#lae'zel is second baby of team

[jeeaark]

Who needs a detailed backstory with plot twists to accommodate your mid-twenties-looking half-orc's life choices when you can just learn A LIL TOO LATE that orc folk have HELLA SHORT LIFESPANS to not have any time to do what you originally plotted????

SO-while everyone here has got a gnarly life-harrowing secret in their back pocket, what's the big ol secret Greygold's got? They are BABY of the team hahahahaI'mhorrified

Who thought it was okay to put the baby in charge????? Just because they charge head first into every conflict should not automatically qualify them as leader!

[alpaca-clouds]

My Personal Companion Ranking

I saw so many people doing this, and now I kinda feel inclined, because we are going on a full year and the brainworms are still strong.

Halsin: I wrote about this before. I love this man just so much. Again: He does not need to help you. Sure, he comes along to the Shadowcursed lands in the hope to solve the problem that he feels responsible for, but afterwards... He is not responsible for the player character and the origins. Also, he is so big and sweet and gives the cutest kisses. <3

Lae'zel: Toad girl! Ironically I could not stand her originally. But then, on my second playthrough I accidentally romanced her, and I went like: "Oh my god, baby girl, you are so messed up! Let me hug you!" And yeah, now I am obsessed with her. I especially love her development in the game, when you oppose Vlaakith. Even though I like the idea most of all, of her dealing with her feelings towards Shadowheart (and possibly Karlach).

Astarion: Yes, I know, he is surprisingly not my absolute favorite, though I do identify with him a lot. And I just love him with my Tav. I will also say, that the version of Astarion I like so much is especially the one in my head, to whom I gave already so much character development and stuff after the end of the game.

Shadowheart: She is another one, who I originally did not like a whole lot. I was originally so annoyed with her and Lae'zel bickering and with the entire "Shar this! Shar that!" stuff. But while it took the second playthrough for me to warm up to Lae'zel, I got behind Shadowheart after saving Aylin and her becoming a Selûnite. I especially love how she centers herself during Act 3 again. And I love her stupid little jokes and pranks.

Jaheira: No long text. No deep reason. I just love her sarcastic ass.

Karlach: I love Karlach as a character. However, I still do not love what the game does with her. I love how she still finds joy in life after everything. She has such a tragic backstory and all that, but she still has joy, still wants to help people, and still is just good. But oh boy. I hate how much her companion quest is a non-quest. I hate how little interactions you really get with her in act 3, especially if she is not romanced. I just dislike how little care she got in the end of the game.

Wyll: Kinda like Karlach. It is not that I dislike him as a character, but he is just so clearly underwritten and gets shafted by the writers. So... Yeah. Admittedly, I also could not quite get into her whole "Heroism, please recognize my name" stick. But most of all it is just... how little content there is.

Gale: Okay, hear me out. Originally he was among my favorites for the game. But the longer I had him in my team (he does tons of damage in the end), the more annoyed I got with him. No, not because he is a know it all (I can identify with that), but mostly because he won't shut up about fucking Mystra. Yes, partly this is an issue with the dialogue options given to me, less than with Gale. But I just... I reached the point by the half of Act 2 where I was like: Let me shake this man and scream at him. "Mystra is a fucking groomer. Let's just please go and fucking kill her!"

Minsc: I do not dislike him. And my Tav definitely is vibing with him. However... He really feels more like a joke character, and I am not laughing.

My standard party usually still consist of my player character + Astarion + Karlach/Lae'zel (depending on my mood) + Gale. Though with my Durge I currently try a run on Durge + Shadowheart + Lae'zel + Astarion/Halsin.

[gothyanki]

@ardentkurashk tagged me in this meme forever ago (thank you!! <3) Now it is time. Lots of yelling about Vin'ath inbound.

Name: Vin'ath

Age: 31

Race: Githyanki

Class: Paladin (Oath of Vengeance).

Alignment: Trying their hardest to be a Lawful Good True Storybook Knight while also following vengeance oath tenets to the letter. This… does not always work out well.

Deity: Having been raised in a cult, Vin is deeply and understandably suspicious of all gods. They’ve dedicated their life to their oath instead, which is totally different.

Favourite spells: Shield of Faith for practicality; Colour Spray for aesthetics. They also love smiting. Divine Smite is their fave, although they couldn’t tell you why it’s the most satisfying.

Armour (Act 1): Scale Mail of Vengeance.

Armour (Act 2): Adamantine Splint Armour.

Armour (Act 3): Still Adamantine Splint Armour! High paladin fashion.

Favourite dye: Baby blue and gold. They flat-out refused to dye their gear at all until they got to Rivington, where they grudgingly agreed to try it out. The description points to a much more militaristic meaning, but to Vin those colours have come to symbolise the sun and sky over the world they love.

