Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Least favourite encounter!

Thinking about my favourite moments, made me think of my least favourite ones too. And seriously, I just needed one of these fav lists I could answer in a sentence (or five):

Act 1, mud mephits. No, just no, they explode, the cover you in mud, they procreate before your eyes. Their tree friends are not much better. Just no. And the worst thing is: Poor Shadowheart is usually out of spell slots by the end so she can't even give the whole gang a bath.

Honourable mentions: The honour mode Shadow-Cursed Shambling Mound in act two, saved from being my most hated by the sole virtue of being optional. The final battle, saved by at least feeling narratively significant.

My least favourite encounter are Harpies ...
I mean its well written kinda fun thing sure ... except keeping that kid alive is sometimes super hard, and its no fun to watch my whole group get charmed turn after turn after turn ...

Yes, i know there are spells to prevent it ...
And yes, i almost allways forget to use them in advance. xD

Oscars Quest in act 3, no questions. I just don't save him anymore, he doesn't deserve it. He nearly kills his new wife and torments another one even after death, because he makes everything about himself. The little piece of crap can stay a Zhentarim slave for all I care. I deal with the Mystic Carrion to help the polite zombies.

Cazador: the fight is entirely unfun and part of why I don't like that quest at all. It's just a slog going through the masses of undead.

The Harpies are quite annoying. Mostly because bad rolls can completely ruin you.

Nere fight can be annoying too since again, there's more chance to get ruined by an unlucky charm (Now also with the potential to get punted into lava)

The multi-Mindflayer fight if you opt to save Zevlor. More charms are more fun (NOT).

The Death Shepard duo in Mountain Pass. Their infinite resurrections make it just super annoying because you have to kill both Shepards at the same time as a result, while all the ghouls (Including the one that's farting out the Stinking Cloud) get free reign because again, you can't take them out because free action resurrections just bring them right back...

Oscar himself does not torment anyone - the ghost of his ex-girlfriend does. If you talk to her, it becomes known that she is the “main evil” in this situation. She committed suicide not because of Oscar, but because of her own mental problems. Oscar's mistake was to “take it personally” and that because of him the ghost was unable to get peace and now she is taking revenge on him and his wife. If this situation is resolved by sending the ghost to rest, Oscar comes to his senses (and he did not wish to harm his beloved wife, he was possessed by the ghost and was under her control) and the couple goes on to live a happy normal married life. The player, of course, authorizes the quest solely at their discretion, but I just don't think that Oscar's mistake with the ghost of his ex deserves such a serious punishment of two people at once (Oscar's wife, who loves him, will also suffer in this case).

My least favorite encounter in the game is rescuing the Gondians from Foundry. It's very, very hard to make them all stay alive - they just do everything to die. This fight is realistically the hardest in the game. I realize that the problem is my personal perfectionism and the death of one Gondian will not lead to the failure of the quest, but still, how great it would be if you could force them not to take part in the battle. If allied NPCs were under the player's control and could be pulled away from combat to safety, things would be much easier. In the aforementioned case of the boy and the harpies, it probably makes sense that the boy goes to the harpies, he's charmed, but NPCs in their right mind, it seems to me, could have stayed out of harm's way.

The girl was forced to stay on the material plane because Oscar made her suicide about himself and made a deal with Mystic Carrion to bring her back, so he can figure out, if the suicide wass his fault. That's pretty shitty behavior in my opinion, plus, I just don't enjoy the quest, similar to the others I listed above. If you see it differently, suit yourself, Asnka asked, what we don't like and I gave my opinion, no need to get into a discussion over it.

Oscar didn't make her suicide, he didn't matter to her at all, she suicide for her own personal reasons, unrelated to Oscar. She talks about it herself and is angry at Oscar for thinking that he was the reason. About the Mystic Carrion deal - yes, it was a bad decision on his part. Alright, I don't want to argue, everyone can perceive this quest as they like, it was just a clarification about the plot of the game.

My least favorite encounter is the whole ghost house encounter, the side quest for Oscar in Act 3 and only because my game has had tendencies to crash during it, most of what has been fixed on Larian's end thankfully.

After patch 7 it is the Bulette in Honor Mode.

Because it pushes everything towards the same type of builds. All other encounters can be dealt with by using your builds creatively in different ways, but the Bulette is all about Great Weapon Master/Sharpshooter or some variant of Lightning Sorcery builds. Everything else is pointless.

