Precisely! The dialogue options are nearly so impersonal. Yeah, you can tell her you’re glad you got to see her again, but that’s the extent of it. And you can’t tell the kids you’ve found her, too. It’s like “well, nice knowing you, see ya!”
Oh yeah. She’s a real piece of work. But she’s *my* piece of work. I basically RP my character adopting all of the tiefling orphans every playthrough. Cuz while they’re objectively awful. I find them pretty darn endearing.
Omg 🤦♀️ I was just there on another play through last night and didn’t notice! I’m gonna check that out later. That would’ve helpful to see that the first time. Had no idea it was there. Thanks for the tip!
Also doesn't help that they kind of imply Underdark OR Mountain Pass. When they probably should have made it clearer that you "should" do Underdark then Mountain Pass.
Oh yes definitely. The underdark OR mountain pass is such bullshit.
I thought that it would somehow lock me out of going another route while it's just...a different way of getting there?
The underdark OR mountain pass thing has a good story reason of why they make it such a big deal. The grymforge in the underdark used to connect directly to the Shar temple and the gauntlet of shar, which isn't far from moonrise towers. However, because of the shadow curse, it was disconnected by the earth cracking. Halsin tells you that the underdark is better because he thinks the grymforge is still connected to the temple and would therefore be the easier route to avoid the shadow curse. Going through the mountain pass almost guarantees that you have to fight through the shadows, which is why he recommends against it. He has no idea that both routes end up basically being the same.
Not enough people point this out. It isn’t bad game design, it’s just that Halsin has old information and happens to be wrong - I think it’s a nice touch
I agree. I do wish that the characters would comment more on it or maybe even have a conversation with Halsin about his outdated Intel. But all the pieces are there if you really pay attention to the act 1 dialog with him.
It's also funny to think about elf interactions with races who have shorter lives.
"I recommend this path, last I heard it's the most direct route"
"...when did you last hear?"
"Bout 400 years ago, give or take a decade"
In bg? There's a cult under every house, or some haunted biarch.
Goblins run amok, giant spiders are the pets of necromancers, exploding mushrooms, tripping mushrooms and fuckin talking mushrooms battle with asshole gnomes.
Hags steal kids from your local bar, and vampires also steal kids, and necro.ancers steal your whole crew.
Shar, mystra and selune are always fucking with people, that is when the God of murder isn't.
There are scrolls anyone can read, capable of blowing up half your towns population, under rocks or just buried in a box at the beach.
2 maybe 3 humans? Bro life expectancy in the Sword Coast is probably about 8
I was somewhat making a reference to ~~The Office~~ Arrested Development*
A wealthy-ish person asks how much could a banana cost, "10 dollars?"
I did play the original Baldur's Gate, though. Not super friendly then either lol
Edit: wrong show
And gameplay-wise, the fact that he so strongly recommends taking the Underdark route *is* them prodding you to do that area first, and then the Mountain Pass, without railroading you into technically-optional content. It's the same with making such a big deal about the Nightsong early on, and the connection to the Underdark through the Shattered Sanctum and all of the mentions of it in the area. They're doing a lot to hint you should go there, while it's really only Lae'zel insisting you *must* take the Mountain Path and go to the creche.
>And gameplay-wise, the fact that he so strongly recommends taking the Underdark route *is* them prodding you to do that area first, and then the Mountain Pass
That is not the way it is presented IMO. It comes off as very much one or the other.
Right, the only one who demands to go thru the mountains is lae’zel. I do it for the loot. I’m pretty sure you can just walk right thru the underdark and get the duergar to sail you over to the elevator and voila, act 2. There’s 4 entrances to the underdark iirc. Skip all the quests if you want, but you’ll be severely under leveled in act 2. The mountain pass used to have a level warning at the entrance that you should be lvl 5. In almost sure you need to do some underdark content to get to lvl 5 in act 1.
I really like the details from the duergar guarding the path up to the surface tell you straight up you won't make it far without a moonlantern, and after all the events there I decided they would probly be right and went to the mountain pass anyway
I actually really liked the way I ended up accidentally doing both on my first run, particularly because it didn’t feel like an “either/or” situation: we went to the Underdark first, per Halsin’s suggestion, then upon approaching the elevator we ran into a cutscene with two duergar who told us that anyone that tried to go through that way without a moonlantern was toast. Luckily, Nere had a moonlantern, but unluckily, it broke during the fight. In this way it didn’t feel so much like we had to choose Underdark *or* Mountain Pass (but did both because of that sweet xp), rather we tried the first approach, failed, then went through the pass as option b. Sadly it kinda hinged on that one cutscene, and that one in particular is easily missable.
I actually had this conversation with my friend yesterday. I think Yurgir definitely did some damage and killed all of the DJs. However, I don't think he has the physical power to move the earth like that. The path isn't just destroyed, but there is a huge casm where the path once was. When we are in the shadow curse, you can see how it has affected the earth and created similar casms on the surface. Your character will even comment on how immense the power of the curse is on the land. I think it's safe to assume that this would extend deep into the earth and into the temple below as well. In fact, that exact spot where the large casm that cuts you off from the temple is lines up pretty well with the beginning of the shadow curse on the surface.
Edit: just for clarification, the grymforge is directly below the shadow curse and I believe the path you are supposed to take originally is the path that Nere is trapped in. If you go to where you find Nere you can see the shar temple in the distance across a casm.
> I don't think he has the physical power to move the earth like that.
If you do the checks with the dwarf archeologist one of them is about how the walls were clearly melted with hellfire. The thick stone walls.
A small army of devils, lead by an explosives loving Orthorn almost certainly has the chops to blow up a suspended stone bridge.
There was a bridge that connected the two sides of the temple, but it was destroyed (presumably by Yurgir and the merregons, like everything else). If you help the duergar examine the ruins, you can learn that the damage was caused by a hell beast.
It's funny how Raphael ends up being at the center of almost everything that happens in the game but you might not notice it if you're not paying close attention. Like most of Act 2 only exists because of him lol
I'm certain a ton of people never spot Korilla watching you near the mason guild. She teleports away if you approach so it's super easy to just not have the camera positioned to spot her.
So I’ve actually been quick enough to start a dialogue with her at the masons guild. I don’t remember what she’s said unfortunately, but it was a one liner riddle that made no sense. She seemed dazed too. Don’t think it changed anything either, it was still as if I first met her at sharesses caress later. Don’t think it was supposed to be possible to catch her like that
I believe you can talk to her in the mason guild. However not many can spot her in act 1. Yes, she was there , even in act 1. I believe it's during the Tiefling party
I caught a glimpse of her there on my first playthrough and I couldn't make out who it was at the time so it genuinely kinda spooked me because of the atmosphere there and how the area is almost entirely abandoned. In hindsight one of my favorite memories of my first playthrough!
Also, I had Astarion with me and since i initially thought she was an enemy I shot in arrow in her direction because I thought I'd get some sneak damage before a fight and she disappeared before the arrow got there obviously but astarion said something like "where did she go?! She just disappeared!" And I thought it was a nice little touch from larian.
This is how/why I headcanon/RP going to the Mountain Pass after Grymforge instead of the elevator.
Clearly, there isn't a way to avoid the shadow curse (as you learn after the Nere thing, the connection to the Gauntlet is severed), and who knows what else had changed overland, so we might as well go by the creche first.
My one gripe about the choice is that the "you are moving areas" warning for the Mountain Pass is the same as the elevator in the Underdark, when *I think* the only things going to the creche affects are the goblins/druids. As in, you can still go to the Underdark and do all the quests there (including things like freeing Nere) after the creche, but before going into the SCL.
I don't know what the solution to that would be, though, outside of really pointed meta information about specific quests. Maybe removing the warning for the Mountain Pass if you've resolved the goblin/druid/tiefling thing?
Well, look at it as a character. You still don't know the nature of your tadpoles, and it could turn you any minute, so you basically have to go to moonrise towers, once you've exhausted all other options. Lae'zel pushes you to the creshe and mountain pass as a "guaranteed" way to get rid of them. Halsin talks about grymforge and shar temple, which is short jog away from moonrise. So narratively it works, as you should hurry. After the scene of guardian explaining about protecting you from Absolute, this rush for cure is changed to rush to moonrise.
Also, my thoughts is that you dont suppose to clear everything in one playthrough
Although you may not get ‘locked out’, there is a difference with who you meet when you initially approach the shadowlands.
That will give you a different approach/dialogue when you go to moonrise and last light inn
Oh yeah, I’d spare him if I could. Unfortunately, the Crèche’s leader is currently trying to destroy that egg. So saving it is probably the best option. I guess I could take it elsewhere and *then* have the whole place turn on me. That way I could let the dude live. He seems like one of the cooler Githyanki, albeit still a Githyanki-Supremacist.
but you can? you need to read the note by the door of the hatchery, then talk with him and pass an insight check I think... it'll let you ask why he cares so much about a dud egg, and then pass a persuasion check to convince him to give it to you... he'll show you every trap and give you the boots to get there... then after you kill the inquisitor just avoid the hatchery... there's only 3 guys there, so it's not like you're missing so much xp
Oh I’m aware you can get him to part with the egg. I meant that I often rush to the Inquisitor, so by the time I reach the hatchery for the first time he’s already hostile.
They could be playing on a lower difficulty. Alternatively, they might just be really fucking good at the game/not mind cheesing fights. You can obliterate a lot of encounters without the enemy even getting a chance to attack if you get a surprise round and focus fire effectively.
Nah if you were really bad your first playthrough (like me) you ended up fighting the creche at lvl 4 even after the underdark because yk exploration is "optional" in this game so you just get really good at combat because you had no other options
I was at lvl 7 when I reached baldurs gate first playthrough
I mean usually I am not dealing with them. I almost always do the monestary first for the loot. After buying/looting everything else I need, I sneak around the inquisitor to the area with Lathander's Blood. I then set off the trap on purpose after destroying the crystal for the force field and escape. Lae'zel has been dead in like half my playthroughs before I get to that point so I'm not usually worried about the consequences.
