Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Justice for Minthara

Hello there,

this will be about Minthara, and the general issues of how Larian is approaching and responding to concerns raised about her character because it's been 4 months and I need Larian to stop sweeping her broken state under the rug, especially now with the new recruitment, she deserves to work properly and be fleshed out as a fully functional companion, which she flat out isn't at the moment.

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1. she is still bugged, she has been bugged for 4 months at this point. there was not a single patch or hotfix in which she was in a fully fixed state since release, please let that sink in, i cannot stress it enough. this shows a serious lack of care for her character from sides of the people in charge of these decisions at Larian, intentional or not.

2. the recently released IGN interview (https://www.ign.com/articles/baldurs-gate-3-final-interview-game-of-the-year-2023-characters-endings) underlines the lack of understanding and care for the character too. there are other points to be raised about the interview, but this is about Minthara so I'll be focusing on that. they mention a dialogue that happens after the new recruitment where she judges the player for their choice of knocking her out and is distrustful, which is a straight up lie as this content doesn't currently exist in the game.

further, the lead writer goes on to say that he is happy with bg3 as is and would like to move on, and only give Minthara a few more lines with Orin, ignoring that her current writing leaves plot holes and direct contradictions in her character, such as her saying Bhaal ain't shit and Durge shouldn't follow him, but then disapproving of turning your back on Bhaal as Durge. or her lines after her act 1 scene where she says she decided the PC must die, but then as a response the PC can ask why the Absolute wanted them dead, while it was HER that wanted that. this combined with the 4 months of bugged state shows a lack of playtesting and making sure her current story and content is coherent, working and makes sense in and of itself. Larian, we aren't in EA, please stop using your players as playtesters, we shouldn't have to report these basic, easy to catch things.

3. I want to draw attention to the fact that:
- Karlach got a whole new ending cutscene and ending choice after popular player demand
- Astarion had his kisses and "thrusties" fixed after more popular player demand
- Minthara never actually got fixed, let alone had her content reviewed or tested by the team itself it seems, DESPITE fan demand
In case the bias wasn't clear yet.

4. what fans of Minthara have been demanding, is simply making her current content work and make sense narratively within her personality and thought processes as well as within her story. and then on top of that giving her a personal quest, working romance and overall fleshing out her content, as she is one of it not THE most lacking character in terms of her personal story, let me explain what I mean. when I compare her to Halsin, who is another "sidekick" and sideline character on a similar content level to Minthara, his story arc revolves around lifting the curse in act 2, this plotline doesn't happen or exist if he isn't recruited, it is mentioned but you're unable to play or complete it without having him there. now compare that to Minthara, whose story arc revolves around her revenge on Ketheric and Orin, two bosses you kill either way, whether she is present or not.

another person I can think of that is tied to getting back at a boss is Karlach who wants to fight Gortash, however Karlach has a whole other storyline outside of that related to her engine, which is also unique to her, Minthara is lacking this unique story content, which is why fans have been saying she seems incomplete and her being in a constantly bugged state definitely isn't helping this. tying new content to Orin as said in the previously mentioned IGN interview wouldn't really solve this problem or answer the demands of her fans - I really hope Larian can see that after some further consideration. she needs content outside of Orin or Ketheric and outside of the main plotline that happens anyway, she needs something that's unique to her like the others have. plus her romance is still broken, by the way.

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I hope the length of this post shows the love I have for the character, it's entirely prompted by feeling like Larian isn't giving her the attention and love I would like to see and is kind of pushing her to the side compared to the other companions. I know there are other characters with similar problems but I'm putting in my effort for Minthy since I personally care about her the most out of the companions. I also hope other people can add on things they can think of! or just share the love for her character, let me know what you think and report her bugs and lack of content to Larian!

I really like Minthara, she's a character who easily gets your interest the moment she says her first words. I'd love to be able to finish a playthrough with her functioning properly, but alas.


Minthara's fans aren't the only ones who think this is unfair, believe me.



Sometimes I think I hate this more than I hate the Emperor.

I only know her as the "drow who wears Astarion's armour" at the moment but I am looking forward to recruit her the next time around - so I hope for the bug fixes too.

