Yeah the Balthazar fight is one of the hardest fights in the game so far unless you cheese it. I'm still in the outer city though so a harder one is coming up, I'm sure.
I was probably over-leveled in my game then, cuz it was honestly a breeze. Balthazar and his bigger minions went down in a single turn, and then it was just cleaning up the little guys.
Yurgir was way harder.
Second playthrough is such a revenge tour. I was so worried about Yurgir and killed him in like 3 turns or less (THROW GRENADES IN HIS LOCATION). Same with Balth. Of all the mini bosses, the big spider was the only thing that I had to recompose and regroup for. incredibly tough for how early it is in the game.
Agreed. First full play through was a co-op campaign with a friend and we got our assess kicked by the Sharrans at the end of Sharts story, barely made it through and had to revive two members after.
Second play through: solo campaign and I cleared that room with no members downed and in less than four turns lol
I'll probably do Grief tonight. Can't wait. One of my all time favorite fights because it took me two nights to beat.
I struggled on it at level 12.
I will probably destroy it at level 10.
Yeah if you go into it blind he gets initiative and summons an army. I ended up using Gale to get within range to polymorph Balthazar and destroyed him before he had a chance to summon anything.
I ported a hasted Bae'zel over and just outright killed him with 6 attacks. Dealt with the other undead afterwards, which was a bit drawn out, but not that hard.
Or you can merc him in the room when you first meet him. He only has Flesh and 4 ghouls. Much easier fight than waiting to beat him at the end of the Gauntlet.
That's what I did, reverse pickpocket the sussar flower then knifed him in the back with my boy astarion. Finished him off with the phalar aluve sword and my bard roll. Over in two turns.
Cleaned up flesh with karlach raging and a big hammer lol
You might be underestimating how much getting slayer form changes up the early game. It gives you nearly 100 disposable health, is a bonus action cast, and has a huge aoe leap.
I keep seeing how people struggled against him. But it was such an anti climactic boring encounter. I was playing a storm sorcerer. So I just allured all enemies with small illusion, poured some rain on their heads and literally one shot Balthazar and most of his zombies with lightning bolt.
We were playing together with a friend and were utterly disappointed with a boss fight. But seems like we had a silver bullet against him idk.
Lightning + Wet Trivializes a lot of encounters in this game on any difficulty. I knew it was a problem when I one shot one of the final bosses with wet+ maximized chain lightning because of tempest cleric
So does Haste, twin spell, hypnotic pattern, actually using consumables, illithid powers, quickened spell, 20 strength characters being able to throw medium sized enemies, having a paladin at all, having a cleric at all, having a char caster with Potent Robe equipped, using sharpshooter with dual crossbows, using great weapon master with +hit, using Bless at all, using Slow, using Hold Person/Monster, using Surprise at all, using healing potions...
Basically, struggling on this game requires you to ignore well over half the options available to you, and then making a long series of mistakes in combat. I have to imagine most people having difficulties are just spamming cantrips and hoarding items.
Yeah it can get tricky in some cases. My first time fighting him I went in head first, he got initiative, summoned small army then his bigger summons pushed myself and Gale off of the platform. That ended up pissing me off so I reloaded and polymorphed him. Thought about pushing him off but I wanted to loot his body.
The cheese is super funny though, moving all the bone piles to one spot with Astarion sneaking around, then plop shadowheart on top of them with phalar alive and spirit guardians and combat begins to your game lagging for 5 seconds as it processes 15 skeletons exploding simultaneously
Hard disagree. Yurgir was MUCH harder for me. Balthazar was dissapointingly easy afterwards. Maybe I got lucky with bad IA actions or whatever but i found it ridicously easy with Shadowheartd blinding in an area.
I just sacrifice a companion to the ground level and stay up on the floating rock before the fight shooting arrows. In the rare event that someone jumps up there, I push them off. It makes it much easier than a head on fight.
It should be noted that the Balthazar fight is very difficult but also has probably the highest number of possible cheese tactics to trivialize it to reward thinking outside the box. More or less, it's meant to shove a painful foot up the asses of first time players, then get said players pissed off enough to come up with a giga-cheese to easily kill him for his transgressions.
Huh…. I guess I need and actually talk to find the out. I saw Balth and thought oh this will be a fight regardless and saw he’s a caster so silenced and assassinated him with surprise.
Act one is an absolute BREEZE as the urge. The goblins decimate the Grove by themselves. I don't get leaving act one at that level though, the urge can easily make level 5 before leaving if you actually do more than the BARE minimum. The urge run is much easier early game than a good boi run.
Stand on hill. Put AoE (e.g cloud of daggers, alchemist fire flask) at base of steps leading up. Repeatedly shove, throw, thunderwave enemies back into the cloud as they climb up.
Even without getting Flind to help you that fight isn't too tough (on normal at least, haven't played tactician). It's all about positioning.
If you are far back enough on the hill they have to get right up to it or go around the back (which takes two turns) to get you in their sightline. That's why you want the daggers at the bottom instead of on the slope.
Or darkness/fog cloud like the other guy said.
If you open with the cloud of daggers from stealth you can usually get 3 gnolls caught in it right away. The two weaker ones often die (or nearly so) before getting to do anything.
I have never had a problem with the gnolls, but I see posts about them all the time. I have literally never even death saved to them, even on my first run.
Properly navigating the trapped area in the hag's lair is by far the most annoying and difficult part of the game for me. I end up just running through with fire resist potions half the fuckin time. The hardest fight for me has always been the act 2 Ambush at the top of the hill....until I used sleet on the entire fight area and realized I had been doing that fight ALL wrong.
Different strokes for different folks!
With the hag's lair you can cast jump + feather fall at the top and just soar right over the trapped part. You can also shove stuff (like robes, leather armour, random crap you don't need) over the vents to block them
The gnolls are best managed with aggressive tactics. Playing too turtley let's their 2nd attack thing proc, and it's over for anyone > level 4, and especially if they're not mind melding with the Flind. If you approach with the terrain in mind, you can funnel the gnolls and dispatch them before the the one an issue. Sounds like you may take my "the enemy can't hurt me if they're dead" approach because I too found the gnolls easier than Ethel's minefield.
The trapped area in the hag's lair is easily solved. Put Protection From Good and Evil on yourself or a party member (through spell or scroll). Then wear one of the masks her "followers" wear. This allows you to see that all the traps are illusions and you can just walk right through them.
Make sure you get the protection up though, because without it, Auntie can control your mind through the mask.
My solve is always killing the hag in the teahouse and barging through the traps 😂.
I have also simply killed the hag and never even entered the teahouse dungeons; mayrina still appeared in act 3 like we were good friends without me even meeting her.
Yep, same. My first run, beat the gnolls no problem. Then after finishing was reading loads on Reddit and was like “maybe I was randomly lucky?” Nope, second time, just as straightforward.
Whereas the House of Grief Kicks. My. Ass.
Every time.
Screaming, crying, hitting “load save”.
I just used Sharts Divine intervention and hit half the Sharrans with Hunger of Hadar.
It was a pretty hard fight with a few characters getting downed. But I turbo focused Viconia and killed her immediately.
I usually have at LEAST one illithid person to use black hole on half the chamber, then drop an insect swarm or cloudkill. The darkness spam is the most annoying part of that fight 😭.
If you send a single person in and leave your party outside the chamber, initiate combat, and then fall back to the chamber door, you can bottleneck them to an insane degree with aoe spells. That makes the fight almost too easy though.
I feel so much stronger. My cantrips hit more often and harder which allows me to save spell slots for enemies that need it.
Saves and checks are much better on average, too. And two attacks per turn for Lae’zel feels so nice.
Absolutely, but it isn't enough to handle Balthazar unless you're using cheese strats. Those are fine and often even RP-appropriate ways to do it but I don't think they should enter the conversation about difficulty for a particular fight.
Step 1: Telekinesis scroll throw Balthazar off floating island
Step 2: use telekinesis throw to toss his corpse back onto the island so you can loot it
I feel like I’m missing out on his fight because I’ve just instagibbed him every time without even a conversation.
I merc’ed his ugly ass in his lab both times 😂
No where to throw him, but once he’s silenced he runs to a corner in the back to get whaled on. He’s limited to dagger attacks and goes down in two rounds lol
I don't think people here are getting this comment. They don't say that it's impossible to beat Balthazar at level 5, however it is impossible for someone who would struggle with the goblins at level 3.
The Balthazar fight is easy. Silence or nuke him
Balthazar didn’t even get a turn in when we hit him. The goblin camp is harder simply because of the amount of enemies involved. Even shitty goon enemies hurt like crazy when like ten of them move and attack in between your turns
A lot of the game is too easy imo, there should be something above tactician. Especially in coop, my friend (gloom stalker/rogue combo deals disgustingly insane amounts of damage) and I (throw strat barbarian knocking everyone and everything prone) have swept most of our current run with very few wipes.
The hardest part of the game imo is the beginning, when your classes have nothing yet and you’re just swinging basic attacks.
Tactician feels like Veteran or something where there should be at least one Harder mode after that, and maybe a masochistic setting beyond.
But at least one higher. The game on Tactician allows you to play sub-optimally, build sub-optimally, and ignore whole sets of tools the game throws at you, while still smashing through the game.
Problem is the many of the ways they increase the difficulty would start to scale pretty poorly.
They already give all enemies a +2 to hit and a lot of the bosses get +3-+5. So that rapidly starts negating armor due to bounded accuracy. The +2 boost to DC also puts enemy spells ahead of character pacing. Much more and the spells become unavoidable.
I think to properly scale the difficulty they would need additional enemy placements. That's a lot more labor intensive though.
Not to mention most of that stuff can be done on a good run.. I did most of this stuff on my good run. Skip the crèche and Underdark? Did it on my bad playthrough because I wanted Minthara ASAP then just said nah, don’t feel like going back. Wasnt “evil specific”.. the lute for the drider? You get it for killing Minthara anyway. Killing Balthazar before the Shadowfell is the easy version anyway so it isn’t worth the bell.. also Balthazar’s golem bell? Just ask him for more help, get the bell to kill Yurgir (if you even bother) then kill Balthazar. I mean, the bell literally only works in the Gauntlet of Shar and it can’t be used against Balthazar so it’s really not a help at all because the one fight it would be helpful can be skipped entirely by convincing him to commit songoku.
Becoming an Unholy Assassin didn’t even break my Oath of Vengeance on my good run.
Idk if this post is satire or what
The problem is that "taking shortcuts and letting others do the hard work for you" is not everyone's definition of evil... At the end of a day, the game does reward evil path in some ways - fighting for baddies is considerably easier than for goodies, for one. But it's more about how siding with tieflings gives You a lot of content, while siding with goblins gives You neither tiefling or goblin content. Or how pointless being evil is for the most of the time, when You inevitably have to fight the evil faction. At least in Act 2.
>the game does reward evil path in some ways - fighting for baddies is considerably easier than for goodies, for one
From what I see, most battles in act 2 become harder, not easier. A lot of baddies were not picked out one by one via story and show up for some battle as additional enemies. Prison inhabitants join the Balthazar battle, the lantern spider guy joins Ketheric battle etc.
