Down, Down, Down By the River: Let's Play Baldur's Gate 3

[Timrod]

Summary

: Welcome back to Baldur’s Gate 3. Today, we’ll kill Orin and hope that Swen Vincke doesn’t do anything stupid. We ended the last update in just the right spot to do that… except we didn’t.

: Normally, what’s supposed to happen is that this room is closed off as a crime scene. You talk to Devella (the person Valeria sent us to see) and she tells you to go investigate the kill list.

: If you saved any of the murder targets, she’s not there anymore. In fact, doing so kinda breaks this entire questline.

: To solve the murders, we need to go to this place, one of the two clothing stores in Act 3. This is the part where things get a little bullshit.

: If Devella isn’t in the Elfsong, she’ll be here. The thing is, by the time this scene finishes, we’ll have gotten to the point in the quest where she leaves the game.

: Ordinarily, you do this part, report back to her, and she goes “Okay I’m gonna go fuck off to the Upper City” and never comes back.

: “It’s unusual for prey to supply the tools of its own butchery.”

: “Razors, scissors, nail files - so many cuts one could make. And yet, such a fleeting window… but then, who am I to deny the auspices of destiny? For we are celebrating, Master Figaro.”

: “Did we just solve this entire quest by stumbling on the answer at random?”

: “I think we did. The best way to solve a quest.”

: “You have the delicious honor of being my crowning achievement. Your body is my ultimate gift to my lord Bhaal. Together, we shall transcend.”

1. Stop right there!
2. Back off. That’s my kill.
3. [BARD] A paralyzed victim and a creepy monologue? Could you get any more cliche?
4. [STEALTH] Keep to the shadows while the dwarf is distracted.

: Pollux doesn’t have a chance of making that stealth check, so we’ll do the dumb thing and go right in.

: “A paralyzed victim and a creepy monologue? Could you get any more cliche?”

: This fight sucks because the shop owner and Devella are both paralyzed in the back room and will get focused down with auto-crits.

: This is the point at which the game goes fanfiction mode. Dolor drinks a haste potion, throws a paralytic toxin at Lyselle (which misses but paralyzes her anyway without allowing a save) and then proceeds to instakill her.

: That’s about the only thing that happens in this fight. Dolor gets killed by Astarion and Karlach, Pollux blasts the doppelgangers in the back room, and the enemies don’t even get a hit off.

: The dwarf has a pair of boots that give you Dimension Door - this is important for the second of two fanfiction gauntlets on the way to Orin.

: He also has a bag full of severed hands we need to get into the fanfiction gauntlet.

[The following text is printed haphazardly on a torn, bloody page titled ‘Dirge of the Unholy Assassin’.]

'Neath Candulhallow’s quiet tombs
Lies a path to murder’s boons.
If entry down below’s your aim,
Seek trigger hidden by a frame.
‘Sicarius’ the door awaits
To admit those who would seek their fates

If to continue you insist
Show a trophy rent from wrist
Of sacrifice for our Lord planned
Present death’s knight a bloodied

[A smear of blood obscures the poem’s final word.]

: This is supposed to be a murder cult. What the fuck are they doing writing poetry?

: One of the doppelgangers has a key we don’t really need.

: The key goes to this door, which is maybe a hundred feet from where Pollux slept last night.

: This is the “trigger hidden by a frame” we need to open the door.

: We don’t get very far before getting stopped by this guy, who is supposed to be a death knight.

: Death knights are oathbreaking paladins who die before they can atone. They’re not to be confused with anti-paladins, which are evil paladins who may or may not be undead.

: You have the option to simply kill them, but they have shitloads of HP and die once the boss in the next room is dead.

: If you’re using Minsc or Jaheira, drop them off at camp. If they enter the next room, combat starts immediately.

: This fight is entirely fanwank for people who played Baldur’s Gate 1. See that guy in the back?

: Sarevok was the final boss of Baldur’s Gate 1. The twist is that he’s your character’s half brother and is effectively Dio Brando except not a vampire.

: He dies in BG1, gets brought back in BG2 as a party member, and then ???. The fact that he’s here is pure fanwank.

: Let’s go into the next room and take a look around.

: There’s two raised sections on the sides. One’s only accessible using a destructible ladder. We can use this.

