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

[Timrod]

Summary

: I realized after I did the last update that I never showed the dialog for either Sarevok or Orin, so let’s do that and I can talk about why I hate it.

: Let’s assume you haven’t played BG1 or BG2. I hadn’t played either before I played this one.

: “You gaze upon Murder’s progeny, child.”

: I think they ran the voiceover through a thing to artificially deepen it. The VA also tends to take dramatic pauses every other line, which is annoying.

Echo of Amelyssan: “His most ill-trusted zealots.”

Echo of Sendai: “HIS FAITHFUL DEPARTED.”

Echo of Illasera: “Prodigal servants, each returned to do his bidding.”

: These characters are all references to villains from BG1. Again, you’re not going to know any of this shit unless you played BG1.

: Let me tell you what this is. You know how they made that shitty Silent Hill movie - I’m talking about the 2006 one - and they made Pyramid Head a selling point even though that makes no sense?

: That’s what this is.

Narrator: “This man is known to all Baldurians, and his presence sparks dread in the pit of your stomach. Before you is Sarevok Anchev - a Bhaalist who almost brought Baldur’s Gate to ruin a century ago.”

: “This is the court of the Dread Lord’s tribunal. I am its custodian. Here come those who seek to transcend. Aspirants of his most profane order - the would-be Unholy Assassins of Bhaal.”

1. Sarevok Anchev. How are you still alive?
2. Are you the reason there are so many murders in the city?
3. I want to become an Unholy Assassin. What must I do?
4. What exactly is an Unholy Assassin?
5. I have no business with Bhaal. I’ll leave.
6. Attack.

: “How are you even still alive? Last time I checked, you’re human. Not a half-elf, not an elf, not a dwarf.”

: “A long while ago, my wretched sibling brought me back. The fairest of Bhaalspawn, soul-bound me to this husk.”

: I’m not sure if it was BG1 or BG2, but in one of those games, the main character learns that they’re a “bhaalspawn”, which are apparently people fathered by Bhaal who aren’t demigods for some reason.

: Sarevok is also a bhaalspawn.

: “Worship death though I do, I refused it. I roamed the Coast, gathering those who still held Bhaal in their black hearts. The cult survived, festering beneath the city, with me as the Gate’s everlasting poison.”

: “But no more. For poison is too slow a death. Now is the time for slaughter. With these killings, the glory of the Bhaalists has risen beyond what we dreamed possible during those dark days.”

: “The worship of my Lord is led by another now - my granddaughter, Orin. The youngest Unholy Assassin ever to follow in Bhaal’s bloody trail. And his Chosen.”

1. What does Orin have to do with the murders in the city?
2. Orin is your granddaughter?
3. How does it feel to be surpassed by your own child?
4. I’m looking for Orin. Where can I find her?

: “Orin is your granddaughter?”

: “My very blood, and by extension, His. Bhaal has never had a more gifted prodigy. Orin’s gift surpassed even her mother’s. Her mother knew this, and she could not bear it.”

: “When Orin was but seven years old, she tried to smother the child as an offering to our Lord. I heard the screams, ran to help, afeared for the child’s life. But the cries were not Orin’s.”

: “It was her mother’s blood that soaked the sheets. Orin had cut off the very hand that tried to end her, and made a plaything of it. And as she toyed with her dead mother’s hand, a deep quiver rose up through her throat - the Lord of Murder speaking through the child.”

: “Lay not a finger on this child, he said. Not let any other, for this child will serve me with unholy ardor. Protect her, in my name.”

1. That’s horrible. No child should have to go through that.
2. Did you know that your daughter was planning to kill Orin?
3. Your granddaughter killed your daughter? Your family sounds deeply disturbed.
4. I can see why Bhaal chose Orin.
5. You should have killed Orin for what she did.
6. I didn’t come here to become embroiled in your family drama - I came here to be baptized by Bhaal.

: This kind of shit doesn’t work because Orin is a cardboard cutout. She is a 90s Saturday morning cartoon villain. Every other word is either “kill” or “blood”.

: Now, here’s what I’d like you to think about. Imagine that whoever the creative director was decided to cut this whole thing. No Sarevok, no murder tribunal, you just hunt down Orin and kill her. What would have changed about the overall plot?

: The answer is nothing. They could have cut this entire thing, put Sarevok’s severed head in Orin’s room, and that would’ve had the same effect.

: “Did you know that your daughter was planning to kill Orin?”

: “I knew of my daughter’s ambitions, but not the lengths to which she’d go. She hungered for Bhaal’s favor more than anyone I’d ever known. But her daughter, Orin, hungered even more.”

: “My Lord made his choice - I abided by his words. But Orin is not the subject of our judgement here today. You wish to become an Unholy Assassin of Bhaal. So, approach and be judged.”