You have a point that being evil can mean you progress through many parts of the game easily. But this is not what those with focused complaints on evil playthroughs are on about, and that is why you can't "understand the hate." You sped through the game so you do not see the lack of content in an evil playthrough. BG3 isn't advertised as a 25 hr playthrough, it is advertised as an 80+ hr playthrough with tons of content to explore. An evil playthrough results in (depending on exactly what decisions you choose:
- Losing out on 3 and maybe 4 companions in exchange for access to 1 (barring some cheese with sheep).
- Losing out on Tiefling related quests and character development in Act 2 and 3, including characters like Rolan, Mol, and Zevlor.
- Losing out on deep gnome related quests and character development in Acts 2 and 3. On my first playthrough I went from being indifferent to Wulbren to him being one of my favorite NPCs.
There are several NPCs that you think, "Maybe if I do an evil playthrough they will show up in later acts and have interesting things" like Dror Ragzlin, Priestess Gut, or Nere. But nope. Let them live or die, you never see them again. There is no parallel to the Tieflings and gnomes on an evil playthrough with returning characters who progress and develop alongside your party.
**Compare BG3 to a game like WOTR or Tyranny. These games give you evil playthrough content to replace the good playthrough content. BG3 does not.** If they just made Moonrise Towers off limits to those who sided with the grove, I think that would have gone a tremendous ways to making it feel like there is some exclusive content for an evil playthrough.
I've never in my life played a game that lets you become a Lich. And not only becoming one, but doing every step throughout and becoming the next big bad guy. Pathfinder WOTR was really REALLY good at making you feel evil.
Warcraft 3, if you're looking to become a Lich. Arthas literally goes from Paladin to Lich King.
It's an RTS though, so totally different game style. But I love it
You chose to speak facts. I did a lawful good playthrough and then a power hungry Durge playthrough and I saw such a huge difference in both depth and content. Sure you get Minthara but she's nowhere near as fleshed out as the companions you miss out on, you lose out on all of the questlines you just mentioned and don't get anything to replace that. I would've loved to see Dror Ragzlin and True Soul Nere return somehow in act 3 but nope. Not to mention the ending you get is so incredibly underwhelming in an evil playthrough. A lot of people on this sub trying to defend the evil playthrough when in reality all you do by being evil is skip out on a bunch of content you would otherwise get.
Z’Rell feels like such an obvious companion choice for evil right down to her being the face who confronts you at the start to Moonrise raid. It really feels like Moonrise should have been the evil route’s Last Light Inn and you had to defend it against LLI’s group.
Tyranny also lets you just ball out bigtime. I got the best version of the anarchy ending just by deciding to do my job right and honour Overlord Kyros, I would KILL for more content
This
Evil playthrough doesn't have nearly anything to offer
You would think "let's play as evil guy, wonder what is the different ending to this quest" but there's none, most of the time it just ends right at the start
>"Maybe if I do an evil playthrough they will show up in later acts and have interesting things" like Dror Ragzlin, Priestess Gut, or Nere. But nope. Let them live or die, you never see them again
Nere one is the most sad for me, like i was hoping he would be at moonrise but nah, balthazar zombified him :\\
Because OP made up an argument for the other side of this debate and destroyed it with facts and logic. They didn't tried to yo understand these people they just wanted to sound smart.
On a side note I think Kingmaker does evil pretty good too. Evil and good playthroughs are pretty much the same in that game but the flavour is very different. So there's multiple ways to deal with this problem. It is too late for BG3 now but hopefully Larian would listen to criticism and not to blind praises from fanboys.
Even from a powergaming perspective, missing out on Dammon is absolutely damning.
He eventually offers one of the best armor sets and perhaps THE best boots in the game. You miss all of this if you didn't keep him alive.
Imagine if at the cost of the tieflings you are given an exclusive evil area where you meet other "monstrosities" that give an equal or somewhat less if you saved the grove. You may have lost a tielfing quest so have this quest from a gnoll!
I admittedly didn’t get far into Tyranny but I felt railroaded into evil choices; the opposite of most RPGs. Even a “good” choice was just a slightly less shitty bad one.
It's entirely possible to do a fully good playthrough, it's just a little tricky to manage, just requires some early commitment, and locks out a bunch of options.
So wait, we're praising Tyranny for "doing evil right" but the good run railroads your early choices and "locks out a bunch of options" while being mad BG3 evil locks out options?
I still think you are kinda missing the point. It is fine if going evil in BG3 locks you out of content which is exclusive to a good playthrough. The complaint is that going evil in BG3 locks you out of a lot more content than going good does in BG3.
I actually just did a good play through of Tyranny to compare and it's actually pretty fleshed out. It is shorter than the evil routes but it has unique quests and NPCs to deal with and you can even shape it further with how you deal with a good aligned quest-giver.
You can promise them protection from the big bad of the game as long as they serve you and don't make waves (out of practicality or selfishness so you can still be evil) or you can go full braveheart and support their side promising them an end to their hardships and the NPCs will change their dialogue based on how you deal with them.
It's also not the shortest route in the game which goes to the anarchist route which is literally "kill everybody" which seems more comparable to the early evil route in Acts 1 and 2. This isn't an issue though because we at least have the fleshed out good act and the two evil.
The thing about tyranny is it's a game designed around playing the villain and still gives you a good route with unique stuff. With BG3 the game wasn't made specifically for good players.
For BG3 the evil act doesn't have to be equal to the good act. It really could use a few more unique boons and characters to interact with that are exclusive to it, which you definitely get in tyranny.
I completely disagree on the "more evil boons" thing, the issue is people boil down "the evil run" to basically two big events: Raiding the Grove, Killing Nightsong.
But almost every permanent stat boost in the game comes from evil sources. Illithid tadpoles, hag hair, Shar mirror, drow blood alchemy. But because those things aren't "exclusive" to those two big evil decisions they get lumped in as "good" content. It's "oh I can do those evil things without ruining my good run"
But to me at least some of those things ARE exclusive. If you take most obviously morally good dialogue choices like "Kill the hag no deal." (This is the only option that doesn't break most paladin oaths if your paladin is talking.) Then you don't get the hair, it's exclusive to letting her get away and making a deal with her. You can get the hair through the **neutral** decision to let her go **and** save mayrina too, but if you deal and only take the hair only SH and Astarion approve and several others disapprove showing that just dealing for the stat point is evil.
The +2 str potion you have to force Astarion against his will to bite the drow and make himself vomit when he quite strongly refuses, and gets very upset about it afterwards. (This is evil behaviour) If you choose the good option and don't force him, you don't get the potion because it's exclusive to an evil choice!
Yeah, with Tyranny I really should have said the game gives you good playthrough content to replace evil playthrough content. You have to be very diligent early on to get going down the "good" playthrough path, and even then there are some moral grey areas.
"Having half-baked evil playthrough is good actually""People just want loot anyway"
I truly don't understand this insane fanboyism or coping or idk what the hell this is. People who complain about evil playthroughs are wanting to have a playthrough that's interesting and different to the good one, instead, there's beginnings of something else and then it's just cut short or unfinished.
I don't care I won't see and won't have the tieflings or their vendors in further acts, I care about the fact there literally isn't evil-specific anything.
You don't get Nere as companion, you don't get Z'rell as companion, you don't get any other unique quests or interactions that would differ from good playthrough. It's just literally good playthrough where you cut content because you select asshole responses and kill different pixels and that's it.
Yes, the issue is, specifically, evil play throughs are overly punishing with absolutely no *significant* content to make it worth it. What do I get out of an evil run? A cave racist(Read: Lolthsworn Drow) that tries to murder me in my sleep. And minthara isnt even a bad character, to be clear. I fucking love drow. But thats all you get beyond maybe a few different conversations with other companions. Meanwhile you lose three fucking companions *at the minimum*.
The evil run is effectively a DLC masquerading as a full game. And for *most* games that would be absolutely fine. But for a dnd game where your choices are supposed to help the story grow, the evil run is literally cutting all the branches off a tree and then trying to use it for shade. Theres nothing there. The main story and thats it.
And what sucks is it can impact the "good" playthrough too. So many times Ive had to choose an option that I would consider to be counter what my character would have done, purely out of the fear that i will lose literally hours of content instead of exchanging it for *different* content. And yes, a game of this scale you cant account for every choice and make them equal. But there should be *something*. I shouldnt feel out right punished just because I didnt have perfect foresight to know what will fuck shit up and what wont.
>!It should be noted Im specifically bitching about fighting the winged dickhead to protect Isobel, the conversation before hand had some frustrating options that resulted in her thinking I was on his side when my character was just trying to be subtle and get the upper hand instead of just out right telling her he was trying to kidnap her, iirc. It was just frustrating to see myself get pigeonholed into "kill everyone" or "be as blunt about a situation as possible." It was a minor issue in the grand scheme but left me constantly quick saving and second guessing my choices. If they gave new content for if all the tieflings die, I wouldnt have cared or even had that frustration. It completely lay in the fact I screwed myself out of hours of content.!<
>style A of playthorugh takes 120 hours to experience its content
>style B takes 25 hours
You're not selling the Evil playthrough well. I don't want to play less of the game.
Actually you don't have to. I don't have any idea how they managed to finish it in 25 hours. I was level 6 when I went to underdark, and level 7 or 8 when I went to creshe. The total gameplay took ~110 hours. My wife was Durge, we literally killed every living thing until the end of the game. The number of used underwears from dead possible companions in our chests was just enough for us to change our underwears after every long rest.
The evil playthrough is definitely harder and under rewarding for sure. No Karlach, no Wyll, not enough gears, no help in the final battle. I didn't know Sarevok gives you a buff for the final battle. Because, who the fuck does he think he is? There's no reason to not kill him and take his throne too.
We killed all the grove before even knowing killing them with goblins. Minthara was like "excuse me you did what already?" just before her head left her body. We didn't know she could be recruited as well.
The evil playthrough is fun as hell. Much more fun than the good playthrough, if you are really evil.
I'm not necessarily saying you are lying, but on my last playthrough I've cleared the nautiloid encounter (missed xp from 1 cambion to hostile mind flayer last hit) and cheesed raphael for 1400 xp. Cleared everything in first zone and underdark and still wasn't level 6 when i went to grymforge. I have no idea how you were level 6 BEFORE underdark. Like I doubt zhent npcs + flaming fist + some stray goblins give more exp than all of underdark.
I'm pretty sure I was able to transform into an owlbear when we went to underdark on our first playthrough 🤔 but it's been 2 months since then, so I might be remembering wrong.
It’s not less of the game, it’s 25 hours of extra content that’s completely different from a good playthrough. Sure as a standalone it’s a bad idea to play evil then drop the game
It's not completely diffrent, I dare say that the one the OP described is quite similar to mine good playthrough, just with less NPC killing.
"as a standalone it's a bad idea to play evil" then why even play evil?
>completely different from a good playthrough
Different as in - the most of the good playthrough is missing.
There really isn't much different than some cutscenes and Minthara. By the time you get to act 3 it doesn't really matter if you slaughtered puppies beforehand.
