Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game packed full of consequences. Align yourself with evildoers and goody two-shoes may ditch your adventure altogether. One particularly evil companion can only join your party if you succumb to a spot of evildoing yourself, risking upsetting others who look on the lighter side of life. Or so we thought…
Baldur’s Gate 3 spoilers follow.
Minthara is a ruthless Drow encountered in Act 1, and found in the Shattered Sanctum, inside the Goblin Camp. She’s one of three Goblin leaders, and is desperate to assault the nearby druid Grove, which the player can choose to protect or attack, as well as a few options in between.
If you side with Minthara in Act 1, you may recruit her later in the game. But siding with Minthara means committing a few unspeakable horrors, horrors I had thought unavoidable. For a start, you must betray the druids and the tieflings in the grove, killing some or all of them (won’t someone think of the children?!).
Do this and both Wyll and Karlach permanently leave your party, with Gale close to doing so as well unless you’re able to convince him otherwise. There is no way to avoid this exodus. But, Redditor Wulfrinnan concocted an ingenious (disturbing?) method to recruit Minthara while keeping their hands clean.
It revolves around the decision to steal or leave the Idol of Silvanus in the Grove. When you turn up, the druids are conducting a ritual designed to close the Grove off to all outsiders, including non-druid residents such as all the tieflings who have set up camp inside.
Stealing the Idol starts a big fight where the druids start murdering all the residents in the Grove (check out IGN’s Steal the Sacred Idol guide for more). They also become hostile to the player and party members. Most players who steal the Idol end up fighting their way out, inevitably killing NPCs in the process, but Wulfrinnan tried something different.
According to Wulfrinnan, you can have another party member steal the Idol (Astarion perhaps, he loves this sort of thing) to stop the ritual at the Grove and just run away while the druids and tieflings murder each other.
From there, report the location of the Grove to Minthara. Off she goes to find most of the defenders dead. By the time you turn up, all the fighting is done with.
“You never killed an innocent,” Wulfrinnan said. “You just (accidentally) lit the fuse. Sure she credits you for softening them all up in advance for her, but you didn’t really do anything.”
Brilliantly, this method lets paladins side with Minthara without breaking their oath. “And my paladin didn’t even steal the Idol, Astarion did while the paladin was looking the other way,” Wulfrinnan said. “Just a tragic case of miscommunication really.”
Does it work? It does indeed. “Just have one of your characters grab the Idol and jump / sneak away,” Wulfrinnan explained. “Go talk your way into the goblin camp. You never have to lift a finger in any of the fights, once you’re away from the action it all happens off camera.”
So there you have it: a full-proof method to “innocently” recruit Minthara, although we’re not sure just how innocent the player will end up. As redditor thundaga0 put it: “Honestly I feel like this is worse. At least the other method has you being honest about what you’re doing. This method has you pretending to not be evil even though you very much still are.”
“I caused children to be slaughtered and didn’t do anything to stop it. I’m a good person,” dt2275 wrote. “Sometimes you need to let a few eggs break in order to redeem a drow and infiltrate an evil cult,” Wulfrinnan replied. “It’s an elective in paladin school.”
What cannot be denied is this is all very Dungeons & Dragons, and testament to Baldur’s Gate 3’s ability to cope with the player’s actions, however experimental they may be.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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