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.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Welcome back to Baldur’s Gate 3. This update will be shorter, because it’s going to feature the last sidequest in the game.

: There’s some very glitchy dialog between Wyll and his father, but I’m not going to bother showing it because of how bugged it is.

: For whatever reason, Larian didn’t program in a conversation for if you broke Wyll’s contract but then saved Ravengard from the prison. If you talk to Wyll, he acts like his father is dead even though he’s standing maybe ten feet away.

: If you talk to Ravengard, he acts the opposite - as if you intentionally sold Wyll to save him.

: I’m pretty sure this line is something that shouldn’t have made it out of beta - remember, in the beta, Wyll and Mizora were fucking.

: Ravengard will then tell us about the dragon underneath the city, even though we already learned that from Florrick.

: Here’s Jannath’s Estate. It’s next door to Jaheira’s house, which is kind of funny when you realize that you can hear screaming and stuff being broken inside.

: Before we go in, we need a source of See Invisible. Lyselle can do that.

: The floors start bleeding and something invisible throws furniture at Pollux.

: Once Lyselle catches up, we can see there are ghosts all over. They have somewhere between 40 and 50 HP, and pretty much anyone who isn’t Lyselle can kill at least one per turn.

: Lyselle could kill more than one, but she’d need to blow spell slots for that and I’m saving those.

: The second floor has an office with a note on it that stands out.

[A quickly scrawled invoice of work completed.]

Record of Work: 29 Tarsakh 1492DR
Completed Installation: Sliding door (concealed) to cubby in atelier.
Initial Quote: 500 gold
Final Invoice: 575 gold (additional cost: structural reinforcements after door installation, making it ‘more secret’ per client request)

: There’s a safe on the wall that has a Hand Crossbow +2 in it. If you didn’t kill Yurgir for his crossbow, this is what you’d want to use.

: This next part is really annoying due to the camera. The camera tries to make it so you can’t see multiple floors at once, which is going to be a problem.

: We arrive at the top floor and can see Lady Jannath and Oskar. That bastard owes us money.

: “All I hear is the grunting of a swine. Come closer so I can rip out your filthy tongue.”

: “Stop this. I love you, Oskar. And I know you love me.”

: “It’s your gold I love, hog-wife. But all the riches in Faerun wouldn’t be enough to make a life with you worth living.”

: “Gods aid me, he does not mean the things he says. You! Help subdue him - but be gentle. He’s not to blame!”

: There are three ghosts in this room. You would think we’d need to neutralize Oskar himself, but that’s not the case.

: The ghosts throw things and can push people for force damage.

: Killing them knocks Oskar out. What’s funny about this is that in 3.5E and Pathfinder, killing ghosts is MUCH harder than this.

: “Wait - your face is familiar to me. Yes, I’ve seen it before, in Oskar’s sketches. You’re the one who saved him from the Zhentarim.”

1. What in the hells is going on here?
2. I came to congratulate you on your wedding, but, erm…
3. I hope he drew my most heroic side.
4. You’re remarkably calm, given that your husband just tried to kill us.
5. I did. And I’ve come to collect the reward he promised.

: “I came to congratulate you on your wedding, but..”

: “Yes, it’s al gone rather tits up, hasn’t it? To think that happiness was just a few days ago… had I known this would happen, I.. oh, who am I kidding? I’d still have married him.”

: “What happened?”

: “Not long after the wedding, he lost his appetite, fell into dark moods. He started to avoid my company entirely.”

: “Do we know for sure he’s not part dwarf? I’m pretty sure that’s a normal thing dwarves do, and then they make a table with an elaborate battle scene depicting screaming wheels of cheese.”

: Oh, it gets worse than that. Half the time, they make the table out of cheese and get really upset when someone throws it out after it goes bad.

: “Artistic temperament, I thought. But it worsened. He became violent. Called me some rather imaginative names. I hesitate to say it.. something unnatural has taken hold of him. Oskar has been possessed.”

1. Yes, that much is obvious.
2. What married couple hasn’t wanted to kill each other at some point?
3. It doesn’t seem personal - he tried to kill me too.
4. You’re sure he hasn’t been, you know, sniffing his paints…?

: Who would bother huffing paint in a world where you have magic cocaine?

: “Yes, that much is obvious.”

: “The last time I left this room, the walls started bleeding, and a portrait of my mother tried to bite me. Flying furniture and screaming portraits I could deal with, but to see my husband reduced to such a state..”

: “I can’t come within arm’s reach without him trying to strangle me. And he calls me such vile things. It hates everyone, but it loathes me. It’s not him - I know he would never hurt me. And I promised I would let no harm come to him.”

: “As you can see, I’ve already failed. It’s obvious he needs more help than I can give. Please - you saved him once. You must find a way to cure him.”

: “Where should I start?”

: “Oskar’s behavior began to change shortly after the wedding. He became withdrawn, working obsessively up in his atelier. I tried to take him some food, but I couldn’t cross the threshold. It was as though the house itself didn’t want me up there.”

: This is the part where things get a little annoying. You see that big candleabra next to Pollux? Those have ghosts in them that emit an aura that causes psychic damage.

: The floating skull in front of Pollux (the glowing thing) will shoot anyone who comes near it for around 20 necrotic damage and knock them back, potentially down an entire floor.

: The skulls have medium toughness, but are weak to force and radiant damage. You can also bludgeon them, but good luck getting close enough.

: Pollux can kill the skulls in one Eldritch Blast, and finishes off the candleabra with a crossbow bolt.

: The ghosts really aren’t hard to kill once the skull is gone, especially with the gear we have.

: Each ghost is worth 12.5 owlbears of experience, so this might not be a bad place to EXP grind if you’re not max level.

: The candle ghosts have an AOE scream that is mostly just annoying.

: Upstairs, we find another skull that Pollux destroys, and a bunch of vendor trash. You can take all this stuff freely even though it’s marked as owned by someone.

: The reason is that if you didn’t save Oskar, Lady Jannath is having a perfectly normal art exhibition and has guests everywhere.

: There’s a skull on the floor above, and it knocks Pollux down the stairs because I can’t get the camera to cooperate.

: Finally, we arrive at Oskar’s atelier. The easel gets pointed out as strange.

: Right behind it is Oskar’s self-portrait. If we touch it..

: A ghost complains at us to leave it alone.

: If you combine it with the easel, the hidden door we read about earlier opens up. The painting is haunted, but we can’t do anything about it.

: To progress, we need to unlock the chest behind it. You can do this either by picking it or by looting a key off Oskar. I didn’t want to do that for fear of pissing Jannath off.

Dearest Mssr Fevras,

I so appreciated the desperation of your correspondence. Heartbreak can impose such a terrible burden. In my humble role as an interlocutor with the spirit realm, I believe I might be able to offer you some reprieve.

Bring this letter to my mansion near the seafront, and together we will see if the dead have peace to offer you.

Yours in spirit,
Mystic Carrion

PS. The door is regrettably stubborn, so you must speak its preferred words: “Secreta mortuorum.”

: We met Mystic Carrion during our shopping trip before killing Orin, and we need to deal with him before we can finish this quest.

: I’m going to do things a little out of order to save time. First, we want to head to the warp point outside the fanfiction gauntlet before Orin and go through this passageway.

: This leads to the Ancient Lair. You’d find out about this if you followed Carrion’s questline, but if you’ve done Orin beforehand you’re likely to have seen it.

: Inside are a bunch of chests and seemingly-dead mummies. No points for guessing what happens next.

: You can build a box wall and turn this fight into nothing.

: The fight is mostly miniature versions of those hand spiders from Elden Ring. I remember there was one of these in a Pathfinder scenario my wizard did, and that was the only time I ever got to use the grapple rules.

: Being in this area gives anyone who isn’t Astarion (or a necromancy-spec wizard) a condition that does damage per spell level if you cast a spell.

: This fight isn’t remotely a challenge for our party.

: The chests have nothing interesting inside, but we can break a wall (or lockpick it) to find Mystic Carrion’s brain in a jar.

: The chest in this room has his liver.

: “He stashed his canopic jar inside a zombie? Oh, the clever boy.”

: Carrion has one more organ in the graveyard. As we go through, Karlach spots her parents’ graves.

: “Here lie Pluck and Caerlack Cliffgate. My parents. Hi mum. Hi dad.”

: The recording for this scene was screwed up in production - Karlach’s voice has an echo on it.

: “Sorry I haven’t visited. I’ve been.. away. But I’m back now! And I brought friends. I miss you so much… but I’m happy. And getting up to some really important shit. Maybe you can see for yourselves. I don’t know. You’re here with me, anyway. Taters.”

: “Taters?”

: “Meant ‘I love you’ in the Cliffgate household. I can’t even remember how it started anymore. Lost family lore. There was a lot of silly nonsense in our house. My mates used to say we had our own personal language. I guess I’m the last remaining speaker.”

: “Mum used to say there was no such thing as death. That there was only change. Dad thought that was a load of woo. That gone meant gone, unless you’d struck a deal with one of the gods. Said he had better things to do in life than beg favors off immortals. I’m not sure what I believe.”

