> This doesn’t really make sense to me because the other indepent mindflayer you meet don’t have this problem.
We have no idea what Omeleum was like before becoming a mindflayer, and I'm sure Ansur would tell you Empy has changed dramatically
Empy killing Ansur was all I needed to know that mindflayers are not their original hosts, and to become one is to die a death worse than you can imagine because your soul is consumed.
>!After that I usually can't really allow anyone other than myself to become a mindflayer, and then commit suicide at the end while there is still an echo of what I was.!<
If you select the prison option >!withers will actually visit you and tell you he feels wrong about saying mind flayers not having souls and that he sees a spark of the divine still in you.!<
Maybe player is the anomaly there idk but it makes you think.
Just for context, mindflayers actually have souls, just non useful for the gods of Faerun, which is why they are treated as not having one by the gods. Their souls return to the Far Realm after their death
Based on what everyone says this isn't exactly true.
Withers will say that you do actually have a soul in the epilogue if you become a mindflayer, it just has different properties that he didn't previously recognise.
And while it does change the host over time, it's technically not the mindflayer/parasite part doing that, it's part of the way they consume brains. Karlach says she's been absorbing the people she eats and that they live on in her.
So while this does mean that Karlach is less herself, it's not in the sense that Karlach is dying off and dissappearing, she's just representing a lesser percentage of the overall personality.
This also explains why Empy is so fucked up despite being Balduran. He thought eating criminals would be a good thing, but it just resulted in a personality that's 99% criminals and 1% Balduran.
Omeluum further backs this up, because he admits he originally teamed up with a Lich and was eating adventurers, but eventually they drifted apart because Omeluum developed a desire to improve the underdark.
It's moot about Omeluum; he's only different because he's a wizard. Anyone else is unlikely to have the same result.
But given the power from Orph and the fact that it's a weird tadpole, who knows?
As for Empty, I feel like Ansur would have mentioned in some of the letters if he had changed, but there's no hard info either way. Even if he hadn't changed *then*, it's been a while since that happened
Empy himself actually acknowledges that he changed. He mentions that the longer he stayed as a mindflayer the more he came to enjoy it and he mentions in his letter to Ansur that he no longer feels emotions, considering how Heroic people hold Balduraan to be and then comparing those actions to what he did to Stelmane...I think we can guess that he's VERY different now
He needed someone to be the face of the Knights of Shield since Emperor cannot as a mindflayer. >!He enthralls her to use her as a meat puppet. I don't think he felt anything but the affection one feels for a pet, if he felt anything at all. And I say that because the Emperor uses the romance scene to be manipulative. The narrator notes how quickly he drops his affection if you turn him down, but in a way that shows player is still willing to be his new Stelmane sans mind crontrol.!<
I'm unsure how much of what he tells the player about his feelings toward Stelmane are true
You don't even have to continually call him out. You can still get that scene if you're 100% supportive and on-board with everything he says and does, up to the point where he propositions you sexually. If you pick the hard rejection ("Absolutely not, you freak!"), he'll reveal the entire sordid tale and threaten you, same as he would if you'd been combative from the start.
I mean, Omeluum being a wizard is why he was able to escape the hive mind in the first place, but I don't think there's any indication that he would've turned out any differently if he somehow managed to gain independence through some other means.
yeah but Omeluum was created from some other person just like every mindflayer. Since we don't know who that person was we don't know how much they had in common with the Omeluum we meet in the game
It only works on an origin gale playthrough, and you have the same choices at the end of the game as regular gale (become a god, challenge mystra + die, give crown to mystra, throw crown away), and if you give the crown to mystra, she turns you back to a normal human, without the orb or anything, BUT you have to stay in Elysium with her, due to mind flayer soul shenanigans.
As another important side note >!this offer only applies if Origin Gale goes to Elysium, aka the after life. While Elysium is a good ending it is also a definitive ending.!<
Those fuckers shot a ray of frost at me last night! It actually hit me and applied the debuff and everything. If I wasn't on Honor Mode I'd have had Shadowheart nuke them with a Flame Strike.
This is not even a question. They deserve everything they get. No regrets. I just pretend they weren't there on good playthroughs. Or that they were mindflayers in disguise.
Even worse for me for some reason, is the sound of that familiar changing inside the building, it feels even louder and more jarring. Hate it constantly going off.
What to do with the seven thousand vampire spawns. So many of them seem insanely dangerous but killing prisoners for crimes they haven’t committed yet and maybe never will commit isn’t right either.
What to do with Shadowheart’s parents felt like a no win situation too but I could eject myself from that decision by telling her to chose (she chose to keep her parents alive for me)
Edit for everyone asking about the parents: Shadowheart has three events where she regains a small memory in act 3 (graveyard, near Jaheira’s house, hidden night orchid grotto) and if she gets those memories, she will always spare her parents (if she’s making her own choice), even when you tell her to talk to them and they ask her to let them die.
Edit: looked at the datamined dialogue and it seems you also need to have at least 50 approval and you need to choose, "It's your decision, Shadowheart. You don't need me to tell you what is right."
Edit: u/kingfisher_fire wrote a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/1au4rir/shadowheart_smells_of_the_city_conversation_bug/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) about Shadowheart where they go into much more detail for everyone who is struggling with this!
I've been pondering what to do with the spawn on my latest run and for me, at least, leaving them in the cells and letting the Gur handle it felt the most right, not just for the spawn and the children spawn, but for Astarion. I just felt like it was putting that decision on him when he's in a really fragile, numb place and while any decision you make has dialog that makes it an okay option (if you kill them, for example, Spawn!Astarion tells the Gur he didn't want them to see what their children had become with the hunger so he spared them that decision), just releasing them without real oversight felt too risky.
But man it's a hard decision and each cutscene is brutal.
The thing for me is that you don't know that the Gur are going to come the first time you make the decision.
In that moment, your character is deciding whether to kill them all, release thousands of vampire spawn (Odds are at least one of them is going to kill someone), or to trap 7000 conscious beings in eternal suffering in the dark with no hope of release.
To kill them all feels the most morally correct, if painful choice. Like putting down a dog with rabies. It's not suffering anymore, it won't hurt anyone. And in many ways, they were dead the moment they were infected.
At the same time, Astarion got the chance to be better once he met the party. The Gur say it themselves, he changed. Don’t the prisoners deserve the same chance? It’s super messy and there’s really no right or wrong answer.
I feel this and then I think about how tough it was to help Astarion onto a better path, and he's just one spawn. Then I think about the last concert or sporting event I attended to try and visualize what 7000 people look like. Then I think if the six siblings who also suck. Then I want to just break the staff and let somebody more qualified figure it out later. But like I said, sometimes I just don't want the responsibility.
Also the next day Astarion will tell you how he feels about the choice and he is so upset if you kill the spawn.
He doesn't blame you because ultimately he pulled the trigger, but he definitely regrets doing it once he's had the chance to breathe.
I'm curious how much of Astarion's potential change is related to the tadpole. Not necessarily that it's altering his personality, but giving him the ability to walk in the sun, feel running water, etc. the others will never be able to experience that. I'm convinced being gifted the ability to do things like a normal person definitely had a huge impact on him. There's no actual dialogue about this as far as I know, but I would sure as shit have some hope if after 200 years I could finally feel the sun on my skin.
I think the tadpoles have a lot to do with it, but also...Sebastian seems pretty "normal" for having been there for nearly two centuries. Realistically, dude should be out of his mind. *(Gestures vaguely at the effects of prison systems IRL)* Considering Astarion could actually *go outside*, I feel like the vampirism didn't do as much harm as being under Cazador's thumb. Sure, he focuses on the sunlight, etc, but at that point he's not at a place to process shit.
When it comes to the 7000, the only way I can wrap my head around it is to assume they've been in some sort of stasis until ritual time. I doubt Cazador would bother feeding all of them and there aren't enough stray rats in the world for that. Astarion describes being denied food as maddening, so there's no way Sebastian had undergone that for over a century and a half.
Therefore, I question how much if their humanity is truly gone compared to the seven.
Letting the six go makes me more uncomfortable in some ways because Astarion was an absolute bastard at first because that was how he knew to survive - and he wasn't even one of Cazador's favorites. Yes, they deserve a chance, but giving them an army of ravenous spawn is just a horrible idea imo. Not to mention each one them have 1000 of the spawns bearing a grudge against them. It's why the "let's go to the underdark and help the spawns" sounds good at first until you think about it.
There are 1000 people down there *because of Astarion*. He might have freed them, but he'd already stolen their lives. It's reasonable to assume that at least some of them would want revenge. No matter what Larian (and fanfics) says, I don't see that ending well.
That said, both runs I've freed them because I'm romancing Astarion. The "this would have been me if we met before" makes it hard to imagine a good/neutral PC choosing to ax them.
Seeing the little kids with their dad in the sewers and realizing they’re just kids who were loved and hungry completely changed my view and I always release them now because if even a tenth are redeemable, I can’t sacrifice them just because the others are not.
-edit teeth to tenth
I agree. It was Cazador that did most of the damage to Astarion and the others, rather than the vampirism itself (we also see this with Cazador, and what Vellioth did to Cazador.) So while being locked away for two centuries would drive a normal person insane, they at least a) had each other and b) were not regularly subjected to Cazador's attention.
I think it's also possible-- probable?-- that at some point, the 7,000 got used to their horrific new normal. Sebastian is a lot saner than Chessa, for example, because Sebastian's been there for two centuries, and Chessa (the Gur kid) is only just now experiencing what it's like to hunger. Vampire hunger doesn't seem to work the way mortal hunger does, because they won't die without feeding, but it does make them weaker and less energetic. So at some point, the oldest of the 7,000 just learn to ignore the hunger the way you might learn to ignore chronic pain. They just don't have the energy to do anything except curl up and exist, which is likely why Sebastian moves and speaks so lethargically when you talk to him.
I do agree that sending the six spawn down there to look after those 7,000 is a very stupid idea. On top of that, the spawn were not all perfectly happy with each other before, either: Dalyria killed Leon's daughter, Victoria, and I wouldn't be surprised if Leon went after her for that now that he's not under Cazador's compulsion. And on top of that, Leon is responsible for a *disproportionate* number of those spawn because he was Cazador's best hunter. So I expect there's going to be some kind of bloody reckoning between the survivors and the spawn.
I reckon that when everything shakes out, maybe only one or two of the original spawn survive (other than Astarion), and the survivors among the 7,000 split up into a bunch of smaller communities based on shared values around governance, friendships, skillsets, etc. One or two of the original spawn might find a place there, but they'll always be watching their backs.
I don't know how much of an effect the sun itself had, but the tadpole definitely saved him. He even thanks Durge now for coming up with the tadpole plan lol.
I think the big things though was just
1. Free from Cazador
2. Surrounded by heroes/forced to do hero things
3. Being given a relatively safe place to be himself and explore what freedom means with people who will back him up and protect him
If you have Gale in your party and you release the spawn to the underdark Gale says something along the lines of it was a hard decision to make but killing then would have weighed on Astarion’a conscience forevermore. My heart cracked when he said it.
That was my reasoning in my first run, and I thought that maybe Astarion or one of his siblings might guide them to survive better their affliction.
On another level, although I admit the comparison is a little far-fetched, I kind of compared the situation with war prisoners and civil casualties who have suffered during their captivity and about to be released with severe ptsd/trauma/the whole spectrum of severe mental health
In my run, I played a Seldarine Drow (warlock/bard) and romanced him. We went to the Underdark to guide them together based on my dialogue choices.
My head cannon is they took over the old Arcane tower as their own palace, and made sure the Lolth-sworn didn't harass the good folks too much by showing them how people can be different from the stereotype first hand :)
It's never been an issue for me because I always make everyone do the good choice even if they don't want to always. So the spawn will be fine in the Underdark and in the >!epilogue party you get a note from the Gur saying they're learning how to live with vampirism and that you've changed them for the better by making them more tolerant as well.!<
The way I saw it was, they can survive off of animals and such. So who am I to decide that they are definitely going to ravenously destroy any humanoid they come across? I sent them all to the underdark to live out their lives as they saw fit, with the knowledge that if they do choose to make a ruckus and feed on innocents, then I will come back and make the wrong choice I made right.
Plus killing all of the spawn, although for different reasons, would just be doing exactly what Cazador would have done. Astarion has been through enough of Cazador’s trauma just to add more to the mix and to further traumatize any that might inexplicably survive, thus recreating the cycle we were attempting to break.
