convoluted work around, but you just end up killing someone else instead. Which is not better in my book. So looks like I will never play that one.

So now I am playing Blood Raven for the 4th or 5th time, as a regular custom character, starting as a Fighter first.

*****

I also figured out a few things about the into cutscenes of the game. The first city the nautiloid flies over was not Baldur's Gate, as I had imagined. It was some other place called Yartar, a few hundred miles east of Neverwinter. Though still on the Sword Coast.

In the second set of cutscenes, when the nautiloid comes back from Hell, several people observe it from the ground. The first is a Tiefling. She is Nadira, one of the people in the Druid Circle. You find her sitting on top of a hill with a telescope later. The second group you see watching through a telescope is a Bugbear and a Drow. The Drow is Minthara, a possible companion who works for the Absolute who you can only recruit by doing the evil route. Those two are in the Goblin Camp, and you see their goblins running out after the crash site.

Finally, right before you fall out of the nautiloid you look across you and there is a Mind Flayer staring back at you from across a breach in the hull. I think that might be the person who saves you from dying in the fall, and is very important later in the game as an ally. But I am not sure about that. The timing might be off on where he was at what time. Unfortunately all the Mind Flayers do look alike, and tend to dress exactly alike as well. He was somewhere on that ship, and might also be the one who infected you with the tadpole.

I’ll let you know what I think because I’m just going to leave Assy as an Assassin (get it? ).

My character Saryn is a Pact of the Blade warlock. The cool thing about this is that, yes, you can stand back and shoot fools with Eldritch Blast (which feels so right in this game!), but you can also use your Charisma score to hit with your Pact melee weapons which makes the warlock even more versatile. A really good combo is Warlock/Vengeance Paladin. Get a Glaive or some other heavy weapon as your Pact weapon and go to town with some smites! Probably want to start off as a Paladin to get those proficiencies right from the start.

Speaking of the class proficiencies, not getting the new class’s proficiencies sounds like a bug to me. You absolutely get the new proficiencies for a multiclass in D&D 5E.


Hmmm, see, I was thinking that MF ( ) was the one you find dying in the wreckage shortly after finding Assy.

I experimented a bit more with dual weapons, and I think I finally figured it out. Under the boxes to select your weapons there is a button to turn on two weapon mode or not. With it on you automatically strike with both your equipped weapons. With it off you only strike with your main hand weapon, even with two equipped. Then you had to use a bonus action to strike with the off-hand weapon. Assuming you did not use your bonus action for something else. I was doing it without both weapons selected all through my last playthrough, and I think that's why it felt really meh to me.

I also figured out that you can dual wield ranged weapons, using hand crossbows. Astarion dual wielding them is pretty good. Better than him using a longbow. The Dual Weapon abilities are confusing. The Feat allows you to use larger than Light weapons. And it gives you a +1 to AC. The Two Weapon fighting style that Fighters and a few others get gives you your ability bonus on your offhand weapon, rather than just your main hand weapon.

For some reason Rapiers are not light weapons. But Scimitars are. Even though both are Finesse weapons.

Now I have Astarion using two +1 Hand Crossbows, and two +1 Rapiers, and I will see how that works out.

I also just got Wyll, and leveled him up again. The other Pacts did not do much for me. Familiars seem really underwhelming in this game. In other games they gave you a spell or power. But in this they just seem to be a very low hit point henchman. The Pact of the Book did not seem much better. So I went with Pact of the Blade with Wyll again. Maybe I could try to multiclass him as a Paladin, to take advantage of that Charisma bonus. A Pact Glaive + Smite might be just the ticket.

I think you are right about the Mind Flayer you find just after Astarion. The one who tries to put the hoodoo on you, and gets his face caved in by my boot instead. He probably is the one who infected us. Though he may or may not be the same one we saw before flying out the hole in the nautiloid. They all look the damn same!

If you are going with two hand crossbows, get the Thief subclass and sharpshooter feat. Thief will allow you to make three attacks because you get a second bonus action as soon as you get the subclass. Sharpshooter let’s you add +10 damage to the attack with a -5 penalty to hit. Could make him more potent.

This post has been edited by TheCheshireKhajiit: Sep 8 2023, 11:06 AM

I did go Thief subclass with him. Next time I get a feat I will do the sharpshooter. So I will see how that works out.

The only thing is that I worry that -5 penalty to hit might be harsh at first. Maybe it would be best to pump your Dex up to 18 or even max it out first.

This post has been edited by TheCheshireKhajiit: Sep 9 2023, 12:33 AM

I used the Great Weapon version of that for my paladins, fighters, and barbarians, and I usually just turned it off because the "To Hit" penalty was just to high in most cases.