: They’re really going to put a segment about the nature of death in the middle of all this ridiculous crap?

: I’d answer, but none of these matter.

: The graveyard has some mausoleums we can loot - this one is a reference to Baldur’s Gate 1. There’s another that all but confirms that Withers is the previous god of death who ascended Bane, Myrkul, and Bhaal to godhood.

: The piece of Carrion is in this basement, which is a pain to get to because of all the NPCs patrolling around.

: Now that we’ve gotten all but one of his jars, let’s talk to Carrion.

: “I know you helped Oskar. I found your letter.”

: “The painter. Yes, I remember. He wanted to contact a tormented spirit. I gave him exactly what he desired, and for a pittance, given the complexity of his request.”

: “His inability to follow simple instructions is hardly my fault. If he wanted his safety guaranteed, that would have cost him extra.”

1. Who was he trying to contact?
2. How can he be freed of the spirit possessing him?
3. His foolishness did not merit such a cruel punishment.
4. So if he were richer, you would have protected him?
5. You knew exactly what would happen. You torment him intentionally.

: “How can he be freed of the spirit possessing him?”

: “I can provide you with the means to exorcise the spirit, but you understand, this is my livelihood. First, you must do something for me.”

: “And what is that?”

: “It regards a conduit of mine, Thrumbo, who has recently deserted his duties. He has not gone far, but given the sensitivity of his nature, I would prefer that he is not free to roam the city.”

: “Return Thrumbo’s body to me. Then I will give you what you need to cleanse Oskar of his spectral interloper.”

1. First, tell me why he ran.
2. His ‘body’? It sounds like you want him killed.
3. Baldur’s Gate is a big city. A name’s not much to go on.
4. I’ll think about it.
5. Very well. I’ll bring you Thrumbo. You agree to free Oskar.
6. I’ll just pay the gold. (3000)

: We have over 20,000 gold at this point that we’re never going to spend, but let’s go find Thrumbo since I know exactly where he is.

: “His body? It sounds like you want him killed.”

: “My child, that would be asking the impossible. He is already dead. He is, what do they call them here.. ah, a zombie. A waif I rescued from the jaws of death, and gave a second chance at an earthly purpose.”

: “If he does not value the gift I gave him in reanimating that wretched flesh of his, then I will take it back. It is my property, not his.”

: At this point, he’ll tell us to track down his three other zombies, who know where Thrumbo is. One of them is in the graveyard, and a second is near the sewer entrance closest to where you enter the Lower City.

: Instead, we’ll head down to the beach where we killed some sahuagin earlier when I was looking for Minsc.

: This abandoned house is where Thrumbo is. He’s hiding in the wardrobe.

: I’m going to skip a lot of his dialog, but the gist of it is that Thrumbo was a beggar who got involuntarily killed and reanimated by Carrion.

: His friend tried to kill Carrion only to find out he’s immortal. Thrumbo suspects that Carrion is a mummy lord.

: Mummy lords are liches who aren’t cool enough to be liches.

: Thrumbo will tell you about the Ancient Lair, but since we’ve already been there, we know that Thrumbo has Carrion’s heart inside him.

: Thrumbo vomits and we get Carrion’s heart jar.

: Carrion works a bit differently from mummy lords in 3.5E, but I wouldn’t call him outright fanfiction. In 3.5E, killing a mummy lord meant having a 10th-level Cleric blow half their daily spell allotment to keep it from regenerating.

: His organs remove his fire vulnerability, give him a +3 to spell DCs, and make it so he can’t be silenced. Destroying them removes those bonuses.

: You know, we’ve got all those explosives lying around and nothing to use them on. Carrion is really just a beefed-up summon whose sole gimmick is exploding his undead buddies to make Cloudkill.

: He can also take over any summoned undead you have, so don’t bring any of those.

: Step one, plant the explosives.

: Step two, use any leftover grease bottles to make a wick. Wine barrels work just fine too.

: This should do.

: Carrion’s organ jars explode when they’re destroyed, and the effect is identical to a fireball spell.

: Lyselle will take some damage here because the jars are supposed to reflect necrotic damage if you don’t successfully break them. This is probably a bug.

: A few seconds later, Carrion is well-done.

: Killing Carrion this way causes the game to bug out a bit. For some reason, Thrumbo and the other beggar zombies show up and are hostile.

: We don’t have to fight them. If you get far enough from any nearby enemies, you can run back to camp.

: Everyone gets out, and we’re done here. This is another quest no one would do on Honor Mode, but if you do, Carrion has a fanfiction ability that makes him invincible and forces you to Remove Curse on him every round to stop him healing.

: If you actually feel like doing this fight, you can build a chest wall in front of the door and shoot the mummies from across it. Carrion’s ranged damage sucks.

: Thrumbo takes over Carrion’s shop, and I believe he’ll have any of the items Carrion did if you didn’t buy them all.

: For not killing Thrumbo, you get a ring that lets you use the 6th-level version of Create Undead, which summons a mummy. This goes on Astarion.

: You might think this would’ve been useful in the Iron Throne, but the mummy summon is pretty slow and limited to melee.

: We get Carrion’s staff, which is.. kinda useless. It boosts necromancy spells and gives you a thing that works like Markoheshkir’s free spell slot every time you kill something with a spell, but the free slot can only be used on necromancy spells.

: The only good necromancy spell is Circle of Death, and even that kinda sucks. 8d6 damage at 11th level is trash.

: What we really want is this magic torch that’s usually in a locked chest behind Carrion.

: With the torch, we can destroy the painting.

: If we go downstairs, Jannath is unconscious on the floor and Oskar is cowering from a ghost.

: “Who are you? Get out! GET OUT!”

: “Please.. Kerri, my darling, listen to me -”

: “You brought me here. YOU DID THIS! DO NOT INTERFERE. He’s coming home with me.”

1. Calm yourself, shade. We can resolve this peacefully.
2. To the realms of the dead? You’ll kill him!
3. I rather like interfering. It’s kind of my thing.
4. Attack.

: We can kill Kerri again, but that would bar us from getting the reward. She is a VERY annoying fight - she has mind control, and also has an AOE stun.

: “I rather like interfering. It’s kind of my thing.”

: “Then you’re as bad as him. He called me here. Trapped me. Pathetic little childish boy.”

: I’m surprised there isn’t an ending where the ghost runs off with his wife.

: “I only wished to explain myself. To make you see how-”

: “NO! Enough of your whining. ENOUGH! Selfish, arrogant bastard of an artist. I wanted to be left in peace.”

: “Please, tell us what happened to you.”

: “And how does that help me? Or is it just to help him? Why does everything always have to revolve around Oskar Fevras?”

: “Oh, my sweet Kerri. What did I do to you?”

: “Save your tears for the Ethereal Plane..”

1. [INTIMIDATION] I don’t care if you’re a spirit. Touch him, and I’ll break you.
2. [PERSUASION] The Kerri Oskar spoke of was kind and gentle. This isn’t the real you.
3. Leave Oskar to his fate.
4. Attack.

: “What are you saying? You’re trying to confuse me. It’s so hard to think. I don’t remember.”

: “Kerri, my sweet meat. I just need to know that what you did.. that it wasn’t my fault-”

: We should’ve let her kill him.

: I’d turn him to stone right there.

: “Why am I here? I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be.”

Narrator: The spirit’s aura flickers, changes. She is confused, lost - dragged here unwillingly by a man who refused to let her leave.

1. [BARD] [DECEPTION] You had a message for us, remember? You were going to tell us why you died by your own hand.
2. [INTIMIDATION] You owe Oskar an explanation. And you’re going to give it to him..
3. [PERSUASION] No more harm will come to you by sharing your story. But it could help Oskar.
4. You owe Oskar nothing. He only brought you here to soothe his conscience.
5. Your bonds are broken. Go, if that is your wish.

: I have no idea how you’re supposed to figure out that Kerri commited suicide, but Pollux apparently did somehow.

: “Fine. If Oskar wants the truth, he can have it: we were a fling, nothing more. My decision had nothing to do with him. I did this because I was so fucking sad. All the time.”

: “Oskar finds it easier to imagine a world where women kill themselves over him than one where they have their own bloody problems.”

: I.. actually like the writing here. It’s trying to say something, it’s not terribly long or over-written like a lot of the main plot is, and it’s really not that bad.

: You could probably cut half the dialog from this game without changing much.

: “I’m sorry, Kerri. I had no idea. But I - I was truly not to blame?”

: “No, you weren’t, so you and your poxy paintings stay away form me. We’re done, Oskar. Over. Now let me rest in bloody peace.”

: I still think it’d be funny if the ghost ran away with his wife.

: Jannath survives, they make up, and Oscar invites the party to his atelier.

: “Hold on. I need to get my boyfriend. We also need to get dressed, and clean all this ghost goo out, and get rid of this burnt mummy stench.”

: “And - voila! Have a look. I think I captured you two perfectly.”

: “It’s wonderful.”