Nere: I hate the way he Thanos blips your allies with his legendary action. The way that forces changes in how and when I feel safe attacking him is annoying.

Balthazar: You get a necrotic AoE, and you and you! The endless resurrections, his mobility, and even worse yet if you stick to siding with him you get a far more difficult battle that shuts down your dedicated spellcasters at the start of it.

Gondians: "The quickest route to freedom is exploding an oil barrel in your own face. Or standing idle in front of ladders. Gond HATES when his worshippers have a sense of self preservation." I feel like I spend the majority of the Iron Throne encounter skipping my turns, waiting on them.

Oliver: Necrotic AoEs are great, aren't they? That whole fight feels specifically like it's made to punish melee users.

Orin: In a change of pace, I have been getting a glitch for about a year that causes her not to attack Durge while in Slayer form. She'll do Sanguine Lash as a reaction, but she won't spend actions on attacking. This makes the fight literally so easy that I can't lose unless I actively try to. I don't remember the last time I had a non-glitched Durge/Slayer Orin battle.

I hate those things that garrotte and then teleport your characters far apart from each other during the fight. Meazels I think.
No shot I was not prepared

Millenia Old Mutant Ninja Gits

Oh, the Meazels. >_< They are especially deadly if you haven't any shadow protection yet.

That's a good point about the Bulette, papercut_ninja. Although I felt that it isn't such a major boss that you would reskill your whole party for it, but more of a case in which half of the gang cheers on the other half while they do they do the hard work.

Lady Jannath house is also the most unstable portion of the game for me, if it is haunted, which is a little sad.


Ha, yes I had one of them run away from the ladder once. I mean we did leave some loot behind where he was heading to, but priorities my friend, pirorities! They could benefit from a Staying alive 101 manual.

With the Iron Throne, I never had problems, but the factory is a Gondian suicide nightmare. I mostly focu now on keeping Toobin alive for that sweet come together afterwards, when Barcus takes control of the Ironhands and reach the hand of friendship to Toobin and the Gondians (that would go under favourite moments - everything Barcus really)

The battle in the basement at the Foundry isn't as much of a combat encounter as it is a puzzle involving yeeting gnomes, with a bit of side activity of fighting.

I hated that in my first campaign, had pretty much most of my party silenced and teleported alone. But in my second campaign we saw them all in advance, cast slow on them all, and they only managed to get into a couple of garotting positions and teleported one person away to where I could reach them in a single move

Confined places with several levels (like the tollhouse, or the drunken kobold cellar) You spend 5 minutes fighting and 30 minutes camera turning, moving up and down, while trying to see your opponent instead of a wall, pillar or the roof.

Nice! I always anticipate them now, but yeah the first time was terrible. It was a legitimately scary fight in the game for me though, which isn't a bad thing.

I agree with a lot of what folk have said here.

I really like the concept of the poltergeists and curses in Lady Jannath’s house and it’s very atmospheric but just *so* frustrating with the multiple levels. Not as bad now I know what’s going on, but the first time I had no idea why my party kept being blasted about and had gone in with a party without any way to combat the cursed objects. I suppose fair enough that I had to run ignominiously away and come back better prepared, but the blasts are just way OTT.

The Steel Foundry is another one where I like the idea but I agree the execution is annoying. Especially downstairs. I’m all for the Gondians taking on their own fight, and for freedom to come at a cost for some of them, but while I think their AI might be a bit better than it was it’s still pretty poor, and the fact that some of them start off so outnumbered in groups of enemies shows they planned their uprising very poorly. And in my last playthrough, one of the guards dropped a detonator after all my party had used their turns so I could do nothing but wait while all the Gondians pointlessly fired off ineffective spells while their doom approached (does the game say they can’t touch the detonators with their collars on? You’d have thought such talented engineers would be able to disarm the detonators themselves).

And yes, the mud mephit fight in act 1 is a pain.

And the final battle is somewhat of a slog. The bit up the top when one has fallen out with the Emperor I find particularly anticlimactic, as it seems the best way to deal with that is simply to ignore the fight and leg it up to the portal.

I kinda like the mud mephit fight. On round 2 or 3, there usually are a bunch of them clumped together. Now at lvl 4 we don't have good AoE spells (like fireball) yet, but with focussed missile fire on one of the younger ones, you can make it explode and wound all the others around it. I always find that a very gratifying thing to watch.