1. I am ready to be judged.
2. I approach and take your head, monster.

: The first option only works if you have a charisma character. Otherwise, you might as well get the treasure chests and/or globe of invulnerability out and ambush him.

: “Let us begin. Spirit of the slaughtered, return to us. Show us the truth of this murderer’s intent, and let us judge him for his bloody service.”

: “You took this spirit’s life, and thus, its voice. So, speak for it. How was this pitiable creature slain?”

1. The deed is done - the details don’t matter.
2. In combat. Honorably.
3. [DECEPTION] First, I ended its sorry existence. Then, I cut the hand from its corpse.
4. [DECEPTION] Slowly and painfully. I savored every scream.
5. [DECEPTION] With a smile on my face and pleasure in my heart.
6. I didn’t kill this person. But I will kill you.

: Welcome to the Edgy Spitoon. How edgy are ya?

: I walked into a Hot Topic once in 2009 and almost bought a band t-shirt.

: I had a Goth phase from about.. oh, 450 AD to around 500 AD? Lots of gold, jewels, trying to conquer Europe, that whole thing. Stopped being fun when they got rolled by Christianity.

: They tried it again with the Visigoths but it just didn’t work.

: I killed a couple of those artificial vore monsters that survived my great grandmother’s reign. They weren’t ever really alive though.

: I got in a fight with Turok in the 1960s. Not the 90s college kid, I mean Grandpa Turok from the 50s.

: Who won?

: When you fistfight Grandpa Turok over a bad ref call, no one wins.

: If you make the check, you can fight Sarevok 4v1 by attacking him while he walks into the next room. The ghosts won’t intervene.

: I just felt like the box thing was better.

: Now let’s do Orin’s dialog from if you’re dumb enough to just walk down there.

: Can we kill her yet?

: “Hush hush. I hear footsteps trip-trapping on the Murder Lord’s stones. It refused the Murder Lord’s command, and comes crawling into his sanctum with the tyrant unpulped.”

: There’s different dialog if you haven’t killed Sarevok, and if you’ve killed Gortash before killing Orin. Am I going to bother? No.

: “I know what you did. Spilled my grandfather’s crimson.. he was mine. He showed me how to slice and slit. He guides my dagger still.”

: “Did it think it could protect? Did it think it could save? Only the blades can offer salvation.”

: “Listen, I already played Coffin of Andy and Leyley, so can we hurry this up?”

1. [DECEPTION] Gortash is dead. I left him rotting on the roof of his fortress.
2. [INTIMIDATION] Anything you do to her, I will inflict on you a hundredfold.
3. [PERSUASION] You said Bhaal wanted us to fight. He will reject this offering.
4. Her fate is of no interest to me.

: Succeeding at any of the checks (which I believe are all DC 20) saves the hostage.. or you could just use the box method.

: “You do not smell of his corpse-rot. But yes - I feel it. He is grave meat now.”

: Why is she not on fire yet?

: “Your blood will clot the gutters of this place, your flesh will rot on the slab. A worthy offering at last. All the lordling’s pretty plans, bleeding out in the gutters. And soon your crimson will join his.”

: Orin has about three times the writing she actually needs. She’s the absolute weakest kind of “I did it because I’m crazy” villain.

: “I will finish what my grandfather started. Sarevok brought this city to its knees, but I will be the one to slit its throat. I am Bhaal’s Chosen.”

1. You will fail as Sarevok did. As all Bhaalspawn are destined to fail.
2. You’re just continuing the family business? How original.
3. What part do the stones play in this ‘plan’ of yours?
4. Baldur’s Gate deserves such a fate. Your vision is exquisite.
5. Attack.

: There’s another option here if you snuck into Orin’s room before fighting her where you can point out she’s an incest baby, which immediately starts the fight and gives her another fanfiction buff.

: It also feels like the writers desperately wanted to have the Baldur’s Gate 1 twist here where your character is also one of Bhaal’s kids, but they constrained that to being the Dark Urge.

: That’s what the Dark Urge’s story is - you get here after all these unexplained cutscenes where your character does stupid shit, and the twist is that you’re Orin’s sibling.

: At this point, the fight starts and your characters are now in a bad position. This fight SUCKS if you haven’t pre-killed the cultists, especially if you have summons out.

: The thing is, even without the cultists, this fight would be pretty difficult. Orin can kill anyone in the party in one turn, which I feel like most people at an actual table would balk at.

: Then again, I feel like if this game was what the voice directors clearly thought it was - an actual play podcast - it would’ve been cancelled after four episodes because no one would want to sit through this shit at an actual table.

