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

Serious question. I really love Minthara's character.💜

But what purpose does she serve as a companion? Why is she a companion? Originally she was evil run exclusive. And according to Adam Smith, she was only recruited around once in 10 runs (as of November 2023). So not many people played with her (back then). A secret companion? A companion especially for evil runs. Probably. Well not many play evil runs. Or only once and then never again. And not everyone who starts an evil run recruits Minthara.

No offense to my fellow Minthara lovers. 💜
But I don't fully understand Larian's intentions with this character. 🤔

Is she some kind of "disposable" companion?
You recruit her once (maybe/for evil run) and then never again.🤔

Edit: but yes. Way more people recruit her probably now. Thanks to the Ko recruitment.

I interpret Minthara to be just a companion for those who go through a more evil or chaotic path from choosing to side with goblins, that is all I can guess how Larian might have wanted her to be exclusive but then the whole knee jerk reaction of making her recruitable on a good path by means of knocking out is what probably turned her more buggy than before for lack of a proper framework if such even exist like for the origin companions, is almost like Minthara is just spaghetti code.

You do have to remember though Minthara was a s far as I can recall, bugged so no one really could recruit nor hear any of her dialogues which was eventually fixed after Baldur's Gate 3 was officially released on steam.
What would have been ideal is to not make her too exclusive behind a path that cripples a lot of content away from players, is only a good thing shes accessible to more players.

Lastly why you might feel that way with the questioning Tim30 is because Minthara also feels like still in middle of on-going development.

I don't know what Larian's intentions are but I do like the conversations you can have with her, especially if you play a "good" characters. Her arguments are usually fuelled by reason and encourage you to consider your own actions and decisions more thoroughly and maybe get another perspective on what's going on. I hope her interactions with Avatar-Gale have been fixed by now, she has by far one of the best takes on the whole Crown situation - alas, that was bugged on my patch 6 adventure.

As of patch 7, there’s no sex scene after knocking her out, can we all get Larian to add that scene since her romance was boring from being knocked out. And she deserves to get a baby, or a Bhaalspawn.

What is the purpose of any of the companions? To entertain us players with their stories and add to the fun of playing BG3. I think Minthara could have some more work done to her story (give her more intereactions with Orin), and a second romance scene like every other companion. But she is worth recruiting, her story is very interesting and her VA is great.

Understandable question and the answer is quite simple; she has no purpose (in full release).

During Early Access Minthara was an incredibly popular and well-thought out character, one so cared about that even the descriptions of her unique gear told so much of her backstory. Constantly kept receiving substantial development efforts and the only character of the entire cast with a fully functioning sex scene at the time (her classic 69 scene which at the time was far more explicit than the PG13 scene we got today). She along with her sex scene were constantly being improved, revised and adjusted... and her fandom was huge and as obsessed with her back then as Astarion and Shadowheart fandoms are today. Actually nay... far more than any fandom today, as just the camera angle changes of her sex scene alone stirred so much discussion and feedback, not to mention her hairstyle change.

She was supposed to be the carrot-on-a-stick, the guide in the darkness, the beacon in the mist, the unique treasure for daring to do something different... the other half of the story that players would not be witnessing unless they joined her (unlike today where one can experience absolutely everything in a good playthrough). She was supposed to be the companion that would guide the player through the other half of the story, into the inner circles of the cult and all its intricacies together with Nere and Kar'niss and even Ketheric Thorm (yes he was a redeemable companion)... but alas it was not meant to be.

BG3 had severe development management issues during production, as most of the game's production was simply "winging it" as they kept going. And once they lost their faith in their own Early Access writing too the majority of the game got rewritten and thus Minthara got abandoned in development hell as the focus entirely shifted to exclusively the good choices and good companions.

Due to this Larian hasn't had a clue what their intentions are with the character ever since Early Access' final Update #9, as once the rewrites started for full release Minthara lost the majority of her original story and ultimately got murdered due to so much content ripped out and too many critical bugs. That's why she has no purpose and therefore is stuck in this miserably buggy and unfinished state a year after release with so much content missing, treated like some unwanted piece of dog muck by the side of the road as her buggy carcass merely got tossed over to the good path and quickly discarded in the evil endings, instead of actually improving the character and filling the gaps.

