#that probably won't make it into the main story

[whereismywarden]

Useful tips for new Veilguard players

Under a cut for people who want to go in 100% blind (and because there are some very mild spoilers).

Return to the Lighthouse regularly to check on your companions. There will be a symbol on the map next to their picture if there's an interaction available.

If two characters are in the same room but there is no symbol on the map, going to meet them will trigger a banter (the same type you'd get while travelling).

Companion arcs are divided into three types of interactions: conversations, outings, quests. While quests probably don't have a time limit (emphasis on probably), the others might disappear as you progress further into the main story.

(spoiler) At some point during the flirting stage of your relationship with a companion, you're given the chance to express romantic interest towards them without committing to the relationship. Your next interaction with that character is very likely going to be when you'll get the option to actually commit.

I strongly suggest doing every side quest before starting the following main quests: A Warden's Best Friend, The Siege of Weisshaupt (can confirm you'll fail some quests if you don't do them first), Blood of Arlathan (haven't tested it myself, but it seems to be that kind of quest).

Exception being the Crossroads' quests, which can be done whenever (most of them require you to be at a higher level anyway).

The final act starts with a warning. Be sure you've done all the quests you wanted to do (Crossroads included) before you go any further.

There are some unmarked quests in the game that grant unique rewards. Some of them won't trigger until later in the story, so don't hesitate to return to areas you've already visited before.

Companion level-ups are tied to their approval. You can raise their approval by doing their personal quests or by completing quests with them in your party. Some of them will also approve of killing specific types of enemies (for example, Davrin with darkspawn). You can also buy a gift from each of their respective faction's vendors.

Merchants may sell valuables that can increase your stats, so don't overlook that tab! Hovering over the items tells you which ones will give you a boost (mostly drinks).

You can sell your valuables to faction vendors in order to raise said faction's strength.

Items may have a different value depending on which faction you're selling them to. For example, Blight-related items will be worth more points if you sell them to the Grey Wardens.

(spoiler) You will lose access to a faction midway through Act 1, but you can still raise their strength by selling your valuables to a vendor in the Crossroads (marked on the map).

Selling your items isn't necessary to get a faction to 3 stars. In most cases (not always, some may depend on choices you've made), doing all their quests (including companion quests) is enough.

You don't need to max out a faction's strength to get them to 3 stars. However, maxing out unlocks the faction's final vendor rank, which then gives you access to unique items.

Having all factions to 3 stars isn't required to get the best ending. (One of my factions was still at 2 stars when I played the final act during my first playthrough, and I saw no difference. Though I would still recommend raising most factions' approval as much as possible.)

Completing companion quests and making the right choices during the final act is important, however.

If you want to unlock all possible endings, you'll need to complete quests in the Crossroads.

[jynxeddraca]

BG3 Drabble - Astarion/Tav Moonridge

Wrote this up one day because I had absolute fluff on the brain and was impatient to get to the romance part of the fanfiction I'm writing. It's just a short, cute, fluffy thing about Astarion and my Tav - post confession - where she wants help sleeping and Astarion is privately suspicious of what her "real" intent is. All my original posts about Baldur's Gate 3 are located here: [Link] If you just want the AO3 link, that's here: [Link]

Astarion was a little skeptical of Tav’s motives when she asked him to lay on her when they went to bed.  The excuse she’d given him was because she’d been having troubles falling asleep and said it would help.  While she had assured him, multiple times, that she really was fine not having sex until he was ready, there was still a paranoia in the far back of his mind that it wasn’t true.  That she was far less okay with it than she claimed.  That this was some kind of manipulation to entice him.  That part of his brain had him all but convinced this was a scheme.

“I promise it’s nothing nefarious I just…sleeping with you on me is comforting.”  Tav had admitted, sounding embarrassed and face flushing.  “No sex, I swear.”

Hesitating only a little bit, he’d agreed – as of late he found himself incapable of telling her ‘no’, especially not to any kind of bedroom activity.  Once Tav laid back on his bedroll, Astarion stretched out over her before carefully lowering down.  Placing his head over her chest, he slowly put his weight on her.  Waist resting between her legs, arms bracketing her torso before sliding up under her shoulders, so his hands were by the pillow.  Her heart steadily thumping under his ear as he settled.

“Comfortable?”  Tav asked uncertainly.  Her hands lifted and moved around him. One hand found his hair and slowly, gently, she carded her fingers through it, nails gingerly scratching his scalp as she did so.  The other hand gently rested on his shoulder, running her thumb idly up and down soothingly.  However, he made a face when he felt her legs shift – certain they were about to wrap around him.  Instead, they both simply bent at the knee, one a bit more than the other, and went still.  It took him longer than he would ever admit to realize that she was just shifting to be more comfortable.  Same way she did every time she’d fallen asleep under him.