: The other side has blocks Sarevok can jump up. We can block these off.

: And finally, the middle staircase. Let’s get blocking.

: Our final barricade looks like this. You need this many boxes because Sarevok has a really long jump radius. Box in three people upstairs and your tank at the bottom.

: Sarevok will run at the tank, but can’t actually do anything because his weapon can’t reach past the first row of boxes.

: Kill this echo first. It uses Sanctuary every turn to stop you attacking Sarevok. Don’t kill the others.. yet.

: Even on Tactician, Sarevok isn’t strong enough to break any box that has medium toughness. For safety, it’s best to use the boxes with 100 HP just in case he gets lucky.

: Every five attacks, he gets a buff that allows him to attack five times in a turn. Each attack does 5d10 damage, which could certainly bust the boxes.. but the AI won’t use it on objects.

: Make sure that if you have Nylruna that you don’t throw it if he’s close. The splash damage can hit Karlach.

: Once Sarevok is down, clean up the ghosts. They’ll go down quickly.

: If you’re not the type to spend the entire game hoarding treasure chests, you can use the same strategy as Raphael - put up a Globe, get everyone in it, and attack from inside.

: I realized after looking at this shot that I vastly overestimated Sarevok’s jump distance - I was using Karlach’s as a base and forgot she has 4 more strength and the jump buff from Nylruna.

: The Sword of Chaos will be useful against Gortash, since Gortash resists thunder.

: This helmet is kind of a sidegrade for Astarion the way I use him, but if you’re using him with two hand crossbows it’s probably better than the Helldusk helmet. I’d prefer the crit immunity.

: He drops a note with directions to the Bhaal Temple, which was a location from BG1, as well as the keys needed to get there. Before we go, there’s one thing we need to do.

: If you go through the cutscene, Sarevok tries to get your character to become an “unholy assassin”, and will lead you in here and demand you kill Valeria.

: At this point, the fight becomes significantly harder. There are more ghosts, Sarevok spawns right on top of you, and you don’t have a chance to create an elaborate box fort.

: “Thanks for freeing me so quickly. No idea what those Bhaalist berks had planned with me, but those chains were starting to chafe. Though I do wish you’d figured this all out before I - ah - put the blame for Father Lorgan’s murder on that poor refugee. Well, at least it’s over now.”

1. I didn’t do it for you. I did it to get access to Orin.
2. How did you end up here?
3. If I know Bhaal, this isn’t over.
4. I think it’s best you get out of here.

: “How did you end up here?”

: “After our chat at Sharess’ Caress, I thought it best to polish off the bottle I had started. I started coming over all woozy… my joints stiffened up quicker than a brothel-browser’s loins. Paralyzed. My vision went black. When I woke up, I was in chains.”

: “Overall - a terrible ordeal. One deserving of a drink. I’d bid you good day, but it’s been royally shite all around. But you.. well, you gave these reprobates a proper seeing to. You clearly have what I don’t. Courage. Insight. Heroism.”

: “The city needs you. I overheard these pigs talking - there’s a Bhaal temple deep within the old Undercity that the cult is using. A century ago it was destroyed by a group of heroic sorts. Let’s hope history repeats itself, eh?”

: For not killing him, we get Valeria as an ally.

: We can also look over Sarevok’s office, which has a letter in it that is kinda gross. The gist of it is that Orin is the product of incest.

: Thanks for reminding me that exists. I hate it.

: To get to Orin, we need to bypass the crazy grease sorcerer in the sewers. Because I already did this once on the way to get Minsc, we can’t get seen by him again or he’ll aggro.

: Fighting him head-on is not the best idea because of his fireball spam and his self-reproducing mephits.

: If you go down the side route, you can fight some of the grease blobs without aggroing the pack.

: Sneaking forward a bit, you can then pull a couple of his mephits and more blobs. This will give us a route to Orin without fighting him.

: This door leads to Orin’s area, but we don’t want to go through there just yet. If you haven’t yet had Orin kidnap someone, the trigger for her to do so is just beyond the door.

: There’s one other thing we can do in the sewers, so let’s do that first.

: We can get to this door easily without fighting anything. It’s locked, but we can pick it.

