Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks How many paths? Good, evil, and..? SPOILERS 50hrs

SPOILERS follow. After almost 50 hours in BG3, I believe the complexity and beauty right now is in the dialog choices and their lasting effects in game.

I'm wondering how many distinct major paths are in early access?

I've done a "lawful good" playthrough as a high elf evocation wizard with Wyll, Shadowheart, and Lae'zel. (No, there's no strict alignment in 5e nor in BG3.) Lae'zel was not thrilled with me and didn't open up. I went for 100% exploration on that run and was happily finding things up to around 30 hours.

I then did a "chaotic evil" run as a drow rogue with Gale, Astarion, and Lae'zel. Lae'zel and Astarion loved it. I was pleasantly surprised at how different the interactions were, especially with Lae'zel, Astarion, the goblins, the drow, and others who you'd expect to be evil aligned.

However, there seem to be only a few major decisions:

1. Druid grove: ally with the tieflings and druids, or ally with the drow and goblins.

2. How to navigate the Underdark and get on the boat to the tower.

3. Whether to allow the Illithid tadpole in your head to begin to take over. On my "lawful good" playthrough I didn't engage at all, so I missed all the content gated on using its powers, seeing the lover and the city in flames, etc. Fortunately caught it on the "evil" playthrough.


There are hundreds of micro decisions. Save Volo? Halsin? Owlbear? Engage the devil? Kill Nettie? "Romance"? etc. but they don't result in huge changes to gameplay, cinematics, character development etc. There's great content there, such as the hag attempting to remove your tadpole or Volo's similar "operation".


Are there any other major paths and content?

I feel like I caught most of it with these two playthroughs and it's time to move on to another game until there's a major BG3 EA update.

I have heard there is an option to "side with Kagha" against the Tieflings and get Halsin that way, however judging by what I've read on the forums it involves murdering all the Tieflings singlehandedly and being told to bugger off without a thank you right after.

spoilers:
as far as Halsin says, there are three paths to moonrise towers: one in the underdark, one over the mountainpass (near the goblin camp), and one near where the githyanki patrol is. When you rescue Halsin, he tells you that its smarter to go the underdark route. Minthara the drow leader tells you to meet up with someone at the mountain pass. However, I haven't yet found a questline that would tell me to take the third path. Maybe thats where you would find the githyanki creche, if you are doing Lae'zels quest?

Yep. If you make the Gith patrol leave or kill them Lae'Zel says she wants to take that third path, as that is where she thinks the creche is.

minimum 4 lines

Thanks for the notes. I'm just referring to what's currently implemented. The mountain pass and Lae'zel's quest are not available yet.

Any other major decisions to explore in EA or do we have it covered?

For future readers looking for more to explore, a couple more areas in Act 1 that have significant choices, albeit not for the main plot line:

1. the hag, the sheep, the redcaps, Mariyna, the hidden lair, the husband. There are a lot of options and some very fun alternate resolutions. Very much worth save scumming to explore them.

2. the Missing Shipment, Zarys quest line.

One or two major choices for an act seems fair if the smaller choices are interesting. sadly, most of them are not, and end up being "fight or not fight"

I can see the Hag line and the shipment going into some further affects once we can get to Baldurs Gate proper. Mariyna's brothers say they are from a farm near BG and Ethel's letter to M seems like a hag near there. Additionally I would expect to see the Tiefs in BG if you took that path and some opening of options in that area. Those would all be minor branches though.

Yes, agree that most encounters are fight or not fight regardless of the dialog options, with a heavy leaning towards fight. Hopefully they add non combat xp and more ways to resolve. (Pacifist route in a tactical combat RPG?)

As the outcome of encounters (and the question if you are able to avoid a fight) are always depending on you passing certain skill checks a "pacifist route" will only be possible by extensive save game scamming.
Even under optimal conditions you often have only a 50% chance to avoid combat.