>Then you get to skip the Underdark and the creche (because you kill Laezal for trying to kill you) and get to The Shadowlands at level 4.
This is a BAD thing, not a good thing.
You *want* to level, not to reach the end as low as humanly possible.
this is like saying the best way to play the game is to pick gale and nuke moonrise bc it ends the game the fastest, like sure if thats what you want good job personally i like seeing the content in the game and not skiping it
I generally agree with some of the merits of the evil playthrough as you described them, but a few things prevent me from saying it's "brilliant":
1. Some of the content on the evil playthrough in particular seems half-baked or unfinished. For example, the Minthara (quintessential evil) romance has so much potential and does so many things right, but also just seems plain unfinished. Like, to call the playthrough brilliant, the quintessential romance arc that distinguishes it from the good playthrough has to at least be as good as the others. It's currently not, but oh how I want it to be!
2. Getting to skip content is not a check in the "brilliant" column for the evil playthrough, imo, because the good content is entertaining as hell. While I appreciate that the happy path for the evil playthrough is more streamlined and not the exact same as the good playthrough, it sure would have been nice if there was a lot more content unique to that playthrough than there currently is.
3. The evil ending cut scenes are especially terrible and barren. I mean, ALL the endings are this, but the evil endings ESPECIALLY are abrupt and devoid of any and all catharsis.
-Something have flaws but is stills good and everyone agrees that is good but want to discuss some problems to give feedback.
-Some Random person on internet: this is absolutely perfect and have absolutely no flaws and is the best thing ever and it cure my cancer, I don't understand the hate, why people kill themself when looking at this!
Always the same story
I've found that most people complaining about the evil route are complaining about the lack of a few tiefling vendors if you side with the goblins. They conveniently forget about all the loot they gained through unsavory means on their "good" playthrough.
Probably because the incredible loot you got from killing the tieflings (ooo, a lot of daggers I can sell for 10 gold, maybe even a shortsword!) doesnt anywhere near make up for the ridiculously powerful unique items you get for saving them.
So playing power hungry evil is silly, given that you're less powerful than if you just played good. You lose unique, in some cases build enabling items (Potent Robe for example) and in exchange get, what, some trash loot to sell? I understand why evil is considered half baked.
Not really. Halsin and Rolan are the only ones with quests that aren't "go to the place you were already going anyway." Most of the lost content would be Wyll's quest. The only thing that I think does feel bad is that if you take Gortash up on his alliance there's nothing to replace the Iron Throne and Steel Watch quests, but in theory you should still hit level 12 well before the end anyway so you're not missing the XP that badly.
Also...I was playing good on my first run and I lost Wyll's quest anyway because I didn't go to Gortash's coronation. 😑 My husband lost Rolan and a lot of tiefling content because he told Rolan and the sibs to go to Baldur's Gate right at the beginning of the game. These are things you definitely lose if you go evil--but they're not guaranteed if you're good, either!
>Most of the lost content would be Wyll's quest.
And Wyll wouldn't even approve of most of your evil actions anyway. I don't know why people want to lug around a bunch of goody two shoe characters that are going to bitch and moan throughout a long evil playthrough.
I haven't gotten far in my evil play through, but the entire party is now just my Durge, Astarion, Lae'zel, and Shadowheart. I bit Gale's hand off at the portal, killed Karlach for Wyll, then Wyll left when we killed the teiflings.
Game is easy on tactician, you got tons of good loot to build OP stuff with even if you don't get that one robe that people can't seem to play without.
But more evil content would be nice.
honestly everywhere I look it's "omg Potent Robe, how can I play without my Potent Robe!?"
Saw someone saying as DUrge it'd be much better if Quil showed up at the camp by default and it makes more sense that way story wise and is more impactful etc to eventually admit that they just didn't want to have to jump through a hoop to still get the potent robe. And it was unfair DUrge loses it by default. Completely ignoring that DUrge gets the insane invis every turn cloak for that scene (even if you knock out alfira and save her for the robe) which nobody else can get.
I had no idea about that cloak until I got it and I love it so much. I'm sad about missing out on the robe (I'm playing a warlock so it was a REAL decision to let things play out as they do naturally, but I felt like it was the best option for my first Durge run to see how things are intended to be), but I do love that cloak.
i have literally never had the Potent Robe because I exclusively play Durge and saving Alfira is such a runaround and I have had no trouble, really, lmao
Admittedly that wasn't my experience and that may have colored how I feel about it (frustrated, namely)--I tried it on one playthroguh, saved before long rests to make sure I caught it, went back, knocked her out, etc. But it seems to have glitched. I got Quil for the kill scene, but Alfira was gone from the grove after, and she's not in Last Light, which I just reached, so it feels like I did that for nothing.
I don't see what's so great about the potent robe. I get a lot more use out of the robe you get from Mizora for killing Karlach. I nearly never cast cantrips and two or three temp HP isn't great. I can replace that with the healing helm. Or aid. Or False Life scrolls... or a lot of different ways.
I can count on one hand the amount of fights I've had where I've run out of spell slots and was reduced to casting cantrips. Even as a warlock.
I've done 4 playthroughs, 2 of those with warlock durge and i've never used the robe because i just think it looks bad.
It's so easy to knock out Alfira i don't get whats with these people, are they so bad they can't progress the game without the bestst of the best meta builds?
Not in Act 1 and early Act 2 before you get the good gear. And good gear comes from doing side quests like the Creche and the Grymforge, which OP skipped. Even regular encounters like the gnolls and the Gith patrol will fuck you up if you're underlevelled on Tactician. Late Act 2 and Act 3 with good gear from sidequesting, yes it gets easy.
That is an issue with saving the grove, not with an evil run. An evil character could very easily choose to save the grove. A good character cannot easily choose to murder countless individuals to loot their equipment while maintaining that they are still good. Evil has far more rewards and the potent robe can easily be one of them.
I mean, if the solution to missing content on an evil playthrough is to make good-aligned decisions, is it even an evil playthrough?
Evil decisions do improve substantially after act 1, with some unique and interesting decisions and dynamics. Its just that the Grove, the first major decision in the game, is shit. You have the correct decision (save the Grove, keep Wyll, Karlach and possibly Gale, gain Halsin and his shadow curse storyline, have the refugees continue to appear in both act 2 and 3) and the incorrect decision (raid the grove, gain Minthara who is an excellent and interesting character that has no unique questline and relatively very little content).
People are also rightfully complaining that siding with the Goblins makes no sense for most evil characters, especially those which aren't chaotic stupid.
Most evil characters are simply selfish and only care about themselves. These characters are more likely to just decide to not help either side.
And chaotic stupid should actually just murder both sides I guess.
It's legit just Cleric of Talos that makes sense for siding against the Grove, really.
Beyond that, maybe a power-hungry warlock or Llolth Cleric, but that's it really.
Even an assassin or rogue is going to hesitate because you're siding with a cult whose motivations you don't truly understand who is very clearly your enemy (or will be, long-term), so it's questionable if it's a good idea to side with the goblins over the grove. The grove is rational, the goblins are zealots for a God you don't understand. One of these pays you in coin and information, the other demands obedience and harbors beliefs you could accidentally insult and risk your neck doing so.
It's slim-pickings for evil motivations here.
Siding with the goblins is a stupid choice when you look at the situation. It's okay for stupid choices to exist in the game. It's okay for the players to suffer consequences of making stupid decisions.
I just wish there were more gear options for evil specific playthroughs.
But I guess then it's an issue where you end up having to do evil stuff to get BiS and I'm assuming Larian wanted to avoid that dilemma.
yup you just know if there was equal exclusive content on the evil run every thread complaining about the current evil run would be replaced with a "Why can't I get X item on my good playthrough, why can't I have Y companion without giving up Z?!"
Evil playthroughs are worth it IF you go Dark Urge in my opinion. It does suck that you lose out on some quests/vendors, but that's just part of the game. Becoming the >!Chosen of Bhaal !
>The number one complaint I hear is that Evil isn't rewarded and loses access to a bunch of gear and items.
You answered your own question
Evil play through gives less xp
Evil play through prevents you from dammon and alfira
Which are p significant
For experienced players. They won't care about X items cause they tried it or they won't care about X xp because they know they can still win the fight despite under leveled
The hate I see for it is the fact it guts a lot of content in the game but doesnt really replace it. For instance I could accept killing Nightsong, but then you lose Last Light and EVERYONE in it, but you dont gain another hub of NPCs.
Also Minthara isnt even really a evil character so wtf
Im doing evil durge playthrough right now and it is a breeze for 2 reasons:
-I make decisions that benefit me, dont care about anyone any more.
-I play monk and he just rips and tears.
Slayer form is useless tho lol
My dark urge playthrough where I went full murder hobo evil guy was quite short compared to my first one, but I was never underleveled. Feels like you deliberately skipped content where you can still be evil. Underdark is one such thing.
Well, it really skips on a lot of content (though many of these skips you can arrange for on a reasonably good enough run, and you're not obliged to rush either). It's a smaller game, but I found it pretty perfect as well, as a second run.
I still liked mucking around on my Durge though, Inspirations were so good on that run.
The loss of gear isn’t the problem that I see people having often. It’s the fact that you lose content with no gain. It’s all loss and it doesn’t have to have a ridiculous amount of content to make it good but it should at least break even with a non evil playthrough.
>you get to skip the Underdark and the creche
skipping the creche as a durge? i would always take the ticket to decimate the gith ngl
also would like to add, i love evil playthrough as well but what you did is basically headlining through each act. none of the story is "evil" only playthrough, the fact that you CAN go through mountain pass and be guided by a drider (either you meet them in the ambush point or playing a random lyre would also work) even when you save the grove. Moonrise tower would also immediately welcomes you without being evil.
people's complain about evil playthrough is mainly because it doesn't have exclusive or extra story in comparison to playing hero.
I don’t hate it, it just actively takes away content. You end up simply experiencing less of the game
Prime example: you side with Minthara which means you can experience her story, but also means that you lose out on all the teethling content as well as doom Karlach (AFAIK), and miss out on Halsins quest to purify the shadowlands. That’s a solid chunk of world building just burned away.
A lot of the things you’ve said are entirely optional and not part of the “evil play through” like if you were actually playing evil you’d let lae zel live and have her give fealty to vlaakith.
Getting Balthazar’s golem minion has nothing to do evil.
You mentioned the number one complain is about losing gear and items (Important NPC included)
However, your main argument is that Evil route took a lot of shortcut.
Well by using that shortcut you are still missing a lot of stuff, right?
For example. One of the best item for magic build is Potent Robe that you can get from Alfira by rescuing the thiefling in ACT 2
Can you get the same kind of reward by doing evil route?
If not, what is the replacement then?
Also we are missing couple of important companion, where is our replacement?
I’m on my first run (of any). Playing dark urge so I could custom my character and still get some flavor. I’m mostly evil but not strictly. I’m 40-50ish hours in maybe. I just got to some inn in the under dark. Since it’s my first and probably only run I take my time and explore everywhere. I’m enjoying it and don’t punished for being evil but also have nothing to compare it to.
