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

I am really sorry for jumping in like in that in the middle of the discussion, but does anybody know if Larian has commented on the changes introduced by Hotfix 21? Is it a bug? Is it meant to be a cannon?

Thing is I am playing "redeemed" Dark Urge in romance with Minthara. There is no change whatsoever in her stance towards him. When he rejected his powers, she did not even disapprove. I am a little confused is Minthara was supposed to have had a tantrum or not breaking up with him in a camp scene is a bug. I am so confused that I have shelved the game for the time being. I mean, I like some drama but I am not sure what direction Larian is going with her.

I am just here to dump another reference to a Grove attack that never happened. This time it concerns the Steel Watch.

In fairness, the grove didn't have to fall for her to say that.

Destroying the grove was once a topic of concern for her. She's thinking back. How much easier it would have been to topple the grove if she had these things under her control instead of a bunch of goblins.

Basically, "I failed to defeat the grove, but I wouldn't have failed if I had these things."

Indeed, the party found the grove when it was attacked by a patrol of goblins chasing the adventurers. The goblins failed to enter the grove. It is likely the party told all this to Minthara, and so she could be referring to that raid.

While the hotfix took care of the breakup trigger, it looks like something else is broken now (01:15):

While i can also confirm the legacy dialogue about break-up has finally been solved running through my save files, this is great news.

Minthara is very sore after having triggered kissing animations with her for dozens upon dozen times, also while standing on different elevations and having numerous times gone through all iterations of kissing animations, everything works perfectly fine for me and is not showing any signs of breakng apart.

DId the video uploader showcoasing the broken kissing scene by chance have his game files influenced by any given mods?

The video was uploaded 4 hours ago, so it's unclear yet if it only happened in their game or if more people experienced that.

Am afraid I cannot confirm that issue either, as they're all working perfectly fine in my game. Tested both before and after the encounter as a redeemed Dark Urge.

Not bug related - or maybe - does Minthara in general have very few comments on events? After downloading the patch I wanted to see what her opinion on Astarion not ascending and Gale promising to return the Crown were and I got nothing.

That's good to hear! I guess the uploader's game got buggy for a moment then.

Hopefully, more fixes are coming.

It's not a bug per say, but unfinished development of her character as she does not have quite a few reactions where she should.

For example she does not have any reaction about her beloved Dark Urge confronting Bhaal and earning themselves any of the three eternal fates afterwards, whereas other companions do;



So I am documenting all of these lack of reactions as well. Oh by the way Anska I tested the tadpole thingy you mentioned and that's just a general bug with the tadpole, not specific to Minthara.

Ach, thank you for your diligence. Even though that does not make it better. I had so hoped that by feeding the bloody thing to someone all those chat lines would go away. Time for some tickets, I guess.

If anyone is interested, the compendium has finally been published.

Hopefully it's pleasant to the eye, as I did my best to beautify it to the point I even hit the image limit in a single post ^^

That's quite an impressive read. I hope that especially the knock-out recruitment gets some love, keeping her save while defending the Grove is a bit of a challenge and I would love it to be an actual conscious decision by the player for a selection of reasons. This could then become a source for conversation and bonding with her once you freed her in Moonrise.

IMHO, there is currently no in-game or story-based motivation for a "good" party to spare Minthara as part of their quest to save the Grove. She really doesn't come across as a conflicted or sympathetic character at the outset. She orders the brutal torture of a captive. She designs the slaughter of the grove. She feeds goblins to her spiders. She's just evil.

Everything sympathetic we learn about her—her cruel childhood, her indoctrination to the Absolute, her torment by Orin—comes after the Grove. After her judgment in Moonrise Towers, she is abandoned and alone and vulnerable. She could have a redemption story arc in a good campaign.

But there's no story motivation at the outset to start down this route. And it's probably why recruiting her in a good campaign is so awkward to begin with. If Larian wants to give Minthara an engaging, compelling role in a good playthrough, they really need to develop substantial additional content for her. It's not just adding some new lines or reactions.

I think it would be a big job. The origin characters with ambiguous morality, such as Astarian, Shadowheart and Lae'zel, can organically grow into more good or more evil personae because they start out morally ambiguous or neutral. Minthara being flat out evil at the outset makes it very unlikely for a good Tav to spare her.

Astarion approves of torturing the captive, murdering the grove and gets inspired when convincing the spiders to feed on goblins. He also approved of all the evil choices I made. He doesn't grow organically into a "good" character, because no matter what he experienced and what you told him he still wants to ascend and you have to persuade him to abandon his ambitions. His "redemption" path is terrible, and I hope Minthara doesn't end up the same way as he did - losing all of his fun traits - brassy and cynical sense of humour, temerity and sexual kinks right after making the big decision. At this point I'd rather she just got an extensive questline but without branching paths, like Halsin did. You just help with Thaniel and the shadow curse or fail and that's it. No personality changes, or more like the erasure of it, for Minthara, please.

Astarion is power-hungry, and feeding that ambition makes for a rich story arc. Arguably he's more fun in an evil playthrough, but he still has a redemption story arc as well. And that story arc works well, IMHO, or well enough to make him a welcome part of a "good" adventuring party.

My point is that there's no in-story reason for Minthara to belong in a good party, and adding that character arc would be a lot of work for Larian. They wouldn't or shouldn't have to change her personality for an evil playthrough, but she would have to change in-character as part of a good playthough. And perhaps that's a bridge too far.

Maybe a good-aligned PC thinks that Minthara can be redeemed and decides to knock her out non-lethally instead of kill her. Maybe they do the same to Ragzlin (though I've never tried).

Maybe the good-aligned PC can see that Minthara is a victim of the cult and may not appreciate her pragmatism and attitude but they are grateful to Minthara for sharing her experiences at Moonrise and finds the background she gives on Ketheric valuable, and while they don't appreciate her being in the party, they keep her around because they believe that being freed from the Absolute is a better fate while staying at camp than kicking her out of camp and the Prism's protection completely.

I don't think there's *no* in-story reason for Minthara to belong in a good party -- you just need some imagination and headcanon rationalization.

I want to qualify that this is simply my viewpoint from how I play the game. Whether she does or does not fit into anyone's playthrough is their own journey. I'm not trying to negate anyone's feelings to the contrary. Or, to put it more bluntly, I'm not trying to flamebait.