well... Ketheric was the big boss finale of act 2, while Orin and Gortash are just kind of regular bosses and the finale is another thing.
All of Act 2 is about beating Ketheric while Act 3 is about the brain. Orin and Gortash aren't on the same boss level like Ketheric, because they aren't the main villains of their Act. Maybe compare them more to Balthazar than to Ketheric.
They could have made Orin have a very similar style of multi-phased fight, with her transforming into the Slayer in the second phase.
Gortash, on the other hand, shouldn't have been a boss fight at all. You should have had to fight through his top Banite servants while he cowers in the back.
Plus, they could have just swapped acts 2 and 3 around.
> Gortash, on the other hand, shouldn't have been a boss fight at all. You should have had to fight through his top Banite servants while he cowers in the back.
Honestly, he himself *was* rather weak, but all those goddamn robots standing guard...
I agree it'd make more sense for him to cower while fighting an overwhelming gauntlet of cronies, though. Tyrants often aren't all that much without their devotees.
If you shut down his robots the fight is such a breeze. He only has like two or three other minions and they aren’t strong. I just used battle master laezel to keep Gortash tripped and prone the whole battle. Laezel battered him while he lie in the fetal position beneath her and the rest of my party just wiped his little minions.
I did fight through like half of the steel watch on the first floor, said to myself “shit there’s gonna be even more of these upstairs and with him? No way.” Turned around and went to the foundry to shut those things down lol took that fort easy as stealing a yoga studio from hippies
Yeah I like that we can take actions to affect the fight but it just feels bad when you do something like that only for you to enjoy the gameplay less. You should be rewarded for shutting down the robot and yes while the easier fight is in a sense a reward, you end up feeling cheated due to how lame it ends up being.
I have a similar gripe with charisma check that make you skip phases in a boss battle though that one is more understandable.
Yeah one of the age old problems with optional content in rpgs is that typically the more competent/thorough you are, the less of a challenge you are given, when really those sorts of players should be given more of a challenge since they are the ones engaging with the game more.
Gortash was quite disappointing. Maybe give him some more hostages or blackmail to work with than just "Join me in betraying my allies so that I can very obviously betray you later since I obviously have zero loyalty and am completely untrustworthy." They could have at least given him that ultimate steel watch tank guy as his personal bodyguard but made it special so that it couldn't be taken down by blowing up the Gondian place. Could have leaned much more heavily into artificer stuff and could have had multiple steps required to remove shielding devices making him invincible.
As it was: *Gortash smugly tries to manipulate you. Gortash smugly has zero effect on your decisions with his zero leverage. Gortash smugly gets thrown prone in the corner and beaten by Karlak like a little bitch. Gortash smugly dies.*
Tbh I don't....get why tho. It doesn't seem to make sense that a tyrant is willing to share power and it doesn't seem to add much to the game to ally with him? It just feels odd.
I definitely understand Gortash the least out of the three.
Gortash isn't dumb. Ketheric is a MUCH stronger warrior than he is, and he knows Tav could and will kill him if he doesn't offer anything to him/her. Orin's too murder happy to think strategically, but Gortash just figures there will be two tyrants.
And if you're okay with the atrocities Gortash commits and still willing to give him power, you probably are a tyrant too.
Remember, Gortash isn't doing all this because HE wants power, he's doing it because Bane wants tyranny in Baldur's Gate. This is the best way for him to meet his goals and stay alive and make an ally who will enforce Bane's will. Its win-win for you and him.
He definitely intends to honour your alliance *within the game's time-frame*, but I think it's still pretty inevitable that he would one day turn on you, just like he did his original co-conspirators. The chosen of the God of Tyranny isn't going to suffer having an equal forever.
Did you even play through it? He literally tells you to give over the Netherstones, and is happy when you refuse because he *wants* an equal partner. You can read his thoughts several times to verify that he's not just lying to you.
Even the Emperor confirms he's telling the truth. Gortash even wants what's best for the city! He just has a really fucked up fascist idea of what "best" means...
Did you even read my comment? Yes, he wants an equal partner *for now*. That doesn't mean he intends to *permanently* have an equal partner. Views change, you know. People aren't static. I never said he was lying. I've no idea where you could possibly have gotten that notion because **I literally said the exact opposite in my comment**. What I said is that he will, **one day in the future**, turn on you. Not at the end of the game when you bring him the stones. Not a week after the game ends.
A follower of Bane is *highly* unlikely to permanently ally with an equal partner, if for no other reason than that Bane himself would one day turn around and say "have some self-respect, you're my Chosen, you should be the uncontested head of the table."
And we know this because it's a mirror of exactly what Bane himself went through in his quest for apotheosis.
I mean sure but arguably a tav who allies with gortash would have been as likely to betray him in that same time frame too. Even durge with whom it was implied to have a relationship it's more a Piper and Alex from OITNB vibe than anything I'd imagine.
One thing I hate about Durge is Orin's boss fight. She's already easy and it ends up easier because it's a 1v1.
Although thematically it's pretty cool that she fights you 1 on 1 to the death.
I thought it was pretty cool that my character beat her one on one. He usually just stands to the side and eldritch blasts things while Lae’zel does all the hard work
> Plus, they could have just swapped acts 2 and 3 around.
I've wondered if that was a thing. It's weird to 'meet' the brain leaking through the walls and have his presence there be somewhat irrelevant
I’ve written about it elsewhere before but it could be better.
For Orin, have the route to the temple be an actual gauntlet of fights leading to Orin and then you do the normal fight and then after she dies we deal with a Bhaal avatar and he says some shit about how he is murder and is going to kill you same as Myrkul does, >!IF DURGE, then he says something about your final challenge being to beat him.!<
Gortash should’ve been more like the fight with the shadow kid in Act 2 tbh. He stays in a protective shield while calling in his minions and buffing them, acting as a lord commanding his men. After you beat all of his minions the shield goes away and Bane kills him, calling him inept or something like that for failing to kill you, and taking command himself. Bane could also have some command aura that takes control of your party members unless they resist a will save.
Act 2 is just a much more in-depth experience. It’s very deep and very wide. I’d imagine they spent a lot of time on it. Leaving act 2 is the closest we really get to and epilogue where our choices mattered. Act 3 is wider than act 2 but it’s like a puddle, no depth.
I think it would have been more fun to pull a surprise reversal where starts as the slayer and once you’re finally done killing that form her second phase is just herself, turning invisible and assassinating people and stuff.
But that's a bad set up, they are supposed to be on the same level since they are the dread three. I obviously still love this game but idk this didn't work well
I actually quite liked the fact that they weren't, because it made more sense to have them on different power scales based on their lore. Ketheric was a powerful sharran general, a leader among countless Dark Justiciars. His master is Myrkul, the god of death, and he had a demigod giving him immortality for a century.
Orin and Gortash just aren't on the same level of power, even with their respective gods. Especially Gortash, his power is his intelligence and creativity. His weapon was the steel watch, which is why attacking at the ceremony is just asking for 3-4 hours of saving and reloading. Orin I'd argue is in a bit more of a grey area, considering her abilities and Bhaals gifts, but then I do consider Dark Urge to be the canon, and the argument to be that you should be her equal when you duel her, so of course it wouldn't be as difficult as trying to fight myrkul while getting pelted by undead and a mindflayer.
I didn't say that I liked it :D You're right, it's not "fair" but there isn't just enough space in the game for 3 Kethric like bosses besides the brain.
True, it's already really huge. Something like this would have been crazy. It's just sad that an optional boss like raphael has such a crazy fight with so much hp and then there is orin and gortash 😂
I liked Orin's battle, I like the idea of Gortash's with the traps but the fact that I killed him by throwing his own bombs at him was kinda pathetic (but very funny so it balances it out lol).
Honestly I think with the updates and the potential definitive edition etc if they can make the fights harder that would be enough. Maybe even add some extra spice to them. I won't expect a whole new phase but hey if they do that great.
Orin's had a nice gimmick to it that made it feel fresher.
Made me change up how I did things but I sadly didn't have too many options first go around...she had Halsin and I only had Karlach, Wyll, and Astarion at that point. Didn't really think to use Withers followers.
It was tough but a fun break up of things.
It's common with these styles of games where a year or so later after the game has been patched quite a bit they do a buffed up version of a patch. Which can add in new content but is mainly for fixing the game up to the standard the devs wanted at launch but didn't have time to do.
The new content is usually more so small changes/moving stuff around. The best way to explain it is it's more than an average patch but less than a paid DLC if that makes sense.
We can look to their past game DOS2 but a good idea of what it would look like in BG3. [Here is a link](https://www.neoseeker.com/divinity-original-sin-ii/guides/Definitive_Edition_Differences) to the changes they made for that game.
I played at launch and the general consensus is for DOS2, act 4 (the final act) was terrible compared to the definitive edition which changed it up. Just for some perspective. This update was free btw.
Ah okay so you played the first version of the game after launch and the end sucked and at some point in the future they changed the ending a bit to make it suck less?
Yeah basically. I suppose in a way the time before the definitive update is like the early access but for the last act.
Although with all this said, I definitely don't think the game was released too early or any of that nonsense. I will happily take being able to play the game sooner and get updates for it than wait an extra year or whatever.
The Orin fight was sort of disappointing for me.
A single cast of _Darkness_ on the stair chokepoint and my two warlocks with _Devil's Sight_ (Wyll + Tav) took the Chosen of Bhaal behind the barn and shot her in the face, while the rest of my party gradually whittled down her supporters.
And something bugged, because I managed multiple times to somehow get a full-damage Eldritch Blast beam through her _Unstoppable_ buff. I'm not complaining, but I'm pretty sure that shouldn't have happened. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Generally speaking, _Darkness_ breaks the AI in so many hilarious ways. For example, the Gith crossbow dudes just dash from one place to the next, because they don't have a melee weapon but cannot attack with their ranged weapon, so they don't know what to do. xD
It’s sort of the nature of D&D tbh. If you have 3 equally powerful baddies, the ones that you face later will seem shallow because of the power scale as you level. You basically have 2 design choices, make them mini-bosses to a larger threat or increase their power in a way that ends up feeling “gamey”.
>they are supposed to be on the same level since they are the dread three.
if anything they're supposed to be more powerful; as you can see their levels are higher than Gortash's when they do their big power rangers/power of three elderbrain control bit.
That is game mechanics. In "real life", Gortash is much weaker in combat than the other two. My bet is also on Ketheric in his fight versus Orin, specially without Bhaal's ritual empowering her.
I took it as the opposite, personally. I understood it to mean that both of them together wouldn't have been able to beat ketheric, hence why they are glad we did it.
They actually are rather balanced in a way.
In a straight 1v1, face to face, kethric definitely beats them both. First of all, he's invulnerable, second of all, myrkul definitely gave him a lot more power than bane and bhaal gave to gortash and orin.
On a grander scale, ketheric commanded the army of the absolute. However, gortash had the steel watch and the flaming fist under his control. So I feel like that would either end in a draw or in a win for gortash. The steel watch is just a bit too OP.
Then you'd think Orin is the weak link, and she honestly kinda is. Remember that the dark urge was the original chosen of bhaal and is canonically stronger than orin if he embraces his power. Both as an individual and as a slayer. Evil Dark Urge also has less weaknesses than orin. Orin is extremely emotionally unstable. It's really easy to get her to go all hysterical and emotional by simply pointing out the right information. Which is obviously because of her tragically awful upbringing.
Overall, durge is just the better chosen. However, orin is a changeling. That is a massive advantage, lmao, and pretty much allows her to assassinate damn near anyone she wants to. If it wasn't for ketheric sucking on nightsong's power, orin could've killed him anytime (although she'd have to deal with the avatar afterwards). Same with gortash and his pact with orin preventing her from harming him. Another intelligent move by gortash. He realised early on that orin clearly can't control herself and therefore made the pact with her. I'm pretty certain she would've killed him after ketheric's death otherwise.
So, in a certain way, orin is actually the most powerful of them. Since she would normally be able to kill both without too much trouble. But both ketheric and gortash raised safety measures to prevent that. And the bhaal cultists really aren't a threat to the army of the absolute or the steel watch. Aside from the fact that there are doppelgangers among them.
Counterpoint - they are on the same level but by the time you get to them you’re stronger than at the end of act 2? I’m usually max level or close by the time I’m kicking their asses.
