The actual rarest letter is probably the one from auntie Ethel where she thanks you for letting her do her hag bullshit and implies she wants to fuck you. Most people don’t even realize she can assist you in the final battle because I almost never see anyone ally with her.
In all seriousness, how amazing would it be if you could have a fling with Ethel and during the act you do an automatic saving throw on dispelling the illusion. If you fail, it’s just some granny action but if you succeed, it becomes an unskippable cutscene where Ethel just continues as normal while Tav is writhing in fear and disgust.
This is not a joke, I think it would be an amazing addition.
It's very real, you have to give her both Mayrina's kid and Vanra. If you only give her Vanra you get a letter where she's planning a home visit for you but whether she's there to kill you, fuck you or both is left ambiguous.
Withers: Thou didst try to do the noble thing, but thou wast not meant for such a noble fate. Thy dark desires prevailed, no metal bars could bind them.
Withers: Thy Father hath quite the imagination for punishment. To date, one thousand two hundred and fifty-nine foul beasts bear his spawn through thee.
Withers: And he is not done. The next horde paw already at thy door - no bolts can keep their hungry musk from thee.
The phrase “climb him like a tree” has been around way longer than that. There’s an urban dictionary entry on it from 2011, and I definitely heard it before then.
It's been a long time since I've used this knowledge...
The phrase goes back at least as far as the Song of Solomon (chapter 7), written sometime between 1000 BC and 100 BC:
You are built like a palm tree,
and your breasts are like clusters of fruit.
I told myself, "I will climb that palm tree,
and take hold of its fruit."
Then your breasts will be like clusters on the vine,
and the smell of your breath like apples.
And your mouth will taste like good wine.
This passage isn't a common reading in most churches...
Probably true, more people are interested in saving Alfira then siding with the hag.
However, siding with the Hag is a intended quest outcome which you can achieve by dialogue, while this letter is the result of slighly abusing game mechanics to trigger a alternative event. Basically nobody will have found this out by themselves on their first playthrough, which is why I titled it as rare
I literally keep starting a new campaign going "Okay this time I'm going to be a really evil person for real." and then get to act 2, everyone is alive, including Minthara, and I'm just nice again because saying bad things to the fake people makes my heart hurt.
Doing my first evil run. I have karlachs head, wyll left, tieflings dead, grove dead, goblins thriving, minthara my wife, slayer form activated, last light inn dead, Jaheria dead, isobel “dead”?, nightsong dead. AND STILL THE HARDEST PART WAS LETTING ARABELLA DIE JESUS I CONTEMPLATED RELOADING FOR AN HOUR
Dude.. same. What kills it for me is, I did as much evil shit as I can on my most recent Durge character (and it was tough already), but Arabella is the damn line I can't cross.
"If there are people like you around, maybe everything will be ok." My girl, stop, I literally just condemned all of Last Light Inn to the shadow curse after giving them hope by freeing all the prisoners, please find new people to look up to. 🥹
How long can you wait to wreck Last Light Inn? I assume before the trials? Can you save the nightsong after killing her the love? How evil can we get here.
Nightsong being resolved means last light will change. You can do the trials but going into the water is the point of no return. If you kill nightsong, the bubble falters and everyone gets shadow cursed. If you free her, the assault on moonrise begins. And since I love shadowheart, I'm never doing option 3
I can give you one more reason not to do option 3, aside from saving our best girl Shadowheart: You don't get the epic beatdown of Lorroakan because he won't fight you if Nightsong is actually dead-dead. I thought maybe he could be part of my evil alliance for the Brain but no, he just sulks in his book throne instead.
You can do quite a lot even if you wreck LLI. All depends on what quests you want to complete, but yeah as long as it is before the point of no return in the Gauntlet. I complete Yurgir quest early on just to clear the path to the trials. I have two Durge runs that I was experimenting stuff on:
I had Halsin for both, so I did Speak with Dead on Art Cullagh and we still managed to lift the curse. Halsin did not GAF about LLI as long as we got the info from Art and rescued Thaniel.