“I am.”  Astarion said softly.  He wasn’t lying.  Physically, this was comfortable for him.  Emotionally though, it was far less comfortable.  They had gone to bed like this before, more than once, but it had always been after a vigorous round of sex when both of them had been too lazy to move apart from each other.  Any other time he rested on top of someone like this had been for the same reasons.  Even his body knew this and, despite still having clothes on and not wanting to do anything, there was a twitch in his groin anticipating something more energetic to come.  As he felt the twitch, Astarion was relieved that he was taller than her, from his position her pelvis was just under his stomach, no where near close enough to have felt the involuntary reaction.

“See?  It’s not so bad.”  She teased lightly.

He only gave a humorous chuckle in response.  Part of him waited on edge though, expecting her to initiate something.  Expecting any moment to feel her hips tilt or her body arch up against him.  Instead, she simply laid quietly, humming softly in the dark, drawing her fingers through his hair.  Absently, her tail took up it’s usual spot, draping and curling around his lower leg.  Slowly, her humming faded, her fingers in his hair slowed before resting on his neck, her breathing evened out, and the hand resting on his shoulder went limp, sliding down.

Astarion blinked.  ‘She’s…asleep?’ The sound of her heart slowing to it’s nightly rhythm under his ear confirmed it.  Staring off to the side, head cradled on her chest, he once again felt his world crack and reorganize around him.  Which it seemed to do that more often than he liked with her.

Tav had genuinely meant it. Tav wasn’t initiating sex, or coercing him into something they agreed not to.  All she wanted was to feel his weight on her because she was having trouble falling asleep.

The urge to push himself up and stare at her was strong.  He probably would have if the feeling of her hand resting on his neck, fingers twitching softly as she started to dream, hadn’t been so damn soothing.  Instead he closed his eyes and tightened his arms around her.  ‘Damn woman.’ He thought nearly laughing.  ‘You have no idea what you do to me do you?’

[celestialrealms]

Fun fact: In Barbatos's intimacy storyline in Nightbringer he ends up living with Solomon and MC at Cocytus Hall temporarily. Here's a highlight from his 40 intimacy call:

The way he makes Solomon sit in the corner. 😭 You cannot convince me he didn't raise this man.

[meownotgood]

also I'll keep my thoughts about this in the tags, don't look if you don't want any leaked information, but the video of viktor's chinese voice actor.... have any of you seen it......... because.......

[nguyenfinity]

Every time I draw Mamagi it does AoE damage (I am also in the area of effect)

Lighthearted bonus:

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

if you have some, do you have any headcannons for barnaby?

honestly! not really! i don't have hcs for any of the neighbors!

[daz4i]

ik we talk abt dazai with a cane and that's so good and i need it to happen. but in addition to that. i want it to at any point be acknowledged that he has some chronic pain or long lasting issues from his suicide attempts. please

[lipglossandsacrifice]

( !! THIS IS NOT A CALLOUT. !!)

(you don't have to heed our advice. we simply wish for you to listen.)

(probably the last post from this blog.) (hi! i'm blog mod @thegardengrows-infrozenrain - this was a joint project alongside @living-dead-rockstar's mod, Shell, who otherwise went by @shelldoodlesstuff or @shrimps-fried-rice - formerly @ask-causes-and-curses. i suppose they don't want me to do that animatic anymore, since they've rethemed what was once the main AU blog.) (we'd made these blogs on a whim, they were to run the lilac blog and i was to run the tab blog.) (unfortunately, immediately after some drama where they'd decided they no longer wished to be my friend, they've stolen tab as a kin thing. which sucks, as i, the humblr blog mod, actually have a tab fictive, which we developed shortly after starting this project.) (so if you see any other tab blogs around, specifically blogs run by them, please block them.) (do not give them any interaction on any of their blogs, incredibox related or otherwise - they're doing this to spite a system who's currently in crisis.)

