Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General About the "evil" path.

Yes, Halsin will attack you in your camp along with some animals the next time you rest if he's still alive after the siege if you sided with the goblins, even if he was still locked up by the goblins and you never even met him.

And bringing Sazza to Minthara will cause the siege to start as soon as you talk to Minthara. That's automatically going to lock you out of basically everything in the camp you don't take care of right then and there while you are there, as well as everything in the Druid grove you haven't yet resolved if you side with the goblins (and a fair bit even if you don't, like the Shadow druids plot). So taking the logical route of finishing the quest your are on and talking to Minthara will lock you out of a ton of content. Ditto if you follow one of the other main incentives to go to the goblin camp and talk to Spike on Wyll's behalf (iirc you can also interrogate the prisoner even if Wyll isn't there or you haven't recruited him) Because Spike will tell Minthara on his own after the interrogation if you didn't kill him.

For this reason I usually save Sazza/Spike for basically last on my playthroughs, because you basically can't do anything in the goblin camp afterwards, and even a fair bit of grove content is unavailable even if you side with the Tieflings after that point. Heck. Even the purely utilitarian loss of access to the merchants at the two locations is incredibly inconvenient, since iirc you are left with Blurg+Omelum as your only permanent vendor options after that point if you sided with the goblins. (Zhents, Dwarven, & Duergar merchant are all themselves temporary)

Two of the main reasons to go to the camp/major items of content there....potentially lock you out of a huge amount of content with no warning. Imagine if just talking to Kahga triggered the Rite of Thorns or the 'Druids attack Tieflings' cutscene on your next rest or next return to the grove. Yeah, you technically have a window to run around and do 'everything' in the grove before that hits, but that's a very metagame-y solution to a problem that most players wouldn't know was coming, and I'm pretty sure that most players here are pretty thankful that there isn't a easily-triggered 'endgame' scenario in the grove that can be triggered by talking to an npc that all the other npcs point you towards like there is with the goblin camp.

Huh! I’ll have to see if I still have a save and try that again. I know I ended the day and went back to camp because I saw Volo and spoke to Gale afterwards, but perhaps I didn’t actually rest. Thanks!


Ah, I see I think. I confess that the one and only time I spoke with Minthara without saving Sazza I just killed her there and then, so didn’t realise there was possibly even more content than I’d found already. Thanks again, and I’ll try in a future run.

I guess it does make sense, though, that having Sazza with you means Minthara finds out the grove location and forces you into a decision there and then whether to kill her or let the raid preparation commence. And to my mind Sazza does give you a fair enough warning that they’ve been looking for the grove and she’s hoping to be able to share the location so her gang can attack.

It's just a weird quest in general, IMO. 'Find the location of the grove' But as the player, you find the 'hidden' grove well before you find the goblin camp. So you can rescue a goblin who knows the location of it, and you can get the location of the grove out of the prisoner...knowledge that you, the player already know. It really doesn't feel like a quest that you ever actually, well quest for, since you already have the solution to the quest fall in your lap basically a the beginning of the chapter, and don't get the actual 'quest' until later, which basically renders the method of acquiring the information (a potentially interesting quest) meaningless, which is a shame because Sazza/Spike constitute a sizeable chunk of the goblin-related content in the game.

Which would be disappointing by itself, except for the way completing either Sazza or Spike's quest (or just telling Minthara the information you already know at any point) immediately brings the conflict to a head. Goblins really need something else going on at the camp you could sink your teeth into. Something substantial like the Shadowdruid quest (which itself has a rather disappointing outcome for evil players) You can literally start the goblin/grove conflict endgame on your first talk with Minthara, and do it unintentionally.

I'm still considering my thoughts about the evil path, but I just want to point out that:

Talking to Minthara with Sazza does not automatically trigger the grove raid. There are three possibilities:

1. You can end up attacking Minthara. This does not trigger the raid.
2. You can agree to help Minthara, whether or not you're being sincere. This does trigger the raid.
3. You can tell Minthara that you're not ready yet and have things to do first. This does not trigger the raid.

So, two out of three options resulting from the conversation with Minthara do not actually trigger the raid on the grove.

I'm not sure killing Minthara really counts though? Killing her excludes the possibility of siding with her and resolving the conflict in a pro-goblin camp manner. If the raid brings things to a head and forces you to choose between siding with Minthara and siding against her, then killing her before is a pretty much the same thing.

just how evil do you want to be? tigger the raid = you still have time to drop some of those firewine 'gifts' inside or outside the grove walls and one last chance to change sides before the real battle starts... killing every kid in sight [a different thread] puts a certain Drow in the mood which is currently the only way to get 69 so yes evil does have its special rewards

the quick rewards means that go to bad end quickly--"the path is always smooth, if it leads your player character to the hell"

"the evil" means neutral evil, the goddess of absolute path.
and i do think Astarion is a neutral evil one.

Wich is actualy quite funny ...

One playthrough i decided to break the story ...
So i "joined" Tieflings, and attacked Kagha ... game sadly dont really recognize when you are attacking "firendly"(Green) targets directly ... so i was totally able to kill every single Tiefling during that battle before i finished hostile Druids ...
Result?
Druid Grove completely wasted ... not single person (except stupidly imortal Tiefling Kids) left alive ...