Her mistreatment began when out of nowhere she got turned from a Cleric into a Paladin with EA's final update (despite all of her unique gear being made for a Cleric) and also had her unique [Amulet of Misty Step] taken away from her (which tells a bit of her backstory). Since then everything went downhill for her in terms of development, causing less and less people to care about the character after the game released due to so many critical issues denying players access to even the miniscule amount of her content that remained (couldn't be romanced, had no kisses either, most of her dialogue couldn't be accessed due to broken triggers etc...)

She simply exists today as a broken unfinished remnant of their once radiantly shining passion that has completely faded away for the character, drifting without a purpose because her original purpose got stolen from her when the story she was a part of got ripped out. Naturally despite the problems she's still a phenomenal character with incredibly well-written personality and dialogue, her lovably unique insights remind me a lot of Kreia from Star Wars KOTOR II as the parts that she still does have is some of the best writing in the game... but that's all she is, just well-written pieces of an unfinished story barely stitched-together without a middle and an end.

Once their most developed and cared-for character, today just a barely-functioning unfinished mess.

Minthara's unique amulet that got taken away from her during Early Access to be just random loot;

When Larian released the companion kiss statistics in August and Minthara was the least kissed companion. I immediately started a “statistic run”. With the intention of slightly improving her statistics. To count the kisses I have used a "Hand Clicker Counter?". For each kiss 1 click.

I have now completed 3 "statistic runs".
These are the results:

August Run (KO): 1163 kisses
October Run 1(ko): 1280 kisses
October Run 2(Raid the Grove): 2088 kisses

So a total of 4531 kisses in 3 runs.
That should at least help her stats a little. 🤏
But for now i am done with this game. 😂😏

Congratulations, you've singlehandedly increased her personal score by 2.6%

That's 0.03% increase in comparison to Astarion's amount and 0.01% increase in comparison to Shadowheart's amount.

Just putting it out there but how many people bothered with her compared to those two?

I mean like it or not they're going to emphasize new support or content for the more popular characters.

One shouldn't base the idea of popularity on these kissing statistics because Minthara could not even be kissed for the first 5 months of the game's release - during which time every other companion (while the player-base was at its highest for months) kept racking up kisses from the very first day, whereas Minthara did not even have a working romance due to critical bugs nor even had kissing implemented for months. Kissing came 5 months later for her as a completely undocumented fix in a random Hotfix #16, by which point the player base naturally diminished and those that remained avoided Minthara like the plague due to her infamous reputation of being unfinished and broken (which 100% stands for her even today).

So do not believe the lies the Larianites tell. These statistics are a big fat lie and if they had any sense they would've excluded Minthara from the anniversary statistics... instead of highlighting their colossal blunder with the character by mispresenting her as "the least kissed companion" due to their own failures.

Same goes for any other kind of popularity comparisons too because Shadowheart or Lae'zel or Astarion or Karlach all launched with fully developed base content that got perfected over time since release. They became popular precisely because the players had a proper chance from the start to fully immerse themselves into these characters.

Minthara on the other hand apart from being exclusively locked to a completely underdeveloped path of the story; launched in an abysmally unfinished and broken state too with the majority of her content not implemented at all, while her content that was in-game remained completely inaccessible due to numerous character-breaking bugs, trying to cover it up as "just a bug blocking 1400 voice lines of hers".

So this has nothing to do with popularity. The fact that Minthara as a non-companion character during Early Access was extremely popular in comparison to actual Origin companions at the time, says all there is to say about her true popularity.

Minthara is coming to Idle Champions on November 6th. And their website claims she is 150 years old. Does that even fit? I always thought she was around 250? 🤔

Nonetheless, I will play it. Because of Minthara. Maybe we'll get new little story pieces with her? 🤔🥺


Idle Champions Minthara Website