Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Decrepit Village - What is it?

So I was really taking my time looking at everything in decrepit village, and now I'm confused more than ever but what that place really is. As I'm walking around and looking, I realized that it really isn't a village at all. There are two structures, or buildings, that are kind of like shacks. They aren't really homes, And everything in the supposed village looks like it was constructed using bones from giant serpent monsters. There are even two full skeletons of these monsters on the beach. The only two buildings are made of wood, and only one of these looks like maybe a place where someone would sleep. The other looks more like a workshop. There is a collapsed mining tunnel on the upper level to the east of the village.

As I'm looking at it, I realized that this place looks more like it was once an orc place, or maybe goblins or hobgoblins. Some sort of primitive race. It also doesn't look like a village. To me it looks more like one person or family settled there, made a single structure to sleep in and a single structure to work in. There are no tents or anything. So it doesn't seem like this place was the home of anyone at any point in time except maybe a single small group of people. I could see maybe three or four people at most living there.

What's also weird to me is that although most of the place looks like it was made by a primitive race like orcs, the two buildings that exist look like they were made by humans or a similar race from the surface. It doesn't look like an elven structure or an orc structure or anything like that. So I'm just utterly confused by this place. Who first settled it? Is it just an outpost for the gnomes before they were recently captured by the duergar? I mean, it looks cool, but I'm just getting mixed signals from it. I feel like there's a good story there but no definite telling of said story. There's just not enough clues to piece it together.

The size of the villages/number of buildings and building "type" (I mean as what is a "home" and a "workshop" and so forth) doesn't mean anything. I mean that literally, it never does in video games, and BG3 is not an exception. They should not be thought of as trying to depict the entirety of a village or town, more the spirit of it. Look at the Moonhaven village for another BG3 example. It has an apotechary, a smith, a school, and a mill, and one barn/warehouse outside of it. The three first could be assumed to also house the owners of them. The mill, however, doesn't even have a house for the miller. And there is a complete lack of farms and fields who would actually go to that mill or need the services of a blacksmith. No other inhabitant's dwellings. Where did the children that went to the school live? And so forth.

It's not a direct, realistic depiction. It's the same in 99.9% of all games, but particularly open world games, since with them you can't handwave the missing parts as being off-screen. But, still, it's just scenery. And like scenery on a theatre stage is only built on the side facing the audience, because that is what is relevant, we only get to see what is relevant and have to extrapolate the rest on our own.

It sort of was built by one family. Underdark societies tend to be close knit and survivalist. Svirfneblin live in intense, crowded conditions. A mining expedition would probably live, work, sleep and eat right next to each other. They live cheek by jowl and are obsessive about their work. Gems! Svirfs love them like a Dragon loves it's hoard. Physical or emotional discomfort is nothing compared to finding and working gems.

Calling it a village is misleading, it's a mining camp. They support themselves with fishing and foraging (not growing or raising), and construct with what comes to hand. There are no trees - that's an important part of world-building in the Underdark - so other resources come to the fore. It's a camp - essentially temporary in nature.

It's is an old camp too. I'm sure I remember one of the journals mentioning that this was an older excavation, and they've found that it wasn't mined out after all.

While i agree with Dexai ...
(I mean just look at Blighted Willage ... also just 3 buildings, barn and windmill ... yet on world map it allready looks biger)

I simply need to ask ... what is the purpose of building whole big town in the Underdark? You know ... the place that is litteraly crowling with huge deadly beasts, whole nations of slavers, or countless other threats ... its it more perceptive to build just basic stuff and being prepared to leave fast and prefferably unseen?

I don't know. When you look at blighted Village, there are more buildings than three. The blacksmith shop, the apothecary, the school building are the only three you can really explore. There is the windmill, and there is a building you can't enter across from the blacksmith. Then there is the building where the bug bear and the ogre female are being nasty. So I get what you're saying that there isn't much to blighted Village. But it is a very old and decrepit ruin, so there could have been more buildings even where the nautiloid crashed which have fallen into ruin or simply don't exist anymore or whatever. Still, I agree that the entire Village seems way too small even if it's like a fishing Village or something similar.

But the main thing that puzzles me about the decrepit Village in the underdark is that it looks like it was maybe originally some sort of orc camp but then you have some more human-like buildings. Of those buildings, only one of them looks like it maybe was a place to sleep, but it is a very small shack. The point I was trying to make is that it seems like there's some sort of larger story to this Village but they're giving you really no clues about the story. There's lots of Bones including two large serpent skeletons, a collapsed mine, and so forth. I would just like to have a little bit more to give me a better idea of what this place is really all about.

I think the reason you might suspect that it is an orc camp comes from the materials used: bones and hide. I actually think that those who made the village had just used the available materials. The orcs also do not strike me as famed miners: this should be a gnome job. At least the recent addition of it.

I disagree with this... in my opinion most games suceed at giving the feeling it's ""real"" villages/locations, especialy open world games that have a lot of surface to set up various elements.
Some games show everything (open world games) and some games just show you what they want you to see (PoE, Pathfinder,...).

BG3 (and DoS) wants to show everything like an open world game but doesn't want to be open world... The inconsistencies of the map are clearly a consequence of their "no loadings but no open world" map design philosophy IMO.
This is very specific to Larian games and TBH, I really don't like it. Fast gameplay VS coherent world building.

Unless you can give me a few good examples for this I have to disagree. If you look at Skyrim for example no city comes even close to having 100 NPCs when something like Solitude or Whiterun should realisticly have at least 10.000 meaning they don't even have 1% of the minimum of inhabitants they should have.