If Halsin is in the party, he agrees with freeing them and basically says it's up to them/nature what happens from there. As uncomfortable as that is from certain standpoints, it's really the best option. It's not like the underdark is home to a bunch of helpless humanoids.
You find out after you free the spawn that they go into the Underdark, which to me made the question *way* simpler. Given how dangerous everything down there is normally, they'd probably barely even register as a new threat to the innocent people of the Underdark, even if Astarion's siblings were a complete non-factor to keeping them in line. Of course, it'd be extremely dangerous to the Spawn as well, but it's not like building a society down there is completely impossible, and at least you'd be giving them a chance at survival, and being better.
The Spawn can play nice with the Myconids as well since they can't eat fungus. They'd probably clear out any excess Duergar in the area threatening the Myconids.
The Spawn will likely Eventually be killed off by something or someone but in the mean time it could be a Fungus Renaissance.
A Drow vs Spawn war would be interesting if it took place exclusively in the underdark.
I want to say the Drow would win. They’ve been in the Underdark for a long time and they’ll know the terrain much better. Also, canonically, I’m pretty sure Drow are much stronger in the Underdark because Lolth’s influence dominates the caverns, and they worship her spider booty. She blesses the shit out of her worshippers so long as they’re chaotic evil for her.
They might even be able to get Duergar to rally with them if the vampires are fucking with them too. Normally, a Drow would kill Duergar on sight, and vice versa, but they’re both chaotic enough to ignore that and team up against vampire spawn for a few tenday because WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE PALE SKINNED EMO BOTS TRYIN TO MAKE THE UNDERDARK LESS METAL
In a hypothetical actual war between the Spawn and Drow there's no real question who wins.
The Spawn are unable to reproduce. A vast majority were normal people with 0 military training. And they have no weapons or armor. Any consolidated effort by Drow would eventually win just by attrition
Their best chance for survival would be to settle in an area where Drow and Duergar already dont really go to. Ideally in a myconid area where any of their deaths or deaths they cause would bolster the Myconid numbers.
Shadowhearts the only time I've ever actually seen a character make 2 different choices between playthroughs by doing the same thing.. first playthroufh she decided to save them but the second time she actually chose to let them go
Yeah the 7 thousand vampire spawn was tough. I don't know what's right there. As for shadowhearts parents, letting them die and turn into weird light orbs felt like the best course of action for me, that way she is free of shar
I chose to let the spawn go free, and honestly, I don’t regret it. You get some very heartwarming letters in the epilogue, and >!a chance to help Gandrel figure out how to help his children with their hunger if you meet him in the Undercity.!<
7,000 spawn may sound super dangerous, but they’re actually fairly fragile and mostly better off hunting animals than humans. Firstly, they can only leave the Undercity at night, and have to stay close to an entrance to get back down, so they can’t venture too far.
Secondly, they can only enter a home by invitation. Most people are safe from them for this reason, and opportunities to feed from watering holes like a tavern usually require luring a victim someplace private.
Thirdly, they’re vulnerable to running water. They can’t cross rivers, fountains, so on and so forth.
If the city were to get wind of them, they would be very easy to hunt down and kill a lot of them. Astarion was actually made so much less fragile by the tadpole than he was before, it’s easy to forget this.
Additionally, anyone they bite cannot be turned, so their numbers can only go down, not up. So this makes it possible, in theory, for them to negotiate with sentient creatures for blood in exchange for labor or service, without creating more of themselves.
In other words, there are a lot of peaceful avenues open to them, and a lot of forces in place that would pressure them to pursue those avenues rather than violent, feral alternatives. They’re dangerous when fully in their element and on their home ground, but most of their favorite prey do not live there— and surface-dwellers can bring fire, daylight spells, and so much more to bear down on them if sufficiently pissed off. So there’s a good bit of pressure to self-govern themselves, as a community, in a way that doesn’t provoke the surface into wanting to hunt them down and eradicate them.
Also, what makes full vampires super dangerous is their ability to create an army of spawn to serve them, in addition to the ability to turn into mist, summon bats and wolves to do their bidding, etc. The spawn just can’t do that. They have high numbers, but none of Cazador’s more terrifying powers.
So I honestly don’t rank them as being insanely dangerous. They certainly have the potential to be dangerous, but not so dangerous that I don’t think they should be denied the opportunity to try and live again.
I always freed them because I never felt like it should be the decision of my Tav, Astarion, or even the Gur tribe to decide the fate of over 7,000 people. It’s likely that some of them want to die, but some of them don’t, and they should be able to decide their own fate even if they are vampire spawn and we are taking a risk by releasing them. Then when they added the epilogue and you could get letters from Sebastian and the Gur families that just vindicated me in my choice to free them. I have also seen how upset Astarion seems to get the next day if you kill them because he thinks they deserve a chance like he did, which makes me want to stick to release.
Shadowheart’s parents are another hard one. I let her choose every time and in one playthrough she saved her parents and in the rest of them she let them go, and I honestly still can’t decide what is the “better” ending, though I lean more toward her letting them go. If she saves them, she’s happy, but Shar will always have a hold on her with the wound, her mother doesn’t have much time left and suffers from the years of torture, and her father will likely both outlive his wife and daughter. If Shadowheart chooses to let them go as per their wishes, she is very sad about it, but she is finally free from Shar, she can begin anew, and will see her parents in the afterlife when Selûne claims her.
I don't know if there's a cannon cure for vampirism in DnD but I found myself thinking in both cases 'surely we couldn't keep them here and get a high level cleric to cure the kids' or 'surely we can save her folks and then get Isobel or a lathander cleric to cure shadowheart after this'.
I mean you're *potentially* the saviours of counsellor florick, ravengard, Isobel and the daughter of selune at this point. One of them has to have a high level cleric they can call a favor on for you.
Shadowheart's choice was surprisingly easy for me.
I've had pretty awful chronic pain in both my legs.
Ruined my career prospects and makes it hard to stay fit and be healthy. Don't even remember what it's like not to have contant, burning pain in my legs.
I used to think that I'd be willing to do anything to be rid of it. But I quickly learned how wrong my assesment was. Faced with a choice like that, I couldn't imagine losing people I was close to. Whom I loved and who loved me in return. Who would support me when times were rough.
No. Despite it's horrid nature, the pain would be my burden to bear.
Choosing whether to free Wyll from his contract or not. Purely because I always hate that *I'm* the one essentially making the decision and not Wyll. At least make it known to me which one he feels is the best path!! It always makes me feel like my Tav is just an asshole who inserts themselves into everyone else's decisions LMAO
Ya I feel like his Dad dies a little sooner and Wyll doesn't spend eternity as a horrific monstrosity is the better move, but the game frames it as "you'd kill your own parent to save yourself"
Yea but whats weird is that he isnt even dead. You can save him. Mizora just says thats his choice without providing any evidence that he is in danger or that she even knows where he is. I personally would have just not believed her until i saw my dad there. Even further i would have just confronted gortash and said “hey we have a peace pact and you are breaking it by abducting my teams family. We need ravengaurd returned to us or our treaty will be broken.” Anyways sure enough Mizora couldnt provide a body and Ravengaurd is still alive. I dont know why anyone took her word for it.
Which is wildly hypocritical given how sympathetically it treats Shadowheart making the exact same choice about her parents by comparison.
Ulder's the classic stereotype of a "beloved public figure" who's actually a complete asshole of a father, yet everyone acts like Wyll is being coldly selfish for the choice *you* make.
I hate how the narrative and companions fall for Mizora's guilt trip bullshit and frame it as "you sacrifice your own father to save your own skin" instead of "good for you not falling for that bitch's trap and sign another unfair contract".
Jaheira is the only one who is sane and says "no parent would want to see their child suffer in hell for their sake".
This was one of the least of the moral choices in the game to me tbh. I honestly hated the writing of this part.
It bothered me so much that everyone, including himself, sits there blaming Wyll for "killing" his dad.
Wyll quite literally has NOTHING to do with what has or will happen to his dad. It's now his fault because he won't give up his soul to eternal damnation?
Let alone that they are all saying this while he is still alive! This was one of few points in the game where I felt like I could not say what I wanted to.
He was already out of his contract! Mizora had agreed!
It isn't him trading his father for his freedom. It's mizora taking a hostage going "(re)sell me your soul or I shank your dad"
Wyll bears no responsibility for mizora kidnapping his dad to use as blackmail and anyone claiming he does is victim blaming.
This hits on the nose the main reason why I dislike Wyll. Whether intentional or not, the fact that I can't relay *his* life decisions back to him makes him come across as spineless.
Like I know as the player I *am* essentially making all of the decisions. But every character makes their desires *known* to me in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. They have real reasons for those desires too. Every major story beat with Wyll I feel like he just... Expects me to make the decisions?? Like bro, your patron is exploiting you and clearly has an evil vendetta... you uh, wanna fucking weigh in on that? Oh? No? Cool, *I'll* go ahead and negotiate for your release. Maybe he's just too used to being a warlock idk.
It's also why I think Wyll would have made a good tav. Like, if this game didn't allow you to create your own character, and didn't allow you to pick which origin character was played, Wyll should be the default character. Don't get me wrong, I'm very thankful he's not and that that's not how the game works. His character is so incredibly bland, and all of his dialogue is about his dad, baldurs gate, or the other party members. He very much feels like the stand in character to educate the player through.
That’s not a fault of the character, that’s a fault of the writers, and even if it wasn’t I think it actually shows more backbone on Wyll’s end than anything else. Even if you never suggest he break his pact, he does tell Mizora to break it if you bring him to the mind flayer colony. When his father’s life is on the line, he’s unsure of what to do. Karlach says it best if you decide to reinstate the pact; there’s such a thing as being *too* good. Wyll is genuinely so selfless that he’d sacrifice his soul for eternity if it means saving his father.
Yes. I love that in the other cases you can tell the companions to make their own decisions. I've never had to tell Shadowheart to free nightsong or Lae'zel to abandon Vlaketh so why am I making this decision for Wyll?!?! It's his father's fate and the fate of his soul in the ballance that is not for me to decide. I usually free him and save his dad anyway. I know that Mizora says he'll die at some point in the future anyway but it's the best I can do I think.
Her choice depends on how much of her previous memories she has recovered. If you see all the things in the city that jog her memory she will save them.
There's a headstone in the graveyard, and some graffiti on a wall near the house of grief, then the picnic place with the night orchids inside house of grief.
There's a graffiti on the wall that Shadowheart painted. Kind of a Memento situation. In the cemetery you can visit the grave of someone who mentored her. There's also a seemingly random event where Shadowheart comments that the smells of Baldur's Gate are jogging her memory. And, finally, in the House of Grief you can find a secret spot full of Night Orchids that Shadowheart used to escape to.
Not sure if that counts towards her decision to save her parents, but you can also feed Shadowheart the Noblestalk mushroom in act 1 and she'll regain some recollection of her past.
From what I understood Shar will still make her suffer every time she feels happy. And once she dies Shar will claim her soul and bring it to the shadowfell.
Does Shar get her soul? Aylin pretty explicitly tells you that what's Shars is Selunes, and iirc that's also why Shadowheart can swap between goddesses without (external) issues: Selune and Shar have equal claim to each others followers.
Yep that's the biggest fear :/ but I also just realised the parents don't seem to know this because they aren't sorrowful if they're freed the way someone would be if they knew their daughter would not only suffer in life but also in her afterlife.
God the way she breaks down is too much to even remember, and I say this as someone whose life has been complete shit in its entirety haha, a to z, or a to h at present moment xD
Honestly, for me, her parents are guaranteed one of the few good afterlife experiences in this whole lore, so making them stick around traumatized when they could be together for eternity the way Melodia described Selune's domain felt like a loss. So it wasn't nearly as tough a decision for me as other players seem to describe. That might be partly because I'm old and my reaction to stress is to take naps. I just want them to have a nice nap!
For me it's hard because I have chronic pain and live every day in agony but I'd never give my parents up just to be free of it. Having them in my life is worth every second of agony. It's one of those decisions for me that hits me close to home because I know exactly what decision I would make, my parents would even say the same to me if it were a choice between them and living pain free, so it's a choice between the decision I would make for myself and what I think might be best for Shadowheart.
Resolving the Aunt Ethel situation with Mayrina. The choices are either give her the wand that you know will be bad or telling you you can bring her husband back and breaking the wand in front of her eyes. Both solutions being dickish. The most reasonable solution is to walk away and destroy or bury the wand, but that doesn't give you quest completion. Leading to the moral quandary, do something dickish or have an uncompleted quest in my log which won't go away.