: Inside is Voss and his dragon mount in humanoid form.

: “Have you retrieved the Orphic Hammer? Will our prince’s chains finally be broken?”

: “Raphael is thoroughly exterminated. We had a song about it and fired friendship beams and everything.”

: “The Prince of the Comet is not dead. The Prince of the Comet will come again. The Prince of the Comet will liberate us from the Lich Queen’s tyranny.”

: “The prophecy is one step closer to fruition. Among the githyanki, one gift is esteemed above all others. The silver sword. Take it. Wield it in honor of Gith, the great liberator - and her unforgotten son.”

: “Now that you have the hammer, you must find a way to enter the astral prism. Once inside, smash Orpheus’ bonds. His cry will shake the planes, and I will fly to your aid.”

: “Think again. I will not permit your entry.”

: “I’ll find a way in, and then I’m going to kill you.”

: “Questions? You seem to be lost in thought.”

: “Getting into the Astral Prism will be complicated.”

: “Yes. But you will meet this challenge, as you have met so many others. Friend to Orpheus. Together, we will end the elder brain which shakes this city. Then, I turn my sights to Vlaakith, the queen of deceit.”

: We get the silver sword we could have gotten back in Act 1 using a bear.

: Now that we’ve got the silver sword, it’s time to prep our hostage. Keep in mind that our hostage will only have access to anything they have equipped.

: If you don’t have a charisma character, you might as well throw Minthara in there so you don’t lose anything valuable if you fail the checks to save her. If you do, Lae’zel is the better choice.

: Buff Lae’zel with everything you have and make sure to send anything in her inventory to camp.

: Now we can go through the door and let Lae’zel get kidnapped. Princess Daddyfucker’s not gonna like this one bit.

: We come across a warp point and a couple of bodies hanging over a circle of blood.

: Hitting the bodies with any attack will fill the circle with blood and let us progress into the second fanfiction gauntlet.. which we’re going to break in two.

: This guy, who a friend of mine described as a “sewer gooner”, is standing nearby. He sells some armor for Halsin if you’re playing Halsin as a melee druid.

: Behind the stone door is the second fanfiction gauntlet. Karlach notices the ambush in time.

: Oh look, it’s the fanfiction gang from the bank vault. They’ll eventually move and start firing at you if you go down the bridge.

: The goal is to get to this asshole and kill him in 5 turns. If you don’t, he automatically kills the entire party. Let’s break this in two.

: Teleport Astarion up here using his necklace. The fanfiction brothers have sanctuary on, but that’s not going to stop us.

: Walk back and use a couple of Arrows of Roaring Thunder. You’ve probably got two dozen of them sitting around at this point.

: That mostly takes care of that. There’s one assassin left who made his save both times, but we’ll get him.

: Have your caster get close to whichever martial has Nylruna and use a scroll of Dimension Door to warp right next to the target.

: He’s got fanfiction invincibility, but that doesn’t stop him from being knocked over. If he’s knocked over, he loses his spell entirely and the fight is over.

: The third assassin wound up getting launched onto this piece of rock and got a few hits on Lyselle before he died.

: There’s a bridge that spews blood for no reason and a door that we need the amulet from Sarevok to open.

: Inside are a bunch of non-hostile murder cultists.

: No such thing as a non-hostile murder cultist.

: In a weird bit of continuity, if you found Orin disguised in town, the bodies of the people she replaced will be here - which is weird because the smith didn’t actually die.

: We kill some more cultists, and now it’s time to set up for Orin’s fight.

: Here’s how this works. Orin has six cultists in a circle around her who provide her with 12 layers of fanfiction armor. The cultists have sanctuary on at all times.

: Once engaged, she enters FANFICTION FORM, which gives her a number of new abilities. The wiki has all of these damage numbers wrong, by the way.

: The damage numbers they have come from a specific version of the fight that only happens if you’re the Dark Urge - in that case, you get her fanfiction form instead.

: Piercing Growl is a 30-foot cone that can stunlock, because Orin is a Tigrex now. Relentless Lunge works exactly like the owlbear’s jump attack.

: She also has this thing, which she uses on both you and the cultists. The cultists don’t get dazed if she uses it on them.