: In the next update, we’ll get the pre-reqs for Gortash done. At that time, the LP is going on a break until Salty Vanilla is done with that picture. In the meantime, I’ll be LPing a better game.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Welcome back to Baldur’s Gate 3! Today, we’re going to save a bunch of people from an underwater prison colony.

: This next part is annoying because like Orin’s plotline, you can accidentally wind up halfway through it if you do sidequests wrong.

: To start, we need to go back to the gnome hideout and talk to someone we probably should’ve talked to back when we first came through.

: First, we want to buy four of these flashblinder grenades off this gnome. He restocks every time you long rest, and these grenades are the only way to fight the boss we’re about to go up against.

: Wulbren and Barcus are in the back room. Technically, you can skip this part - but we’ll do it anyway.

: “Good to see you. Wasn’t sure you’d make it to the city. Regretting it yet?”

: “I spent a lot of time thinking of worst case scenarios while I was locked in that cell you plucked me from at Moonrise. I didn’t imagine anything as bad as this. The Gondians have handed Enver Gortash the means to bring about the end of liberty in Baldur’s Gate.”

: “And the citizens have rolled out the red carpet for their new tyrant. Resistance fighters are few and far between - my Ironhands, what’s left of the Harpers, and you.”

1. I’m with you.
2. Gortash is a dead man - I have reasons of my own for taking him down.
3. This is your fight - not mine.

: “I’m with you as long as it gets me more explosives. We kind of used most of our supply killing a devil.”

: “Good. We don’t have a chance unless we stick together - not while the Gondians’ metal monsters are patrolling the streets. The Steel Watch - they’re a threat to you, me - and every man, woman, and child in the city.”

: They’re also a threat to good writing and good game design.

: “They act all civilized.. servants of the people. But they only serve one man. When he becomes Grand Duke, it will only get worse. Laws will change, freedoms will vanish, and soon you’ll be accused and sentenced before you’ve even committed a crime. And the fucking Gondians are to blame for all of it.”

: Gondians are worshipers of Gond, who is effectively D&D’s version of Hephaestus. Most of his worshipers are gnomes. He’s a tech bro.

1. Cheer up Wulbren. We’re here to help.
2. Personally, I put a lot of the blame on Gortash.
3. Why put the blame on the Gondians?
4. Perhaps the Gondians were infected with a tadpole?

: “Why put the blame on the Gondians? They don’t have a moral code so much as they only really give a shit about making and using technology and being an excuse for putting guns in D&D.”

: “They invented the Steel Watchers. And they’re building an army of them. They’ve always been happy to provide their technology to despots in exchange for a stipend and the freedom to work in peace.”

: “They would’ve licked Sarevok’s boots given the chance, and now they’ll kiss Gortash’s ring while the city screams. I had a plan to put a stop to them. But the way things are now, if we stick our heads above ground, the Watchers are on us like flies on shit.”

: “What was the plan?”

: “Same as it always is. Genocide. In this case - take this giant fuckoff runepowder bomb I made and blow up the Steel Watch Foundry with the Gondians in it.”

: “No, Wulbren! We can’t commit a genocide!”

: “Fuck you. I hate you.”

: “If Barcus wasn’t here you’d already be dead.”

: We’ve been past the fanfiction factory before, but we need to do one other thing, which is attend Gortash’s coronation. I’m going to skip all of it.

: He has slightly different dialog if you’ve already killed Orin, because now we could theoretically ally with him and end the game.

: “What did I tell you? A momentous occasion, I’m sure you agree. And to think the drama’s just started.”

: “You see, Gortash has had Wyll’s father.. relocated. Ravengard’s good as dead. And to think, there’s no way to save him.. or is there?”

: You then need to long rest, which causes Mizora to show up at your camp along with a pair of Hell Lesbians.

: Those are fake Hell Lesbians. She probably can’t afford the real ones.

: They sit there chanting in fake latin (or maybe it’s real latin, I don’t know) for a bit.

: “Your contract, Wyll. Signed in blood, forged in fire, bound in bone - but not unbreakable.”

1. What are you proposing?
2. Then break it already. Wyll doesn’t need to wait six months.
3. Remain silent.

: “Then break it already before I find a mod that lets me kill you.”

: I checked and could not find a mod that lets you kill Mizora. My guess is that doing so probably crashes the game.

: “No contract is ended without sacrifice. A cost must be paid.”

: “We already had a deal. Are you aware I killed Raphael?”

: “Wyll Ravengard. A choice is before you. Option one. I show you the way to your father. I guarantee him no harm except that from you and your allies. And you pledge your soul to me and the archdevil Zariel in a pact eternal.”

: “Option two. I break your pact, and you are freed from your duty. Your father dies by his enemy’s hand, and Baldur’s Gate loses its greatest champion.”