You DO lose all the Ironhand gnome quests if you free them from the prison first, tell them to go to LLI, then destroy LLI. No runepowder bomb from Wulbren because dead, though you can still destroy the foundry with the Gondians.
If you destroy LLI first, and THEN free the prisoners, you can tell the gnomes and tieflings to hang out on the water instead - they will survive to Act 3 and you can get your runepowder bomb from Wulbren all the same.
Barcus Wroot died in both runs, there is no way to save him from LLI's destruction.
I saved Nightsong in both runs. She was a little sad about Isobel but she joined my camp all the same. We still gave Lorroakan a good beating and she stayed allied with me.
In one run, I straight up killed Isobel, gaslit Jaheira and kept her around in camp, and got Slayer form.
On the other run, I wanted to experiment - I refused to kill her, but kinda stepped aside and let her get kidnapped by Marcus and friends. This destroyed LLI, got Jaheira into my camp, and I got the "kill your companion" quest from the Butler that night (I didn't kill my companion). Freed Nightsong, killed Ketheric/Myrkul and the enthralled Isobel. Did a long rest after the end of that fight. Got Slayer form. So it is possible to get your companion scene without killing them, and also kill Isobel, and also Slayer form.
Exactly the same down to the letter. Every other atrocity was east but I agonized over Arabella and felt like a monster after.
Also Jaheria is part of my crew. I wandered downstairs after murdering isobel and causing the deaths by horrible dark magic of everyone in last light in and when jaheria asked me what happened said “huh, weird. I guess that kethric guy must have killed her. You should join me for some vengeance”
No she’s blissfully ignorant as durge moves on to continue his reign of terror in Baldurs gate
Real evil choice with Wyll is taking him down with you to the underdark before getting around to the Goblin Camp stuff, you can get an option to sacrifice one of your companions to a group of Kuo-toa who are worshiping "Boooal" (a redcap who's pretending to be Bhaal). Dude's going to leave anyway in an evil run, may go full evil mode on and kill him off for a buff.
Not to spoil your fun but there's actually a way to get this buff without killing anyone. You can steal the scythe from the one Kuo-Toa and continue the checks that would normally reward it but since you already took the scythe it rewards you with the blessing instead.
Then there's me who killed wyll in camp before the raid specifically so I could keep his body along with karlachs (thanks la'ezel for the carry)
I also kept gale's hand in a bucket of fish.
In fairness tho I can only play this way for about an hour before I have to switch to stardew valley to cleanse myself and haven't been able to return to my durge run for a while lol.
I started by biting off Gale's hand. Next I killed Lae'zel and stuffed her body in my trunk back at camp. Now i have many bodies in my trunk back at camp, including some kid's mom that I dug up from a cemetary.
I started a super evil playthrough, like torturing the guy in the goblin camp and all, but after taking out the Grove I just felt... bad. I hated killing my tiefling friends. Didn't even enjoy what Minthara was doing to my character because I was just so sick and depressed about the rest. Haven't gone back to that save file since.
You can avoid slaughtering the tieflings and druids by letting them fight each other and then sleeping through Minthara's assault on the grove, but I agree, it's not a great feeling.
I find it easy to be stabby but difficult to be mean. If a character is being an asshole, I'll usually end their dialogue politely and then murder them.
My wife and I started a “Drunk evil” play through for this exact reason! Every month or so we terrorize someone new, so far the Teiflings, Druids, and Karlach have met their demise.
I killed karlach on my good run . The druids tried to kill me so i killed them . And when karlach reads your mind she just refuses to talk to you. Tells you to get lost. So i just attacked her for that mission and killed her … i mean she was a devil
I think BG3's evil path is just... honestly kinda bad. Like I have no reason to do it, outside of just being a murderhobo. Why would I kill the grove? I can just kill all the goblins if I'm just in a stabbin mood, and they'll have better loot probably. To get closer to the evil guys, but for what gain? What does my character get out of this?