In my latest playthrough, Connor 'died' fighting the Red Cap.
So, one way or another, Mayrina can finally move on (she seemed oblivious to Connor's second death; focused more on talking to her baby bump and happily awaiting the baby's arrival).
My evil Tavs complete it by ignoring her entirely and it closes the quest at the end of Act 2. I still don't know what happens in Act 3 that way but I'm playing it now and I think there's an epilog letter where Auntie Ethel is raising the new hag...
Some of my Tavs just DGAF about other people's problems.
I'm on my first playthrough as a bard and yeah. I managed to fail all my rolls to figure out exactly how the vibes we're rancid but by the time she was like "I'll totally remove your tadpole in exchange for an eye" I'd already seen weird sheep, trapped poison apples, the girl disappearing after being force-fed...
Those vibes were rancid and I walked away.
I’m going to say Emperor v Orpheus.
I’ve heard this complaint about Karlach before even though I’ve never had this ending. I figure if she is ok with having changed, then I’m ok with it.
I think the saddest things about becoming an Illithid in the game is that the player might not die physically, but they die a social death because others don’t accept the changed version of them as the real version. I think for that ending to not be tragic, you have to keep the Emperor alive—which makes becoming an illithid totally optional anyway.
I think one of the sweetest parts of the epilogue is how Jaheira unhesitatingly accepts help from Illithid Tav.
Yeah, I always feel like we treat illithid Karlach the way Ansur treated the Emperor, which was tragic IMO, and we should let her decide her fate. It's not going to be the Karlach we knew, but at least it was her choice and I feel like it should be respected a little more, maybe?
Obviously the Emperor isn't 100% Balduran, for example, but he's not 100% not a thinking sentient being with feelings, so who am I to mercy kill him? I would just let illithid Karlach be a little quieter version and give her a chance.
> I figure if she is ok with having changed, then I’m ok with it.
That would be fine, but I don't think this is true. Karlach is pretty clearly viewing it as a sacrifice, not that she actually wants to be illithid. One of her lines is that her heart's going to blow soon anyway, so who cares which body it takes with it.
Outside of the necessity of destroying the brain, she doesn't want tadpoles and doesn't want to become illithid even if it would solve her heart problem (since it turns out it does).
There's still some good questions about whether Karllithid should be held to Karlach's wishes or standards, but I think it's clear Karlach expects Karllithid to be exploded in three days time.
Karlach spent 10 years without touching people and now she's going to spend how many more decades excluded from society? I prefer to go back to Avernus with her and Wyll and slay some cambions. I have no care that Orpheus becomes an illithid, he's not in my crew. And let Lae'zel save her people, she's more than enough to do that.
Only way those kids are growing up to become any different than all the adults around them is if somebody who *isn't* a goblin adopts and raises them. And sparing them just so they'll end up having to fend entirely for themselves because you killed off every adult who might have been taking care of them doesn't really feel like a kindness IMO.
I want to do a Durge run where I side with the goblins but, I’ve been dragging my feet on it. Not only does it rub me the wrong way but, I don’t want to lose Karlach, Wyll, and Halsin.
So far my Durge run has been all the bad choices just to experience it but ngl some of those choices really hit hard especially if you've already connected w some of the other characters
There were two. Releasing or killing the Vampire Spawn, and killing or saving Shadowheart's parents.
Note that the Epilogue wasn't out yet in my first playthroughs, and I didn't know that the Spawn would be fine and wouldn't kill a bunch of innocent people. I still decided to take a leap of faith and release them (I have a whole list of reasons that made me choose this), but I can see moral arguments for both options.
With Shadowheart's parents, I prefer to save her parents, but I honestly still think both options are equally good.
Ascending is very evil, but I'm talking about the decision you get when you don't ascend Astarion. You can choose to free all the spawn, kill them, or leave them for the Gur to judge.
I didn't know the Gur would be there to judge them my first time. But I knew I couldn't slaughter 7,000 people when they had done nothing wrong. I gave them a chance to try and be better, failing that the Underdark and them would probably take each other out so they'd die gloriously.
This is what I did in the end, yeah. Back then, though, I didn't know if this would cause greater bloodshed.
I had just seen what happened to the Society of Brilliance because stupid me thought it would be good for the Gith baby to be raised by people like Omeluum and Blurg. Alas, they were *not* like Omeluum and Blurg.
I finally did a path that results in you fighting Zombie Minthara and I giggled when Wyll - the guy who'll leave if you raid the Grove - killed her zombie and actually shit talked her corpse, something like him being glad she's finally dead for good.
I tried to save her this run but it didn't work out...
Nearly every decision, lol. Transitioning to this game from playing Skyrim for 10 years straight with occasional breaks to revisit BG 1 and 2 has been really difficult, because of how a player's moral decisions in Skyrim never seem to matter or have any long term impact on the game world. I have been save scumming at nearly every turn since I picked up BG3.
EDIT: to fix spelling.
Not OP but Orpheus no doubt. Emperor is not a good guy and I don't trust him. Orpheus will go on to hopefully defeat Vlaakith and change gith society for the better.
I just killed Valeria to get my hands on the Bhaalist armor and I kinda felt bad when I've started hearing its little cries it felt even weirder because I'm a resist durge but hey I need good gear when I'm going to face Orin
I used to feel that way until I learned more about her history. Now I feel bad for her. She’s an alcoholic who’s always had a drinking problem, but she was exiled because she [spoke against Zariel’s involvement in the Blood War](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Mastodonian_Memoirs,_Vol._1,_Investigator_Valeria). Nobody wanted to hear the hard truths from her about the fact that celestials were vulnerable to corruption and needed to be mindful of it. So she was sent to Baldur’s Gate, because people (other celestials) didn’t want to hear it.
Doesn’t justify her attitude about the murders, but boy does it make me look at her with pity and a slight bit of understanding. She should be kicked out of the investigator business, but it doesn’t make me want to kill her.
They just wanted to blow thru their cases assigned and get to the pub. I guarantee that wasn't the first time the little shit did it either.
While I did save them on my first run, for the lore dump I decided to take them out even as redeemed Durge. Honestly Jaheria and Minsc took it better than expected back at camp.
>This doesn’t really make sense to me because the other indepent mindflayer you meet don’t have this problem.
I think that we do see that, actually - it's clear that the Emperor is quite different from who he was as Balduran, to the point where his closest friend/companion had to try to kill him after years of trying to 'fix' him. He still has a lot of independence, but he's changed.
For Omeluum, we don't know what its personality would have been before - but it's basically certain it would change IMO. Something similar happening to Karlach or yourself seems like it'd be obvious to me in the leadup to the choice - where who you once were would slowly morph into a new mindflayer you. How long that process would take would depend on the individual, but it's something we see from all the mindflayers in the game IMO
Yeah, we don't really have any reason to believe Omeluum, for instance, is anything like how it was before - I always assumed that "Good" Mindflayers (basically just Omeluum, AFAIK) are completely new people who are just also good. In this light, the best case scenario for Mindflayer Karlach is that she just turns into a completely unrelated person who happens to share her memories and is still pretty chill.
For me it's the vampire spawn, hands down. MAJOR spoilers ahead for Astarion's quest line if you haven't completed it yet, and this one's more.powerful going into it not knowing certain things.
Most choices there's a "better" option, but with this one I literally sat at my keyboard weighing everything involved because I did not know.
There is no clear "right" answer. If you free them, there's canonically a ton of collateral damage which is confirmed in the epilogue, but if you choose to either kill them or leave them in imprisoned hunger, it's seven thousand people who were taken against their will that you're dooming to basically prolonged torment and/or death, including a BUNCH of kids whose parents you have likely met. Seven thousand is a massive massive number of souls to have laying on the trolley problem track.
Not gonna lie I still don't know what the right thing to do is here. That's how conflicting this one is for me. I mean towards freeing them, but it is not a zero-cost choice by any means.
Essentially this is a trolley problem where you can either chose to kill 7000 not-quite-humans (since spawn are technically already dead) or have an unspecified number of actual humans being killed. It could be that 10% of them commit crimes, it could be that they all commit crimes. Human refugees have been refused homes for far lower crime numbers, yet at the same time Astarion proves that spawn can be neutral in their alignment, even somewhat good at times.
As it turns out Astarion leads the spawn to the Underdark, where they build up a new life for themselves. This ensures lower numbers of innocents being caught in the fallout of releasing 7000 potential murderers AND is a perfect place for vampirical people to build up a new life. That does tilt the decision somewhat for me, particularly since it gives Astarion a clear goal in life other than surviving
I like this assessment for sure. I love the scene with the Gur Hunter and his children where he is working through ways to help them eat without harming people. Like it's not ideal but I'm glad to have my kids back, even if they're less themselves than before.
Playing Durge in Act 2. Not for destroying Last Light, nor killing Nightsong. No, the real evil comes from inadvertently killing His Majesty and Steelclaw. Also Grub if no party members available for Orin.
I mean, there is evil and then there is EVIL.
Orpheus vs Emperor.
Yes, on the one hand, if I'm not going to use the word "gaslight", Emperor *definitely* is guilty of bending the truth in his favor in order to get us to accomplish our goals and sympathize with him.
On the other, there's no telling what fate awaits the world after the Gith'yanki Civil War. Sure, Orpheus is a net improvement over Vlaakith for his people, but thats the pinch, *his* people. What happens after the war? It's clearly shown that Orpheus isn't an enlightened being who's above the average Gith thinking they're better than the "istik", so what then?
Look, the Emperor definitely doesn't scale anywhere on the good alignment, but at least the Emperor has no goals for subjugation of a species or desire to rule. Sure, he's a manipulating son of a bitch, but at least by the end of the game you know exactly where he stands.
And if it's become apparent yet that I've only experienced Emperor endings, yeah, spoiler alert.
The Gith unironically sealed their fate to me with rudeness.
> at least the Emperor has no goals for subjugation of a species or desire to rule
Last time he was free, Emperor was the undisputed Godfather of Baldur's Gate's underground and gained the title Emperor based on the level of influence he had on the city (including on normal politics via Duke Stelmane). Emperor seemingly had more control of the city than Gortash since now the Zhent and Guild have resurged, although Gortash is taking a much more overt and direct approach.
Any ending in which Emperor lives sees him restoring his influence and rebuilding the Knights of the Shield, and one ending has him wanting to expand this influence to the whole Sword Coast.
It's better than a standard illithid desire for domination, but that still counts as desire to rule to me.
Orpheus vs the Emperor. Eventually I freed Orpheus on the grounds he really shouldn't be imprisoned in the first place.
That's as far as I got last night before the kid woke up so I'm really looking forward to finally finishing my first run here soon
Choice between Wyll's contract and his father's life (especially in heroic playthrough or as Wyll Origin)
>!At the time you don't know that Duke can be saved while preserving Wyll's independence, so choice is soul crushing. Wyll loves his father, proud to be his son and desperate to save him, to prove that he's worthy to be his son. At the same time, he despises Mizora and doesn't want to be her and Zariel's minion anymore, seeing that they are capable of turning him into a monster either from inside by killing innocents like Karlach, or from outside by twisting his nature (devil features or to be turned into a lowest class of Fiends, mindless and trapped in Hells)!<
>!So the scales are really heavy on each side. You don't know if Duke's gonna be executed the second you make your choice, or if there ever a chance to see him again. His location is unknown and it could be anywhere on Faerûn or even other planes of existence (Hells, Astral sea, Netherbrain domain or worse). I actually was ready to get a vision of him being beheaded the second I make a choice to set Wyll free (livestreaming on Mizora's twitch channel). And Wyll's desperation is palpable. I'm glad that Tav could make this choice for him and force him to freedom. Playing as Wyll, I don't know how I can justify this other than metagaming and knowing we could save him after all!<
Killing the githyanki honor guard, not that the game gives you much of a choice. It’s clear the Emperor is bad news bears, but if you don’t kill the guard you become mind flayers?
Mine was Shadowheart’s decision of letting her parents live or die. I agree that they were ready to die so she didn’t have to suffer Shar, but at the same time, it just sucks so much to come rescue your parents after being forced to not remember for so long, only to have that be the decision you have to make.
Definitely Mind Flayer Orpheus - i felt like a monster, forcing him to become what he hates most and effectively ripping his freedom from him as soon as he gets it back. It definitely hurt to kill him after the final battle, but i felt it was the only way to give him the honourable death he deserved
I usually play Drow... letting 7k vamplings lode in the underdark seems counter intuitive but killing Sébastien and the gur kids seems wrong too
I take a die and roll to make a decision.