I was not talking about NPC or the "story" of the locations (that makes you think Witherun should have 10.000 inhabitants).

In Skyrim Whiterun may look like a village more than a town but it looks like something that could exist. There's a decent number of buildings, the scale of everything is pretty good, there are fields arround and activities, village squares and so on...
Things may not be designed like they would have been built in real life but it looks "like something real" and pretty much everything required for a location to be called a town or a village is there.

Kingdom Come Deliverance is probably the best exemple of an open world builded on reality and every villages doesn't have 100 NPCs + tons of buildings.

You think something like the blighted village couldnt exist? Where I'm from theres lots of places that are like 3 houses that are a few kilometer away from the next city and the shops could easily be explained by the proximity to Waukeens rest. Its also not that different from something like Riverwood which has only like 5 families but still a smithy and a general goods store, the only real difference is that there currently arent any people there.

I'm going to need to see something from the source material that says this doesn't qualify as a village please, thanks.

So, I don't have a problem with either place being called a village. That's not the issue I have. Not really. These places are both very old. We know that Moonhaven was destroyed in 1371, 120 years prior to the events of the game. It could be that there were LOTS more buildings. It was not necessarily a farming community, so not having farmlands is also not a big deal. They could have been fishers and hunters. Moonhaven is in a forest, and the forest might be small, but it could have been much bigger, once upon a time. Either way, it was a small town, and based on documents found in the Selunite Outpost, it is likely that the town was very young when it was destroyed.

The logbook for the Selunites mentions that the temple was founded by Jarrus and Morna. When it was founded, settlers were also mentioned that the Selunites were supposed to be guiding. What other settlers could they be referring to if not Moonhaven? So, it is most likely that Moonhaven was founded at the same time.

Jarrus then messes up and gets himself and his fellow Selunite Initiates killed. The temple is sealed, etc. All this would have been roughly around the same time as Moonhaven, Ketheric, etc. So, it is probable and likely that shortly after the incident with Jarrus, Ketheric rose to power with Shar and came and wiped out Moonhaven and the temple. The Harper crimes list mentions three crimes. Murder, slavery and the desecration of temples most holy, implying Ketheric was the one who took people from Moonhaven as slaves, murdered a bunch of them and wiped out the temple.

This, I have no problem with because they have given us information and clues to piece it all together. Decrepit Village, however, they have not. That's why I'm bringing it up. It's kind of this weird place. Could have had a lot more buildings once upon a time. Who knows? It looks very old and if you hover over things they are rotting. Some areas look like they've been buried by landslides, etc. The mine has been collapsed. Dead gnomes and duergar are near the mine. So, one could assume that the gnomes were mining and either collapsed the tunnels to keep the duergar from what they were claiming for themselves, or the duergar collapsed it on the gnomes withing.

Was Decrepit Village Expedition #42 as mentioned in Meerna's journal? Did the gnomes build the village, as some seem to think? If so, why'd they use bone? Where'd they get it from? Where did those two giant behir-like skeletons come from? Were they there for ages? Did some other race build the village and the gnomes just used what was there for their mining expedition? It certainly doesn't seem like drow built it, for it's too primitive and crude for them. There are two buildings left standing, but they are wooden and appear more like surface buildings. So, did the Selunites build those when they were exploring the Underdark under Jarrus?

So many questions, but no real clear answers. Not even really that many clues.

If Moonhaven weren't a farming community it wouldn't have a mill.

You pick:
- How about some willage that was build about the crypt ... unless you believe that they build a crypt to worship god of the dead so far from their homes and never builded anything nearby ... i dunno how about you, but i dont know many cemeteries abandoned far from the city.
- How about that fisherman willage the fisherman was talking about?
- How about people who founded Waukeen's rest?
- How about Baldur's Gate? I mean 10 days is quite far, but not that far so nobody would ever show nearby.
- And last but not least ... how about litteraly anyone from around whos house simply isnt on map, since they are not important for this particular story?

Ok. But again. 120 years without anyone tending anything. Makes sense that most of the former village has likely vanished into obscurity, especially since there were cataclysmic things that happened on a grand scale. That's my point. I could see maybe only a few buildings being all that remains. Ever seen a ghost town? Depending on the circumstances, there may be very little left to show anyone lived there, especially if a tornado tore through it at some point.

I'm not saying it couldn't exist, I'm saying it doesn't look like a village and the life of it.
There's only 3 houses, another one built under rocks (or maybe stones have grown on it, it seems like a better explanation when you look at it), another small one but without any door and a storage outside the walls.
To cross this village you only need 15 seconds, which mean its longest length is +- 40 meters.

What life could there have been in such a village ? There have always been 8 adults at best.
It looks like a hamlet or some kind of domain (not sure if "domain" suit well in EN) with an unusual variety of activities.

Don't get me wrong I like a lot the "models" and the overall design of it but it's too small according to me to be a beleivable village. It lacks at least 3 or 4 houses and a field for the mill.

Again, kinda missing the point. Moonhaven has some clues about it; when it was built, who lived in it, etc. Nothing really makes sense with Decrepit Village. My request is that they provide us with a bit more story with it. I'd like to have one.

If not. Whatever. There can be map locations that are just a mystery. I just want to know the story. It's a compliment to the designers. They have created something that has piqued my interest. I'd like to know more. Right now, it doesn't add up.