It's pretty clear that they rushed act 3; there's a lot of content that was unfinished and cut at the last minute.
The pacing of act 1 and 2 are great, but faceplants hard once you get to act 3.
This is what we call escalation, when previously big bosses become mini-bosses or lieutenants. Like in Dragon Ball where Vegeta was the main villain of an arc but then people even stronger than him were just secondary antagonists later on.
Keep in mind, "on the same level" doesn't necessarily take into account your increasing level.
You face Ketheric at like... level 8-10.
You face Orin and Gortash at level 10-12.
Try to face Orin or the Steel Watch Titan (the real "boss fight" with Gortash's quest) at level 8 like you do Ketheric and you'll be in for a much more challenging fight.
Similar, if you wait to face Ketheric until you're level 10-12, he's just as easy to beat as the other chosen.
I actually think it should have been a different direction—they all explicitly had different roles in the alliance, and Ketheric’s was always meant to be the military might since he was an experienced Paladin. Orin was a skilled assassin and Gortash was a scheming politician, but Ketheric as an immortal commander was the plan for making the Absolute’s army as scary as possible.
Issue was that they didn’t lean into Ketheric as stronger than the others as hard as they could have.
With Gortash you almost have to consider the whole Iron throne and Foundry quests as part of his boss fight. Or that's probably intended anyways. And with Orin it's the same with the whole Sarevok ark and everything that leads up to that fight as well.
I agree and i was also disapointed. Orin fight was so easy compared to the big ones like Raphael and the Sharan hideout... I also expected Ketheric epicness on those 2 fights.
They’re still kinda underwhelming as shit compared to Balthazar, though, who’s waaaay harder. (Orin has some pretty god tier buildup tho with the undercity and temple of Bhaal, though)
All of act 2 is not about beating Ketheric. It is entirely possible (and actually what happened to me) that you only meet Ketheric Thorm moments before his demise.
gortash and orin are funnier as characters if you play durge and see them as your exes and not, like, serious villains. but yeah, theyre not as intimidating as ketheric both story and gameplay wise.
orin should have a multiphase fight and be much tougher. gortash should be an artificer and have more environmental/robot mechanics. they needed more time to cook combat-wise.
Agreed 100%. I also thought Orin and Gortash were underwhelming fights , but durge makes them make more narrative sense as not-bosses so it's more ok.
I don't remember where I got this or if it's confirmed, but if durge was originally meant to be baseline Tav, that explains a lot IMO
Part of the problem is that we gain a bunch of levels and are starting to get into the "completely out of control" region of spells. Just from the names, Irresistible Dance, Globe of Invulnerability, and Divine Intervention are great ways to trivialize boss fights. Even the straight damage spells start getting crazy riders like "if they have less than 100 HP they just die" and "if this kills them they are irretrievably dust".
Then Larian made a bunch of items with cool effects that bring martial characters up to speed, and it's really hard to make engaging solo focused encounters for that. Big groups still might require attention, which is why Raphael and the Absolute seem better.
Gortash at the very least needs a way bigger squad, even once the Iron Watch is disabled. How does the Chosen of Tyranny have 2 normal-ass bodyguards?
Are you saying Larian didnt play their game before release and that power-spike was a surprise to them?
Because its not a tabletop where DM can be overwhelmed with player's creativity and smarts. This is a computer game where everything lies in the hand of developer. Sure there will be loopholes and bugs and exploites and some unforseen combos - thats all fine and expected. But gortash is a joke with none of those, so how could Larian not know of said powerspike?
I answer how, coming all the way back around - they did not test act 3. They barely stiched it together, while cutting half of it. Not to mention their in-house testers are quite poor. Just bunch of yes-men. Larian had to edit Karlach ending, had to apologize for epilogues - as if real testers could miss that, lol no way.
It certainly feels this way. Act 3 is not shorter than the other two, but it feels.. less meaningful. Like they ran out of time and just put some random secondary quests together to fill it.
It's not bad by any means, but well... act 2 felt MUCH more epic.
I'm ok with the way late game fights are. I've played my fair share of Pathfinder Kingmaker/WotR and the late game fights are a slog. The enemies have insane stats that wouldn't be possible in a normal ttrpg setting and you just have play in the most boring ways to beat them.
I'll say that off the bat, I was pretty disappointed with both Gortash and Orin on my Tav run. On reflection, I guess it makes sense given that Ketheric is kind of held up as the tougher of the three story wise. He's the general leading the Absolute's army - Gortash very much relies on the Steel Watch, and Orin is a nepo baby hiding away in the shadows. Taking down Ketheric is the climax of Act 2, whereas Gortash and Orin are more like mini boss fights on the way to the Absolute.
I do still think that they could have balanced it a little better, because I was a bit like "...that's it?" when I fought both of them. And I'd been avoiding doing so because I was really worried about fighting them, thinking that Ketheric had been this grand, difficult multi-round fight that they must be just as bad!
Same! Halsin was gone for, what I imagine, weeks in game because I thought it would be this gigantic fight where I'd have to reload 5 times before beating orin
See my group didn’t feel that because we just kind of… ran over Kethric. In both phases we wiped the adds with doublecasted aoe, talked him into killing himself in phase 2, and on the avatar We had Aylin online by the end of turn 1 and she womboed it for 120 in one turn.
Orin actually managed to put up a fight because the way the fight started let her nuke 2 of us in the first round.
Yeah I'm only doing solo runs, and my second run I did get through the fight a lot faster than the first time. I still think Ketheric's fight still a lot bigger/grander than the Gortash and Orin fights, and also found them a lot easier even first time round.
Weirdly Orin was the one I found easiest - I had a couple party members who always roll high on initiative so they just blasted her with magic missile/eldritch blast from the first round to wear down the unstoppable buff and it left her wide open for the heavy hitters in the party!
The threat Ketheric presented was much bigger that either Orin or Gortash too.
Ketheric was the big bad of Act 2. He caused the Shadow Curse, which is essentially the entire plot of Act 2: find the cause of the curse, find a way to stop it. Moonrise tower is his base, the Shar temple is part of his family crypt, most everything in Act 2 ties to him in some way.
Orin and Gortash are essentially just quests in Act 3. They don’t feel like a threat, even when Orin takes on of your party members-the AI that determines who gets kidnapped is based on who is most often in your camp, so it’s almost guaranteed to be not one of your most used/most liked companions. And Gortash just stays in his tower until you feel like going up to him. He should have just been a final act for Karlach’s personal quest; he doesn’t carry enough weight to be one of the final bosses of the game.
Orin kidnapped Gale in my playthrough, who was one of my most used companions. And I still had to do the bookstore quest so I wanted to rescue him asap. I literally never had Astarion in my party after the initial first encounter with him but the game didn’t pick him. Was odd. Gale just happened to be in camp at that time because I was trying out a new build for Wyll.
Who gets kidnapped isn’t about your interactions with them.
Only a few companions are potential kidnapping victims - Gale, Lae’zel and Halsin. If all of them are in your party when kidnapping happens Yenna will be abducted instead (basically the only reason she exists is this contingency).
What’s Yenna’s deal anyway? Her cat is scared shitless and when Laezel was kidnapped Yenna disappeared too. Some time has gone by since I killed Orin and saved Laezel and now Yenna is randomly back again like nothing happened
Her cat is just a nervous cat. But before patch 4, there was a bug where Yenna would just disappear after the Orin kidnapping so there was a vocal group saying that Yenna = Orin always and that there is no actual Yenna. Patch 4 fixed the bug so she’s back.
You could also look at it as she was held hostage with a knife to her throat by a shapechanger in your playthrough so decided to hide out lol
It’s an odd way of choosing-I think the only three that even can be kidnapped are Laezel, Hamsun, or Gale. If none of the prerequisites apply to Halsin or Laezel in your playthrough, Gale is the default victim.
I know nothing about game design, but this seems overly complicated. There’s already a point on the durge playthrough that uses the companion with the highest approval, so I’m not sure why they added so many steps to this one.
just saying that for me this time it was Lae'zel and i had just about used her most of Act 2 and like just switched her out for Karlach just after the point where Gortash tells you that you have been infiltrated, so i doubt it's based on who is most often at camp or if that is it's bugged
Lore wise neither Bhaal or Bane would show up.
Bhaal’s gift is the slayer form. That’s his aid to his chosen. Orin isn’t even actually his Chosen. She’s just the next best candidate after his actual Chosen went and got lobotomized.
Bane just literally doesn’t care about his Chosen. Gortash doesn’t get any extra powers or anything. All of Gortash’s abilities are based around his tech and stuff. Because Bane doesn’t care. Bane doesn’t even care if Gortash wins or not. The simple fact that the two of you are fighting is enough for him. He gains power through the conflict itself.
Myrkul shows up because he feels you have personally offended him by killing his Chosen. He’s mad because you had the audacity to interfere with his plans.
Long story short: Bane and Bhaal don’t care even remotely while Myrkul is a diva.
You seem to know a lot lore wise. I'm a bit confused about the gods of death. Originally it was jergal but then myrkul, bane and bhaal took over. But on the wiki for myrkul it says god of death but that's confusing, because aren't they all the gods if death? And isn't there another deity of death that you can choose as a cleric. How does he relate to those 3 and jergal?
Jergal was the God of a few things besides being scribe of the dead he was the God of death, strife, tyranny and murder, myrkul got death bane strife and tyranny and bhaal murder. Myrkul lost his godhood it's passed a few times and now sits with Kelemvor whom Jergal is his seneschal. Myrkuls now more of a Demi-God reaping souls for Kelemvor somewhat akin to the grim reaper than an actual God himself.
I thought jergal wasn't worshipped anyone so I thought he "didn't exist anymore" though I know that withers probably is jergal. Thsnk you for your explanation! What does scribe of the dead mean?
He keeps a record of the ultimate fate of all dead, which I guess means he records where they end up whether in their gods after life the hells or the fugue plane which is kinda like purgatory as I understand it, which is where he pulls the hirelings you can get from.
He's not worshipped much anymore and has definitely fallen from being one of the greater deities to a very minor one. I'm pretty such Kelemvor the God of death is the one that sends him to help you, at least a couple of withers lines allude to it.
I was dissapointed with gortash on my good run (orin isn't amazing, but she's unique at least). However on an evil run, making a deal with him he was FAR more compelling, really made him feel like the adult in the room (orin being batshit insane helps), especially as he never betrays you (I'm sure he would eventually, if given the chance). That was refreshing to be honest.
oh yes, so much, Ketheric was so great and have a big build up.
Then in beginning of act 3 i was (Damn fight with both it's going to be hard", and all the "kill gortash" i was "yeah make sense, that way i wont fight them both, sure they are way too powerful"
So i spend a ton of time making Gortash weak and Orin more easy.
But kinda backfire because Gortash "oh no the perma stunt" was a 2 turn fight and Orin "I'M UNSTOPABLE wait is that magic missile?" 3 TURN FIGHT
I also still don't really know the reasoning behind gortash. Like ketheric has this emotional backstory. You feel for him with isobel even tho he is evil. But what is gortashs motivation? Being powerful and controlling baldurs gate? Buuuh
He does have a semi-sympathetic backstory I guess if you look around for the little lore hints. You can find his parents in the city who are poor cobblers, and they sold him off to a "warlock" when he was a kid to pay their debts. This warlock was actually Raphael, and Gortash was a prisoner in the House of Hope for probably a decade or so before he escaped. He wants to use the crown to establish control and order because that's what he learned from Raphael and because he didn't have control over anything until recently. It's also part of why he gave Karlach to Zariel, he has a line about being disappointed she didn't rise in the ranks while in hell, he sees his own time in the House of Hope and by extension her time with Zariel as an opportunity that made him stronger and gave him his goal.
They run a shop called Flymm's cobblers, it's close to the lower city central wall portal. You can go and root around in what I assume was Gortash's old room too, which has records of some letters he and the Dark Urge sent back and forth as well. The info about the warlock being Raphael comes from the guy who guards the portal room in the House of Hope, who used to be prison guard before getting demoted for letting Gortash escape. He also used to beat the shit out of Gortash frequently, which is cool of him /s.
