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Major spoilers for ending of BG3:

>!This is my first playthrough where Lae'zel wants to free Orpheus (and not just to immediately kill him) so the choice of whether or not to do so is harder than just "do I trust the Emperor or not?". I'm definitely not the first to feel weird about the options you're given here and how they play out in terms of The Emperor's actions, but I thought it'd be fun to write out my headcanon for the direction I wish I could have taken the conversation (a direction I believe would stay true to what Larian intended with this scene). !<

• >!After your character indicates they want to free Orpheus and The Emperor gives its speech about trust, your character can say "I trust you, but we can't let Orpheus be killed. We need to find another way."!<

• >!The Emperor responds "There is no other way. An Illithid is needed to dominate the Netherbrain, and I cannot exist outside of the astral prism without absorbing the protection provided by Orpheus."!<

• >!You can respond "What if Orpheus is willing to protect you? He could be freed and we could still be shielded from the Netherbrain."!<

• >!The Emperor: "I told you: to Orpheus, you are Illithid. If you free him, he will kill you. Right after he kills me."!<

• >!You can then make a persuasion check with a DC influenced by how much you've shown The Emperor trust thus far: "He will see reason. And if he doesn't, I will subdue him again. I won't let him hurt us."!<

• >!If unsuccessful, The Emperor doesn't believe you, and you're brought back to the original dialogue options.!<

• >!If successful, The Emperor will guardedly agree to let you free Orpheus. However, it doesn't trust that Orpheus will protect it if it leaves the astral prism, so it will refuse to go with you.!<

• >!When Orpheus is freed, he will initially be hostile toward The Emperor and threaten to kill it for imprisoning him. You can pass a high persuation or intimidation check to convince him to see reason and work together for the common cause. Otherwise, you can side with him against The Emperor and help him kill it, or you can fight Orpheus. If the latter, you must knock him out; if you kill him, you get a Game Over.!<

• >!If you convince Orpheus to stand down, you are then presented with the same choice as you would if you'd freed Orpheus without convincing The Emperor to stay. However, The Emperor becomes a powerful callable ally in the ensuing battle. It continues communicating with your party, and it has a tense but nonviolent interaction with Orpheus after the Netherbrain is defeated.!<

• >!If you subdue Orpheus, Lae'zel is angry, but she will reluctantly agree in light of Orpheus's hostility that The Emperor consuming him is the only option.!<

• >!If you help Orpheus kill The Emperor, the scene will proceed as if The Emperor abandoned you.!<

>!What do y'all think? Does this seem realistic, or am I off with any of the characters? What's your headcanon for this scene? !<

Recently, I started my second campaign in Baldurs Gate in addition to the campaign I play with my wife in co-op. My wife and I opted for the easiest difficulty in our playthrough since neither if us ever played similar game.

This time I felt like it would be such a breeze since I already know a bit more about the game and DnD in general. I opted for the balanced mode with my new character and started going through Act I and boy oh boy do I get wrecked almost everywhere. Multiple of my characters already died and I had to revive them.

I feel very scared going into each combat and trying to plan as much in advance as possible (keep in mind I mostly know what awaits me there, because I've gone through Act I already).

I just don't know what am I doing wrong.

Are these early encounters in Act I intentionally challenging so that the game "force-teaches" you to utilize everything at your disposal and will it get easier later on or am I just on the wrong path with my character and my party? Honestly, I can't imagine going through the goblin camp in this state.

Let's add a friendly image so that people don't see any spoilers by accident.

!

So, the way I see it the Emperor probably tailed Shadowheart's team who liberated the Astral Prism. Maybe he even got the Nautiloid and some cultists and Mindflayers from the Elder Brain so that he could extract Shadowheart's team. Orin left her sibling on there for good measure. Mindflayers doing Mindflayer things they abducted Shadowheart.

But as soon as the Prism was close enough the Elder Brain lost its grip on the Emperor. Probably just him because he already was able to leave an Elder Brain once. Seeing the opportunity he killed the Mindflayers near him and took control of the Nautiloid.

Being the practical Mindflayer he probably sought to build an army of tadpoled people with super duper Illithid powers to fight the Absolute. He went to Baldur's Gate to find more people and thus snatched up Tav and the others.

The Githyanki were in close pursuit and disrupted him so he had to flee. When the Nautiloid arrived on Avernus he hid inside the prism.

I'm not quite sure where Lae'zel fits into all this. She probably went aboard the Nautiloid to get her Mindflayer head but was captured instead. She didn't know anything about the Prism because it was way above her paygrade.

What do you think happened? Or is there an official version of the events that lead up to the game?

Hello everyone,

We’ve got a new hotfix for you today, addressing several bugs, visual issues and blockers.

