she is just dead meat in my playthroughs. So hard pass.
There's a possibility you're missing something here.
If you side with her, and bunk with her, and later choose to focus on her lust rather than fear, and pass a skill check, she doesn't try to kill you
so there's a lot of potential for Act 2+ possibilities with the character
I don't care, I'm not interested in evil cult leaders and I have zero interest in getting cosy with that drow, she is highly uninteresting and even annoying to me. It amazes me, that this character has so kann fans ( it amazes me with Astarion too, who I even like less than Minthara). As far, as I'm concerned, she is and stays dead meat, I only want her Amulett of Misty Steps.
Well, I share the same opinion, but not everyone is the same. Some want to enjoy an evil character/romance expecting to have something like a "romance" with evil characters. Until they realize that they will not have any sort of good endings and start blaming the developers. It happened in some games and ppl still think evil path, etc is more interesting which is nice to have this choice. So, let them try and see how exactly Evil is. Ad I hope Larian can make sure the Evil path has some very nasty ending/consequences, especially for "romances".
But again, now that I think about it, Larian made the worst, and the most evil ending in DOS2 their canon and lead to the best ending for the world. hmmm.
I think it's highly likely you can eventually influence most of the evilish characters(probably not Minthara, though), so that they're not doomed, and/or total assholes towards the PC, and maybe even adopt a less evil worldview. It would be a tad unconventional, if they didn't add this degree of companion malleability in relationships.
Also in BG2 Throne of Bhaal, they basically treated the Bhaal taint as some sort of harmless 'god juice', since assuming the divine essence and position of Bhaal, lord of murder, had zero effect on your being. Basically if you were good up to the ending, you remained so, despite being a god of murder. So along these lines, it wouldn't surprise me, if they decided to "respect player choice" by adding some convoluted plot twist(Like making it so, that one of the dead three is ultimately pulling the Mind flayer cult's strings, not the mind flayers), where aligning with Minthara and the cult can ultimately be beneficial, since you're not destined to become flayer food.
I sincerely hope that will not be the case, though.
The promise of being led to death is reason enough to follow.