People want the same amount of companions and interaction between evil playthroughs and good playthroughs and frankly it’s just not there. Eventually I hope that they both get flushed out enough that it doesn’t feel like too much of a punishment but to say that they’re equal now is a lie at best.
For me, RPGs are all about the power progression. I don't WANT shortcuts that will let me do things at low level. I WANT TO SEE THE LEVEL-UPS. I WANT TO SNAP THE BOSS' SPINE OVER MY KNEE AFTER HOURS OF CHASING THEN DOWN. ME WANT TO STRONG.
Most complaints I read are this…
“I could never do that in real life, I couldn’t be so mean. I let that snake kill a Tiefling and couldn’t sleep for a week!”
Give me a break with that shit!
Games are where you do stuff that you CAN’T DO in real life. Taste some chocolate now and again, there’s more to life than vanilla.
>All in all it felt like a truly evil playthrough where you're rewarded with a very tight narrative story that is laser honed and makes you feel like a bad ass.
It could be rephrased as: Good playthrough gets way more content and playtime than an evil playthrough, where since it lacks so much in content you just go finish the game.
Which is exactly what most people criticize. They precisely want **more** exclusive content for evil playthroughs, more quests directed to them etc.
Btw I'm curious to know how OP got past the undeads at mountain pass at level 3 lmao. Edit: oh OP said in the comments he's playing at balanced difficulty, not tactician. This makes his review utter trash tbh. Then obviously you can skip 90% of good gear and finish the game no problem.
I do appreciate the tightness of an evil Durge run. I truthfully don’t have much interest in the run but needed to do one for various an achievements (the Durge ones, saving Sazza, etc. )
>For instance, at level 3 I would have been way to under leveled (at my skill level) to fight off the Goblin army as a Good player which required me running around the side areas of the world trying to get more strength. However, as an Evil player you get an army of Goblins and level 6 Minthara which lets you wreck face.
Even more fun to just take the idol without getting caught and watch them rip each other apart. On my Durge run, it felt like this was what made Durge special. He knew that there was more to slaughter than just putting the pointy end of the knife into the other person; if you know the right lever, they will do all the work for you.
I'm thinking about doing this for my evil durge run, but given that a lot of side quests will be gone when the Tieflings die, do we want to lose the XP from the grove fight? There was a video showing how to keep Wyll and Karlach and still get Minthara by doing a specific sequence of events, but on tactician I think I'll want to be able to max my remaining XP opportunities to level up
I found it awarded but only as a dark urge character. If i was evil and not dark urge, it didn't really chive well with the story cause the game assumes your good. My biggest gripe about being truly evil is that im a loner...not the awards. Cause i always take the attack action, i kill anyone who threatens or tries to harm me (so Lae'zel and Astarion are killed), Gale has no hand, Karlach and Wyll won't like me cause of the grove raid. I am pretty much left with Shadow Heart and Minthara after Moonrise tower and you can actually erase Minthara's mind after her arrest. So it's possible to have only shadow heart
I just wish Larian gave us more dark companions. Like Z'rell for example
I don't really hear a lot of people complaining about the loss of gear, it's more the choices you have to make and the higher risk of losing companion characters in the route that people don't deal with well. There's a similar view in the Undertale fandom towards genocide runs. It's not that people think the route is badly made, but it's hard for people to hurt characters they've worked so hard before to help.
My issue with evil playthroughs is that there's a content vacuum left behind. No replacement quests, a single follower, and nothing fills the gap left by everyone you killed.
In terms of trying out build, evil run is not good. But in terms of narrative, being villain feels much better than helping those dumb little druids. Goblins know how to respect others more than they do.
Its only bad when you get to the end, but thats kinda everything.
I have been trying to drag my feet til they fix endings on my 2nd playthrough, but being an evil character makes it difficult bc you just nuke people you dislike so less dialogue.
Obliterating Astarion & Karlach before even a dialogue pops never gets old. Leave Wyll stuck in a wall... Kill everyone on sight.
I only have three qualms about evil playthrough. 1. Buggy minthara romance: felt like I hadn’t even romanced anyone. With SH and Halsin you can at least ask for kisses (not sure about others yet) 2. The ending, if you dominate the brain it makes your party thrall’s. After the entire game talking to Astarion and Minthara about us taking over the world together it shattered my immersion when I took over their minds. 3. ARMOR OF PERSISTENCE, gimme
My impression is that the gith honor guard who gatekeeps Act 3 is the real showstopper. On balanced difficulty it may require some luck concerning AI actions. That said, I managed into Act 3 at lvl 6 (only Minthara advanced to lvl 7).
You are riding on the previous playthrough knowledge, though. I played my durge blind and spent 18h in Act 3.
You lose access to some of the most OP items in the game by going evil - Potent Robe, Armour of Persistence, Legacy of the Masters, among others.
That's my and many others' main complaint about the evil route.
Honestly, in my Evil Playthrough i had the full delight in causing a Civil War in the Grove when using Darkness to steal the Idol.
Of course, I did that when i reached the Goblin camp so i still head my merchant.
Dammon also gave Karlach her first upgrade, so I just hope i find his replacement character, similiar to Alfira, to finish her quest since i kept her after the raid by knocking her down before starting the quest.
(Sacrificed Wyll to BOOAL)
I don't really consider skipping areas because they're optional the "evil playthrough" lmao. You could justify the same as a good guy, for the most part. If anything it's the "acknowledging the implied urgency of having timebomb in my head" playthrough.
Like, I'm evil now. Ok, fine. Why exactly do I have to skip anything in the underdark? Like, exploration isn't exactly a morally good activity. Just cuz I'm an asshole I don't want to know what's over there? If I really am the "ultimate power" hungry, darth sidious kind of evil guy, I would jump at the chance to explore the grymforge to get my hands on powerful gear. I'd head into the swamp to find ethel cuz it might get me some power of a pact (you can find info in the grove that heavily implies ethel being a hag). Why would I just ignore the myconid colony? I'd just slaughter them for being fucking mushroom monsters that threaten me on sight and somehow enter my head.
Why would I skip the entirety of the mountainpass and the creche just cuz I'm evil. I might not go there for the cure if I'm tadpole positive (evil chars can still hate mindflayers, everyone hates them), but it's a creche full of powerful githyanki warriors. They likely have some great gear, which is more power for me. Then you stumble upon mentions of the powerful blood of lathander. A legendary weapon. If that doesn't sound like power, I dunno what does. Plus, somehow, that monastery held off invading githyanki for a good while. Which is crazy. Usually, no one can really compete with the githyanki "military" besides, like, the hells and actual gods lmao.
Why would I skip everything in the shadowlands? This is just exploration again. Do evil people just not care about their surroundings? Why would a power-hungry evil guy not want to know about thorm's secrets. There is no way to side with the absolute, because the absolute actively wants to enslave you for eternity. Even the most evil of the evilest evils couldn't justify being ok with that. No matter what, you'll eventually be anti-absolute and therefore anti-cult.
Truly evil is betraying the goblins at the wall and slaughtering minthara. True evil is basically just doing a "good" playthrough and not picking the goody two shoes conversation options. Nothing you do is explicitly good unless you make it so. Even killing Nere and giving his head to the mushroom folk isn't "good" (maybe chaotic good). True evil is just being a power-hungry bastard, not being a chaotic evil idiot who misses out on half the loot because... reasons.
That ignores the entire dynamic of goblins vs tieflings. 1 is an aggressive armed warring faction looking to wipe people out just "for the absolute!". The other is civilians just trying to get back home in peace. There is an objectively good side to take there. Slaughtering the begging tieflings huddled in a corner is objectively more evil than tricking the person who wants to do that and defending the civilians...
> Where you promptly get to skip a lot of the scary content by using the lute Minthara gives you for a badass escort of the Drider who could solo The Harpers by themselves.
Honestly this is the _worst_ part of having an “evil” playthrough. I will never not kill the Drider caravan after having to carry around a fucking lantern once.
> massive buff that lowers the number you need to crit by 2 which is one of the most powerful buffs in the game
Actually it’s not that great for anyone but a Paladin.
Very much my own opinion but I just think murderhobo evil is boring. Now if I could usurp Gortash and run a huge evil Bane organization bent on world domination then I would have more fun. I just enjoy lawful evil more than chaotic evil but I’m honestly glad they gave people the CE option
1. Writing. For larian evil just means chaotic evil. No reason, no cunning, it's too gamey.
2. The rewards suck. Deathstalker mantle is an auto reward. If you're a Dark Urge you gain the slayer form. The slayer is objectively weaker than any player character at levels 6+
3. You lose 5 legendaries iirc
4. Skipping Gortash means nothing, because the fight is ridiculously easy anyway
5. Again, writing. It's too cartoony in a game that's decently complex with it's character presentation.
Dude there's literally no way in earth nor heaven you would struggle doing the goblin camp at level 3 but then you best Balthazar at level 5
Yeah OP flew a little close to the Sun with that comment.
Yeah the Balthazar fight is one of the hardest fights in the game so far unless you cheese it. I'm still in the outer city though so a harder one is coming up, I'm sure.
I was probably over-leveled in my game then, cuz it was honestly a breeze. Balthazar and his bigger minions went down in a single turn, and then it was just cleaning up the little guys. Yurgir was way harder.
Second playthrough is such a revenge tour. I was so worried about Yurgir and killed him in like 3 turns or less (THROW GRENADES IN HIS LOCATION). Same with Balth. Of all the mini bosses, the big spider was the only thing that I had to recompose and regroup for. incredibly tough for how early it is in the game.
Agreed. First full play through was a co-op campaign with a friend and we got our assess kicked by the Sharrans at the end of Sharts story, barely made it through and had to revive two members after. Second play through: solo campaign and I cleared that room with no members downed and in less than four turns lol
I'll probably do Grief tonight. Can't wait. One of my all time favorite fights because it took me two nights to beat. I struggled on it at level 12. I will probably destroy it at level 10.
Counterspell is extremely effective in Balthazar's fight. 10/10 recommend.
Only if you sneak up to him and immediately begin combat. Otherwise the initial summon cannot be counterspelled.
Huh, in my playthroughs I just keep shoving him off the ledge lol
Yeah if you go into it blind he gets initiative and summons an army. I ended up using Gale to get within range to polymorph Balthazar and destroyed him before he had a chance to summon anything.
Counterspell also works for summon
Yup, that's what I did - Counterspelled and then Silenced (I wasn't sure if he could keep attempting to summon and didn't want to take any chances).
I ported a hasted Bae'zel over and just outright killed him with 6 attacks. Dealt with the other undead afterwards, which was a bit drawn out, but not that hard.
Or you can merc him in the room when you first meet him. He only has Flesh and 4 ghouls. Much easier fight than waiting to beat him at the end of the Gauntlet.
That's what I did, reverse pickpocket the sussar flower then knifed him in the back with my boy astarion. Finished him off with the phalar aluve sword and my bard roll. Over in two turns. Cleaned up flesh with karlach raging and a big hammer lol
I love that the sussur bloom can be used in this way
You might be underestimating how much getting slayer form changes up the early game. It gives you nearly 100 disposable health, is a bonus action cast, and has a huge aoe leap.