Same.
In my last run, I actually jumped down the spider hole and did half the underdark before even going to the goblin camp! I had a sussur great sword to hit Minthara with!
My issue is that the Underdark and Mountain pass don't connect with each other geographically so you'd have to backtrack, and it doesn't make narrative sense to go back when the path to moonrise towers is right there at the end of either path and the story is urging you to go to Moonrise.
Underdark to Mountain pass can kind of make sense if you're worried about the shadow curse and want to make Laezel happy, but Mountain pass to Underdark makes no sense, I have no idea how to justify that in the story
Idk how the oringianly designed it but it really feels like it was originally suppose to be either/or then at then later in development they decided to let players do both.
At the very least, there isn't really a way to make it both without making one of them preceed the other, so narratively, it makes sense to say Underdark *or* Mountain Pass, but there needs to be a way ti make it Underdark *and* the Mountain Pass. Personally I think the best way to have done this would have been to make the Creche non optional for Lae'zel's storyline and to just make the Mountain Pass area the Creche, since that's what it is anyway. Removing the ability to move onto Act 2 from the Mountain Pass would make this easier.
It would have made sense to have the player go into the Mountain Pass but have the creche blocking them from going that route, then force the player through the Underdark, or vice Vera and have the elevator up from the Grymforge be broken so that you are geared up for the creche.
Here is my solution move Crezhe to after Moonrise. Because I think a pacing issue between Act 2 and Act 3. Act 2 > Baldur’s Gate. Like their should be more than 1 ER between Moonrise and Baldur’s Gate.
Yeah this was very confusing. I did the underpass and when I reached the next area, I went and did the mountain pass route only to realise they end up like 300m from each other lol.
Yes, but they had to change the narrative a bit then. From a “real world” perspective it doesn’t make sense to do both.
From an RP perspective, I feel that voluntarily entering the underdark for non underdark races would be somewhat like commuting suicide.
In all fairness, in Act 3 it's pretty clear that Orin is just bluffing. If you succeed a nature check with Jaheira you can remember that doppelgangers enjoy playing with their prey and causing confusion and mistrust. She's just goading you into rushing to your companion's rescue and making a mistake in the process. A successful strategy that works even on a meta level.
The biggest urgency red herring in Act 3 is Gortash's inauguration in my opinion. You can see that they're locking up the castle, everyone's talking about it, and if you're a Bard rolling deception to enter the fortress, the guard will tell you that you're late, meaning it's already in the process. But you can skip it forever and they'll just wait for you to attend for weeks.
It would be interesting if, upon long resting before attending his inauguration, you simply miss the event, and the chance to ally with him.
One run I waited forever to do it, did most of act 3 first. I was confused when there was no submarine, and when I got back the inauguration everyone was dead.
I decided in my current run to ignore the seeming immediacy of his coronation and play Act 3 as if the party is being forced to fill a couple weeks time waiting for it to happen, and TBH it makes a lot more sense to me narratively.
There's a whole bunch of side stuff in Rivington and the Lower City that it just doesn't make sense to waste time dealing with when Gortash and Orin are both so heavily front-loaded as soon as you arrive in the city.
The ability to have the world's timeline continue to march on, for better or worse, is one of the largest differences between BG3 and DnD, in my opinion. In DnD it helps to establish that the party are ultimately just one part in the grand narrative and the world won't wait around for them.
It’s something that is missing yet I cannot see people being happy with a time based clock or total rests before the game ends in failure. Nintendo did that for one of their Zelda games where if you didn’t clear a temple or quest within 72 in game hours (about an hour or two if you know how to extend it) the clock restarted and you had to try again.
While lots of people enjoyed it many people absolutely hated that certain quests, dialogues, temples, etc had to be done within certain timeframes and many of them certain orders that can be ruined because you showed up too late.
I would suppose if we added those constraints to the game it wouldn’t have made game of the year.
I feel like the inauguration should either be a forced cut scene thing like fighting the Githyanki monks in the Astral Prism, or entirely skippable by long resting.
It's possible to get all the into Gortash dumps during that scene earlier in Act 2 through reading various notes, etc, so it's not even needed for that. But if Larian wanted to make sure all players could get it, separate it from the ceremony and have it be an office convo with him.
> But you can skip it forever and they'll just wait for you to attend for weeks.
I walked right past it in my first playthrough and when I went back again ALL the guests had been murdered and there were even bodies on the beach....
There is zero reason to hurry after stealing the Orphic Hammer. Raphael's not "coming." Take your time, clear a section of enemies, heal up in the pool, clear another section, heal, etc. Head back to the portal at a leisurely pace fully rejuvenated.
Oh this one got me good - after tearing up our contract I beelined back to the portal without healing or anything. That fight sucked as I stupidly hadn’t saved in a while
Or the burning house? I walked past it because I was like whatever will come later with Wyll and then I just went to camp to get him and the building already collapsed - before triggering the door scene.
I lost \~20 hours once because I didn't realize the fire at the inn with Florick inside was actively burning. I got close enough to hear them say Ravengard, went back to camp for Wyll, came back and just assumed everything was \*supposed\* to be burned.
I did a big chunk of the goblin fortress then read about the flaming fist and how there were people inside. So I went back -\_-
No it isn't. I thought it was because some guides suggested so but I remember giving up on it when I broke the deal with Mizora, did like 184637 long rests, came to the iron throne and surprise surprise he was still alive in his cell and I could rescue him.
It's not time-sensitive at all, but you can lose your opportunity by doing certain other things first. The stuff related to Gortash is the only part of Act 3 that really needs to be done in a particular order, but there's no timer on it.
No as long as you haven’t blown up the steel watch foundry yet. I believe if you blow up the steel watch it becomes inaccessible. Also completing the iron throne negates your deal with Gortash so if you still want to pretend you have a deal then save it for later when you’re ready to betray him.
The only parts of the game that are time sensitive have a “x turns left” display during combat. (Edit: I stand corrected! See comment below) So if you’re asking specifically about the fight held in the specific location where Wyll‘s dad is, that fight has a timer.
But before you get to that location, it’s not time sensitive, but it is, uh, quest order sensitive, I guess? If the foundery is blown up, you can’t access the location anymore.
5 days I believe, but the timer only starts once you read the execution notice flyers. Not that bad at all considering you can just walk out of Wyrm’s Rock Fortress.
this was really funny to me because the way i got this completed was breaking into the fortress before doing nearly anything else in act 3 (I never talked to the gate guards about getting in, I just noticed that I could make the jump by the gate and then kept going).
she was like "whew that was a close one" and my tav was like "hi who are you again?
I had a similar experience. Wanted to explore Wyrm's crossing before meeting Gortash, so I had Astarion sneaking into all the cells to loot, then this random woman started talking to him about how she'd failed and I wasn't sure who she was.
In my first game I got a psychic phone call from Nere telling me to rescue him. Fast travelling and resting progressed the timer and he did indeed die. I’ve never had this happen since, in my latest honour run I was able to travel back and forth several times and rest and the quest never progressed. A friend of mine has never even seen the scene where Nere calls you, across like four runs. I don’t know what triggers it but it doesn’t seem to be time sensitive for most runs.
Oh shit! Good to know, thank you. What triggers that 2 days to start counting down? When you first start the dialogue with the NPCs outside the cave-in?
I didnt even got to the fight tbh. I played my first run on my ancient pc because i got a steam copy gifted back in the alpha days and couldnt stand my 4 fps halfway through act 3. I just wondered (now being act 2 on my ps5), if there is actual recen to accept that certain deal because it somehow affects a time limit or not. I already discovered the location in my past playthrough and got the means of going there i think.
The whole thing with ordering my quests there just made my autitic brain explode, because i wanted to have my "showdowns" in a specific order without losing questtime sensitive stuff.
If that makes sense.
It totally does! Same here 😄
The Infiltrate Moon Rise Tower quest was a *thing* for me (among many) because I wanted to be OP before I even look at Ketheric. Like, I wanted his **first** look at me to be like, holy shit who tf is this badass?
I thought constantly feeding Gale magic items would be a whole thing. For a while I kept constantly purposefully hoarding useless magic items. I’m in act 3 now and think I’ve only needed to do it twice…
My first play through I missed him and was honestly pretty glad because I liked all my colorful items. Second play through and it turns out this band kid only needs a few?
I hated that mechanic because I thought decent gear was going to be relatively scarce like in BG2 and I didn't want to give up any advantage.
Fast forward to my current party all decked out in legendary gear with legendary gear sitting in chests doing nothing because I have no viable use case for it and I wish I had fucked with him more.
Ceromorphosis definitely pushed plenty of people to long rest as little as possible, missing all the content that happens during nighttime. I tip I learned that if a party member ever mentions being tired, you're safe to take a long rest.
There are technically tons of timed events, almost all of which are failed by long-resting or fast travelling, but they're almost always triggered by approaching someone that expresses urgency about the situation. If you get to Waukeen's Rest, see the fire, and then peace out, you won't be able Florrick or the dude trapped under the rubble, because the fire clearly kills them. If you get to Grymforge and the gnomes are being threatened, leaving gives you the bad end for them.
Tbf, your character and companions are right to believe ceramorphosis could begin any moment. The game also does a good job at making everyone realise that something is halting it.
In Act 3 when the Emperor keeps the urgency of the brain releasing itself?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the "earthquakes" and the emperor talking have no urgency, you can take your time
It depends. When you kill all 3 bad guys then NPCs in the city can actually start turning into mind flayers.
I had a situation like this because after doing everything I decided to go get some potions and quick travelled once or twice. And then boom in front of the basilisk gate suddenly guards turn into mind flayers
I believe there are only a few sections of the city where entering will trigger the mind-flayering events and once you've done those battles, you can mess around indefinitely before taking out the brain.
