#anyways i love Wyll so much it makes me wanna throw up

[katthequeer]

"The very picture of selflessness, Wyll has never put himself before anyone in his life"

[codecicle]

Swag, tell me about your BG3 character, I’m curious about what you play !! :D

rubbing my hands together evil style. wampus you have no idea what you've unleashed

this is my bastard son: Samuel Alastine :D he goes by Sam but everyone calls him Sammy ^_^

his personality is like if you combined chip jrwi + sokka atla and made a really sappy fucked up love child. he's such a sarcastic little bitchboy at all times who loves being a bastard and charming his way into and out of situations (the consequences of his actions). he really focuses on the actions of the people and how they treat others as a sign of if he should trust them or not, when asked by Withers the question on how much a single human life was valued i had his answer READY lmao he was instantly responding with "it depends on the person's actions." he definitely has a weak-spot for kids though, he went through a rough childhood, but he doesn't consider it "important" and he trys to keep it as close to his chest as possible.

he's a tiefling sorcerer and i decided to make his sub-race a dragonborn tiefling so he could get the specific type of spells i wanted. i think my plan for progressing him is to focus my general skill-tree to be skewed towards how his personality would fight instead of whats most practical, and for him that definitely means wiping out multiple people in one flashy go with ZERO back-up plans. the amount of times he's had to get one of the other party member to revive him is insane, so he tends to leave that part out of the big flashy tales about his adventures. he loves showing off and bragging so much genuinely again think sokka atla just an absolute loser bastard who tries to take credit in a loving way. he would kill and die for his friends he just shit-talked as beneath him and side characters 5 seconds ago, and if someone else tries to also talk bad about them he's throwing hands and swinging on them in an instant with his whole 8 strength

speaking of which i skewed by skills so badly by putting the free +2 modifier to charisma to give him a 17 bro i coulda blanced his skills a little more and made all of his attacks do more than a grand total average of like. 2. maybe 3 if youre lucky but i DIDNT because im not a COWARD!!!!!!!!!!!!! so now he just flops over if he gets breathed at wrong or is out of spell slots like god intended. but at least he knows how to flirt GODBLESS

also also i definitely think his current party is going to remain his favorite and most trusted for the whole game. he's adventuring with Shadowheart, Wyll, and Astarion right now and they fit him so perfectly its actually insane. he loves how forward thinking Shadowheart is and is willing to follow her, and respects her for keeping her secrets while still letting him make fun of how closed off she is. (realizing now that my playful banter i try to give him might be the romancing options. but like. yeah he would try and do that she would never go for it though.) ((maybe)) and he absolutely adores Wyll's heroicism and looks up to him in a way, full of nothing but respect for how selflessly he acts and how he fights with confidence. he's an especially big fan of how he treats kids, knowing he never would have gotten that same kindness and it was nice to see the cycle be broken and someone make a change. and astarion he just wants to fuck LMAOOOO he loves the conversations they have and while astarion saying "oh yeah btw how do you wanna die when that worm in your brain spreads. like do you want poison or a knife" should normally be offputting thats EXACTLY his kinda humor and flirting. he said knife btw ^_^ purely because at the beginning where astarion jumped him he pinned him to the ground and held a knife to his throat and he really wants that to happen again but you didn't hear that from him. nuh uh.

anyway im having so much fun playing this game fully in character i see why the council did it that way now !! this is so silly goofy and fun i love going "oh wow any normal self respecting person would NOT say that to the random person they just met. i dont want to pick this option but youre not gonna believe this chief, its What My Character Would Do" every 5 fucking minutes for a new dialog this game is awesome im gonna go die in a combat now goodbye [vanishes into the woods] [the camera very clearly shows me hiding behind a tree thats too skinny for my body asking someone off screen if he's gone yet]

[luvdisease]

HIIII, perhaps; strawberry, coconut mango, nectarine, blue moon and teaberry for Karlach? 👀

that was NOT quick nap. ANYWAY HI HI HI THANK U I LVOE TALKING ABT MY WIFE

Strawberry

"before getting together, how did your F/O realize they had a crush on you? How did they act around you once they realized they were head over heels?"