1. What will happen to Wyll’s powers if he breaks the pact?
2. Save your father, Wyll. The city will need him to help rebuild.
3. Do the right thing. Give your soul so that your father can live.
4. Break the pact. You deserve your freedom.
5. Let your father die. When the city’s free, you can take his place.

: “Option three, we tell you to fuck yourself.”

: If Wyll sells his soul, you get Mizora as an ally for the final battle, and Ravengard is saved. Alternatively, you can tell Mizora to fuck herself and save Ravengard anyway.

: Mizora breaks Wyll’s contract, and insists on staying in camp because BG3’s writers fucking love their stupid villains. Personally, I think it’s dumb as fuck that you can’t kill Mizora.

: We could go to the fanfiction factory right away.. or we could walk right past it and do a sidequest that will have us stumble upon something we’d need to do anyway.

: To do that, we’re literally walking right past the factory, which is guarded by two gundams and a swarm of guards.

: Just past that is a temple full of 30-year olds who are still in a college sorority.

: I know at least three of those people and they all suck.

: When we approach, one of the sorority sisters asks us if we’re here for the funeral.

: Going to the far end of the temple brings us to a bunch of sorority pledges humming Down Down Down by the River for some reason.

: From here, a lady in ridiculous makeup tells us that her sorority sister got killed by a giant metal beast while swimming in the harbor and tasks us with killing it.

: These are worshipers of Umberlee, also known as the Bitch Queen. She’s the goddess of the ocean and considers drowning people to death a reward.

: All of her worshipers are women, because D&D was written by men who assumed women have nothing better to do than form some kind of weird drowning cult.

: When am I supposed to have time to lead a cult?

: We have to go to a building on the other end of the harbor. Before we can, we get interrupted by one of THE dumbest scenes in this entire game.

: “Godsdamned hypocrites. The Blade of Frontiers - all pomp and empty oaths. The Sword Coast’s most dashing fraud. You are either a fool for trusting him, or a wretch for conspiring with him. It doesn’t matter which.”

: “Lady Mizora told me everything. How Wyll slaughtered his own father, how he craves his power. How he means to make the city bow to him and him alone. This city holds no place for you - or for Ravengard’s treacherous spawn.”

1. [PERSUASION] Ravengard could still be alive. And we intend to save him.
2. [HISTORY] A relevant thread of knowledge pokes at your mind. Explore it.
3. [DETECT THOUGHTS] Probe Florrick’s mind.
4. When we found you in prison, you’d given up. Who’s the hypocrite here?
5. Attack us, then. Let’s see who’s left standing.

Narrator: You remember the stories of Elturel’s fall. The city was dragged into the Hells at Zariel’s behest - and Ravengard along with it.

: “Zariel’s stunt destroyed countless lives. Mizora is her minion. You can’t trust her.”

: Here’s why this is stupid. Florrick should already know this.

: She tells us there’s a magic dragon somewhere in the sewers we should go find. We could’ve found this a long time ago - the entrance is near where you rescue Florrick.

: With Florrick gone, we can go over here by the Blushing Mermaid, which is where we’ll find the “metal beast”.

: Pollux notices a trail of oil leading inside.

: We might as well barricade the doors before we open them to cut down on resource use. Alternatively, have the party wait down the street and run Astarion over to them.

: There are a bunch of wargs inside for no good reason.

: With Orin’s dagger equipped, Astarion is almost guaranteed to crit once per turn.

: The only reason I boxed the entrance up is because I wanted Pollux to get the bonus from Cazador’s dagger.

: There’s a hidden hatch in the floor, and this is where we need to go to reach my favorite part of Act 3.

: One thing I want to mention is we’re not really sequence breaking by doing this - you’re intended to either come here for the Umberlee sidequest and then go to the factory, or go to the factory first which then leads you here.

: There’s a random box with a lock on it we can open to find out where we’re headed.

[Page after page within this book is covered with diagrams and schematics of a pressurized underwater research facility to be built in Grey Harbor atop the sunken stone structure of Sarevok’s Iron Throne Headquarters.]

: ..So it’s Rapture?

: The Iron Throne was one of the final dungeons of BG1 - you fight Sarevok there, blow it up, and then Sarevok escapes to the temple we fought Orin in.

: There’s a prison down here. This is another way in - you can use a hole behind the grease wizard to get in and out from the sewers.

: A couple rooms further down, we find a dwarf standing over a submarine.

Redhammer the Deviser: “Oi, mate! Wot’s all this, then? Swear on me mum mate I’m so British I shit the queen.”

Narrator: “You spot a curious metal contraption in the water - a submersible.”

: How do these medieval adventurers know what a submarine is just by looking at it?

