Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion [spoilers] I really hate the Steel Watch Foundry

Wulbren acted like I murdered everyone and Barcus threw a temper tantrum, refusing to talk to me ever again despite the fact I saved them both several times. There should have been an option to explain they died fighting and not act like I just murdered them all. I agree it makes the prison rescue seem less impactful as well.

Raphael fight, I did this one without the Npcs as I found the foundry first and the sub second.

You are matched against 3 steel watchers and 12? 80 health oathbreakers and 3 captains. I believe they total to 1000? health, Raphael is 666.

Tips: steel watchers take 2X lightning, and must be disarmed by fighter or you hard wipe. Save scummed until I stealth disarmed with Laz. Paralyze or hold person guards and shove them into steel watcher bombs.

Trick captain to teleport to top ledge, shove them to death.

Have paralyze poison and shock hand, reactions are hard blocked, and leave them unable to heal 50% health twice

Have fun on steel titan.

the blind gnome died straight away and didn't get to plant the bomb. But it turns out you can use Speak With Dead to get a self-destruct code from him.

I had everyone use misty step and the use dimension door to get the gnomes to a safe place. I then used insect plague and blade barrier to take down the existing groups. But the suicidal gnomes ran into my trap and returned to soloing groups of 5.

Which is reminds me of the DOS2 oil rig fight - you have trap the suicidal guy behind barrels or he runs right into the fire.

The Iron Throne is also part of the quest to disable the steel watchers. If you want to blow up the factory but save the workers you need to first rescue the gnomes from the Iron Throne.

In theory - but the gnomes will thwart your attempts to save them. You'll see what I mean by aesthetics when you get to this point the factory looks like a 19th century factory with some parts that could have only been made in the 20th.

I enjoyed the Iron Throne as a bit of change of pace, and managed to get most of the hostages out on my first playthrough without knowing what to expect. The main thing I found confusing here was on the approach when there was a message from Gortash telling me to turn around or he'd destroy the facility. It wasn't clear to me that there would be an opportunity to save people if I didn't turn back: I'd have liked a bit of reassurance when picking whether to progress or not that things were still salvageable and I'd not done something earlier on that meant I'd set myself up to fail.

Back in the foundry, the battle upstairs was okay-ish. I'd still have preferred the gnomes to put more distance between themselves and the enemies, and the blinded gnome did die. But at least everyone else survived without me having to nanny them.

Downstairs was a complete washout. The battle was already in progress when I got down there, with a bunch of clumps of enemies each attacking 1-3 gnomes so no real opportunity to use AoE spells/bombs to thin out enemy numbers early on to minimise casualties. Though frankly I might as well have just blasted them as all the gnomes died anyway. Even the guy who survived to the end of the battle got taken out when the final Steel Watcher blew. As I experienced it in my first playthrough, I can understand why this would be unbearably frustrating if someone were determined to save everyone - or indeed anyone - against all the odds. I just found it fairly disappointing that the setup at the start was so balanced in favour of the enemies and against the gnomes, and that the gnomes' AI didn't have them prioritise putting distance between themselves and enemies more.

I am assuming, by the way, that if I sneak past and don't trigger the cutscene upstairs with Toobin after rescuing the hostages and just go plant the bomb, then the Gondians would die along with everyone else. If that's not the case, then we could do with some sort of hint in game that the gnomes would know to escape in time even if I don't talk to them.

Obviously, if saving the Gondians isn't an issue, this would all be a hell of a lot easier! Or if it were possible to sneak back into the Foundry and tell Toobin and one of the gnomes downstairs to give me 5 minutes to plant the bomb then just make a run for it without trying to fight more than necessary, though I guess it's reasonable that my raid on the Iron Throne put the facility on high alert.

Not saving anyone on the level 2 doesn't trigger anything. If your protect Toobin after the explosion against Iron Hand (or whatever the other gnome faction is called), the quest description still states you saved Gondians. It seems saving gnomes on the level 2 is not expected by the game at all.