[wereh0gz]

Begging for ppl to understand sonamy isn't canon

[nyxqueenofshadows]

yakuza 3 (sort of) done! thoughts under the cut cos they got quite long. they're a lot more coherent than my kiwami 2 ones cos i made them along the way rather than in a feverish mess at the end, though ofc they contain spoilers for 3 and ig gaiden??

overall thoughts, it's messy and weird and makes some Choices, but it's not a bad game, and the people who write it off as being shit are, imho, wrong. once i got into it i liked it, it introduced some great characters, had some really fun moments, and i'm gonna miss the morning glory kids (yes even riona).

if you're looking at this like when did you change the difficulty??? the bit where you have to run away from the police at millenium tower, fuck that bit so hard, none of the other chases gave me trouble but that one ughhhhh

also i neglected haruka i'm sorry

the combat is harder and more tedious, and i can see why it puts people off, but i find pulling off the combos and counters way more satisfying as a result. like, i tiger dropped lau ka long to finish that fight and it felt *so* good, way more than ending fights with heat actions or whatever has done in previous games. having said that the blocking oh jesus christ the BLOCKING

it’s the place we get the most on kashiwagi pre-y0 especially kiryu’s opinion of him (including the iconic lines about reimen) so you can’t knock it for that.

rikiya buddy i love you but wtf was that substory with natsumi. actually why is he suddenly a dick in all of his side content???? (i know he’s confrontational and that’s just how he is but idk, smth about how he is in the side content feels different). he’s rude to utabori to his face (despite kiryu repeatedly telling him not to), when he meets natsumi again he’s like yo i kept this necklace why are you in tokyo you don’t fit in here come back to okinawa with me, like ????? she clearly has a life she’s built up there (not a good one, i don’t think, but still) and they might have known each other when they were kids but we never get her side of the story on that, only rikiya’s. idk. it’s one of the first things he says to her, that’s a neon red flag if ever i’ve seen one.

also also during that entire scene in asia, kiryu watches rikiya’s reaction to the dancing the *entire* time. is that a bug of how conversations work or was that a deliberate choice or what

MACK buddy why aren't you in this game more

we had a second majima-no-nii-san! from hamazaki of all people! tho having said that i think he was being sardonic. like, he never says it again, and is generally kind of like that. he’ll use polite forms but he’s never being *polite*. lowkey obsessed with his hand on majima’s shoulder in that scene and what it says about his character and their relationship up to that point and how majima has ended up in this kind of position *again*. kiryu leaving - as it always does - fucked so many people over it’s not even funny.

some of the translations bother me. as an english script it’s for the most part pretty coherent and works well enough on its own, but in combination with the japanese it sometimes deviates in ways that change character moments or even just feel weird. like the addition of the puns in the seven mysteries substories is fun, very ace attorney, but sometimes it feels like they step too far (‘getting tight in your britches!’ for ビビった like ???? even ignoring the japanese what is that supposed to meannnnn)

specific moments i was thinking of were the really early line where taichi is like 晩ごはんまだぁ？ and they add in an unnecessary ‘i thought curry was supposed to be easy!’ in the english which then undermines later when they all sit down to eat and are like カレーだ！ like they didn’t actually know what was for dinner. another one is when kiryu leaves rikiya behind in okinawa and tells haruka that he can’t let him come (in various ways, three times). in the english they shake it up a bit by adding ‘it’s my burden to bear’ WHICH i’ll fully admit flows better and is a very kiryu thing to say but i think it shifts the tone of that scene from worry to responsibility? in a way that doesn’t feel quite right in context of the story as a whole. last one where mine calls kiryu a coward when he’s leaving after showing whatever was left of kanda in that box. again, it flows better and lines up with kiryu’s behaviour in later games but doesn’t feel quite right and i think it changes the point mine was trying to make there. there's also the minefield about how mine expresses his feelings about daigo right at the end. BUT i’m a learner this isn’t my job what do i know. they worked hard and faults aside it’s a fun read and they also had to deal with that fuck-awful section of exposition from the politician so no blame here. it’s not like the other games don’t have this, it just feels especially weird in this one to me.

i loved the little wrestling bit. it’s not perfect but it has the kind of heart and good intentions that makes those sections (and yakuza 3 as a whole) really enjoyable for me.

objectively very funny that the text you get congratulating you on all the revelations is from kaoru, and that she’s like hey your blog was very funny, go see my friend bob utsunomiya for your reward. i know it’s mostly game mechanics to make it make sense but is it not the funniest thing to imagine a. that kaoru knows a bob utsunomiya (how did they meet??? why???) and b. that on her breaks between Mystery Police Stuff she’s refreshing kiryu’s blog like what dumb shit is this idiot up to now asdfghjkl tbf his blog can’t be hard to find, it’s literally ‘day in the life of the dragon of dojima’ it’s a miracle he gets anything done ever with how bad he is at being on the downlow

standing on the morning glory beach, especially in the evening/at night and looking up at the sky while listening to the waves roll in is so calming, the first time i got to do it i stayed there for like ten minutes just chilling