: Salty Vanilla spent WEEKS on that portrait, and I think it came out great. If you’re looking to commission them, you can find his commission sheet here - or, you know what, I’ll just post it myself.

: In the game, the portrait is vendor trash. It copies your character’s status bar portrait into an image.

: Next time, we’ll go under Gortash’s fortress to kill a dragon. We’ll kill Gortash while we’re at it.

[Timrod]

Summary

CasualTalk|100x69: We’ve got exactly two things left to do: kill Gortash and do this quest for Wyll. Both of them are conveniently in the same place, but we have to do Gortash first.

: The reason is that the moment you destroy the fanfiction factory, Wyrm’s Rock closes up. You have to access it from the Lower City side, and the warp point inside disappears.

: All of the Flaming Fist NPCs will be hostile. It’s time to exterminate.

: Each group has a wizard who will cast Counterspell the first time someone casts something. Kill them first.

: The AI bugs out here and the enemies stop reacting, so we get three free kills.

: This room is optional, but if you’re low on money you can get quite a bit by raiding the fortress now that the gundams are dead.

: There’s another group of Fist in here we can kill.

: Love the smell of cooked bacon.

: We can also kill a few of them in the room that leads to the prison, because why not?

: There’s a locked gate back here that we would have needed greater invisibility to get into because of the sheer number of guards normally in here.

: Our reward is some vendor trash and explosive barrels. It’s too bad we won’t have any more use for those.

: The room before Gortash’s audience chamber has a ton of food in it if you need it. We don’t. Even with all the long rests I’ve taken, we’re still at over 7,000 supplies.

: As soon as we reach the audience chamber, combat starts again. This is a fight I never did on my first playthrough because I quit right after the Iron Throne due to how glitchy the fanfiction factory was.

: The things on the walls are flamethrowers and will explode if damaged. They’re immune or heavily resistant to everything that isn’t lightning or force damage.

: There are also grenade launchers on the walls that react to movement. In this case, the party already has two of them at their feet.

: They have a 2-meter radius and can be destroyed to stop them exploding.

: Apart from Nylruna glitching and getting stuck, this fight is extremely straightforward. The flamethrowers are mostly out of the way, and the grenades are easy to dodge.

: Up above, there are a bunch of stun mines that are now active - Astarion caught a few of them the last time he was up here.

: I feel like the entire reason these exist is to stop people from getting that “Kill Gortash without setting off his traps” achievement.

: Even if you don’t kidnap him, this moron is laughably easy to break. Orin takes upwards of half an hour of rearranging dozens of chests at precise angles. Gortash takes two chests and a pair of eyes.

: The first thing to do is clear this room of traps. We have two flamethrowers here..

: Two more by the front door..

: Two of these shield generators which will give him projectile reflection..

: And one of these, which gives him a shield that makes him near immune to everything.

: Don’t forget the grenade launchers in the corners.

: We drop the acid barrel from downstairs in the doorway, and then cover it with chests. This is all the setup we need.

: He’s going to start the fight by getting a shield and then putting a projectile shield on one of his buddies.

: Keep in mind that the other idiots can jump the crates, but he won’t - he’s content to sit back and shoot his crossbow until he goes into his second form.

: His buddies tend to bunch up near the crates, letting you AOE them down.

: Once he goes fanfiction mode, he’ll summon a bunch of ghosts that give him a strength bonus if he’s near them.

: Fortunately, he’s dumb enough to spawn them all in this room, where he can’t reach or benefit from any of them. This would be potentially nasty if he could make it in here.

: The ghosts go down in a single hit. Now we just need to wait.

: Eventually, the adds will jump over the crates to attack. With no support from the traps, all we have to do is kill them.

: He’ll sit behind the chests doing nothing unless you try to blind him.

: Dodge the giant hands and kill him.

: “The last stone.. I need to see it for myself. There it is. So innocent, but such potential. You have done very well indeed.”

Narrator: The netherstones pulse with psionic energy - permeating you, pulling you in line with their rhythm. The thrum quickens, rising, cresting on a single feeling, a location.

: “As I expected. The docks under the city must lead to a Morphic Pool - that’s where the Chosen imprisoned the Elder Brain.”

: We’ve already been to the dock that goes there - it’s near Orin’s boss room.

: It’s the point of no return, and we have one more sidequest to do, so we’ll hold off for the moment. We can warp right there since I got it while fighting Orin.

: “So Gortash is nothing more than a pile of flesh, same as the rest of us.”

1. He’s dead now. You’ve won.
2. Perhaps a bit uglier.
3. You can sense she’s working something out; say nothing.

: “…”

: “I feel like there should be a sunset for me to ride off into. Or an orchestral swell.. or something. But there’s nothing, is there? I killed the bastard who ruined my life, and my prize is that I get to crawl into a corner and die. Am I fucking missing something?”

: I liked that guy from Elden Ring who spends the rest of the game stomping on Godrick. That guy got the whole revenge thing.

1. This is all a lot to take in. It’s no wonder you’re overwhelmed.
2. What do you mean?
3. Say nothing.
4. Life isn’t fair. Get used to it.

: “This is all a lot to take in. It’s no wonder you’re overwhelmed. I can help you find his family and we can mail them bits of him.”

: I think he’s an orphan. Everyone on Faerun is an orphan.

: My parents are both alive.

: Are they, though?

: “I’m beyond overwhelmed. I’m.. I’m finished. He’s dead, and he’s no fucking sorrier now than he was before.”

: This feels kind of dumb in a setting where Hell exists, and more importantly when Karlach has been there and knows for a fact it exists.

: “What was the point? I’m still dying. I’m dying! I’m going to die!”

1. But you’re not dead yet. I’m here with you, and I will be until I go off with Halsin and spend all this gold taking over a mansion - I mean, not Cazador’s because that’d be kinda fucked up, but a mansion - and… you know, I’m not sure where I’m going with that line of thought.

2. I don’t want you to die. It makes no sense.

3. Maybe we can still fix your engine; stabilize it.

4. Karlach, it doesn’t need to be this way. You can still return to Avernus.

: “Karlach, it doesn’t need to be this way. You can still return to Avernus.”

: “I don’t want to go back to Hell! I shouldn’t have to! I want to live - I want to live here, in my home, with my own heart.”

: The voice direction in this scene is atrocious. When Karlach’s VA does the “I’m going to die!” line, she’s borderline crying. By the next line, she’s suddenly stopped.

: “My heart. It was mine, and they took it. I’m going to be as dead as Gortash any day now. Any moment. And what then? Off to the City of Judgment to waste into oblivion? Into the dirt to get eaten by maggots? is that for me?! Is that fucking all?!”

: “And you - you’ll just keep going, won’t you. Watching the stars. Warming your hands on the campfire. Dancing, eating, making fucking love all night - all of it.”

: “That’s my reward for everything I suffered. That’s why I survived ten years of torment. The fighting, the clawing, the loneliness, the fucking loneliness.. all of it, so I could rot. Because the person I trusted the most gave me away to the devil. It’s not fair. I don’t want it like this.”

: Karlach leaves the party until we go listen to her at camp. With this, we’ve completed all the companion sidequests except Lae’zel’s.

: I also found out about something I probably should’ve been doing since Act 2. Remember that trader we threw off a cliff in the Fuck Zone?

: She sells this glaive, which has a thing on it that adds +1 to attack rolls and 1d4 elemental damage of choice. You can cast this on Nylruna by dropping it first.

: That’s better. Let’s go kill a dragon, and by kill a dragon I mean “do a bunch of cut content from the Shar temple in Act 2”.

: Back in the prison where we rescued Florrick, there’s a dead-end hallway with a couple of dragon-shaped torches in it.

: If you hit them with lightning (arrows of lightning will do) they turn blue and open a hidden door.

: This leads us to the Wyrmway, which is made up of what is probably cut content from the Shar temple.

Narrator: “The statue before you bears a familiar likeness. It is Balduran, the celebrated adventurer who founded the city of Baldur’s Gate.”

Statue of Balduran: “Peril floods my province, the palisades fall, the earth does tremble, the servants of shadow and blood assemble. Beyond lies the grand wyrm deep in slumber, awaiting a true hero’s advent, should my domain drown in torment. Be you the deluge, turn away. Be you the hero, answer true: are you worthy?”

: What are we, Thor? I lifted that hammer once, and it’s nowhere near as heavy as you’d think it would be.

: Clearly he wasn’t very good at poetry.

: “Poetic nonsense. There is no wyrm, and no savior.”

: “I am worthy (of being Halsin’s boyfriend).”

Statue of Balduran: “Ancient Ansur, hear me: a champion is proclaimed. The test begins; let your judgment follow.”

: Did he give up on the rhyming? “Ancient Ansur, answer me: does a hero stand before me?”

: We need to get through this big door, which requires us to do THE TRIALS FOUR. This feels a lot like that one part of Sonic 2006 that ends with it asking Sonic “Would you rather fuck Amy or this human OC?”

: Wyll will give you the answers to most of these if you have him, but we’ll start with the CHAMBER OF JUSTICE.

: The walls have a series of paintings on them.