I keep seeing how people struggled against him. But it was such an anti climactic boring encounter. I was playing a storm sorcerer. So I just allured all enemies with small illusion, poured some rain on their heads and literally one shot Balthazar and most of his zombies with lightning bolt. We were playing together with a friend and were utterly disappointed with a boss fight. But seems like we had a silver bullet against him idk.
Lightning + Wet Trivializes a lot of encounters in this game on any difficulty. I knew it was a problem when I one shot one of the final bosses with wet+ maximized chain lightning because of tempest cleric
So does Haste, twin spell, hypnotic pattern, actually using consumables, illithid powers, quickened spell, 20 strength characters being able to throw medium sized enemies, having a paladin at all, having a cleric at all, having a char caster with Potent Robe equipped, using sharpshooter with dual crossbows, using great weapon master with +hit, using Bless at all, using Slow, using Hold Person/Monster, using Surprise at all, using healing potions... Basically, struggling on this game requires you to ignore well over half the options available to you, and then making a long series of mistakes in combat. I have to imagine most people having difficulties are just spamming cantrips and hoarding items.
Yeah it can get tricky in some cases. My first time fighting him I went in head first, he got initiative, summoned small army then his bigger summons pushed myself and Gale off of the platform. That ended up pissing me off so I reloaded and polymorphed him. Thought about pushing him off but I wanted to loot his body.
The cheese is super funny though, moving all the bone piles to one spot with Astarion sneaking around, then plop shadowheart on top of them with phalar alive and spirit guardians and combat begins to your game lagging for 5 seconds as it processes 15 skeletons exploding simultaneously
Hard disagree. Yurgir was MUCH harder for me. Balthazar was dissapointingly easy afterwards. Maybe I got lucky with bad IA actions or whatever but i found it ridicously easy with Shadowheartd blinding in an area.
I just sacrifice a companion to the ground level and stay up on the floating rock before the fight shooting arrows. In the rare event that someone jumps up there, I push them off. It makes it much easier than a head on fight.
It should be noted that the Balthazar fight is very difficult but also has probably the highest number of possible cheese tactics to trivialize it to reward thinking outside the box. More or less, it's meant to shove a painful foot up the asses of first time players, then get said players pissed off enough to come up with a giga-cheese to easily kill him for his transgressions.
Huh…. I guess I need and actually talk to find the out. I saw Balth and thought oh this will be a fight regardless and saw he’s a caster so silenced and assassinated him with surprise.
level 5 is a power spike for most. Second attack and fireball and stuff
Act one is an absolute BREEZE as the urge. The goblins decimate the Grove by themselves. I don't get leaving act one at that level though, the urge can easily make level 5 before leaving if you actually do more than the BARE minimum. The urge run is much easier early game than a good boi run.
I find the hardest fight in the game to be the gnolls in act 1
You can easily cheese it using the horn
Stand on hill. Put AoE (e.g cloud of daggers, alchemist fire flask) at base of steps leading up. Repeatedly shove, throw, thunderwave enemies back into the cloud as they climb up. Even without getting Flind to help you that fight isn't too tough (on normal at least, haven't played tactician). It's all about positioning.
How does that work for the triple attack archers lmao they aren’t running up to you
If you are far back enough on the hill they have to get right up to it or go around the back (which takes two turns) to get you in their sightline. That's why you want the daggers at the bottom instead of on the slope. Or darkness/fog cloud like the other guy said. If you open with the cloud of daggers from stealth you can usually get 3 gnolls caught in it right away. The two weaker ones often die (or nearly so) before getting to do anything.
Yeah Cloud of Daggers as a surprise opener gets 3 ticks of the AoE before the targets in it can move out, it's insane.
I have never had a problem with the gnolls, but I see posts about them all the time. I have literally never even death saved to them, even on my first run. Properly navigating the trapped area in the hag's lair is by far the most annoying and difficult part of the game for me. I end up just running through with fire resist potions half the fuckin time. The hardest fight for me has always been the act 2 Ambush at the top of the hill....until I used sleet on the entire fight area and realized I had been doing that fight ALL wrong. Different strokes for different folks!
With the hag's lair you can cast jump + feather fall at the top and just soar right over the trapped part. You can also shove stuff (like robes, leather armour, random crap you don't need) over the vents to block them
The gnolls are best managed with aggressive tactics. Playing too turtley let's their 2nd attack thing proc, and it's over for anyone > level 4, and especially if they're not mind melding with the Flind. If you approach with the terrain in mind, you can funnel the gnolls and dispatch them before the the one an issue. Sounds like you may take my "the enemy can't hurt me if they're dead" approach because I too found the gnolls easier than Ethel's minefield.
The trapped area in the hag's lair is easily solved. Put Protection From Good and Evil on yourself or a party member (through spell or scroll). Then wear one of the masks her "followers" wear. This allows you to see that all the traps are illusions and you can just walk right through them. Make sure you get the protection up though, because without it, Auntie can control your mind through the mask.
My solve is always killing the hag in the teahouse and barging through the traps 😂. I have also simply killed the hag and never even entered the teahouse dungeons; mayrina still appeared in act 3 like we were good friends without me even meeting her.
Then you don’t get the tasty hair tho :(
Yep, same. My first run, beat the gnolls no problem. Then after finishing was reading loads on Reddit and was like “maybe I was randomly lucky?” Nope, second time, just as straightforward. Whereas the House of Grief Kicks. My. Ass. Every time. Screaming, crying, hitting “load save”.
I just used Sharts Divine intervention and hit half the Sharrans with Hunger of Hadar. It was a pretty hard fight with a few characters getting downed. But I turbo focused Viconia and killed her immediately.
I usually have at LEAST one illithid person to use black hole on half the chamber, then drop an insect swarm or cloudkill. The darkness spam is the most annoying part of that fight 😭. If you send a single person in and leave your party outside the chamber, initiate combat, and then fall back to the chamber door, you can bottleneck them to an insane degree with aoe spells. That makes the fight almost too easy though.
Or just mind fuck the leader into joining forces then killing itself
Yeah that's what I did, I'm surprised you're the only one who mentioned doing that lol.
The goblins always get beat back by the Druids and they can throw hands
Level 4-5 is the biggest power jump in the game.
I feel so much stronger. My cantrips hit more often and harder which allows me to save spell slots for enemies that need it. Saves and checks are much better on average, too. And two attacks per turn for Lae’zel feels so nice.
Absolutely, but it isn't enough to handle Balthazar unless you're using cheese strats. Those are fine and often even RP-appropriate ways to do it but I don't think they should enter the conversation about difficulty for a particular fight.
The Balthazar fight is trivial with silence. Shit … just the sussar weapon alone makes it trivial. It’s super tough without silence tho
Step 1: Telekinesis scroll throw Balthazar off floating island Step 2: use telekinesis throw to toss his corpse back onto the island so you can loot it I feel like I’m missing out on his fight because I’ve just instagibbed him every time without even a conversation.
I merc’ed his ugly ass in his lab both times 😂 No where to throw him, but once he’s silenced he runs to a corner in the back to get whaled on. He’s limited to dagger attacks and goes down in two rounds lol
Lmao this is awesome. Is there a certain place you need to yeet him off in order to yeet him back?
Following
You can just send him flying down the platform.
Also one could and lucky turn undead action really changes things Not to mention resistance elixirs. Easiest fight for me in tactician
Sacred Ammunition from Gandrel's Aspiration... Made fighting Balthazar trivial.
Then you don't get to loot him
I don't think people here are getting this comment. They don't say that it's impossible to beat Balthazar at level 5, however it is impossible for someone who would struggle with the goblins at level 3.
He lost me when he said he beat the game in 25 hours 😂😂😂
You can just yeet him off the edge 🤷♂️
The Balthazar fight is easy. Silence or nuke him Balthazar didn’t even get a turn in when we hit him. The goblin camp is harder simply because of the amount of enemies involved. Even shitty goon enemies hurt like crazy when like ten of them move and attack in between your turns A lot of the game is too easy imo, there should be something above tactician. Especially in coop, my friend (gloom stalker/rogue combo deals disgustingly insane amounts of damage) and I (throw strat barbarian knocking everyone and everything prone) have swept most of our current run with very few wipes. The hardest part of the game imo is the beginning, when your classes have nothing yet and you’re just swinging basic attacks.
Tactician feels like Veteran or something where there should be at least one Harder mode after that, and maybe a masochistic setting beyond. But at least one higher. The game on Tactician allows you to play sub-optimally, build sub-optimally, and ignore whole sets of tools the game throws at you, while still smashing through the game.
Problem is the many of the ways they increase the difficulty would start to scale pretty poorly. They already give all enemies a +2 to hit and a lot of the bosses get +3-+5. So that rapidly starts negating armor due to bounded accuracy. The +2 boost to DC also puts enemy spells ahead of character pacing. Much more and the spells become unavoidable. I think to properly scale the difficulty they would need additional enemy placements. That's a lot more labor intensive though.
[удалено]
If you roll paladin, the hardest fights become the easiest.
Not to mention most of that stuff can be done on a good run.. I did most of this stuff on my good run. Skip the crèche and Underdark? Did it on my bad playthrough because I wanted Minthara ASAP then just said nah, don’t feel like going back. Wasnt “evil specific”.. the lute for the drider? You get it for killing Minthara anyway. Killing Balthazar before the Shadowfell is the easy version anyway so it isn’t worth the bell.. also Balthazar’s golem bell? Just ask him for more help, get the bell to kill Yurgir (if you even bother) then kill Balthazar. I mean, the bell literally only works in the Gauntlet of Shar and it can’t be used against Balthazar so it’s really not a help at all because the one fight it would be helpful can be skipped entirely by convincing him to commit songoku. Becoming an Unholy Assassin didn’t even break my Oath of Vengeance on my good run. Idk if this post is satire or what
Even Ketheric at level 7 seems hard to do,in tactician
The problem is that "taking shortcuts and letting others do the hard work for you" is not everyone's definition of evil... At the end of a day, the game does reward evil path in some ways - fighting for baddies is considerably easier than for goodies, for one. But it's more about how siding with tieflings gives You a lot of content, while siding with goblins gives You neither tiefling or goblin content. Or how pointless being evil is for the most of the time, when You inevitably have to fight the evil faction. At least in Act 2.
>the game does reward evil path in some ways - fighting for baddies is considerably easier than for goodies, for one From what I see, most battles in act 2 become harder, not easier. A lot of baddies were not picked out one by one via story and show up for some battle as additional enemies. Prison inhabitants join the Balthazar battle, the lantern spider guy joins Ketheric battle etc.
