#it was a mess lol until I found jaheira

[birdeedraws]

I love their little interactions

to be completely honest I didn’t like gale very much in the beginning and bullied him so much he left my team (I didn’t know you could do that lol) but I promise I will be nice to him and keep him in my next playthrough lol. he’s grown on me

Tara tho I love her can u tell

[lunarreverb]

Just finished the silliest BG3 run that was.... not really a speedrun, but a mess-around solo run to see what happens if you effectively skip Act 1 and 2 (to the extent possible) and recruit nobody. Here's Bunnie the gnome; she's quick like a bunny!

Some of the most interesting things I found under the cut!

If you immediately jog over from the Nautiloid to the mountain pass area, Shadowheart will catch up to you and try to party up.

You can reject her company, of course; if you do, the artefact just appears in your inventory later after this brief cutscene saying ''you got the plot device.' The Emperor never addresses this at all but I have to assume it just looked at the both of you liked your main character energy better.

(For her part, Shadowheart will hang out indefinitely in front of the path to the mountain pass, insisting that you need her to come with you. She never seems to realize that the artefact ditched her, but seems to have the 'shielded' effect on her for as long as you can still go back to that area to check on her, so idk. I assume she dies/ceremorphosizes at some point after you leave the shadow cursed lands.)

If you leave for the mountain pass without encountering Raphael, he just shows up in your camp, and you do NOT have a choice to go to bed without speaking to him, lol.

What happens to Lae'zel is SUPER interesting. If you don't encounter her in the cage outside of the grove, the game gives you a second chance by setting her outside of the monastery, wandering around.

If you don't join her there, either, you will find her at the entrance of the Shadow-Cursed lands, extremely dead. I imagine this is just the game's way of making sure you see she's dead, but I would have assumed for sure that without player intervention she would've died in the zaith'isk? I wonder what sequence of events is implied by this? Maybe she broke out of the zaith'isk on her own, escaped the creche, but had nobody to warn her that she needed a torch in the Shadow-Cursed lands? Maybe the gith sent her on an errand before they let her have a turn in the cleansing machine? Unclear!

Your dream guardian comments that it's impressed by your efficiency by skipping over the grove entirely:

This is different from what it says if you actively durge the grove, where it insinuates that you did what you did to infiltrate the cult and asks whether or not you have regrets about that.

If you don't go to Last Light Inn at all, you can meet Jaheira for the first time at the bridge to Moonrise tower. She does NOT react well if you answer her question by saying "I'm busy, get out of the way"; this will aggro the Harpers (understandably). I ultimately decided to sneak around the back and I didn't canonically meet her for the first time until after defeating Ketheric. She will automatically join your camp for the one night on the way to Baldur's Gate, but she will leave forever (leaving you a letter saying "bye") once you get to the Lower City if you tell her at Moonrise you don't want her in your party.

She does not survive the events of the game if you do not let her join your party, it seems. (I did not pursue the Minsc storyline and I do not know if it's possible to prevent this outcome that way.)

This next bit is REALLY wild; in all of my other playthroughs, I don't think I ever tried defeating Gortash before I disabled the Steel Watch. You can defeat Gortash at his inauguration, and the Absolute will immediately be your bestie about it and will helpfully murder any of the witnesses (including Ulder Ravengard, I think; I took care not to kill him but he vanished anyway.)

The next thing that happens doesn't actually make sense but is interesting nevertheless. Once Gortash is dead, the Steel Foundry is automatically blown up, and the Absolute speaks encouragingly to the player through the Steel Watchers:

I'm actually stumped about how the Absolute can control the Steel Watchers without the corresponding tadpoled brains in the Foundry (which I have to assume got crushed in the rubble?) Oh well. In any case, the Steel Watchers are friendly and will even be allied with you if you get into any scuffles with the Fist, until you kill Orin. After you kill Orin, every Steel Watcher is immediately hostile AND will sic the Fist on you, too.

(Funny story, I actually managed to down one of the Watchers next to the Steel Watch fan group on the north end of Wyrm's Crossing and uh. The Watcher blew up one of the fanboys. Oops. RIP Trinigan Gazotts.)

I kinda want to write a whole post about just this, but Shadowheart's parents are still put up on display in the House of Grief basement in spite of the fact that she is almost certainly (?!) dead and/or a mindflayer by this point:

You can talk to them but you cannot help them in any way. I'm aware that this is just a tease for Shadowheart's plot, but I want to nitpick this so bad. The Sharrans have regular prison cells in the building; what is the point of hanging up these two on the Spencer's Gifts lights indefinitely? Whatever bummer vibes Shar is getting off of them can not be enough to pay for their magical upkeep. Do the Sharrans have to take them down at mealtimes, or are they fed with sandwiches on sticks, or...?

The love test at the circus is NOT interesting; the dryad assumes that you are in love even if you are forever alone and gives her usual sales pitch about bringing the one you love to her.

If you didn't save Wulbren or Barcus, the entrance to the Ironhand Gnomes' cave is just blocked off.

Astarion's unfortunate end if you don't recruit him has been covered in great detail by other posts, but I will remark that it is funny to kill Cazador yourself as a gnome because you have to hop up to stab him. It's also very, very funny to see Cazador explain his whole evil plot to you, random gnome woman who just showed up, if Astarion isn't around. This man is desperate for somebody to think he's cool, so I guess he'll settle for attention from the cattle if he's gotta.