(I have a LOT of feelings about the default vengeance paladin colour scheme in light of “I see only blood-red and death-black”. Vin hasn’t drifted as far from their upbringing as they’d like to think.)

Weapon (Act 1): Monster Slayer Glaive (+ anything else they could grab that looked useful).

Weapon (Act 2): Soulbreaker Greatsword.

Weapon (Act 3): Silver Sword of the Astral Plane. Sorry, Lae'zel - it's just too perfect for a githyanki paladin. (In my headcanon, Lae does end up getting it after some token face-saving resistance from Vin. They’re not comfortable with the idea of wielding a silver sword and don't really want to give up the Soulbreaker - they've still got a lot of complicated feelings about the way they won it and they feel responsible for all those whispering souls.)

Buffs: Ooh, it’s been a while - I’d have to load up the game to see what they’ve got on. Githborn Psionic Weapon? Wielding the Soulbreaker Greatsword feels so right to them (ditto for Voss' silver sword, in the very brief space of time they had it); they’ve thoroughly compartmentalised that feeling so they don’t have to think about Why.

Main love interest: Karlach. It was a bit of a rough road to get there (the touch issue might have been the least of their problems), but now they’re an unstoppable team. To hell first, then onward to the stars!

Favourite NPC(s): Vin’s got a huge soft spot for the tiefling kids, especially Mol. (They’re very protective of children in general, for reasons they won’t admit have anything to do with their own upbringing.) Meeting Varrl and Varsh Ko’kuu gave them some hope in a difficult time, even though the circumstances were painful. They also greatly admire Dame Aylin and Isobel… and kind of see them as #relationshipgoals.

…and then there’s Kith'rak Voss. Yeah, that’s a complicated one.

Favourite enemy: Kith'rak Therezzyn and Inquisitor W'wargasm W'wargaz. There was a LOT of emotional fallout after the adrenaline crash, but for a while there they were riding the high of having faced down two terrifying childhood authority figures and lived (not to mention the staring contest with Vlaakith herself…)

Favourite battle: Gortash. That one was very personal - vengeance paladin mode on full display. (The conversation after it was… significantly harder for them to deal with.) Rescuing Halsin from Orin & co. was a close second - they were just so relieved they’d got there in time.

Favourite dialogue: Is “every single dialogue involving Karlach” cheating? Not just the overtly flirty/romantic ones - Vin would happily listen to her read the Faerûnian phonebook.

Aside from that, they got so much vicarious joy out of hearing Lae'zel reject Vlaakith - they don’t tend to show much emotion, but they may have done a little fist pump at “she has sinned against me!” Also, the conversation where Wyll opened up about the circumstances of his exile - Vin felt very honoured that he trusted them enough to let them see beyond the Blade of Frontiers persona, and it led them to drop their Perfect Paladin walls a little in return.

Decision about the Absolute: Red laser destroy destroy destroy + the Crown returns to Mystra. Unlike Lykos, Vin'ath isn’t tentacle-curious.

I tag anyone who hasn’t already done this (see: forever ago) and wants to!

[andrewknightley]

OK SO I FINISHED BG3 thoughts and stuff under the cut (spoilers obvs) . Pals and mutuals that played feel free to comment it with me, and also wyll enjoyers pls do interact fkfkdk

SPOILER about the ending

-Ok so i was playing a good tav dwarf paladin romancing wyll, got my team of wyll/lae'zel/karlach, but lae'zel felt like the real main character of this story and honestly its what she deserves.

-got orpheus and turned him into a mind flayer sorry bro. and then the emperor gets angry and fights with the baddies. like gosh this guy sucks

-saved the day yadda yadda and lae'zel went away to guide her kind and LOOK SHE IS MY BEST FRIEND FOREVER i was so sad but i knew it was what she wanted but IT PAINS ME

-then gale leaves me to become a god, and then astarion gets attacked by the sun and runs away and im like wow this ending is such a downer everyone is leaving me

-AND THEN. KARLACH.......

-Ok so i cried like a baby like. i fucked up i dont know what i did wrogn i cant believe karlach is gonna die im SOBBING

-But wyll is like "WE CAN LIVE ALL FIGHTING DEMONS IN HELL" and got the coolest shit ever of these 3 going on adventures like you dont know HOW MUCH I LOVE THIS ENDING!!! im so happy aaah TOT

-then there is the epilogue and it's the cutest thing i can hug shadow heart and halsin and karlach :_) tried with astarion but i dont know if its impossible or i had him too low (every companion loves me but he finds me acceptable fgoihdgfjiodgio) anyways i wanted to hug all my friends

-gale is a god and like good for him but im like ??? damn we dont see his mission or anything he does this all off screen?? i wanted to see his struggles and stuff idk i wanted to see the FEELINGS

-anyways idk if i got a bug or something but when i get to talk with people about what i am doing is just me and karlach and 0 mention of wyll idk why TOT let me talk about my romantic companion pls

