In fact sorcadin is one of the top builds if you can’t decide between them.
Well I found that timed Quest and wow that was not an easy fight. After more than a dozen failed attempts I finally remembered I had an ally with good ol’ Lump and even with him it took two more times and in the end poor lump and his friends didn’t make it and two of my party died also. But I finally beat that arrogant SOB.
Even back in the 3.5 days I loved that combo, I played it In Neverwinter Nights.
I really like Astarion, and I really like the idea of turning him good by being nice to him. But the other companions are so much fun, too, that I haven’t been using him very much since the beginning of Act 1, and his approval of me has remained relatively low as a result.
We just came across [act 2 spoiler] the drow alchemist in Moonrise Towers, who asked to speak with Astarion. I agreed, and brought him over (bye Halsin, I’ll miss ya). The lady wanted him to bite her; he refused; despite my curiosity I decided to back him without question, telling her to bugger off. I also emphasized that despite being a spawn in my employee Astarion was a free man.
This finally increased his opinion of me enough that he changed his greeting to a much friendlier one. I really need to travel with Astarion some more - I want to make sure his opinion of me is high before he has to make a decision, which judging by Lae’Zel and Shadowheart is something that’s coming up…
I still have some way to go before I finish this playthrough, but I think playthrough 2 will absolutely be modded. There’s a Necromancy ++ mod that adds an undead version of Magehand and the ability to craft flesh golems, gives some alternative summons to Create Undead and Animate Dead, allows you to upcast Animate Dead for extra skeletons (rather than being a necro wizard), and adds the undead creating spells to sorcerers. I think that’s all I need for a Xykon-inspired Dark Urge playthrough.
I have been talking to animals because I can and found one that was basically immortal. Later through no fault of his own, everyone at that location became hostile to me and he attacked so I had to kill him and now I feel guilty. This is a great game…
I found that traveling with him really did not help in keeping his approval up, because my playstyle is simply not to his tastes.
I haven’t been doing the kinds of evil or sadistic actions that appeal to his bloodlust, but I have gotten opportunities to show him that I respect him as a fellow sentient creature who is worthy of dignity (even if he isn’t exactly a ‘living’ being) and that’s slowly earned his respect.
I’m stealing this thought from a post I saw on Reddit a while back, but my adventures in Moonrise Tower made me realize that I play my Bard in a very James Bond-like way:
- Find out that some bad guys have made their lair somewhere nearby (Goblin Camp, Moonrise Tower, the Grymforge, etc)
- Arrive at the location and gain entrance by pretending that I’m working for the bad guys
- Snoop around the place, stealing key items and documents. Occasionally get in a fight but do it stealthily without breaking my cover.
- Eventually charm my way to meet the leader of the bad guys. Get them to reveal their plans, and continue pretending to be on their side until inevitably they ask me to do something irredeemably evil, like kill a bunch of innocents.
- I refuse, my cover’s blown, I either escape or kill the bad guys, then move on to the next enemy lair.
This is, of course, exactly how you want to play a bard.
“Thanks for saving [thing]! Now I can run this store?”
“Cool, glad to help. Can I have a discount?”
“Hahahahaha… no”
That’s my experience with every quest-NPC merchant ever. You have to just give them a pile of loot to raise their approval (which feels like defeating the purpose). Not that I’m cash poor but I’m amused at how many people I’ve saved but they’re all “Neutral” to me when it comes to selling silver goblets and Spear +1’s.
Y’know to date I haven’t bartered once to play the approval game. I imagine it must pay off if you’re diligent about working it (if not, Larian is evil 
). But I find the the haggler sim part of the most any CRPG slightly tedious. So I just switch to trade mode and buy and sell at stock prices.
I don’t even know if it works. Or is supposed to work. I’ve had things like offering 99 gold for 100gp worth of merchandise and the merchant always refuses. I would have assumed some play between your Charisma score and a random chance, etc but it feels like just a more roundabout way of buying stuff at retail.
If you just give them money (in gold or loot) and ask nothing in return, you’ll raise their approval. It’s on a sliding scale based on your level but starts at 400gp at level 1 to max approval. That doesn’t really feel worth it to me. Granted, I’ve done a lot of five-finger discounting but I’m sitting on ~30k gold towards the end of the game.
I didn’t even realize Haggling was a thing. I thought putting what you offer and what you want on both sides and clicking Balance was just how the interface works.
