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

Tbh, I think this is just a marketing pitch. They can't exactly admit that the rewrite resulted in cut companion content and messed up main plot. Because the way the tadpoles worked with Daisy in the EA was different, and there are still leftover lines from the narrator in the full game referring to that. My guess is that the emperor was a planned character, but for a different role.

aww i didn't know this, since i haven't played EA, so i'll just take your word for it. it's sad how much they overlooked once you start digging a little deeper into the writing and content :c i love this game very much tho and i really hope larian will do something more for it in general - and not forget about minthara while doing so!

Thanks for your answer. I will try this.

I load an old save and did this:
1. Stealed in Front of Minthara. So she became temporary Enemy. Knock her out and she was temporary knocked out.
2. Freed Halsin and defeated the rest of the Goblins
3. Did a long rest.
4. Looked for Minthara in the temple. She was no more ko. to be sure I didn't talk to her.

From my point of view the method sounds more like an exploit than as a feature.

I did one PT recruiting Minthara, using the "evil" path. Recruited her before patch 5 came out, but ended the game with patch 5.

What I find incomprehensible is that after the end, there was a nice intimate scene with Minthara (no sex, just talking), complimenting eachother, declaring love and making future plans. You can chose different futures for your couple.
Some months later, at Wither's party, the dialogues change depending on the future you chose. You talk about the progress you made in this or that direction.

So this seems to be all fine and well worked out, but before the end of the game, there is no hint about any progress or development in your relationship with Minthara. When she calls you "my love" right after you end the main story, it comes as a surprise really. " Oh, so we were, actually , a couple ? Surprise. Since when ?"

That is why I find it hard to believe that the actual content of the "building up to a couple" is missing from the game. Why put all the effort in the post-story wrapup and nothing in the actual story ?
So I guess there's a bug that blocks the in-story progress. But how can Larian have missed this ?

I guess they can't test the whole main story and side quests in all variants for every patch, so probably they have some saves in certain conditions that they use to test. Then maybe fix some bugs, retest etc... until it works. But if the "saves" from which they start testing are not updated from the beginning, they may initiate from a situation that cannot be reached anymore because of other changes earlier on.

Not trying to find excuses for Larian, but I just try to rationalize why the post-ending is there and not the actual in-story scenes and dialogues.

I agree with this. Daisy tried in her scenes to seduce to use the powers to do evil things. So I never trust her.
To be honest: I only met her during the first year of the EA. After this time I never used any Tadpole power so this scenes were never triggerd.

From my point of view Larian realised that the most players never used these powers because of the consequences. For me this is the reason

I have a feeling the epilogue is supposed to put a band aid over many such plot holes. I think Halsin's thing with the orphans also comes as a surprise if you romance him and he mentions his plan during the Post-Brain-Scene because it doesn't have any build up. Astarion talking about what he did after fleeing from the dock when befriended puts a band aid on that sore spot and Gale doesn't really have a conclusive ending in the game proper either unless romanced or pulverised. So I wouldn't be surprised if if Minthara got the same treatment, though I do hope it is just a bug that gets fixed.

A more general question: If I want to currently recruit her, can I chat with her before knocking her out or will that stop her from appearing at Moonrise? I got a little confused, by what I read on the subject.

Talking to her is fine as long as you don't pick dialogue that causes her to become hostile. You can even do Sazza's quest and get the reward from it.

You must cause her to become *Temporarily Hostile* which happens from things like attacking her while she's not hostile, stealing stuff in her room, getting caught pickpocketing her, breaking the drum that summons reinforcements, what have you. When her status is Temporarily Hostile, that's when knocking her out works and she'll appear in Moonrise later. It must be done in her initial location, it cannot be done in front of the druid grove.

Thank you for clearing up the confusion.

I've been wondering this myself. It's no secret Minthara and Halsin were added as companions due to popular demand during Early Access. So it's safe to say their addition was mostly for fanservice, but it's... poorly executed because they seem to teeter between developing them fully vs putting them in for pure fan appeasement. Like I guess they couldn't commit, so now Minthara and Halsin are stuck in this weird kind of limbo that it raises a lot of questions of what-if's and what-could-have-been's.