: And in the middle is a shadow that is blocking us from touching three more paintings with a darkness spell. There are a number of ways to skip this puzzle, but we’ll do it the “right” way.

Narrator: ‘The Apple’. The painting depicts a red-haired man stealing a shiny apple from a cart in an open-air market.

Narrator: “You know this market: The Wide, where Baldur’s Gate’s citizens and vistors gather to conduct trade and wax political.”

: Wait, why do I know that? I’m an elven noble. I shop at the local independently-owned Fantasy Grocery.

Narrator: ‘The Child’. A red-haired man is portrayed with his cloak’s hood lowered, giving an apple to a smiling urchin.

Narrator: Several other children are huddled behind the one receiving the apple, hands outstretched.

: You just know that if Swen Vincke has his way, they’ll have a “puzzle” like this in Divinity except all these paintings will be AI-generated.

Narrator: ‘The Induction’. A red-haired man is depicted in hushed conversation with a dark-haired woman. She wears a cloak with an unusual symbol on it: tally marks totalling the number ‘nine’.

: I’m sure the marks are some minor Forgotten Realms lore thing. What I do appreciate is that a human artist did these paintings and honestly, they’re pretty good.

Narrator: ‘The Theft’. A red-haired man is depicted in the Hall of Wonders, thieving what looks to be a priceless artifact. It’s an Astrolabe of Entrapment. It could hold a dozen djinn in it - perhaps even more.

: I’d steal that just to open it and see if I could get some deals on some vaguely middle-eastern furniture for the mansion I’m going to buy.

Narrator: ‘The Chase’. A red-haired man is depicted running through the city streets, a Flaming Fist officer chasing just behind. A cloaked woman, hair dark as a raven, looks on from a safe distance.

Narrator: ‘The Judgement’. A stern judge, his pockets full of coin, orders a red-haired man to the gallows. A shiny red apple rests on the ground nearby.

: Are they trying to imply Lucifer did it?

: I knew that apple was evil.

: The shadow is immune to everything. So how do we get rid of it? Well, remember how Gortash wouldn’t jump over the chest until Pollux cast Hunger of Hadar on him?

: The reason is that enemy AI in this game is hard-coded to avoid standing in persistent damage AOEs, and also from things like the darkness spell.

: You can cast Hunger of Hadar on it and it will fuck off, or alternatively, we can use one of the half-dozen scrolls of Banish we have.

Narrator: ‘The Cell’. A stern prison guard slides a warm meal into the thief’s cell. The red-haired man has a tenday to serve, judging by the scratchings on the wall behind him.

Narrator: ‘Freedom’. A red-haired man walks the streets of Baldur’s Gate, clad in a billowing cloak. You catch a glimpse of a sly smile beneath his hood and a golden coin in his hand.

Narrator: ‘The Hanging’. A red-haired man is depicted hanging from a gallows as a crowd looks on. You notice a child in the crowd, a falling tear leaving a trail on his cheek.

: If you have Wyll, he’ll tell you that the answer is The Cell. We take it and place it on the empty plinth nearby.

: What kind of heroism test is that?

: The next one is the CHAMBER OF COURAGE, which is a straight up battle arena against elementals.

: What you do is have someone take it and put them under a globe of invulnerability. Or you can fight them.

: The elementals will focus entirely on whoever has the torch. Karlach and Astarion kill them all without any real issues.

: As long as the person with the torch is standing, you win.

: I remember this one from the academy, except it was evacuating a baby from a building full of supervillains. They weren’t sure whether I passed or failed that one.

: Here he goes…

: Let’s just say that it’s really hard to estimate the number of G-forces a baby can take. That would not have been a happy baby. An alive baby, but not a happy one.

: The third test is the CHAMBER OF STRATEGY, which is a chess puzzle. If you have Gale with you, he’ll outright tell you how to solve it.

: …Chess? When is a superhero ever going to need to play chess in the field? Where’s the football puzzle?

: The chamber has four possible configurations, and we get three attempts to checkmate the black king in two moves or less.

: We move our queen here, which causes the king to move one space to the left to avoid checkmate.

: One space diagonally to the left and it’s checkmate. I should mention that if you fail any of these trials, you fight a bunch of undead instead.

: The final trial is the CHAMBER OF INSIGHT, which is extremely easy to solve if you remember a very minor detail from Ketheric’s office in Act 2.

: There are three ghosts and we need to find out which one is evil.

: Throughout the area are three books that fly around. You need a DC 15 Sleight of Hand check to catch them, which only Pollux and Astarion have a real shot at making.

: Each character gets ONE attempt to grab a book. If you don’t have the right one (it’s the lowest one) you’re either going to need to look up a guide or take the 33% chance.

: The answer is Suelto. You can find a book by her in Ketheric’s office in Act 2 that outright says she’s what inspired him to lead the Dark Justiciars.

: Here’s why I hate this. When I first played Pathfinder Society, I made a Kineticist. They’re constitution-based casters who at the time were in a playtest state.

: The scenario started with the party having to board a ship. This required a DC 15 Climb check that was not bypassable. Failing the check makes you fall into the water, and needs a DC 10 Swim check to get back to your boat and not drown.

: Both Climb and Swim are strength skills, and my character has a -2 strength modifier: this is very common among casters. I can’t make the Climb check (which would require me to roll a 17) and barely made the Swim check to not die.

: At this point I’m not willing to risk my character, so I get to sit there while the rest of the party clears the boat and eventually comes back for me. I probably should’ve quit there.

: Once we open the doors, we get a MASSIVE amount of EXP - that’s over 256 owlbears worth. I hope you’re ready for a pointless plot development and some more fanfiction.

Statue of Balduran: Twenty lines of poetry that don’t even rhyme properly

: Please enjoy the following cutscene brought to you by the developers who played Monster Hunter World: Iceborne.

: Looks like fanfiction to me.

: What the fuck? Why did it do that just to reform itself?

Narrator: The dragon’s spirit floods your mind and memory in a great torrent of power. He is with you, he is within you, he is you. The next words that spill from your mouth are not yours, but the wyrm’s.

: Where in the rulebook does it state that bronze dragons have this power?

: What’s really wrong here is that lightning strike. Bronze dragons are water elemental. Everyone knows that.

: What element is Astra? She’s got dragon in her somewhere, doesn’t she?

: I don’t like talking about it.

: “I am Ansur, Heart of the Gate - butchered in flesh, risen in spirit.”

: There are choices here that don’t matter, so I’m not going to bother.

Narrator: "Ansur wends his way through your mind like an unstoppable river. Your body is unmoving, yet thought flows effortlessly between you. The spirit pauses, and you feel the Astral Prism stir. Ansur senses the Emperor’s presence within.

: “Answer me, faessi: why have you come?”

: I am going to exterminate this thing so hard.

Narrator: A deep sigh resonates within you. The torrent stills, only disturbed by the dragon’s next words.

: “Vrak. My words aren’t meant for you - they’re meant for him.”

: “Balduran.”

: I’d like to point out that this whole thing is entirely optional. You can finish the game without ever finding out that Miku is Balduran.

: This whole thing makes no sense, though. Balduran was ostensibly human or a half-elf, and I believe the city is several hundred years old by the time BG1 happens.

: I’m also pretty sure mind flayers aren’t immortal.

: “Your presence has stirred me, as it ever did. I am awakened.”

: “Ansur. It’s been too long.”

: “He called you Balduran?”

: “A name I once answered to. A name I did not expect to hear again, least of all from the mouth of an old friend.”

: “Friend, yes - and more. Until you killed me. Have you come to dance on my bones, Balduran? Was slaying me not satisfaction enough?”

: He fucked the dragon.

: “Satisfaction? No. You let me no choice.”

: “You had every choice. You were becoming illithid. I offered you merciful death; you chose to fight. And now you bring your thrall before me. How far has the great Balduran fallen?”

: Ansur is a copy-pasted version of the Safi’jiiva fight from Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, a game that released in 2020.

: He comes with two water elementals, which is admittedly one thing Safi didn’t have.

: Two turns after the fight starts, Safi’jiiva flies upward and becomes immune to damage. At this point, the party needs to “find cover”.

: In Monster Hunter, this was fairly easy to do because Monster Hunter is a true 3D game - you could go behind a rock until you couldn’t see the impending explosion and that was how you knew you were in cover properly.

: We either need to run out of the circle or get behind one of those rocks. The easier way is to put down a globe of invulnerability.

: If you don’t, the party instantly dies. Note that the explosion is visually identical to Safi’jiiva’s, which is also blue.

: On my second recording, the party is merely at half health because the game starts Pollux within melee range of the dragon and he ate an AoO trying to get to cover.

: Once Safi’jiiva does his explosion, rain starts falling. This makes everything but Safi’jiiva wet, because Safi is immune to being wet for some reason.

: How does that make any sense?

: Up until he dies, Safi will spawn blue AOE circles that do lightning damage (which is doubled because of the rain) to anyone standing in them on his turn.

: On Honor Mode, Safi’jiiva gets to use his explosion a second time, except this time there’s no cover. The cover is buggy as fuck anyway - you have to walk around until your character loses a debuff that marks them as vulnerable to it.