OOH hmm,, god this is so self indulgent but ig thats what this blogs for LMFAO

i think the crush started a little early but she didnt realise that much, shes in touch with her emotions just thought it'd be a passing thing.

oh btw Azazel is my tav/player/ s/i heads up.

It started when Azazel defended Karlach from Wyll, adament she was not who he had been told, perhaps it was something of a tiefling bond, maybe fates hand played a part.

I think the "oh fuck" moment was after a battle, Karlach had gotten a small scrape but Azazel, the smug fucking rogue he is went and made a fuss over her, making sure she was okay.

after that she got a clue that Azazel liked her too? extra giddy over everything he did. I cant say there was a lot of distant pining, shes blunt.

Coconut mango

"what mementos do you and your F/O treasure?"

Well, travelling around the game i pick up every stuffed animal i see to give to her, my player and karlach also have matching rings bc,,, cute, never use the warding thing though, yes i did steal them off a corpse. whoops.

i cant quite think of what nementos azazel would have but he does give thinks to karlach he thinks she'd like, even something like a cool rock.

found a phallic looking one hehehehehe

Nectarine

"do you and your F/O live together? If so, what does your living space look like?"

constant camping... no time to settle down sop...

i do imagine they sleep in the same tent though, its half karlachs teddy collection, half some random shit azazel picks up HAJDGSJSG

Blue moon

"is your F/O very routine-oriented or do they like to go with the flow? How routine-oriented are you?"

Were both pretty impulsive but also. my autism would kill me without a routine.

there is occasional moments of spur of the moment activities

like

"u wanna throw some rocks at the flaming fists?"

"FUCK YEAH I DO"

Teaberry

"where would you like to travel with your F/O someday?"

i know i know its a fandom joke but i wanna take her to a build a bear HAJDGSJDG i know she would love it.

also an adult sized playground. she needs to get that energy out.

[mokeonn]

I found out how to not lose the Halsin portal quest! That's why I said Darkness is a very op spell and I love it, if you cast darkness on the portal it will prevent any enemies with ranged attacks from shooting it as darkness prevents any ranged attacks going in it! Then all you gotta do is prep all the fun AoE spells and go absolutely ham on the crowds, and it's not a shadow cursed lands fight without Shadowheart upcasting a radiant spirit guardians and running around. My first game it took me several tries to get it, my second time while using darkness on the portal? First try. HIGHLY recommend it and recommend using darkness more. Even better if you have one of Wyll's (or another warlock) eldritch invocations be devil's sight. Devil's sight gives you the ability to see up to 24m in nonmagical AND magical darkness. Making him pretty useful in the gauntlet of Shar as well.

I can say for certain that cheesing the hag will NOT cause her to try to bargain with you. When you do this, it's right before she runs away and tells you to "have fun with your new friends, bye bye!" And the redcaps come after you. Since it's arcane locking the stairs before she runs away, she just stands there the whole turn interacting with them. The game's script wants her to go down those stairs, making it her only priority and making it VERY easy to wail on her. So you can't get her hair because the hair event isn't supposed to trigger. You're still in the treehouse, so you can't bargain for Mayrina and the hair (or just the hair) because Mayrina is in the hag's lair, and the fight is happening in the treehouse. I somehow have NEVER gotten the hair my entire 300+ hours playing the game, so I don't really feel like I'm missing much when I do this method over just fighting her in her lair. In fact, out of all the times I fought her in her lair she only stopped the fight to beg once, and I didn't know about the hair at the time so I just killed her anyways.

I did NOT know I could leave food in chests I just force everyone else to carry food items based on the food item and the character. The main consistent ones are that Astarion carries the wine, Gale carries the cheese (because it's all Waterdhavian cheese wheels and he's Gale from Waterdeep), and Karlach carries the meat. Vegetables, fruit, bread, sweets, all those seem to change depending on the playthrough. I like this system because I like to punish that stupid fruity vampire who cries about dirt by making him hold the 40 bottles of Ithbank. Good to know in the future, though, that I can simply leave it all at camp!