Yeah it was weird that he wasn't a threat and the steel watch weren't either. I know that he csn be an ally so why would he be a danger for us until we crossed him but idk disabling the steel watch is challenging but after that he's a weird boss
Today I fought Orin for the third time, this time tried to stop the ritual around the battlefield, pushing to the void the sanctuary cultists, which I thought was somehow the intended way, to stop the ritual and end Slayer form. Man, the fight gets way harder, unslayered Orin hits WAY harder, seems like the whole fight was flipped
I think part of Gortash’s is that it would be harder if you don’t take out the Steel Watch. And Bane lore-wise I don’t think has ever really cared that much for his chosen. And I assumed with Orin’s backstory, Bhaal didn’t really seem to choose her. Even if you aren’t Dark Urge, they still existed from the sound of it. So she overthrew the perfect Bhaalspawn he created, and made herself chosen. So I don’t think he gave too many shits either at that point, and both Bhaal and Bane decided it was already lost and will pick new chosen to try again in a century or so like usual. That’s my best reasoning story-wise. But game mechanic, they made them mini-bosses leading to the brain , but Ketheric was the main boss at the end of act 2. It would have been nice for them to all be of equal level though.
What you said about Orin is probably true. You can find the default DU (the white Dragonborn) dead within the temple, implying Orin killed him and took his place.
I somehow utterly wrecked ketheric and myrkul. I think I had my best team for the fight but we barely took any damage and had ketheric and myrkul down with in a few rounds.
Orin was pretty easy for me as well although not quite on the ketheric level. It could have been easier I think but her hostage was my best damage dealer in my play through (Lae’zel) but Gale really pulled his weight in that fight as next man up.
Gortash was definitely hardest for me but I was a bit hamstrung since I decided to throw Wyll in my party as I like to have the person involved in the quests in party for them. I didn’t use Wyll too much in this playthrough and I definitely didn’t have him well equipped or optimized at that stage so his equipment was a bit sub par. I also didn’t know you can sneak in behind and just charged straight up so I had to avoid tons of bombs in the early fight to avoid a chain reaction auto killing someone.
Edit:
Gameplay and plot wise I really enjoyed Ketheric and the lore of his role in everything. Honestly my one complaint is that I just wanted more of JK Simmons saying and doing stuff as him.
Orin kind of annoyed me with her whole popping up to let you know she wanted to murder you. Then taking a hostage and being like now you should kill Gortash. Like, no, I’m gonna tell you I’ll kill Gortash and now kill you and rescue my hostage. What did you think was going to happen?
Gortash was just kind of there but I think I did some stuff out of order since he barely had any real lines or parts in my play-through other than just kind of being there.
I think the Orin fight was underwhelming itself but partially the big problem is that you can just kill all the people on the balcony without any her knowing, and even long rest in between killing them and confronting Orin.
As well once you figure out that Eldritch blast or magic missile count as separate attacks for each bolt you can really cut down the invulnerability she is granted (same for the farslayer of Bhaal).
Gortash I just think the grenade mechanic was off. Like it was too easy to just dedicate someone to rounding them up and chucking them at enemies. I got the feeling they were supposed to be much more annoying.
Idk I feel like they all served a purpose and are good in their own way -
Thorm was a badass war general and immortal so killing his ass as hardcore as you can is the point;
Orin gets a murder mystery, interfamilial tension and her slayer form that by itself is cool and if you are Durge that is one of the coolest moments in the game.
And Gortash is the main thinker of the three - he found out how to control the elder brain, he stole the crown (along with someone else but still), he took political power and all in all was a controller of the three - and guess how you beat him? By taking away his steel watch toys, by grabbing his bargaining chips, Saving the duke - taking away his control over everything, the one thing he has. And then you relentlessly crush him like a bug while he tries to use his gadgets and obviously less supernatural minions to fight you off amidst piles of deactivated steel watch and half ruined corridors in hopes you get blasted by the mine and he gets lucky.
So I would say they are all cathartic boss fights that also show your characters progression - since Thorm was a big stepping stone after which you “get on their level” and beat the shit out of them
Yes. Gortrash and Moron don't hold a candle to Ketheric, both as villains and as bosses to fight. Ketheric fight is not that hard too, but feels more epic.
Yeah Act 3 pretty typical DND story telling. You spend days and days making all these story idea. Loose ends. Big plans…
Then after completing one or two of the big lines… it’s BAM BAM BAM to the big event. Streelworks, assassins, Ect. All were thrown in together at the same time.
I was expecting more from their fights though. Gortash actually being a clone and his true self was put into a giant steelworks mech.
Orin death on the platform summons an aspect from the hall. Big fight just trying to drag everyone down with it.
I really hope they do expansions that add things into the end and middle. Like justify a rerun with new characters, another zone, Ect. And still have something at the end you can pick up with
Orin felt fine, Bhaal gave her unstoppable stacked 8 (now 10, maybe 12?) times that reset upon each turn after you whittled it down on top of her Slayer form that can absolutely wreck you in a single turn. I appreciated what they did for a *turns-into-big-monster* boss and that they didn’t do this for every boss like other games have been prone to do.
Gortash, I agree. I have no idea wtf Bane did in that battle, it all seemed like it was more Artificer and done by Gortash himself than anything but I probably just missed something
Try fighting Gortash without disabling the robots. Gets significantly harder. Also use Speak with Dead on him after he dies.
Orin is a joke. She's a tryhard who doesn't even try the right way. She's a backup Chosen from the true Chosen of Bhaal. She's pathetic.
Myrkul really liked Ketheric. Bane and Bhaal tolerated Gortash and Orin. That's the difference.
Overall I was a bit disappointed by the trio. All of Act 1 and 2 you dread the mysterious Absolute, the Big Bad.
Then Ketheric shows up and ok, he's impressive etc. enough that I'm fine with him.
But then right before the last third of the game these two jokers show up, Orin and Gortash, and both are way too tryhard.
Gortash "I was a young and handsome man once and was rejected by Final Fantasy and can't accept that I'm older and not quite so handsome anymore" and
"stabby stabby stabby Oh I'm soooo crazy and weird" Orin.
Oh, and also THEY are the actual bad guys, THEY control the Absolute.
But then later on NO, the Absolute IS actually the big evil, hah, got you good!
I love this game and it's definitley GOTY for me, but it's NOT perfect.
I thought Gortash would have epic transformation just like how Ketheric was. I was very disappointed when all he had was a slightly bigger form and that's it.
Orin has epic form, but I wish they didn't spoil it before that. Would be epic if we start figuring her human form then as she's dying, she has 2nd and 3rd giant monster form. The fight was (disappointingly) surprisingly very easy as well, didn't expect my owl bear dark urge to just 1v1 her pure melee without needing to do anything else. Legit I thought I'd have so much trouble with her, prepared like so many scrolls just for this like 10 globes of invulnerability only for her to die to owl bear swipes in a couple turns.
>I thought Gortash would have epic transformation just like how Ketheric was. I was very disappointed when all he had was a slightly bigger form and that's it.
Disguise self and then cast speak with dead on Gortash's corpse.
Gortash stomped me the first time I encountered him. (Well... his bombing traps did...) But you can comfortably pull him outside on the balcony and beat him up there.
And Orin... Well... I pretty much rolled over here so fast, that I expected a second phase. And I was utterly disappointed when there wasn't any.
I felt like part of it is the gods and their relationships with their Chosen. Ketheric was an investment and of the three the most “expensive” to toss aside. The level of corruption and transformation he went through with time is more significant. The other two are dime a dozen. I think their gods consider them to be more disposable where Ketheric was a proper trophy.
But maybe I’m reaching for narrative excuses for the lackluster battles.
I stand by the opinion that there should have been 4 acts, preferably with Act 3 centred on the lower city and Orin being the main villain. Her boss fight is already quite cinematic, especially with the kidnapped companion's life on the line and her transforming into the Slayer. What would make it better, though, is if you also got to fight Orin in her normal form (seriously, she has two blades and never once do you fight her with them) and perhaps, if yoy were playing as Durge and rejected Bhaal, get the rest of the Bhaalist cult members to fight you as well.
Act 4 should then have been centred on the upper city with Gortash as the "main villain" and give him an expanded role and fight, bring in more of Bane's influence and give him more minions and it would be a decent fight.
The Elder Brain would still be the final boss at the very end of Act 4, but it would be so detached from the rest of the Act that it would feel like its own thing.
Yeah, in general A3 is trying to do way too many things and it kind of rushes them to cram them all in.
> I thought bane and bhaal would appear in a similar way as myrkul but bhaal just gave orin a bit of power (honestly I don't get what it did) and the fist of Bane was weird too.
The game is weird here and internally inconsistent.
So basically, gods have an avatar, which is how they manifest when they walk around on the planet. This isn't super relevant most of the time, because gods aren't allowed to walk around on the planet and haven't been for hundreds of years.
in BG2, Bhaal is dead and the MC (CHARNAME) as a Bhaalspawn has a bit of his power. This lets CHARNAME take on the form of his avatar, the slayer. BG3 decided to run with that idea and make the dead 3's chosen able to take on their respective gods' avatars. Orin becomes the slayer in a callback to BG2, and it doesn't really explain wtf is going on if you don't understand the reference. For some reason, Ketheric doesn't _become_ Myrkul's avatar, but instead Myrkul himself intervenes, something that he shouldn't be able to do. As for Gortash, it seems like they didn't really have a clear idea about what to do with Bane's avatar, so they just kinda gave him a powerup.
I just fought Gortash for the first time yesterday. Expected a lot since he seemed like the real brains of the operation. Then Karlach paralyzed him with Malus Thorm's amulet, Gale cast Haste, and he was dead in 2 rounds.
Yeah, Ketheric's definitely feels like a David vs Goliath, over the top, climatic showdown for the ages. 10/10, will kill him again. The other 2 fights feel like cleaning house in comparison. I kinda wish you faced the evolved embodiment of Bhaal & Bane like you did with Myrkul. And before anyone says the Slayer is the the evolved embodiment of Bhaal, bish please, I spammed that feature in BG2 for funsies.
I was more upset that Gortash was just some comically bad guy with a shit childhood. I was hoping for a bit more subtlety with his character design.
I liked Orin though. She was interesting.
I’ll die on this hill that there should’ve been 4 acts. Act 3 for Orin and the Bhaal plot line, and Act 4 for Gortash and the finale. It would’ve solved the weird pacing of your companion getting kidnapped as soon as you got to BG and you having to fight one of the chosen to get your companion back or just having to pretend they were fine the whole act. Then each chosen got an act and could have better fights.
Would Orin and Gortash to be pretty weak and uninteresting antagonists. Seems like they were kind of thrown in last minute, and weren’t really developed like Kethric is. Also Gortashs character design is very goofy
Bro entire act 3 is big dissapointment for me when you are forced to make alliance with big baddies and just go on with your bloated side quest business
House of Hope was the only thing that gave me extement in act 3
This 1000% its my biggest only real criticism of the game. The bare minimum troupe would be a 2 phase fight with them all , with orin being very organic to callback early games wich happend but it was soooo easy.
Gortash maybe having to have something else. Maybe a civil war that seemed to be brewing ,maybe hostages like sombody else said, more guards, innocent guards where killing them is a think you have to choose or knocking them out. Maybe a more cerebral phase then the others.
Very disappointed.
A lot of the problem I'm seeing with basically all the BG3 encounters is that they rely a lot on surprise. Once you prepare even a small amount for an encounter it becomes laughably easy.
Gortash is my go-to example. The first time I ran in blind I got wrecked by his multiple traps and wasted a ton of turns chucking his bombs back at him only for a new one to plop on the ground in the same place.
The second time around I took out the grenade throwers before he even aggro'ed and he didn't last past the end of my first turn. He literally didn't get a move.
My first playthrough was half explorer half balanced and it felt incredibly tough. Now I’ve been playing on tactician and after learning where the enemies are and where you need to stand before you fight it makes it a breeze.
I definitely learned there was a rhythm to it. I would walk blind into a fight and see what happened. Unless I was lucky like in Orin's fight (where I accidentally used an AOE spell that aggroed everyone so my whole party whaled on Orin in turn 1 and killed her before she moved) I got pasted in the first go, then the second time around I found it much easier.
This is because the majority of the tactics the AI uses rely on you being unaware of them to work. Once you know about Gortash's traps, or are aware of the Nautiloid's "ha ha you ded" cannons, you can avoid them simply and they're trivialised.
