Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Reach the transponder before the nautiloid crashes!

I was watching a video about the whack racial abilities change, and I caught something completely unrelated in the video content. It was in the tutorial, and just under the map, the copy 'Reach the transponder before the nautiloid crashes!" plus and indicator that there were 13 rounds remaining.

here, at 10:06

I haven't seen discussion about that before. I guess there's no more cheesing Zhelk for his sword unless you can do it really quickly

Good catch. I didn't notice that before.

I wonder how many rounds you get?

I may have to start practicing to see how long it takes me.

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I also wonder if any of the mucoid shell things are going to be valuable, for crafting or whatever.

Well spotted, I tend to watch these videos on my second monitor while I'm doing other stuff so I didn't notice it. I think it adds to the urgency of the situation, I like it. It also adds the challenge of killing Zhelk (and the cambions) faster like you said.

Considering the amount of ticks on the circle I'd say 15 rounds.

Ah, 15, that makes sense, I see what you're pointing at.

So now we have to take out Commander Zhalk in 15 rounds if we want his sword.

*

I'm going to play through a few openings and record how long it takes me to finish him, on average.

GL, tell us how it goes

I was counting in my last playtrough ...
It took me like 19 turns to kill everyone in Helm.

I wonder different thing ...
If you somehow manage to defeat them faster ... what will happen next?
Combat ends, all remaining turns ends in real time and you all die in few seconds?

I guess they would force turn mode until the 15 rounds are done (?)

Interesting find. Strange how none of the YTers seem to have mentioned it. Also strange is the clock design. The ticks appear to have started around the 2 o'clock mark (assuming they are added in a clockwise direction).
It would be a bit weird if you got a 'game over' 10 minutes into the tutorial. Maybe it's just a Steam achievement?

Would it actually be a game over if the nautiloid crashes though? Best case scenario the game dumps you in a different location and you get a slightly different start.

I think killing Zhalk in 15 turns is totally feasible.
Killing the other 2 cambion dudes might be a challange, but killing one of them is probably not too hard.

When you've figured out how close you need to be to make it on the last turn the "puzzle" should become a lot easier. You don't have to kill everything or move everyone to the transponder in order to trigger the scene after all.

Sure, but I damn well want to. There is a lot of xp available in the helm

Understandable. I don't leave Chateau Irenicus or the Neverwinter academy "unfinished" either. Though having done them so many times they're basically speedruns at this point

Perhaps but what would be the point of the race against time?

I have nothing against
GAME OVER
PLAY AGAIN?
Y/N
Excitement.

That kind of depends. Maybe it's tutorialising the game is fail forwards. Maybe you end up in a better position if you fail that easy combat challenge as a way to give players unfamiliar with the system a leg up. Or maybe its harder so as to give an optional challenge or sense of consequence to your actions. Maybe it's a character moment for Laezel.

Well... if you run out of time and the nautiloid crashes, it would be in Avernus. I somehow doubt your character(s) would have a fun time there, considering the blood war and everything...

I think there are likely two options:

1. You die, and have another crack at it starting from the initial autosave when you entered the helm

2. They have some ridiculous animation that gets the transponder connected regardless

My money's on option 1, because option 2 is objectively a horrible way to start the game

Yeah that's how it would play out in EA but it could play out differently in release. The nautiloid crashes in EA no matter what you do so it could play out differently.

Most likely it's a go-back-to-autosave if you don't make it yeah. Though I wouldn't put it past Larian to actually have a cut scene of what happens first.