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.
That sequence rocks. It’s like it came from a different game. I was suddenly going through my spellbooks, scrolls, potions – using all these tools I hadn’t had to touch before.
In my game I had one prisoner fail to make it up the ladder, but that’s because his AI got stuck a couple turns earlier and he didn’t complete a dash. I didn’t feel like reloading and I figured his death was on Larian, not me. Plus you don’t have to rescue all of them to make the gnomes happy.
I used a lot of misty step and dimension door, so even though I was a bit confused at first, I was able to pull it off in the end.
Damn Discourse tags are so broken…
I had one barely make it too – but turns out if you push, blast, or throw them into the ladder, they’ll climb out automatically!
There’s two ladders. Gale never actually made it to the second one, but showed him climbing up it as part of the escape cutscene. Not sure how the mechanics actually work. Does everyone survive as long as they make it to that antechamber between the first and second ladder? Like if you had more than one person down there.
Only person I got out alive was the Duke.
Har har.
On the contrary, I enjoyed some parts of Act 1, most of Act 2, and Act 3 is growing on me.
Only there’s a ton of stuff to do. There’s still a chance it overstays its welcome. :)
They really don’t want you to rescue him if you broke Wyll’s contract. At least the demoness tries hard to stop you. He, unlike Gale being dumb and failing, barely just managed to escape. He dashed every turn straight to the ladder from the cell after being “stalled” and entered the ship on the last round with like 5 HP remaining. The fish monsters were pouring in and had reached the lower ladder by that point.
In hindsight, 20/20, meta-gaming it, casting Sanctuary on him and teleporting him forward with dimension door would probably be optimal, with less nail-biting involved, but where is the fun in that?
Unearthed a super ultra deluxe mega critical spoiler from one of the coin-counter vaults…oops! It’s such a huge spoiler just locked away behind a DC30 door…I won’t even post it here.
Finally made it through my first playthrough. 160 hours - 2,168 quicksaves later…
On tactician and didn’t multi-class anyone. Astarion/Gale/Shadowheart were my mains, but everyone pretty much cycled in here and there. Unfortunately, Wyll died in Act 2, and it felt appropriate so I let it happen. Half my squad either died or left me in the final cinematics. It was quite melencholy. I was surprised and disappointed there weren’t any ending story cards to explain what happened to people or events based on your actions.
Also, romancing Gale sucks. Totally played me in the end, but I guess that was always written on his face.
Ompf. Wyll had one of the better quest line end reels. Not sure if you can learn that information elsewhere but it’s a pretty big reveal.
preach
Late Act 3 / Dark Urge spoilers: lol Sarevok gets so fucking mad if you’re Dark Urge and you bring Minsc and Jaheira with you to meet him.
Cleared House of Hope.
The boss fight seemed overwhelming at first but they give you a powerful NPC that can perma-banish and cast divine intervention and has a powerful heal. To access I made a deal with the shop owner for the gauntlets of 23 strength but could just leave the shop and keep them afterwards…/shrug
I handed the gauntlets over since my character was such a goody two shoes.
The score during that battle was teriffic.
About those gauntlets: if you give them to her, she adds them to her store and you can buy them for a laughable 500 gold
That’s exactly what I did. Hilarious!
I figured it was one of those tests of character on whether you’d give them away or keep them, so the reward is more or less the same.Sometimes being good really does pay off!
That boss fight was a ton of fun. Cheers to Larian for having some fun with the boss battle music. Brought a huge smile to my face.