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

I recruited Minthara the classic way (attacking the grove), so it might also be tied to that.

You are correct that majority do not try to see her side of the story, but it's important to also take into account that lots of players do not want to see it precisely because Larian never bothered to flesh it out and improve it. Hell even I did not care about her side of the story up until Honour Mode came out - my excuse to fully immerse myself with the immoral route.

So I played through Minthara's story four times total (twice in Early Access and twice with Update #5), they just barely patched it together and left it alone once it was "playable enough" as all the focus and effort went into the intended heroic narrative.

Between Early Access and full release; the one universally reached consensus by the community remains that Minthara as a character is awfully lackluster and that her side of the story just plain sucks because it does not have anything unique of its own and only deletes content. It's been pointed out for over 2 years now and keeps being brought up all the time because every single choice that one makes in the game contrary to the intended heroic narrative leads to removed or deleted content without any long-term payoff.

• Sided with Minthara? All the goblins pack up and leave, never to be seen again.
• Sided with Nere? He ends up zombified.
• Sided with the Duergar? They just pack up and leave, never to be seen again.
• Sided with Marcus? He's either a glorified statue at Moonrise or a corpse in Balthazar's study.
• Saved Sazza? She just leaves, never to be seen again.
• Sided with Balthazar? Leads to exact same path as the rest, except zombified Ragzlin makes an appearance.

Every single choice done on Minthara's side leads to extremely short-lived linear narrative with no long-term branching and reactions because Larian didn't want to bother with it, while the intended "good" narrative has story choices branching out throughout all three ACTs reacting to it. And to put even more salt to the wound Larian gave two more good-aligned companions (Jaheira and Minsc) because all of the effort went into the heroic narrative.

Larian could have had Sazza, Nere, Marcus or even Viconia join the group as compensation for losing 5 companions from the other side, but obviously immoral narrative is not their intended narrative so we get nothing. We don't even get the one and only Minthara properly integrated and as you've seen yourself Minthara despite having stuff at the Mountain Pass, was cut off from it too because who cares. What reason is there to cut her off from it... literally no reason.

So it's Larian's fault that people are not interested in trying out Minthara and her side of the story because they made it impossible to enjoy it. Who wants to waste time playing a clearly rushed, unfinished, buggy mess of a story that leads nowhere with a companion that is broken 7 months in a row with non-existent romance, while content just keeps getting deleted with every choice made. I certainly don't and never will again, hell my ending for an evil Dark Urge did not even have an epilogue, just a stupid disappointing one liner and fade-to-black.

I also wrote feedback about it too, but who cares... Larian certainly doesn't care


Well that's weird, because I tested it yesterday and she loses the prefix the moment she steps into camp. So not sure what's going on, but I'll try to keep an eye out on it once I feel ready to suffer through an Update #6 playthrough.


Probably meant persistence. Since I'm not actually stubbornly discussing stuff here, merely persistently pointing out issues

But about that point I made;


But that is not the issue nor is truly relevant; the issue is that she does not have any love/romance scene after she is truly free and fully herself in ACT II. That's the real problem, the fact that Larian did not make any for the actual Minthara.

As I said we all have our opinions and that's okay and even more: it's very good.


To your point then and my opinion

It may feel like developing slow because after the romance scene in Act 1 she just does not spend time with you or stay in the camp so narratively it would be difficult to drop in cue's without breaking the immersion to let the player know you are in a relationship and I 'm glad it was decided to keep it the way it is now, it will just have to take players own inlellect to grasp at the relationship status exactly as you get the dice advantage later on during rescue scene.

Given the myriad of dialogue choices and if you drop into her fears and fail the dice check for example, game flags you both as not in relationship and you get disadvantage on the dice checks during rescue scene,.

So one could debate that if she truly is not herself none of these relationship notions would even matter at that point as Minthara would not care and just busy enjoying the trip, other than mechanically in the context of gameplay element which I doubt its solely there for.

While most of the comparisons are okay'ish I feel comparing Minthara to Chop to be unfair,

Back to our regular scheduled program;

Sazza's introductory scene does not have a safe-guard in place to account for the fact that the player already met Minthara and Priestess Gut prior to ever meeting Sazza at the Grove. So just like with Sazza's scene at the Goblin Camp where Minthara acts like she never met the main character, the same happens here where our own character acts like they never met Minthara.

*Maybe Drow are just terrible with remembering names*


This would be the simplest fix ever if the player already met Minthara by simply replacing the dialogue with;

• 1. 'Boss lady'? You mean Minthara?
• 3. Yes, she sent me. Ready to get out of here? (No deception check since the player is not lying here)

I wish we could confront Klagga and his love letter to Minthara, maybe even show her his love letter haha

I am not sure if this on your list (and I currently don't dare to click through the pages because the forum is very unstable) but I noticed that if you recruit Minthara and have not previously used tadpoles, you will now get the option to convince your hesitant companions of using tadpole powers too. I assume this is because Minthara unlocks the Illithid Powers menu but from a narrative point of view it makes no sense. It would be nice if she tried to convince a hesitant player though.

Also, when long resting after having the scene in the throne room but before rescuing Minthi, Wyll said "Minthara's still imprisoned in Moonrise. If I were inclined, I could save her. Not that I'm inclined." The "I" makes me think this is an Origin-Wyll thing that slipped in, despite not being on his Origin (I am on Astarion's Origin atm).

No. It's still lie because Minthara doesn't value lifes of goblins at all except as cannon fodder on battlefield. And Minthara sent you to find/infiltrate the grove not on rescue operation.