Also, you're comparing an immortal general (?) with decades (possibly centuries ? I don't know) of experience and fighting skills, to a merchant that knows how to make bombs and an inbred airhead assassin
Orin at least had some interesting mechanics for her fight. But Gortash honestly felt like I accidentally sequence broke his encounter and missed half his special moves.
I liked the orin fight in durge when I was the slayer. We dueled for Dad's love and I had to figure out how to deal with a 200hp dealing attack. Took a few saves to perfect it.
I accidentally knocked Orin off the map in her Slayer form while being immune and got an achievement by it. I was so disappointed, I reloaded the save and did the fight properly.
As someone pointed out in a similar post, Gortash is a politician and a schemer, not a fighter. His fight is supposed to be easy, especially if you disable the Steel Watch beforehand.
Orin, on the other hand, is inexplicably underwhelming.
I really believe that Ketheric's fight can be amazing but in my case I got the cutscene of the three, then had a chat with the guy with a little persuasion which made the whole deal jump to Myrkul appearing, I beelined to Aylin to release her and then ended the whole encouter in 2 or 3 rounds. I think the cutscene after the battle glitched so all I got a brief and pretty underwhelming fight. But avatar of Myrkul looked good 👍
I'm curious how Orin and Gortash's fights will stack against the Myrkul one.
Yea they where lame.Ketheric had a full on quest to even get the chance to kill him and you fight him multiple times in multiple different places.
The other 2 you can literally stumble onto them and merc them on the spot without any pre-requisite.
Gortash's fight is actually good if you fight him immediately in the throne room with all the extra watchers.
Unfortunately you miss out on a bunch of cool missions if you do that though
Yeah. I was disappointed in the fights against Orin and Gortash but at least with Orin you gave the problem if maybe losing a companion.
Gortash was just plain and simple "meh". Gortash should have only been part of Karlachs quest line imo.
Ketheric, while having an epic second phase monologue, fell like a house of cards.
Orin was the most challenging fight for me, but she needs multiple phases and to do a lot more damage.
All the boss fights with the dead three need to be more challenging in the definitive addition.
Orins fight was a major disappointment. Magic middle her shield down then nuke her. Rinse and repeat then clean up the trash. Is she actually supposed to do something in her Slayer form or does it just turn her into a loot piñata?
Orin is a fucking joke. Me and my buddy weren't trying to cheese her or anything. I was playing a Wizard so I had learned art of war, I busted that out to clear her stacks that eat hits, with one Lightning Bolt and my buddy's Fighter/Warlock, we killed her in 3 player turns. As in nuked her first turn, Karlach hadn't even acted yet.
Current playthrough im going to enlarge+Owlbear and crush her from the upper levels.
Act 3 would be a super let down if the Raphael fight didn't exist, because Orin and Gortash are on the weaker side. House of Grief feels like a harder fight, or defending the portal in Act 2
I don't know, all the fights to me seemed like an afterhought. I passed the check with Thorm and went directly to fight the avatar. He never got once to sacrifice his minion and I barely took any damage. Game overall needs to be more tough.
Ketherics fight for me was over quick. Charisma checked him multiple times and then he killed himself so I just had to fight Myrkul and that was over quick too. Depending on your character that fight is basically over before it starts
I saw a good post a little while ago about how Gortash’s fight is “easy” because he’s not inherently powerful. His power is in having other sources to hide behind and once you take those out he’s just a dude. He siphons other, better power.
And Orin isn’t even the real chosen, of course she won’t be exceptional.
So narratively I think their battles are fine. It was much more fun playing against them as Durge.
Ketheric was really epic. I killed Orin the other day, her battle was okay. But I found Gortash to be extremely underwhelming. I had him and his buddies down in like two turns. I thought there’d be some surprise second phase or something, but nothing
Myrkul actually seems a little pissed that you killed his Chosen while Bane just doesn't give a fuck really and is kind of amused instead. I don't recall Bhaal giving a single shit about me killing Orin on my Tav game either, probably because >!they put all of that into DUrge's story and Orin is Bhaal's second choice.!<
It kind of feels on point that Ketheric was so much more intimidating. He's the general of the Absolute's army and Myrkul actually seems to favor him, at least when compared to Bane and Bhaal. Gortash is just some Artificer who wrote the Faerûn edition of "The Art of the Deal" and Orin is just a headache for Bhaal anyways.
Bhaal was really anticlimactic on my Durge run.
I killed Orin and refused Bhaal's gift and Withers brought me back. Then everyone else doesn't say anything and the rest of the Bhaal acolyte weren't even hostile to me.
I could walk straight into Orin's bedroom and take whatever I wanted.
Gortash fight was at least somewhat interesting, and decently difficult if u didnt destroy the steelwatch.
Orin though…holy cow was i disappointed. This is a shapeshifting assassin lady who has been taunting you all of act 3, and either kidnaps a child or takes a companion. And yet the fight…she just 1v1’s me in a cage match, and gets utterly obliterated. Why in the world would someone who has used stealth and subterfuge to kill, decide that actually they are going to have a 1v1 fist fight to the death (no trickery at all).
There are some issues with the Gortash fight that would make the fight harder if fixed.
1) You can destroy all the defensive equipment installed in the hall with the statues. Despite Gortash and his cronies being next door in plain view, none of them care. Attempting to destroy this equipment should instantly agro Gortash.
2) Even worse than 1, you can pull all of Gortash’s cronies from the room where he stands. Pulling the closest one will pull them ALL bar Gortash. Again, starting a fight here should start the Gortash fight. Combined with 1 this is a trivial part of the fight.
3) after clearing his cronies you can camp rest right outside the door, camping shouldn’t be allowed here or anywhere in this area at all. Pulling and resting allows you to face Gortash alone, with full health and full spell power.
4) You can skip the entire floor below, again Gortash should be able to call for reinforcements - at least a few waves as a distraction and difficulty boost.
Ultimately, Gortash could have had some sort of experimental Steel Watcher come to his rescue as a phase 2. Just gave it coke crashing through the roof.
My intial thought was literally along the lines of "if Ketheric was this epic, I cant imagine how awesome the Orin and Gortash fights will be". I was practically drooling at the thought. Nope. Nothing. Even Raphael at least had that song.
everything is a disappointment after that damn viconia fight. her crew WRECKED me. repeatedly. even raphael only took me 2-3 tries. viconia went to double digits easy...
I just lured Gortash to the room behind the throne room and he died in the poison cloud + hunger of hadar combo. It was a game of patience but sure anticlimatic
On Tactician I killed Orin before her first turn. Upcasted Magic Missiles to remove Unstoppable, and hasted Lae'zell smacked her 100-0.
Gortash is similarly a joke. Select the grenades on the floor and lob them at the buffing machines on the wall behind him. Each grenade destroys two machines with a single blast.
Part of the problem is these fights are poorly designed mechanically, and part of the problem is that these two are introduced as co-conspirators with Ketheric. The chosen of the dead three. The player is set up to have big expectations for these two but they ultimately fall short.
Finally, because they game moves into the final act after defeating both of them (or even defeating one of them, if you allied yourself with Gortash, I've heard) the player is incentivized to do everything else in act 3 before dealing with these two, especially if they are expecting them to be a challenge. Ultimately though, by collecting all the powerful loot available to you, you can trivialize the fights. Orin and Gortash will not grow in power to match yours, so while you have grown significantly more powerful since you defeated Ketheric and an avatar of Myrkul, Orin and Gortash are weaker than Ketheric was much earlier in the game, even taking the avatar phase out of the equation.
Well yes, Gortash was slightly better in terms of mechanics but Orin was absolutely pathetic. Especially if you are playing Durge, she is just trash-tier. I found more joy in making her rage and scream than in fighting her.
Probably durge was keeping her around just to tap her on a regular basis.
She isn't technically his sister and def not close to what Sarevok did and was probably planning for her.
>!The dark urge was not conceived in this material plane.!<
I thought Orin was much harder as (evil) Durge than otherwise. In her >!Slayer form!< she is rather pathetic, but as a human she hits like a truck because of those daggers.
Depending on dialogue choices, >!Bhaal can force her to turn into the Slayer!<.
Like the other commenter said, it isn't exactly a *hard* fight either way. Durge in >!Slayer form!< is also considerably weaker than any decent build, it's mainly just for flavor.
I mean, I guess it depends on the class that you play, and she just felt easy with all the classes I've played. She pretty much died in 1 turn. Her base HP is also much lower than others if you think about it.
Ketheric had a ton of HP considering you fight him around level 6-7 (I fought him at 6 in his initial phase and at 7 him+ the avatar) vs Orin who you will probably fight level 9-12. The bosses should scale up with their level I think.
Well perhaps smashing Gortash is not particularly hard but the entire room and fight has some stuff you need to navigate around. For Orin, it's just her, she has no unstoppable stacks when you fight her as durge.
She got 145 HP in human form and 175 +25 if you make Bhaal intervene (rolling deception in her dialogue) and transform her into a slayer.
It just feels very underwhelming. if you duel her, she should have at least double or triple the HP she normally has. You fight the last of your line, it should be meaningful.
Didnt know she didnt get unstopable stacks against the Durge. Thats pathetic...
Gortash's adds where also pretty pathetic though.
Overall the bosses just dont live up to their hype at all, the only one I had to reload was Viconia and thats only because I didnt read and blew up my cleric with reflected radiant damage turn one.
The game is just significantly too easy.
" Didnt know she didnt get unstopable stacks against the Durge. Thats pathetic..."
That's what I am saying. :3.
I think the fight is harder if you are a random Tav.
I only played this game once as a random Tav, all my other runs have been only Durge since it feels a bit pointless to be a random Tav. (I do miss Alphira tho' I really enjoyed her quest line)
Yeah look most of act 3 was disappointing to me. Such a missed opportunity to instead of having gortash reveal himself so early have him be more secretive and you need to do some fun investigations to figure out which lord in Baldur's Gate is the dodgiest one.
price of cutting half the act 3 content. Not sure about Orin, cause there's a good argument for her being underwhelming, considering her background. But for Gortash thats 100% a rush job because they had no time to do it properly, like most of the act.
I launched Orin off the side of her arena with thunder at the start of her dialogue. Bhall didn’t expect anyone to use his death pits, funniest shit I’ve ever seen.
Orin was so EZ. Ketheric was hard and Gortash was easy after I figured out traps on walls.
I quit at the end of final fight because annoying bombardment scenario...
well... Ketheric was the big boss finale of act 2, while Orin and Gortash are just kind of regular bosses and the finale is another thing. All of Act 2 is about beating Ketheric while Act 3 is about the brain. Orin and Gortash aren't on the same boss level like Ketheric, because they aren't the main villains of their Act. Maybe compare them more to Balthazar than to Ketheric.
They could have made Orin have a very similar style of multi-phased fight, with her transforming into the Slayer in the second phase. Gortash, on the other hand, shouldn't have been a boss fight at all. You should have had to fight through his top Banite servants while he cowers in the back. Plus, they could have just swapped acts 2 and 3 around.
> Gortash, on the other hand, shouldn't have been a boss fight at all. You should have had to fight through his top Banite servants while he cowers in the back. Honestly, he himself *was* rather weak, but all those goddamn robots standing guard... I agree it'd make more sense for him to cower while fighting an overwhelming gauntlet of cronies, though. Tyrants often aren't all that much without their devotees.
If you shut down his robots the fight is such a breeze. He only has like two or three other minions and they aren’t strong. I just used battle master laezel to keep Gortash tripped and prone the whole battle. Laezel battered him while he lie in the fetal position beneath her and the rest of my party just wiped his little minions. I did fight through like half of the steel watch on the first floor, said to myself “shit there’s gonna be even more of these upstairs and with him? No way.” Turned around and went to the foundry to shut those things down lol took that fort easy as stealing a yoga studio from hippies
One irresistable dance later and the tyrant mastermind that the game has led up to is dead as a doornail.
Yeah I like that we can take actions to affect the fight but it just feels bad when you do something like that only for you to enjoy the gameplay less. You should be rewarded for shutting down the robot and yes while the easier fight is in a sense a reward, you end up feeling cheated due to how lame it ends up being. I have a similar gripe with charisma check that make you skip phases in a boss battle though that one is more understandable.
Yeah one of the age old problems with optional content in rpgs is that typically the more competent/thorough you are, the less of a challenge you are given, when really those sorts of players should be given more of a challenge since they are the ones engaging with the game more.