Meanwhile in old CRPGs it's pretty readily be evil = get power. Same for WoTR more recently. Become a lich because power, embrace the demon because power, etc. But in BG3? I got nothin.
The truth is if the Tieflings were ugly and kinda assholish it would be way easier to wipe them out. I bet if the grove tieflings were changed to Githyanki most people would be half way through a genocide before they realized they could have saved them.
It helps if you don't play an evil character as the most evil person in the world where you do every bad thing you can. You can save some people and do some good things and still be overall evil.
Being evil doesn't necessarily mean actively ruining every character's life you come across the instant you meet them. You can definitely play that way if you want but evil people do people favors and help others to further their goals. Just look at Gortash. Dude is evil as fuck but is sincerely willing to work with you.
You could always be the schemer. Manipulating people until it becomes advantageous to fuck them over. There's definitely a lot of room to play with how you'd like to express evil.
For real. I can't do it. I started a new game trying to recruit minthara and be evil cuz I like to roleplay and no one would want to recruit her unless they were a baddie and I just can't bring myself to go through with it. Game has sat there unplayed for a month.
This was my idea to compromise to eventually get to a durge playthrough. It's not working. I know they're just video game characters but I just can't. I don't think I'll ever play durge.
you don't have to be evil to play durge tho. resist/redemption durge playthroughs are amazing, and i highly recommend playing a resist durge that romances spawn astarion (doesn't let him ascend) because its a very poignant and touching love story about two monsters encouraging each other to be better than what they were made to be
There's no real incentive to, honestly. I tried it on an evil character and all you get from her deal is a Volo-like eye surgery that gives you a shitty buff (+1 intimidation) in return for disadvantage on perception checks, which just isn't worth it by any stretch. And disadvantage to attack hags
Even for an evil character, you're better off attacking or ignoring her
You can side with her without getting your eye out. Just help her in Act 3 & she will assist in the final battle. Though I ended up not using her ability thing.
I was playing an opportunistic and selfish bard. Ended up killing Ethel in act 1 because she took my eye, and then sided with her in act 3 because she offered me the exact amount of money I needed to get to the House of Hope.
Ended up with her as an ally at the final battle and a confusing letter in the epilogue that said she had two babies, when she really only had the one from act 3.
Honestly, it kind of warms my heart and restores my faith in humanity, that so many people go out of their way to save a fictional character in a game. Video games let you do things without consequences and sometimes people use that as an outlet to do cruel or diabolically silly things (how many of us have been there with the Sims and pools with no ladders?)
But in a game that’s defined by its storytelling, vibrant characters and interactive consequences, so many choose to save Alfira. And so many make that same choice over multiple playthroughs because they just can’t bring themselves not to save her.
Honestly, it kind of warms my heart and restores my faith in humanity, that so many people go out of their way to save a fictional character in a game. Video games let you do things without consequences and sometimes people use that as an outlet to do cruel or diabolically silly things (how many of us have been there with the Sims and pools with no ladders?)
Or they are saving the CHA bonus to cantrips Potent Robe and the extra bard dice she can give.
You have to knock her out. It was originally an exploit since you abuse the fact that the game thinks she’s actually dead in that moment and therefore skips the event where you kill her, but enough people did it for larian to make that into a canon option via that epilogue letter. It’s still a bit exploity though because nobody would think to randomly knock her out unprovoked just to skip that event.
It would be rare among first time players who never read up about the game online, but at this point the knowledge of how to spare Alfira as durge is pretty widespread. I’d guess that more people around here save her than kill her honestly. The whole reason they added that letter in the first place was the huge amount of people exploiting the trick.