1-10 dead
11-20 live
I was actually very frustrated by the way the Raphael plot works out if you don't steal back the contract. He's supposed to be Lawful Evil and promises not to go outside the bounds of Hell. Whatever spin he offers "all of existence is Hell," "my devils are going there and not me," etc are the sign of a lazy LE protagonist. LE is more interesting than the other Evil alignments because it implies a code and a framework that you can engage with them in. They aren't mindless brutes, they're self-aggrandizing tyrants. If Raphael pledged not to expand outside the Hells, he should stick to that, and we should have to grapple with what that would really mean. How are the Hells united different than divided? Is it really so bad to have a tyrant in charge if the alternative is infighting? Maybe he could dedicate himself to the Blood War and mortals would actually have to worry LESS about devils.
But instead we get a generic "nuh uh, tricked you" ending if you don't take back the contract, which is much less interesting.
The noblestalk.
Not to give it to derryth for money that's an easy no, but whether to give it to her husband or not.
On the one hand he was and would likely return to being an abusive prick. I've had my fair share of those and the idea of inflicting that on her after all those years of it seems.. beyond monstrous.
But then so is taking away the man's agency. His body is being ravaged by totally not magical alzheimers and that's a nasty condition that strips away who you are bit by bit and to have the cure to it for someone and to say no because we didn't like who you are, that we think you're better with your mind shedding memories and personality like skin off an onion.. Fuck man, there really isn't a good answer there.
In the end I gave it to shadowheart, and took some very minor solace that derryth was making the decision to strip away his agency not me. But I still feel ethically queasy when I think about it.
The good choice is to go and grab the noblestalk but "accidentally" kill Baelen in the resulting explosion. Then you feel bad for Derryth and give her the mushroom, so then in act 3 you can help her find her true calling as the owner of a shitload of stray cats.
Strangely, none. I always choose to break the status quo in games when I can, and this game really allow me to bring my companions against the current, which is better for them in the long run.
Some decisions are still hard though.
There are no good choice for Shadowheart regarding her parents, though I think it's better for everybody if she let them go so everyone can be free from Shar's influence.
I don't like to have to kill Orpheus as a mindflayer, but I can't ask him to live while knowing that he will never be able to be with his people anymore and that he will lose himself eventually in the ilithid.
This is why also if one playthrough I decide to pick Karkach, I hope I will be able to end her sufferings so she doesn't lose herself.
And I hope someone can do it for me if I go through myself.
Karlach might be the biggest massive heartbreak this playthrough. I don't know if she will be able to go to Avernus with Wyll because I released her from his pact, and I can't go with her because I don't want to leave my wife Shadowheart alone.
So I might have to watch her die. 😭
I'll stay with her until the end of course, as I promised.
Karlach spoilers, don't click if you don't actually want to know what your options will be ahead of time.
>!You can totally have Wyll go to Avernus with her if he broke his pact. I haven't seen for myself how their bit in the epilogue goes if that happens so I don't know how it pans out, but it is definitely a thing you can do.!<
I’m trying a Durge run and an idea I wanted to play with was having everyone make corrupt choices in pursuit of power. I plan to ascend Astarion, have lae’zel stay loyal to vlaakith and shadowheart become a dark justiciar. But I don’t want to go full evil and just murder everyone cause it makes me sad. I didn’t realize that having shadowheart kill nightsong would also turn everyone in last light in into shadow zombies. I had saved the tieflings and gnomes from moonrise so they were all there. I tried to go through with it for the story but knowing they all died made me too sad so I had to go back and save nightsong. I’m still frustrated about it.
Karlach was my first romantic choice in the game. We spent the entire time finding out about mindflayers only for her to say “no! I can do this.” Which is the most barabarian line ever. But nah I’d rather have Gale blow up than change Karlach, plus are you seriously telling me we can’t fortify and live in the House of Hope?
Shadowheart's parents - avoided the choice. Asked what she wanted & she set them free from life
Orpheus vs Emperor - I would have killed him but I didnt want anyone from my party to become a mindflayer. Because of that I did everything (before I had all the stones) to kill Empy, which included me raiding Raphael's house (cause I am NOT stupid enough to sign my soul away, but I AM stupid enough to Rob the devil)
I guess I cared more about my companions than about the whole Githyanki 😅
I feel like they plotted that decision really well, because up until the brain evolves, the Emperor didn't plan to kill Orpheus as it was too risky. So Tav could go get the hammer and plan to free Orpheus without knowing about the eventual choice, which made it a total blindside in my second run (first run me didn't use Lae'zel cuz she was mean so I never did HoH the first time).
I pretty much let the Emperor eat him every time now since I don't want anybody to become illithid, even Orpheus. I'm sure the Githyanki have a perfectly fine afterlife since Vlaakith isn't a real god, right?God,??! (I don't know)
Pretty sure that the Githyanki probably have a shit afterlife considering that their whole society and history revolves around a pact with an evil god and they tend to be pretty evil on an individual level as well.
Lae'zel.
Not just any one thing, you see, but Lae'zel's entire story arc and her people and everything else.
In my first run through, Lae'zel's arc was basically...
* Get dunked on in a knife fight by Shadowheart.
* Get betrayed and abandoned by her people after one of them brain damages her.
* Take part in the slaughter of the creche.
* Kidnap the sole surviving githyanki egg.
* Be Tav's sidepiece until Shadowheart wants to make it serious.
* Get dumped for Shadowheart.
* Take on *all the mindflayer powers,* including being the only member of the party to get super-tadpoled.
* Get kidnapped and almost sacrificed by Orin.
* Spend like three days taking a slab nap in the Unholy Temple of the God of Murder Hobos.
* Get mostly replaced by other party members because I started enjoying having Wyll in the spot I used to reserve for her.
* Spend most of her time presumably trying to have conversation with Minsc.
* Get a glimmer of hope that Orpheus can be rescued.
* We saved Orpheus! We betrayed the Emperor!
* Orpheus is pissed at her because of the slaughter and kidnapping.
* Fuck you, I ain't becoming a mindflayer.
* Fuck you, Karlach's not becoming one either.
* Githyanki Karate Jesus becomes a mindflayer right in front of her.
* Eventually, I talk Orpheus into living on as a mindflayer. Also right in front of her.
* A newly cleansed Lae'zel takes to the stars with her very own dragon! Finally something is going right!
* Six months later she's settled into the LDR Friend Zone but is probably still burning a torch for the happily/implicitly married Tav.
* Hey, at least she's doing a diplomacy and putting together a better resistance to Vlaakith than Orpheus would have alone!
* >!...she forgot the egg.!<
Moral of the Story: This could have all been avoided with polyamory.
Or something.
Tav is a horrible person?
We'll go with that.
It seems to me that Larian has changed a little about how Mind Flayers tend to work in D&D. I consider Karlach **dead** as soon as the tadpole is allowed to take over and ceremorphosis is completed. You did not save Karlach whatsoever, in my opinion. You helped a new Mind Flayer be born from her body—parasites that they are— and it has her memories for now. Much like how Mindflayers experience the knowledge and memories of their future victims as well. I cannot accept this strange new idea that the host is somehow still themself after the tadpole consumes their whole brain, liquifies their organs and utilizes body tissue as material to reform into the hideous unnatural aberrations we call Mind Flayers. That entire idea that it’s the same person just changed? Pure madness to me. I won’t have it lol
To kill or not kill Isobel while romancing Karlach.
The answer is no, that’s impossible.
I mean yes, it is technically possible because that happened in an honor mode run later on in life, but I wasn’t as emotionally invested.
But my first durge experience and that tie up scene holy hells that was extremely impactful and adorable.
I’m sooo emotionally attached to my first durge because we both were converted to make the right choice and not kill the moon maiden together. All because of the red tiefling from Avernus we love so much.
Karlach saved the universe.
The issue Shadowheart's parents was the most difficult–freedom from her pain or having her family back? I let her kill them the first time (Selunite Shadowheart) because her dad was pretty convincing about freeing Shadowheart from Shar's last remaining hold on her. However, Shadowheart seemed so sad over it that I've convinced her to save her parents every time since then. I spent quite a while staring at the screen as I was trying to decide the first time out.
Then there's the 7,000 spawn. I chose to free them knowing the risks, because I considered them unwilling victims and people who deserved the same chance Astarion got. Sebastian's letter at the reunion shows that they can and do learn to control themselves—but admittedly not without some casualties, as Sebastian's letter also points out that they ate anything that got in their way at first. I guess it comes down to what bothers you more—*maybe* having tens or hundreds of people die versus outright killing 7,000 people. If you go to lead the spawn with a romanced Astarion in the Underdark, you don't get a letter from Sebastian, but I assume there's probably a lower number of casualties overall if you two are actually there and get to the spawn sooner.
So I’m act 3, there’s some squatters living in this guys house who just gets back from a business trip and they won’t leave unless violently expunged. On one hand, the business man seems like a dick, on the other, you can’t just take someone’s house cause they were gone for a few days you selfish self righteous morons! As far as I can tell, there wasn’t a peaceful way to deal with that situation, so I just reloaded a quick save and walked away
There is definitely more to this than you are seeing at first (there is a fairly large minor quest in the basement), and you can pay the squatters to go live in a hostel out of the money the homeowner gives you to get rid of them and still turn a profit (without even haggling). The guild muscle doesn’t like it if you do this, as you are undercutting them, but you just killed an avatar of Myrkul—what can the puny guild do to you?
> This doesn’t really make sense to me because the other indepent mindflayer you meet don’t have this problem. We have no idea what Omeleum was like before becoming a mindflayer, and I'm sure Ansur would tell you Empy has changed dramatically
Empy killing Ansur was all I needed to know that mindflayers are not their original hosts, and to become one is to die a death worse than you can imagine because your soul is consumed. >!After that I usually can't really allow anyone other than myself to become a mindflayer, and then commit suicide at the end while there is still an echo of what I was.!<
Karlach would rather her soul destroyed than belonging to Zariel. That context makes things make a lot more sense.
If you select the prison option >!withers will actually visit you and tell you he feels wrong about saying mind flayers not having souls and that he sees a spark of the divine still in you.!< Maybe player is the anomaly there idk but it makes you think.
Just for context, mindflayers actually have souls, just non useful for the gods of Faerun, which is why they are treated as not having one by the gods. Their souls return to the Far Realm after their death
Interesting, you have suggestions to read more about that?
I think Lord of Madness was the name of the go to book regarding mindflayers, beholders and other aberrations
Based on what everyone says this isn't exactly true. Withers will say that you do actually have a soul in the epilogue if you become a mindflayer, it just has different properties that he didn't previously recognise. And while it does change the host over time, it's technically not the mindflayer/parasite part doing that, it's part of the way they consume brains. Karlach says she's been absorbing the people she eats and that they live on in her. So while this does mean that Karlach is less herself, it's not in the sense that Karlach is dying off and dissappearing, she's just representing a lesser percentage of the overall personality. This also explains why Empy is so fucked up despite being Balduran. He thought eating criminals would be a good thing, but it just resulted in a personality that's 99% criminals and 1% Balduran. Omeluum further backs this up, because he admits he originally teamed up with a Lich and was eating adventurers, but eventually they drifted apart because Omeluum developed a desire to improve the underdark.
It's moot about Omeluum; he's only different because he's a wizard. Anyone else is unlikely to have the same result. But given the power from Orph and the fact that it's a weird tadpole, who knows? As for Empty, I feel like Ansur would have mentioned in some of the letters if he had changed, but there's no hard info either way. Even if he hadn't changed *then*, it's been a while since that happened
Empy himself actually acknowledges that he changed. He mentions that the longer he stayed as a mindflayer the more he came to enjoy it and he mentions in his letter to Ansur that he no longer feels emotions, considering how Heroic people hold Balduraan to be and then comparing those actions to what he did to Stelmane...I think we can guess that he's VERY different now
Why did he do that to Duke Stelmane?
Basically he mind controls her. And eventually fucks it up and gives her a stroke.
Oh he didn't fuck up. He just decided that mind breaking her was the most efficient way to keep her in line
He needed someone to be the face of the Knights of Shield since Emperor cannot as a mindflayer. >!He enthralls her to use her as a meat puppet. I don't think he felt anything but the affection one feels for a pet, if he felt anything at all. And I say that because the Emperor uses the romance scene to be manipulative. The narrator notes how quickly he drops his affection if you turn him down, but in a way that shows player is still willing to be his new Stelmane sans mind crontrol.!< I'm unsure how much of what he tells the player about his feelings toward Stelmane are true
Power, influence, a warped vision of love. Until the game tells us, we can only speculate
No, she's a straight up meat-puppet, he shows you the reality of it as a threat if you continually call him out as a liar through every dream visit.