1. That submersible - why is it here? What is this place?
2. [DECEPTION] Boss sent me to check up on the situation down here.
3. [BARD] [DECEPTION] Haven’t you heard? I’m the new municipal waterway inspector!
4. [BARD] [DECEPTION] I’m the new municipal waterway inspector under Lord Gortash.
5. [INTIMIDATION] I have questions. You have answers.
6. You killed one of those servants of Umberlee. Now they want you dead.
7. Sorry, I just got turned around.

: “You killed one of those servants of Umberlee. Now they want you dead.”

Redhammer the Deviser: “This submarine leads to Gortash’s underwater prison - most secure in the Realms. Gortash keeps some Gondians there - collateral to keep those working in the Steel Watch Foundry until control.”

: We kill the dwarf. He’s not really a threat. You can intimidate him into taking you to the Iron Throne, but if you do that the sorority sisters show up and make you kill him or kill them.

: By the way, this is the part of Gortash’s questline that you can’t do if you kidnap him - if you kill Gortash before coming here, Redhammer will have fled on the sub.

: You might ask what happens if you were to kill Redhammer before the coronation and then kidnap Gortash. The answer is you can’t: if you kill Redhammer, Gortash teleports to his boss arena. This happens even if you’ve already kidnapped Gortash somewhere but haven’t killed him.

: Our reward is a dress that looks like something out of a third-party 2E splatbook.

: Before we go in the submarine, we need to do some setup. First, we want to summon anything we possibly can. If you have any scrolls of Summon Elemental, give them to your martials.

: Go through your camp chest and find any scrolls of Dimension Door you have. Split them up evenly.

: Get all your alchemy supplies and make any Potions of Flight you can. If you can, make a Haste Spore Grenade because Haste Potions suck.

: Make sure, by the way, that you don’t use fire or have any fire spells equipped if you can help it.

: This thing is surprisingly easy to pilot. All aboard, Captain Pollux on deck!

: “Aren’t you the intrepid little adventurer. Digging and diving where you don’t belong.”

1. What are you doing here?
2. What the hells is this place?
3. Fuck you, Gortash.
4. Cut the crap, Gortash. I go where I choose, and I’m curious about what’s down here.
5. Whatever you’re hiding down here, I’m going to take it.

: “Get fucked.”

: “Tsk tsk. You’ve been spending too much time with young Karlach - it’s affecting your manners. And your intelligence. Go any further, and I will destroy the Iron Throne and all of the prisoners inside.”

Narrator: “How many people are trapped within? How many lives will be lost?”

: Zero. We’re saving everyone.

: “When the corpses start to wash up on shore, remember - you could have prevented all of this.”

: The prison starts exploding, and Pollux docks the submarine with it.

: The moment we leave the submarine, a timer starts. We have time to prepare.

: Go turn-based mode and have everyone drink a potion of flying. DO NOT USE THE HASTE SPORE GRENADE YET. Give it to your highest initiative character and have them drink an Elixir of Vigilance if you have any left.

Omeluum: “Halt. You must act with haste. Duke Ravengard is held within these walls. He must be extracted.”

1. Omeluum? Is that you?
2. Where are you?
3. Tell me what to do.
4. Get out of my head.

: “Tell me what to do like it’s one of those James Bond games that aren’t the N64 Goldeneye.”

Omeluum: “Duke Ravengard is held in the security wing. Be careful. There are many hazards. This structure is collapsing.”

Omeluum: “Act with speed. Act with efficiency. Good luck.”

: What? Where’s my segment?

: This calls for a superhero. You’d just blow the place up for laughs.

: Our first play is having the person with the spore grenade throw it. Even though the grenade says it lasts three turns, that’s misleading. The cloud it generates lasts for three turns, but the haste effect only lasts for one.

: It might be tempting to fly down the ladder, but don’t. Fly to the ladder instead, use it, and then fly to your destination. Ladders don’t cost movement, but flying does.

: A classic four-way intersection. We have a prisoner here..

: And another back here. In an emergency, delegating responsibility is key. Don’t waste your party’s turn freeing them when the summons can do that.

: This hostage is free and will be able to save herself. Behind her is the route to the mind flayer.

: This route is the one we want to send our fastest character down. It has two prison cells full of slow-moving hostages who need at least three turns to escape to safety.

: The number of turns you get is based on difficulty. You get 8 on Explorer, 6 on Balanced, and 5 on Tactician and Honor Mode.

: For some reason, these villains equipped the doors with heat sensors that close and lock the doors if a fire starts in the hallways. If the doors close, they won’t re-open.

: We have enough actions with Haste to take out one of the fishmen and free half the prisoners in the room.

: There are two summons capable of using the Help action: Scratch the dog and the summoned angel. The angel moves much faster and can fly. Send him down this way.

: Delegate the rescue of the prisoners in the main room to your weaker summons. They can open the doors by attacking the levers next to them. Make sure to kill or incapacitate the fishman.