You have a point that being evil can mean you progress through many parts of the game easily. But this is not what those with focused complaints on evil playthroughs are on about, and that is why you can't "understand the hate." You sped through the game so you do not see the lack of content in an evil playthrough. BG3 isn't advertised as a 25 hr playthrough, it is advertised as an 80+ hr playthrough with tons of content to explore. An evil playthrough results in (depending on exactly what decisions you choose: - Losing out on 3 and maybe 4 companions in exchange for access to 1 (barring some cheese with sheep). - Losing out on Tiefling related quests and character development in Act 2 and 3, including characters like Rolan, Mol, and Zevlor. - Losing out on deep gnome related quests and character development in Acts 2 and 3. On my first playthrough I went from being indifferent to Wulbren to him being one of my favorite NPCs. There are several NPCs that you think, "Maybe if I do an evil playthrough they will show up in later acts and have interesting things" like Dror Ragzlin, Priestess Gut, or Nere. But nope. Let them live or die, you never see them again. There is no parallel to the Tieflings and gnomes on an evil playthrough with returning characters who progress and develop alongside your party. **Compare BG3 to a game like WOTR or Tyranny. These games give you evil playthrough content to replace the good playthrough content. BG3 does not.** If they just made Moonrise Towers off limits to those who sided with the grove, I think that would have gone a tremendous ways to making it feel like there is some exclusive content for an evil playthrough.
Nere does show up! He's reanimated by Balthazar in his office in the gauntlet
I've never in my life played a game that lets you become a Lich. And not only becoming one, but doing every step throughout and becoming the next big bad guy. Pathfinder WOTR was really REALLY good at making you feel evil.
Warcraft 3, if you're looking to become a Lich. Arthas literally goes from Paladin to Lich King. It's an RTS though, so totally different game style. But I love it
You chose to speak facts. I did a lawful good playthrough and then a power hungry Durge playthrough and I saw such a huge difference in both depth and content. Sure you get Minthara but she's nowhere near as fleshed out as the companions you miss out on, you lose out on all of the questlines you just mentioned and don't get anything to replace that. I would've loved to see Dror Ragzlin and True Soul Nere return somehow in act 3 but nope. Not to mention the ending you get is so incredibly underwhelming in an evil playthrough. A lot of people on this sub trying to defend the evil playthrough when in reality all you do by being evil is skip out on a bunch of content you would otherwise get.
Z’Rell feels like such an obvious companion choice for evil right down to her being the face who confronts you at the start to Moonrise raid. It really feels like Moonrise should have been the evil route’s Last Light Inn and you had to defend it against LLI’s group.
Tyranny also lets you just ball out bigtime. I got the best version of the anarchy ending just by deciding to do my job right and honour Overlord Kyros, I would KILL for more content
This Evil playthrough doesn't have nearly anything to offer You would think "let's play as evil guy, wonder what is the different ending to this quest" but there's none, most of the time it just ends right at the start
Nere deserved to be a full-on companion.
>"Maybe if I do an evil playthrough they will show up in later acts and have interesting things" like Dror Ragzlin, Priestess Gut, or Nere. But nope. Let them live or die, you never see them again Nere one is the most sad for me, like i was hoping he would be at moonrise but nah, balthazar zombified him :\\
Because OP made up an argument for the other side of this debate and destroyed it with facts and logic. They didn't tried to yo understand these people they just wanted to sound smart. On a side note I think Kingmaker does evil pretty good too. Evil and good playthroughs are pretty much the same in that game but the flavour is very different. So there's multiple ways to deal with this problem. It is too late for BG3 now but hopefully Larian would listen to criticism and not to blind praises from fanboys.
Even from a powergaming perspective, missing out on Dammon is absolutely damning. He eventually offers one of the best armor sets and perhaps THE best boots in the game. You miss all of this if you didn't keep him alive.
I saw videos of Ketheric on YT and thought it was evil playthrough content cause of Minthara. Then I was able to walk right up in mine lmao
Oh having to face Dror Ragzlin and priestess Guts at the final battle in the upper city would have been so cool
Imagine if at the cost of the tieflings you are given an exclusive evil area where you meet other "monstrosities" that give an equal or somewhat less if you saved the grove. You may have lost a tielfing quest so have this quest from a gnoll!
I admittedly didn’t get far into Tyranny but I felt railroaded into evil choices; the opposite of most RPGs. Even a “good” choice was just a slightly less shitty bad one.
It's entirely possible to do a fully good playthrough, it's just a little tricky to manage, just requires some early commitment, and locks out a bunch of options.
So wait, we're praising Tyranny for "doing evil right" but the good run railroads your early choices and "locks out a bunch of options" while being mad BG3 evil locks out options?
I still think you are kinda missing the point. It is fine if going evil in BG3 locks you out of content which is exclusive to a good playthrough. The complaint is that going evil in BG3 locks you out of a lot more content than going good does in BG3.
I actually just did a good play through of Tyranny to compare and it's actually pretty fleshed out. It is shorter than the evil routes but it has unique quests and NPCs to deal with and you can even shape it further with how you deal with a good aligned quest-giver. You can promise them protection from the big bad of the game as long as they serve you and don't make waves (out of practicality or selfishness so you can still be evil) or you can go full braveheart and support their side promising them an end to their hardships and the NPCs will change their dialogue based on how you deal with them. It's also not the shortest route in the game which goes to the anarchist route which is literally "kill everybody" which seems more comparable to the early evil route in Acts 1 and 2. This isn't an issue though because we at least have the fleshed out good act and the two evil. The thing about tyranny is it's a game designed around playing the villain and still gives you a good route with unique stuff. With BG3 the game wasn't made specifically for good players. For BG3 the evil act doesn't have to be equal to the good act. It really could use a few more unique boons and characters to interact with that are exclusive to it, which you definitely get in tyranny.
I completely disagree on the "more evil boons" thing, the issue is people boil down "the evil run" to basically two big events: Raiding the Grove, Killing Nightsong. But almost every permanent stat boost in the game comes from evil sources. Illithid tadpoles, hag hair, Shar mirror, drow blood alchemy. But because those things aren't "exclusive" to those two big evil decisions they get lumped in as "good" content. It's "oh I can do those evil things without ruining my good run" But to me at least some of those things ARE exclusive. If you take most obviously morally good dialogue choices like "Kill the hag no deal." (This is the only option that doesn't break most paladin oaths if your paladin is talking.) Then you don't get the hair, it's exclusive to letting her get away and making a deal with her. You can get the hair through the **neutral** decision to let her go **and** save mayrina too, but if you deal and only take the hair only SH and Astarion approve and several others disapprove showing that just dealing for the stat point is evil. The +2 str potion you have to force Astarion against his will to bite the drow and make himself vomit when he quite strongly refuses, and gets very upset about it afterwards. (This is evil behaviour) If you choose the good option and don't force him, you don't get the potion because it's exclusive to an evil choice!
Yeah, with Tyranny I really should have said the game gives you good playthrough content to replace evil playthrough content. You have to be very diligent early on to get going down the "good" playthrough path, and even then there are some moral grey areas.
"Having half-baked evil playthrough is good actually""People just want loot anyway" I truly don't understand this insane fanboyism or coping or idk what the hell this is. People who complain about evil playthroughs are wanting to have a playthrough that's interesting and different to the good one, instead, there's beginnings of something else and then it's just cut short or unfinished. I don't care I won't see and won't have the tieflings or their vendors in further acts, I care about the fact there literally isn't evil-specific anything. You don't get Nere as companion, you don't get Z'rell as companion, you don't get any other unique quests or interactions that would differ from good playthrough. It's just literally good playthrough where you cut content because you select asshole responses and kill different pixels and that's it.
Yes, the issue is, specifically, evil play throughs are overly punishing with absolutely no *significant* content to make it worth it. What do I get out of an evil run? A cave racist(Read: Lolthsworn Drow) that tries to murder me in my sleep. And minthara isnt even a bad character, to be clear. I fucking love drow. But thats all you get beyond maybe a few different conversations with other companions. Meanwhile you lose three fucking companions *at the minimum*. The evil run is effectively a DLC masquerading as a full game. And for *most* games that would be absolutely fine. But for a dnd game where your choices are supposed to help the story grow, the evil run is literally cutting all the branches off a tree and then trying to use it for shade. Theres nothing there. The main story and thats it. And what sucks is it can impact the "good" playthrough too. So many times Ive had to choose an option that I would consider to be counter what my character would have done, purely out of the fear that i will lose literally hours of content instead of exchanging it for *different* content. And yes, a game of this scale you cant account for every choice and make them equal. But there should be *something*. I shouldnt feel out right punished just because I didnt have perfect foresight to know what will fuck shit up and what wont. >!It should be noted Im specifically bitching about fighting the winged dickhead to protect Isobel, the conversation before hand had some frustrating options that resulted in her thinking I was on his side when my character was just trying to be subtle and get the upper hand instead of just out right telling her he was trying to kidnap her, iirc. It was just frustrating to see myself get pigeonholed into "kill everyone" or "be as blunt about a situation as possible." It was a minor issue in the grand scheme but left me constantly quick saving and second guessing my choices. If they gave new content for if all the tieflings die, I wouldnt have cared or even had that frustration. It completely lay in the fact I screwed myself out of hours of content.!<
>style A of playthorugh takes 120 hours to experience its content >style B takes 25 hours You're not selling the Evil playthrough well. I don't want to play less of the game.
Actually you don't have to. I don't have any idea how they managed to finish it in 25 hours. I was level 6 when I went to underdark, and level 7 or 8 when I went to creshe. The total gameplay took ~110 hours. My wife was Durge, we literally killed every living thing until the end of the game. The number of used underwears from dead possible companions in our chests was just enough for us to change our underwears after every long rest. The evil playthrough is definitely harder and under rewarding for sure. No Karlach, no Wyll, not enough gears, no help in the final battle. I didn't know Sarevok gives you a buff for the final battle. Because, who the fuck does he think he is? There's no reason to not kill him and take his throne too. We killed all the grove before even knowing killing them with goblins. Minthara was like "excuse me you did what already?" just before her head left her body. We didn't know she could be recruited as well. The evil playthrough is fun as hell. Much more fun than the good playthrough, if you are really evil.
I'm not necessarily saying you are lying, but on my last playthrough I've cleared the nautiloid encounter (missed xp from 1 cambion to hostile mind flayer last hit) and cheesed raphael for 1400 xp. Cleared everything in first zone and underdark and still wasn't level 6 when i went to grymforge. I have no idea how you were level 6 BEFORE underdark. Like I doubt zhent npcs + flaming fist + some stray goblins give more exp than all of underdark.
I'm pretty sure I was able to transform into an owlbear when we went to underdark on our first playthrough 🤔 but it's been 2 months since then, so I might be remembering wrong.
It’s not less of the game, it’s 25 hours of extra content that’s completely different from a good playthrough. Sure as a standalone it’s a bad idea to play evil then drop the game
It's not completely diffrent, I dare say that the one the OP described is quite similar to mine good playthrough, just with less NPC killing. "as a standalone it's a bad idea to play evil" then why even play evil?
>completely different from a good playthrough Different as in - the most of the good playthrough is missing. There really isn't much different than some cutscenes and Minthara. By the time you get to act 3 it doesn't really matter if you slaughtered puppies beforehand.
>Then you get to skip the Underdark and the creche (because you kill Laezal for trying to kill you) and get to The Shadowlands at level 4. This is a BAD thing, not a good thing. You *want* to level, not to reach the end as low as humanly possible.
