Yeah, you can’t run past the courtyard fight.
Ah. OK, yeah you do have to complete the courtyard fight. But then you advance up steps, confronted by more baddies, but you can mostly try to run past them to get to a doorway, climb the brainstem there, and fight the final battle.
Since you describe the restoration pod, maybe you got all the way there, but the game won’t let you advance since you didn’t complete the courtyard battle.
I wonder how many people have stalled out at this same spot. I have a party parked there as well.
I just hit the dumbest part of the game so far:
Major spoilers for the end of Wyll's quest
I was super pumped to fight a dragon but Lae’zel is so overpowered it ended up being a pushover, and then the insult to the injury is the sappiest young adult love letter or whatever that was. They turned what should have been an epic moment at the end of the game into a broken personal relationship. Who cares?!
About the courtyard: remember to call in as many support troops as you need. Save some for later, but calling in allies can help a lot. And drop the difficulty if it’s too much. I found getting some of my main party up above quickly is best.
Regarding Long Rests in Act 3…
So eventually after like 3 or 4 long rests it seems, the stupid evil monster women will show up in your camp and just jack one of your dudes no matter what and force you to choose. Priority one is Lae’zel it seems. If you add her to your party beforehand, then the next on the chopping block is Halsin. I didn’t bother to go deeper because this is the optimal choice as he isn’t important at all in Act 3. Those two scenes though could not go more differently…
I know you can trigger this much earlier outside of camp straight away by entering the sewers…it’s jarring as hell there though, although the stakes are lower.
Ah. I always had Lae’zel in party, and must have triggered the Halsin kidnap reveal in the sewer. I never had an in- camp abduction scene.
Yeah, I guess if you’re like me and want to do all the quests in the city first, and I ain’t even done with them…
I suppose it’s meant to try and force you into the sewers if you haven’t done so already.
Completed at last. I’m spent. I think the best way to describe it is epic to the extreme – for better or worse.
Act 3 companion
Found Minsc and immediately did a repec to fixed his stats.
It’s weird and wrong and lazy to me they defaulted his stats to just the ranger recommended. 12 strength bro? We all just saw him succeed a DC50 strength check to brute force himself out of a mimic!
Also I naturally gave him plenty of Barbarian levels as he was always meant to have. BioWare’s original build for him in the Infinity games was completely out of whack and at odds with his stats! He was one of the most poorly optimized companions in the original games! Not any more suckas.
Whenever I get around to a 2nd playthrough, after some other games, I’d love to recruit Minsc. After a couple of attempts, I couldn’t keep Jaheira alive during the battle of Moonrise Tower, and didn’t have the enthusiasm to keep replaying the fight to save her. Minsc is not-recruitable AFAICT if Jaheira isn’t in your party.
Really? I didn’t find her hard to keep alive. In fact she demolished the left flank straight out of the gate with a well placed Ice Storm immediately. Overall I cleared Moonrise like a hot knife through butter.
Paladin’s might just be OP. I sent my PC into the fray immediately before any NPC straight at the grand foozle jugular. My guy is always the vanguard army of one. I’m pretty sure he can solo entire rooms by himself.
The fight with Jaheira can work out several ways depending whether she decides to charge into the middle of the room first thing or not, and also depending whether you hang back and plink at enemies or whether you also charge in there. She can get killed the first turn if she charges in and all the enemies decide to shoot at her.
I cleared the combat encounter first try so I can’t really comment on that as it didn’t play out that way. My guy was the point man.
To be precise Jaheria nuked all the Gnolls and the only thing left on that side was the handler. She did morph into a Panther and attack her but she had lots of cohorts with her.
You CAN recruit Minsc without Jaheira in your party, but she may need to at least be alive and in your camp. If you encounter Minsc without Jaheira in your party, he will be hostile. You have to take him down with non-lethal attacks to make him come around.
Minsc is hostile even with Jaheira in your party. I suspect you always much use non-lethal. I almost killed him actually but Jaheira had a combat bark mid-combat that queued me in. So I polymorphed him, then casted hold-person on him until I wiped out everyone else. Then wacked him with non-lethal attack after he was the last man standing. I guess I could I have done that before.
Protip: Minsc is highly susceptible to Hold Person. Even after combat/dialog ended he failed like a dozen rounds extra. Waiting…
The Emperor wanted me to kill him…more reasons to kill that middle-man mindflayer mounting.
My latest play through saw Isobel captured, all the gargoyles surrounded her and none missed, downing her by the 2nd round of combat. And after that things go dark and Jaheira decided to charge into a pack of mobs and died before I could heal her or even get a Sanctuary spell on her. I decided to just go with it rather than reloading, but like others I’ve yet to recruit you-know-who.
Minsc feels a little off. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it’s the change in voice actor. Matthew Mercer is no Jim Cummings.
The Iron Throne sequence was really quite something.
Six rounds to rescue prisoners in three different directions, and get all the way back to the ship! Of course fucking Gale. I sent him to the east side cell block but he never did reach the cell levers. He got netted and was generally being a fucking Gale. When he finally almost but not quite reached the cells I was staring down two rounds left. Nope! Gale dimension doored in a desperate attempt to get back to the ladder! One turn left. Up the latter. Everyone’s in the ship except him! End. Cue cutscene of Gale climbing the latter up to the ship as the tail-end Charlie. LOL!
This quest was so fucking tight. There’s other things like how the demoness warps in and tries to botch your rescue of the Duke. Wyll blasted the locked door to pieces to break out of there. I totally lucked into having the foresight to fully heal the Duke with my Paladin’s lay-on hands, because he fucking needed it. He was sub 10 HP by the time he boarded the boat!
The best thing though is I managed to do it in one shot without ever reloading. RIP east-side prisoners. I can imagine a alternate playthough where you fail a lot. Although playing it again without going in blind while could easy be more optimal, it wouldn’t be as fun.
I’m glad you finally found something you enjoyed in the game.