Baldur's Gate 3- What does fried Nautiloid taste like?

[ArmyOfOptimists]

Can I ask the posters here what they would think a "Regill" build would look like for BG 3?

One half wants to be a very basic twohanded fighter (forest gnome because understanding animals and still kicking puppies is 110% Regill) for the authenticity of being a profane (read: not holy rather than unholy) practical warrior with a very pragmatic moral compass. The other wants him to be an oathbreaker paladin due to the expanded roleplaying.

And would you make him a reluctant Dark Urge or rather a Tav? And who in Act 1 would Regill side with, you think? The Absolute are a bunch of moron cultists, but the tiefling refugees are weak and the druids are isolationist idiots. You think he would give into tadpole powers? Ally himself with a certain devil? Would he kill more than a few companions or utilize their skills?

Regardless of class choice, I think he has to be a Polearm Master to emulate the usage of the Gnome Hooked Hammer.

[Anonymouswizard]

Regardless of class choice, I think he has to be a Polearm Master to emulate the usage of the Gnome Hooked Hammer.

Unfortunately he'd have disadvantage on every attack. Bloody 5e.

[Psyren]

Just did Astarion's act 3 quest.

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The fight with Cazador took more tries than it should have, and not because it was hard.

My first couple of tries failed because of the 3-turn timer, and how unclear it was how exactly you interrupt the ritual (short of killing one of the spawn, I mean). Trying to interact with Astarion yields nothing, just the option to move to where he is, and even the context menu didn't bring up what you need. This is the one time in the entire game where you need to manually select the Help action to use it in a situation where it's needed, for some reason - I'm so used to it coming up automatically when it matters that I'd forgotten it was even in there among my action options, and only found out it was what I needed when I googled it out of frustration.

Then it started failing because the game kept crashing when I started attacking Cazador himself. I managed to get that to stop by turning off performance mode... though not consistently, as I still had one more crash after doing that, strangely. Still, it seems to have helped.

Finally, I needed one last attempt because I failed the skill checks with Astarion afterwards. Even with advantage on the Insight check and a strong modifier there, rolled like absolute garbage, and I hadn't thought to save post-fight but before yanking Cazador out of his casket. On the up side, got to see how things go when you do fail that and then refuse to help him - which is him killing Cazador, breaking his staff so you can't free the other imprisoned spawn, and then saying "I'm done with you, I hope you die screaming" and leaving permanently. Yeah, Astarion's really just quite awful without you convincing him to be at least somewhat better than he wants to be, isn't he?

Deciding what to do with all those other spawn was at least a somewhat interesting question, but I wound up letting them go. Need to keep up the idealistic route, even if with that many, it's virtually a statistical guarantee some bad is going to come from doing that.

Also, I kind of feel like there must be some cut/planned but never made content in there somewhere. There were so many books and notes referring to the mines under the place, but it doesn't seem as though you can get to them, and there's that whole room with broken levels that nobody seems to know what to do with online.

Final aside: nice to actually get some use out of that Daylight spell my domain gives me as a freebie. I mean, the Light domain gives me so many awesome things that it's hardly right to complain about a dead spell or two, but Daylight is the deadest of dead spells 99% of the time, so any instance where it's useful is nice to have.

Yeah, that fight isn't too bad when you know what to do, but man is it BS if you go in blind. I actually made a post in the 5e subforum, in the "what can we learn from BG3" thread about it:

Spoiler: Cazador, Act 3

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For this fight, your party should have the juice to take Cazador and his minions down in a straight fight - but you start the fight down a party member because he immediately traps Astarion during the cutscene, and there's a secret timer whereby you have 3 rounds to get Astarion out of the ritual, thus disrupting it. If you fail to do so, Cazador consumes him and ascends to being a much more difficult super-vampire, permakilling your companion in the process and gaining new immunities and abilities. Preventing this requires sprinting over to Astarion and using the Help action, which not only resets the timer until Cazador can down him, it allows him to join you for the combat and make it much easier.