Volo still shows up tied to that trolley cart by the foundry, but there's no angry mob around him.

If you haven't encountered the inquisitor at the creche, or the avatar of Vlaakith in the shadow cursed land, they both show up in the Elfsong's basement

There is no hag plot if you did not encounter Ethel. The captain at the Blushing Mermaid is just as she seems, there's no hag lair, and Vanra and her mother want nothing to do with you. There's no hag support group; that house has a group of random hostile thugs in it instead (with a tenuous tie-in to Ninefinger's Guild).

In Act 3, Raphael will totally say "listen here you little shit" if you hassled him outside of the mausoleum in Act 2 by, oh, I don't know, casting Silence on him? (after which he does NOT give you the Yurgir quest, he just leaves).

Bluurg and Omeluum do not show up at the Society of Brilliance's lodge if you did not meet them in the underdark in Act One, but there is a letter indicating that they will show up later. I checked, and Omeluum is also not in the Iron Throne.

Nothing funny or new happened with Orin. I threw her in a pit. BUT worth mentioning? You can skip the entire Bhaalist powerword kill trial if you just send one invisible party member through the area and just find the warppoint near the temple afterward. You're welcome.

If you get to the epilogue alone, Milil will comment that he expected more guests, but Withers will speak as if multiple people are there no matter what

Also, if you are a lonely little mindflayer, this has no effect on the refreshments offered at the epilogue party. Mindflayers can drink alcohol, apparently, but obviously nobody is here to eat all the food Withers put out. WTF, pee paw.

And I think that's mostly all the was interesting or different in this run. It was a fun challenge!

[riddlerosehearts]

bg3 playthrough thoughts!! i'm still basically just doing sidequests, but they've been interesting and it feels like a lot of important stuff has happened even if it isn't part of the main story.

i... ran into gortash's parents at the cobbler shop while wandering around? i had no idea that would happen. i also got an option to use illithid powers on the mother, but did not do it because my tav is someone who has been adamantly refusing to use the powers this entire time. may have to keep that in mind for another playthrough!

OMG I FOUND THE INSTRUMENT STORE!! got excited about that because elenion lost their lyre when they got taken by mind flayers and they've been trying to find a new one this entire time. i'm still annoyed that volo didn't stock one even though he stocked like every other instrument. also omg if you're a bard you get special dialogue with the shopkeeper!

i brought both karlach and shadowheart to the graveyard, specifically because i knew in advance that they had things they'd comment on if you did. so i got to see karlach speak to her parents. :( i also put some flowers outside their graves, and a night orchid at the grave of the guy shadowheart mourned for.

YESSSS THE PARTY HIT LEVEL 11. after suddenly getting attacked by a bunch of sahuagin on the beach lol but i'm not complaining! i can't wait to use otto's irresistible dance in every battle from now on.

...i had used up a lot of spell slots and such from various quests so i went to take a long rest. and it was nice to finally rest, except for the fact that lae'zel got kidnapped! i actually knew that someone was going to get kidnapped, but i didn't know when it would happen and i don't know how the game determines who it is either--though, storywise, for my tav, i really like that it ended up being lae'zel. also, orin made it look like lae'zel was trying to kill yenna, and now i wonder what would've happened if someone else had been taken instead?

it's a good thing saving orin's victim isn't time sensitive LOL because i have sooo much stuff left. and storywise it feels wrong to be going around completing a bunch of random sidequests and helping out the rest of the companions while lae'zel is in trouble, but in terms of gameplay it feels like dealing with orin and gortash should be some of the last things you do! so i'm just going to say we need to take our time to come up with a plan and lae'zel is strong enough to handle herself until we get there.

looking for minsc now--i know i said before that i wasn't very attached to jaheira, but she gets better the more i see of her LMAO. i mean, she approves of being sarcastic with nine-fingers and saying "just exploring the local sewer life" when asked what you're doing in the guildhall! maybe on my next playthrough i'll try to use her a bit more.

i'm sure there was a more reasonable and normal way to get past the vault puzzle than by literally throwing water all over the buttons and short circuiting the contraption with lightning magic. but would a reasonable and normal method have been as FUN as short circuiting the contraption? i doubt it.

MAN i wish there was a way to speed up the combat specifically when it's the enemy's turn, at least. fights with a large number of characters involved, like this one i just did at the counting house, can just get painful to sit through when it isn't my party's turn to move. especially since with this particular battle i messed up and got party wiped once and there's a lot of enemies AND a lot of bank employees helping out MISSING EVERY ATTACK and it's just ajksgshgdh. i'm so glad to be done with that now.

got jumpscared by astarion's siblings appearing at camp! after that i tried to continue the mystic carrion quest (which i started as part of the free the artist quest) and realized it was leading me down the sewers, which is also where we need to be to find minsc, so to the sewers we go. i found a woman there who had been lured by a vampire--wonder if astarion would've had any reaction to that if we brought him along.

i now have the single most important companion of them all--boo! okay, and minsc is here too. i talked to him a bit back at camp and he's really funny, actually. now i actually wanna try using him a bit and seeing if he has any funny reactions to things around the city.

also, i finished the free the artist quest and oh my god it was unbelievably annoying just to navigate the house. and the massive detour you have to take to deal with mystic carrion... well, that was actually interesting, but was it all worth the reward you get in the end? nope! maybe in the future my characters won't stumble across the zhentarim hideout and just won't know oskar exists...