I don't agree with everyone about Minthara's path being evil:
1. In my playthrough, I only massacred the grove after Nettie tried to unalive me with a rather pointy stick.
2. Freeing Halsin from his cage requires killing goblin children, but no one seems to mind them dying since they're just goblins.
3. Furthermore, the goblins aren't hostile until attacked.
4. I do admit the tieflings got caught in the crossfire, it would be nice if there was a better way to get them out without offing them.
1. You are speaking to Nettie because you asked about a healer, in the absense of Halsin she is the healer. Nettie just needs reassurance that you will deal with your problem in such a way as to not threaten the lives of everyone in the grove - a completely understandable stance. Why is it so hard to promise to take poison if you feel yourself turning? Wouldn't you want to? Unless you want to become a mind flayer at this stage of the game of course. It's not as if she is going to watch you constantly to make sure you do it.
Also theres no dialogue to even mention the artefact to her or anyone else in the grove, even Halsin when you free him. At this stage of the game no one needs to know about it at all.
2. Freeing Halsin does not require you to kill goblin children, It just requires you to kill the goblin leaders - 3 people, that's all. Any others are optional.
3. Hostile to whom? They are plenty hostile but you have sailed into their camp under a false flag of one sort or another. They can sense the parasite and assume you are one of them. Have you actually looked around the camp carefully, , burning people, eating people is all fine?
If you do the quest relating to Kaugha you can stop the ritual without freeing Halsin or even going into the goblin camp. She can even turn over a new leaf and become penitent about her choices. I have never found the druids to be unpleasant to me, they can be unpleasant to the tiefling refugees at the entrance to the ritual site but not to you for more than one minute at the same place, and no one else is unpleasant at all.
Minthara wants to slaughter the druids. The tieflings alongside many more children and everyone else will still be there because the goblins still have a leader and are still a threat to travellers. All of them, children included, will be slaughtered. Minthara doesn't care about collataral damage.
Unless you are using a mod then siding with Minthara is unquivocally taking the evil route and it's intended as such. Which is fine of course but don't pretend it isn't an evil choice.