This fight unfortunately runs headfirst into all three of the issues I listed above.

Inadequate Tutorializing: The game does a very bad job of teaching you what you need to do to save Astarion. I don't think any other part of the game even has you practice the Help action, let alone needing to rely on it: a new player might get to this point in Act 3 without ever needing to use the Help action in the entire game; they may not even know it exists! The game should have a point leading up to the fight where you're required to use the Help action to proceed, just so you know where to find it on your bar if nothing else.

Inadequate Telegraphing:There' no clearly displayed time limit on the urgency to get Astarion down, so for players who are unaware of it, they're highly likely to fail the first time and thus need to save scum. He does yell that you need to HELP him down at the start, which would be a good reminder if they had tutorialized Help earlier, but you don't realize you've run out of time until you do and Cazador yells in triumph.

Multiple Solutions: For a ritual this precise (Astarion needs to be incapacitated and immobile in one spot X for Y rounds) there should be a variety of ways to delay or disrupt it. Pulling Astarion out of place directly or via magic is the most obvious way, but I would have liked it if interrupting his connections to the other victims, e.g. body-blocking via summons or using wall spellls actually stalled the ritual rather than simply weakening him. Similarly, daylight/sunbeam should erase his minions (other than the werewolves anyway) even they can't take down Cazador himself. And in the worst case scenario, for an evil playthrough staking Astarion himself before the ritual is complete should be an option too.

It has serious structural issues going in, being a puzzle boss that is neither telegraphed nor tutorialized as one.

Regarding the decision at the end,

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I wiped out the spawn (as Astarion himself termed it, "put them to rest"; I couldn't in good conscience loose 7000 spawn, spawn who are basically feral and canonically feel endless hunger, on the Sword Coast and just hope they all stay underground. If even 5% of them came back up to become killers, that would still be 350 new vampires someone else would need to worry about. For me, saving the ones that were in the ritual chamber itself was plenty.

[Anonymouswizard]

Party time, and the most important question of a playthrough: do I snuggle Karlach or Astarion?

I mean, I'll save beforehand to see if I can nab both, but I'm leaning Karlach now I know she's compatible with my polyamorous husbando.

[Rising Phoenix]

Regarding Astarion's ACT 3 quest

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You can just have him join the fight late. He won't be trapped then. Have him stay back in the shadows and join after the talk is done

[Aragehaor]

Although in practice you're seeing about the same amount of shadow cursed region either way.

Techincally, a little more if your going via the underdark. Assuming you would otherwise not explore and just rush for moonrise.

Can I ask the posters here what they would think a "Regill" build would look like for BG 3?

One half wants to be a very basic twohanded fighter (forest gnome because understanding animals and still kicking puppies is 110% Regill) for the authenticity of being a profane (read: not holy rather than unholy) practical warrior with a very pragmatic moral compass. The other wants him to be an oathbreaker paladin due to the expanded roleplaying.

And would you make him a reluctant Dark Urge or rather a Tav? And who in Act 1 would Regill side with, you think? The Absolute are a bunch of moron cultists, but the tiefling refugees are weak and the druids are isolationist idiots. You think he would give into tadpole powers? Ally himself with a certain devil? Would he kill more than a few companions or utilize their skills?

Build wise, i would say fighter works better with his lore, whereas oathbreaker is more thematic with his pathfinder class/personality (and, also, is more fun in my opinion)

Character wise, Regil was very devoted against demons and chaos in general, The tieflings refugees are weak, yes - but the goblins are chaotic and undisciplined. It could go either way, but i believe it would be considerably more likely for Regill to help the tieflings over helping the goblins, he should get along decently well with Kahga, as i doubt he would have a problem with her goals or methods (There isnt a greater battle with the demons to concern himself with here, so Isolation, while not an optimal ideal, probably wouldnt inherently offend his sensibilities)

I would fully expect him to use the tadpole powers, so long as he did not notice any changes to his thought processes or weakening of his will, I could see him taking the time to test it on a companion first and closely observing them for such changes, but that could prove somewhat unrealistic given that none of the starting squad know each other personally before the game starts. (Additionally, the tadpole is already inside his head regardless, so by the point he could consume a tadpoles power he should already have determined it is unable to influence his will for whatever reason)

...Although your Dream Guardian suggesting he do so could easily convince regill to refrain due to distrust, as Regill is not a trusting individual in any circumstance.