The complications might have come when they started adding more and more content in Act 2 or 3, as in they tried to bite more than they could chew and ended up having trouble prioritizing things. There isn't a good justification for this, but it all probably came down to saving money and resources with the rush of having to release the game in a predetermined time window.

It's just unfortunate for Minthara as she seemingly got shafted along the way to make room for other things. Other characters like Wyll are receiving more or less the same treatment, but Minthara is currently receiving the shortest end of the stick as she has the least amount of content and has been constantly bugged since release.

I also think most of what they said in the interview is a marketing pitch, or at least some form of "damage control" in response to the cut content discussion, but they certainly made themselves appear more disingenuous than ever before by not acknowledging any of the issues their characters have. As for the shift from Daisy to Emperor, someone already wrote a good summary on this thread if anyone wants to give it a read.

Maybe that's because it is. They never explicitly stated it's a feature or promoted it as a new way to recruit Minthara. I definitely see it as an exploit too, or rather a lazy workaround in response to the widespread complaint that we can't have Minthara without sacrificing a massive amount of content.

I think they should've made it easier because currently this method is nearly impossible to do without consulting a guide. But I also fail to understand why they didn't plan a more immersive recruitment instead, one that wouldn't require us to bonk her head out of nowhere. There are better ideas out there.

No problem, mate. You're good to go and she will appear at Moonrise later on... unless you come across some other bug.

I heard this method was there at launch but they removed it. At some point, people even started recruiting Minthara by turning her into a sheep. I think they just readded this because people asked them to. I could be wrong though...


This is the question we've all been asking haha! I sure hope they address this eventually, and maybe add more content to make up for it

So... I got to ACT 3 with Minthara legitimately recruited by invading the Grove and... I'm baffled. What in the world is Larian smoking over there by disrespecting her so much through such terrible negligence, she is ridiculously missing content and buggy.

The ironic fact is she actually has more content and feels more alive if the player recruits her by knocking her out rather than legitimately doing it, because she gets to react to plenty of stuff other companions do with their quests. For example her dialogue after Karlach is able to finally touch people is quite amazing and motivational.

But in this legitimate playthrough... YIKES! The amount of her clear-as-day missing and buggy content is insane.

• First she immediately acts when recruited as if Shadowheart did a whoopsie in the Shadowfell by spearing a certain someone, despite that not even happening yet
• Second why is this a one-time dialogue even, why can't we keep asking her about companions after specific points in the story to see her reactions to various companion events
• Third she has absolutely no dialogue options whatsoever to talk about the player's Dark Urges (she does with the knockout method though)
• Her "Wish to talk about private matters" dialogue branch is completely empty. Has been empty for the entirety of ACT 2 and still is in ACT 3.
• After exhausting her initial dialogue post-recruitment, she does not have any new dialogue up until the very finale of ACT 2
• Romancing her after the act's finale she will say that tonight we are fully hers... but NOTHING ever happens and Shadowheart (who I was fully romantically involved with at the time) immediately broke off her romance the very next morning. Thanks Larry...
• Despite Withers then recognizing Minthara as a love interest, there's absolutely ZERO new dialogue, acknowledgment or reaction from Minthara about us being romantically involved (probably because whatever was supposed to happen that night never happened, so now I'm stuck in a non-existent romantic friendzone with no way out because I can't even talk to her about it)
• Then in ACT 3 after the big reveal of who is actually in the Prism, absolutely ZERO reaction from her about what just happened. Nothing...

Jesus Christ... and Larian says she is fixed??? I decided to play Honour Mode with the worst outcomes imaginable just to see her content and test just how lacking such a playthrough would be. I knew it was gonna be terrible because I've tested it in Early Access, but I did not expect it to be this terrible in full release. Where the hell is all her content and thousands of voice lines that were supposedly locked behind some buggy trigger not working properly? What a massive disrespect and mistreatment of the character...

I'm so mad I'm gonna punch a Displacer Kitten

Reading this thread thoroughly makes me sad for Minthara. I was postponing my third playthrough for her. I thought with the new recruitment, or exploit? added she would be fixed by now so I decided to give it a try.