Then i traveled to Druid Grove and freed Halsin ...
His reaction? "You did what you had to do friend, Grove is safe and thats what matters most."

> I mean ... just made your mind dude.

---

BTW question to people who are talking here about what consequences should or should not certain actions (and potential alies) have ...
You dont read datamining threats much huh?

I apologize if I don't know exactly what you mean. Minthara's been mentioned. But aside from her I can't think of any other members of the goblin camp that have any new lines attributed to them 'down the road' in datamined stuff. Including
I guess there's Shadowheart-related stuff with
Tieflings on the other hand, there's a *ton* of content

Yup this one.
In last Chubtlot video, there was about half hour recorded voiceacting. :3

Good catch. I didnt even think about Shadowheart at all ...
But now when you mention her ...

Yeah ... i gues we can certainly agree that there is lots of potential in this group, no argue about that.

True ...
But that is hardly related to qualities of any option from any quest ... seems more like question of pure personal prefferences to me.

Also, from what we see around Goblins vs. Grove quest ...
It seems to me like Larian really wants to give us option to walk, well not exactly middle ground, more like screw both parties.
- I mean nothing is stoping you from returning to Goblin camp and wipe it out ... not sure why would anyone do that, but its possible!
- Aswell as mentioned abowe, you can seemingly pick Grove side and kill Goblin leaders ... after you wipe whole Grove and kill everyone in it, and yet the game will think you are good guy.
> So i would dare to say that your decision in Goblins vs. Grove quest ... will not determine your side here, or at least not "irreversibly" ... but thats just my speculation.

great architecture, a fine job.

I do hope the game designers can have a look this message.

Lol did that once....pretty lonely in the EA world after that.

fighting for and against the grove still = evil path... killing one group or the other before the final grove fight is also the evil path & the goblin prisoner rescue is my favorite side quest

imo its the 'good' path that tends to be just paint by numbers... which is fine too

I have a problem with how stupid the whole thing is with using the tadpole. Even Lord Voldemort, with how psychotic and power hungry he was, had enough sense to learn how Hocruxes worked, before he started splitting his soul into 7 different pieces. Our character can't even express an interest in learning how to control it like Astarion, and our overall goal remains to find a healer to remove it. Right now, everything associated with the evil playthrough feels like it was thrown in there because somebody over at Larian said they had to, but no one actually wants to make it satisfying.

Isnt that difference that Voldemort had source of every and any information right before him, while our Tav have no idea where to even look for it?

Voldemort had to piece every information together very slowly and painstakingly. And he had the sense to only act, after he knew everything, unlike evil Tav ( and I can't believe, I basically used Voldy as a good example anywhere)

Well i didnt say it was fast.

The point was that he was at school ... something he find in some old book, something through talking to not too carefull profesor, etc.

What do we have? Forest, and lots and lots and lots of people who either have no idea what is happening to us, or they refuse to tell us, or they try to kill us right here and now.

it just can't be compared

Yeah sure, Tav is in a forest. The only choice is between a druid healer that offers you help and has experience with tadpoles or cult who's members constantly try to backstab and kill Tav and whose god issued kill order on Tavs head. Whic is more rational choice here?

Good question ...

The only choice is between a druid helaer, who we were told "may" be able to help us ... he indeed have experience with healing, reportedly ... and his knowledge of tadpole is at best questionable, since we are between druids, who would destroy such creature on sight rather than study it ...
Also this all we were told *not* by himself, but by his close and loayal follower who also desperately needs him back for her own reasons, who were just prepared to kill us "just in case" ... and were willing to let us go only under condition, that we will kill ourselef, if we feel ill.
At least quesionable source ... providing at least questionable promises ... full of "maybe", "prehaps" and "i hope so".

On the other hand there is indeed cult, where some members (Sazza and Gut) tryes to backstab us ... one in order to please her leader (hardly surprising, both from Goblin, or Drow lackey) where she dont really seem to care what will happen to us really ... and another one in order for her to be selfish b*** (again, its GOBLIN!) ...
Where we know for sure that leaders of that cult are using the same tadpoles as is in our hand ... therefore they are working with them first hand ... therefore they *logicaly* must know something about them for SURE ... and again, therefore *logicaly* their knowledge could be waluable for us.
And even if not, presuming that we are living on borrowed time, everyone else around us were tadpolized long before us ... so, while they are ok, we should be aswell.

Wich one is more rational?
Gee i dunno ...

Aswell as im not quite sure why make such fuss about killing atempts ...
Astartion tryed to kill you ...
Lae'zel tryes to kill you ...
Shadowheart tryes to kill you ...
This is just the way people in Faerun comunicate as it seems.

The most rational choice is skipping the conflict entirely, and heading to the creche, post-haste.


Not knowing about the creche, if you find out that the True-Souls have tadpoles in their head, it's probably trying to shake priestess Gut down, which leads you killing her and discovering that the True-Souls know less than you do, which leaves you with Halsin.

At some point you'll learn about Moonrise Towers, which overrides every other choice, because you know that's the source of all the True-Souls.