some of the animation is genuinely really really good, like saki’s eyes shaking in fear or kiryu’s cheek twitch when he finds out about morning glory, or mine on finding out daigo's alive. idk how much is the work of the remaster and how much was originally there but i really like it

the last three chapters are such whiplash cos it’s like sad, sad, very sad, bulls! sad, very very sad, sad, jet! thumbs up! sad, sad, ANGRY, there is no change in the plan, sad, sad, on the roof, sad, sad, MACHO, things are gonna be fine! oh wait sad sa- please mr richardson they’re trying to have a moment -d sad sad surprise! murder! surprise! alive! done. you know?

idk if i was just hormonal or emotional but saki calling out to nakahara really got to me for some reason. her first word after years of silence was ‘dad’, and that hit me in a way i wasn’t expecting even tho i knew it was coming.

show us the akimoto/mizuki kiss, cowards

that last section was really fun to play for me (aside from that first little bit going up the first couple of floors of the hospital), the music’s great, the combat had (mostly) good pacing, the fights felt challenging in a good way, yeah i was all for it! reinforced for me how much i like mine as a character and wish we’d got to see more of him (but hey, look, if andre richardson survived the fall...?). like, the moment he realises daigo is still alive - and that he was about to kill the man he love- ahem sorry admired, so much - is seared into my brain.

[celibibratty]

I know the idea of the game is to our main characters become an old master one day in a certain moment of their life, but one part of me kinda don't like that?, i like more the idea of after they kill the villans, they become some kinda of badass vigilants/justice gangsters, and continue be like this since they become old(no idea how they pay the bills living in that way?, but it doesn't matter is just a game), idk i just like our main characters more being some kinda of "lone wolf", i think it fits more their style

[terrified-spider]

Okay, so my Call of Cthulhu group (originally my CoS group) have shifted from our CoC game to a Ravenloft campaign, with much more episodic sessions that will be easier for me to prep and run weekly. We're setting it after the events of the CoS campaign, with Ezmerelda returning to van Richten's home in Mordent, using it as a base of operations as she recruits individuals from across the Domains of Dread for adventuring work.

Thanks to it being set within the same universe, NPCs from the pervious game will likely make an appearance, and I get to make some updated designs for them (:

The current list of NPCs carrying over includes:

Ezmerelda, gaunt and tired from a lack of human blood, with some new scars obtained during the CoS campaign but never included in the art I made. She technically made it to the end of the CoS campaign, but not without becoming a vampire and having her skull crushed in. She got better, sort of. Now, her and Erasmus get to hang out in Mordent while she stuggles to find ethically sourced blood.

Escher, who's living his best unlife after leaving Barovia and returning to adventuring, now with Gertruda at his side. I'm going to have to fight like hell to make sure I don't make him look like Astarion, because from what I know of BG3 so far, the two have similar character concepts now, and each look good in purple. Unlike Ez, he's going to be quite well fed, no longer limited to only Strahd for blood.

Gertruda, originally 30 in CoS, now in her 40s, with more life experience having traveled with Escher for a decade. The two get along like a house on fire, and make a (un)living thieving their way across the domains. Escher typically serves as the distraction and Gertruda does the actual pickpocketing or breaking and entering.

[name-that-isnt]

I hope we go back to lorule one day. Ik I never talk about them but I miss yuga hilda and ravio so much. We need a lorule spinoff series, the tale of hilda or something like that. I think about this concept more than I'd like to admit,, 😔

[scribe-of-monsters]

To be honest my main problem with the Renfield movie is the fact that it's a comedy, because Ren as a character is so rarely taken seriously (which we learned from DD, thanks guys) despite his entire arc being extremely tragic and cruel. He is a character that deserved to be taken seriously and treated with respect, but the fact that the movie is written to be a comedy has me worried that they'll try to make jokes out of things they really shouldn't and end up downplaying or mocking his suffering even if it's unintentional. It just seems like this movie could go south real fast, which I hope it doesn't, because a lot of it does seem promising. I hope the writers can tell when to reel the comedy in, and there weren't too many tasteless jokes in the trailer that I saw, but man I dunno, I'm not really sure why they chose Renfield of all characters to make a comedy movie about.

[luvdzu]

ayo, i'm going to fix up some links and making sure everything is organized and neat since the layouts of the weverse and bubble updates are messing me up and i'm confused but i'm fixing them up, old posts will be on queue since there's about 30 drafts of the old posts that i haven't uploaded and then in between these posts will be the new ones yay!