Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Petition: Let us have Minthara without mass genocide

Thank you! Since I started this thread it's nice to see that I'm not alone in our fight to recruit Minthara without dead tieflings haunting my dreams.

Not hunting for a best ending, just one that makes sense and isn't silly or contrived.

Never mind the fact that there's is just. Genuinely no reason to raid the grove. You lock yourself out of *so* much content it's not even funny. And for what? A companion that internally makes sense that should be convince-able, or hell even knock-out-able?

As someone who will likely never do an truly evil play through but is also an overenthusiastic Minthara enjoyer, I honestly really like the current difficult choice you have to make in order to impress her. Just from my own character's weird RP perspective I like the idea of making bad decisions for someone you love. But personal preferences aside I would also love to see more content for Minthara and if the community or Larian themselves can think of (and have the time to create) an alternative route to having her in your party I'd of course want to explore it because it just means more replayability for me.

Some spoilers at the bottom for Act 1 & 2 Minthara stuff.

I would normally be 100% on board with this, if that difficult decision came AFTER you get to know her. But as the very first stepping stone required? It's entirely too much lost as a result, especially with how her romance continues to be a major problem even after Larian believed they fixed it. That you can't romance her without slaughtering the grove I think is compromise enough to allow her to be saved without dooming the Tieflings to be Thanos-snapped out of existence. The neutral path not helping the grove or the goblins when you get a certain sidequest outcome even tells you explicitly you'll see the tieflings later, but that was clearly left on the cutting room floor for reasons I can't understand. I've mentioned in Minthara's thread that the strict losses you have to incur to recruit her at all are absolutely ridiculous compared to what Halsin is perfectly okay with you doing to the place he'd been dedicating his life to. It's totally contrived nonsense.

I'd be okay with that too! Really, mention expanded Minthara content in any form and I'll very likely agree. I honestly just wouldn't want the grove fight removed entirely because, at least to me, the intensity of the choice is memorable and part of what makes her story so compelling. But I'm also not part of the "I can fix her" crowd I see so often surrounding Minthara. I don't want to fix her, I want to be at her side as she learns to cope with the years she's lost to being thralled and the gruesome choices she's made as a result of that. Which is also why new dialogue in Act 2 regarding what happened at the grove would be at the top of my wishlist if Larian decided to keep working on her. Throw in a Tiefling specific response too for those of us who have Tiefling characters as well.

Another thing the grove fight offers is the chance to expand the story into a continuing cycle of mistakes. Making awful choices for your lover/the object of your affection can be cute in its own little messed up and misguided way. The following in the spoiler text are just ideas I've had about my own interpretation of Minthara and contain some Act 2 or possibly 3? spoilers so feel free to just skip over this if you'd like.
As for getting to know her prior to making the choice, I can picture a list of options with different skill checks that would lead to some expanded conversation and then the eventual discovery of what she plans to do to the grove (and your choice to start to convince her not to go for the grove if that's what you want).

- [ILLITHID] Prying into her mind (the same way we choose to the night after the grove incident)
- [PERSUASION] Directing the conversation to focus on the goblin's (and their two leaders) incompetence
- [DECEPTION] Mentioning that it is far more urgent to go to Moonrise towers than stick around and investigate an area that may have been a bad lead anyway (with this option contingent on )

If anything this thread is a lot of fun for brainstorming new ideas about Minthara. I'm sorry for kind of just jumping in and posting my insane rambles about her sdhgdsf. But I'm having a lot of fun doing it.

You are making a lot of great points!

I might be the only person who thinks like that, but my biggest problem with Minthara is how she is implemented in the game in general. It feels so punishing being a Minthara fan since she is the biggest punching bag in the game.
It's obvious she isn't part of the main cast of companions, you will always be confronted with her being in the shadow of the community because she is locked behind an evil decision.

I get it that some people like her being the exclusive treat when playing evil, but her being locked behind the evil path is wasting so much of her potential in my opinion.

It doesn't add any replayability as well, I think. The ones who would like to recruit her but don't want to play evil, will make another good playthrough and skip her again.
Dos2 didn't have exclusivity and is highly replayable.