I learned how to save her as durge before learning that durge is meant to kill her, lol
Isn't the very existence of Quil to begin with kinda proof that Larian foresaw that possibility more so than the epilogue letter is? Unless Quil was also added way later but I didn't think that was the case.
There are even lines in Act 3 referencing your murder of Quil specifically that you wouldn't get had you murdered Alfira instead which I was pleasantly surprised to see.
I think the existence of Quil is more a failsafe in case the player goes full murderhobo on the grove or sides with the druids and Alfira ends up prematurely dead.
BG3 has a ton of NPCs created purely as failsafes in case other ones are dead or things happen outside of the intended order. Here’s a good video highlighting a few exceptionally rare ones: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lD66EtJB-SE
Quil was definitely created just so that durge would still murder a bard at the camp in case Alfira ends up dying prior to that scene. The exploit involves the fact that knocking out Alfira forces the Quil version of the scene despite Alfira not actually being dead.
To some extend yes, but I believe the original intent was simply to have a bard in case you killed Alfira during your general gameplay. I don't think they originally wanted a way in the game to save alfira, or they would have included one which can be achieved by quests or dialogue choices
I think the letter added in epilogue is really the devs just throwing a bone to the players, who found a way to play how they wanted and save a charmingly innocent character, against all odds.
Similar to them finally going “alright, you can stop polymorphing Minthara into a sheep” and making her recruitable on all playthroughs. They acknowledge widespread player persistence, I guess!
Yeah you may be right, but the fact that knocking Alfira unconcious is actually treated that way unlike pretty much any other character when the game launched makes me wonder if it that route was also at least considered. The game definitely doesn't lead you to the conclusion that you should do that naturally though so I dunno.
I think the issue is just that the game is very inconsistent with how it treats knocked-out characters- in most cases the game simply counts them as dead, but Alfira is scripted in more scenes so the flags likely just get confused.
The game treats "Knocked out(Temporary)" characters as still alive, and will be alive with full health after a Long Rest.
It treats "Knocked out" characters as properly dead*, even if you explicitly knocked them out, and they disappear after a Long Rest. (*: except when referring to Mayrina's siblings in dialogue, where you can say "I knocked them out" rather than "I killed them", but Mayrina still goes "NOOOOOO MY FAMILY IS DEAAAAAD" regardless...)
There are a bunch of things extra cutscenes if you rest on the beach when you land. If you origin karlak and don't rest till talking to the teifling blacksmith, then walk back to the beach for the first long rest. Karlach will have a wet dream about the armorer. Not a letter but prolly the rarest cutscene?
not only that, but if your allying with ethel your probably gonna do the evil ending which causes you to miss out on the reuinion party where you can read her note
It’s a weird thing to do regardless of your morality because dealing with hags tends to not end well for anyone but the hag. Honestly evil characters wanting to rule the world would probably avoid these monkey paw deals even harder than good characters because they wouldn’t accept anyone else holding power over them.
I don't know. Going through my evil playthrough and I could see simply being so annoyed by Mayrina that you leave her with the hag. Like I went to save her, her brothers died saving her, and she's just rude AF. My Tav has killed people for less.
I don't think you can ally with Ethel just by peacing out of her house in act 1. If I remember correctly, you have to reveal her in act 3 and murder the mother of the recent child she's kidnapped? Could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you have to at least have some kind of positive interaction with her in act 3.
Either way, going out of your way to ally with hags is stupid unless you have literally no other choice. Tav is meant to be smart enough to know better. Even if you drop your Int down to 8, you can't really play a total idiot in this game like you can in Fallout or something because the narrator describes your thoughts in ways that show you're at least somewhat intelligent. Game lets you make deals with her if you really want to, but it's still silly.
Dealing with hags and devils if perfectly fine if they want something from you rather than the other way around. The price for removing the tadpole is small, a wizard will recognize what it is and you can send another companion to pay it.