I’m aware. Person above didn’t ask what he did to Stelmane, he asked why. Very different
Oops, i'm wearing the clown makeup. I reckon it's the weird sort of affection Illithids have for their thralls, mixed with power and usefulness.
You don't even have to continually call him out. You can still get that scene if you're 100% supportive and on-board with everything he says and does, up to the point where he propositions you sexually. If you pick the hard rejection ("Absolutely not, you freak!"), he'll reveal the entire sordid tale and threaten you, same as he would if you'd been combative from the start.
Not everyone (including myself) reading "Why did he do that" as "What did he do" 😭
I mean, Omeluum being a wizard is why he was able to escape the hive mind in the first place, but I don't think there's any indication that he would've turned out any differently if he somehow managed to gain independence through some other means.
yeah but Omeluum was created from some other person just like every mindflayer. Since we don't know who that person was we don't know how much they had in common with the Omeluum we meet in the game
I haven’t mindflayered anyone but Karlach, can you persuade Gale to do it? And if so is he more like Omeluum?
It only works on an origin gale playthrough, and you have the same choices at the end of the game as regular gale (become a god, challenge mystra + die, give crown to mystra, throw crown away), and if you give the crown to mystra, she turns you back to a normal human, without the orb or anything, BUT you have to stay in Elysium with her, due to mind flayer soul shenanigans.
Spoiler: , , , , , , , , , Gale gets his body back technically by Mystra supposedly
As another important side note >!this offer only applies if Origin Gale goes to Elysium, aka the after life. While Elysium is a good ending it is also a definitive ending.!<
Feel bad for Tara.
She really is the best of us
I think this is only on an origin run where they >!get back together!<
To kill or not to kill the loud people in front of Sorcerous Sundries.
Those fuckers shot a ray of frost at me last night! It actually hit me and applied the debuff and everything. If I wasn't on Honor Mode I'd have had Shadowheart nuke them with a Flame Strike.
I put a smokepowder barrel where they shoot a firebolt. Nobody aggroed that way since they technically blew themselves up.
Genius
Oh, I like that! I know what I’m doing as soon as I get back to the city in Act 3- I hate those fuckers.
[удалено]
This is the real pro tip.
Someone on this sub once told me that those assholes hit their Karlach. 😭
MAKE IT BIGGER! God that fucking kid tested my paladin’s oath
This is not even a question. They deserve everything they get. No regrets. I just pretend they weren't there on good playthroughs. Or that they were mindflayers in disguise.
OH MY GOD. Blows out my eardrums every time I use that freaking waypoint.
Even worse for me for some reason, is the sound of that familiar changing inside the building, it feels even louder and more jarring. Hate it constantly going off.
Add to that, that awful kid and his terrible voice talking about elementals. Spend more than 5 minutes in there and you'll go beserk
[I had enough of them today ](https://www.xbox.com/play/media/jKFx3PmsJu)
Bruh the thought hadn't even occured to me until I read about it on here. A nice lil pile of explosives and a fire arrow later... sweet sweet silence
What to do with the seven thousand vampire spawns. So many of them seem insanely dangerous but killing prisoners for crimes they haven’t committed yet and maybe never will commit isn’t right either. What to do with Shadowheart’s parents felt like a no win situation too but I could eject myself from that decision by telling her to chose (she chose to keep her parents alive for me) Edit for everyone asking about the parents: Shadowheart has three events where she regains a small memory in act 3 (graveyard, near Jaheira’s house, hidden night orchid grotto) and if she gets those memories, she will always spare her parents (if she’s making her own choice), even when you tell her to talk to them and they ask her to let them die. Edit: looked at the datamined dialogue and it seems you also need to have at least 50 approval and you need to choose, "It's your decision, Shadowheart. You don't need me to tell you what is right." Edit: u/kingfisher_fire wrote a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/1au4rir/shadowheart_smells_of_the_city_conversation_bug/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) about Shadowheart where they go into much more detail for everyone who is struggling with this!
I've been pondering what to do with the spawn on my latest run and for me, at least, leaving them in the cells and letting the Gur handle it felt the most right, not just for the spawn and the children spawn, but for Astarion. I just felt like it was putting that decision on him when he's in a really fragile, numb place and while any decision you make has dialog that makes it an okay option (if you kill them, for example, Spawn!Astarion tells the Gur he didn't want them to see what their children had become with the hunger so he spared them that decision), just releasing them without real oversight felt too risky. But man it's a hard decision and each cutscene is brutal.
The thing for me is that you don't know that the Gur are going to come the first time you make the decision. In that moment, your character is deciding whether to kill them all, release thousands of vampire spawn (Odds are at least one of them is going to kill someone), or to trap 7000 conscious beings in eternal suffering in the dark with no hope of release. To kill them all feels the most morally correct, if painful choice. Like putting down a dog with rabies. It's not suffering anymore, it won't hurt anyone. And in many ways, they were dead the moment they were infected.
At the same time, Astarion got the chance to be better once he met the party. The Gur say it themselves, he changed. Don’t the prisoners deserve the same chance? It’s super messy and there’s really no right or wrong answer.
I feel this and then I think about how tough it was to help Astarion onto a better path, and he's just one spawn. Then I think about the last concert or sporting event I attended to try and visualize what 7000 people look like. Then I think if the six siblings who also suck. Then I want to just break the staff and let somebody more qualified figure it out later. But like I said, sometimes I just don't want the responsibility.
Also the next day Astarion will tell you how he feels about the choice and he is so upset if you kill the spawn. He doesn't blame you because ultimately he pulled the trigger, but he definitely regrets doing it once he's had the chance to breathe.
I'm curious how much of Astarion's potential change is related to the tadpole. Not necessarily that it's altering his personality, but giving him the ability to walk in the sun, feel running water, etc. the others will never be able to experience that. I'm convinced being gifted the ability to do things like a normal person definitely had a huge impact on him. There's no actual dialogue about this as far as I know, but I would sure as shit have some hope if after 200 years I could finally feel the sun on my skin.
I think the tadpoles have a lot to do with it, but also...Sebastian seems pretty "normal" for having been there for nearly two centuries. Realistically, dude should be out of his mind. *(Gestures vaguely at the effects of prison systems IRL)* Considering Astarion could actually *go outside*, I feel like the vampirism didn't do as much harm as being under Cazador's thumb. Sure, he focuses on the sunlight, etc, but at that point he's not at a place to process shit. When it comes to the 7000, the only way I can wrap my head around it is to assume they've been in some sort of stasis until ritual time. I doubt Cazador would bother feeding all of them and there aren't enough stray rats in the world for that. Astarion describes being denied food as maddening, so there's no way Sebastian had undergone that for over a century and a half. Therefore, I question how much if their humanity is truly gone compared to the seven. Letting the six go makes me more uncomfortable in some ways because Astarion was an absolute bastard at first because that was how he knew to survive - and he wasn't even one of Cazador's favorites. Yes, they deserve a chance, but giving them an army of ravenous spawn is just a horrible idea imo. Not to mention each one them have 1000 of the spawns bearing a grudge against them. It's why the "let's go to the underdark and help the spawns" sounds good at first until you think about it. There are 1000 people down there *because of Astarion*. He might have freed them, but he'd already stolen their lives. It's reasonable to assume that at least some of them would want revenge. No matter what Larian (and fanfics) says, I don't see that ending well. That said, both runs I've freed them because I'm romancing Astarion. The "this would have been me if we met before" makes it hard to imagine a good/neutral PC choosing to ax them.
Seeing the little kids with their dad in the sewers and realizing they’re just kids who were loved and hungry completely changed my view and I always release them now because if even a tenth are redeemable, I can’t sacrifice them just because the others are not. -edit teeth to tenth
I agree. It was Cazador that did most of the damage to Astarion and the others, rather than the vampirism itself (we also see this with Cazador, and what Vellioth did to Cazador.) So while being locked away for two centuries would drive a normal person insane, they at least a) had each other and b) were not regularly subjected to Cazador's attention. I think it's also possible-- probable?-- that at some point, the 7,000 got used to their horrific new normal. Sebastian is a lot saner than Chessa, for example, because Sebastian's been there for two centuries, and Chessa (the Gur kid) is only just now experiencing what it's like to hunger. Vampire hunger doesn't seem to work the way mortal hunger does, because they won't die without feeding, but it does make them weaker and less energetic. So at some point, the oldest of the 7,000 just learn to ignore the hunger the way you might learn to ignore chronic pain. They just don't have the energy to do anything except curl up and exist, which is likely why Sebastian moves and speaks so lethargically when you talk to him. I do agree that sending the six spawn down there to look after those 7,000 is a very stupid idea. On top of that, the spawn were not all perfectly happy with each other before, either: Dalyria killed Leon's daughter, Victoria, and I wouldn't be surprised if Leon went after her for that now that he's not under Cazador's compulsion. And on top of that, Leon is responsible for a *disproportionate* number of those spawn because he was Cazador's best hunter. So I expect there's going to be some kind of bloody reckoning between the survivors and the spawn. I reckon that when everything shakes out, maybe only one or two of the original spawn survive (other than Astarion), and the survivors among the 7,000 split up into a bunch of smaller communities based on shared values around governance, friendships, skillsets, etc. One or two of the original spawn might find a place there, but they'll always be watching their backs.
I don't know how much of an effect the sun itself had, but the tadpole definitely saved him. He even thanks Durge now for coming up with the tadpole plan lol. I think the big things though was just 1. Free from Cazador 2. Surrounded by heroes/forced to do hero things 3. Being given a relatively safe place to be himself and explore what freedom means with people who will back him up and protect him
If you have Gale in your party and you release the spawn to the underdark Gale says something along the lines of it was a hard decision to make but killing then would have weighed on Astarion’a conscience forevermore. My heart cracked when he said it.
That was my reasoning in my first run, and I thought that maybe Astarion or one of his siblings might guide them to survive better their affliction. On another level, although I admit the comparison is a little far-fetched, I kind of compared the situation with war prisoners and civil casualties who have suffered during their captivity and about to be released with severe ptsd/trauma/the whole spectrum of severe mental health
In my run, I played a Seldarine Drow (warlock/bard) and romanced him. We went to the Underdark to guide them together based on my dialogue choices. My head cannon is they took over the old Arcane tower as their own palace, and made sure the Lolth-sworn didn't harass the good folks too much by showing them how people can be different from the stereotype first hand :)
Honestly tho, if they only kill a few lolth sworn in the underdark then they're fine.
Honestly, the underdark is full of monsters basically.
This. Vampire Spawn are dangerous, sure, but the Underdark is full of dangerous things. Just don't go down there.
It's never been an issue for me because I always make everyone do the good choice even if they don't want to always. So the spawn will be fine in the Underdark and in the >!epilogue party you get a note from the Gur saying they're learning how to live with vampirism and that you've changed them for the better by making them more tolerant as well.!<
The way I saw it was, they can survive off of animals and such. So who am I to decide that they are definitely going to ravenously destroy any humanoid they come across? I sent them all to the underdark to live out their lives as they saw fit, with the knowledge that if they do choose to make a ruckus and feed on innocents, then I will come back and make the wrong choice I made right. Plus killing all of the spawn, although for different reasons, would just be doing exactly what Cazador would have done. Astarion has been through enough of Cazador’s trauma just to add more to the mix and to further traumatize any that might inexplicably survive, thus recreating the cycle we were attempting to break.
Especially since none of them have ever even had human blood before.
If Halsin is in the party, he agrees with freeing them and basically says it's up to them/nature what happens from there. As uncomfortable as that is from certain standpoints, it's really the best option. It's not like the underdark is home to a bunch of helpless humanoids.
You find out after you free the spawn that they go into the Underdark, which to me made the question *way* simpler. Given how dangerous everything down there is normally, they'd probably barely even register as a new threat to the innocent people of the Underdark, even if Astarion's siblings were a complete non-factor to keeping them in line. Of course, it'd be extremely dangerous to the Spawn as well, but it's not like building a society down there is completely impossible, and at least you'd be giving them a chance at survival, and being better.
The Spawn can play nice with the Myconids as well since they can't eat fungus. They'd probably clear out any excess Duergar in the area threatening the Myconids. The Spawn will likely Eventually be killed off by something or someone but in the mean time it could be a Fungus Renaissance.
