I noticed that after the initial fight at the entrance of the Grove astarion suggests to immediately leave because most likely more goblins will come. Issue with this is if you do so you will not know about the auntie Ethel option, nor would you know about priestess gut. Do you even know halsin is a healer at that point? And finally if you do follow astarion advice why would you then go into a full camp of goblins considering you're trying to avoid goblins in the first place. And then what, the only options left are the gith and Raphael which you can't do in ea. You have a map full of places that you cannot explore cause goblins!
To be fair, if this was the full game it might be perfectly reasonable to just say "fuck this" and head for the creché so just because it doesn't make sense in EA doesn't mean it couldn't make sense in the larger scope of the finished game
All of this. If you do end up getting to Minthara and not already started butchering them, she doesn't offer anything. Hell the only way I knew allying with her is a thing bc I saw on the internet you can. How is a person who isn't looking supposed to know? You don't. The game doesn't tell you in anyway, instead you're made to fight them with your companions and other npcs you meet telling you how evil they are. The only way I didn't get in a fight is I played drow and the gatekeeper was like "drow coming through let em go". No dialogue persuasion or anything. I was gearing up for a fight.
But in the end I got nothing. A companion left me (rightfully so, I like this part) but in the end I got nothing at all. No power, no loot from the drow, and she just peaces out. I guess I became a homicidal maniac for the drow booty.
I snuck into the goblin camp and kinda just got tolerated there (I guess they take all kinds though I'm pretty sure I was the only Dwarf there. Which was commented on once or twice which was a nice touch), and when I met up with Minthara she immediately recognizes me as a True Soul. I can then *volunteer* to go torture a guy to find out where the Grove is, or just offer to tell her and then get told to go kill them. No promises of anything at all so to me it seemed 100% "evil for the sake it". Figured the loot would be better in Goblin camp so I killed them all, not just the men but the women and children too (yeah, felt a bit bad about murdering those Goblin kids to be honest) and the loot was definitely worth it