: If the fishmen aren’t dealt with, they’ll use one of their two attacks to throw a net at one of the hostages. If it hits, you’ll need to Help them out of it.

: We’ll send the dog to help rescue the duke.

: The elementals can either help out with the three other hallways, or they can go down this one. If you’ve got everything else done, you can go here for some treasure.

: Karlach and one of the elementals head down here. If you can, you want to save these two hostages on the first turn.

: The surviving fishman near Astarion nearly kills someone, but they’ll live.

: We’ll want to send Karlach down here after rescuing the hostage from the chair.

: The hostages will spend their turn running as far as they can to the exit, stopping only if an enemy gets in their way.

: The reason we want to save these hostages as quickly as possible is because fishmen will constantly pour into this room. We want to seal it off as soon as we can.

: On our next turn, Astarion frees the other group of hostages and take some oil barrels home as a souvenir on the way back.

: By this time, Pollux has eliminated the two fishmen near the duke. The duke is in the middle cell, and there are two hostages in the cell on the right.

: Make sure you save the other hostages first and give them a turn to run before you save the duke. This hallway is the shortest one, and you’ll have plenty of time to escape.

: Have the summons clear out the baddies as soon as they can.

: Due to a bug, the hostages sometimes won’t run on the first turn after they’re freed, even if there’s nothing stopping them from doing so.

: Now we can free the duke.

: In the other wing, Karlach frees the mind flayer.

: We now have control over the duke. Have him get as close to someone with a dimension door scroll as possible. He gets one turn before we need to evacuate him.

: “Well, look who it is. I was hoping you’d bound along. A bargain’s a bargain. And I’ve come to see it through.”

: “Kneel for me. If only Wyll were here to see this. This is what he wanted, after all. Now stand back and enjoy the show.”

: Her plan is to drop explosive spiders on him? I would’ve just shot him.

: Because the developers were afraid of actions having consequences, you can save the duke and break Wyll’s contract. There are a number of ways to do this.

: The easiest one is using Dimension Door. You can also heal the duke, cast resist fire on him, or cast Greater Restoration on the first turn, which stops Mizora from mind controlling him.

: Astarion’s prisoners are safe, so we’ll have him go for some loot.

: Once the duke is free, you can shoot this lever to close the door on the spiders.

: You can also do that here once the last hostage is past the door. That’s because Karlach can teleport out.

: The mind flayer can teleport himself and anyone else to the submarine once per turn.

: Astarion picks up a chest and hightails it back to the submarine. With the doors closed on the fishmen, all we need to do is wait for the stragglers.

Narrator: “Calmness greets you as the submersible slows to a halt. Unlike the Iron Throne, you remain intact. So, it seems, will the families of all the hostages rescued from the Throne.”

Narrator: “Duke Ravengard approaches you, looking confused.”

: “He’s tadpoled, but under my protection now, just like you. His mind is his own again.”

: “I’m.. free. In my own mind again, wholly. I will not take it for granted. You acted quickly, decisively, and compassionately. I - nay, all of us - owe you no less than our undying gratitude.”

: “I will wait at your camp - we can speak more there.”

: We’re now down to just two remaining possible allies. We’ve fulfilled half the criteria for one of them, which is saving all of the hostages in the Iron Throne.

Obelia Toobin: “I just - I - I can’t thank you enough. I was certain that place was to be my cold, wet tomb. You saved us. Saved us all. I thought it impossible, b-but you DID it! We were kept hostage to control our families in the Steel Watch Foundry. To keep them building Gortash’s death machines. Please. They need to know what happened here. They have no reason to obey Gortash anymore. If they rebel, it’ll put a dent in Gortash’s steel might.”

: The only thing left to do now is destroy the fanfiction factory. On my first run through the game, this was very bugged.

: The first problem is dealing with this gundam outside of the factory. You don’t technically need to do this, because it has a long enough patrol route that you can sneak in.

: The reason we’re doing it anyway is because as previously seen, these fuckers have Oblivion guard senses and will aggro through walls.

: Because the gate in front of it is locked and too tall for the gundam to jump, we can attack it freely from range.

: The only problem is that it has the Pudge Hook ™ from DOTA and can hook people close enough to hit them with melee through the gate.

: That’s Bebop from Deadlock if you’re looking for a reference to a game people still play. Not that I like Deadlock apart from the fanart.

: The back side of the building has two entrances that are patrolled by a second gundam, which we’re not going to fight because this game is spaghetti.

: It makes me wonder if they had an LLM write the stealth code, because you’ll see how fucking broken shit’s about to get.

: There’s a side entrance over here that can take you up to the rafters. Don’t use it. Why? Because there’s a gundam on the roof that will aggro.

