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

Larian had this mantra of going all the way with content that not everyone is going to see and respect the player agency, this statistics is just for a little bit of fun its not a reflection of priorities and I hope won't affect the priorities where needed.

However even if MInthara being kissable came so very late I personally still think its a very low number, I hope the game won't lose more of its complexity as you can replay the game endlessly and in one of those occasions you can go all murder hobo to get Minthara very early on shouldn't be so hard to do, I know .. I know.. you do lose a large amount of content doing so and its a loss of opportunity to not include side content exclusive to that chaotic evil side.

I'm feeling naive but hopeful towards patch 7 or the fixes that follow after it.

Even if we amuse the idea development decisions are based on stats; these stats should actually be the sole motivator to drastically pull their attention towards her, rather than the opposite, because when a wide character roster has characters that are so drastically underused by the community and the statistics colossally show it then obviously there is something horribly wrong with the character. At that point the next course of action isn't to keep ignoring it by focusing on the most popular character(s), but to actually stop, find out why the other ones are not receiving any interest at all and address it to maintain a balanced roster.

The thing about Minthara's stats is that they are fundamentally incorrect and do not reflect the player's actual interest whatsoever; because unlike someone like Wyll who truly has always been underused precisely because he's generally unliked by the community, Minthara is the least used because she's a development-starved character.

Larian with its poor development management crippled her character from the very get-go and made the worst mistake one could make with a wide character roster by failing to ensure she provides equal quality content as the rest of the cast and then not caring about it when it mattered the most while a vast portion of the community was truly trying to get invested in her character despite her colossal issues. Larian's own lack of care is what made it impossible to develop an interest in the first place, therefore they can't expect her to be popular if they themselves don't care about her. Karlach was in a similar position too at launch as an exceptionally well-written but underdeveloped character, yet she started receiving attention instantly when it mattered and it paid off.

Which is why I pointed out this amusingly ironic statistic with kisses; I find it so insanely tone-deaf of them to compare their intentionally least-developed-character who because of their utter lack of care didn't even have the ability to kiss for 5 months post-release, with their most developed character Shadowheart who as their development princess has been receiving their complete attention since the very beginning. What's next... comparing how many players romanced Minthara in comparison to Shadowheart when her entire romance was not even accessible for the first 6 months since release?

These player statistics are just disingenuous. If Minthara actually launched with the same amount of content as the rest of the cast, she'd be toppling most of the cast on these charts today. Her fandom was massive in Early Access and the first few months at launch, despite her colossal issues during both periods.


If my words alone are not enough here is actual proof that she truly did not receive kisses until 9th of January 2024;

Hotfix #16 - It Is Now Possible To Kiss Minthara At Camp

Her finally being kissable was news spreading like wildfire pretty much everywhere, especially on Reddit

Not needed to convince just bad wording on my end, I'm very aware that she wasn't kissable prior to that date, still remember feeling like few of the first players dropping a kiss on her on the day after the patch that enabled this before it spread like wildfire on Reddit, the same playthrough I wrote a love story between the dark urge and Minthara, I am obviously biased but I feel like Minthara also got tbe best mocap kiss animations between all of the companions when valentine patch added few different iterations at random.

Ever heard about Loghain from Dragon Age: Origins? The dude who's recruitment was locked behind not bashing his head in?
The main reason why Minthara is so unpopular is because the most obvious story path involves burying her midst the first main quest. Not because something is horribly wrong with her..

The exclusivity choice certainly played a part in diminishing the interest in her character, but it's not the main reason at all because 35% of total players actually joined Minthara's side of the story during the opening week, a period when nobody knew anything about the game.



Afterwards over time it slowly became obvious to everyone that her entire side of the story is terribly underdeveloped and buggy since Larian was prioritizing the good path, which gave that entire side of the story the reputation that still stands today. That reputation drastically worsened when it turned out she is so terribly underdeveloped with more than 1500 voice lines missing due to "a bug" according to Larian, when in reality it was them downplaying her rushed development and countless of bugs. Her dialogues broken, her romance nonexistent, her reactivity not even conceptualized yet, her side of the story not offering even 1% of new content. And it still keeps being an issue till this day.

So naturally who wants to waste their time on a clearly underdeveloped side of the story that offers nothing in return with a companion that is broken beyond belief, when Shadowheart, Lae'zel and Karlach exist and provide a much more fulfilling experience.