: Let’s see the box fort tactic first, before we do this the “real” way.

: This setup is what you want. It keeps everyone more than 30 feet from Orin while allowing them to hit her and stops her from jumping.

: Because the party is protected from all her attacks, it’s safe to summon a bunch of low-level garbage to eat up her twelve invulnerability stacks.

: Nylruna will also eat up three of her stacks per hit when thrown using this setup - one from the weapon damage, one from the AOE, and one from the gravity damage.

: Now let’s do the fight the “correct” way, and by “correct” I mean “cheesing stealth to avoid the fight becoming a slot machine.”

: What we need to do is have Astarion stand way the hell up here with a regular bow equipped. This is crucial because Orin can’t reach him in one turn.

: Snipe one of the cultists, and hope they plummet to their death. Orin will aggro the first time, at which point you hide and run out of the arena until combat ends.

: Make sure not to kill all of the cultists. Leave one alive for when you actually start the fight. If you don’t, the game bugs out.

: This whole thing is remarkably consistent until you get to about this spot, where I had to chug some invisibility potions to let Astarion escape.

: We then go down and let Lae’zel loose. This is kind of a mistake because if she dies, it’s permadeath.

: Meanwhile, Pollux and Lyselle (who are out of combat) use their summons and fly them in to give Lae’zel cover. Lae’zel got hit by the fear stunlock.

: It is at this point that the humiliation ritual begins.

: Pollux uses Irresistible Dance. This hits regardless of any fanfiction Orin has.

: Karlach jumps down thanks to her invulnerability to fall damage and kills the last remaining add.

: Because of Irresistible Dance, the summons get advantage on all their attacks. The water myrmidons can hit three times each, which quickly burns through the last of Orin’s bullshit.

: Even if Orin had made her save against Irresistible Dance, the fight is over.. only she doesn’t make her save and is out of the fight for a second round.

Narrator: A metallic tang fills the air as the Slayer’s form is drained of life - ashes to ashes, blood to blood.

: “NO! My real name.. is Ebony Darkness.. Raven.. Dementia.. Way.. I’m also pregnant..”

Narrator: You have robbed another god of his Chosen.

1. Stand back and admire a job well done.
2. Reflect on your technique - it could have been better.
3. Examine the blood with dismay - this will take forever to come out.

: I think we took all of two hits that entire fight.

Narrator: A glint of light on something in the blood catches your eye.

: Crimson Mischief goes in the vendor trash pile, since it sucks compared to what Astarion has.

: This, however, does not. Bloodthirst is the best weapon in the game for Astarion and one of the best weapons in general. Astarion’s critical threshold is now a 14, and is a 13 if he’s concealed.

: On top of making him more likely to crit, it also makes his crits better - anything it hits becomes vulnerable to piercing damage. This also applies to Karlach, since Nylruna does pierce damage.

: Orin’s room is downstairs from the platform we fought her on. It’s not really important.

: You can see her dead mother, who is also her sister.

: Gross.

: The one interesting detail is this dead dragonborn, who won’t be there if you’re the Dark Urge. This is canonically what happens to the Dark Urge if you don’t play as him.

: On the way back up, we can stop by the area my recording fucked up in. It’s this big staircase that goes from the sewer to Orin’s arena.

: This dead body has Dribbles’ head on them, so we can complete that sidequest.

: Before we leave, there’s one other fight we can do here that unlocks a warp point we’ll need for once we’ve killed Gortash.

: This dock is full of glowing rats, because three fights against swarms of rats wasn’t enough.

: They retaliate with “infectious madness”, which is a charm effect.

: We’ve got plenty of tools to deal with this. Lyselle has fireballs, Karlach has Nylruna, Pollux has his summon that can AOE.

: With that unlocked, let’s go turn in Dribbles.

: This gets us a pair of gloves that let us Power Attack with spells. This is absolutely not worth it. The circus leaves after this, so make sure you’ve gotten Nylruna if you haven’t.

: We can also check out Pollux’s statue. This gets him a semi-permanent Bless.

: I’m now realizing that we’ve murdered our way through Orin and the update is still kinda short, but there’s still some side content we can do.

: Off screen, I go back through that barn with the explosive toys in it, which I did several updates ago but didn’t save.