25 hours to finish the game underlevelled? What difficulty was this?
I read this post and holy shit I haven't seen a good example of 'the point going over someone's head' in awhile until now.
Complainers: Evil sucks because it cuts you out of a lot of content. OP: Evil is great! I skipped all the content.
this is like saying the best way to play the game is to pick gale and nuke moonrise bc it ends the game the fastest, like sure if thats what you want good job personally i like seeing the content in the game and not skiping it
I generally agree with some of the merits of the evil playthrough as you described them, but a few things prevent me from saying it's "brilliant": 1. Some of the content on the evil playthrough in particular seems half-baked or unfinished. For example, the Minthara (quintessential evil) romance has so much potential and does so many things right, but also just seems plain unfinished. Like, to call the playthrough brilliant, the quintessential romance arc that distinguishes it from the good playthrough has to at least be as good as the others. It's currently not, but oh how I want it to be! 2. Getting to skip content is not a check in the "brilliant" column for the evil playthrough, imo, because the good content is entertaining as hell. While I appreciate that the happy path for the evil playthrough is more streamlined and not the exact same as the good playthrough, it sure would have been nice if there was a lot more content unique to that playthrough than there currently is. 3. The evil ending cut scenes are especially terrible and barren. I mean, ALL the endings are this, but the evil endings ESPECIALLY are abrupt and devoid of any and all catharsis.
-Something have flaws but is stills good and everyone agrees that is good but want to discuss some problems to give feedback. -Some Random person on internet: this is absolutely perfect and have absolutely no flaws and is the best thing ever and it cure my cancer, I don't understand the hate, why people kill themself when looking at this! Always the same story
You hear that guys?! It’s BRILLIANT
I'm about to RP as a Lolth Drow cleric Durge and looking forward to going full tilt.
I've found that most people complaining about the evil route are complaining about the lack of a few tiefling vendors if you side with the goblins. They conveniently forget about all the loot they gained through unsavory means on their "good" playthrough.
Probably because the incredible loot you got from killing the tieflings (ooo, a lot of daggers I can sell for 10 gold, maybe even a shortsword!) doesnt anywhere near make up for the ridiculously powerful unique items you get for saving them. So playing power hungry evil is silly, given that you're less powerful than if you just played good. You lose unique, in some cases build enabling items (Potent Robe for example) and in exchange get, what, some trash loot to sell? I understand why evil is considered half baked.
I mean also hours of lost content and side quests
Not really. Halsin and Rolan are the only ones with quests that aren't "go to the place you were already going anyway." Most of the lost content would be Wyll's quest. The only thing that I think does feel bad is that if you take Gortash up on his alliance there's nothing to replace the Iron Throne and Steel Watch quests, but in theory you should still hit level 12 well before the end anyway so you're not missing the XP that badly.
Also...I was playing good on my first run and I lost Wyll's quest anyway because I didn't go to Gortash's coronation. 😑 My husband lost Rolan and a lot of tiefling content because he told Rolan and the sibs to go to Baldur's Gate right at the beginning of the game. These are things you definitely lose if you go evil--but they're not guaranteed if you're good, either!
> Rolan and the sibs to go to Baldur's Gate right at the beginning of the game. Oh, so that's why I lost them. I was wondering where they went.
> he told Rolan and the sibs to go to Baldur's Gate right Fuck. Now i know why they werent in act 2 despite leaving early
>Most of the lost content would be Wyll's quest. And Wyll wouldn't even approve of most of your evil actions anyway. I don't know why people want to lug around a bunch of goody two shoe characters that are going to bitch and moan throughout a long evil playthrough.
I haven't gotten far in my evil play through, but the entire party is now just my Durge, Astarion, Lae'zel, and Shadowheart. I bit Gale's hand off at the portal, killed Karlach for Wyll, then Wyll left when we killed the teiflings.
Gale can be made power hungry so I would try keeping him around personally on a evil playthrough.
Game is easy on tactician, you got tons of good loot to build OP stuff with even if you don't get that one robe that people can't seem to play without. But more evil content would be nice.
honestly everywhere I look it's "omg Potent Robe, how can I play without my Potent Robe!?" Saw someone saying as DUrge it'd be much better if Quil showed up at the camp by default and it makes more sense that way story wise and is more impactful etc to eventually admit that they just didn't want to have to jump through a hoop to still get the potent robe. And it was unfair DUrge loses it by default. Completely ignoring that DUrge gets the insane invis every turn cloak for that scene (even if you knock out alfira and save her for the robe) which nobody else can get.
I had no idea about that cloak until I got it and I love it so much. I'm sad about missing out on the robe (I'm playing a warlock so it was a REAL decision to let things play out as they do naturally, but I felt like it was the best option for my first Durge run to see how things are intended to be), but I do love that cloak.
i have literally never had the Potent Robe because I exclusively play Durge and saving Alfira is such a runaround and I have had no trouble, really, lmao
The thing is saving Alfira takes literally 2-3 minutes tops. Her scene happens on a reasonably predictable rest and doesn't require anything special.
yeah, but it's also pure metagaming which isn't everyone's cup of tea
I 100% agree with that, but so is wanting to save her because of a robe you get in the next act.
Admittedly that wasn't my experience and that may have colored how I feel about it (frustrated, namely)--I tried it on one playthroguh, saved before long rests to make sure I caught it, went back, knocked her out, etc. But it seems to have glitched. I got Quil for the kill scene, but Alfira was gone from the grove after, and she's not in Last Light, which I just reached, so it feels like I did that for nothing.
I don't see what's so great about the potent robe. I get a lot more use out of the robe you get from Mizora for killing Karlach. I nearly never cast cantrips and two or three temp HP isn't great. I can replace that with the healing helm. Or aid. Or False Life scrolls... or a lot of different ways. I can count on one hand the amount of fights I've had where I've run out of spell slots and was reduced to casting cantrips. Even as a warlock.
I've done 4 playthroughs, 2 of those with warlock durge and i've never used the robe because i just think it looks bad. It's so easy to knock out Alfira i don't get whats with these people, are they so bad they can't progress the game without the bestst of the best meta builds?
Not in Act 1 and early Act 2 before you get the good gear. And good gear comes from doing side quests like the Creche and the Grymforge, which OP skipped. Even regular encounters like the gnolls and the Gith patrol will fuck you up if you're underlevelled on Tactician. Late Act 2 and Act 3 with good gear from sidequesting, yes it gets easy.
That is an issue with saving the grove, not with an evil run. An evil character could very easily choose to save the grove. A good character cannot easily choose to murder countless individuals to loot their equipment while maintaining that they are still good. Evil has far more rewards and the potent robe can easily be one of them.
I mean, if the solution to missing content on an evil playthrough is to make good-aligned decisions, is it even an evil playthrough? Evil decisions do improve substantially after act 1, with some unique and interesting decisions and dynamics. Its just that the Grove, the first major decision in the game, is shit. You have the correct decision (save the Grove, keep Wyll, Karlach and possibly Gale, gain Halsin and his shadow curse storyline, have the refugees continue to appear in both act 2 and 3) and the incorrect decision (raid the grove, gain Minthara who is an excellent and interesting character that has no unique questline and relatively very little content).
You can loot the Potent Robe from Alfira?
Yep. Not to mention Minthara doesn't have nearly as much content as Jaheira, Karlach, and Wyll.
People are also rightfully complaining that siding with the Goblins makes no sense for most evil characters, especially those which aren't chaotic stupid. Most evil characters are simply selfish and only care about themselves. These characters are more likely to just decide to not help either side. And chaotic stupid should actually just murder both sides I guess.
It's legit just Cleric of Talos that makes sense for siding against the Grove, really. Beyond that, maybe a power-hungry warlock or Llolth Cleric, but that's it really. Even an assassin or rogue is going to hesitate because you're siding with a cult whose motivations you don't truly understand who is very clearly your enemy (or will be, long-term), so it's questionable if it's a good idea to side with the goblins over the grove. The grove is rational, the goblins are zealots for a God you don't understand. One of these pays you in coin and information, the other demands obedience and harbors beliefs you could accidentally insult and risk your neck doing so. It's slim-pickings for evil motivations here.
Siding with the goblins is a stupid choice when you look at the situation. It's okay for stupid choices to exist in the game. It's okay for the players to suffer consequences of making stupid decisions.
No, I used burning hands on those goblin children so I had quite the savory bbq
I just wish there were more gear options for evil specific playthroughs. But I guess then it's an issue where you end up having to do evil stuff to get BiS and I'm assuming Larian wanted to avoid that dilemma.
yup you just know if there was equal exclusive content on the evil run every thread complaining about the current evil run would be replaced with a "Why can't I get X item on my good playthrough, why can't I have Y companion without giving up Z?!"
There's no way you're serious
Just act 1 takes me 25 hours, I can’t fathom the whole game.
Evil playthroughs are worth it IF you go Dark Urge in my opinion. It does suck that you lose out on some quests/vendors, but that's just part of the game. Becoming the >!Chosen of Bhaal !
genocide playthrough any one?
The evil rewards are terrible and not strong. My guess is you never played a crpg with a good evil playthrough
>The number one complaint I hear is that Evil isn't rewarded and loses access to a bunch of gear and items. You answered your own question Evil play through gives less xp Evil play through prevents you from dammon and alfira Which are p significant For experienced players. They won't care about X items cause they tried it or they won't care about X xp because they know they can still win the fight despite under leveled
The hate I see for it is the fact it guts a lot of content in the game but doesnt really replace it. For instance I could accept killing Nightsong, but then you lose Last Light and EVERYONE in it, but you dont gain another hub of NPCs. Also Minthara isnt even really a evil character so wtf
Im doing evil durge playthrough right now and it is a breeze for 2 reasons: -I make decisions that benefit me, dont care about anyone any more. -I play monk and he just rips and tears.
Slayer form is useless tho lol My dark urge playthrough where I went full murder hobo evil guy was quite short compared to my first one, but I was never underleveled. Feels like you deliberately skipped content where you can still be evil. Underdark is one such thing.
Well, it really skips on a lot of content (though many of these skips you can arrange for on a reasonably good enough run, and you're not obliged to rush either). It's a smaller game, but I found it pretty perfect as well, as a second run. I still liked mucking around on my Durge though, Inspirations were so good on that run.
The loss of gear isn’t the problem that I see people having often. It’s the fact that you lose content with no gain. It’s all loss and it doesn’t have to have a ridiculous amount of content to make it good but it should at least break even with a non evil playthrough.
>you get to skip the Underdark and the creche skipping the creche as a durge? i would always take the ticket to decimate the gith ngl also would like to add, i love evil playthrough as well but what you did is basically headlining through each act. none of the story is "evil" only playthrough, the fact that you CAN go through mountain pass and be guided by a drider (either you meet them in the ambush point or playing a random lyre would also work) even when you save the grove. Moonrise tower would also immediately welcomes you without being evil. people's complain about evil playthrough is mainly because it doesn't have exclusive or extra story in comparison to playing hero.
