Everything comes off as metagaming when talking about it after the fact. There's no way to avoid that feeling but it's not necessarily true. It's possible to have it pointed out to you by a couple characters that without their drow leader the goblins are a total mess. Being the leader implies she knows the most about the cult, and we even see her communing with someone even more important in it. There are a ton of reasons to try and talk to her, especially when the game keeps dropping hints throughout Act 1 that True Souls don't know they're tadpoled (and with the way Larian thought it important enough to alter her dialogue interactions with Nere in the recent patch which was kinda weird). The problem isn't that people would stop roleplaying to recruit her on the good path. The problem is the game doesn't have support for it, but on the other hand its narrative support for recruiting her the evil way is to not only have a ton of content turn off, but to have her tell you herself you shouldn't have done it, on top of her own content being the buggiest mess I've ever seen out of a Larian game. The roleplay in this case is that you knock her out with the intent to speak to her more. If the game wasn't programmed to treat her as dead, that would work totally fine, just more delayed than it would be if we were doing this in tabletop. The early Speak with Dead amulet is awesome but feels like it misguidedly replaced this type of roleplay almost entirely except when it doesn't, in those instances when the game DOES want you to knock someone out to talk to them and/or recruit them later. Just not for Minthara because... because. The game even has surrender conditions for certain enemies in certain encounters, but again not for Minthara because... because.
Regardless of what Larian clearly wanted, to achieve it they've layered a bunch of double-standards onto Minthara compared to the other non-Origins. If she were some kind of secret in Act 3 this would make WAY MORE SENSE. But she's as front and center right at the start as Wyll is. They literally treat her like an object to award to you for being evil, and then gave her some of the best writing in the game which not only remains buggier than it should be but can only be experienced with massive collateral damage to the rest of the playthrough if done as intended. It just doesn't make sense. If they won't budge from her current restrictions, they need to change a lot more than just turning off the death flag for knocking her out for it to make sense.
Originally Posted by EdaLee
I want Minthara and Halsin together in the group, I have nothing against the “genocide”, but Halsin does (Wyll and Karlach too). We lose three companions just for one. That's not worth it.
See part of the problem with Minthara's extremely strict recruitment conditions is exactly that Halsin does NOT have a problem with genocide.
You can leave the grove a lifeless hole as long as you don't lead Minthara there and then tell him about it when you meet him. He's completely fine with it. It doesn't even come up later.