It’s been out a little while now and I’m curious, are any common criticisms/critiques rising up now? I’ll give an example. Tears of the Kingdom is an incredible game, amazing achievement, and probably the best or one of the best games of all time.
However, there are a few common critiques people have sort of made after it was out for awhile. Interface with some of the powers was terrible, one whole map section was sparsely populated with things to do, some other issues in terms of design that took some time to realize.
I think this is the case with even the best games. I’m curious what are some common critiques of Baldur’s Gate 3.
There is a lot of cut content, some very important stuff. For example it is impossible to get a good ending for one of the companions due to content that was cut.
I’ve seen complaints about the inventory management but I think there are mods out that can help with that. I suspect in time mods will solve a lot of the criticisms that pop up.
I think they’re mostly focused around Act 3. Some people the pacing and writing don’t hold up, especially as compared to Acts 1 and 2. It’s not a completely unfair critique, but I think the negative reviews on Steam are fully overblown.
And I absolutely get why they cut content from Act 3. Act 3 is biiiig. I hit the level cap and had more gold than I knew what to do with, so the last few quests I did felt kind of empty. And I’m not even a completionist.
I’m glad there wasn’t even more to do. More stuff at the end would have meant needing to increase the level cap or change the difficulty pacing of the entire game, or else just shrug and give players an even longer end-game experience with very little to do in the way of improving their characters.
Complaints about the inventory system are absolutely reasonable. I expect patches there eventually.
Agree 100%. For one thing, we don’t know what state the “cut content” was in – anything from “It’d be cool” concept to fully realized and playable material – but you have to draw the line before release somewhere. Some internet people want to act like this was some malicious scheme to… I dunno… NOT give us more areas/quests? Larian isn’t known for the DLC and microtransactions so it seems unlikely that they’d hold things back to sell to us later. The reasonable answer is just “There wasn’t time to put these in or they messed with the game flow/feature creep/story concepts in other ways”
But I agree that the game doesn’t need more stuff in Act III (and most of the ‘cut’ stuff people huff about is Act III) as it’s potentially too large anyway. I’ve felt like “Ok, almost done” for a week now but each quest leads to some other whole new location and it’s been slow going. This is talking about ‘main story’ and companion quests, not Random Shopkeeper Lost His Tomatoes stuff. It’s like a 3.5hr movie… “I like this but I’d maybe like it more if it were a little tighter?” At Level 12 and with an array of gear on each character that I’m happy with, it feels less like working towards goals and more like prolonged mopping up.
So, silly as it sounds, one criticism might be Act III’s pacing and bloat. Hard as it is to bitch about “too much content”. Inventory is a common complaint and there’s some complaints about “overly horny companions” (though I suspect much of this is dudes upset that Nice Guy video game dudes keep pestering them for a little romance; probably a lesson in there somewhere). Act III hasn’t been too buggy for me but I have had a game breaking bug pop up two or three times where a Player controlled NPC’s combat round just won’t end. I had a Spiritual Weapon that would get locked like that each time and finally got out by restarting (luckily I had saved right before that round) and dismissing it.
Speaking of, large combats get sloggish in large part because the computer spends twenty sections pondering what Bat #9 should do before flying it in a circle. Even with an i7-13700 and 32GB of DDR5, it can feel slow going when you have more than four or five enemies on the board. I’d actually rate this as my biggest complaint – I can live with inventory clutter and don’t mind my companions looking for a little somethin’ before they potentially turn into mind flayers and/or die. But seeing combat with 10+ enemies just makes me droop a bit inside.
A part of me likes that, since this game is replicating a tabletop D&D experience. This is very much like what would happen in the pen and paper game. I had a DM who thought it would be cool to throw an actual army of kobolds at us, and the combat took 12 hours to resolve. (Not an exaggeration, we literally played all night. I could do stuff like that when I was in my 20s.)
Um, it wasn’t cool, just FYI.
I fought someone who summoned a flock of six or eight birds. Each one was a lengthy pause while the game weighed its options… for a monster that can (a) fly and (b) peck. If I had a DM who spent two minutes moving six birds, I’d be worried for them 
My personal favorite was a gnome who ‘thought’ for an eternity, just to (a) Dash away, triggering an attack of opportunity then (b) Misty Step’d right back to point A. Nice tactics, glad we waited.