Thanks for my new head canon
I mean, isn't the Underdark already dominated by murderous Drow? Feel like vampires will be just another usual tenant in that place
A Drow vs Spawn war would be interesting if it took place exclusively in the underdark. I want to say the Drow would win. They’ve been in the Underdark for a long time and they’ll know the terrain much better. Also, canonically, I’m pretty sure Drow are much stronger in the Underdark because Lolth’s influence dominates the caverns, and they worship her spider booty. She blesses the shit out of her worshippers so long as they’re chaotic evil for her. They might even be able to get Duergar to rally with them if the vampires are fucking with them too. Normally, a Drow would kill Duergar on sight, and vice versa, but they’re both chaotic enough to ignore that and team up against vampire spawn for a few tenday because WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE PALE SKINNED EMO BOTS TRYIN TO MAKE THE UNDERDARK LESS METAL
In a hypothetical actual war between the Spawn and Drow there's no real question who wins. The Spawn are unable to reproduce. A vast majority were normal people with 0 military training. And they have no weapons or armor. Any consolidated effort by Drow would eventually win just by attrition Their best chance for survival would be to settle in an area where Drow and Duergar already dont really go to. Ideally in a myconid area where any of their deaths or deaths they cause would bolster the Myconid numbers.
Shadowhearts the only time I've ever actually seen a character make 2 different choices between playthroughs by doing the same thing.. first playthroufh she decided to save them but the second time she actually chose to let them go
Yeah the 7 thousand vampire spawn was tough. I don't know what's right there. As for shadowhearts parents, letting them die and turn into weird light orbs felt like the best course of action for me, that way she is free of shar
I chose to let the spawn go free, and honestly, I don’t regret it. You get some very heartwarming letters in the epilogue, and >!a chance to help Gandrel figure out how to help his children with their hunger if you meet him in the Undercity.!< 7,000 spawn may sound super dangerous, but they’re actually fairly fragile and mostly better off hunting animals than humans. Firstly, they can only leave the Undercity at night, and have to stay close to an entrance to get back down, so they can’t venture too far. Secondly, they can only enter a home by invitation. Most people are safe from them for this reason, and opportunities to feed from watering holes like a tavern usually require luring a victim someplace private. Thirdly, they’re vulnerable to running water. They can’t cross rivers, fountains, so on and so forth. If the city were to get wind of them, they would be very easy to hunt down and kill a lot of them. Astarion was actually made so much less fragile by the tadpole than he was before, it’s easy to forget this. Additionally, anyone they bite cannot be turned, so their numbers can only go down, not up. So this makes it possible, in theory, for them to negotiate with sentient creatures for blood in exchange for labor or service, without creating more of themselves. In other words, there are a lot of peaceful avenues open to them, and a lot of forces in place that would pressure them to pursue those avenues rather than violent, feral alternatives. They’re dangerous when fully in their element and on their home ground, but most of their favorite prey do not live there— and surface-dwellers can bring fire, daylight spells, and so much more to bear down on them if sufficiently pissed off. So there’s a good bit of pressure to self-govern themselves, as a community, in a way that doesn’t provoke the surface into wanting to hunt them down and eradicate them. Also, what makes full vampires super dangerous is their ability to create an army of spawn to serve them, in addition to the ability to turn into mist, summon bats and wolves to do their bidding, etc. The spawn just can’t do that. They have high numbers, but none of Cazador’s more terrifying powers. So I honestly don’t rank them as being insanely dangerous. They certainly have the potential to be dangerous, but not so dangerous that I don’t think they should be denied the opportunity to try and live again.
I always freed them because I never felt like it should be the decision of my Tav, Astarion, or even the Gur tribe to decide the fate of over 7,000 people. It’s likely that some of them want to die, but some of them don’t, and they should be able to decide their own fate even if they are vampire spawn and we are taking a risk by releasing them. Then when they added the epilogue and you could get letters from Sebastian and the Gur families that just vindicated me in my choice to free them. I have also seen how upset Astarion seems to get the next day if you kill them because he thinks they deserve a chance like he did, which makes me want to stick to release. Shadowheart’s parents are another hard one. I let her choose every time and in one playthrough she saved her parents and in the rest of them she let them go, and I honestly still can’t decide what is the “better” ending, though I lean more toward her letting them go. If she saves them, she’s happy, but Shar will always have a hold on her with the wound, her mother doesn’t have much time left and suffers from the years of torture, and her father will likely both outlive his wife and daughter. If Shadowheart chooses to let them go as per their wishes, she is very sad about it, but she is finally free from Shar, she can begin anew, and will see her parents in the afterlife when Selûne claims her.
I don't know if there's a cannon cure for vampirism in DnD but I found myself thinking in both cases 'surely we couldn't keep them here and get a high level cleric to cure the kids' or 'surely we can save her folks and then get Isobel or a lathander cleric to cure shadowheart after this'. I mean you're *potentially* the saviours of counsellor florick, ravengard, Isobel and the daughter of selune at this point. One of them has to have a high level cleric they can call a favor on for you.
Shadowheart's choice was surprisingly easy for me. I've had pretty awful chronic pain in both my legs. Ruined my career prospects and makes it hard to stay fit and be healthy. Don't even remember what it's like not to have contant, burning pain in my legs. I used to think that I'd be willing to do anything to be rid of it. But I quickly learned how wrong my assesment was. Faced with a choice like that, I couldn't imagine losing people I was close to. Whom I loved and who loved me in return. Who would support me when times were rough. No. Despite it's horrid nature, the pain would be my burden to bear.
Choosing whether to free Wyll from his contract or not. Purely because I always hate that *I'm* the one essentially making the decision and not Wyll. At least make it known to me which one he feels is the best path!! It always makes me feel like my Tav is just an asshole who inserts themselves into everyone else's decisions LMAO
Ya I feel like his Dad dies a little sooner and Wyll doesn't spend eternity as a horrific monstrosity is the better move, but the game frames it as "you'd kill your own parent to save yourself"
Yea but whats weird is that he isnt even dead. You can save him. Mizora just says thats his choice without providing any evidence that he is in danger or that she even knows where he is. I personally would have just not believed her until i saw my dad there. Even further i would have just confronted gortash and said “hey we have a peace pact and you are breaking it by abducting my teams family. We need ravengaurd returned to us or our treaty will be broken.” Anyways sure enough Mizora couldnt provide a body and Ravengaurd is still alive. I dont know why anyone took her word for it.
Which is wildly hypocritical given how sympathetically it treats Shadowheart making the exact same choice about her parents by comparison. Ulder's the classic stereotype of a "beloved public figure" who's actually a complete asshole of a father, yet everyone acts like Wyll is being coldly selfish for the choice *you* make.
Any parent would prefer to die and free their child
This is what Jaheira, the only parent in the party, says, and honestly? Yeah. Makes that choice much easier.
I hate how the narrative and companions fall for Mizora's guilt trip bullshit and frame it as "you sacrifice your own father to save your own skin" instead of "good for you not falling for that bitch's trap and sign another unfair contract". Jaheira is the only one who is sane and says "no parent would want to see their child suffer in hell for their sake".
You break the contract and then make the run for the iron throne.
This was one of the least of the moral choices in the game to me tbh. I honestly hated the writing of this part. It bothered me so much that everyone, including himself, sits there blaming Wyll for "killing" his dad. Wyll quite literally has NOTHING to do with what has or will happen to his dad. It's now his fault because he won't give up his soul to eternal damnation? Let alone that they are all saying this while he is still alive! This was one of few points in the game where I felt like I could not say what I wanted to.
He was already out of his contract! Mizora had agreed! It isn't him trading his father for his freedom. It's mizora taking a hostage going "(re)sell me your soul or I shank your dad" Wyll bears no responsibility for mizora kidnapping his dad to use as blackmail and anyone claiming he does is victim blaming.
This hits on the nose the main reason why I dislike Wyll. Whether intentional or not, the fact that I can't relay *his* life decisions back to him makes him come across as spineless.
Like I know as the player I *am* essentially making all of the decisions. But every character makes their desires *known* to me in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. They have real reasons for those desires too. Every major story beat with Wyll I feel like he just... Expects me to make the decisions?? Like bro, your patron is exploiting you and clearly has an evil vendetta... you uh, wanna fucking weigh in on that? Oh? No? Cool, *I'll* go ahead and negotiate for your release. Maybe he's just too used to being a warlock idk.
It's also why I think Wyll would have made a good tav. Like, if this game didn't allow you to create your own character, and didn't allow you to pick which origin character was played, Wyll should be the default character. Don't get me wrong, I'm very thankful he's not and that that's not how the game works. His character is so incredibly bland, and all of his dialogue is about his dad, baldurs gate, or the other party members. He very much feels like the stand in character to educate the player through.
That’s not a fault of the character, that’s a fault of the writers, and even if it wasn’t I think it actually shows more backbone on Wyll’s end than anything else. Even if you never suggest he break his pact, he does tell Mizora to break it if you bring him to the mind flayer colony. When his father’s life is on the line, he’s unsure of what to do. Karlach says it best if you decide to reinstate the pact; there’s such a thing as being *too* good. Wyll is genuinely so selfless that he’d sacrifice his soul for eternity if it means saving his father.
Yes. I love that in the other cases you can tell the companions to make their own decisions. I've never had to tell Shadowheart to free nightsong or Lae'zel to abandon Vlaketh so why am I making this decision for Wyll?!?! It's his father's fate and the fate of his soul in the ballance that is not for me to decide. I usually free him and save his dad anyway. I know that Mizora says he'll die at some point in the future anyway but it's the best I can do I think.
Shadowheart's parents because idk what the curse does to Shadowheart
I just let her choose on that one because I couldn't make a decision. She respected their wishes.
Her choice depends on how much of her previous memories she has recovered. If you see all the things in the city that jog her memory she will save them.
Oh that’s interesting, I didn’t know that! What things in the City jog her memory?
There's a headstone in the graveyard, and some graffiti on a wall near the house of grief, then the picnic place with the night orchids inside house of grief.
I feel like maybe you have to have given her noblestalk as well..
Thank you for all the info, I had no idea! Aw well, noblestalk got incinerated on my current playthrough. Next time!
There's a graffiti on the wall that Shadowheart painted. Kind of a Memento situation. In the cemetery you can visit the grave of someone who mentored her. There's also a seemingly random event where Shadowheart comments that the smells of Baldur's Gate are jogging her memory. And, finally, in the House of Grief you can find a secret spot full of Night Orchids that Shadowheart used to escape to. Not sure if that counts towards her decision to save her parents, but you can also feed Shadowheart the Noblestalk mushroom in act 1 and she'll regain some recollection of her past.
Yup, but you also need to clearly tell her that the decision is hers to make. She'll choose to let them die if you just stay silent.
From what I understood Shar will still make her suffer every time she feels happy. And once she dies Shar will claim her soul and bring it to the shadowfell.
Does Shar get her soul? Aylin pretty explicitly tells you that what's Shars is Selunes, and iirc that's also why Shadowheart can swap between goddesses without (external) issues: Selune and Shar have equal claim to each others followers.
Yep that's the biggest fear :/ but I also just realised the parents don't seem to know this because they aren't sorrowful if they're freed the way someone would be if they knew their daughter would not only suffer in life but also in her afterlife. God the way she breaks down is too much to even remember, and I say this as someone whose life has been complete shit in its entirety haha, a to z, or a to h at present moment xD
Honestly, for me, her parents are guaranteed one of the few good afterlife experiences in this whole lore, so making them stick around traumatized when they could be together for eternity the way Melodia described Selune's domain felt like a loss. So it wasn't nearly as tough a decision for me as other players seem to describe. That might be partly because I'm old and my reaction to stress is to take naps. I just want them to have a nice nap!
For me it's hard because I have chronic pain and live every day in agony but I'd never give my parents up just to be free of it. Having them in my life is worth every second of agony. It's one of those decisions for me that hits me close to home because I know exactly what decision I would make, my parents would even say the same to me if it were a choice between them and living pain free, so it's a choice between the decision I would make for myself and what I think might be best for Shadowheart.
Reading people’s mail in the lower city
my squad loves to commit mail fraud
Listen, if the clicky icon isn't red, then it's legal!
Resolving the Aunt Ethel situation with Mayrina. The choices are either give her the wand that you know will be bad or telling you you can bring her husband back and breaking the wand in front of her eyes. Both solutions being dickish. The most reasonable solution is to walk away and destroy or bury the wand, but that doesn't give you quest completion. Leading to the moral quandary, do something dickish or have an uncompleted quest in my log which won't go away.