Have you ever had a romance so intense, that everything melts away? Well, sometimes that isn’t intentional. We’ve fixed an issue where Gale’s romance scene was playing in what looked like some kind of black void. Consider the ambience restored.

We are aware of an issue with kissing animations for Astarion, and are currently working on a fix. We expect this to be released in a future update. Thank you for all your reports and messages, and thank you for playing Baldur’s Gate 3! If you have any bugs to report, please reach out to our support team.

FIXES

• You can now use soaps encountered in savegames before Patch 4.
• Fixed the game sometimes freezing indefinitely after a reaction to a spell that hits you with multiple projectiles.
• Fixed a crash after using a reaction that causes an attack against a dead creature.
• Fixed an issue causing you to get stuck in certain dialogues unable to continue.
• Fixed a blocker that could occur when trying to Long Rest.
• Dominated followers will now follow the party as expected after loading a savegame.
• Fixed Gale's romance scene playing in what looks like a black void.
• Fixed a Dark Urge flashback accidentally teleporting you to the Lower City.
• The Cursed Skulls in Jannath's Estate are now vulnerable to Force and Radiant damage.
• Fixed an issue that prevented certain characters from executing their behaviours.
• Fixed citizens and refugees in Baldur's Gate sometimes jittering about the place or not using their proper animations.
• Fixed some visual artefacts appearing at camp in relation to Dark Urge and Karlach dialogues. This also solved the bloodstain under [SPOILER]* suddenly becoming larger after loading a savegame.
• Wyll and Minthara should now properly kiss a second time without the need to retrigger the dialogue.
• Fixed an issue where a companion's camp night dialogue could be replaced by a different dialogue that couldn't trigger during a previous night.

Just so no one else reloads 131 times like I did to get a +2 wisdom bonus for Shadowheart, it doesn't work for her since she has "nothing more to give."

Yes, I kept track of how many times I reloaded.

Are there any good collections anyone might be aware of, for EA information or datamined information.

I'm curious to see what ideas got scrapped and how things changed. I know of a few things, like a little on Daisy. How certain abilities were actually going to be handed out.

But places like Grymforge really elude to something... there's a bunch of stuff hints that something might be near. From whatever caused some of the destruction you see. Because I refuse to believe it's all a vague reference to Yurgir.

And then there's some MTG pictures I saw, that list someone has potentially the main villain, in the very least a bad guy, and in the current game plays a very different roll.

Edit: Added spoiler tag just in case

:::Spoiler

Does anyone else think the Shadowheart showdown at the House of Grief ends oddly?

Talk to priestess: Does Shar know about this prism thing? "Nah"

Kill everyone. (Ok this part was expected, but a little disappointing)

Documents: Prism operatives are Totally Expendable.

Next room: Shadowheart's parents are being personally tortured by Shar. This is right in front of the memory eraser, which seems like the temple's money maker.

Tonally, this seems so strange. I guess it is part of the Larian design philosophy that gods must be directly involved, but it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense here.

:::

Warning: spoiler about the ending with a specific companion

I was just curious, has anyone beaten the game with Astarion?

Thanks for your time!

Should I revert my game after killing

? I was able to throw them off the balcony with several shoves, dealing ~1100 damage (and only granting 65 XP).

Because the game keeps teleporting you out and never technically entered combat, I'm guessing they weren't supposed to be killed here. Some quick google searches suggest they're supposed to appear later on too - will this break my game at all or is it safe to continue with this save file?

Finished the game yesterday and have some thoughts on how the ending is handled.

Personally I'd have liked something deeper than the 'and they lived happily ever after' I got in my playthrough. In Divinity: Original Sin 2 you get a recap of how your decisions influenced certain places and characters, but BG3's epilogue is almost non-existent, other than your party acknowledging that they did in fact complete the main quest.

I'm not saying the ending is bad or that I didn't enjoy it - quite the opposite. But then credits rolled and my first thought was 'wait, what about everything else I just did, am I not getting to see any of it?' My issue isn't with the story that is told, but rather the part that is omitted.

Now, I must also mention that

--- Other thoughts

Edit: formatting

I somehow got into a state where Lae'zel couldn't be interacted with. I'll put the rest in a spoiler tag for those that don't want to know the details.

Luckily, I was able to resolve it by loading a save from before the fateful event, and only lost an hour of progress.

For most of act 1, fights felt reasonably difficult. There were only a few points where I had a tpk. However, between early access and now, that last fight felt like a sharp spike in difficulty.

My first time through, it took me and my wife 2 days to finally cheese it. This time around it still took us 3 or 4 reloads and something I'll talk about in the spoiler section before we made it.

It seems like you suddenly need to get good at really strategizing or find some extra wrinkle to make it possible. But I'm curious to hear how other folks managed to get through the fight.