Simply go back to see how popular Minthara was during Early Access here and especially on Reddit when people religiously discussed every miniscule change about her, from her appearance to her lore, especially her hairstyle changes and sex scene angles. Her fandom was as religious back then as Astarion's fans today. How many threads were born since then to literally repeat the same exact complaints word for word about her entire side of the story being so underdeveloped from Early Access up until this very day. More than 3 years of feedback and what has Larian done to address it? She doesn't even have a single voice line for casting cantrips and spells.

Assaulting the grove and recruiting minthara are different things though. Taking the goblins' side equals peeling the first layer of the onion. The night you celebrate she just tries to kill you, which can lead to her death a second time. In act 2 there is also no clear indication of her being reqruitable unless the rather specific game and dialogue sequence is followed. Compare this to "I think we should travel together" during the first hours of the game with any other companion. I imagine if we get stats on Minsc - it would be as dire as Minthara. Those characters are just locked behind too many doors in order to be popular. Your discontent with her level of polish as a character is legit, thats for sure. Maybe they hid her that well for that exact reason, hope she gets some more love in the upcoming patch.

Maybe a little bit OT, but has Minthara been branded by the absolute ? I had Lae'zel and Tav branded, but it seems to be showing nowhere in the character sheet.)
Now I recruited Minthy and need to give her equipment, but there are some items that work only when the wearer is branded. So that's why I would like to know if she is.

Minthara does voice her spells and cantrips in Patch 7, though her voice sounds a bit quiet to me.

Thank you for taking the time to answer some questions or to look them up in the game.

Just a normal day in camp for Minthara. At least Thaniel likes her. Halsin is currently annoying Lae'zel.
Maybe if we can get both (and the druid just overstays his welcome in act 3), give her her own tent, so she doesn't need to steal Halsins and stand in the table.
At least she is talking to me this time, the last time, she just bugged out completely and was silent.

What a beautiful and versatile pile of skulls.

That reminds me -- and I feel incredibly stupid now -- Halsin disappeared in my playground after recruitment. I never understood why. But get this, I don't have his tent! Thaniel was standing in a patch of dirt all the time and I just didn't notice...

In my last HM, Halsin and Oliver bugged out big time. Halsin became unresponsive after a while, Oliver didn't get the dialogue, when you defeat him and then Halsin just vanished from the game completely. I recruited Mintahra by knocking her out instead of killing her (so the good way) and she too bugged out. This time, both Halsin and Minthara act normal and I saved Thaniel and Oliver. Did the same as last time.

My bad, thought it was an inquiry

And I agree, Larian truly did a fantastic job with them. The amount of character, passion and admiration they convey along with her piercing gaze that shoots straight into the soul... *chef's kiss* PERFECTION. Exceptionally well done and fitting for Dark Urge who she admires the most and therefore carrying a much deeper meaning than with any other Origin. Ends up feeling so genuine, especially after already having a partner she admired once;


Hands down her 'Ride Or Die' scene at the very end where she doesn't care if she dies as long as they're together and then followed by such a caring embrace is one of my favorite moments in the entire game. Insane how good that scene is and how far she's come as a character.


By the goddess, thank you for letting me know.

Wonder what else was fixed about her and Halsin without being mentioning in the notes. Am worried about the sound quality though, will have to extensively test both of them when I get my hands on it.


Nope, the brand is only for the peons of the True Souls to act as identification since they don't have tadpoles.

Alright, I don't know if this was reported or not. I've read two different lists of known bugs and plot holes from Minthara and did not saw this.


Since Patch 8 seams to be the very last big patch that we are getting, I decided to at least make an effort to report this plot hole that is bugging me since the release of the game and now seams to be like the "last opportunity" to fix this.
I still don't know who did it! ... Nor does Minthara, apparently.

According to a Twitter/X user, the Minthara/Durge Romance Breakup is back as a bug in Patch 7.

Quote: "I saw people playing Patch 7 commenting on it in the Spoiler Chat. They were told it is a Bug they should Report though!"

If this is true. The Romance Breakup becomes a running Joke. 🥴

A high born female Drow, too dumb to become a priestess hence used as a Lollth cult enforcer, then tadpoled, now with two stories on how she got her tadpole? I'd not trust her with the time of the day ...

Loved this, thank you for sharing!