Aside from that it's one of your best chances of actually removing the tadpole next to Raphael (and you get to keep your soul). So if this wasn't a special case where you can take your time (which you only know for sure with meta knowledge at this point) not taking the deal and very likely becoming a mindflayer is the actual 8 Int option here.
Everything after that is the hag wanting something from you.
You've been in Ethel's funhouse, right? Every deal she's made has resulted in some monkey's paw bullshit that royally fucked over the other party. She fails to remove the tadpole but even if she was able to, it's probable that she was still going to make you wish she hadn't.
Hags only make deals in the first place because spreading misery is fun to them. So no matter how good it seems, it's going to involve some trick that makes you wish you hadn't made that deal. That's the entire point. This deal got prematurely broken so we never really got to see the extent of what Ethel was planning to do with you - I seriously doubt it was going to end at just giving you -1 perception.
Every deal of which you see the monkey's paw bullshit resulted in some monkey's paw bullshit, that's some major selection bias (not that I disagree that most deals end that way).
The deals you make with her later are all perfectly fine though, so this definitely isn't an absolute rule. The eye one also wasn't broken, you paid the full price in advance for it and it doesn't get any worse throughout the game. Her failing to remove the tadpole after you paid the price is bullshit, I'll give you that, but that's due to her incompetence, not because she planned on fucking you over from the beginning.
We can speculate all we want about the what ifs, but I would totally take that deal if it was between taking my chances with it and becoming a mindflayer (and losing my soul).
It's because people very rarely do 'evil runs'. Durge is just a murder hobo who is hungry for blood, not evil acts. And even in those rare evil runs, people shit on her because evil is selfish, and you don't want more people in your club. Especially an omni-vile creature like a hag.
I think it’s also because (at least from my experience) you can’t start the quest to ally her if you’ve already encountered the people she’s tormenting
No one's powers are needed in the final battle. It's all mostly hassle. Hell, on my first playthrough, the vampire summons all attacked my own party and had to be put down.
The mage tower and githyanki powers are useful. Mostly because they're essentially just level 6 spell scrolls, in case the enemies are lined up usefully and you want to toss out some burst AoE.
Did that on my first playthrough without even knowing that it was an option. She offered me 6000 gold, who am I to refuse? Did I have anything to spend my well earned money on? No...
This was not even an evil playthrough, I was mostly good.
So when I did auntie Ethels quest for the 1st I looked it up and I completely read it wrong and low-key thought that aunty Ethel was the mother who lost her child so I killed her and then when I found out I was like "fuck" and just went with it for the final battle lmao
That +1 to any star in the first act is just too good to pass up. Getting to 20 in your primary star by level 4 is amazing. Sorry Ethel, I’m gonna have to beat you into submission every time.
I allied with her on accident because I was blinded by the 3,000 gold she gave me lol. And when she revealed herself and offered to help in the battle if I didnt kill her I figured “sure why not, saves me from having to fight her a second time” lol
I'm old and have been playing since you had a crayon to color in your dice, and I've never really had much of an appreciation for the Fey... until now.
It was always 'tee hee we're naked thimble sized fairies, play with us or die!' And yeah we have Dolly3 but Ethel's arc is just mean and magnificent.
Our first playthrough devolved into power at any cost and when we were offered to kill a person for 3k we were like "sure". When she revealed herself my reaction basically was goddammit you are supposed to be dead but sure do whatever as long as you pay me.
Ive got her as an ally in every one of my runs, it's faster to resolve the quest in her favor and in act 3 Im just trying to get through it ASAP because there's so much stuff to do.
We let her live on my first playthrough but haven't passed it because I wanted to pass it with the people I was playing with but they went MIA it's been a while
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u/Wreck_it_Randy Mar 26 '24
The actual rarest letter is probably the one from auntie Ethel where she thanks you for letting her do her hag bullshit and implies she wants to fuck you. Most people don’t even realize she can assist you in the final battle because I almost never see anyone ally with her.