Yeah I honestly don't understand what's going on. It's like her dialogue is load-bearing for the entire rest of the game's stability and fixing it TOO WELL will cause the game to spontaneously combust. I don't necessarily want to assume they're liars, if they say they think she's working it's likely one of their dev builds DOES have her working. But for whatever reason something specific to Minthara continues to mess up between their dev build and being patched to the live build.

It has happened so many times now that I truly cannot fathom the explanation, especially since relatively simple flag activations manually with a mod have tended to cause her to work properly when Larian just cannot ever seem to take that final step to full proper functionality.

Underdark has drow armor that looks even better on him, so you can have them both looking great while they murder things for you.

Not personally a huge fan of Minthara because I’ve only recruited her the new weird way on a good playthrough and I haven’t seen fully who she is. But I a million bazillion percent agree with the OP! Minthara is in serious need of attention, to the point where it’s just so glaringly obvious if you interact with her at all. There’s been clear bugs reported again and again on these forums, as well, about her romance being bugged, and that has never been fixed. So absolutely, justice for Minthara. I support this cause.

Edit: Also, I didn’t get the dialogue where she said that the player character was weak for sparing her, either. So that appears to be bugged.

Minthara is one of my two favorite characters. I’m honestly tired of going through patchnotes and being disappointed over and over again. It’s been so many months, and yet they fail to properly adress her.
I sometimes feel like Larian thinks they fixed her bugs, when they clearly haven't. Especially looking at the patch notes for patch 4 and 5, where they mention unlocking some minor content that I've not seen anyone actually get to work.

I was looking forward to patch 5, thinking that surely this time they’d do something, since they added a new recruitment method, and thus more people would get to experience her. Sadly, I was very wrong. It feels like she constantly gets the short end of the stick. I feel like the fact that she was locked behind a choice that most players don’t take is one of the reasons she just gets treated as an orphan.

That being said, from what I've seen from datamines with the recent patches, they seem to still be rewriting some things that are not yet reachable in the game.
So maybe it’s just taking them longer than anticipated to implement things. I don’t know why it would be taking this long, however. And I hate the fact that Astarion is slightly bugged for a short period of time, gets fixed rather quickly - mind you, still has the interactions, they're just not displayed properly - but with Minthara we don't seem to get anything at all.

I like Min also, but -- at the risk of being blasted by everyone -- she *is* a drow, of some importance in house of Baenre. And so the non-evil recruitment is kind of counterlogical to me. Anyway, I did the evil route and that is also completely broken.

Been advocating for Minthara getting equal treatment, love and respect in terms of content for years now, which is why even seeing something as simple as allowing her to be recruited on a good playthrough sent me into ecstasy. A small step for Minthara, but a giant leap to hopefully seeing her start being treated equally by the devs.

To me it's unthinkable seeing Larian ignore, mistreat and mishandle such a wonderfully unique and intricate character for so long, especially since these issues have been pointed out countless of times even during Early Access and now after full release. For Lolth's sake she's been a part of the game for as long as Halsin has, yet that smelly tree-hugger got all the recognition and content while she's been left to gather dust in a buggy and unfinished state.

Oh my god, I thought I was the only one thinking this for the longest time. After 4 months of constant bugs, missing dialogues, broken romance; I am absolutely fed up with how Larian is treating Minthara specifically. Drawing the comparison to Karlach and Astarion is necessary at this point. It's just so unfair.

Thank you SO much to the OP for shedding some light on this topic. I have been sending bug reports almost every week now and every update they just never fail to disappoint me. I will continue to bump this thread every now and then until Larian takes notice and does SOMETHING about her. I'm literally begging them to fix her properly. And we NEED an explanation!

Well i would like to see some new stuff for her.
Halsin and Karlach i never care or bother for then i even avoid then in all my last Games becouse of that..
Never saved Shadowcurse ever again after the first Time when playing Hero..haha
And she need a litle bit of Love too..
Btw.. i like her in Dark run too..
But have her in Both sides of the Game would be cool.. i mean Make it in a Proper Way..
Like yu can Refuse Halsin in act 1 and then yu find her in act 2. dont know.. some better way.
(becouse the way they make it was made out of a Real Bug that people just Broke the Game to Have Her in Hero Runs..huahauh xD)

Just make it Legit in some better way and Gave her a Nice Fix with new content maybe..