Yes, it's great Minthara and Halsin will now both voice their spells.^^

This is the part that still gets me the most. She was so ridiculously popular, and they literally left her for dead when they started the mad dash to prop up Halsin, restructure the Nightsong, and rip out all the incredibly interesting transformation progression scenes from the story. If they never actually talk transparently about what their goal was I'm never going to understand what the core "good idea" they were chasing with these decisions was supposed to be unless it was some kind of mandate from WOTC because they got cold feet on the trajectory Early Access content was still following (which was, I'm gonna say it, definitively better than what we got in the final game).

People didn't have a 35% grove assault pick rate because of the changes to further gamify tradpole powers, it happened because of all the buzz with how Early Access kept on telling us to try evil, and that we would find a unique rewarding story path in the final game for doing so. What we got was just less total content, party members leaving, and Minthara who was supposed to make up for the loss if you even knew you could recruit her being nonfunctional. That statistic probably sank faster than a rock once people realized none of it got followed through on. It's good we'll finally be seeing some more interesting Evil stuff but holy hell why were they so focused on having us try it out in EA if it was going to be the definition of an afterthought.

Sad isn't it. Not only was she extremely popular, but also consistently receiving substantial development throughout the entirety of Early Access with multiple additions, tweaks and revisions to make her the best she possibly could be.




Those who were here and engaged back then will always know Minthara's skyrocketing popularity during Early Access. The fandom behind her was massive, passionate and vocal just about anything related to her. Why did it happen? Well because back then Larian actually had a balanced character roster. Everyone had an equal chance because there were no blatantly prioritized companions showered with 10 times more content than others, unlike today where their most overdeveloped characters like Shadowheart dominate 50% of the total player base chart due to having full development attention. It wasn't like this back then because, unlike Minthara, the entire origin cast was generally disliked by the community.

Who here remembers when the community back then barely tolerated the origin cast's Early Access personalities, believing actual good-aligned companions were coming later?

• Shadowheart wasn't everyone's favorite cute princess as she is today; she was the complete opposite. Massively disliked for her extremely selfishly opinionated and cruel behaviors with constant snarky disapprovals towards any acts of decency to those less fortunate. Remnants of her cruel EA personality still remain in some ACT I scenes.
• Lae'zel was the most grumpy and xenophobic Gith in existence that disliked everything and everyone, had no shame constantly repeating that in everyone's face. Her personality underwent the most changes of all the companions.
• Gale was so incredibly mysterious to the point many believed him to be the most evil untrustworthy companion of them all, merely putting up a facade.
• Wyll was a badass vengeance seeking fallen hero with a bad past and a temper. For whatever reason the community didn't like his fallen hero arc, so when Larian botched his writing at launch by taking away everything that made him interesting and entangled him with Karlach to be her useless sidekick he became the least liked Origin companion.
• Astarion was 'damaged goods' personified, like a mistreated dog on crack. Extremely paranoid and intensely jumpy at any sign of empathy from the player, often lashing out of mistrust at everyone trying to treat him humanely. Getting him to open up back then felt like digging through a mountain of steel.

And then there was Minthara, just a genuine mind-controlled Lolth-Drow who unlike the origin cast was actually liked for who she was. Butchers an entire grove with us, laughs about it and then performs the hottest 69 of all time while afterwards sincerely regretting she can't spend her life together with us in Menzoberranzan. Despite not being an origin companion she captivated her audience and there was so much development going into her at the time.


So what happened... why did Minthara who was genuinely loved and consistently receiving development (also the only one with a fully-developed sex scene at the time) end up as the most underdeveloped, nonfunctional and abandoned character of the entire cast?

Most people today upon seeing Minthara's state or these disingenuously presented stats come to the conclusion it's due to "lack of character's popularity"; but for retrospect Jaheira did not exist during Early Access at all, yet she does not suffer from any of the issues that Minthara suffers. Even has miniscule details covered such as having voicelines for the [Sentient Amulet] from ACT I, whereas Minthara does not.

The truth simply is that Larian abandoned her at the peak of her popularity due to their poor development management and afterwards failed to ensure their cast of characters is equally interesting with equal amounts of content due to blatant favoritism post-launch. That's why the quality and the amount of content between companions vary so drastically today, that's why Minthara, Halsin and Wyll are in the positions they're in, that's why Sarevok and Viconia are just shallow throwaway villains, that's why it took a whole year for us to get proper evil endings as the final content update, that's why the evil path is so deprived of content, quality control and development care, etc...