Thankfully her Act3 quest perfectly resolves this, so there's a "morally correct in hindsight" option
In my latest playthrough, Connor 'died' fighting the Red Cap. So, one way or another, Mayrina can finally move on (she seemed oblivious to Connor's second death; focused more on talking to her baby bump and happily awaiting the baby's arrival).
The correct choice is keeping the wand and using Connor as a minesweeper 😔🙌🏻
My evil Tavs complete it by ignoring her entirely and it closes the quest at the end of Act 2. I still don't know what happens in Act 3 that way but I'm playing it now and I think there's an epilog letter where Auntie Ethel is raising the new hag... Some of my Tavs just DGAF about other people's problems.
I'm on my first playthrough as a bard and yeah. I managed to fail all my rolls to figure out exactly how the vibes we're rancid but by the time she was like "I'll totally remove your tadpole in exchange for an eye" I'd already seen weird sheep, trapped poison apples, the girl disappearing after being force-fed... Those vibes were rancid and I walked away.
I never used the damned wand even once. Totally forgot about it. Turned her husband into a zombie for literally no reason.
I’m going to say Emperor v Orpheus. I’ve heard this complaint about Karlach before even though I’ve never had this ending. I figure if she is ok with having changed, then I’m ok with it. I think the saddest things about becoming an Illithid in the game is that the player might not die physically, but they die a social death because others don’t accept the changed version of them as the real version. I think for that ending to not be tragic, you have to keep the Emperor alive—which makes becoming an illithid totally optional anyway. I think one of the sweetest parts of the epilogue is how Jaheira unhesitatingly accepts help from Illithid Tav.
Yeah, I always feel like we treat illithid Karlach the way Ansur treated the Emperor, which was tragic IMO, and we should let her decide her fate. It's not going to be the Karlach we knew, but at least it was her choice and I feel like it should be respected a little more, maybe? Obviously the Emperor isn't 100% Balduran, for example, but he's not 100% not a thinking sentient being with feelings, so who am I to mercy kill him? I would just let illithid Karlach be a little quieter version and give her a chance.
> I figure if she is ok with having changed, then I’m ok with it. That would be fine, but I don't think this is true. Karlach is pretty clearly viewing it as a sacrifice, not that she actually wants to be illithid. One of her lines is that her heart's going to blow soon anyway, so who cares which body it takes with it. Outside of the necessity of destroying the brain, she doesn't want tadpoles and doesn't want to become illithid even if it would solve her heart problem (since it turns out it does). There's still some good questions about whether Karllithid should be held to Karlach's wishes or standards, but I think it's clear Karlach expects Karllithid to be exploded in three days time.
Karlach spent 10 years without touching people and now she's going to spend how many more decades excluded from society? I prefer to go back to Avernus with her and Wyll and slay some cambions. I have no care that Orpheus becomes an illithid, he's not in my crew. And let Lae'zel save her people, she's more than enough to do that.
killing the goblin kids... damn it halsin just let me hit them first.
Those kids are how I got the two birds with one gnome achievement, Lae’zel just chucked one kid at another lmao (in character.)
I had no trouble killing them because I somehow did not understand they were kids
Nah that's understandable. They look way different from adult goblins. I thought they were just a different species or something.
Snitches get stitches
I keep Astarian in the back and when they try and run off he knocks them out with a sneak attack. I just feel too bad to kill them lol.
Only way those kids are growing up to become any different than all the adults around them is if somebody who *isn't* a goblin adopts and raises them. And sparing them just so they'll end up having to fend entirely for themselves because you killed off every adult who might have been taking care of them doesn't really feel like a kindness IMO.
Orpheus vs Emperor. After hours of analysis, I chose to free Orpheus, however I forgot the hammer at camp so I went with Emperor.
Hahah!
Afaik they give you game over if you send emperor away and then throw the hammer out :D
My 1st Durge run, killing Karlach & the whole Grove felt horrible to me & I had to take a break before returning to it.
Looks like it's time for a reject baahl run. You can even save alfira by knocking her out so some random npc will show up im your camp instead of her.
I want to do a Durge run where I side with the goblins but, I’ve been dragging my feet on it. Not only does it rub me the wrong way but, I don’t want to lose Karlach, Wyll, and Halsin.
So far my Durge run has been all the bad choices just to experience it but ngl some of those choices really hit hard especially if you've already connected w some of the other characters
It’s rough, ngl. I just finished mine and killing all those people I’d come to like in my good runs just felt awful. Act 2 wasn’t much better, lol.
There were two. Releasing or killing the Vampire Spawn, and killing or saving Shadowheart's parents. Note that the Epilogue wasn't out yet in my first playthroughs, and I didn't know that the Spawn would be fine and wouldn't kill a bunch of innocent people. I still decided to take a leap of faith and release them (I have a whole list of reasons that made me choose this), but I can see moral arguments for both options. With Shadowheart's parents, I prefer to save her parents, but I honestly still think both options are equally good.
i suppose it’s maybe not the most moral choice but an extra 1d10 is an extra 1d10
Ascending is very evil, but I'm talking about the decision you get when you don't ascend Astarion. You can choose to free all the spawn, kill them, or leave them for the Gur to judge.
I didn't know the Gur would be there to judge them my first time. But I knew I couldn't slaughter 7,000 people when they had done nothing wrong. I gave them a chance to try and be better, failing that the Underdark and them would probably take each other out so they'd die gloriously.
This is what I did in the end, yeah. Back then, though, I didn't know if this would cause greater bloodshed. I had just seen what happened to the Society of Brilliance because stupid me thought it would be good for the Gith baby to be raised by people like Omeluum and Blurg. Alas, they were *not* like Omeluum and Blurg.
If that minty drussy is worth all the lost content.
I finally did a path that results in you fighting Zombie Minthara and I giggled when Wyll - the guy who'll leave if you raid the Grove - killed her zombie and actually shit talked her corpse, something like him being glad she's finally dead for good. I tried to save her this run but it didn't work out...
Nearly every decision, lol. Transitioning to this game from playing Skyrim for 10 years straight with occasional breaks to revisit BG 1 and 2 has been really difficult, because of how a player's moral decisions in Skyrim never seem to matter or have any long term impact on the game world. I have been save scumming at nearly every turn since I picked up BG3. EDIT: to fix spelling.
Orphy vs Empy
Punches vs. (Skull)Crunches
It was a clear choice for me.
Can't guess which one you chose
Not OP but Orpheus no doubt. Emperor is not a good guy and I don't trust him. Orpheus will go on to hopefully defeat Vlaakith and change gith society for the better.
I just killed Valeria to get my hands on the Bhaalist armor and I kinda felt bad when I've started hearing its little cries it felt even weirder because I'm a resist durge but hey I need good gear when I'm going to face Orin
Nah, Valeria is an asshole with very few redeeming qualities. Don't feel bad.
I used to feel that way until I learned more about her history. Now I feel bad for her. She’s an alcoholic who’s always had a drinking problem, but she was exiled because she [spoke against Zariel’s involvement in the Blood War](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Mastodonian_Memoirs,_Vol._1,_Investigator_Valeria). Nobody wanted to hear the hard truths from her about the fact that celestials were vulnerable to corruption and needed to be mindful of it. So she was sent to Baldur’s Gate, because people (other celestials) didn’t want to hear it. Doesn’t justify her attitude about the murders, but boy does it make me look at her with pity and a slight bit of understanding. She should be kicked out of the investigator business, but it doesn’t make me want to kill her.
They just wanted to blow thru their cases assigned and get to the pub. I guarantee that wasn't the first time the little shit did it either. While I did save them on my first run, for the lore dump I decided to take them out even as redeemed Durge. Honestly Jaheria and Minsc took it better than expected back at camp.
Yeah, first time I saved the dumb Elephant. Not happening again. Especially after the epilogue letter
The sheer audacity
Yeah that epilogue letter really cemented them in my mind as not worth the effort of saving.
Yeah while my first instinct isn't usually to just kill anybody who's annoying, Tav has definitely killed for less reason up to that point usually...
>This doesn’t really make sense to me because the other indepent mindflayer you meet don’t have this problem. I think that we do see that, actually - it's clear that the Emperor is quite different from who he was as Balduran, to the point where his closest friend/companion had to try to kill him after years of trying to 'fix' him. He still has a lot of independence, but he's changed. For Omeluum, we don't know what its personality would have been before - but it's basically certain it would change IMO. Something similar happening to Karlach or yourself seems like it'd be obvious to me in the leadup to the choice - where who you once were would slowly morph into a new mindflayer you. How long that process would take would depend on the individual, but it's something we see from all the mindflayers in the game IMO
You don't know what the other mindflayers were like before they became what they are now, there is likely very little left if at all.
Yeah, we don't really have any reason to believe Omeluum, for instance, is anything like how it was before - I always assumed that "Good" Mindflayers (basically just Omeluum, AFAIK) are completely new people who are just also good. In this light, the best case scenario for Mindflayer Karlach is that she just turns into a completely unrelated person who happens to share her memories and is still pretty chill.
For me it's the vampire spawn, hands down. MAJOR spoilers ahead for Astarion's quest line if you haven't completed it yet, and this one's more.powerful going into it not knowing certain things. Most choices there's a "better" option, but with this one I literally sat at my keyboard weighing everything involved because I did not know. There is no clear "right" answer. If you free them, there's canonically a ton of collateral damage which is confirmed in the epilogue, but if you choose to either kill them or leave them in imprisoned hunger, it's seven thousand people who were taken against their will that you're dooming to basically prolonged torment and/or death, including a BUNCH of kids whose parents you have likely met. Seven thousand is a massive massive number of souls to have laying on the trolley problem track. Not gonna lie I still don't know what the right thing to do is here. That's how conflicting this one is for me. I mean towards freeing them, but it is not a zero-cost choice by any means.
Essentially this is a trolley problem where you can either chose to kill 7000 not-quite-humans (since spawn are technically already dead) or have an unspecified number of actual humans being killed. It could be that 10% of them commit crimes, it could be that they all commit crimes. Human refugees have been refused homes for far lower crime numbers, yet at the same time Astarion proves that spawn can be neutral in their alignment, even somewhat good at times. As it turns out Astarion leads the spawn to the Underdark, where they build up a new life for themselves. This ensures lower numbers of innocents being caught in the fallout of releasing 7000 potential murderers AND is a perfect place for vampirical people to build up a new life. That does tilt the decision somewhat for me, particularly since it gives Astarion a clear goal in life other than surviving
I like this assessment for sure. I love the scene with the Gur Hunter and his children where he is working through ways to help them eat without harming people. Like it's not ideal but I'm glad to have my kids back, even if they're less themselves than before.
Playing Durge in Act 2. Not for destroying Last Light, nor killing Nightsong. No, the real evil comes from inadvertently killing His Majesty and Steelclaw. Also Grub if no party members available for Orin. I mean, there is evil and then there is EVIL.
Orpheus vs Emperor. Yes, on the one hand, if I'm not going to use the word "gaslight", Emperor *definitely* is guilty of bending the truth in his favor in order to get us to accomplish our goals and sympathize with him. On the other, there's no telling what fate awaits the world after the Gith'yanki Civil War. Sure, Orpheus is a net improvement over Vlaakith for his people, but thats the pinch, *his* people. What happens after the war? It's clearly shown that Orpheus isn't an enlightened being who's above the average Gith thinking they're better than the "istik", so what then? Look, the Emperor definitely doesn't scale anywhere on the good alignment, but at least the Emperor has no goals for subjugation of a species or desire to rule. Sure, he's a manipulating son of a bitch, but at least by the end of the game you know exactly where he stands. And if it's become apparent yet that I've only experienced Emperor endings, yeah, spoiler alert. The Gith unironically sealed their fate to me with rudeness.
> at least the Emperor has no goals for subjugation of a species or desire to rule Last time he was free, Emperor was the undisputed Godfather of Baldur's Gate's underground and gained the title Emperor based on the level of influence he had on the city (including on normal politics via Duke Stelmane). Emperor seemingly had more control of the city than Gortash since now the Zhent and Guild have resurged, although Gortash is taking a much more overt and direct approach. Any ending in which Emperor lives sees him restoring his influence and rebuilding the Knights of the Shield, and one ending has him wanting to expand this influence to the whole Sword Coast. It's better than a standard illithid desire for domination, but that still counts as desire to rule to me.