: What I love is how if the party has so much as a pixel in front of them, it’ll block line of sight and thus all attacks, but enemies can hit you through floors.

: There are a bunch of gondians here, and we need to fight this whole thing head-on if we want them to survive because now we’re in New Vegas.

: All of the enemies below have magic detonators that automatically kill the gondians after one turn. These go off if the enemy dies, which is.. incredibly stupid.

: Great way to kill your hostages by accident.

Zanner Toobin: “You have beaten and tormented us to the brink of insanity. You cut out my eyes. But we will bow no more. Gondians! Rip the Motivator from this bastard’s hands. FOR GOND!”

: …or not. As it turns out, Larian managed to fix the major bug with this area. Originally, if you attacked one of the enemies from stealth, the gondians would enter the battle.. on their side.

: Pollux and Astarion open by attacking the nearest target, who happens to be carrying a detonator.

: Lyselle’s ghoul gets a paralyze off, which means this guy is now dead.

: The annoying part is that if you disable the detonators in combat, you have to make an intelligence check. This means it’s possible (but unlikely) to fail.

: The gondians will largely stay out of the way or teleport to safety, which is a marked improvement over how this fight used to go - in the older patches, they’d attack the enemies in melee.

: One of the enemies can summon an evil deva, which has a different model than the one Lyselle summons.

: That would be an asura, not a deva. You wouldn’t catch me wearing that.

: There’s a second enemy carrying a detonator, and if they happen to die last you’ll need to enter turn-based mode immediately to stop the detonation.

: “Did you see what happened? Is my little girl - is Obelia safe?”

: “The prison exploded, but we got everyone out. She’s safe.”

: “My heart - I thought her lost. I would give more than just my sight to keep her safe.”

: If you didn’t save his daughter (which would require intentionally killing her, since she makes it onto the sub in one turn) you can lie to him and he’ll attack you later.

: “Our destination is the Neurocitor - the nerve center of the Steel Watch. Guide me there, and I’ll do the rest.”

: This part is VERY glitchy. If you stop to rest at any point, Zanner disappears from the game and you have to go back and get the runepowder bomb.

: Zanner joins as a follower. He’s useless.

: We now have to go through the security office, which exists primarily for Gortash to show up and do an evil speech about the prison if you haven’t done that yet.

: There are two ways to get down to where we need to go. The first is using this lever to call an elevator, which arrives in the room we were just in.

: Or we can use these stairs. Either way, you’re getting into a fight as soon as you enter.

: The gondians here are surrounded by enemies, but that’s not all.

: There are also a second type of fanfiction Gundam - we’ll call these Iron Blooded Orphans, or IBOs.

: IBOs are identical to the regular gundams, except they’re also resistant to fire. They have a flamethrower, which I have never seen them use.

: For some reason, the IBOs can use their AOE without hitting the other enemies. Not sure how that works.

: One of them tries to come up the stairs - they desperately want to get to the party and blow up. We can reposition some summons here to stop it from getting close enough.

: Karlach takes down the closer IBO. This is already going much better than it did when I did it on my first playthrough, where both IBOs rushed the stairs, stunned everyone, and then blew up and killed half the party.

: Once the IBOs are taken care of, this particular enemy needs to die next. They have Dominate Person, and having any of our party members dominated is bad.

: Lyselle uses an ice storm, which is bad because this enemy has a detonator and is standing in the middle of it.

: The first IBO explodes, and Pollux uses Dimension Door to bring Karlach to the detonator.

: Naturally, this dumbass uses their detonator the next turn.

: Astarion gets dominated, which is bad.

: Lyselle gets trapped on the wrong end of the second IBO.

: Pollux warps Karlach to the second detonator, pops a haste potion, and disables it. Karlach kills the enemy casting Dominate Person, and Astarion kills the IBO.

: There are explosives down here which conveniently don’t work on the IBOs. We’ll take them anyway.

: I made a mistake and rested here, forgetting that would wipe Zanner from the game. What you’re meant to do is get him to this door, at which point he waits for you.

: I was going to do a thing here because this next boss fight is very clearly “inspired” by Final Fantasy 7, but the mods for it suck.

: Have Pollux in Cloud’s outfit. It’s about the only mod that worked right.

: I wanted to put this on Karlach but it only supports Lyselle’s body type.

: Someone ported a bunch of outfits from FF14, but none of them work right because they’re all made for titty mods.

: There are three IBOs in this room. Two of them have crossbows.

: For this fight, you need Orin’s dagger and Nylruna. You’ll also need as many of those Flashblinder grenades as you can get. Four should do it if everyone’s fully rested.

: As soon as you enter the room, the dumbass Final Fantasy boss gets lifted from the floor. Ordinarily, this thing would be a bitch to kill. Let’s see why.