He is perfectly willing to ally with devils, though he may dislike "a certain devil" due to his personality, that probably wouldnt stop him from making deals with him if they were useful, If he rejects using tadpole powers, i would imagine he'd be much more willing to accept the devils initial deal.

Astarion would be killed all but the most favorable of introductions, Karlach would probably be slain unless she is met prior to Wyll and the paladins of tyr, Gale would probably be abandoned to death in the initial "meeting".

Shadowheart keeping secrets would make her more expendable, but not necessarily remove her usefulness as a healer, so she'd probably be fine. Lae'zel would probably be respected somewhat, but be expendable due to Regill only having a tenous grip on her loyalty early on, Wyll would not be respected due to his personality and morals, but he would be used. Especially as his later connections come to light.

If Halsin is rescued, he'd probably not be respected much by regill, but studiously used for his abilites (and of course, being expendable due to a lack of control of loyalty to any greater cause regill is in support of) If the golbins are sided with, Minthara would be respected but incredibly expendable, I wouldnt be surprised if regill eliminated her once her usefulness expired due to her loyalty to the absolute.

Jaheria would probably have regills begrudging respect for her competence if he is not on an "infiltrating the absolute" path, and be derided for her extending trust and morals when on that path.

I havent actually recruited the last companion in any of playthroughs yet, so i cant comment on it.


All of the above is just my opinion of course, and assumes a regill taken from his home setting, rather then a 'homegrown' regill for balduars gate 3.

"Either route will get you there" are options, yes.

Okay?

I had a slight vibe that Halsin was promoting the Pass, maybe because he made special mention of how dangerous the Underdark was, but went Underdark anyway because (a) we had already located it in the course of earlier adventuring, (b) Shadowheart was all perked up to hear mention of Shar stuff, (c) "Underdark" is just way cooler than "Mountain Pass" and (d) I was playing a Deep Gnome so wanted to see how I interacted with an Underdark theme. I assume that, for many people, it would come down to your position on the Shadowheart/Vae'zel thing since the choices are presented as exclusive options (even if they're not).

I meant to go back to the Pass but it got closed off due to other choices and I just shrugged and saved it for Game #2.

Interesting! I got an incredibly different vibe (IIRC, Halsin told me that i really should go to the underdark when i expressed interest in going to the mountain pass)

Its pretty fun that things can come across so differently depending on dialogue choices. Aside from that difference, the remainder of your reasoning is spot on for why i went there in my first playthrough.

Technically, the bulk of both are optional. If you go through the Mountain Pass, you can completely ignore the Cithyanki Creche, which is 90% of the play time of the area, and just move on pretty quickly to the Shadowlands.

Very true, you can go through the mountain pass with only one to two encounters, although doing so does cause the game to warn you that your severely underlevelled (The same message if you try going to the pass early, IIRC)

And the funny thing is, he has that backwards. The Underdark puts you out further from Moonrise Tower than the Mountain Pass, not closer like he says.

Sometimes i wonder if Halsin is an expert on anything outside the confines of his circle and druidic magic.


(Its also possible that they planned for halsin to be correct, but changed things at some point while forgetting to touch up that dialogue, the game has changed deeply since EA, afterall)

[Keltest]

In fairness, the underdark does get you protection from the curse much sooner, offering two Spider Lyres and a band of harpers to point you to last light.

[Jophiel]

Technically, the bulk of both are optional. If you go through the Mountain Pass, you can completely ignore the Cithyanki Creche, which is 90% of the play time of the area, and just move on pretty quickly to the Shadowlands.