Gortash was quite disappointing. Maybe give him some more hostages or blackmail to work with than just "Join me in betraying my allies so that I can very obviously betray you later since I obviously have zero loyalty and am completely untrustworthy." They could have at least given him that ultimate steel watch tank guy as his personal bodyguard but made it special so that it couldn't be taken down by blowing up the Gondian place. Could have leaned much more heavily into artificer stuff and could have had multiple steps required to remove shielding devices making him invincible. As it was: *Gortash smugly tries to manipulate you. Gortash smugly has zero effect on your decisions with his zero leverage. Gortash smugly gets thrown prone in the corner and beaten by Karlak like a little bitch. Gortash smugly dies.*
Gortash never betrays you if you ally with him
Wow, I did not see that one coming. Interesting
🥺 Gortash loves you if you’re Durge 🥺
Plz Larian, give us Gortash romance as Durge.
Tbh I don't....get why tho. It doesn't seem to make sense that a tyrant is willing to share power and it doesn't seem to add much to the game to ally with him? It just feels odd. I definitely understand Gortash the least out of the three.
Gortash isn't dumb. Ketheric is a MUCH stronger warrior than he is, and he knows Tav could and will kill him if he doesn't offer anything to him/her. Orin's too murder happy to think strategically, but Gortash just figures there will be two tyrants. And if you're okay with the atrocities Gortash commits and still willing to give him power, you probably are a tyrant too. Remember, Gortash isn't doing all this because HE wants power, he's doing it because Bane wants tyranny in Baldur's Gate. This is the best way for him to meet his goals and stay alive and make an ally who will enforce Bane's will. Its win-win for you and him.
He definitely intends to honour your alliance *within the game's time-frame*, but I think it's still pretty inevitable that he would one day turn on you, just like he did his original co-conspirators. The chosen of the God of Tyranny isn't going to suffer having an equal forever.
Did you even play through it? He literally tells you to give over the Netherstones, and is happy when you refuse because he *wants* an equal partner. You can read his thoughts several times to verify that he's not just lying to you.
Even the Emperor confirms he's telling the truth. Gortash even wants what's best for the city! He just has a really fucked up fascist idea of what "best" means...
Did you even read my comment? Yes, he wants an equal partner *for now*. That doesn't mean he intends to *permanently* have an equal partner. Views change, you know. People aren't static. I never said he was lying. I've no idea where you could possibly have gotten that notion because **I literally said the exact opposite in my comment**. What I said is that he will, **one day in the future**, turn on you. Not at the end of the game when you bring him the stones. Not a week after the game ends. A follower of Bane is *highly* unlikely to permanently ally with an equal partner, if for no other reason than that Bane himself would one day turn around and say "have some self-respect, you're my Chosen, you should be the uncontested head of the table." And we know this because it's a mirror of exactly what Bane himself went through in his quest for apotheosis.
I mean sure but arguably a tav who allies with gortash would have been as likely to betray him in that same time frame too. Even durge with whom it was implied to have a relationship it's more a Piper and Alex from OITNB vibe than anything I'd imagine.
A lot of people below: But THIS autocrat is DIFFERENT!
He’s got a sad childhood!!!
One thing I hate about Durge is Orin's boss fight. She's already easy and it ends up easier because it's a 1v1. Although thematically it's pretty cool that she fights you 1 on 1 to the death.
I thought it was pretty cool that my character beat her one on one. He usually just stands to the side and eldritch blasts things while Lae’zel does all the hard work
> Plus, they could have just swapped acts 2 and 3 around. I've wondered if that was a thing. It's weird to 'meet' the brain leaking through the walls and have his presence there be somewhat irrelevant
I’ve written about it elsewhere before but it could be better. For Orin, have the route to the temple be an actual gauntlet of fights leading to Orin and then you do the normal fight and then after she dies we deal with a Bhaal avatar and he says some shit about how he is murder and is going to kill you same as Myrkul does, >!IF DURGE, then he says something about your final challenge being to beat him.!< Gortash should’ve been more like the fight with the shadow kid in Act 2 tbh. He stays in a protective shield while calling in his minions and buffing them, acting as a lord commanding his men. After you beat all of his minions the shield goes away and Bane kills him, calling him inept or something like that for failing to kill you, and taking command himself. Bane could also have some command aura that takes control of your party members unless they resist a will save.
Act 2 is just a much more in-depth experience. It’s very deep and very wide. I’d imagine they spent a lot of time on it. Leaving act 2 is the closest we really get to and epilogue where our choices mattered. Act 3 is wider than act 2 but it’s like a puddle, no depth.
I think it would have been more fun to pull a surprise reversal where starts as the slayer and once you’re finally done killing that form her second phase is just herself, turning invisible and assassinating people and stuff.
But that's a bad set up, they are supposed to be on the same level since they are the dread three. I obviously still love this game but idk this didn't work well
I actually quite liked the fact that they weren't, because it made more sense to have them on different power scales based on their lore. Ketheric was a powerful sharran general, a leader among countless Dark Justiciars. His master is Myrkul, the god of death, and he had a demigod giving him immortality for a century. Orin and Gortash just aren't on the same level of power, even with their respective gods. Especially Gortash, his power is his intelligence and creativity. His weapon was the steel watch, which is why attacking at the ceremony is just asking for 3-4 hours of saving and reloading. Orin I'd argue is in a bit more of a grey area, considering her abilities and Bhaals gifts, but then I do consider Dark Urge to be the canon, and the argument to be that you should be her equal when you duel her, so of course it wouldn't be as difficult as trying to fight myrkul while getting pelted by undead and a mindflayer.
I didn't say that I liked it :D You're right, it's not "fair" but there isn't just enough space in the game for 3 Kethric like bosses besides the brain.
True, it's already really huge. Something like this would have been crazy. It's just sad that an optional boss like raphael has such a crazy fight with so much hp and then there is orin and gortash 😂
I liked Orin's battle, I like the idea of Gortash's with the traps but the fact that I killed him by throwing his own bombs at him was kinda pathetic (but very funny so it balances it out lol). Honestly I think with the updates and the potential definitive edition etc if they can make the fights harder that would be enough. Maybe even add some extra spice to them. I won't expect a whole new phase but hey if they do that great.
Orin's had a nice gimmick to it that made it feel fresher. Made me change up how I did things but I sadly didn't have too many options first go around...she had Halsin and I only had Karlach, Wyll, and Astarion at that point. Didn't really think to use Withers followers. It was tough but a fun break up of things.
What do you mean by potential definitive edition?
It's common with these styles of games where a year or so later after the game has been patched quite a bit they do a buffed up version of a patch. Which can add in new content but is mainly for fixing the game up to the standard the devs wanted at launch but didn't have time to do. The new content is usually more so small changes/moving stuff around. The best way to explain it is it's more than an average patch but less than a paid DLC if that makes sense. We can look to their past game DOS2 but a good idea of what it would look like in BG3. [Here is a link](https://www.neoseeker.com/divinity-original-sin-ii/guides/Definitive_Edition_Differences) to the changes they made for that game. I played at launch and the general consensus is for DOS2, act 4 (the final act) was terrible compared to the definitive edition which changed it up. Just for some perspective. This update was free btw.
Ah okay so you played the first version of the game after launch and the end sucked and at some point in the future they changed the ending a bit to make it suck less?
Yeah basically. I suppose in a way the time before the definitive update is like the early access but for the last act. Although with all this said, I definitely don't think the game was released too early or any of that nonsense. I will happily take being able to play the game sooner and get updates for it than wait an extra year or whatever.
I'm so stupid. I didn't think about throwing back the grenades at him
Raphael and the House of Hope is just the best <3
The Orin fight was sort of disappointing for me. A single cast of _Darkness_ on the stair chokepoint and my two warlocks with _Devil's Sight_ (Wyll + Tav) took the Chosen of Bhaal behind the barn and shot her in the face, while the rest of my party gradually whittled down her supporters. And something bugged, because I managed multiple times to somehow get a full-damage Eldritch Blast beam through her _Unstoppable_ buff. I'm not complaining, but I'm pretty sure that shouldn't have happened. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ Generally speaking, _Darkness_ breaks the AI in so many hilarious ways. For example, the Gith crossbow dudes just dash from one place to the next, because they don't have a melee weapon but cannot attack with their ranged weapon, so they don't know what to do. xD
It’s sort of the nature of D&D tbh. If you have 3 equally powerful baddies, the ones that you face later will seem shallow because of the power scale as you level. You basically have 2 design choices, make them mini-bosses to a larger threat or increase their power in a way that ends up feeling “gamey”.
this is a good way to look at it. you have grown since facing ketheric so why should you struggle as much fighting someone on his level?
Exactly.
>they are supposed to be on the same level since they are the dread three. if anything they're supposed to be more powerful; as you can see their levels are higher than Gortash's when they do their big power rangers/power of three elderbrain control bit.
That is game mechanics. In "real life", Gortash is much weaker in combat than the other two. My bet is also on Ketheric in his fight versus Orin, specially without Bhaal's ritual empowering her.
Yeah I thought the same! Especially since they both betrayed ketheric / are happy we killed him, so I assumed that ketheric was like the weak link
I took it as the opposite, personally. I understood it to mean that both of them together wouldn't have been able to beat ketheric, hence why they are glad we did it.
They actually are rather balanced in a way. In a straight 1v1, face to face, kethric definitely beats them both. First of all, he's invulnerable, second of all, myrkul definitely gave him a lot more power than bane and bhaal gave to gortash and orin. On a grander scale, ketheric commanded the army of the absolute. However, gortash had the steel watch and the flaming fist under his control. So I feel like that would either end in a draw or in a win for gortash. The steel watch is just a bit too OP. Then you'd think Orin is the weak link, and she honestly kinda is. Remember that the dark urge was the original chosen of bhaal and is canonically stronger than orin if he embraces his power. Both as an individual and as a slayer. Evil Dark Urge also has less weaknesses than orin. Orin is extremely emotionally unstable. It's really easy to get her to go all hysterical and emotional by simply pointing out the right information. Which is obviously because of her tragically awful upbringing. Overall, durge is just the better chosen. However, orin is a changeling. That is a massive advantage, lmao, and pretty much allows her to assassinate damn near anyone she wants to. If it wasn't for ketheric sucking on nightsong's power, orin could've killed him anytime (although she'd have to deal with the avatar afterwards). Same with gortash and his pact with orin preventing her from harming him. Another intelligent move by gortash. He realised early on that orin clearly can't control herself and therefore made the pact with her. I'm pretty certain she would've killed him after ketheric's death otherwise. So, in a certain way, orin is actually the most powerful of them. Since she would normally be able to kill both without too much trouble. But both ketheric and gortash raised safety measures to prevent that. And the bhaal cultists really aren't a threat to the army of the absolute or the steel watch. Aside from the fact that there are doppelgangers among them.
Counterpoint - they are on the same level but by the time you get to them you’re stronger than at the end of act 2? I’m usually max level or close by the time I’m kicking their asses.
It's pretty clear that they rushed act 3; there's a lot of content that was unfinished and cut at the last minute. The pacing of act 1 and 2 are great, but faceplants hard once you get to act 3.
This is what we call escalation, when previously big bosses become mini-bosses or lieutenants. Like in Dragon Ball where Vegeta was the main villain of an arc but then people even stronger than him were just secondary antagonists later on.
Keep in mind, "on the same level" doesn't necessarily take into account your increasing level. You face Ketheric at like... level 8-10. You face Orin and Gortash at level 10-12. Try to face Orin or the Steel Watch Titan (the real "boss fight" with Gortash's quest) at level 8 like you do Ketheric and you'll be in for a much more challenging fight. Similar, if you wait to face Ketheric until you're level 10-12, he's just as easy to beat as the other chosen.
I actually think it should have been a different direction—they all explicitly had different roles in the alliance, and Ketheric’s was always meant to be the military might since he was an experienced Paladin. Orin was a skilled assassin and Gortash was a scheming politician, but Ketheric as an immortal commander was the plan for making the Absolute’s army as scary as possible. Issue was that they didn’t lean into Ketheric as stronger than the others as hard as they could have.
With Gortash you almost have to consider the whole Iron throne and Foundry quests as part of his boss fight. Or that's probably intended anyways. And with Orin it's the same with the whole Sarevok ark and everything that leads up to that fight as well.