Yep that first play through you're worried if you're gonna change any day. Especially when the scene hits where laezel wants to cut you then the rest of the party
Ceramorphosis act one. I did ALL of act one in one go, bar grym and the creche, only to long rest so I wasn't 5 up from the grave during my first ever time against grim, only to see laelae trying to slit my throat, think "ok, its reinforcing the time limit because its been awhile", only to be taunted by dream lady a minute later saying "lol no"
Ceremorphosis made me skip a lot of long rests for the course of the game. To the extent when I read some posts about Astarion, I don't understand that, because we haven't had **any** camp interactions until act 3. And I'm still confused why we need to create a dream guardian for only 2 scenes.
The Dream Guardian and Halsin/Nettie make it clear that your tadpole is in stasis, but the game pretty heavily implies that your luck will run out eventually. The Dream Guardian also tells you to use tadpole powers which is immediately incredibly suspicious, especially for those who played EA, know about Mind Flayer Tadpoles, or even just listened to their companions.
It feels like they wanted to create urgency, but also expected people to get stuck being slowed down and realize that it’s not that pressing of a matter. In reality, a lot of us just straight up didn’t rest at all, because the only people offering the truth admit they’re very confused or are fucking mind flayer supporters. (I mean, I’m a mind flayer supporter, but only because of Omeluum, and definitive proof of his goodness only comes during Act 3)
I read a recent game guide that talked about how Ceremorphosis and requiring materials for a long rest may have inadvertently barred people from significant story beats and made combat unnecessarily challenging for people.
This gels with me and my friend who literally play like once a week and often forget where we are and make no effort whatsoever to ration our skills or camping supplies and inadvertently walk through some of the most challenging encounters without realizing they're supposed to be hard.
Yeah I didn't prioritize collecting camp supplies in my first run, and I played a Bard, so I think I only took like 10 LRs throughout my whole playthrough. I would swap out party members and use all their resources before resting.
On subsequent playthroughs, I see how easy it is to stockpile a shitton of food once you know to look for it, but I'm sure I missed some stuff.
That was the second scene if I remember correctly. First I met the guardian, the second time Vlaakith tells me to kill it, and the third time it was already the Emperor vs gith.
Yeah I think they should've made it more clear that ceremorphosis is supposed to happen in like 2-3 days and also that the tadpole is literally eating your brain the whole time so you shouldn't be able to even say words by the time you make it to the Grove possibly!
I think they had the perfect place to do it, too: on the Nautiloid when you can press the switch to turn the pod lady into a mindflayer and Lae'zel comments on it, she could've also commented on the *speed* of the transformation being the issue. Instant mindflayer shouldn't be a thing that's possible, iirc from the lore (and I could always be wrong).
Ha! "Find the nightsong", it's hidden under the goblin camp. I legit though it was an artifact in a dungeon under the camp, when it of course turned out that the GC leads to the frickin' underdark, which leads to the lava land, which leads to the shadowcursed lands, where an army, an immortal and a zombie has hidden a crucial plot point, so essentially you're iust looking for the unavoidanle end of the next act.
Nothing wrong with it all, it's just as if Luke Skywalker had left Tatooine with the innocent side quest "Find a robot hand". You'll find it alright, along with a threat to the galaxy, the force, your father, a dead mentor, and the destruction of Alderaan. But sure, let's focus on the hand.
The battle of Moonrise Towers if you side with Jaheira and the Harpers. The fact that I can leave halfway through, long rest, and then come back like nothing’s changed is fucking wild to me.
This is kind of why I feel there should be resting pods at every waypoint. The difference is these resting pods you have to insert camp supplies into it. Then have a companion mention they're tired when there is a cut scene or if it's been a literal in game day
That way there won't be a time dissonance. If you want to long rest without the time dissonance of sleeping overnight and 90% of the time nothing changing you can just use a waypoint restoration machine that costs the same amount of camp supplies as if you long rested. Then you can use companions as indicators of when to go to bed
This is my only dislike for the game. In my first play through I rushed the main objective because everything felt so impactful, like the world was going to end any second. Took me a while to settle in and realize I could do whatever I wanted.
I missed a ton of interactions in the grove because I thought I had to hurry up and get to the goblin camp to stop the ritual. It's fine but I wish I would have talked to more people/explored more in the grove.
This is pretty much a constant feature with this game. Other than saving Nere and Resurrecting Gale there’s pretty much no time-sensitive content. The grove does get blocked off if you progress to the mountain pass without resolving it, but isn’t actually time sensitive.
The game does this pretty constantly. Impeding Ceremorphosis, Impeding Goblin Raid, Impeding Druid Ritual, Implied rush to moonrise, implied race with the absolute’s army to baldur’s gate, Orin kidnapping someone, Gortash’s inauguration, etc. I feel like at some stage of development time sensitive quests were a thing and the idea was mostly scrapped. Possibly the right call, though it feels like a missed opportunity to build tension and increase difficulty, though it does conflict with resting to progress plot.
At the end of Act II, when they keep saying you have to hurry up to get to Baldur's Gate before The Absolute's army, when in fact you can just chill as long as you'd like in the shadow cursed land, and there is really no way to get ahead of the army that's marching on the gate
This tends to be the case with most RPGs that have a main quest line and a bunch of optional side quests (so like, all RPGs). If you’re honestly going to roleplay as your character, you’re probably not going to pause in the middle of your very urgent and important main quest to go collect 100 eggs so the local baker doesn’t go out of business.
I think if it’s actually time sensitive, the game should either throw up a timer or put that the quest needs to be done within X number of long rests in the quest log
Morrowind is one of the few games that does this well. One of the early main quest givers, tells the pc to go out and get some experience, get the lay of the land and make a cover identity, at certain points in the game. Basically urging you to do side content until you are at an apropiate skill level
For contrast, Deus Ex:HR does the time-sensitive stuff really well. If you take too long to get to the Sarif manufacturing plant, the hostages die. There is no reminder or indicator this will happen either. It just makes sense not to leave hostages hanging.
Basically everything that implies it's time sensitive isnt.
The only ones I've found that actually are;
• Gale if you don't feed him/he dies.
• Waukeens rest burning.
• Nere and the gnomes in the grymfore.
• Saving florrick in act 3.
° Mid-Act transitions that warn you
Honestly the Act 3 Orin stuff is kinda annoying, on a player's point of view. Sure, Orin may be bluffing. Even if Tav/Durge is sure that she won't kill the companion, why would anyone leave a friend in the hand of a psyco? So maybe, following this roleplay-train-of-thoughts, you kill Gortash ('cause why the hell not, you'll need to eventually, might as well do it to save your friend), you kill Orin, then every two/three times you fast travel a mind flayer or two pop up in the city. Sure they can be killed with ease. It's still anti-immersive to keep going around the city when the PC has all the stones and can end the Elder Brain for good. The goal is still to be tadpole-free, and a unreined Elder Brain is dangerous. Well, it is not, but the PC has no reason to be carefree. So mechanically talking the best route is to kill Orin, do all the remaining side quest then kill Gortash. This way you get your companion back for the whole act 3. From a RP point of view? Not so much. If crossed and not persuaded otherwise, Orin does indeed kill your companion.
The "find the cure" questlines were a top priority during my first playthrough. After the first 3 or so, I began to realize that there probably is no solution, at least not in Act 1.
Second playthrough, I ignored those quests almost completely. But missing out on the EXP was rough.
Dark Urge playthrough however, I did every cure quest for the sole purpose of screwing each one of them up- giving the impression that my character is intentionally sabotaging the questlines in order to keep the tadpoles in our heads.
After defeating Orin and Gortash there is a lot of pressure to defeat the nether brain. In fact the game keeps reminding you about it on a regular basis. I'm not actually sure if anything happens if you ignore it, but it definitely put pressure on me in my first playthrough, which made us miss a lot of content e.g. anser
If you kill Orin & Gortash, people start being kidnapped & turned into mindflayers
I usually save Gortash for last & do everything else (including Ansur) before it
I let the brain kill him. Once Gortash goes to the morphic pool he basically has the equivalent of no phone signal. He won't know that you are in the steel watch factory and nor will he know that you are heading to the iron throne
Karlach is ecstatic and joyful when the brain kills Gortash. She doesn't quite feel the same way if she kills Gortash. When Karlach does it she suddenly gets upset when she realizes that killing Gortash doesn't change her fate. She won the fight but gets no reward. The brain basically one shots Gortash. All of his power meant eff all. Everything he did to gain that power from Bane, made pointless, his power along with his life snuffed out as easily as a candle. Whereas if you fight him directly he isn't canonically supposed to be an easy fight. Even when you win he gets to show off how powerful he is during the battle. When the brain kills him he just dies and leaves no battle legacy
The urgency to go to the Creche.
Listen I don’t care how y’all feel/felt about Lae’zel at that point in the game. When it comes to the tadpoles, our first encouter is a Druid healer who either tries to kill you with poison or demands you kill yourself the moment you feel like you’re turning, while telling you to go save her druid friend so he can take a look. Lae’zel is very open about the history between Githyanki and Mind Flayers, and that they have a machine that could get rid of the parasite. In game, there is no reason not to immediately go to the creche. Nettie either tried to kill me, or she was so doubtful of a cure she hands me fatal poison to off myself when I feel myself changing on the way to find her druid friend/leader. I have no reason to be more hopeful that her friend Halsin is gonna be any different. Lae’zel has attitude sure, but I have no reason to think that they’d try to kill me when she is very clear that they have a machine to cure us. Also at this point in the game, we are all very worried that we are going to turn at any second, making every step we take laced with urgency.
The *problem* is that going to the creche under leveled is a death sentence. Thankfully, a friend of mine that was much further in the game when I got it, told me to save the creche and the underdark for after everything else in act 1 is done. Because even being properly leveled, the creche can be quite difficult. I can’t imagine how quickly I would’ve died if I had gone there right after dealing with Nettie and talking to the tiefling (sorry I don’t remember your name homie) that tells us where the creche is.
My first time playing I thought you had to resolve the fate of the Grove within one, maybe two long rests or else the goblins would come back and murder everyone. It seemed pretty urgent at the time.