: Karlach kills it with Nylruna. We now need to wait for the wyverians to positively identify the parts so we can shove them in a slot machine.

: Miku tells his his story again just in case we didn’t understand it the first time.

: The only revelation here is that his dragon boyfriend was what saved him from the elder brain. This whole thing is kinda pointless.

: I mean, we don’t really give a shit about Balduran/The Emperor. I guess if you’re one of those hardcore monsterfuckers and you really want to have sex with the squidman you might, but I’m not.

: We get to see Balduran briefly, confirming he was human.

: Finally, we confirm that he killed Ansur because Ansur tried to mercy kill him. Let me tell you what this feels like: it feels like Larian wanted to do a DLC where you play as Balduran, and then put it as a missable side thing because they realized they were not going to be making DLC or a sequel.

: Speaking of sequels, there IS going to be a sequel to BG3 in the worst possible way. Hasbro hired the guy who directed the TV adaptation of The Last of Us to do a sequel show to BG3. There is no way it’s going to be watchable. I hope it gets axed.

: For our efforts, we get Balduran’s Giantslayer. This is supposedly the best 2-handed weapon in the game, but it isn’t because it doesn’t have the synergy with Orin’s dagger that Nylruna has.

: For reference, Karlach has a +7 strength modifier. This would give her an extra 10 to 13 points of damage over Nylruna.. except that with vulnerability, Nylruna does more damage.

: Way in the back is the Helm of Balduran, which is definitely worth using. You get stun immunity, crit immunity, +1 to AC and saves, and 2 HP per turn.

: Pollux goes to sleep. Next time, we’ll kill the brain and finish the game.

[Timrod]

Summary

: As soon as we go to the dock warp point, the game throws us into a cutscene. Welcome back to Fanfiction’s Gate 3.

: To get an idea, imagine the SHODAN voice from System Shock except it goes on for about a minute and the entire thing is a single shot of Pollux’s face.

: Make sure you’ve loaded up on anything you might need.

: Lyselle gives so few fucks that she’s still in her sitting animation.

Narrator: An overwhelming force pushes into your mind. The brain. It is here.

: How would we have ever figured that out without them telling us?

: Another 30 seconds or so of SHODAN speech.

: Every couple of seconds, the party gets stunned while the brain says random shit. This already feels like Monster Hunter Wilds.

: There’s an area over here with some special arrows and gold in it. I don’t know why the game is giving us gold at this point - we can’t spend it.

: As soon as we enter this room, we get surprised by a group of intellect devourers. Don’t worry about this fight - you can go all out because there’s a free long rest coming up.

: This fight introduces the Intellect Glutton, which has slightly more HP and explodes on death.

: There’s not much to them. The gluttons do a lot of damage, but no one died.

: The door has one of those short rests in a can inside if you need it.

: This cutscene’s funny because if you look when it zooms out, you can see everyone doing the same animation in sync. It reminds me of the original version of Resident Evil 4 when you tossed an incendiary grenade at a group of ganados and they had the synchronized “on fire” animation.

Narrator: “Deathly silence, the air stale and putrid.”

: “It’s close. Have the stones ready.”

Narrator: Your blood slows, your senses strung so tight that they could snap in an instant.

: Pollux now has a magical girl crystal. I’m sure this will work out fine, just like all those times in the Final Fantasy games when the magic crystals do something.

: “You think you know why you are here. You think that by killing the Chosen and taking the Netherstones, you can destroy me. YOU ARE WRONG.”

: (Oh god we’re facing an elder brain with a magical friendship crystal this is not going to end well)

: “It’s messing with your mind. Don’t listen to it. Use the stones!”

: This sure would suck if we actually had to make these checks, since Pollux only has a positive Constitution modifier and the DC is 20.

: This check would be doable if we had Lyselle making it, since she has a +6 or +7 to Intelligence and adds her proficiency bonus.

: “FRIENDSHIP BEAMS! FIRE!”

: “By eliminating Ketheric, Orin , and Gortash, you have simply unbound me. Exactly as I intended. The Crown is now mine to command - mine alone.”

: “Don’t listen to it! Focus on the Crown!”

: I missed that the last check was charisma and accidentally made the dexterity check instead. It does not matter.

: If you see a DC 25 stat check (not a skill check) in 3.5E, you can safely assume you’re not meant to make it. Let me briefly break down what you’d need for a 50% chance at that.

: You probably started with a 20 in your main stat, so that’s a base modifier of +5. At 12th level you’ve had three free stat increases, so that’s going to be a +6 since you’d need a fourth point to get to +7.

: You probably have a stat-increasing item at +6, which is the maximum, so your modifier is now a +10. You still need to roll a 15.

: Let’s say you additionally have enough money to buy a Wish to increase your stat by 1 - this is a thing you can do in Pathfinder. You now have a +11 modifier, which still means you need to roll a 14. You’re not likely to have enough money to buy multiple wishes at 12th level.

: What about buffs?

: Nope. Bardic Inspiration only works on a single skill at a time - not stats. The same goes for Guidance, which only works on skills and saves. Stat boosting spells don’t stack with stat-boosting equipment.

: The spell fizzles before it can do anything.

: “The Crown is not my weakness. It is what made me what I am. I needed the Crown to build an army. I needed the Chosen to bring it to me. They would not have surrendered it freely, so I gave them what they wanted - power.”

: “Just enough power that they would play their part in my design. Their part has ended. The next orders will be mine.”

: “I won’t allow it. Again! Dominate it!”

: We get another stat check. This one is Strength, Intelligence, or Constitution again, and is a DC 30. Let’s assume your character is 20th level.

: You have two extra stat points that you got at 16th and 20th level, so you’re now at a base of +8 with your stat increase item bringing that to +11.

: Through what I can only assume is some kind of genie sweatshop, you’ve spent half the GDP of a small country and had five wishes cast on you at once to boost your stat by an additional 5 points, which is the absolute limit. You are now at a +14 with a whopping 36 in your primary stat. This is as high as your stat can feasibly go in 3.5E short of houseruled stuff like spell research.

: You still need to roll a 16 to make it. A 12th-level character does not stand a chance outside of rolling a natural 20. There is a way you could make it in Pathfinder, but you’d need mythic tiers for that and no one uses those because at that point your character is a mix between an end-game battle shonen protagonist and a demigod.

: A 20th-level character wouldn’t even bother making the check because an elder brain has a CR of 13. They’d pull out their weird double-bladed elf katana and do 8 attacks for 300+ damage.

: If genies existed, I’d own a genie sweatshop.

: You’d never get it to work. They’re weapons-grade horny.

: Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t work.

: “And you. You had your role to play, too. Who do you think told the Chosen about the Astral Prism? Who do you think planted the knowledge of Orpheus’ power, and the fear of what it could do?”

: “When the Chosen sent my thralls to retrieve the Prism - who do you think let the ‘Emperor’ slip its leash, knowing it would be the one to bring you to me?”

: “We were part of its plan..”

: “I only needed one Netherstone loosened from the Chosen’s grasp to guarantee my freedom. You brought all three back to me. In doing so, you have liberated me. This was your role - and it is complete.”

: “Now you will witness the Grand Design.”

: “We have to stop it! It’s now or never!”

: A DC of 99 would mean you’d need a stat of nearly 180 to make it on a 10. The highest statted creature in Pathfinder 1E is Cthulhu, who has a 56 in strength.

: Even using mythic power in Pathfinder 1E and giving Pollux a legendary weapon (presumably a grand piano he throws at his enemies), the highest I can get Pollux’s charisma is a 71 (+29 modifier) with a +20 to the roll from his weapon.

: Of course, if Pollux had that level of power (which means he’s one wrong move away from becoming a demigod), he’d simply cast Wish and force the roll to succeed with his mythic power. Or, you know, he’d cast two quickened Disintegrates for 240d6 damage. Mythic powers are funny like that.

: You know, I should get Salty Vanilla to -

: No.

: You can succeed at this roll if your character has a means of forcing a natural 20 (say, by being a diviner wizard). It doesn’t do anything special.

: “This is not over.”

: You know, I really wish I had a magic legendary electric guitar and 10 mythic ranks right now.

: Even this fight is ripped from BG2, where you fight an elder brain in a pretty similar cave.

: “I pulled you out just in time. The situation is worse than I thought. This is an elder brain no longer. The magic of the crown has caused it to evolve. It has become something more - a Netherbrain.”

1. I thought the Netherstones were supposed to allow us to dominate the brain.
2. Did you expect this?
3. I’m glad you were there to save me.
4. You pulled me out too soon - I nearly had it!

: “I thought the Netherstones were supposed to allow us to dominate the brain.”

: “I thought so too. But that was when I believed it was still an elder brain. It has been anticipating our every move from the start. I underestimated it. We will need to rethink our plan.”

: So you’re telling me I could have avoided blowing up Gortash’s gundam factory and going through an elaborate stealth sequence to kill Orin?

: There are two things we can do here. You can either side with Balduran, or you can free Orpheus with the hammer we stole from Raphael.