-also i had like 2 options to talk with romanced wyll and way more conver with astarion wich again i didnt even have very high on his love for me (i do love him and my chara frienenemy status tho) but why only 2 options for wyll i wanna talk with him moreeee at the end

-he did blow me a kiss it was the cutest thing tho

-Again idk if i got a bug but i never get anyone commenting on my relationship with wyll and i know the companions gossip about karlach and probs other charas >-<

-i heard a friend who had to kill karlach to get to see her gale ending so i tried in another save to see what happened (it was awful btw) and that was the only way to get an extra scene of wyll telling me to go for mizora and having other people aknowledge him in the epilogue (just with jaheira it lets me say wyll, with astarion and shadow heart they gave me answer like "oh im with my lover" and such instead of by name)

-i am a big fan of wyll but not so much of wyll missions, like they are fun to play but gosh i wanted the cool FEELINGS moments like lae'zel, shadow heart, astarion and karlach had, i feel he is straight up a classic hero tale and i want to see this man overwhelming with feelings of all the stuff he suffered. also more stuff with the dad idk i couldnt even tell him im with his son that could had been cool

-gale also feels like ???? he didnt have a proper mission and was like off screen wich is a bit weird to me ??

-my fav chara is wyll and then second lae'zel who is perfect 0 notes on her 100% increible. Then Do Not Make Me Choose for the other origin companions i cant. I love them so much. I didn't like astarion at first and i was like "really this is the man all my friends and everyone is obsessed about??" but then act 3 arrived and i was like Ah. I Get It Now. I would say my less fav is gale but because i didnt bring him anywhere so next game im def paying him more attention.

-anyways i could have some notes but in general i fucking loved this game so much TOT

[thessalian]

Thess vs Hotfix Disappointments

Note to self: NEVER READ THE COMMENTS.

So apparently Hotfix 20 is out, and has fixed an awful lot of bugs with Minthara. ...Not, however, the bug that's been plaguing me of late. Apparently Minthara was so central to an evil playthrough that the attempt to use a less complicated workaround to let her join the party on a good playthrough just leaves everything to do with her bugged right to hell.

Apparently it got to the point that a few days ago, someone actually came up with a Ring of No Justice mod for this damn game just to take the damn status condition off. Which ... is a solution, I guess? Just ... now I have a quandary. Because honestly? They still don't seem to have ironed out all the bugs about Minthara joining a good playthrough ... and I'm not sure Drow!Mommy's worth this shit. I mean, c'mon. I warmed to Lae'zel to the point where I stopped killing her, at least, but at least she isn't bugged to Avernus and back.

So, I have two options. I can either use this Ring of No Justice mod and remove the Enemy of Justice condition and carry on with my current playthrough ... or I can say, "You know what? Fuck it. Just knocking her out wouldn't make any sense IC anyway, so I'm going to go back and just straight-up murder her". I don't want to spend the rest of a playthrough having to deal with the cornucopia of buggy bullshit that comes with having her on the team. Plus, let's face it - I'm never going to have her in my party anyway. Just ... I'm nearly to the end of Act 1 now and do I really want to go through this again?

...Probably more than I want to run into another cavalcade of bugs, honestly. I guess I could just leave that playthrough to one side and start a second one, see how far I get before the whole situation is fixed. Or I could just get as far as Moonrise Towers on this playthrough with the mod and ... honestly, probably kill her to shut her up about all the slaughtering of the goblin generals we did and...

.........

Yeah, no, it's nice that they gave us the option to keep Minthara on a good playthrough, but it's not fucking worth it and makes absolutely zero sense so here I go on the nautiloid again. Fuck, I'm never going to finish this game at this rate.

...Except I just got the baby owlbear AAAAAAAA.

(Oh, and the "NEVER READ THE COMMENTS" thing? Came when I went to check the hotfix notes, had a look at the "Discuss" part of the announcement of the fix notes to see if anything more was said about the situation, and ... yeah, no, that made Reddit look sane.)

EDIT: I found a way easier workaround than the one I liked to - THANK YOU, SCRIPT EXTENDER - so we'll see how it goes. I may end up shanking Minthara anyway. Depends on how merciful Alisaie's feeling that day.

[breelandwalker]

THE FINAL UPDATE:

Y'all know that feeling when you get onto a rollercoaster and you think you're ready and you're all braced for shit, and then you just get thrown around and windwhipped to hell and back and you scream your head off, and then suddenly the ride is over and you're sitting at the depot like tf just happened.

That's kind of how the last stretch of missions went.