Poor development management back then, blatant favoritism since then.

• Why is Minthara still broken as an Early Access character a year later when she had so much content written for her behind-the-scenes?
• Why were Sarevok and Viconia not made companions for the evil path as direct counterparts to Jaheira and Minsc?
• Why weren't Sazza or Nere made companions to compensate for the loss of Halsin, Wyll, Karlach, potentially Gale, potentially Minthara?
• Why does the good path gain 9 companions, but the evil path takes away over 60 NPCs and 4 companions while giving only 1 companion that's not even functional?
• Why do all evil characters we peacefully interact with either run off-screen or die off-screen?
• Why does the evil path entirely feel as just a slight variation of the actual intended good path with drastically less content in it?

Like, I understand certain changes they made. Lae'zel getting toned down is sort of reflective of the overall adjustments WOTC is finally getting around to with their... let's say poor past racial connotations in the rules books. But things like Shadowheart and Wyll's personality changes feel like a complete lack of confidence in their own writing, to say nothing of the pattern certain criticisms of the latter followed. Gale, Astarion, and Shadowheart opening up a little earlier is probably a good thing given we now have the full picture of the game's scope, but a lot of the complete overhauls were so blatantly unnecessary. And if there WERE "good" party members/companions on the way that unnecessary work is certainly a large part of the cause for never getting them. Of course Karlach is probably the only good character that was in the pipeline, Halsin was explicitly unplanned even without the nature of his Act 3 personality being so utterly divorced from how he behaves prior, and Helia was dropped before those quotes even happened so I have no idea why they'd be implying MULTIPLE good characters were on the way unless Early Access was intended to go on quite a bit longer (and it probably should have). Helia in particular as a werewolf (hell the ability to be one at all) is sorely missed in a game with such a hefty amount of Selûne and Shar content and the amount of work on her that was done prior to her early cut calls into question why they didn't pick her back up as a "Good" character the EA crowd was waiting for instead of rewriting everyone. Why rewrite so much, so completely so late in development? It could not have possibly been good for the team, especially with the release date MOVED UP for some unhinged reason further exacerbating the obvious problems like Minthara's non-functionality outside of Act 1.

That said the general tone of barely tolerating the origin characters always baffled me. I wasn't posting for it but I'd been lurking and truly could not wrap my head around it. Shadowheart and Wyll especially were just more interesting with the only thing wrong about Wyll being that Mizora's capture made no sense in any context prior to Karlach's backstory being explained (which WOULD make it make sense if Mizora were in pursuit but they don't appear to have thought of that). Wyll in particular was so confident and basically proud of his self-indulgent past, and they turned him into a walking doormat when all that really needed adjusting was how obsessively hateful he was of goblins, even more so than the Goblin Slayer MC. Shadowheart on the other hand made so much more sense as a devotee of Shar with her EA personality, and at least to my memory near the end of EA still had mostly the same approval spread, she was just more dedicated to obfuscating her feelings. God the quality of writing was so much higher for both of them.

And then we have Minthara who just talked the best game of all of them for her relatively few lines. She was proud and self-assured in a way that even EA Wyll didn't come close to being. In the final game rather than slowly changing as all the EA origins do, she slowly opens up and reveals more of who she is for you to take or leave. NONE of them can compare to her in Act 1, and later in the game she's the only one self-confident enough even with her inner turmoil about her autonomy being taken from her to continue being who she already is. And then oops, "the most popular EA character that we always intended to make recruitable, unlike Halsin? Yeah we forgot to make sure anything about her worked in Act 2 and 3."

Sarevok and Viconia are certainly disappointing in terms of what I personally would have liked to see from them (not necessarily Evil replacements for Jaheira/Minsc but at least having far more depth and interactivity especially with those two around) but at least in their cases there aren't any signs they had something better for them already arranged only to tear it up in some kind of misguided attempt to appease ONLY their loudest EA critics.

Honestly I wish someone archived the Early Access install. I wish I thought of it myself at the time, but how could any of us know the changes would be so wildly, unnecessarily drastic. Even the character creation models for Tav faces looked better than what we have now (granted, I mean that in terms of style, not graphical fidelity). My favorite Half-Elf face looks like it got stung by a bee between the final EA patch and the full release.