The getting rid of a boss fight early is referring to Balthazar! I found out that when you first meet him right before Shar's trials, you can lockpick the door he's in during the battle and open it, causing everyone inside to join the fight. His undead and himself are programmed to prioritize enemies, so they won't kill the shadow orbs that spawn more unless all the enemies are gone. What I simply do is I wait for everyone to leave the room, and use my turns to move all the chests in the room to the door. Then all the team hides behind the barrier of chests by the door while Balthazar and his buddies fight Shar's constantly spawning dead friends. The chest barrier makes it so neither Balthazar nor his minions can just run back into the room and attract the fight to you, and you can close the door after every teammates' turn so no one will target you with ranged attacks. The dark justiciars will slowly widdle away Balthazar's minions, and if you wanna turn it into a free-for-all where it's Balthazar, The Dark Justiciars, and you all against each other: just start throwing spells at Balthazar!

Eventually after spawning some very powerful warriors, the orbs disappear on their own, so you might have to take care of the leftover dark Justiciars, but this means you DONT HAVE TO DO THE DAMN FIGHT RIGHT BEFORE THE NIGHTSONG. That fight was a nightmare I kept restarting and eventually had to solve with an arrow of roaring thunder and an acceptance that I won't get any loot. At least with this method you get some loot.

Yes! With the assault on the duegar they considered me temporarily hostile since I just started throwing javelins and starting shit, so they all ignored the gnomes to focus on these weirdos throwing shit at them. This allowed me to save the gnomes by then blowing Nere out of the tunnel and then instantly attacking him before his cutscene triggers.

I gotta admit I love annoying people with it in co-op. It's SO funny to hand my friends a treasure pack to sell and hearing "why are there bones in here?!" And getting an exasperated response when I respond with "because they sell for a gold :)". Telling them "don't read the attack log" because if they do all they see is me picking up random bullshit. Opening a chest with someone and as they carefully pick and choose what they want I just steal it all and run off by slapping that "take all button". Getting asked why a shopkeeper is selling a severed head. It's honestly SO fun to see how upset friends get at my nightmare collecting. Because it gets us gold and it gets us discounts, but it bugs them just enough to be funny. Plus I love grabbing a backpack, filling it with all the treasure so I can keep my inventory a little cleaner, and then casting the spell of encumber (putting the bag in my friend's inventory)

Oh I know about the drow thing! Drow is probably my most played race in the game that it's become a joke that I made another goddamn drow. I just got so used to being able to waltz through the goblin camps as a drow that I realized that disguise self also works. So if you're playing a character who isn't a drow, you can simply get that "no need for a check, just go on in" benefit with a little spell. My two games where I'm the furthest are both drow dark urges with the same romance, funnily enough. One good, one evil. One of them is an old dnd character that I shall be pushing on this blog soon enough, and the other was just made on the spot to be as evil as possible.

Yeah! I feel like since I know act one pretty well, especially in tactician, I can have a lot of fun trying out new builds and seeing what works. I will admit I have a habit of just picking the same ol' same ol' because it's powerful (battle master Lae'zel, berserker Karlach, assassin/gloomstalker Astarion) but I might have a lot more fun with this playthrough and either completely change the class of some characters, or try out new subclasses.

Currently, I am trying out both thief and monk for the first time for this playthrough, as monk uses a lot of bonus actions and that two bonus action bonus sounds VERY nice.

Why don't you wanna play your other games cuz you can't turn them honor? What part of honor mode has enchanted you so?

I do enjoy my other games but I am having a TON of fun with honor mode, mainly coming down to the following reasons:

- No reloading.

This has been my blessing and my curse. On the one hand, it makes battles WAY more fun because if they go south, I can't just press the magic undo key. It's changed my battle strategy when I lose from "just reload to before the battle" to "have someone escape and prepare to pickpocket Withers at camp," which is a lot more fun imo. It's also why I had so many problems with the phase spider matriarch and why Poetry is technically continuing with dishonor because I kept running away and leaving camp right back to the fight. (Which was my fault, I forgot you can use waypoints in camp)

It also means I don't have to worry about saving often anymore. No more backtracking more than expected because I forgot to save before or after an event, because I simply can't backtrack!