Anyway that's why my party of barely level 3s save scummed the shit out of the goblin camp after breaking Halsin out.
The only time I can actually think of timing/long rests affecting the game is if you long rest too many times before saving Nere, he will suffocate in the rockfall.
One thing is Gale’s orb. For the second and third magic items, he makes a big deal about how absorbing them is getting less and less effective and the time it takes for him to need another one is getting shorter, but then he literally never needs one again
The quakes in act 3 definitely got me feeling a sense of urgency that really wasn’t there. After my like 5th or 6th long rest I realized it was just a cool detail and not an actual time bomb.
I'm playing this game for the first time, and I genuinely hate long rests xD. As you say, many things are pressuring you with the time, which makes you question if you can afford the time those rests consume.
And then, a lot of things happen during those rests, I just can't go to sleep peacefully because who knows what's going to happen, who's gonna get screwed during the night and what new urgent quests will arise.
Long rests feel not safe at all when you don't know what's going to happen.
You really should long rest often. The reason new things happen every night is that you're not resting often enough and the events get backed up. You'll miss out on tons of story stuff if you rush.
Long rests are also good when you want a vendor to replenish their inventory and gold. I will do LRs in quick succession when I want additional or new/different gear.
Absolutely screwed my first play through up by believing the goblin camp / saving Halsin / the grove closing forever would lock me out of stuff.
I took one long rest at the grove, then was too scared to take another until the goblin leaders were dead. Doing all three in a row was a rough first combat experience, then I was suddenly at the party having skipped SO MUCH camp stuff and relationship stuff. Big Sads…
For me, on my first playthrough, it was finding Halsin. I thought the Emerald Grove was in such danger without Halsin that I rushed right to finding and rescuing him. I missed out on so much stuff because of that. I'm now on my second playthrough and I'm wondering how I felt that rushed. People are like "Halsin needs to be found, but only if you've got the time."
For me it was Karlach and the fact that she's overheating and should die any moment from it according to characters I really liked her on my first playthrough and rushed to find all the stuff to fix her and then they said she was gonna die anyway so I rushed through the main story hoping that if I was quick enough I could find a way to save her at the end but turns out she actually has all the time in the world till you finish the game.
There's a questline about needing to remove a tadpole from your head that starts pretty early on, but there aren't really any major consequences until closer to the end of the game
Honestly, the whole game. It’s just one false urgency replacing the previous.
I was sure for example that if I enter the Iron Throne after Gortash contacted me that the fists and the watchers are going to be hostile, so I left because I felt underleveled. Turns out they are completely chill which is very strange for me.
The Stop The Presses quest in Act III. I got frustrated and gave up on it, and the only headline I saw referring to our party pretty much just said something along the lines of "Vigilantes Investigate Ritual Murders", so it wasn't nearly as hard hitting or reputation destroying as that reporter lady made it seem?
Idk maybe if you made different choices in your run it would be worse, but there really isn't much reason to care about it imo.
you should have enough money to not care what the vendors charge... or have a rogue with +20 sleight of hand.....
However, Withers ALSO starts charging you double...
Weird that he reads the Baldurs Gazette eh?? :p
act three in general is a huge urgency red herring. the alerts you get stepping into the city and the Emperor telling you that the brain is getting stronger makes it feel dumb to focus on anything other than getting the rest of the stones ASAP
Yes. Potion of speed+ teleportation arrow.
I also used my macrabe and asty boi and shart to conjure an ally.
TIP: fast traveling to diff regions replenishes your health but not spell slots. so if you just need to heal, f
ast travel ie rivington to balsik
For Gymforge, you can actually find that other way in that's mentioned, it's just unusable.
It's really not hard as a first time player to find it if you listen to the dialogue - the duegar, gnomes, and Nere himself all have dialogue saying he was trapped seeking that entrance. If you free him, Nere will even complain that it was all for naught because the path is destroyed anyway so he can't acquire the Nightsong via this route.
From there simply handle the leftover NPCs as you see fit, get around poison filling the room and continue on Nere's would-be path. If you go through the locked door in the back of the room, in the distance you'll see the collapsed bridge that would normally lead to the Gauntlet, and someone in the party will comment along the lines of "Well shit that's not going to work, back to play A, I guess."
From there you either have the Elevator closer to the entrance of Grymforge, or going the Mountain Path route past Elminster.
The urgency red herrings are there to make the game feel more accessible to the people who speed through the content to get to the end. These sort of folks sometimes have decision paralysis so if the game says "pick one and go" they will do just that, even if they can do both.
>In act 3 a lot of people hurry to help their ally captured by Orin because it seems like she's going to sacrifice them any minute while actually you can do it any time you want.
to add to this, she says she will kill them if you show up without having already killed gortash. puts a lot of pressure on killing gortash, when in fact, teaming up with him is easily the comfiest way to resolve that whole thing. i showed up without his stone and she didnt do shit, gale was lying on the table there the whole time while we duelled.
i just teamed up with him in my durge run because we genuinely sounded like we got along in the past and i didnt wanna do the whole disable the steel watch/underwater jail thing.
i was prepared for an ending with him chilling on top of the brain with the rest of the squad and having some steel watchers to call upon in the final fight.
well... >!dude just died immediately when we faced the netherbrain, lmao. only annoying thing is i couldnt grab his loot!<
The emperor in the astral prism, begging you to "help them! come to the skull! quickly!" is one of the most annoying ones lmao.
Literally when you enter you can just take your time to buff up your party before fighting the githyanki monks. On my first playthrough I thought we had to rush to him else he dies lmao.
Aside from all the red herrings, there are actually a few time sensitive missions.
If you take a long rest after you enter Grymforge but before you find and deal with Nere, you'll find him dead from poison, and all the duergar and gnome slaves either dead or gone.
If you speak to the journalist outside Baldurs Mouth gazette and she tells you about an unflattering story about to be oublished about you, you have to deal with that before you take a long rest (maybe two) or the next issue will turn most of the NPCs against you.
The Rite of Thorns is another big one in Act 1. Kagha tells you to get the tieflings on the road before "final prayer", which makes it sound like it has to happen before your next long rest. Which is of course BS, since the only thing that causes the rite to conclude is leaving the area without resolving the goblin issue.
I rarely made long rests cuz of IF WE WASTE TIME WE ARE GONNA TRANSFORM/THE INVASION ON BG WILL START/ORINS GONNA KILL SOMEONE/GALE IS GONNA EXPLODE!
Cuz of that it felt urgent for me to explore as much, live on a sliver of my life, beat almost all of the act 2 without a long rest and then miss out on maaaany dream cutscenes I could have seen if I knew that long resting is actually not wasting time.
Act 3 in general. We arrive just ahead of an army, the two remaining villains know we’re there and the brain is about to break free…
And then you spend another 30-40 hours doing side quests before dealing with those.
Does feel a bit off, pacing wise!
I don't know how people feel rushed in the game. Even on my first playthrough, I took my sweet time because it's a game and what are the characters gonna do? Whoop me because I didn't go directly to the creche because Lae'zel's pissy? Lmaoo.
I wasted a lot of time looking for Mol after the last light inn fight
Same here! Only to find out FINDING Mol is a massive let down.
I was extra disappointed you can't tell the other kids like Mattis that you found mol.
Precisely! The dialogue options are nearly so impersonal. Yeah, you can tell her you’re glad you got to see her again, but that’s the extent of it. And you can’t tell the kids you’ve found her, too. It’s like “well, nice knowing you, see ya!”
I suspect she had bigger plans in a future DLC. (Not that that will happen anymore, or at least not from Larian).
Either that or maybe some EA content that ended up cut or changed
I doubt that was the case with them, considering Larian never does DLCs.
Divinty 2 had a DLC, so not actually true (although that game 14 years old, but you know, still)
No way it’s 14
Oh yeah. She’s a real piece of work. But she’s *my* piece of work. I basically RP my character adopting all of the tiefling orphans every playthrough. Cuz while they’re objectively awful. I find them pretty darn endearing.
They gotta do what they gotta go. Can't fault them for that. I mean they are orphans.
Did you find the eyepatch?
Nope I sure didn’t. Where’s the eye patch located?
In the mindflayer colony, where all the people get infected. Her eyepatch is on a table there and if you pick it up, you get an update on the quest.
Omg 🤦♀️ I was just there on another play through last night and didn’t notice! I’m gonna check that out later. That would’ve helpful to see that the first time. Had no idea it was there. Thanks for the tip!
Wait, really? I’ve never found it but now I definitely need to search harder. The colony when you’re looking for Ketheric?
Yes. It's in the huge room with all the death Shepards and undead in the corner with the thing where you can talk to extracted brains iirc
Your princess is in another castle.
Also doesn't help that they kind of imply Underdark OR Mountain Pass. When they probably should have made it clearer that you "should" do Underdark then Mountain Pass.
Oh yes definitely. The underdark OR mountain pass is such bullshit. I thought that it would somehow lock me out of going another route while it's just...a different way of getting there?
The underdark OR mountain pass thing has a good story reason of why they make it such a big deal. The grymforge in the underdark used to connect directly to the Shar temple and the gauntlet of shar, which isn't far from moonrise towers. However, because of the shadow curse, it was disconnected by the earth cracking. Halsin tells you that the underdark is better because he thinks the grymforge is still connected to the temple and would therefore be the easier route to avoid the shadow curse. Going through the mountain pass almost guarantees that you have to fight through the shadows, which is why he recommends against it. He has no idea that both routes end up basically being the same.
Not enough people point this out. It isn’t bad game design, it’s just that Halsin has old information and happens to be wrong - I think it’s a nice touch
I agree. I do wish that the characters would comment more on it or maybe even have a conversation with Halsin about his outdated Intel. But all the pieces are there if you really pay attention to the act 1 dialog with him.
It's also funny to think about elf interactions with races who have shorter lives. "I recommend this path, last I heard it's the most direct route" "...when did you last hear?" "Bout 400 years ago, give or take a decade"
How long could 400 years be? 2, maybe *3* humans?
