Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Chapter 1 major choice lack of parity **Spoiler**

To be clear, I don't expect that there is a precise balancing of gear, companions, content and experience regardless of which choices you make.

However, having played up to the start of chapter 3 siding with the Tieflings, there is clearly a lot of content in chapter 2 (not to mention a merchant who provides several pieces of unique gear), specific to the Teiflings, as well as associated with the 2 origin companions that you lose, and I expect there will be significantly more in chapter 3.

Siding with Minthara gives you -2 companions net, and from what I have read, a not very reactive companion, plus you end up against the absolutes forces anyway and presumably therefore do not get anything like comparable chapter 2 and 3 content, reactivity, gear experience and so on. Even just the fight itself offers significantly less experience than defending the grove and clearing out the remainder of the goblin camp, along with no notable gear.

Not that I would prefer it, but it would be somewhat more equal if chapter 2 quests and merchants from moonrise tower were locked out to you if you had, you know, massacred one of their armies.

Bottom line is, siding with Minthara is not a compelling choice. It simply feels like the wrong choice. I am not saying there should be no wrong choices (attacking everyone on sight, for example, should not offer the same amount of content and reward as interacting as the game obviously intends you to). But this isn't presented as a clearly wrong choice and a non trivial amount of time has gone into making this an option for you. So why is it so much worse than the alternative? At least in BG2 when the evil options were objectively worse from a reward standpoint, these were largely half arsed and without much effort put in, like with Firkraag or BG2's druid grove. But a significant amount of development time has in my view basically been wasted in order to given players a pretty objectively bad choice, whereby you lose quests, reactivity, 2 full companions, lots of gear and experience. Again, it doesn't need to be exactly balanced, but this is just by far and away the worst outcome.

Realistically, we probably aren't getting parallel chapter 2 and 3 content for siding with Minthara that is comparable with the Tieflings. That being the case, I would propose making the attack on the druid grove at least offer the option to the warn the Tieflings the goblins were on their way and them flee under through the hidden passage, for example. Then significantly buff the forces that the druids bring to bear, maybe have them summon a bunch of animals, who can then defend the gate. Minthara still raises the grove, Halsin is killed off, Wyll and Karlach can remain and you then dont lose a massive amount of gear and content.

It would be nice if there were parallel and comparable content for siding with Minthara, but I recognise this would be a massive undertaking and therefore rather unlikely.