I just got this scene after going to Act 3... and yeah nothing happened. I romanced Karlach and Laezel before this and I immediately notice the change. With Minthara, she doesn't greet me differently. I can't even break up with her xD Not that I want to after all I did to get her, but the lack of option sure is strange. It's a big shame that her content is so sparse. I think she's a really interesting character.

She still does that in Patch 5? Pff.

I'm surprised you even got this option, it never showed up for me... also I'm even more surprised to read there is more or additional content from her when knocking her out, I've only ever gotten her by killing the grove so I didn't know. Now I'm curious how much more there is and if she's just as buggy and lacking in content there?? Man, I just wished Larian would finally fix her properly and prioritize her for once

Yeah, it's her dialogue about the player's Dark Urges.

For some reason she does not have that dialogue whatsoever if she's legitimately recruited, BUT if you recruit her by knocking her out then she has it. Weird that her knockout recruitment has more content that's far less buggy than her legitimate one

Example between knock-out and legitimate recruitment;

I never bothered to recruit Minthara legitimately, just watched videos about it, and I likely never will after knowing this. It just gets worse and worse.

I said it once and I’ll say it again, I’m surprised Minthara was released in this state. Other companions like Gale, Wyll, and Halsin have bugs too but they are nowhere near the amount Minthara has. The fact that they’ve continued to ignore this for nearly 5 months is ridiculous and no longer acceptable. What excuse do they have?

Nothing really. I’m not sure they’re ever going to address the situation. I bet they're just going to fix her one day and move on to other things. Like they've been pretty bad at communicating so far, and answering why she's been broken for this long wouldn't give them a good look - because there isn't really a good excuse lol, what would they say? Minthara's code was too complex? Even the modders managed to solve most of her issues: recruitment, bugged dialogue, etc. Also it's been proven time and time again that Larian is just biased. After everything's been sorted out, the vast majority of players will probably sweep this issue under the rug too.

So yeah, I'm not expecting much from them on that front, I just hope they learn from this. I certainly did. Seeing my favorite character getting sidelined for months to make room for more "marketable" characters was disappointing enough. I'll think twice before buying their games in the future.

They aren't even trying to hide this tbh, they've said in multiple interviews that she's a "sidekick" and doesn't get as much priority as origins, also that combined with their patchnotes about updates to her non-existent kisses makes me really think more and more they just aren't aware of her current state in the live version, or they're thinking all the reports are single bugs and not widespread issues, since her fandom is small and of the people that play with her mostly the same 5 people report her bugs it seems



This is wild to me, I can't recall if I had this in my run with her, but my run was after patch 2 or 3 when the game was much more stable and she was in the most "fixed" state she ever was, the only thing that was messed up was her romance flags, it's baffling she's so much worse off now, it's good I'm not currently going for her romance then, I'd just be even more disappointed :c

I really want to give her a chance in another campaign - she seems like such an interesting and funny character.. maybe waiting a bit longer will pay out for me and make the experience better. Still it makes me mad that so much about her seems a little buggy and weird
Right now she is just rotting at camp because I only recruited when I saved her from moonrise towers and my (good) Tav may or may not have made a super big oopsie at emerald grove and 'raided' that place without even talking to her prior lmao

But I love how people find different ways to recruit her without being evil (or stupid like me)

Their support team have stated they're "aware of the issues with Minthara" so I'm more inclined to believe they're just putting her on the backburner - which would be totally fine if the basic problems were fixed and she functioned like every other companion, but we know that hasn't been the case

Sad part is, I wouldn't even be as mad or disappointed if it was just Astarion or Karlach getting the attention. Halsin is not an origin companion and is supposedly Minthara's counterpart, seeing as they're planning the ultimatum for us to choose between them, but even he has a fancy kissing animation now while Minthara's is still bugged. He only has one major bug that I know of: his point-and-click lines aren't working.

If it's not her code being "too complex" then yeah, this is all just bias and pandering to the majority. If Minthara's recruitment were more appealing or straightforward, no content loss, no KO exploit needed, her fandom would be bigger and Larian would probably prioritize her more.