I suppose that, technically, you could do Underdark and just blitz across it and up the elevator if you knew where stuff was and didn't care about the content. Which makes you a monster-person but you COULD do it; there's probably only one or two critter fights that way, assuming you roll well when dealing with the people-types.

Party time, and the most important question of a playthrough: do I snuggle Karlach or Astarion?

I mean, I'll save beforehand to see if I can nab both, but I'm leaning Karlach now I know she's compatible with my polyamorous husbando.

In my romance with Karlach, she's still toasty and straight up said that she was cool with me rolling around with Asterion in the meantime but to save some of me for when she gets the engine thing figured out.

Spoiler: Romance-Unrelated Asterion Final Story Chatter

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After my first failed attempt, which was due more to me making a dumb move than anything, I cheesed the Cazador fight with the patented "arrow to the face before he can monologue" technique. He doesn't zap Astarion into bondage and we killed Caz within a round of combat. Took longer to mop up the umpteen bats.

[Zevox]

Huh, looks like I managed to accidentally save two different quests for near-last that turned out to be very closely related.

Spoiler: Act 3

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Those being "help the Hag survivors" and investigating the girl who went missing in the Blushing Mermaid. Was not expecting the girl to be a young child who got eaten by a Hag, given I know from elsewhere that the Blushing Mermaid is a bar known to be popular among rowdy sailors and regularly experiences barroom brawls - who the heck takes a kid that young to a place like that?

Anyway though, while I suspected Mayrina would be among the Hag survivors group and wasn't surprised to find her the leader of it, I wasn't expecting to see Auntie Ethel again like that. I do like that she wasn't really any stronger than she was the first time, it felt like - the only new trick she seemed to have was making her duplicates invisible, which kind of has the side-effect of making the real one a lot easier to target, so bit of a double-edged sword that - the fight was instead made harder by circumstance, between the mushrooms that were keeping her alive and the fact that you want to finish her with a non-lethal blow in order to save the child. Good design. Although it is annoying that, after making sure I non-lethal KOed her mind-controlled subjects outside her lair, they turned out to be dead when I checked on them on my way out. Not sure what caused that.

And now I'm down to the last things on the to-do list. All that's left from here as side-quests go is finding and recruiting Ansur. Well, and finding all that murdered clown's parts, but I don't know if I'll do that, that seems tedious. Beyond those, I'll maybe do a last sweep of the city to see if I come across any quests I missed, and then it's killing Gortash and proceeding with main plot.

Party time, and the most important question of a playthrough: do I snuggle Karlach or Astarion?

Is it even possible to snuggle Karlach at the party? She still can't touch anyone safely at that point.

Regarding Astarion's ACT 3 quest

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You can just have him join the fight late. He won't be trapped then. Have him stay back in the shadows and join after the talk is done

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Blech, that sounds like some meta-gamey cheese nonsense. That'd take all the fun out of it.

[Psyren]

Okay?

Neither route is a "sidequest area" is my point. We were directed to both, just like we were to the Gauntlet.

Party time, and the most important question of a playthrough: do I snuggle Karlach or Astarion?

I mean, I'll save beforehand to see if I can nab both, but I'm leaning Karlach now I know she's compatible with my polyamorous husbando.

IIRC Astarion is poly but Karlach is not.

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Blech, that sounds like some meta-gamey cheese nonsense. That'd take all the fun out of it.

Yeah I've seen so many metagamey cheese tactics for that fight. "Polymorph him before he starts talking!" "Leave Astarion on the stairs!"

When all they needed to do was make it clear the Help action is an expected part of the fight.

[Zevox]

Yeah I've seen so many metagamey cheese tactics for that fight. "Polymorph him before he starts talking!" "Leave Astarion on the stairs!"

When all they needed to do was make it clear the Help action is an expected part of the fight.

Easy enough to do: just make that the default action you can perform when selecting Astarion there. Just like how it becomes the default action when selecting a party member who has been put to sleep by magic, for example. Can't imagine why they didn't.