It's not even locked behind evil, it's locked behind a single decision where you have to give up a lot of content.

It's just lousy decision design. Consequences shouldn't be coupled together based on a single decision IF you want replay value. There should be room to mitigate each individual consequence whether it's tedious, difficult or luck based. For the most part, the game does this well but this one example is pretty bad (and to a lesser extent the Act 3 stuff is terribly all or nothing)

I'm a firm believer in the Rule of Three.

FIrst time you side with evil - Personal, small scale interaction.
Second time, continuing to side with evil - Big Yikes reactions.
Third time, committed to being evil - "FACTION:HOSTILE"

Minthara, a companion we can only obtain by going pure STUPID EVIL. I understand wanting to give players reasons to RP both as a good guy or as evil or as someone in the middle.

Not only you get nothing by siding with goblins and lose on quests, content, etc. There is 0 logical reasons to do that, RP and gameplay included. Unless you are doing solo evil durge run, there is no reason to side with goblins.

While I can understand why Minthara and Halsin are mutually exclusive right now, it's setup in such a way that feels "lame" to put mildly.

Here is an idea, we convince Minthara to leave, knock her out, etc. Anyway, she ends up in ACT 2 the same way she does.

Let’s assume we take Halsin with us, we rescue her but she and Halsin hate each other, similar to Lazel and Shadowheart. In the camp we get them arguing and the two can turn towards you for choosing between either of them. You can persuade them to step down.

Later Minthara tries to kill Halsin and the two end up in the same spot, forcing you to choose between the two of them. Anyway, this time there is no persuading them to step down, you have to choose a side. In any event, one of them leaves camp, but you could possibly find them later in the playthrough.

Hell, have Halsin appear at Last Light Inn and you could still do his quest, but he would not join your party as long as Minthara lives. And Vice versa. There, a proper choice, not murderhobo way of stupid evil.

Disagree. There is some real reason to side with goblins: you recognize their commanders as infected too and they obey to the source of the infection. So stay loyal to them you can get information about this source and alongside try get privilege to come closer to this source and know more about it.

Yes, it is evil. But still very reasonable.
Hope Minthara will stay as part of reasonable evil/neutral path.

That’s not reasonable, That’s just stupid and you are trying to make it sound smart.

Counterpoint 1: you already get recognized by true soul by other infected and those with a brand. Why would you side with the guys, you can already infiltrate? Hell, it gets worse with Moonrise tower and Grymforge.

Counterpoint 2: narratively speaking it makes no sense. Minthara only wants to destroy the grove based on suspicion that the prism is there. Why isn't there an option of leading her away on a wild goose chase? Why cant she leave the assault to you, while you backstab the goblins?

Counterpoint 3: if you recruited Karlach and Wyll, they will fight and leave you, you lose access to at least 2 traders (Dammon and druid) in exchange for what? Making a good first impression on a cult that believes you are one of them? That’s just stupid evil. You basically killing off potential merchants, allies, slaves just to for the sake of killing them.

So, no, this isn't smart in any way shape. It’s like being stupid good and killing all Zhentarim because they aren't "honest traders" instead of keeping them alive to benefit from their services...

To me this really shows that the only legitimate evil path is dark urge. Outside of dark urge the evil options have zero build up or legit reward. Even in cases where you can ally with certain villains you always end up either having to fight them later anyway or are just gutting your experience and rewards/allies therefore setting you up for way higher difficulty later on that is really only mitigated by the rewards you can get for dark urge

You're speaking from the point of person who already know what will come next in act 2 and 3. Try again because that’s just stupid and you are trying to make it sound smart.

Not trying to butt in or escalate but if there’s nothing resulting from that choice it’s unreasonable regardless of the players knowledge going into it. It’s also reasonable to assume most players would talk to the goblins, get said information, and then still defend the grove. First playthrough I did assume it would lead to a legitimate separate path and it never did. With my extremely limited forgotten realms knowledge I just assumed the absolute was some sort of evil diety at that point and not something you would have to fight.