: I wind up getting into combat with every guard in a five-mile radius while trying to disarm the bears. Don’t ask me, I don’t know. This isn’t the first time this will happen.

: Once we do this, we can go back to Arfur - remember him? He’ll give us the password to the fireworks factory in the Lower City.

: This quest sucks. I probably should’ve done it before we did Raphael, but I hate it that much.

: The entire place is rigged with explosives, which is reason one why this place sucks.

: The clerk has a dumb comedy routine about selling irresponsible amounts of explosives to a child, because it’s 1867 or some shit. Larian Writing.

: He’s a cultist, and we can use the password from Arfur to get upstairs. This doesn’t really do much because even with the password, we need to kill everyone in this building.

: If they’re standing in front of explosives, why not blow them up?

: Because there’s a fanfiction gundam right outside.

: The gundam is a problem because for whatever reason, it has Oblivion guard senses and will aggro you mid-fight through walls.

: Upstairs is another clerk and a level 11 guard with 120 HP. This fight was a pain in the ass when I did it on my first playthrough at level 10.

: We exterminate them quickly. This makes the first floor guards aggressive, but they won’t attack until they can see someone.

: The first floor is easier if you warp out and shoot the clerk from outside. Just watch out for the gundam. Speaking of which, let’s kill that fucking thing.

: Fanfiction Gundams suck because all of their attacks are AOE and inflict “maimed”, which stops anyone hit by it from moving. The AOE on their sword swings is huge.

: At low health, they’ll go into a self-destruct state and blow up on the next round. They’ll blow up immediately if their HP is brought to 0.

: Basically, there’s no good way to fight a gundam other than maybe telling it that G-Gundam is the best one.

: With the gundam gone, we can go in and take all the fireworks from the first floor.

: Come to think of it, we probably could’ve used these to blow Orin up.

: There’s a hatch in the corner with even more explosives - you know, just in case you don’t have enough. I’m kind of tempted to go blow Gortash up again.

: The basement also has a secret door hiding something like eleven explosive barrels. I’m not kidding when I say that there are more explosives in this building alone than there are in the entirety of Act 2.

: Look at that third floor. If we fought up there, they’d destroy our precious explosive barrels.

: There’s a cargo elevator outside the building, in the back. Hit the second floor door with any AOE. A grenade will do.

: This causes the morons on the third floor to investigate.

: If you’ve cleared out the first floor and taken all the fireworks, it’s safe to fireball them as long as they’re on the second floor.

: Flying summons can take the rest out easy. If you do this before the radio asshole, you could probably blow him up on the first turn.

: I went back and counted, and there are almost as many barrels in here as we used on Raphael in total. We have three quests left. Let’s do one more – really, it’s more like an errand. We need to go back to the local mafia, which is safe now that we’ve killed Orin.

: There’s supposed to be this whole route where you can join the Zhentarim, who show up for no good reason to fight the mafia… except the NPC that would do that is currently at the bottom of a ravine in the Fuck Zone in Act 2.

: This leads to a very one-sided fight where the mafia kill the Zhentarim no problem.

: Completing the fight gets us another ally.

: We’ve also eliminated two allies, one because of a bug.

: Arabella was the little girl we saved from Kagha in Act 1 and later found outside the House of Healing in Act 2. She’s supposed to be in the sewers, but isn’t because of a bug.

: Two of our characters already have permanent Freedom of Movement. We didn’t miss much either - there’s one scene where Arabella is in the sewer and goes “I learned magic! The bone man told me I’m supposed to be a great wizard!”

: “Well, look who it is. Glad to see you in the city - hope you found plenty of coin in Ketheric’s coffers.”

: “I know you sold your soul to a psychopathic freak.”

: “A pact is just another deal. He can call himself ‘patron’, but Big Raph doesn’t own me - he’s just giving me the ability to take what I want.”

: “Yeah.. Raphael is um, totally still alive. Can you help us in the final battle somehow?”

: “I’m twelve.”

: “Yeah I knew this was stupid.”

: Next time, we’ll blow up Gortash’s fanfiction factory and do what is probably my favorite part of Act 3 even though it’s purely Saturday morning cartoon shit.

: We’ll also get the sluttiest dress in the game.