: If you have Lae’zel in the party, she will insist on you freeing Orpheus and will automatically go hostile if you side with Balduran. You also lose Voss as an ally and have to fight him.

: As much as I want to kill the gith, we’re going to smash the stones because Balduran is an asshole.

As the githyanki prince takes his blade, a silent cry pierces your head. It’s unlike any sensation you’ve ever felt.

: “You reek of illithid. You stole an unborn hatchling from my people. And you slaughtered my honor guard. Nonetheless, it seems we must be allies.”

: Orpheus will also complain at you for a few other things: he’ll complain if you took Balduran’s deal and became a partial illithid, he’ll complain louder if you then take Balduran’s other deal and become a straight up mind flayer, and he’ll also complain about lasering the gith creche and having sex with Balduran.

: What a whiny little bitch.

: I’m going to paraphrase some of this dialog because it’s dumb.

: “Your honor guard attacked me. What exactly was I supposed to do?”

: “Let them kill you. They would have freed me, and I would have killed the elder brain. All that suffering was avoidable, if not for the choices you made.”

: I have my suspicions as to why this dialog exists, and they start and end with “Because Cyberpunk 2077 did the same thing three years earlier, and then a second time a year earlier when the anime launched to try and save the project from being a laughingstock.”

: There are tabletop RPG systems that exist for that kind of ending. Shadowrun is one, as is Call of Cthulhu. If this was a Shadowrun game, I’d be surprised if it DIDN’T do this.

: “We can either stop the brain or I can kill you.”

: “We will destroy the Netherbrain together. The ghaik was correct about one thing - its power is beyond us. The hardest metal in the world would not cut through its mind, for it is made of thought itself.”

: Black Sabbath could totally cut through that brain.

: Dragonforce!

: Dragon-what? Is that one of your furry things?

: “I dunno, I feel like Dragonforce, the hardest metal known the man, could do it. Have you heard that one Undertale remix someone did of Through the Fire and Flames?”

: “Can you even name one other song of theirs?”

: “They have other songs?”

: Oh dear god they DO have other songs. They put out an album in 2024. How the fuck is this legal?

: “At this point, it will take an illithid to unleash the full power of the Netherstones.”

: This is the one point in the game where it actually asks us to make a meaningful sacrifice. You can either sacrifice your main character, or Karlach will do it if you don’t want to.

: I’m too pretty to be a mind flayer.

: My characterization is all over the place.

: Or you can tell Orpheus to do it and he’ll just fucking do it. This is technically a bad end for Lae’zel, but who gives a shit? The gith are villains in every other game they’ve appeared in.

: Orpheus opens a portal to High Hall, which is the only part of the Upper City we see in this game. In the.. maybe an hour.. since we left, Baldur’s Gate has become Lordran (or Drangleic, or Leyndell, or whatever the last area of Dark Souls 2 was).

: I have memory holed the entirety of Dark Souls 2. I remember only that it was the worst one.

: We should get some greatbows and set up on those parapets. They’d never figure out how to get past it.

: Orpheus gives us resistance to psychic damage and a bonus to mind-based saves. Let’s go meet our allies.

: Voss shows up and is pissy that we turned his prince (who, I remind you, he shoved into the prism and handed to Vlaakith) into a squid.

: I’m not going to transcribe any of this because it’s full of fantasy gibberish and none of it matters.

: My headcanon is that Voss sees this and immediately kills himself. I don’t know why he even gives a shit about Orpheus when he’s the one who put him in the prism in the first place.

: He asks Orpheus what they’re supposed to do about Vlaakith and we get a scene that is literally this scene from the manga Exorcist wo Otosenai (Eng: Make the Exorcist Fall in Love).

: Oh shit, is that supposed to be Lucifer? I gotta show him this. Hey Lucifer! Check this out! The humans made you the guy from Delicious in Dungeon!

Beorn Winterbrood: “We have lost much already. And we will lose more before the day is out.”

Beorn Winterbrood: “But even when the last soul falls, Baldur’s Gate will stand. For Baldur’s Gate is more than just a city. It’s also a marketable game franchise that is probably dead after this game. No, seriously, the second that sequel TV show drops, we’re all fucked.”

Beorn Winterbrood: “You’re late, friend. This is the one you spoke of?”

: I am very surprised they didn’t play the sting from Down by the River here.

: “The very game. The champion we’ve been waiting for, and that I almost died to because I listened to a demon that I knew was a demon. The one who will save Baldur’s Gate from ruin.”

: Unfortunately, I’m a few years and a few billion dollars too late to save this game. The first thing I would’ve done is not even tried to make it. There’s no way the C-suite didn’t know about Hasbro’s history of fucking over everyone who has ever gone near them.

Beorn Winterbrood: “My steel is yours. And I’m not alone.”

: “I’m better at crafting steel than wielding it - your friend here is armored and potion-fuelled and ready for battle!”

: “I have marshalled the best the Flaming Fist has to offer. We will fight to the last.”

: “You’ve unexpected friends, but my debt to you still stands. The Ironhand Gnomes’ firepower is yours to command. Just show us where it’s needed.”

Fanfiction Gundam: “I am Inuyasha’s brother.”

: The last surviving gundam takes the place of Zanner Toobin, who presumably got fired for jerking off on that zoom call.

: “Whatever strength I have to lend, I will lend it. I will make my city proud again.”

: That last part is.. not great considering what happened a year after this game released.

: “Did you think I was going to let you have all the fun? Mol looks out for her friends, mind flayers included, and she’ll have your back. Trust me.”

: “You can count on me, little rabbit. And your squiddy friend. I thirst for the hunt, and also to get away from that horrible gremlin. She put me through therapy.”

: “I made some improvements to Ramazith’s arcane artillery. Give the word, and the sky falls on any who stand in your way.”

: “I’m in the mood to crack some skulls after that fuckery in the Temple of Bhaal. The City Watch will be glad to oblige me.”

: “Not sure what I have to offer a mind flayer, if I’m honest, but I hope my words of encouragement and reassurance will strengthen your - ah- resolve.”

: “Of course I showed up for my boyfriend.”

: Something really fucky happened here. Isobel and Aylin are supposed to be here.

: The quest log shows we have them, but we don’t. As far as I can tell, this is due to a bug that was never fixed. It has something to do with the game not setting a flag properly if you tell Lorroakan that Aylin is dead and then kill Lorroakan without her being there, even if you later tell her you did.

: Pollux gives a speech before moving out. In the game, it’s only one line and it doesn’t really matter.

: This scene is honestly a lot better if you get here without having any allies at all. If you do, Winterbrood is dead outside and Withers is the only one waiting for you inside.

: These steps lead to the last big fight in this game.

: You can talk to these idiots to recruit them, and you might want to do that if you plan on running into the courtyard like an idiot.

: Why give the enemies the advantage? Let 's go this way instead.

: There’s a single ghoul over here that won’t notice you unless you walk into it. Kill it from range.

: Blast this one too while you’re at it.

: If you climb up this way, you wind up on the parapets instead of on the ground, and no one has noticed you yet.

: This patrol has See Invisible, and unlike the fanfiction version we have, theirs doesn’t allow a save.

: If you don’t feel like fighting, you can have someone with a lot of movement fly past the patrol in turn-based mode and run right to the next cutscene.

: This ghoul gets a call for help off. If you don’t recruit the soldiers outside, this won’t do anything because we’ve killed all the help it can call for.

: If you did, the soldiers will run in and alert the entire courtyard. Don’t do that.

: We could take these goblins now, but that would alert a bunch of enemies on the front parapets who we can otherwise ignore.

: Remember that this ogre is here as well.

: The ogre will be annoying later because of spaghetti code.

: Kill these two goblins. It shouldn’t be much of a challenge.

: You can free some civilians behind the door.

: This isolated platform is where we want to fight the rest of the room.

: There’s another mind flayer that patrols down here, because Larian didn’t want anyone cheesing this but couldn’t design the returning weapons to not randomly refuse to work.

: We kill them without anyone noticing.

: There’s a spectator guarding the door we need to use, and so we have to aggro spiral the rest of the area.

: These are all Act 1 enemies, and most of them die in a single hit.

: The problem is this ghoul located on the other side of the map who immediately screams for help.

: There’s a mind flayer in the group who will spam magic missiles because he’s a dick, as well as a bunch of Ketheric’s cultists who have spells and infinite special arrows.

: Most of the enemies will either waste turns trying to find a route to the party or sit and do nothing because they’re melee-only.

: At this point, the game’s spaghetti code kicks in and Nylruna drops to the ground. I have no idea how the fuck this bug wasn’t fixed.

: One of the mind flayers gets stuck, which again - this is something that shouldn’t fucking happen. Why would you even add that side route if the game breaks if you take it?

: Because we have Mol as an ally, each character gets a powered up version of Scorching Ray they can use once per short rest.

: We could call in Yurgir or the fanfiction gundam or something, but why? This is piss easy and we’re on Tactician.

: Eventually we get it down to just the mind flayer. The party has taken damage, but we have two short rests plus a bunch of canned long rests.