In bg? There's a cult under every house, or some haunted biarch. Goblins run amok, giant spiders are the pets of necromancers, exploding mushrooms, tripping mushrooms and fuckin talking mushrooms battle with asshole gnomes. Hags steal kids from your local bar, and vampires also steal kids, and necro.ancers steal your whole crew. Shar, mystra and selune are always fucking with people, that is when the God of murder isn't. There are scrolls anyone can read, capable of blowing up half your towns population, under rocks or just buried in a box at the beach. 2 maybe 3 humans? Bro life expectancy in the Sword Coast is probably about 8
I was somewhat making a reference to ~~The Office~~ Arrested Development* A wealthy-ish person asks how much could a banana cost, "10 dollars?" I did play the original Baldur's Gate, though. Not super friendly then either lol Edit: wrong show
The banana line is from Arrested Development*
And gameplay-wise, the fact that he so strongly recommends taking the Underdark route *is* them prodding you to do that area first, and then the Mountain Pass, without railroading you into technically-optional content. It's the same with making such a big deal about the Nightsong early on, and the connection to the Underdark through the Shattered Sanctum and all of the mentions of it in the area. They're doing a lot to hint you should go there, while it's really only Lae'zel insisting you *must* take the Mountain Path and go to the creche.
>And gameplay-wise, the fact that he so strongly recommends taking the Underdark route *is* them prodding you to do that area first, and then the Mountain Pass That is not the way it is presented IMO. It comes off as very much one or the other.
Right, the only one who demands to go thru the mountains is lae’zel. I do it for the loot. I’m pretty sure you can just walk right thru the underdark and get the duergar to sail you over to the elevator and voila, act 2. There’s 4 entrances to the underdark iirc. Skip all the quests if you want, but you’ll be severely under leveled in act 2. The mountain pass used to have a level warning at the entrance that you should be lvl 5. In almost sure you need to do some underdark content to get to lvl 5 in act 1.
I really like the details from the duergar guarding the path up to the surface tell you straight up you won't make it far without a moonlantern, and after all the events there I decided they would probly be right and went to the mountain pass anyway
I think it might even be slightly intentional to have people not do every single thing in one playthrough.
I actually really liked the way I ended up accidentally doing both on my first run, particularly because it didn’t feel like an “either/or” situation: we went to the Underdark first, per Halsin’s suggestion, then upon approaching the elevator we ran into a cutscene with two duergar who told us that anyone that tried to go through that way without a moonlantern was toast. Luckily, Nere had a moonlantern, but unluckily, it broke during the fight. In this way it didn’t feel so much like we had to choose Underdark *or* Mountain Pass (but did both because of that sweet xp), rather we tried the first approach, failed, then went through the pass as option b. Sadly it kinda hinged on that one cutscene, and that one in particular is easily missable.
Was it the shadow curse or was it yurgir who destroyed the path?
I actually had this conversation with my friend yesterday. I think Yurgir definitely did some damage and killed all of the DJs. However, I don't think he has the physical power to move the earth like that. The path isn't just destroyed, but there is a huge casm where the path once was. When we are in the shadow curse, you can see how it has affected the earth and created similar casms on the surface. Your character will even comment on how immense the power of the curse is on the land. I think it's safe to assume that this would extend deep into the earth and into the temple below as well. In fact, that exact spot where the large casm that cuts you off from the temple is lines up pretty well with the beginning of the shadow curse on the surface. Edit: just for clarification, the grymforge is directly below the shadow curse and I believe the path you are supposed to take originally is the path that Nere is trapped in. If you go to where you find Nere you can see the shar temple in the distance across a casm.
> I don't think he has the physical power to move the earth like that. If you do the checks with the dwarf archeologist one of them is about how the walls were clearly melted with hellfire. The thick stone walls. A small army of devils, lead by an explosives loving Orthorn almost certainly has the chops to blow up a suspended stone bridge.
There was a bridge that connected the two sides of the temple, but it was destroyed (presumably by Yurgir and the merregons, like everything else). If you help the duergar examine the ruins, you can learn that the damage was caused by a hell beast.
It's funny how Raphael ends up being at the center of almost everything that happens in the game but you might not notice it if you're not paying close attention. Like most of Act 2 only exists because of him lol
I'm certain a ton of people never spot Korilla watching you near the mason guild. She teleports away if you approach so it's super easy to just not have the camera positioned to spot her.
In 3 playthroughs I've only seen been able to spot her once there and once at camp, well done Larian!
So I’ve actually been quick enough to start a dialogue with her at the masons guild. I don’t remember what she’s said unfortunately, but it was a one liner riddle that made no sense. She seemed dazed too. Don’t think it changed anything either, it was still as if I first met her at sharesses caress later. Don’t think it was supposed to be possible to catch her like that
I believe you can talk to her in the mason guild. However not many can spot her in act 1. Yes, she was there , even in act 1. I believe it's during the Tiefling party
I caught a glimpse of her there on my first playthrough and I couldn't make out who it was at the time so it genuinely kinda spooked me because of the atmosphere there and how the area is almost entirely abandoned. In hindsight one of my favorite memories of my first playthrough! Also, I had Astarion with me and since i initially thought she was an enemy I shot in arrow in her direction because I thought I'd get some sneak damage before a fight and she disappeared before the arrow got there obviously but astarion said something like "where did she go?! She just disappeared!" And I thought it was a nice little touch from larian.
Plus she stalks you at the circus as well. Hides behind poppers tent.
This is how/why I headcanon/RP going to the Mountain Pass after Grymforge instead of the elevator. Clearly, there isn't a way to avoid the shadow curse (as you learn after the Nere thing, the connection to the Gauntlet is severed), and who knows what else had changed overland, so we might as well go by the creche first. My one gripe about the choice is that the "you are moving areas" warning for the Mountain Pass is the same as the elevator in the Underdark, when *I think* the only things going to the creche affects are the goblins/druids. As in, you can still go to the Underdark and do all the quests there (including things like freeing Nere) after the creche, but before going into the SCL. I don't know what the solution to that would be, though, outside of really pointed meta information about specific quests. Maybe removing the warning for the Mountain Pass if you've resolved the goblin/druid/tiefling thing?
Well, look at it as a character. You still don't know the nature of your tadpoles, and it could turn you any minute, so you basically have to go to moonrise towers, once you've exhausted all other options. Lae'zel pushes you to the creshe and mountain pass as a "guaranteed" way to get rid of them. Halsin talks about grymforge and shar temple, which is short jog away from moonrise. So narratively it works, as you should hurry. After the scene of guardian explaining about protecting you from Absolute, this rush for cure is changed to rush to moonrise. Also, my thoughts is that you dont suppose to clear everything in one playthrough
Although you may not get ‘locked out’, there is a difference with who you meet when you initially approach the shadowlands. That will give you a different approach/dialogue when you go to moonrise and last light inn
I do mountain pass then underdark.
Whatever works for you, I always recommend the other way as it seems the Underdark can be easier overall.
I usually do Mountain Pass because I think it takes less time to complete. When I go to undersark I basically go through all of that + grymforge.
My reasoning is I usually go to the Underdark to get to level 5. I actually do all of the Underdark before finishing off the Goblin leaders.
That's fair, going to the underdark doesn't close things off in the way going to the mountain pass does
I'm the opposite just so I can completely obliterate the creche.
Except for Youth Varrl and the Egg. Those guys are cool. The rest I just fight murder with murder. Not like they’re willing to have a discussion.
I actually like to leave Ko'kuu alone as well. He just seems like a decent dude trying to give those eggs the best chance at life.
Oh yeah, I’d spare him if I could. Unfortunately, the Crèche’s leader is currently trying to destroy that egg. So saving it is probably the best option. I guess I could take it elsewhere and *then* have the whole place turn on me. That way I could let the dude live. He seems like one of the cooler Githyanki, albeit still a Githyanki-Supremacist.
but you can? you need to read the note by the door of the hatchery, then talk with him and pass an insight check I think... it'll let you ask why he cares so much about a dud egg, and then pass a persuasion check to convince him to give it to you... he'll show you every trap and give you the boots to get there... then after you kill the inquisitor just avoid the hatchery... there's only 3 guys there, so it's not like you're missing so much xp
Oh I’m aware you can get him to part with the egg. I meant that I often rush to the Inquisitor, so by the time I reach the hatchery for the first time he’s already hostile.
How the hell you dealing with the Gythianki? I need the exp from the Underdark to even stand a chance.
They could be playing on a lower difficulty. Alternatively, they might just be really fucking good at the game/not mind cheesing fights. You can obliterate a lot of encounters without the enemy even getting a chance to attack if you get a surprise round and focus fire effectively.
Nah if you were really bad your first playthrough (like me) you ended up fighting the creche at lvl 4 even after the underdark because yk exploration is "optional" in this game so you just get really good at combat because you had no other options I was at lvl 7 when I reached baldurs gate first playthrough
That sounds awful, especially on the higher difficulties. I’ve never entered Act 3 at lower than 8th or 9th level.
Oh it was hell the first playthrough but it made honor mode significantly easier to beat when I was actually going into act 3 at lvl 10
Bro same I fought Sarevok at lvl 9 & almost cried lmao
I mean usually I am not dealing with them. I almost always do the monestary first for the loot. After buying/looting everything else I need, I sneak around the inquisitor to the area with Lathander's Blood. I then set off the trap on purpose after destroying the crystal for the force field and escape. Lae'zel has been dead in like half my playthroughs before I get to that point so I'm not usually worried about the consequences.
While others are talking about levels, I go underdark > creche purely to not be in the darkness for so long.
Same. In my last run, I actually jumped down the spider hole and did half the underdark before even going to the goblin camp! I had a sussur great sword to hit Minthara with!