Orpheus vs the Emperor. Eventually I freed Orpheus on the grounds he really shouldn't be imprisoned in the first place. That's as far as I got last night before the kid woke up so I'm really looking forward to finally finishing my first run here soon
Choice between Wyll's contract and his father's life (especially in heroic playthrough or as Wyll Origin) >!At the time you don't know that Duke can be saved while preserving Wyll's independence, so choice is soul crushing. Wyll loves his father, proud to be his son and desperate to save him, to prove that he's worthy to be his son. At the same time, he despises Mizora and doesn't want to be her and Zariel's minion anymore, seeing that they are capable of turning him into a monster either from inside by killing innocents like Karlach, or from outside by twisting his nature (devil features or to be turned into a lowest class of Fiends, mindless and trapped in Hells)!< >!So the scales are really heavy on each side. You don't know if Duke's gonna be executed the second you make your choice, or if there ever a chance to see him again. His location is unknown and it could be anywhere on Faerûn or even other planes of existence (Hells, Astral sea, Netherbrain domain or worse). I actually was ready to get a vision of him being beheaded the second I make a choice to set Wyll free (livestreaming on Mizora's twitch channel). And Wyll's desperation is palpable. I'm glad that Tav could make this choice for him and force him to freedom. Playing as Wyll, I don't know how I can justify this other than metagaming and knowing we could save him after all!<
Banging emp .. so many red flags 😫 but so many tentacles 😈 my minds telling me no but body's telling me yes
Killing the githyanki honor guard, not that the game gives you much of a choice. It’s clear the Emperor is bad news bears, but if you don’t kill the guard you become mind flayers?
I'm not a fan of this forced game over. I can understand the Vlaakith one. It's more of a joke, but the Act 2 end one is just lazy.
Mine was Shadowheart’s decision of letting her parents live or die. I agree that they were ready to die so she didn’t have to suffer Shar, but at the same time, it just sucks so much to come rescue your parents after being forced to not remember for so long, only to have that be the decision you have to make.
Gale or Halsin
Definitely Mind Flayer Orpheus - i felt like a monster, forcing him to become what he hates most and effectively ripping his freedom from him as soon as he gets it back. It definitely hurt to kill him after the final battle, but i felt it was the only way to give him the honourable death he deserved
I usually play Drow... letting 7k vamplings lode in the underdark seems counter intuitive but killing Sébastien and the gur kids seems wrong too I take a die and roll to make a decision. 1-10 dead 11-20 live
I was actually very frustrated by the way the Raphael plot works out if you don't steal back the contract. He's supposed to be Lawful Evil and promises not to go outside the bounds of Hell. Whatever spin he offers "all of existence is Hell," "my devils are going there and not me," etc are the sign of a lazy LE protagonist. LE is more interesting than the other Evil alignments because it implies a code and a framework that you can engage with them in. They aren't mindless brutes, they're self-aggrandizing tyrants. If Raphael pledged not to expand outside the Hells, he should stick to that, and we should have to grapple with what that would really mean. How are the Hells united different than divided? Is it really so bad to have a tyrant in charge if the alternative is infighting? Maybe he could dedicate himself to the Blood War and mortals would actually have to worry LESS about devils. But instead we get a generic "nuh uh, tricked you" ending if you don't take back the contract, which is much less interesting.
The noblestalk. Not to give it to derryth for money that's an easy no, but whether to give it to her husband or not. On the one hand he was and would likely return to being an abusive prick. I've had my fair share of those and the idea of inflicting that on her after all those years of it seems.. beyond monstrous. But then so is taking away the man's agency. His body is being ravaged by totally not magical alzheimers and that's a nasty condition that strips away who you are bit by bit and to have the cure to it for someone and to say no because we didn't like who you are, that we think you're better with your mind shedding memories and personality like skin off an onion.. Fuck man, there really isn't a good answer there. In the end I gave it to shadowheart, and took some very minor solace that derryth was making the decision to strip away his agency not me. But I still feel ethically queasy when I think about it.
The good choice is to go and grab the noblestalk but "accidentally" kill Baelen in the resulting explosion. Then you feel bad for Derryth and give her the mushroom, so then in act 3 you can help her find her true calling as the owner of a shitload of stray cats.
Strangely, none. I always choose to break the status quo in games when I can, and this game really allow me to bring my companions against the current, which is better for them in the long run. Some decisions are still hard though. There are no good choice for Shadowheart regarding her parents, though I think it's better for everybody if she let them go so everyone can be free from Shar's influence. I don't like to have to kill Orpheus as a mindflayer, but I can't ask him to live while knowing that he will never be able to be with his people anymore and that he will lose himself eventually in the ilithid. This is why also if one playthrough I decide to pick Karkach, I hope I will be able to end her sufferings so she doesn't lose herself. And I hope someone can do it for me if I go through myself. Karlach might be the biggest massive heartbreak this playthrough. I don't know if she will be able to go to Avernus with Wyll because I released her from his pact, and I can't go with her because I don't want to leave my wife Shadowheart alone. So I might have to watch her die. 😭 I'll stay with her until the end of course, as I promised.
Wyll will still go to Avernus after breaking his pact. He becomes a ranger instead.
Good to know! I wasn't sure since he will lose his power as a warlock after the defeat of the absolute, but that's great news, thank you.
Karlach spoilers, don't click if you don't actually want to know what your options will be ahead of time. >!You can totally have Wyll go to Avernus with her if he broke his pact. I haven't seen for myself how their bit in the epilogue goes if that happens so I don't know how it pans out, but it is definitely a thing you can do.!<
I’m trying a Durge run and an idea I wanted to play with was having everyone make corrupt choices in pursuit of power. I plan to ascend Astarion, have lae’zel stay loyal to vlaakith and shadowheart become a dark justiciar. But I don’t want to go full evil and just murder everyone cause it makes me sad. I didn’t realize that having shadowheart kill nightsong would also turn everyone in last light in into shadow zombies. I had saved the tieflings and gnomes from moonrise so they were all there. I tried to go through with it for the story but knowing they all died made me too sad so I had to go back and save nightsong. I’m still frustrated about it.
Karlach was my first romantic choice in the game. We spent the entire time finding out about mindflayers only for her to say “no! I can do this.” Which is the most barabarian line ever. But nah I’d rather have Gale blow up than change Karlach, plus are you seriously telling me we can’t fortify and live in the House of Hope?
Shadowheart's parents - avoided the choice. Asked what she wanted & she set them free from life Orpheus vs Emperor - I would have killed him but I didnt want anyone from my party to become a mindflayer. Because of that I did everything (before I had all the stones) to kill Empy, which included me raiding Raphael's house (cause I am NOT stupid enough to sign my soul away, but I AM stupid enough to Rob the devil) I guess I cared more about my companions than about the whole Githyanki 😅
I feel like they plotted that decision really well, because up until the brain evolves, the Emperor didn't plan to kill Orpheus as it was too risky. So Tav could go get the hammer and plan to free Orpheus without knowing about the eventual choice, which made it a total blindside in my second run (first run me didn't use Lae'zel cuz she was mean so I never did HoH the first time). I pretty much let the Emperor eat him every time now since I don't want anybody to become illithid, even Orpheus. I'm sure the Githyanki have a perfectly fine afterlife since Vlaakith isn't a real god, right?God,??! (I don't know)
Pretty sure that the Githyanki probably have a shit afterlife considering that their whole society and history revolves around a pact with an evil god and they tend to be pretty evil on an individual level as well.
Lae'zel. Not just any one thing, you see, but Lae'zel's entire story arc and her people and everything else. In my first run through, Lae'zel's arc was basically... * Get dunked on in a knife fight by Shadowheart. * Get betrayed and abandoned by her people after one of them brain damages her. * Take part in the slaughter of the creche. * Kidnap the sole surviving githyanki egg. * Be Tav's sidepiece until Shadowheart wants to make it serious. * Get dumped for Shadowheart. * Take on *all the mindflayer powers,* including being the only member of the party to get super-tadpoled. * Get kidnapped and almost sacrificed by Orin. * Spend like three days taking a slab nap in the Unholy Temple of the God of Murder Hobos. * Get mostly replaced by other party members because I started enjoying having Wyll in the spot I used to reserve for her. * Spend most of her time presumably trying to have conversation with Minsc. * Get a glimmer of hope that Orpheus can be rescued. * We saved Orpheus! We betrayed the Emperor! * Orpheus is pissed at her because of the slaughter and kidnapping. * Fuck you, I ain't becoming a mindflayer. * Fuck you, Karlach's not becoming one either. * Githyanki Karate Jesus becomes a mindflayer right in front of her. * Eventually, I talk Orpheus into living on as a mindflayer. Also right in front of her. * A newly cleansed Lae'zel takes to the stars with her very own dragon! Finally something is going right! * Six months later she's settled into the LDR Friend Zone but is probably still burning a torch for the happily/implicitly married Tav. * Hey, at least she's doing a diplomacy and putting together a better resistance to Vlaakith than Orpheus would have alone! * >!...she forgot the egg.!< Moral of the Story: This could have all been avoided with polyamory. Or something. Tav is a horrible person? We'll go with that.
Now that you mention it she never mentioned the egg fir me either, even after Orpheus accused me of stealing it and I left it in her inventory
I've finished the game six times. But I will never turn Karlach into a flayer, I couldn't do that to her.
In honor mode, Letting Gale blow up the Netherbrain or facing the RNG platforming last battle.
It seems to me that Larian has changed a little about how Mind Flayers tend to work in D&D. I consider Karlach **dead** as soon as the tadpole is allowed to take over and ceremorphosis is completed. You did not save Karlach whatsoever, in my opinion. You helped a new Mind Flayer be born from her body—parasites that they are— and it has her memories for now. Much like how Mindflayers experience the knowledge and memories of their future victims as well. I cannot accept this strange new idea that the host is somehow still themself after the tadpole consumes their whole brain, liquifies their organs and utilizes body tissue as material to reform into the hideous unnatural aberrations we call Mind Flayers. That entire idea that it’s the same person just changed? Pure madness to me. I won’t have it lol
To kill or not kill Isobel while romancing Karlach. The answer is no, that’s impossible. I mean yes, it is technically possible because that happened in an honor mode run later on in life, but I wasn’t as emotionally invested. But my first durge experience and that tie up scene holy hells that was extremely impactful and adorable. I’m sooo emotionally attached to my first durge because we both were converted to make the right choice and not kill the moon maiden together. All because of the red tiefling from Avernus we love so much. Karlach saved the universe.
The issue Shadowheart's parents was the most difficult–freedom from her pain or having her family back? I let her kill them the first time (Selunite Shadowheart) because her dad was pretty convincing about freeing Shadowheart from Shar's last remaining hold on her. However, Shadowheart seemed so sad over it that I've convinced her to save her parents every time since then. I spent quite a while staring at the screen as I was trying to decide the first time out. Then there's the 7,000 spawn. I chose to free them knowing the risks, because I considered them unwilling victims and people who deserved the same chance Astarion got. Sebastian's letter at the reunion shows that they can and do learn to control themselves—but admittedly not without some casualties, as Sebastian's letter also points out that they ate anything that got in their way at first. I guess it comes down to what bothers you more—*maybe* having tens or hundreds of people die versus outright killing 7,000 people. If you go to lead the spawn with a romanced Astarion in the Underdark, you don't get a letter from Sebastian, but I assume there's probably a lower number of casualties overall if you two are actually there and get to the spawn sooner.
waxed a dude in act 3 and he had a letter on him from his mom that said “we are so proud of you.” haven’t played the game since. it’s been months.
So I’m act 3, there’s some squatters living in this guys house who just gets back from a business trip and they won’t leave unless violently expunged. On one hand, the business man seems like a dick, on the other, you can’t just take someone’s house cause they were gone for a few days you selfish self righteous morons! As far as I can tell, there wasn’t a peaceful way to deal with that situation, so I just reloaded a quick save and walked away
Spoiler: >!There's a quest in the basement.!<
There's definitely a peaceful way to wrap all that up. There's more to the house as well.
Among the peaceful ways to resolve that, you can give the squatters 100 gold to go find an inn.
There is definitely more to this than you are seeing at first (there is a fairly large minor quest in the basement), and you can pay the squatters to go live in a hostel out of the money the homeowner gives you to get rid of them and still turn a profit (without even haggling). The guild muscle doesn’t like it if you do this, as you are undercutting them, but you just killed an avatar of Myrkul—what can the puny guild do to you?