However this also causes a nightmare, if you fuck up and end up wiping out an entire town or giving a character a bad end on accident, you're stuck with that. I have figured out how to turn the tide in my favor for a lot of events, but for others, I am simply out of luck if I mess it up. Like triggering the Isobel kidnapping scene and not winning the fight, or if something happens to a future companion in a battle where they're an ally. You're just stuck with the consequences, which sucks SO much.

- the difficulty is kinda fun and adds new features to fights that freshens it up

I normally go through the game in balanced mode, because that feels just right for me, but I can't help but admit that the new attacks and enemy features of honor mode freshen up the game a lot more. Take the intellect devourer fight at the very beginning of the game when you pick up Shadowheart, I've done that fight so many times it's more of a chore that gets you to level up than anything else. In tactician mode, it's the same fight, but they hit harder. In honor mode??? Those fuckers got laser beams! That's new! That adds something that freshens up an old experience! I like that a lot!

Many fights are like that where an old fight I've already done at least 5 times feels new. Getting the owlbear fight out of the way? Now there's 2 owlbears, bitch. Does the hag have new attacks? I wouldn't know! I just cheese the fight by arcane locking the stairs to the lair when she first reveals herself.

It really adds a breath of fresh air, and it gets me to think a lot more about equipment, spells, battle strategies, classes, feats, and so on. Rather than simply brute forcing my way through and reloading until I win.

-food system

I understand this is just a general tactician mode change, but instead of 40 camp supplies, you need 80.

I tend to pick up any edible substance I can see anyways, leading to me having over 1,000 camp supplies sometimes. I have to constantly distribute supplies to other party members lest my player character have 70% of their inventory and ability to carry things be taken up by food. I am constantly juggling to make sure I don't become encumbered.

So, having that set to 80 instantly helps me cut down on food and has even caused a little challenge. Due to the difficulty of honor mode, I have to long rest more, which means I now ACTUALLY have to worry about camp supplies. There will be times were the party needs to rest but I don't have enough supplies so I need to either find something, or buy something.

I find the food management aspect really fun actually and it's very interesting to want to long rest only to realize you only have 18 supplies and need to scramble to get 62 more.

-gettin' funky with it

I think the biggest part I like about honor mode as well is that there are areas where you can't simply run away to camp if things go south. So the game constantly requires me to think outside of the box and get funky with it.

Things like using enemies as weapons against other enemies, making a healing circle in combat and throwing a potion down in the middle of it, getting rid of an entire boss fight early by simply getting other enemies to fight them, blocking off doorways with boxes or arcane lock, finding out that darkness is your friend it is SUCH a good spell.

It's REALLY fun to figure out wild solutions to get things done without risking the run ending. A dumb example was in grymforge! I wanted to get all the duegar out of the way before fighting Nere, so I did this by going to the upper platform hanging above the entrance of the main room, and using a berserker Karlach to start throwing things down. Most of the duegar were melee fighters so they would end up dashing around and missing turns, and those that could hit far were taken out first. I had potions lined up the wazoo and made shadowheart throw them on karlach when she got low on health, Astarion was sneak attacking, and Poetry (my durge bardlock) was inspiring Karlach and eldrich blasting.

It got even better because some enemies had javelins they would throw up, which meant that Karlach now had more Javelins to throw down.

It was a dumb battle that ended with a solid 8 turns of everyone wailing on the scrying eye hoping to damage it, because we ran out of thunder spells that could hurt it and most of our damage was negated most turns. It cried for help every time, but no help came.

But I had a ton of fun with it! It was a memorable fight! It wasn't like my first fight in my first playthrough where I had to keep reloading, I just got to win by standing up really high and making Karlach throw every Javelin I had found and gave her throughout the game and then some.