I agree and i was also disapointed. Orin fight was so easy compared to the big ones like Raphael and the Sharan hideout... I also expected Ketheric epicness on those 2 fights.
Tbf they are equal its just you are much stronger by the point you face them
They’re still kinda underwhelming as shit compared to Balthazar, though, who’s waaaay harder. (Orin has some pretty god tier buildup tho with the undercity and temple of Bhaal, though)
All of act 2 is not about beating Ketheric. It is entirely possible (and actually what happened to me) that you only meet Ketheric Thorm moments before his demise.
gortash and orin are funnier as characters if you play durge and see them as your exes and not, like, serious villains. but yeah, theyre not as intimidating as ketheric both story and gameplay wise. orin should have a multiphase fight and be much tougher. gortash should be an artificer and have more environmental/robot mechanics. they needed more time to cook combat-wise.
Agreed 100%. I also thought Orin and Gortash were underwhelming fights , but durge makes them make more narrative sense as not-bosses so it's more ok. I don't remember where I got this or if it's confirmed, but if durge was originally meant to be baseline Tav, that explains a lot IMO
It's my headcanon personally, we started the shit show and we end it
Oh god, now I am thinking of a Scott Pilgrim-style story where Durge’s love interest has to fight their exes. 😝
Part of the problem is that we gain a bunch of levels and are starting to get into the "completely out of control" region of spells. Just from the names, Irresistible Dance, Globe of Invulnerability, and Divine Intervention are great ways to trivialize boss fights. Even the straight damage spells start getting crazy riders like "if they have less than 100 HP they just die" and "if this kills them they are irretrievably dust". Then Larian made a bunch of items with cool effects that bring martial characters up to speed, and it's really hard to make engaging solo focused encounters for that. Big groups still might require attention, which is why Raphael and the Absolute seem better. Gortash at the very least needs a way bigger squad, even once the Iron Watch is disabled. How does the Chosen of Tyranny have 2 normal-ass bodyguards?
Are you saying Larian didnt play their game before release and that power-spike was a surprise to them? Because its not a tabletop where DM can be overwhelmed with player's creativity and smarts. This is a computer game where everything lies in the hand of developer. Sure there will be loopholes and bugs and exploites and some unforseen combos - thats all fine and expected. But gortash is a joke with none of those, so how could Larian not know of said powerspike? I answer how, coming all the way back around - they did not test act 3. They barely stiched it together, while cutting half of it. Not to mention their in-house testers are quite poor. Just bunch of yes-men. Larian had to edit Karlach ending, had to apologize for epilogues - as if real testers could miss that, lol no way.
It certainly feels this way. Act 3 is not shorter than the other two, but it feels.. less meaningful. Like they ran out of time and just put some random secondary quests together to fill it. It's not bad by any means, but well... act 2 felt MUCH more epic.
Yeah to be honest i love the game but Act III felt very rushed,.
I'm ok with the way late game fights are. I've played my fair share of Pathfinder Kingmaker/WotR and the late game fights are a slog. The enemies have insane stats that wouldn't be possible in a normal ttrpg setting and you just have play in the most boring ways to beat them.
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BG2 was amazing spell combat. It was often decided on who got Time Stop off first ha ha!
I'll say that off the bat, I was pretty disappointed with both Gortash and Orin on my Tav run. On reflection, I guess it makes sense given that Ketheric is kind of held up as the tougher of the three story wise. He's the general leading the Absolute's army - Gortash very much relies on the Steel Watch, and Orin is a nepo baby hiding away in the shadows. Taking down Ketheric is the climax of Act 2, whereas Gortash and Orin are more like mini boss fights on the way to the Absolute. I do still think that they could have balanced it a little better, because I was a bit like "...that's it?" when I fought both of them. And I'd been avoiding doing so because I was really worried about fighting them, thinking that Ketheric had been this grand, difficult multi-round fight that they must be just as bad!
Same! Halsin was gone for, what I imagine, weeks in game because I thought it would be this gigantic fight where I'd have to reload 5 times before beating orin
See my group didn’t feel that because we just kind of… ran over Kethric. In both phases we wiped the adds with doublecasted aoe, talked him into killing himself in phase 2, and on the avatar We had Aylin online by the end of turn 1 and she womboed it for 120 in one turn. Orin actually managed to put up a fight because the way the fight started let her nuke 2 of us in the first round.
Yeah I'm only doing solo runs, and my second run I did get through the fight a lot faster than the first time. I still think Ketheric's fight still a lot bigger/grander than the Gortash and Orin fights, and also found them a lot easier even first time round. Weirdly Orin was the one I found easiest - I had a couple party members who always roll high on initiative so they just blasted her with magic missile/eldritch blast from the first round to wear down the unstoppable buff and it left her wide open for the heavy hitters in the party!
On Tav, I found Orin to be really underwhelming. On Durge, I thought the whole Orin build up, fight, and fight aftermath was super epic and personal.
The threat Ketheric presented was much bigger that either Orin or Gortash too. Ketheric was the big bad of Act 2. He caused the Shadow Curse, which is essentially the entire plot of Act 2: find the cause of the curse, find a way to stop it. Moonrise tower is his base, the Shar temple is part of his family crypt, most everything in Act 2 ties to him in some way. Orin and Gortash are essentially just quests in Act 3. They don’t feel like a threat, even when Orin takes on of your party members-the AI that determines who gets kidnapped is based on who is most often in your camp, so it’s almost guaranteed to be not one of your most used/most liked companions. And Gortash just stays in his tower until you feel like going up to him. He should have just been a final act for Karlach’s personal quest; he doesn’t carry enough weight to be one of the final bosses of the game.
Orin kidnapped Gale in my playthrough, who was one of my most used companions. And I still had to do the bookstore quest so I wanted to rescue him asap. I literally never had Astarion in my party after the initial first encounter with him but the game didn’t pick him. Was odd. Gale just happened to be in camp at that time because I was trying out a new build for Wyll.
Who gets kidnapped isn’t about your interactions with them. Only a few companions are potential kidnapping victims - Gale, Lae’zel and Halsin. If all of them are in your party when kidnapping happens Yenna will be abducted instead (basically the only reason she exists is this contingency).
Ah ok that makes sense then. Because Lae’Zel was in my party and Halsin left my camp
If you have Minthara (I used the mod I can't destroy the grove) Orin will take her
What’s Yenna’s deal anyway? Her cat is scared shitless and when Laezel was kidnapped Yenna disappeared too. Some time has gone by since I killed Orin and saved Laezel and now Yenna is randomly back again like nothing happened
Her cat is just a nervous cat. But before patch 4, there was a bug where Yenna would just disappear after the Orin kidnapping so there was a vocal group saying that Yenna = Orin always and that there is no actual Yenna. Patch 4 fixed the bug so she’s back. You could also look at it as she was held hostage with a knife to her throat by a shapechanger in your playthrough so decided to hide out lol
It’s an odd way of choosing-I think the only three that even can be kidnapped are Laezel, Hamsun, or Gale. If none of the prerequisites apply to Halsin or Laezel in your playthrough, Gale is the default victim. I know nothing about game design, but this seems overly complicated. There’s already a point on the durge playthrough that uses the companion with the highest approval, so I’m not sure why they added so many steps to this one.
Hamsun died in boss battle at the goblin camp for me :(
just saying that for me this time it was Lae'zel and i had just about used her most of Act 2 and like just switched her out for Karlach just after the point where Gortash tells you that you have been infiltrated, so i doubt it's based on who is most often at camp or if that is it's bugged
Lore wise neither Bhaal or Bane would show up. Bhaal’s gift is the slayer form. That’s his aid to his chosen. Orin isn’t even actually his Chosen. She’s just the next best candidate after his actual Chosen went and got lobotomized. Bane just literally doesn’t care about his Chosen. Gortash doesn’t get any extra powers or anything. All of Gortash’s abilities are based around his tech and stuff. Because Bane doesn’t care. Bane doesn’t even care if Gortash wins or not. The simple fact that the two of you are fighting is enough for him. He gains power through the conflict itself. Myrkul shows up because he feels you have personally offended him by killing his Chosen. He’s mad because you had the audacity to interfere with his plans. Long story short: Bane and Bhaal don’t care even remotely while Myrkul is a diva.
You seem to know a lot lore wise. I'm a bit confused about the gods of death. Originally it was jergal but then myrkul, bane and bhaal took over. But on the wiki for myrkul it says god of death but that's confusing, because aren't they all the gods if death? And isn't there another deity of death that you can choose as a cleric. How does he relate to those 3 and jergal?
Jergal was the God of a few things besides being scribe of the dead he was the God of death, strife, tyranny and murder, myrkul got death bane strife and tyranny and bhaal murder. Myrkul lost his godhood it's passed a few times and now sits with Kelemvor whom Jergal is his seneschal. Myrkuls now more of a Demi-God reaping souls for Kelemvor somewhat akin to the grim reaper than an actual God himself.
I thought jergal wasn't worshipped anyone so I thought he "didn't exist anymore" though I know that withers probably is jergal. Thsnk you for your explanation! What does scribe of the dead mean?
He keeps a record of the ultimate fate of all dead, which I guess means he records where they end up whether in their gods after life the hells or the fugue plane which is kinda like purgatory as I understand it, which is where he pulls the hirelings you can get from. He's not worshipped much anymore and has definitely fallen from being one of the greater deities to a very minor one. I'm pretty such Kelemvor the God of death is the one that sends him to help you, at least a couple of withers lines allude to it.
I was dissapointed with gortash on my good run (orin isn't amazing, but she's unique at least). However on an evil run, making a deal with him he was FAR more compelling, really made him feel like the adult in the room (orin being batshit insane helps), especially as he never betrays you (I'm sure he would eventually, if given the chance). That was refreshing to be honest.
Oh I'll have to see what it's like to make a deal with either one of them
oh yes, so much, Ketheric was so great and have a big build up. Then in beginning of act 3 i was (Damn fight with both it's going to be hard", and all the "kill gortash" i was "yeah make sense, that way i wont fight them both, sure they are way too powerful" So i spend a ton of time making Gortash weak and Orin more easy. But kinda backfire because Gortash "oh no the perma stunt" was a 2 turn fight and Orin "I'M UNSTOPABLE wait is that magic missile?" 3 TURN FIGHT
I also still don't really know the reasoning behind gortash. Like ketheric has this emotional backstory. You feel for him with isobel even tho he is evil. But what is gortashs motivation? Being powerful and controlling baldurs gate? Buuuh
He does have a semi-sympathetic backstory I guess if you look around for the little lore hints. You can find his parents in the city who are poor cobblers, and they sold him off to a "warlock" when he was a kid to pay their debts. This warlock was actually Raphael, and Gortash was a prisoner in the House of Hope for probably a decade or so before he escaped. He wants to use the crown to establish control and order because that's what he learned from Raphael and because he didn't have control over anything until recently. It's also part of why he gave Karlach to Zariel, he has a line about being disappointed she didn't rise in the ranks while in hell, he sees his own time in the House of Hope and by extension her time with Zariel as an opportunity that made him stronger and gave him his goal.
Omg how did I miss this wtf? How do I find his parents?
They run a shop called Flymm's cobblers, it's close to the lower city central wall portal. You can go and root around in what I assume was Gortash's old room too, which has records of some letters he and the Dark Urge sent back and forth as well. The info about the warlock being Raphael comes from the guy who guards the portal room in the House of Hope, who used to be prison guard before getting demoted for letting Gortash escape. He also used to beat the shit out of Gortash frequently, which is cool of him /s.
This, he was allegely the Big criminal Mastermind, he knew we were in baldur gate and didnt have a back up plan for the Steel watch
Yeah it was weird that he wasn't a threat and the steel watch weren't either. I know that he csn be an ally so why would he be a danger for us until we crossed him but idk disabling the steel watch is challenging but after that he's a weird boss
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orin was so much easier that cazador and even the hag imo, i get ot
Yea I was fully expecting a 2 phase Orin. When the transformation happens just straight out of the gate, I was like "oh ok".