: It’s heavily resistant to fire, heavily resistant to piercing, and merely strong against the other physical damage types.

: On Tactician, you can’t make it vulnerable to lightning damage by making it wet. This doesn’t block you from using Orin’s dagger to make it vulnerable to piercing.

: Once it loses around 25% of its HP, it activates defense mode. This heals it for 4d8 damage per turn, makes it ignore damage under 15, and lets it launch swarms of missiles.

: We’re not going to let it do that.

: Start by tossing a Flashblinder. This stuns the boss for two turns, blinds it for 10, and permanently gives it a 1d6 penalty to all attack rolls.

: Have Astarion run up and stab it, making it vulnerable to piercing damage.

: In one turn, we’ve reduced it to a third of its total HP.

: By turn 2, it’s dead. Use the remaining flashblinders on the gundams, and this fight is over.

: This fight is brutally difficult without the flash grenades. It’s also entirely skippable if you have someone with greater invisibility plant the bomb.

: It makes me wonder if someone on the development team saw that the fight sucked and put that in as a bypass specifically to stop it from becoming an impassible hurdle.

: It also makes me wonder if originally, Sphere of Invulnerability didn’t have the full-on invincibility effect and they added that because of the Raphael and Orin fights.

: This might just be me, but I feel like if you need to add bypasses like that, your boss fight sucks. I do understand that D&D is an inherently flawed game that breaks down right around this point because all of the balancing and content effort goes into low-level stuff, but that’s not really an excuse.

: If you look in one of the corners of the boss arena, you can find Bernard’s head. This is here whether you killed him or not.

: Before we go, we can get a pretty good crossbow from the security office we passed by earlier. You need this blueprint..

: This targeting module, which is in the first area…

: And this arm.

: Combining them at this table gets us the Hellfire Engine Crossbow, which comes with the hook ability built in. The hook has no cooldown.

: This would have been really useful against Orin.

: “Okay, we can set the bomb for ten minutes or twenty minutes.”

: “I think you just set it for twenty seconds.”

: “OH FUCK!”

: “That was a hell of a show, my friend. Watchers collapse in the street as we speak, and the Foundry? Well, it won’t stain this beautiful city with its abominations - not anymore.”

: “But it’s not over - so long as a single parasitic Gondian remains, Baldur’s Gate is under threat.”

: “Enough, Wulbren! Gortash enslaved us, forced us to build his Steel Watchers - but no more. Take the city - let the Ironhands reign supreme. I just wish to go home, and to hold my daughter.”

: I realized there’s a plot detail that doesn’t make a lot of sense - the gundams are built with metal from hell. How was Gortash getting his hands on it?

: There’s no hint about that in the House of Hope, and even if it was Raphael giving it to him, Raphael is dead. Those gundams were probably going to fail from lack of spare parts.

1. What about Gortash? What if he forces you to build up his Steel Watch once more?
2. Toobin is right. It’s over.
3. What do you think, Wulbren?

: “The guy who got fired from the New Yorker for gooning on camera is right. It’s over.”

: “That’s Jeffrey Toobin.”

: “You’re not the same person?”

: “Please - if a Gondian told me the sky was blue, I’d look outside and check. You Gondians will lie, scheme, and torment this city until your dying breaths. Let’s end this.”

: That reminds me. While I’m waiting for Salty Vanilla, I’m going to be LPing Look Outside. I’ve already got most of the first update recorded.

: “Wulbren - enough! I won’t watch as you poison your soul - and the brilliant future that remains to the Ironhand Gnomes. I thought the Ironhands had corrupted you, Wulbren. Now I wonder if it wasn’t the other way around.”

: “Kill the Gondians, and you kill all we love: Collaboration. Challenge. Solving problems with the power of reason, creativity, and invention.”

: “I still want to believe you’re better than that, Wulbren. But even I am having my doubts.”

: At this point, you pick between either joining with Wulbren and killing the gondians you just spent hours saving, or join with Barcus and get both him and the gondians as allies.

: “I say.. you’re right. They deserve a leader who’ll encourage them to create, not destroy. They deserve someone like me. I can’t save you from yourself, Wulbren. It hurts terribly, but I can’t. Toss your values in the bin, if you want. But don’t throw out the Ironhands’ with them.”

: “IRONHANDS, KILL EVERYONE!”

: “The Gondians recognize Barcus Wroot as the new leader of the Ironhand Gnomes - and look forward to ushering in a new peace between our factions.”

: We now have every ally we could possibly have - minus Ethel and Mizora, but who gives a shit about either of them?

: Next time, Gortash dies and we finish the game.. after I finish my next LP. I may also throw in a couple of 25th Ward updates, since I haven’t touched that in forever.