-it justifies my bad habits that make gamers cry

To the joy of all my friends, I have stopped using my inventory system I made up. I used to pick up every backpack and pouch I could find and sort everything into 4 bags in the order of: spell scrolls, drinkables, throwables, and coatables.

This kept everything nice and clean as most things outside of these bags either got a special bag (i.e story items or dye bottles) or just got to be sold. It was a little tedious to grab things during battle, but I used the custom page to make things easier. So it was only really a pain getting things out of someone else's inventory.

I have since found out that an auto sort by type button exists, and I can just use that instead. And that a search bar exists. It took until a friend pointed it out for me to realize this. So I stopped doing the bag system since I could simply throw the story items you can't sell into a backpack and just auto sort everything else.

Plus I used to have a treasure pouch I would sell, which is not necessary! That's what the 'add to wares' button is for! Whoopsie!

So, thankfully, for everyone, I stopped doing the backpack system...

However

I had also developed another habit around the same time I developed the backpack system. I was doing a challenge run where I dared myself to use every object I picked up no matter how useless, and it caused me to develop a habit that makes everyone who plays with me cry:

I press take all no matter what.

That's just how I close containers.

There's nothing that makes a friend playing with you cry more than an inventory full of useless garbage, and you keep picking up more garbage off the ground to mess with them.

In honor mode, the shop prices are HIGH. A 80 gp ring of flinging in balanced mode is over 200gp in honor mode. The gloves of missile snaring that are about 200 gp normally? Over 600gp. If you aren't planning on pickpocketting (which admittedly I am clearly under utilizing and I need to plan on pickpocketting more), you need a LOT of money to buy items you need.

You know what gets you a lot of money? Selling a metric fuckton of armor, weapons, rotten food, bones, and whatever other garbage you pick up!

Hell, if you even give some of these to shop keepers for free, they'll like you more and lower the prices!

So next time your friend yells at you for picking up all of the severed body parts you see in on the risen road, consider that each of those parts net you about 3 gold, and you need that bottle of light blue dye Dammon is selling.

- I want the achievement and the gold dice

I've been getting into achievement hunting and I really like how all of bg3 achievements are achievable through story beats or small fun actions, so I want the achievement. I'm already working on the second hardest one which is busking 100 gold, so I need the hardest one. Boost my ego. Plus I wanna see if it gets the tactician achievement out of the way as well.

Also yeah I want those gold dice lmao

So that's why I have only been playing honor mode lately. I still love those regular balanced games, and I will need to revisit my main game soon since I haven't beaten the game yet and have no idea what act 3 encounters there are, but I am having the time of my life with honor mode. The furthest I have gotten so far is right before the Nightsong and the assault on Moonrise Towers. I would be able to tell you how well that went if I didn't proceed to let my hubris get the better of me and mess up the last light Inn.

Anyways, I highly recommend trying honor mode! It really forces you to get into out of the box thinking and try some spells, classes, and methods you might not have used. Whether that's disguising yourself as a drow to get past the goblin camps conflict free, pickpocketting every shopkeeper you can to save money, or saving every smokepowder barrel you can find; there's a lot of fun to be had in honor mode.

Of course, if you normally do explorer and never balanced or tactician, maybe reconsider idk. Also I am weird and absolutely have been trying new classes I never played before in this mode, I highly recommend playing a class you have played before if you're worried about the difficulty. For me? I got act 1 figured out, so by act 2 I'll be used to the class I picked it's no biggie :)

So far the only honor mode game going REALLY well for me is the one I'm doing with my friend, since he was unsure about honor mode and normally plays explorer. That one he is a druid half-wood elf (which is a fantastic pick as the wild shapes are grand for not dying and half-wood elves get an extra 3 meters to their speed) and I am a war cleric of Selune romancing Lae'zel (war clerics RULE for hitting hard, and I wanted to piss off Shadowheart as much as possible with my build.) So if you have a friend who likes playing tactician or honor mode, you can totally mooch off them. Having another player to control half of the team honestly helps a lot imo.