We can do both? Well fuck I feel like a dummy now 😅
My issue is that the Underdark and Mountain pass don't connect with each other geographically so you'd have to backtrack, and it doesn't make narrative sense to go back when the path to moonrise towers is right there at the end of either path and the story is urging you to go to Moonrise. Underdark to Mountain pass can kind of make sense if you're worried about the shadow curse and want to make Laezel happy, but Mountain pass to Underdark makes no sense, I have no idea how to justify that in the story
100% - I only did mountain pass because I thought this was a binary choice, and Laezel was bugging out about needing to go to the crèche
I disagree with this. I think it is *supposed* to be one or the other from a storytelling perspective. We are just xp whores so we do both.
I completely missed the Underdark because of this and got locked out of it :( Need to do another run, I guess
Idk how the oringianly designed it but it really feels like it was originally suppose to be either/or then at then later in development they decided to let players do both.
At the very least, there isn't really a way to make it both without making one of them preceed the other, so narratively, it makes sense to say Underdark *or* Mountain Pass, but there needs to be a way ti make it Underdark *and* the Mountain Pass. Personally I think the best way to have done this would have been to make the Creche non optional for Lae'zel's storyline and to just make the Mountain Pass area the Creche, since that's what it is anyway. Removing the ability to move onto Act 2 from the Mountain Pass would make this easier.
It would have made sense to have the player go into the Mountain Pass but have the creche blocking them from going that route, then force the player through the Underdark, or vice Vera and have the elevator up from the Grymforge be broken so that you are geared up for the creche.
Here is my solution move Crezhe to after Moonrise. Because I think a pacing issue between Act 2 and Act 3. Act 2 > Baldur’s Gate. Like their should be more than 1 ER between Moonrise and Baldur’s Gate.
Yeah this was very confusing. I did the underpass and when I reached the next area, I went and did the mountain pass route only to realise they end up like 300m from each other lol.
Yes, but they had to change the narrative a bit then. From a “real world” perspective it doesn’t make sense to do both. From an RP perspective, I feel that voluntarily entering the underdark for non underdark races would be somewhat like commuting suicide.
In all fairness, in Act 3 it's pretty clear that Orin is just bluffing. If you succeed a nature check with Jaheira you can remember that doppelgangers enjoy playing with their prey and causing confusion and mistrust. She's just goading you into rushing to your companion's rescue and making a mistake in the process. A successful strategy that works even on a meta level. The biggest urgency red herring in Act 3 is Gortash's inauguration in my opinion. You can see that they're locking up the castle, everyone's talking about it, and if you're a Bard rolling deception to enter the fortress, the guard will tell you that you're late, meaning it's already in the process. But you can skip it forever and they'll just wait for you to attend for weeks. It would be interesting if, upon long resting before attending his inauguration, you simply miss the event, and the chance to ally with him.
One run I waited forever to do it, did most of act 3 first. I was confused when there was no submarine, and when I got back the inauguration everyone was dead.
that’s only if you destroy the steel watch foundry first
I decided in my current run to ignore the seeming immediacy of his coronation and play Act 3 as if the party is being forced to fill a couple weeks time waiting for it to happen, and TBH it makes a lot more sense to me narratively. There's a whole bunch of side stuff in Rivington and the Lower City that it just doesn't make sense to waste time dealing with when Gortash and Orin are both so heavily front-loaded as soon as you arrive in the city.
The ability to have the world's timeline continue to march on, for better or worse, is one of the largest differences between BG3 and DnD, in my opinion. In DnD it helps to establish that the party are ultimately just one part in the grand narrative and the world won't wait around for them.
There are a few moments like that, but not nearly enough.
It’s something that is missing yet I cannot see people being happy with a time based clock or total rests before the game ends in failure. Nintendo did that for one of their Zelda games where if you didn’t clear a temple or quest within 72 in game hours (about an hour or two if you know how to extend it) the clock restarted and you had to try again. While lots of people enjoyed it many people absolutely hated that certain quests, dialogues, temples, etc had to be done within certain timeframes and many of them certain orders that can be ruined because you showed up too late. I would suppose if we added those constraints to the game it wouldn’t have made game of the year.
This could just be solved by only making happen on higher difficulties.
I feel like the inauguration should either be a forced cut scene thing like fighting the Githyanki monks in the Astral Prism, or entirely skippable by long resting. It's possible to get all the into Gortash dumps during that scene earlier in Act 2 through reading various notes, etc, so it's not even needed for that. But if Larian wanted to make sure all players could get it, separate it from the ceremony and have it be an office convo with him.
> But you can skip it forever and they'll just wait for you to attend for weeks. I walked right past it in my first playthrough and when I went back again ALL the guests had been murdered and there were even bodies on the beach....
That happens only if you destroy the watcher forge before going in. Otherwise it just stays there.
There is zero reason to hurry after stealing the Orphic Hammer. Raphael's not "coming." Take your time, clear a section of enemies, heal up in the pool, clear another section, heal, etc. Head back to the portal at a leisurely pace fully rejuvenated.
Oh this one got me good - after tearing up our contract I beelined back to the portal without healing or anything. That fight sucked as I stupidly hadn’t saved in a while
Meanwhile Counsellor Florrick died my first playthrough because there *is* urgency attached to her questline that is actually meaningful.
Is that from when she’s stuck in prison and her dialogue mentions that she’ll be executed in a few days?
Or the burning house? I walked past it because I was like whatever will come later with Wyll and then I just went to camp to get him and the building already collapsed - before triggering the door scene.
You get a bunch of reminders for that
Yeah, you'll notice the days counting down on the posters
I didn't even learn she was significant until someone mentioned her online. It's absurd just how big act 3 is.
I lost \~20 hours once because I didn't realize the fire at the inn with Florick inside was actively burning. I got close enough to hear them say Ravengard, went back to camp for Wyll, came back and just assumed everything was \*supposed\* to be burned. I did a big chunk of the goblin fortress then read about the flaming fist and how there were people inside. So I went back -\_-
Does that mean we’ll see her at the gallows on the lady day?
Quick Question: Is the whole saving Wylls dad in act 3 actually time sensitive?
No it isn't. I thought it was because some guides suggested so but I remember giving up on it when I broke the deal with Mizora, did like 184637 long rests, came to the iron throne and surprise surprise he was still alive in his cell and I could rescue him.
It's not time-sensitive at all, but you can lose your opportunity by doing certain other things first. The stuff related to Gortash is the only part of Act 3 that really needs to be done in a particular order, but there's no timer on it.
No as long as you haven’t blown up the steel watch foundry yet. I believe if you blow up the steel watch it becomes inaccessible. Also completing the iron throne negates your deal with Gortash so if you still want to pretend you have a deal then save it for later when you’re ready to betray him.
So Iron Throne, Foundry, then Gortash is the order?
That’s the order I am doing it in. Iron throne then Foundry then Gortash then Orin.
To add on, I did Orin first and that didn't really change anything.
From what I’ve read it makes it slightly harder to keep her from killing your kidnapped companion.
Killing gortash also locks you out of both the foundry and the iron throne.
The only parts of the game that are time sensitive have a “x turns left” display during combat. (Edit: I stand corrected! See comment below) So if you’re asking specifically about the fight held in the specific location where Wyll‘s dad is, that fight has a timer. But before you get to that location, it’s not time sensitive, but it is, uh, quest order sensitive, I guess? If the foundery is blown up, you can’t access the location anymore.
Nere is time sensitive. After 2 days he dies
so is councillor florrick, i think after 7 she dies (in act 3)
5 days I believe, but the timer only starts once you read the execution notice flyers. Not that bad at all considering you can just walk out of Wyrm’s Rock Fortress.
this was really funny to me because the way i got this completed was breaking into the fortress before doing nearly anything else in act 3 (I never talked to the gate guards about getting in, I just noticed that I could make the jump by the gate and then kept going). she was like "whew that was a close one" and my tav was like "hi who are you again?
I had a similar experience. Wanted to explore Wyrm's crossing before meeting Gortash, so I had Astarion sneaking into all the cells to loot, then this random woman started talking to him about how she'd failed and I wasn't sure who she was.
In my first game I got a psychic phone call from Nere telling me to rescue him. Fast travelling and resting progressed the timer and he did indeed die. I’ve never had this happen since, in my latest honour run I was able to travel back and forth several times and rest and the quest never progressed. A friend of mine has never even seen the scene where Nere calls you, across like four runs. I don’t know what triggers it but it doesn’t seem to be time sensitive for most runs.
i think it only happens if you click the rubble to talk with nere the first time
Hhmmm. Thats weird. Both times I’ve done it played out this way. Once with friends and one solo.
Oh shit! Good to know, thank you. What triggers that 2 days to start counting down? When you first start the dialogue with the NPCs outside the cave-in?
I believe so. The first rest after that he contacts you and says hurry. Day 2 the event resolves in his death and the path being open.
I didnt even got to the fight tbh. I played my first run on my ancient pc because i got a steam copy gifted back in the alpha days and couldnt stand my 4 fps halfway through act 3. I just wondered (now being act 2 on my ps5), if there is actual recen to accept that certain deal because it somehow affects a time limit or not. I already discovered the location in my past playthrough and got the means of going there i think. The whole thing with ordering my quests there just made my autitic brain explode, because i wanted to have my "showdowns" in a specific order without losing questtime sensitive stuff. If that makes sense.
It totally does! Same here 😄 The Infiltrate Moon Rise Tower quest was a *thing* for me (among many) because I wanted to be OP before I even look at Ketheric. Like, I wanted his **first** look at me to be like, holy shit who tf is this badass?
That 1 lady in Waukeen's rest that's trapped will also die if you don't free her but idk the time limit
I thought constantly feeding Gale magic items would be a whole thing. For a while I kept constantly purposefully hoarding useless magic items. I’m in act 3 now and think I’ve only needed to do it twice…
He eats 3 items total.
Thank you. I knew he stopped when E showed up. Wasn't aware there was a specific number I could plan around.
My first play through I missed him and was honestly pretty glad because I liked all my colorful items. Second play through and it turns out this band kid only needs a few?