: I had to move the party around a bit, but eventually the mind flayer gets unstuck and dies.

: Again, you’d think that someone would have tested this shit.

: We get in combat with the ogre trying to get Nylruna back. It dies in one turn.

: Now it’s time for part 2 of this stupid gauntlet.

: If you sneak someone in here, once you get to this cutscene it will warp everyone to the stairs - provided the game doesn’t fuck up. It’s prone to do that because it’s a buggy mess.

: Honestly, I think this whole end-game section sucks because of how open ended the game is. They couldn’t do anything with actual impact because there’s a possibility you get here without any NPC summons, so they just made it a long boring encounter against nothing enemies we could have oneshotted in Act 1.

: The worst part is that Descent to Avernus did this with its final boss, though they didn’t do it right and it’s laughably dumb.

: The orange circles that barely stand out against the floor texture are where the nautiloid is going to fire its cannons.

: If they had cannons, why didn’t they use them on the dragons at the start of the game?

: Lyselle gets stuck in a pixel of the explosion and dies because I couldn’t tell exactly where the AOE was. If the AOE overlaps scenery, it doesn’t show up properly.

: The trick is that this entire segment is bullshit and is best done by making Astarion invisible, making him fly, and then having him rush at full speed to the end which will end the encounter immediately.

: This would give me anxiety even though I can fly.

: Our objective is to get Orpheus to the crown, where he has to spend a full turn dominating the brain.

: “My gods! I didn’t think they were real! Not really.”

: The game bugs out here a bit. This is supposed to be Miku, except the game can’t do that because Miku used modded everything, so she gets replaced with a default failsafe.

: We now have to fight Balduran, who has turned full-on villain, and four Not-Mikus. The strategy here SHOULD be to have someone teleport Orpheus up to the crown.

: Just two problems there. One, dimension door has zero range. Two, everyone needs to be at the crown or you game over.

: I have Astarion teleport Orpheus as far as they can go, which is about halfway. Because Astarion is wearing Raphael’s armor, no one can teleport him except himself.

: The mind flayers up here all have fire shield on, which does a ridiculous amount of damage if you melee them and can crit.

: We have to kill all of these because if we don’t, they’ll stun Orpheus when he goes to dominate the brain and make him waste a turn.

: Have I mentioned I lost three runs because the dragon has a fuckhuge AOE it can spam that can potentially instakill Lyselle? It does.

: There’s no counterplay to the dragon. You can summon allies, but it won’t hit them because the AI is hard coded to hit whatever has the fewest HP - and that’s always going to be Lyselle.

: You also can’t leave Balduran alive or he uses Chain Lightning and does upward of 60 damage. The best way to deal with him is typically calling in Rolan, followed by Karlach using Action Surge.

: In comparison, the Not-Mikus are a non-threat. They don’t attack, they just use a modified version of Command to try and silence people. They’ll always target your party first before targeting Balduran.

: On attempt six, I finally get Orpheus to the crown, but he’s immediately stunlocked. I wish I could say there’s a good way around this, but there just isn’t.

: The mind flayers can stun even through Globe of Invulnerability, and Sanctuary doesn’t work because it’s an AOE. The Mikus can also silence through Globe, but not through Sanctuary.

: I don’t think you can silence the mind flayers either, since they’re using what was called an SLA (Spell-like Ability) in 3.5E, and those weren’t subject to silence.

: We don’t have the damage output to kill them either, specifically because they have a built-in counterspell that’s supposed to allow a save but doesn’t.

: Here’s how I wind up winning this. Pollux summons Voss, who drops a fire nuke on the two remaining mind flayers. One of them instantly dies.

: One of the Mikus is still alive and keeps spamming disables on Lyselle. Her entire role for the rest of this fight is to keep that bitch occupied.

: And then we finally get lucky. The last mind flayer survives the fire, but uses its AOE stun on Astarion rather than on Orpheus, who is off to the side.

: “The brain is vulnerable - now is our chance. Use the portal. We will bring it down together.”

: And now we get to Phase 2, which is a WoW raid boss. The fact that we got here is pure luck. If that mind flayer had decided to stun Orpheus, we would not have had the turns to finish the fight.

: The second phase is also pure RNG, but to a slightly lesser extent. The netherbrain’s core starts with three layers of platforms around it.

: The first time it gets attacked each round, it does an AOE that slows anyone who gets hit by it.

: At the end of each round, it destroys roughly 1/3 of the platforms. The 5 turn limit is a lie - you’ll be dead by turn 4.

: Astarion goes in and softens the brain up.

: Pollux follows up.

: Throwing in this arena is EXTREMELY fucked. If I had known how fucked it is, I wouldn’t have made Karlach a throw build.

: Basically, every time you throw a weapon, there’s a chance it falls into the void because the line of sight code for throws is spaghetti.

: Lyselle is pinned down outside and eats another fireball that nearly kills her.

: Because she’s still outside, the nautiloid shows up and starts using its cannons. These will auto-aim at party members and focus on whoever is trying to dominate the brain.

: “Fuck you, you ugly sack of shit!”

: We get the option to betray Orpheus and take over the brain, which makes no sense. The Fanfiction Trio could only do that because they had gods backing them, and even then weren’t really controlling it.

: Pollux’s tadpole disappears. He’s now ready to marry Halsin.

: The crown falls into the river.

: The brain explodes in a pile of fanfiction.

: And then it crashes into the harbor. We’ll see the ending next time, along with the epilogue, once I’m less pissed off about this garbage fight.

[Timrod]

Summary

: She probably got two levels off that.

Narrator: Everything you did, everything you sacrificed - it was worth it, for this.

: “We did it. We actually did it. And the city’s still standing.”

: “My powers.. they’re draining. Just like Mizora said they would. A small price to pay, in the grand scheme of things.”

: “And I’m still standing in the sun. This is incredible! Maybe whatever it changed in me was permanent? And we didn’t even have to turn into mind flayers to do it!”

: “Even when my time in the Prism stretched out like eternity - when escape seemed impossible - I never lost hope.”

: “I knew my destiny was to liberate my people. To return to them triumphant. I was wrong. It seems I can only fulfil one part of my destiny. My people will be liberated, but I cannot return to them. Not like this.”

: “You helped me destroy that abomination. Now help me destroy myself. You must kill me.”

: “But first, Lae’zel, I need your promise. Carry my hope. Carry my burden. Call upon my dragons, Quulos and Quuthos, and ride to the Astral Sea. Destroy Vlaakith, release our people. Be our future and our legacy.”

: We can talk Orpheus out of dying, but.. you know what? Nah.

: “I can never forget you. Your name will be etched in our slates. You will be called Mla’ghir - liberator.”

: And then Lae’zel fucked off forever.

: “The githyanki are departing in peace. A curious sight in a day already full of them.”

Narrator: With the githyanki gone, there’s nothing left but the silence of the city, smouldering, waiting to be rebuilt. But it seems that Gale’s mind is elsewhere.

: “The Crown. It’s somewhere in the Chionthar. If I salvage the stones, I can reforge it. And once I have, I’ll return it to Mystra. She’ll cure me of my affliction, and I’ll finally be free.”

: “Better yet, you’ll be her Chosen again.”

: “And a more deserving one this time around. If this adventure has taught me anything, it’s that there are things in this world far more valuable than power.”

: “Besides, I’ve grown quite fond of this merry band of ours, and I’d quite like to see what happens to it. I’m sure Mystra will summon me soon enough, but until then, I propose we celebrate our victory the mortal way - with a drink in our hands, and reckless abandon in our hearts.”

1. A celebration sounds perfect.
2. We should stay in the city. Help rebuild it.
3. Let’s get out of this godsforsaken city. I hear Amn is lovely this time of year.
4. I think it’s time we part ways."

: “A celebration sounds perfect. You can all celebrate, and Halsin and I will go have hours of private time in whatever buildings aren’t destroyed.”

: Astarion starts burning from the sun, which feels.. I dunno, kinda shitty.

: Karlach also burns, but for a different reason. You can tell her you’ll go with her to Avernus, and I think if you let Wyll sell his soul he’ll offer to do it.

: I hate this scene. Even if I bothered transcribing it all, it has zero emotional impact because Karlach is barely an entity in the plot.

: You can tell the writers didn’t have nearly enough time to flesh out the companion characters except for Astarion. I guess I can’t blame them because I did the same thing: I had four PNGtubers and fleshed out maybe two of them.

Narrator: It’s over. And all because of you. You, who were destined to become a thrall. Thanks to you, there will be no illithid empire, no death gods’ tyranny.

: This shot reminds me of the infamous “baguette boy” scene from Bioshock Infinite.

: Yep, let’s have a shot of this guy looking up at Balduran’s dumbass statue. He died and I’m glad we exterminated him.

Narrator: Six months have passed since you defeated the Netherbrain, and since then you have seen more of life than you ever thought possible.

Narrator: You are greeted as a savior, a champion, a hero.. but sometimes, you feel like something else entirely. An adventurer, a traveler, a survivor.

: Pollux survived six months of trying to get Halsin to wear something that wasn’t made of leather. He gave up.