Trust me, you were never alone in this. I have been observing the forum, the discord server, twitter... you name it. People are taking notice of this longstanding issue with Minthara. The way Larian is ignoring her is a problem they need to address sooner than later.

I had heard of her bugs before but I never knew just how bad they were until I decided to recruit her after patch 5, with all the hassle of the knockout requirement that I had to reload my save multiple times. This whole sequence is immersion breaking and I'm not trying to exaggerate anything here. I could not interact or even click on her because, according to some articles, I followed "the wrong steps" so I can see why this is discouraging players to give her a chance.


That's how I saw Minthara too haha! She is so much more than that. I think she deserves more attention and a seamless good aligned recruitment. Coming from someone who loves to RP, the latter is not at all "counterlogical" to me.


Yes please, I want to see more of her. I'm enjoying my experience with her so far, even though her romance is bugged at the moment. Then again I don't place much importance in romance. Also, this is another personal wish of mine but seeing as Minthara is, or was, a member of House Baenre, I would love to see more significance being placed upon that fact!

Minthara is definitely so much more than that! And she does not deserve to be called a bonus character or a sidekick. I am utterly disappointed by what they said in the linked interview. People asked for Minthara to be a companion for YEARS during EA for her to get pushed down the article like she's nothing AND receive unfair treatment for such a prolonged amount of time. The game is amazing but I can't just sit still and accept this.

She is my favorite character in the entire game. And honestly? That's saying a lot because I initially did not like her. At all. So many people will miss experiencing her because like Greek said, they're discouraged by her currently broken state and multitude of issues. If any Larian employees are reading this, for the love of all that is holy in Faerun, eliminate all her bugs just for one patch. I beg you to add more FULLY FUNCTIONAL content for her too. I fail to understand how they can be happy with leaving her like this!

Even with all her problems, Minthara has an appealing story and an incredible amount of potential which is sadly wasted:
SPOILERS FOR MINTHARA'S ENTIRE ARC

Thank you guys for replying to this, it makes me happy to see so many people here care about her case and share some thoughts and general consensus about her current state and lacking treatment by Larian. I really hope some devs check this forum, since the IGN interview it feels like there is some genuine disconnect between how players have been perceiving the game and what (at least some) Larian members think of the current state of the game and Minthara. It's confusing and disheartening to see and begs the question why they included companions they seem to not care about?

I'm also surprised to see this issue has persisted since EA and people have been begging for content and fixes only to be answered with crumbs - please Larian, listen to your players, you're at an upswing with the attention the game has been receiving and this can very much solidify how people see you as a studio in the future. At least, be more transparent with us about what seems like obvious bias - perhaps there is some reason to it? Or I might be talking out of my ass, maybe someone that's been around since EA knows them better and can clarify.

Something I also wish for Minthara is for her "True Soul Of The Absolute" title to go away after she's been recruited.

She immediately loses her Nightwarden prefix in her name upon recruitment, so why does the True Soul title remain under her name afterwards when she just becomes Minthara Baenre. Makes no sense.

EDIT: For anyone curious there were numerous Early Access discussions about the horrible lack of care towards Minthara's side of the story. Even comparison images being provided to show just how laughably bad the content is imbalanced between Halsin and Minthara's side.

I've posted this in another thread (about Karlach), so it is repeating myself a bit, but I think this is because they wrote the companions more as protagonists than npcs. My guess this is why characters like Minthara (and Halsin, in his current version) were left in the dust. They are not origin characters. Example: Gale gets to ascend now, because he was the most popular origin character played as, and ascension to godhood is classic power fantasy fulfillment.

The nice thing is, that you no longer have to sacrifice a huge amount of content in order to have Minthara in your party. Maybe once more folks are able to experience Minthara, there will be increasing pressure to fix some of the biggest issues with her character.

I hope that they flesh out Minthara’s story and dialogue more, and enable romance for her, when you recruit her in the new way in a good playthrough. Because there’s quite a bit of bugginess and lack of care there as well, and no romance option. Not that I would consider romancing anybody besides my beloved Shadowheart, but it would be nice to at least have the option.

Minthara does have an incredibly compelling story, on a base level, so it would be great if it all got ironed out, and we could experience it fully.