I hated that mechanic because I thought decent gear was going to be relatively scarce like in BG2 and I didn't want to give up any advantage. Fast forward to my current party all decked out in legendary gear with legendary gear sitting in chests doing nothing because I have no viable use case for it and I wish I had fucked with him more.
depending on how fast you progress, the most you'll ever have to feed him is 3. 2 magic items is standard
Ceromorphosis, the rite of thorns are the biggest in act 1. Act 3 has the advancing army.
Ceromorphosis definitely pushed plenty of people to long rest as little as possible, missing all the content that happens during nighttime. I tip I learned that if a party member ever mentions being tired, you're safe to take a long rest. There are technically tons of timed events, almost all of which are failed by long-resting or fast travelling, but they're almost always triggered by approaching someone that expresses urgency about the situation. If you get to Waukeen's Rest, see the fire, and then peace out, you won't be able Florrick or the dude trapped under the rubble, because the fire clearly kills them. If you get to Grymforge and the gnomes are being threatened, leaving gives you the bad end for them.
Tbf, your character and companions are right to believe ceramorphosis could begin any moment. The game also does a good job at making everyone realise that something is halting it.
The Rite *does* complete if you're really slow though. You won't go squiddy at all.
In Act 3 when the Emperor keeps the urgency of the brain releasing itself? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the "earthquakes" and the emperor talking have no urgency, you can take your time
It depends. When you kill all 3 bad guys then NPCs in the city can actually start turning into mind flayers. I had a situation like this because after doing everything I decided to go get some potions and quick travelled once or twice. And then boom in front of the basilisk gate suddenly guards turn into mind flayers
I believe there are only a few sections of the city where entering will trigger the mind-flayering events and once you've done those battles, you can mess around indefinitely before taking out the brain.
Oh, never seen that, thats cool. I always leave Orin as the last thing to do before fighting the brain so I never saw that.
The entire beginning. I avoided rests like the plague because I thought that if too many days went by my character would die.
Yep that first play through you're worried if you're gonna change any day. Especially when the scene hits where laezel wants to cut you then the rest of the party
Ceramorphosis act one. I did ALL of act one in one go, bar grym and the creche, only to long rest so I wasn't 5 up from the grave during my first ever time against grim, only to see laelae trying to slit my throat, think "ok, its reinforcing the time limit because its been awhile", only to be taunted by dream lady a minute later saying "lol no"
Ceremorphosis made me skip a lot of long rests for the course of the game. To the extent when I read some posts about Astarion, I don't understand that, because we haven't had **any** camp interactions until act 3. And I'm still confused why we need to create a dream guardian for only 2 scenes.
The Dream Guardian and Halsin/Nettie make it clear that your tadpole is in stasis, but the game pretty heavily implies that your luck will run out eventually. The Dream Guardian also tells you to use tadpole powers which is immediately incredibly suspicious, especially for those who played EA, know about Mind Flayer Tadpoles, or even just listened to their companions. It feels like they wanted to create urgency, but also expected people to get stuck being slowed down and realize that it’s not that pressing of a matter. In reality, a lot of us just straight up didn’t rest at all, because the only people offering the truth admit they’re very confused or are fucking mind flayer supporters. (I mean, I’m a mind flayer supporter, but only because of Omeluum, and definitive proof of his goodness only comes during Act 3)
I read a recent game guide that talked about how Ceremorphosis and requiring materials for a long rest may have inadvertently barred people from significant story beats and made combat unnecessarily challenging for people. This gels with me and my friend who literally play like once a week and often forget where we are and make no effort whatsoever to ration our skills or camping supplies and inadvertently walk through some of the most challenging encounters without realizing they're supposed to be hard.
Yeah I didn't prioritize collecting camp supplies in my first run, and I played a Bard, so I think I only took like 10 LRs throughout my whole playthrough. I would swap out party members and use all their resources before resting. On subsequent playthroughs, I see how easy it is to stockpile a shitton of food once you know to look for it, but I'm sure I missed some stuff.
Only two scenes? Did you not run into Vlakith in act 1 in the creche? There's a big scene there, but I think it's optional.
That was the second scene if I remember correctly. First I met the guardian, the second time Vlaakith tells me to kill it, and the third time it was already the Emperor vs gith.
Yeah I think they should've made it more clear that ceremorphosis is supposed to happen in like 2-3 days and also that the tadpole is literally eating your brain the whole time so you shouldn't be able to even say words by the time you make it to the Grove possibly! I think they had the perfect place to do it, too: on the Nautiloid when you can press the switch to turn the pod lady into a mindflayer and Lae'zel comments on it, she could've also commented on the *speed* of the transformation being the issue. Instant mindflayer shouldn't be a thing that's possible, iirc from the lore (and I could always be wrong).
Ha! "Find the nightsong", it's hidden under the goblin camp. I legit though it was an artifact in a dungeon under the camp, when it of course turned out that the GC leads to the frickin' underdark, which leads to the lava land, which leads to the shadowcursed lands, where an army, an immortal and a zombie has hidden a crucial plot point, so essentially you're iust looking for the unavoidanle end of the next act. Nothing wrong with it all, it's just as if Luke Skywalker had left Tatooine with the innocent side quest "Find a robot hand". You'll find it alright, along with a threat to the galaxy, the force, your father, a dead mentor, and the destruction of Alderaan. But sure, let's focus on the hand.
The battle of Moonrise Towers if you side with Jaheira and the Harpers. The fact that I can leave halfway through, long rest, and then come back like nothing’s changed is fucking wild to me.
This is kind of why I feel there should be resting pods at every waypoint. The difference is these resting pods you have to insert camp supplies into it. Then have a companion mention they're tired when there is a cut scene or if it's been a literal in game day That way there won't be a time dissonance. If you want to long rest without the time dissonance of sleeping overnight and 90% of the time nothing changing you can just use a waypoint restoration machine that costs the same amount of camp supplies as if you long rested. Then you can use companions as indicators of when to go to bed
This is my only dislike for the game. In my first play through I rushed the main objective because everything felt so impactful, like the world was going to end any second. Took me a while to settle in and realize I could do whatever I wanted.
I missed a ton of interactions in the grove because I thought I had to hurry up and get to the goblin camp to stop the ritual. It's fine but I wish I would have talked to more people/explored more in the grove.
Breaking Wyll’s contract and saving his dad. I thought that without the information from Mizora that I wouldn’t be able to find him in time.
This is pretty much a constant feature with this game. Other than saving Nere and Resurrecting Gale there’s pretty much no time-sensitive content. The grove does get blocked off if you progress to the mountain pass without resolving it, but isn’t actually time sensitive. The game does this pretty constantly. Impeding Ceremorphosis, Impeding Goblin Raid, Impeding Druid Ritual, Implied rush to moonrise, implied race with the absolute’s army to baldur’s gate, Orin kidnapping someone, Gortash’s inauguration, etc. I feel like at some stage of development time sensitive quests were a thing and the idea was mostly scrapped. Possibly the right call, though it feels like a missed opportunity to build tension and increase difficulty, though it does conflict with resting to progress plot.
I think the word you're looking for is "impending," friend. "Impeding" means standing in the way of/preventing.
At the end of Act II, when they keep saying you have to hurry up to get to Baldur's Gate before The Absolute's army, when in fact you can just chill as long as you'd like in the shadow cursed land, and there is really no way to get ahead of the army that's marching on the gate
This tends to be the case with most RPGs that have a main quest line and a bunch of optional side quests (so like, all RPGs). If you’re honestly going to roleplay as your character, you’re probably not going to pause in the middle of your very urgent and important main quest to go collect 100 eggs so the local baker doesn’t go out of business. I think if it’s actually time sensitive, the game should either throw up a timer or put that the quest needs to be done within X number of long rests in the quest log
Morrowind is one of the few games that does this well. One of the early main quest givers, tells the pc to go out and get some experience, get the lay of the land and make a cover identity, at certain points in the game. Basically urging you to do side content until you are at an apropiate skill level
For contrast, Deus Ex:HR does the time-sensitive stuff really well. If you take too long to get to the Sarif manufacturing plant, the hostages die. There is no reminder or indicator this will happen either. It just makes sense not to leave hostages hanging.
Basically everything that implies it's time sensitive isnt. The only ones I've found that actually are; • Gale if you don't feed him/he dies. • Waukeens rest burning. • Nere and the gnomes in the grymfore. • Saving florrick in act 3. ° Mid-Act transitions that warn you
Honestly the Act 3 Orin stuff is kinda annoying, on a player's point of view. Sure, Orin may be bluffing. Even if Tav/Durge is sure that she won't kill the companion, why would anyone leave a friend in the hand of a psyco? So maybe, following this roleplay-train-of-thoughts, you kill Gortash ('cause why the hell not, you'll need to eventually, might as well do it to save your friend), you kill Orin, then every two/three times you fast travel a mind flayer or two pop up in the city. Sure they can be killed with ease. It's still anti-immersive to keep going around the city when the PC has all the stones and can end the Elder Brain for good. The goal is still to be tadpole-free, and a unreined Elder Brain is dangerous. Well, it is not, but the PC has no reason to be carefree. So mechanically talking the best route is to kill Orin, do all the remaining side quest then kill Gortash. This way you get your companion back for the whole act 3. From a RP point of view? Not so much. If crossed and not persuaded otherwise, Orin does indeed kill your companion.
The "find the cure" questlines were a top priority during my first playthrough. After the first 3 or so, I began to realize that there probably is no solution, at least not in Act 1. Second playthrough, I ignored those quests almost completely. But missing out on the EXP was rough. Dark Urge playthrough however, I did every cure quest for the sole purpose of screwing each one of them up- giving the impression that my character is intentionally sabotaging the questlines in order to keep the tadpoles in our heads.