: Who knew that Pollux was in a Suda51 game this entire time?

Narrator: You faced down the gods, you thwarted the Grand Design - anything seems possible. But before you can write the next chapter of your story, you must end this one.

: It’s nice that Lae’zel’s ghost attended after Pollux killed her.

: “Thou wert called here. Some from above, some below. For with thine bond, together thou hast kept the Wheel of Fate spinning, when it threatened to halt.”

: “Thou thou wert drawn far apart in the months after the collapse of the Absolute, tonight, Fate renews thy bond once more. Thou shouldst take care to preserve it - it is a great weapon, wielded in the hand of good.”

: “Well, look who decided to turn up. I wasn’t sure our withered old friend could live up to his promise, but here we are.”

: “And you’re looking more delicious than ever, if you don’t mind me saying. Whatever you’ve been doing with your time, it’s clearly worked wonders.”

: “It’s called having a boyfriend.”

: “I’m glad to see the world has treated you well - you’ve earned it. We both have, in fact. And where better than to celebrate our good fortune? An old haunt with old friends.”

: It’s not obvious from the screenshots, but this is the same camp they had the tiefling party in the night after we cleared the goblins out.

: "The last time I saw you, you were running from the sun. What happened?’

: “Exactly what I feared. Without the protection of our little friends I was just an ordinary spawn again, burning in the sun. I fled the dock and found refuge in the shadows until night fell.”

: “Part of me was relieved you left so quickly after the battle. I felt.. ashamed. Like I’d lost everything, just as you claimed your victory. I didn’t want you to see me like that.”

: “But time lent perspective. It wasn’t your victory, it was ours. And for all I’d lost, I had gained so much more. I had freedom, strength - a whole new life. And it was time to live it.”

: “I’ve taken a turn as an adventurer and a hero. It turns out no one actually cares about murder, as long as you murder the right people. And apparently I’m rather good at it.”

: “Astarion, one of the good guys. Who would’ve thought?”

: “Let’s not get carried away, darling. I’m still me. Perhaps more ‘me’ than I’ve ever been.”

: “Do you ever miss walking in the sun?”

: “I did at first, but then I realized - these shadows, this darkness - it’s all part of me. I spent too long being defined by what other people did to me. The choices other people made for me - but that’s over now.”

: “This is who I am. In all my glory, for better and for worse.”

: “I’m glad to hear it. Acceptance looks good on you.”

: “That being said, I haven’t completely given up on returning to the sun. If the opportunity presented itself - well, I wouldn’t say no.”

: “But until then, I am happy. We have had quite the journey, you and I. From the moment I first threatened you, I knew you were someone special. Someone to take on the world with.”

: "I will miss our time together. But then again, maybe this isn’t goodbye so much as it’s.. ‘see you later, darling.’ "

: It kind of sucks that this game never got a sequel where they didn’t have to glue a game together from disjointed setpieces at the last minute.

: Then again, I’m sure that TV show (assuming it doesn’t get shitcanned before it ever airs) will be bad enough that we’ll wish this was the end of the franchise.

: “Well well, look what the tressym dragged in. Professor Gale Dekarios of Blackstaff Academy, educator of the esteemed School of Illusion. A pleasure to remake your acquaintance.”

: I find it kind of ridiculous that Gale gets so much screen time in the end.

: “Sorry, who are you again?”

: Mystra took the orb out of him and now he’s her Chosen again and they’re probably fucking. The end.

: Halsin’s dialog is very non-canon.

: “You would think someone of my vintage would be inured to the passage of time, yet these past six months have seemed endless without your company. But now our paths cross once more..”

: “Halsin, we got married three days after the netherbrain died.”

: “We have all pined for each other’s company, I sense. I cannot imagine otherwise, after what we shared.”

: “Halsin, we had lunch together and then walked down separately. We’ve only been apart for maybe two hours, and that was only because you had to feed all the pets.”

: “That bond was forged in a crucible that can never be stoked again, Oak Father willing. It is a bond that can weather any distance, any passage of time. I know it can, for I feel the longing of for old friends in my heart each day.”

: This is what happens when I don’t let him wear leather.

: Halsin runs a small settlement in what used to be Ketheric’s fanfiction fortress, which has since been torn down.

: Over here is this small chest, which has letters in it depending on how many sidequests you did (and more importantly, how many of them registered properly). I’m not going to transcribe these because they’re on the wiki.

: Note that a few of them are broken: Aylin and Isobel are supposed to send letters, and those letters exist in the game code, but they never show up (unless you use a mod) because this whole thing was probably thrown together in five minutes at the end of development.

: The newspapers near the chest are interactable.

: Alfira and her girlfriend open a new bard school, and we get the article about the refugees because we saved them all.

: We don’t get the ending for having Lae’zel keep the gith egg - I forgot that when she got kidnapped, the egg gets removed from her inventory.

: This one is straight-up bugged. You can see there are two articles - one is meant to be for if you killed Wulbren off after the fanfiction factory, and the other is meant for if you killed Barcus instead.

: Nobody grows almonds in Hell. Takes too much water.

: Minthara launches a one-woman assault against Lolth, which kind of makes no sense for an evil-aligned Drow.

: Lae’zel becomes the new Orpheus and allies with the githzerai to take down Vlaakith. I like to imagine that Vlaakith died from Pollux having Lyselle teleport the remaining explosives we had directly into her.

: Lae’zel comes across as less of a generic fantasy klingon, but it’s too late.

: Shadowheart lives out in the woods with her parents and raises animals. This scene is non-canon because she implies Pollux is straight.

: Wyll respecs into a ranger.

: Jaheira is still the queen of the Harpers and her kids are both cops.

: “BOO! WE ARE NOT DREAMING! IT IS OUR OLD FRIEND!”

: “It’s too good to see you too, Minsc.”

: “And it is good to be seen! After so many days down in the dark, Minsc began to wonder if he was some blind bug who had only dreamed himself to be large and bulksome.”

: “You will forgive the aroma, I hope. We were not expecting the dusty one to open a portal to our very cell! Boo had a moment to lick himself clean, but there is a little too much of Minsc to cover.”

: “You were in a cell? What for?”

: “Minsc and Boo have been helping, of course! We guard the streets while Jaheira is occupied with Harperish matters. The Zhentarim rule the city’s underbelly - so Minsc and Boo went to give them a tickle. There were harsh words. Battle-cries. Some manner of.. head-wound?”

: “We awoke in a Zhentish cell, awaiting trial by noble combat! Ah - ‘execution’, says Boo, though.. I am not sure of the difference? It is a long walk to the gallows and Minsc still has his fists, no?”

: “It sounds like Withers got you out just in time.”

: “In ample time indeed! So long as the bone-mage returns us to our cell by dawn. Boo would not be late to the bloodshed.”

: Minsc later falls into a time portal to WWI-era Brazil, where he founds a ninja village. I still think Frank is a better character.

: There’s only one way for Karlach to be here, and that’s assuming that you agree to go to hell with her. We instead get an incredibly dumb conversation with Withers.

: “Have you thought about Karlach?”

: “Not really.”

: “She’s enjoying being dead so much. Also she went to heaven or some shit.”

: Once we’re done, Withers does a sequel hook that is obviously never going to materialize.

: Then there’s a post-credits scene where he complains about the Dead Three, which is funny when you realize HE’S THE REASON THEY EXIST.

: I got the cheevo for saving all the tieflings, and for finishing the game. Note that just under a quarter of people have ever finished it. I wonder why?

: That’ll do it for BG3. Thank you for reading this trash fire of a let’s play and putting up with me hating the game. Though, you know…

: I think there might be time for one last extermination before we go.

[Timrod]

: Welcome back to Baldur’s Gate 3. Let’s beat that drago-

: What’s going on?

: I think that’s DLSS 5, with that new “realism mode”. I think the AI doesn’t understand the concept of a sparklefur.

: How does it not understand what a fisher cat is?! Why are you even using that?

: I figured Swen Vincke would love it, so I found a patch to add it to BG3. It.. might’ve had some side effects.

: Points of Pythagoras! Why does everything look.. wrong?

: I’m all ready to exterminate that scaly piece of.. oh what the fuck! Wrong Mara, dipshits! How the fuck did they even get that confused? That game was around for like two weeks!

: The trick to this fight is using the dragon’s reaction against it. The dragon will spew fire at the first thing to attack it every round.

: Teleport an otherwise-worthless elemental into a group of enemies and have it attack the dragon from range. The dragon will counterattack and nuke the enemies to death.

: You can also use Astarion this way, since he has evasion and isn’t likely to take damage.

: Your mind flayer has an AOE stun that works on the dragon. Once you’ve gotten its reaction off, stun it and force it to fail the save.

: The only thing to watch out for is the magic missile spam. If you can, teleport someone up there and use the dragon AOE to kill it.

: Once it takes enough damage, the dragon will try to reposition. This is where you rush in and stab it to death.

: Oh, look at that! A Rathalos ruby!

: Okay, NOW we’re done. @moderators can go ahead and put this in closed.