With as few spoilers as possible, highlights include:

closure and reconciliation for Wyll and his dad (YES. ULDER. YOUR SON IS A GODDAMN HERO. SHOW SOME RESPECT.)

meeting Voss' dragon pal

finally beating the shit out of Gortash (good GODS if ever a man needed his entire ass kicked up and down the entirety of the Sword Coast TWICE)

sobbing my entire heart out over the ensuing conversation with Karlach (my sweet bestie, the narrative did you so dirty, you deserve the fucking world 😭)

classic puzzle-solving dungeon crawl under Wyrm's Rock with a rotating crew bc different things need different skillsets and maybe i wanted to pretend the whole gang was there don't judge me (but we are judging the SHIT out of Astarion for apparently being a REAL asshole in his previous career, you sure your last name is Ancunin and not Turpin? no more gavel for you)

DRAGON DRAGON DRAGO-....oh. that's gonna complicate things.

WAIT NEVERMIND

....i'm sorry, the Emperor is WHOMST??????

welp.

props to Wyll for coming into his own and also Blade of Avernus sounds way more badass than Blade of Frontiers (also I see you and Karlach vibing back there, don't think we didn't notice 😏)

So then there was nothing left to do but one last supply run, one last round of hugs and kisses in camp, and then off to fight the big brain. (For those wanting to know, my final fight team was Karlach, Astarion, and Shadowheart.) We got thrashed for a bit, then it was into the prism to regroup. We did choose to free Orpheus, which didn't go over well with Tall, Dark, and Squidly.

From there, we portaled back to the Gate for one last rally, walked into the High Hall like Aragorn returning to Edoras, and....wow, I had no idea we had so many allies. Like I knew we'd helped a lot of people but DAMN. The entire room was full!

AND MY BABY OWLBEAR WAS ALL GROWN UP AND ARMORED! Omg my sweet floofy boy, all ready to rip and tear. Mama's so proud! Also SO much tiefling solidarity. All my peeps from Arabella to Zevlor turned up and I know it's game canon but my girl couldn't help having a moment of I Think I Have Done A Good For My People Here.

Then it was all a blur of stairs and fighting and dodging artillery and calling on allies and okay can we BREATHE for five seconds? Angelic Reprieve, Hero's Feast, and....here we fuckin go.

The last fight is BRUTAL. Even in Explorer, it pulls no punches and it took me a few tries. But in the end, WE WON. The big brain went squish, the floating mind palace fell into the river, and we all washed up like half-drowned rats to find a whole lot of dead mindflayers and a city that is once more safe...for now.

The Aftermath: (Spoilers for endgame)

Orpheus asked for an honorable death and bequeathed his dragons and his mission to Lae'zel, who promptly took off for the Astral Sea to liberate her people. Cue my tiefling waving goodbye like, you're still an insufferable cunt, but I respect you.

Gale decided to be a bit of a dick about the crown and sort of just...walked away to become a god. (And then was even MORE of a dick at the reunion party later.) So much for that. Guess my tiefling made the right choice after all.

With the tadpoles out of commission, Astarion became allergic to the sun again and had to SCAMPER away from the docks before he burned up. We'll catch up with him later.

Karlach's engine finally gave out and as she was starting to burn, Wyll stepped in and offered to escort her back to Avernus to save her life, promising he'd keep her safe from Zariel. Then we got a nice little cutscene of the two of them preparing to kick INFERNAL amounts of ass together. (I SHIP IT SO HARD. LARIEN YOU COWARDS, THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN AN AMAZING DLC.)

Once everything calmed down and the remaining party members retreated to the Elfsong for some heavy drink and a good night's sleep, we got our romantic epilogue. And of COURSE, my tiefling is staying with her bitchy feral tomcat of a vampire, who is SO much happier now, and they'll be setting out on a quest to find him a way to walk in the sun again. And is it a coincidence that the Til Death Do Us Part ring is on her finger? No it is not. 🥰

Six months later, we catch up with everyone at the reunion party, learn some fun new developments (AGAIN, MISSED OPPORTUNITIES FOR DLC), read some grateful letters from the people we helped, and rest on our laurels for the time being.

Bit of a shame we have to wait until the party to find out how things went for Halsin, but as predicted, Papa Bear (DADDY HALSIN gfdi devs you did that on purpose) has built a refuge in Reithwin for anyone who needs a place to go and is raising several dozen orphaned children as a single dad. And yes, he will be seeing his tiefling honey there very soon to help with storytime. Among other things. 😏

So that's the end! We saved the world, we saved everyone we could possibly save, the whole party made it out alive and they lived happily ever after. What a glow-up it's been. My tiefling started out with nothing, just a broke homeless druid from the Gate, and wound up becoming a hero, saving the realm, making some amazing friends, elevating her people, and finding love not once, but twice.

Fabulous game, 100/10, will play again and again and again. Feel free to drop questions in my inbox if you have them.

Until next time!

Tfw you're nearing the end of Act II in your BG3 run and you realize you've fallen into the exact trap you said you were going to avoid FROM THE BEGINNING.

The devs knew exactly what they were doing, didn't they.