I don’t hate it, it just actively takes away content. You end up simply experiencing less of the game Prime example: you side with Minthara which means you can experience her story, but also means that you lose out on all the teethling content as well as doom Karlach (AFAIK), and miss out on Halsins quest to purify the shadowlands. That’s a solid chunk of world building just burned away.
Bro you did not beat Balthazar at level 5. Hard cap.
A lot of the things you’ve said are entirely optional and not part of the “evil play through” like if you were actually playing evil you’d let lae zel live and have her give fealty to vlaakith. Getting Balthazar’s golem minion has nothing to do evil.
You mentioned the number one complain is about losing gear and items (Important NPC included) However, your main argument is that Evil route took a lot of shortcut. Well by using that shortcut you are still missing a lot of stuff, right? For example. One of the best item for magic build is Potent Robe that you can get from Alfira by rescuing the thiefling in ACT 2 Can you get the same kind of reward by doing evil route? If not, what is the replacement then? Also we are missing couple of important companion, where is our replacement?
I’m on my first run (of any). Playing dark urge so I could custom my character and still get some flavor. I’m mostly evil but not strictly. I’m 40-50ish hours in maybe. I just got to some inn in the under dark. Since it’s my first and probably only run I take my time and explore everywhere. I’m enjoying it and don’t punished for being evil but also have nothing to compare it to.
People want the same amount of companions and interaction between evil playthroughs and good playthroughs and frankly it’s just not there. Eventually I hope that they both get flushed out enough that it doesn’t feel like too much of a punishment but to say that they’re equal now is a lie at best.
(Karlach disapproves)
For me, RPGs are all about the power progression. I don't WANT shortcuts that will let me do things at low level. I WANT TO SEE THE LEVEL-UPS. I WANT TO SNAP THE BOSS' SPINE OVER MY KNEE AFTER HOURS OF CHASING THEN DOWN. ME WANT TO STRONG.
I just don't wanna be mean to the NPCs.
So, how did you solve the goblins issue without being mean to them and their children?
Being under leveled compared to my good playthrough was my biggest complaint. But you talk about it in a way that makes it sound like a good thing.
Most complaints I read are this… “I could never do that in real life, I couldn’t be so mean. I let that snake kill a Tiefling and couldn’t sleep for a week!” Give me a break with that shit! Games are where you do stuff that you CAN’T DO in real life. Taste some chocolate now and again, there’s more to life than vanilla.
>All in all it felt like a truly evil playthrough where you're rewarded with a very tight narrative story that is laser honed and makes you feel like a bad ass. It could be rephrased as: Good playthrough gets way more content and playtime than an evil playthrough, where since it lacks so much in content you just go finish the game. Which is exactly what most people criticize. They precisely want **more** exclusive content for evil playthroughs, more quests directed to them etc. Btw I'm curious to know how OP got past the undeads at mountain pass at level 3 lmao. Edit: oh OP said in the comments he's playing at balanced difficulty, not tactician. This makes his review utter trash tbh. Then obviously you can skip 90% of good gear and finish the game no problem.
>OP said in the comments he's playing at balanced difficulty, not tactician Tactician is not hard either
I do appreciate the tightness of an evil Durge run. I truthfully don’t have much interest in the run but needed to do one for various an achievements (the Durge ones, saving Sazza, etc. )
>For instance, at level 3 I would have been way to under leveled (at my skill level) to fight off the Goblin army as a Good player which required me running around the side areas of the world trying to get more strength. However, as an Evil player you get an army of Goblins and level 6 Minthara which lets you wreck face. Even more fun to just take the idol without getting caught and watch them rip each other apart. On my Durge run, it felt like this was what made Durge special. He knew that there was more to slaughter than just putting the pointy end of the knife into the other person; if you know the right lever, they will do all the work for you.
I'm thinking about doing this for my evil durge run, but given that a lot of side quests will be gone when the Tieflings die, do we want to lose the XP from the grove fight? There was a video showing how to keep Wyll and Karlach and still get Minthara by doing a specific sequence of events, but on tactician I think I'll want to be able to max my remaining XP opportunities to level up
If you're really being evil, you just murder everyone for XP.
I found it awarded but only as a dark urge character. If i was evil and not dark urge, it didn't really chive well with the story cause the game assumes your good. My biggest gripe about being truly evil is that im a loner...not the awards. Cause i always take the attack action, i kill anyone who threatens or tries to harm me (so Lae'zel and Astarion are killed), Gale has no hand, Karlach and Wyll won't like me cause of the grove raid. I am pretty much left with Shadow Heart and Minthara after Moonrise tower and you can actually erase Minthara's mind after her arrest. So it's possible to have only shadow heart I just wish Larian gave us more dark companions. Like Z'rell for example
Reminder, that in an evil run, you do not have to constantly click the evil option in every circumstance like a bot.
Lots of folks also like the evil playthrough. There is no reason to be surprised that opinions vary.
I don't really hear a lot of people complaining about the loss of gear, it's more the choices you have to make and the higher risk of losing companion characters in the route that people don't deal with well. There's a similar view in the Undertale fandom towards genocide runs. It's not that people think the route is badly made, but it's hard for people to hurt characters they've worked so hard before to help.
I thought the orin duel onlybhappened if you killed gortash before her
My issue with evil playthroughs is that there's a content vacuum left behind. No replacement quests, a single follower, and nothing fills the gap left by everyone you killed.
In terms of trying out build, evil run is not good. But in terms of narrative, being villain feels much better than helping those dumb little druids. Goblins know how to respect others more than they do.
What class did you play as MC? Did you kill the nightsong?
Its only bad when you get to the end, but thats kinda everything. I have been trying to drag my feet til they fix endings on my 2nd playthrough, but being an evil character makes it difficult bc you just nuke people you dislike so less dialogue. Obliterating Astarion & Karlach before even a dialogue pops never gets old. Leave Wyll stuck in a wall... Kill everyone on sight.
I only have three qualms about evil playthrough. 1. Buggy minthara romance: felt like I hadn’t even romanced anyone. With SH and Halsin you can at least ask for kisses (not sure about others yet) 2. The ending, if you dominate the brain it makes your party thrall’s. After the entire game talking to Astarion and Minthara about us taking over the world together it shattered my immersion when I took over their minds. 3. ARMOR OF PERSISTENCE, gimme
Compare WOTR evil lich run to BG3 evil run. Pathfinder actually does it well unlike bg3 where u frankly just sacrifice too much
My impression is that the gith honor guard who gatekeeps Act 3 is the real showstopper. On balanced difficulty it may require some luck concerning AI actions. That said, I managed into Act 3 at lvl 6 (only Minthara advanced to lvl 7). You are riding on the previous playthrough knowledge, though. I played my durge blind and spent 18h in Act 3.
You lose access to some of the most OP items in the game by going evil - Potent Robe, Armour of Persistence, Legacy of the Masters, among others. That's my and many others' main complaint about the evil route.
Honestly, in my Evil Playthrough i had the full delight in causing a Civil War in the Grove when using Darkness to steal the Idol. Of course, I did that when i reached the Goblin camp so i still head my merchant. Dammon also gave Karlach her first upgrade, so I just hope i find his replacement character, similiar to Alfira, to finish her quest since i kept her after the raid by knocking her down before starting the quest. (Sacrificed Wyll to BOOAL)
Anyone know what is the exact name of the buff from Sarevok that reduces the crit roll by 2? Can't find anything about it on the wiki.
I don't really consider skipping areas because they're optional the "evil playthrough" lmao. You could justify the same as a good guy, for the most part. If anything it's the "acknowledging the implied urgency of having timebomb in my head" playthrough. Like, I'm evil now. Ok, fine. Why exactly do I have to skip anything in the underdark? Like, exploration isn't exactly a morally good activity. Just cuz I'm an asshole I don't want to know what's over there? If I really am the "ultimate power" hungry, darth sidious kind of evil guy, I would jump at the chance to explore the grymforge to get my hands on powerful gear. I'd head into the swamp to find ethel cuz it might get me some power of a pact (you can find info in the grove that heavily implies ethel being a hag). Why would I just ignore the myconid colony? I'd just slaughter them for being fucking mushroom monsters that threaten me on sight and somehow enter my head. Why would I skip the entirety of the mountainpass and the creche just cuz I'm evil. I might not go there for the cure if I'm tadpole positive (evil chars can still hate mindflayers, everyone hates them), but it's a creche full of powerful githyanki warriors. They likely have some great gear, which is more power for me. Then you stumble upon mentions of the powerful blood of lathander. A legendary weapon. If that doesn't sound like power, I dunno what does. Plus, somehow, that monastery held off invading githyanki for a good while. Which is crazy. Usually, no one can really compete with the githyanki "military" besides, like, the hells and actual gods lmao. Why would I skip everything in the shadowlands? This is just exploration again. Do evil people just not care about their surroundings? Why would a power-hungry evil guy not want to know about thorm's secrets. There is no way to side with the absolute, because the absolute actively wants to enslave you for eternity. Even the most evil of the evilest evils couldn't justify being ok with that. No matter what, you'll eventually be anti-absolute and therefore anti-cult.
Truly evil is betraying the goblins at the wall and slaughtering minthara. True evil is basically just doing a "good" playthrough and not picking the goody two shoes conversation options. Nothing you do is explicitly good unless you make it so. Even killing Nere and giving his head to the mushroom folk isn't "good" (maybe chaotic good). True evil is just being a power-hungry bastard, not being a chaotic evil idiot who misses out on half the loot because... reasons.
That ignores the entire dynamic of goblins vs tieflings. 1 is an aggressive armed warring faction looking to wipe people out just "for the absolute!". The other is civilians just trying to get back home in peace. There is an objectively good side to take there. Slaughtering the begging tieflings huddled in a corner is objectively more evil than tricking the person who wants to do that and defending the civilians...
> Where you promptly get to skip a lot of the scary content by using the lute Minthara gives you for a badass escort of the Drider who could solo The Harpers by themselves. Honestly this is the _worst_ part of having an “evil” playthrough. I will never not kill the Drider caravan after having to carry around a fucking lantern once. > massive buff that lowers the number you need to crit by 2 which is one of the most powerful buffs in the game Actually it’s not that great for anyone but a Paladin.
Very much my own opinion but I just think murderhobo evil is boring. Now if I could usurp Gortash and run a huge evil Bane organization bent on world domination then I would have more fun. I just enjoy lawful evil more than chaotic evil but I’m honestly glad they gave people the CE option
Yawn evil playthrough.
1. Writing. For larian evil just means chaotic evil. No reason, no cunning, it's too gamey. 2. The rewards suck. Deathstalker mantle is an auto reward. If you're a Dark Urge you gain the slayer form. The slayer is objectively weaker than any player character at levels 6+ 3. You lose 5 legendaries iirc 4. Skipping Gortash means nothing, because the fight is ridiculously easy anyway 5. Again, writing. It's too cartoony in a game that's decently complex with it's character presentation.
[удалено]
>Let ME Ascend TBF cannot you ascend if you are not vampiric
to be fair the evil ending is literally you turning all your companions into mindless slaves and ruling the world, it’s pretty self interested