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Baldur's Gate 3 is a game crammed full of content, with a single playthrough only allowing for a limited look at a larger whole, depending on decisions made. One such "secret" many players may have missed is Minthara, a sadistic Drow Paladin and potential party member, who could previously only be recruited under very special circumstances. Vague spoilers for Act I to follow.
Released on Friday, Larian's monstrous Update 5 added an enormous amount to the game, like a new epilogue sequence and the Ironman-esque Honour Mode difficulty, amongst hundreds of fixes, tweaks and alterations. If, like us, you read every line in rapt attention, one would have stood out in particular: "Minthara will still appear at Moonrise Towers if she was knocked out in Act I."
Now, if your first playthrough went anything like ours, you'd know that sneaking into the Goblin Camp, allying with Minthara, and opening the gates to the Druid Grove to let her warband slaughter the Tieflings is a great way to get on her good side. Short of a glitch the community discovered, this was actually the only way to recruit the character, as she would survive and end up imprisoned in Moonlight Towers, where she could potentially be recruited to your party.
Players now have more options. They can take the Goblin Camp head-on or trick Minthara (and double-cross her while attacking the Druid Grove), making sure to toggle on the Non-Lethal Damage passive and knock her out instead. She will still end up at Moonrise Towers, where she gets some needed characterisation, and from there, players can decide her fate one way or the other.
Did you simply murder Minthara your first time through? Are you already plotting repeat playthroughs? Let us know in the comments section below.
Comments 8
This is horrible. Minthara is supposed to be an evil route boon and emending that is just penalizing the evil route, which has a lot going for it, but needs some definite work. Letting a good player have all the companions with no consequence is an awful idea. Good or evil, this game needs consequences and this is removing them in a shortsighted manner.
Let me play the game the way I want to play it. Thank you, Larian!
By boring you mean non genocidal?
Yeah, on my playthrough I killed her with magic missiles and guiding bolts
I tried using non-lethal on her... A month ago when I started. Oh well if I need to do another good playthrough I'll do it again
@Jaz007 I'm not sure why you think this is horrible because you can still have her be the evil route. It's your own play through so whatever you want to happen is canon to your play through. You can still help her kill the tieflings if you want to go the evil route. But now there's an option for people to have her on a good route as well. Adding options for different players seems like a good thing to me.
@Scootybby The thing is, you get a lot less companions being evil than you do for being good. At least, Minthara would have been a replacement for Halsin, and the exclusivity forces the player into a choice, with consequences. Now, there's little consequence for being good, in that you can recruit every companion, and so, no choice either. However, being bad still nets you the disadvantage of a smaller team, but now, with no real advantage, unless you play Durge...
@Scootybby Because you lose 3 companions on the evil route and gained one. The point of the game is to choose and live with what happens. It’s the same reason you should not Halsin for the sake of “options” if you kill all druids. Different paths should lock things out.
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