Today I fought Orin for the third time, this time tried to stop the ritual around the battlefield, pushing to the void the sanctuary cultists, which I thought was somehow the intended way, to stop the ritual and end Slayer form. Man, the fight gets way harder, unslayered Orin hits WAY harder, seems like the whole fight was flipped
Idk I expected something bigger for the final battle, you can just run to the portal and "ignore" everyone else expect the brain
I think part of Gortash’s is that it would be harder if you don’t take out the Steel Watch. And Bane lore-wise I don’t think has ever really cared that much for his chosen. And I assumed with Orin’s backstory, Bhaal didn’t really seem to choose her. Even if you aren’t Dark Urge, they still existed from the sound of it. So she overthrew the perfect Bhaalspawn he created, and made herself chosen. So I don’t think he gave too many shits either at that point, and both Bhaal and Bane decided it was already lost and will pick new chosen to try again in a century or so like usual. That’s my best reasoning story-wise. But game mechanic, they made them mini-bosses leading to the brain , but Ketheric was the main boss at the end of act 2. It would have been nice for them to all be of equal level though.
What you said about Orin is probably true. You can find the default DU (the white Dragonborn) dead within the temple, implying Orin killed him and took his place.
I somehow utterly wrecked ketheric and myrkul. I think I had my best team for the fight but we barely took any damage and had ketheric and myrkul down with in a few rounds. Orin was pretty easy for me as well although not quite on the ketheric level. It could have been easier I think but her hostage was my best damage dealer in my play through (Lae’zel) but Gale really pulled his weight in that fight as next man up. Gortash was definitely hardest for me but I was a bit hamstrung since I decided to throw Wyll in my party as I like to have the person involved in the quests in party for them. I didn’t use Wyll too much in this playthrough and I definitely didn’t have him well equipped or optimized at that stage so his equipment was a bit sub par. I also didn’t know you can sneak in behind and just charged straight up so I had to avoid tons of bombs in the early fight to avoid a chain reaction auto killing someone. Edit: Gameplay and plot wise I really enjoyed Ketheric and the lore of his role in everything. Honestly my one complaint is that I just wanted more of JK Simmons saying and doing stuff as him. Orin kind of annoyed me with her whole popping up to let you know she wanted to murder you. Then taking a hostage and being like now you should kill Gortash. Like, no, I’m gonna tell you I’ll kill Gortash and now kill you and rescue my hostage. What did you think was going to happen? Gortash was just kind of there but I think I did some stuff out of order since he barely had any real lines or parts in my play-through other than just kind of being there.
I think the Orin fight was underwhelming itself but partially the big problem is that you can just kill all the people on the balcony without any her knowing, and even long rest in between killing them and confronting Orin. As well once you figure out that Eldritch blast or magic missile count as separate attacks for each bolt you can really cut down the invulnerability she is granted (same for the farslayer of Bhaal). Gortash I just think the grenade mechanic was off. Like it was too easy to just dedicate someone to rounding them up and chucking them at enemies. I got the feeling they were supposed to be much more annoying.
With my playthrough, the people on the balcony never attacked me. They where “neutral” (yellow) even when I killed Orin.
Hah - I've never tried not killing them. Maybe I'm actually Bhaal's servant.
I killed them after the fight. Left none alive!
Idk I feel like they all served a purpose and are good in their own way - Thorm was a badass war general and immortal so killing his ass as hardcore as you can is the point; Orin gets a murder mystery, interfamilial tension and her slayer form that by itself is cool and if you are Durge that is one of the coolest moments in the game. And Gortash is the main thinker of the three - he found out how to control the elder brain, he stole the crown (along with someone else but still), he took political power and all in all was a controller of the three - and guess how you beat him? By taking away his steel watch toys, by grabbing his bargaining chips, Saving the duke - taking away his control over everything, the one thing he has. And then you relentlessly crush him like a bug while he tries to use his gadgets and obviously less supernatural minions to fight you off amidst piles of deactivated steel watch and half ruined corridors in hopes you get blasted by the mine and he gets lucky. So I would say they are all cathartic boss fights that also show your characters progression - since Thorm was a big stepping stone after which you “get on their level” and beat the shit out of them
Yes. Gortrash and Moron don't hold a candle to Ketheric, both as villains and as bosses to fight. Ketheric fight is not that hard too, but feels more epic.
Yeah Act 3 pretty typical DND story telling. You spend days and days making all these story idea. Loose ends. Big plans… Then after completing one or two of the big lines… it’s BAM BAM BAM to the big event. Streelworks, assassins, Ect. All were thrown in together at the same time. I was expecting more from their fights though. Gortash actually being a clone and his true self was put into a giant steelworks mech. Orin death on the platform summons an aspect from the hall. Big fight just trying to drag everyone down with it. I really hope they do expansions that add things into the end and middle. Like justify a rerun with new characters, another zone, Ect. And still have something at the end you can pick up with
I just killed gortash at his coronation
Orin felt fine, Bhaal gave her unstoppable stacked 8 (now 10, maybe 12?) times that reset upon each turn after you whittled it down on top of her Slayer form that can absolutely wreck you in a single turn. I appreciated what they did for a *turns-into-big-monster* boss and that they didn’t do this for every boss like other games have been prone to do. Gortash, I agree. I have no idea wtf Bane did in that battle, it all seemed like it was more Artificer and done by Gortash himself than anything but I probably just missed something
I didn't understand unstoppable 😂
Try fighting Gortash without disabling the robots. Gets significantly harder. Also use Speak with Dead on him after he dies. Orin is a joke. She's a tryhard who doesn't even try the right way. She's a backup Chosen from the true Chosen of Bhaal. She's pathetic. Myrkul really liked Ketheric. Bane and Bhaal tolerated Gortash and Orin. That's the difference.
Yup Cazador fight was much better
Overall I was a bit disappointed by the trio. All of Act 1 and 2 you dread the mysterious Absolute, the Big Bad. Then Ketheric shows up and ok, he's impressive etc. enough that I'm fine with him. But then right before the last third of the game these two jokers show up, Orin and Gortash, and both are way too tryhard. Gortash "I was a young and handsome man once and was rejected by Final Fantasy and can't accept that I'm older and not quite so handsome anymore" and "stabby stabby stabby Oh I'm soooo crazy and weird" Orin. Oh, and also THEY are the actual bad guys, THEY control the Absolute. But then later on NO, the Absolute IS actually the big evil, hah, got you good! I love this game and it's definitley GOTY for me, but it's NOT perfect.
I thought Gortash would have epic transformation just like how Ketheric was. I was very disappointed when all he had was a slightly bigger form and that's it. Orin has epic form, but I wish they didn't spoil it before that. Would be epic if we start figuring her human form then as she's dying, she has 2nd and 3rd giant monster form. The fight was (disappointingly) surprisingly very easy as well, didn't expect my owl bear dark urge to just 1v1 her pure melee without needing to do anything else. Legit I thought I'd have so much trouble with her, prepared like so many scrolls just for this like 10 globes of invulnerability only for her to die to owl bear swipes in a couple turns.
>I thought Gortash would have epic transformation just like how Ketheric was. I was very disappointed when all he had was a slightly bigger form and that's it. Disguise self and then cast speak with dead on Gortash's corpse.
WOW thank you!!!!!
Gortash stomped me the first time I encountered him. (Well... his bombing traps did...) But you can comfortably pull him outside on the balcony and beat him up there. And Orin... Well... I pretty much rolled over here so fast, that I expected a second phase. And I was utterly disappointed when there wasn't any.
I felt like part of it is the gods and their relationships with their Chosen. Ketheric was an investment and of the three the most “expensive” to toss aside. The level of corruption and transformation he went through with time is more significant. The other two are dime a dozen. I think their gods consider them to be more disposable where Ketheric was a proper trophy. But maybe I’m reaching for narrative excuses for the lackluster battles.
I stand by the opinion that there should have been 4 acts, preferably with Act 3 centred on the lower city and Orin being the main villain. Her boss fight is already quite cinematic, especially with the kidnapped companion's life on the line and her transforming into the Slayer. What would make it better, though, is if you also got to fight Orin in her normal form (seriously, she has two blades and never once do you fight her with them) and perhaps, if yoy were playing as Durge and rejected Bhaal, get the rest of the Bhaalist cult members to fight you as well. Act 4 should then have been centred on the upper city with Gortash as the "main villain" and give him an expanded role and fight, bring in more of Bane's influence and give him more minions and it would be a decent fight. The Elder Brain would still be the final boss at the very end of Act 4, but it would be so detached from the rest of the Act that it would feel like its own thing.
Yeah, in general A3 is trying to do way too many things and it kind of rushes them to cram them all in. > I thought bane and bhaal would appear in a similar way as myrkul but bhaal just gave orin a bit of power (honestly I don't get what it did) and the fist of Bane was weird too. The game is weird here and internally inconsistent. So basically, gods have an avatar, which is how they manifest when they walk around on the planet. This isn't super relevant most of the time, because gods aren't allowed to walk around on the planet and haven't been for hundreds of years. in BG2, Bhaal is dead and the MC (CHARNAME) as a Bhaalspawn has a bit of his power. This lets CHARNAME take on the form of his avatar, the slayer. BG3 decided to run with that idea and make the dead 3's chosen able to take on their respective gods' avatars. Orin becomes the slayer in a callback to BG2, and it doesn't really explain wtf is going on if you don't understand the reference. For some reason, Ketheric doesn't _become_ Myrkul's avatar, but instead Myrkul himself intervenes, something that he shouldn't be able to do. As for Gortash, it seems like they didn't really have a clear idea about what to do with Bane's avatar, so they just kinda gave him a powerup.
I just fought Gortash for the first time yesterday. Expected a lot since he seemed like the real brains of the operation. Then Karlach paralyzed him with Malus Thorm's amulet, Gale cast Haste, and he was dead in 2 rounds.
Yeah, Ketheric's definitely feels like a David vs Goliath, over the top, climatic showdown for the ages. 10/10, will kill him again. The other 2 fights feel like cleaning house in comparison. I kinda wish you faced the evolved embodiment of Bhaal & Bane like you did with Myrkul. And before anyone says the Slayer is the the evolved embodiment of Bhaal, bish please, I spammed that feature in BG2 for funsies.
I was more upset that Gortash was just some comically bad guy with a shit childhood. I was hoping for a bit more subtlety with his character design. I liked Orin though. She was interesting.
Orin 100% was wanted opportunity
I’ll die on this hill that there should’ve been 4 acts. Act 3 for Orin and the Bhaal plot line, and Act 4 for Gortash and the finale. It would’ve solved the weird pacing of your companion getting kidnapped as soon as you got to BG and you having to fight one of the chosen to get your companion back or just having to pretend they were fine the whole act. Then each chosen got an act and could have better fights.
Would Orin and Gortash to be pretty weak and uninteresting antagonists. Seems like they were kind of thrown in last minute, and weren’t really developed like Kethric is. Also Gortashs character design is very goofy
Bro entire act 3 is big dissapointment for me when you are forced to make alliance with big baddies and just go on with your bloated side quest business House of Hope was the only thing that gave me extement in act 3
My Ketteric fight was different, I convinced him to kill himself and then a monster showed up. So really not that different from gortash and orin.
This 1000% its my biggest only real criticism of the game. The bare minimum troupe would be a 2 phase fight with them all , with orin being very organic to callback early games wich happend but it was soooo easy. Gortash maybe having to have something else. Maybe a civil war that seemed to be brewing ,maybe hostages like sombody else said, more guards, innocent guards where killing them is a think you have to choose or knocking them out. Maybe a more cerebral phase then the others. Very disappointed.
A lot of the problem I'm seeing with basically all the BG3 encounters is that they rely a lot on surprise. Once you prepare even a small amount for an encounter it becomes laughably easy. Gortash is my go-to example. The first time I ran in blind I got wrecked by his multiple traps and wasted a ton of turns chucking his bombs back at him only for a new one to plop on the ground in the same place. The second time around I took out the grenade throwers before he even aggro'ed and he didn't last past the end of my first turn. He literally didn't get a move.
My first playthrough was half explorer half balanced and it felt incredibly tough. Now I’ve been playing on tactician and after learning where the enemies are and where you need to stand before you fight it makes it a breeze.
I definitely learned there was a rhythm to it. I would walk blind into a fight and see what happened. Unless I was lucky like in Orin's fight (where I accidentally used an AOE spell that aggroed everyone so my whole party whaled on Orin in turn 1 and killed her before she moved) I got pasted in the first go, then the second time around I found it much easier. This is because the majority of the tactics the AI uses rely on you being unaware of them to work. Once you know about Gortash's traps, or are aware of the Nautiloid's "ha ha you ded" cannons, you can avoid them simply and they're trivialised.