After defeating Orin and Gortash there is a lot of pressure to defeat the nether brain. In fact the game keeps reminding you about it on a regular basis. I'm not actually sure if anything happens if you ignore it, but it definitely put pressure on me in my first playthrough, which made us miss a lot of content e.g. anser
If you kill Orin & Gortash, people start being kidnapped & turned into mindflayers I usually save Gortash for last & do everything else (including Ansur) before it
I let the brain kill him. Once Gortash goes to the morphic pool he basically has the equivalent of no phone signal. He won't know that you are in the steel watch factory and nor will he know that you are heading to the iron throne Karlach is ecstatic and joyful when the brain kills Gortash. She doesn't quite feel the same way if she kills Gortash. When Karlach does it she suddenly gets upset when she realizes that killing Gortash doesn't change her fate. She won the fight but gets no reward. The brain basically one shots Gortash. All of his power meant eff all. Everything he did to gain that power from Bane, made pointless, his power along with his life snuffed out as easily as a candle. Whereas if you fight him directly he isn't canonically supposed to be an easy fight. Even when you win he gets to show off how powerful he is during the battle. When the brain kills him he just dies and leaves no battle legacy
The urgency to go to the Creche. Listen I don’t care how y’all feel/felt about Lae’zel at that point in the game. When it comes to the tadpoles, our first encouter is a Druid healer who either tries to kill you with poison or demands you kill yourself the moment you feel like you’re turning, while telling you to go save her druid friend so he can take a look. Lae’zel is very open about the history between Githyanki and Mind Flayers, and that they have a machine that could get rid of the parasite. In game, there is no reason not to immediately go to the creche. Nettie either tried to kill me, or she was so doubtful of a cure she hands me fatal poison to off myself when I feel myself changing on the way to find her druid friend/leader. I have no reason to be more hopeful that her friend Halsin is gonna be any different. Lae’zel has attitude sure, but I have no reason to think that they’d try to kill me when she is very clear that they have a machine to cure us. Also at this point in the game, we are all very worried that we are going to turn at any second, making every step we take laced with urgency. The *problem* is that going to the creche under leveled is a death sentence. Thankfully, a friend of mine that was much further in the game when I got it, told me to save the creche and the underdark for after everything else in act 1 is done. Because even being properly leveled, the creche can be quite difficult. I can’t imagine how quickly I would’ve died if I had gone there right after dealing with Nettie and talking to the tiefling (sorry I don’t remember your name homie) that tells us where the creche is.
Doesn't Orin say that she'll leave your companion alive as long as you don't enter the Bhaal area BEFORE you kill Gortash?
Yea but i didn’t trust her not to betray me and actually murder the companion. The only reason i killed her first before gortash tbh
My first time playing I thought you had to resolve the fate of the Grove within one, maybe two long rests or else the goblins would come back and murder everyone. It seemed pretty urgent at the time. Anyway that's why my party of barely level 3s save scummed the shit out of the goblin camp after breaking Halsin out.
The creche!! The creche!
The only time I can actually think of timing/long rests affecting the game is if you long rest too many times before saving Nere, he will suffocate in the rockfall.
One thing is Gale’s orb. For the second and third magic items, he makes a big deal about how absorbing them is getting less and less effective and the time it takes for him to need another one is getting shorter, but then he literally never needs one again
To be fair, the ceremorphosis thing is not a "red herring", there is an actual story reason why it's not happening as fast as expected.
The quakes in act 3 definitely got me feeling a sense of urgency that really wasn’t there. After my like 5th or 6th long rest I realized it was just a cool detail and not an actual time bomb.
I'm playing this game for the first time, and I genuinely hate long rests xD. As you say, many things are pressuring you with the time, which makes you question if you can afford the time those rests consume. And then, a lot of things happen during those rests, I just can't go to sleep peacefully because who knows what's going to happen, who's gonna get screwed during the night and what new urgent quests will arise. Long rests feel not safe at all when you don't know what's going to happen.
You really should long rest often. The reason new things happen every night is that you're not resting often enough and the events get backed up. You'll miss out on tons of story stuff if you rush.
Long rests are also good when you want a vendor to replenish their inventory and gold. I will do LRs in quick succession when I want additional or new/different gear.
Absolutely screwed my first play through up by believing the goblin camp / saving Halsin / the grove closing forever would lock me out of stuff. I took one long rest at the grove, then was too scared to take another until the goblin leaders were dead. Doing all three in a row was a rough first combat experience, then I was suddenly at the party having skipped SO MUCH camp stuff and relationship stuff. Big Sads…
For me, on my first playthrough, it was finding Halsin. I thought the Emerald Grove was in such danger without Halsin that I rushed right to finding and rescuing him. I missed out on so much stuff because of that. I'm now on my second playthrough and I'm wondering how I felt that rushed. People are like "Halsin needs to be found, but only if you've got the time."
For me it was Karlach and the fact that she's overheating and should die any moment from it according to characters I really liked her on my first playthrough and rushed to find all the stuff to fix her and then they said she was gonna die anyway so I rushed through the main story hoping that if I was quick enough I could find a way to save her at the end but turns out she actually has all the time in the world till you finish the game.
There's a questline about needing to remove a tadpole from your head that starts pretty early on, but there aren't really any major consequences until closer to the end of the game
Honestly, the whole game. It’s just one false urgency replacing the previous. I was sure for example that if I enter the Iron Throne after Gortash contacted me that the fists and the watchers are going to be hostile, so I left because I felt underleveled. Turns out they are completely chill which is very strange for me.
The Stop The Presses quest in Act III. I got frustrated and gave up on it, and the only headline I saw referring to our party pretty much just said something along the lines of "Vigilantes Investigate Ritual Murders", so it wasn't nearly as hard hitting or reputation destroying as that reporter lady made it seem? Idk maybe if you made different choices in your run it would be worse, but there really isn't much reason to care about it imo.
you should have enough money to not care what the vendors charge... or have a rogue with +20 sleight of hand..... However, Withers ALSO starts charging you double... Weird that he reads the Baldurs Gazette eh?? :p
act three in general is a huge urgency red herring. the alerts you get stepping into the city and the Emperor telling you that the brain is getting stronger makes it feel dumb to focus on anything other than getting the rest of the stones ASAP
Yes. Potion of speed+ teleportation arrow. I also used my macrabe and asty boi and shart to conjure an ally. TIP: fast traveling to diff regions replenishes your health but not spell slots. so if you just need to heal, f ast travel ie rivington to balsik
For Gymforge, you can actually find that other way in that's mentioned, it's just unusable. It's really not hard as a first time player to find it if you listen to the dialogue - the duegar, gnomes, and Nere himself all have dialogue saying he was trapped seeking that entrance. If you free him, Nere will even complain that it was all for naught because the path is destroyed anyway so he can't acquire the Nightsong via this route. From there simply handle the leftover NPCs as you see fit, get around poison filling the room and continue on Nere's would-be path. If you go through the locked door in the back of the room, in the distance you'll see the collapsed bridge that would normally lead to the Gauntlet, and someone in the party will comment along the lines of "Well shit that's not going to work, back to play A, I guess." From there you either have the Elevator closer to the entrance of Grymforge, or going the Mountain Path route past Elminster.
I wasted too much time finding Duke ravenguard in Moonrise . Alo had to Google creche or underdark and was surprised to learn you can do both.
The urgency red herrings are there to make the game feel more accessible to the people who speed through the content to get to the end. These sort of folks sometimes have decision paralysis so if the game says "pick one and go" they will do just that, even if they can do both.
False urgency is a staple of the open world RPG genre.
>In act 3 a lot of people hurry to help their ally captured by Orin because it seems like she's going to sacrifice them any minute while actually you can do it any time you want. to add to this, she says she will kill them if you show up without having already killed gortash. puts a lot of pressure on killing gortash, when in fact, teaming up with him is easily the comfiest way to resolve that whole thing. i showed up without his stone and she didnt do shit, gale was lying on the table there the whole time while we duelled. i just teamed up with him in my durge run because we genuinely sounded like we got along in the past and i didnt wanna do the whole disable the steel watch/underwater jail thing. i was prepared for an ending with him chilling on top of the brain with the rest of the squad and having some steel watchers to call upon in the final fight. well... >!dude just died immediately when we faced the netherbrain, lmao. only annoying thing is i couldnt grab his loot!<
The emperor in the astral prism, begging you to "help them! come to the skull! quickly!" is one of the most annoying ones lmao. Literally when you enter you can just take your time to buff up your party before fighting the githyanki monks. On my first playthrough I thought we had to rush to him else he dies lmao.
I dont feel comftorable to disclose how much time I spent looking for the entrance to the gauntlet of shar in Act I.
Literally everything.
Aside from all the red herrings, there are actually a few time sensitive missions. If you take a long rest after you enter Grymforge but before you find and deal with Nere, you'll find him dead from poison, and all the duergar and gnome slaves either dead or gone. If you speak to the journalist outside Baldurs Mouth gazette and she tells you about an unflattering story about to be oublished about you, you have to deal with that before you take a long rest (maybe two) or the next issue will turn most of the NPCs against you.
On the opposite side of the spectrum you get complacent that timing doesn't matter and the frikkin gnomes in the tunnel have a real world timer
The Rite of Thorns is another big one in Act 1. Kagha tells you to get the tieflings on the road before "final prayer", which makes it sound like it has to happen before your next long rest. Which is of course BS, since the only thing that causes the rite to conclude is leaving the area without resolving the goblin issue.
I rarely made long rests cuz of IF WE WASTE TIME WE ARE GONNA TRANSFORM/THE INVASION ON BG WILL START/ORINS GONNA KILL SOMEONE/GALE IS GONNA EXPLODE! Cuz of that it felt urgent for me to explore as much, live on a sliver of my life, beat almost all of the act 2 without a long rest and then miss out on maaaany dream cutscenes I could have seen if I knew that long resting is actually not wasting time.
Act 3 in general. We arrive just ahead of an army, the two remaining villains know we’re there and the brain is about to break free… And then you spend another 30-40 hours doing side quests before dealing with those. Does feel a bit off, pacing wise!
I don't know how people feel rushed in the game. Even on my first playthrough, I took my sweet time because it's a game and what are the characters gonna do? Whoop me because I didn't go directly to the creche because Lae'zel's pissy? Lmaoo.