It's not currently on the list, but I am aware of it and yes it's because of the tadpole system immediately enabling as soon as she's recruited. Funnily enough if you never triggered the 2nd Guardian scene and go back to ACT I after recruiting Minthara, you can trigger that Guardian scene and they'll act as if you consumed tadpoles yourself despite never doing so, due to being instantly flagged by the enabled tadpole system.

I believe Minsc despite being tadpoled, does not auto-enable the system so it should not be a massive thing for them to fix.

I'll check the idle comments with companions too.


Obviously she did not send us to rescue Sazza... but she did send us to the Grove and therefore although Sazza is not originally included in the plan, still falls under the overall plan to infiltrate the Grove.

Yet another oversight with poorly rushed Minthara;

Minthara does not have a laughing voice line for the [Sentient Amulet]. Larian you do know she can laugh, right? You do know you even recorded her laughing lines, RIGHT?

*It's okay, that's why I'm here. Laugh it up Minthy*


*In case any Halsin fans are reading this, he also doesn't have laughing lines for the amulet so might want to bring it up to Larian*

I am just guessing, but it might be because Minsc is opposed to using tadpoles and needs to be convinced to use them, while Minthara is pro-power, having several abilities unlocked.

Yup, though they can do the same with Minthara as well. A simple dialogue asking her not to indulge if the player never used the tadpoles. Or simply not enabling it at all if the player never used the tadpoles.

After all Astarion too despite wanting to munch every tadpole in sight, won't do it without our say so. So with Minthara this is just a result of rushed development causing a gameplay bug/oversight that directly clashes against the narrative of our main character, but it should not be a huge issue for Larian to fix 'if they care to fix it'.

I don't disagree, I was just wondering about the why. I also wonder if tadpoles are bugged in general, Minthara is currently the only character in the group who has consumed additional tadpoles, yet when I was influencing dear Barnabas to break free, it still gave me the "Favourable Beginnings" bonus for my PC which surprised me.

Apart from the issues described, it would be great if she got a real "good" path recruitment, not just this meta-gamed knock-out solution. Exploring why you want to save her could be interesting especially for a more morally motivated character. Is it because your character could have so easily been in her position or because you want to maybe use her later on? Why is she different from the goblins? If you choose to defend the Grove convincing her that the "Goblin trash" she is forced to work with just won't cut it, could be used to end the battle earlier, like with Auntie. - and she definitely needs some protective measure like Viconia or Auntie for the battle. There is just too much stuff flying around in that scenario.

A pretty major roleplay issue for non-tadpole players;

When Minthara joins the party, her auto-enablement of the tadpole system causes the narrative to treat the main character who never consumed any tadpoles as if they did.

*I swear Guardian lady, she made me do it!*

Hey all, there is a mod on Nexus to fix the repeating dialogue for Minthara. Judging by Larian's track record with her, I'm not expecting them to fix the bug this week (or anytime soon) so I'm using this now to resume my playthrough. Here is the link if anyone wants to use it too.

I prefer to avoid delving into mod usage and remain positive it will get fixed eventually, while it is nice to hear a hobbyist being able to fix it we should not have to rely on them from a broader perspective, thank you for sharing though!

Biggest reason I prefer ot avoid mods is to save future headaches with them seeing as Baldurs Gate 3 is still actively developed, even if biggest focus is bug fixing.

Of course, it's there as a choice

This bug has been crippling my gameplay as well as my friends' who are just now playing the game. While I agree and know Larian will fix this eventually, they have the tendency to put off fixing Minthara until months later. Just downloading this so we can get back to our multiplayer run without missing out on anything, and I personally never had much headache with mods.

I tested this in my non-tadpole playthrough some time ago.

Yes the options to convince party members to use the tadpoles and when the Dream Guardian speaks to you it has that dialogue but, the most important aspect imo is when in act 3
Also when I asked about this UI behavior thing on Reddit someone commented that the UI will activate anyway on Act 3 upon reaching certain locations. I haven't been able to test this.

These two things in combination constitute my biggest problem with her treatment. In Early Access the devs really stressed that they wanted people doing the evil stuff so they could get data on that, so I did! And Minthara's dialogue AFTER the ethical quandary of her sex scene actually has some of her most interesting, most in-depth writing. You get insight into her fears and hopes and even if you offend her and lose the opportunity to recruit her by looking into those fears you get GREAT content out of it. You get some early insight into her matriarchal upbringing and a nice little mention of Menzoberranzan and how she'd love to take you as her consort there, you get reactivity when you save her later (unfortunately though as you've shown this path has far more broken than working). With a start that strong it was exciting to see where they'd take her. But they left her pretty barebones so that's like... ALL you get out of recruiting her the original way to balance out everything you lose and it's just nowhere near enough. Then you fast forward to her new recruitment method and while that's great and in a world where they won't hunker down and fix all her bugs it's nice that more things work on this path they still left things broken and you instead just lose all that early intrigue she gives you. Damn shame.

It's wild that they left her in such a bizarrely broken state, and I can only imagine it's mostly for Halsin's sake. Sure he needed Act 3 content when they decided to make him recruitable but as time has gone by I've just become more and more convinced that they basically forgot she existed and ALSO needed to be worked on between EA and launch when they shifted their effort to Halsin. It's the only reasonable explanation I can think of for why there are SO many problems with her and why new bugs with her appear with every update that tries to fix any of her problems. It feels even more odd because before the game launched they seemed ENTHUSIASTIC about her and the evil path content.

LMAO, Larian still hasn't fixed her boots either. Still have to use "Drow Leather Boots for Minthara" mod from Nexus, that brings back matching footwear from Early Access.