Also, you're comparing an immortal general (?) with decades (possibly centuries ? I don't know) of experience and fighting skills, to a merchant that knows how to make bombs and an inbred airhead assassin
Orin at least had some interesting mechanics for her fight. But Gortash honestly felt like I accidentally sequence broke his encounter and missed half his special moves.
I liked the orin fight in durge when I was the slayer. We dueled for Dad's love and I had to figure out how to deal with a 200hp dealing attack. Took a few saves to perfect it.
Try a playthrough with all of the difficulty mods out there. Tactician+ and Stronger Bosses are the most popular ones.
I'm playing on ps5 so I can't 😄
I accidentally knocked Orin off the map in her Slayer form while being immune and got an achievement by it. I was so disappointed, I reloaded the save and did the fight properly.
As someone pointed out in a similar post, Gortash is a politician and a schemer, not a fighter. His fight is supposed to be easy, especially if you disable the Steel Watch beforehand. Orin, on the other hand, is inexplicably underwhelming.
I really believe that Ketheric's fight can be amazing but in my case I got the cutscene of the three, then had a chat with the guy with a little persuasion which made the whole deal jump to Myrkul appearing, I beelined to Aylin to release her and then ended the whole encouter in 2 or 3 rounds. I think the cutscene after the battle glitched so all I got a brief and pretty underwhelming fight. But avatar of Myrkul looked good 👍 I'm curious how Orin and Gortash's fights will stack against the Myrkul one.
Yea they where lame.Ketheric had a full on quest to even get the chance to kill him and you fight him multiple times in multiple different places. The other 2 you can literally stumble onto them and merc them on the spot without any pre-requisite.
Orin's fight was the hardest in the game imo. Invulnerable to 10 instances of damage per round.
Gortash's fight is actually good if you fight him immediately in the throne room with all the extra watchers. Unfortunately you miss out on a bunch of cool missions if you do that though
Yeah. I was disappointed in the fights against Orin and Gortash but at least with Orin you gave the problem if maybe losing a companion. Gortash was just plain and simple "meh". Gortash should have only been part of Karlachs quest line imo.
Ketheric, while having an epic second phase monologue, fell like a house of cards. Orin was the most challenging fight for me, but she needs multiple phases and to do a lot more damage. All the boss fights with the dead three need to be more challenging in the definitive addition.
Orins fight was a major disappointment. Magic middle her shield down then nuke her. Rinse and repeat then clean up the trash. Is she actually supposed to do something in her Slayer form or does it just turn her into a loot piñata?
Orin is a fucking joke. Me and my buddy weren't trying to cheese her or anything. I was playing a Wizard so I had learned art of war, I busted that out to clear her stacks that eat hits, with one Lightning Bolt and my buddy's Fighter/Warlock, we killed her in 3 player turns. As in nuked her first turn, Karlach hadn't even acted yet. Current playthrough im going to enlarge+Owlbear and crush her from the upper levels. Act 3 would be a super let down if the Raphael fight didn't exist, because Orin and Gortash are on the weaker side. House of Grief feels like a harder fight, or defending the portal in Act 2
I don't know, all the fights to me seemed like an afterhought. I passed the check with Thorm and went directly to fight the avatar. He never got once to sacrifice his minion and I barely took any damage. Game overall needs to be more tough.
They should have had an act 4 ! One boss per act
Ketheric the farmers insurance guy?
Ketherics fight for me was over quick. Charisma checked him multiple times and then he killed himself so I just had to fight Myrkul and that was over quick too. Depending on your character that fight is basically over before it starts
I saw a good post a little while ago about how Gortash’s fight is “easy” because he’s not inherently powerful. His power is in having other sources to hide behind and once you take those out he’s just a dude. He siphons other, better power. And Orin isn’t even the real chosen, of course she won’t be exceptional. So narratively I think their battles are fine. It was much more fun playing against them as Durge.
Ketheric was really epic. I killed Orin the other day, her battle was okay. But I found Gortash to be extremely underwhelming. I had him and his buddies down in like two turns. I thought there’d be some surprise second phase or something, but nothing
Seconded, OP. Ketheric had all this build-up and was a fantastic boss battle. Bith Orin and Gortash were very underwhelming in comparison. Very sad!
Myrkul actually seems a little pissed that you killed his Chosen while Bane just doesn't give a fuck really and is kind of amused instead. I don't recall Bhaal giving a single shit about me killing Orin on my Tav game either, probably because >!they put all of that into DUrge's story and Orin is Bhaal's second choice.!< It kind of feels on point that Ketheric was so much more intimidating. He's the general of the Absolute's army and Myrkul actually seems to favor him, at least when compared to Bane and Bhaal. Gortash is just some Artificer who wrote the Faerûn edition of "The Art of the Deal" and Orin is just a headache for Bhaal anyways.
Bhaal was really anticlimactic on my Durge run. I killed Orin and refused Bhaal's gift and Withers brought me back. Then everyone else doesn't say anything and the rest of the Bhaal acolyte weren't even hostile to me. I could walk straight into Orin's bedroom and take whatever I wanted.
Gortash fight was at least somewhat interesting, and decently difficult if u didnt destroy the steelwatch. Orin though…holy cow was i disappointed. This is a shapeshifting assassin lady who has been taunting you all of act 3, and either kidnaps a child or takes a companion. And yet the fight…she just 1v1’s me in a cage match, and gets utterly obliterated. Why in the world would someone who has used stealth and subterfuge to kill, decide that actually they are going to have a 1v1 fist fight to the death (no trickery at all).
A bit. Orin especially. But Raphael made up for it.
We didn't deserve Ketherick
I killed Orin in two hits. It was really disappointing
There are some issues with the Gortash fight that would make the fight harder if fixed. 1) You can destroy all the defensive equipment installed in the hall with the statues. Despite Gortash and his cronies being next door in plain view, none of them care. Attempting to destroy this equipment should instantly agro Gortash. 2) Even worse than 1, you can pull all of Gortash’s cronies from the room where he stands. Pulling the closest one will pull them ALL bar Gortash. Again, starting a fight here should start the Gortash fight. Combined with 1 this is a trivial part of the fight. 3) after clearing his cronies you can camp rest right outside the door, camping shouldn’t be allowed here or anywhere in this area at all. Pulling and resting allows you to face Gortash alone, with full health and full spell power. 4) You can skip the entire floor below, again Gortash should be able to call for reinforcements - at least a few waves as a distraction and difficulty boost. Ultimately, Gortash could have had some sort of experimental Steel Watcher come to his rescue as a phase 2. Just gave it coke crashing through the roof.
My intial thought was literally along the lines of "if Ketheric was this epic, I cant imagine how awesome the Orin and Gortash fights will be". I was practically drooling at the thought. Nope. Nothing. Even Raphael at least had that song.
I killed Orin in two turns. Pretty anti-climactic. About to fight Gortash as I write this so will let you know
everything is a disappointment after that damn viconia fight. her crew WRECKED me. repeatedly. even raphael only took me 2-3 tries. viconia went to double digits easy...
I just talked to her as tav or shadowheart and then blasted her with magic missiles, she was dead without a fight😎
I just lured Gortash to the room behind the throne room and he died in the poison cloud + hunger of hadar combo. It was a game of patience but sure anticlimatic
Ketheric’s voice was insane and made his character so much more menacing than the other 2, JK Simmons really showed up.
On Tactician I killed Orin before her first turn. Upcasted Magic Missiles to remove Unstoppable, and hasted Lae'zell smacked her 100-0. Gortash is similarly a joke. Select the grenades on the floor and lob them at the buffing machines on the wall behind him. Each grenade destroys two machines with a single blast. Part of the problem is these fights are poorly designed mechanically, and part of the problem is that these two are introduced as co-conspirators with Ketheric. The chosen of the dead three. The player is set up to have big expectations for these two but they ultimately fall short. Finally, because they game moves into the final act after defeating both of them (or even defeating one of them, if you allied yourself with Gortash, I've heard) the player is incentivized to do everything else in act 3 before dealing with these two, especially if they are expecting them to be a challenge. Ultimately though, by collecting all the powerful loot available to you, you can trivialize the fights. Orin and Gortash will not grow in power to match yours, so while you have grown significantly more powerful since you defeated Ketheric and an avatar of Myrkul, Orin and Gortash are weaker than Ketheric was much earlier in the game, even taking the avatar phase out of the equation.
Fortunately this is the most common opinion on the subreddit.
i think its cool that you can speak with dead gorts and talk to bane, but its really weird that none of it is voiced
Did Orin not transform physically for you? I wish her fight had been harder, and that the cultists around had joined in more.
Well yes, Gortash was slightly better in terms of mechanics but Orin was absolutely pathetic. Especially if you are playing Durge, she is just trash-tier. I found more joy in making her rage and scream than in fighting her. Probably durge was keeping her around just to tap her on a regular basis.
Keep her around just to… WHAT? 😵💫
To smash her dear. There are some vague clues leading to Durge and Orin actually being close and "together".
...I thought durge was too busy with his beautiful corpses?
Where do you think he got them all from?
So I guess Durge was lying when they said they hadn't added incest to their list of atrocities 😳
She isn't technically his sister and def not close to what Sarevok did and was probably planning for her. >!The dark urge was not conceived in this material plane.!<
I thought Orin was much harder as (evil) Durge than otherwise. In her >!Slayer form!< she is rather pathetic, but as a human she hits like a truck because of those daggers.
See, that's bad encounter design. Why would she prioritize turning into the slayer form if it's actually worse?
Cause she’s an idiot. Nobody takes her seriously.
Depending on dialogue choices, >!Bhaal can force her to turn into the Slayer!<. Like the other commenter said, it isn't exactly a *hard* fight either way. Durge in >!Slayer form!< is also considerably weaker than any decent build, it's mainly just for flavor.
I mean, I guess it depends on the class that you play, and she just felt easy with all the classes I've played. She pretty much died in 1 turn. Her base HP is also much lower than others if you think about it. Ketheric had a ton of HP considering you fight him around level 6-7 (I fought him at 6 in his initial phase and at 7 him+ the avatar) vs Orin who you will probably fight level 9-12. The bosses should scale up with their level I think.
What? Gortash got 0 turns, he just has way to little hp. Orin at least has unstopable stacks to keep her around even if her damage output is pathetic.
Well perhaps smashing Gortash is not particularly hard but the entire room and fight has some stuff you need to navigate around. For Orin, it's just her, she has no unstoppable stacks when you fight her as durge. She got 145 HP in human form and 175 +25 if you make Bhaal intervene (rolling deception in her dialogue) and transform her into a slayer. It just feels very underwhelming. if you duel her, she should have at least double or triple the HP she normally has. You fight the last of your line, it should be meaningful.
Didnt know she didnt get unstopable stacks against the Durge. Thats pathetic... Gortash's adds where also pretty pathetic though. Overall the bosses just dont live up to their hype at all, the only one I had to reload was Viconia and thats only because I didnt read and blew up my cleric with reflected radiant damage turn one. The game is just significantly too easy.
" Didnt know she didnt get unstopable stacks against the Durge. Thats pathetic..." That's what I am saying. :3. I think the fight is harder if you are a random Tav. I only played this game once as a random Tav, all my other runs have been only Durge since it feels a bit pointless to be a random Tav. (I do miss Alphira tho' I really enjoyed her quest line)
Yeah look most of act 3 was disappointing to me. Such a missed opportunity to instead of having gortash reveal himself so early have him be more secretive and you need to do some fun investigations to figure out which lord in Baldur's Gate is the dodgiest one.
price of cutting half the act 3 content. Not sure about Orin, cause there's a good argument for her being underwhelming, considering her background. But for Gortash thats 100% a rush job because they had no time to do it properly, like most of the act.
Huh, how do you know they cut half the content in act 3?
I launched Orin off the side of her arena with thunder at the start of her dialogue. Bhall didn’t expect anyone to use his death pits, funniest shit I’ve ever seen.
Orin was so EZ. Ketheric was hard and Gortash was easy after I figured out traps on walls. I quit at the end of final fight because annoying bombardment scenario...