I don't think your counterpoints work. If you go down that route, Minthara and the goblins offer you a save passage through the Shadow, which none of the other options can. In the same way, on the good side, it's almost suicidal to go to the Creche (and deliver the prism right into their hands, one of the outcomes is literally game over), and you still do it. All these options are very much taking high risks because you have no good options. For my dark elf durge, siding with goblins and commanding them around, feels like a much more natural choice then having to deal with druids, refugees and other losers.

CP 3 is just metagaming. You wouldn't know that, and also who cares? That's exactly what makes it a meaningful decision. You go down the evil route, you have less allies, less resources, but more personal power. It's part of the fun doing it. You also gain something for that. Normally in a good party, Shadowheart wouldn't become the leader of the Shar cult (getting some nice items and allies), Astarion wouldn't ascent (which makes him more powerful and fresh allies), the Dark Urge gets a few extra powers (limited though, if you play with a "good" dark urge, in comparison to Tav substantial) and a extra Baahl trader. I honestly don't get it. It's a trade off. And you can play the game without those allies and traders without any problems.

Now, Minthara is still bugged, the evil ending (at least in my case) was a joke, and they probably could add a bit more to that side in general, but it's still a fun, and because of all those differences, distinct and memorably experience. At least for me. It also makes Minthara stand out. She's can't be influenced as much as the other characters in either direction.

I don't know where this is at for the devs, but to me I feel like Mintara was a bit of a ball fumble.

Every other companion has such a rich path to follow and Minthara is just either do action A or D. A gets you Minthara. D gets you a dead Minthara.

All the others have A, B, C, D and E.

If anything, I'd just love an alternative way to recruit her that doesn't involve senseless slaughter. It feels so one dimensional for such a rich character.

This is probably supposed to be one of the unique things about the path, but it's not actually unique at all. The only unique thing about it is that the game offers it to you ahead of time. You can do essentially the same thing without siding with the goblins at all. The only real unique thing about siding with the goblins is being able to have sex with Minthara which in the game's current state is a pretty awful writing and design choice (and just starts to look creepy looking back at being told in Early Access that she's the reward for evil, they REALLY meant just her very specifically).

In terms of metagaming anything, like yeah but this isn't a tabletop it's a videogame. The design itself is ENTIRELY too drastic about how much content is closed off for how little you get in return in any scenario where Minthara is in the party. Add to that how much of her reactivity is Dark Urge specific and it gets kinda bonkers. That recruiting her by being neutral still locks you out of nearly all that same content is WILD, especially when signs of a big scrapped contingency to keep a big portion of that content is still in the journal and that's where the user experience perspective just dives off a cliff.

And personally I just really can't let go of how lopsided she is compared to Halsin. With Halsin being totally fine with you murderhobo-ing your way through the grove why the hell isn't Minthara accessible without a huge slaughter happening whether off-screen or led directly by you? Her circumstance is exactly what a typical good-aligned character would think about trying to help with if they found out even just a little about True Souls and their tadpoles. But obviously for gameplay purposes it could just be as simple as the game flagging the quest as complete without flagging her as dead on knockout so she carries forward. I'd rather a small programming change like than a content expansion even if they went full Definitive Edition on her, simply because she's so interesting that the kind of content a lot of people want to see is just too much.

Isn't the action of killing the grove part of what makes her a complex character though? Without making that difficult and/or uncomfortable choice she loses a very impactful moment that helps the player understand both the horrible situation she's been put in and just how strong the influence of the Absolute can be. If someone as terrifyingly strong as Minthara can be manipulated it doesn't really look good for a lot of other people in the game.

I'm struggling to understand why so many people seem to associate multiple paths that lead to the same conclusion as being somehow more developed. It seems more like it waters down the character and gives Tav even more main character syndrome (which is rarely fun for anyone because it makes for less flexible rp) if they can just convince anyone of anything. Part of what makes Minthara so good (and the Drow lore in general imo) is her very black and white view of life.

Again I'm still fine with an alternative way to recruit her as long as it makes sense with the way she's already been written but it really bothers me to see so many people talk down on the current way to recruit her.

1st all you actually have to do is mark the map, druids be here

2ns as someone that played both good and evil to get her, I'm fine with the current design... yes the missing talks are nice to get back