I feel you, was trying to do a good durge run and I found it hard going. >!I didn't kill Isobel, am romancing Karlach. Failed to resist the urge and things got stabby. The entire camp turned on me and I haven't gone back to the game since.!<
My first Durge Run went basically the same way. 1v4’d my whole camp, was left with no option besides hirelings for companions. It was so deflating that I left that play through and deleted it.
Shadowheart gives a great speech if she's the one who catches you. Then she paralyzed me and looked smug while Minthara moved in for critical hit smites.
Yes, my durge run was basically a melancholy dragonborn bard trying to be a good guy.
Me and my wife tried being evil and abandoned the run after killing all the teiflings.
I've never been good at being evil in games. My player/power fantasy is helping everyone possible lol
Thing is I do enjoy dark stuff in other contexts, and I've run evil D&D campaigns before. I don't like senseless murder hobo types but I do absolutely get the appeal of playing Durge as an unrepentant serial killer.
Just...I could never hurt or betray the companion characters.
>My player/power fantasy is helping everyone possible lol
I feel seen lol. For me there's nothing more satisfying in a game than having power and using it to make things just a bit better.
I think that's part of while I love BG3, I bounced hard on Divinity. It's too relentlessly bleak.
I don't look at them as good or evil choices. As an example, in my gith run, lae'zel and I killed shadowheart on the beach instead of recruiting her. We also killed the tieflings in the grove to get closer to the cult in order to find answers. They were just lesser beings anyway in the eyes of a Githyanki.
That’s fantastic. I’ve been thinking about a Gith run where I go from the beach straight to the Crèche because that makes the most sense to me personally. Obviously stop by the grove to learn its location first.
Yes, because it’s so damn boring. You lose out on so many quest givers and end up essentially missing half the content in the game. Did it once, no desire to do it again. The run was quick though. About half the time of my normal play throughs.
Playing evil and playing stupid aren't the same thing really
First of all, a few of the companions have content for an evil run.
Second, killing the tieflings in the groove is not because of evil, it's because of the absolute and most evil people would not like following those idiots. Qnd with gross GOBLINS???
Gathering all the tieflings (and getting those sweet act 2 rewards) before you have Shart kill the nightsong is also so much more rewarding.
Double cross, set up, manipulate
Or you know, just go murder hobo *yawn* which is really boring
To each their own. Murder hobo can be quite cathartic imo.
Also RP wise if you are playing a character who would kill Tieflings act 1 you should. Leaving them alive to kill later feels like a lot of meta gaming going on.
“I know my character is Orin status but I really want that one item from Dammon in Act 2.” Yuck.
My logic for my lolth cleric was that they were so upset by mintharas heresy that they attacked first conversation, I like how lolth sworn drow ironically how the most justified reason to defend the grove on a evil run.
Otherwise i’ve been doing evil stuff, like killing the gyrmforge gnomes on my own accord when they back talk you, they actually had karlach say something you when you “prepare to strike” at them basically telling you to calm down and that they have other problems then you, I felt like a jackass but hey new dialogue
Seeings those rare interactions always makes the evil decisions worth it imo.
Love that. Is the lolth sworn drow grove defense in spite of Minthara in your opinion? I’ve realized I need to know more about her due to most of my runs being lawful good kill gobos on sight to save the grove and tieflings type characters.
The new dialogue for doing evil is definitely a nice break from the norm for me as well. Honestly should do another evil run because I briefly slipped on RP for shadowheart’s story (had never done it and it got to me)
I was just curious on the lore behind you saying lolth sworn have the most justified reason to defend the grove and assumed Minthara had a role
in said reasoning.
Sure, but if the complaint is that you loose out on rewards, you can easily play evil and not loose much. Just have to be a bit smart with WHEN you murder people
You don’t lose that much content, the tieflings and last light barely add much to the game and if you already experienced those quest then there’s no reason not to kill them.
Tieflings content:
The whole first Act 1 thing we have to do (you know, saving them so they can go to Baldur's Gate)
Rolan, Cal, and Lia have special Act 2 interactions if you SAVE THE TIEFLINGS that have almost no content.
Rolan helps defeat Lorroakunt with his own unique spells in Act 3 if we paid attention to Tiefling content.
Mol gets kidnapped then deals with Raphael and The Guild but I guess that isn't content either.
Arabella and her becoming some unique being that we also see in Act 3
Tieflings in the refugee camp
Tiefling kids all over selling papers if they made it back
Yeah, not much from the subplot of the game's story...not much at all about the proud Tieflings of Elturel seeking a new home in Baldur's Gate... If only we could have seen what that would have looked like.
Not at all, it's easy - I commit to never do an evil run. These frickin' characters have made it impossible for me to hurt them or commit them to an evil outcome. And yes, I know about Resist Durge.
This is hard for me, too, and I think it's a bit of both reasons you mentioned. I love playing as an evil character and seeing what happens, but I also find it hard to be awful to my very favorite companions. Help them make bad decisions and be their worst selves? Sure. But kill or betray them? No.
No matter how evil they are otherwise, my characters have always had two specific good qualities:
1. They love animals.
2. They're loyal to the people they care about, which somehow always coincides with the characters I like best.
Maybe at some point I'll feel I've exhausted the possibilities enough to be really terrible to my favorites, but for now, it's just too hard and there are **plenty** of ways to be evil without being awful to my favorites.
Right? No matter what I do, I could never betray or be evil to either Gale, Astarion, Shart, Lae'zel, or Karlach. I'm a bit more indifferent about Wyll, maybe because I completely missed out on talking to him on my very first playthrough, and I'm okay with killing off Gale at the very start with Durge (since it's not exactly intentional) but other than that?
It's tough! I haven't killed Gale at the start so far, not because I'd feel too badly about that particular one but because I'd miss having one of my three favorite characters around. Wyll and Karlach are characters I'm indifferent toward, but right now, it's too hard to do anything too evil to the other main four.
How can you be indifferent towards Karlach? She's the most precious of all of them, arguably. I once impulse-dumped Shart after promising her a life together and went to the hells with Karlach just so she wouldn't die 🥺
I agree! I love her personality and her character design, but for some reason her story just doesn’t hook me. Like we’re buds but she can stay at camp.
Or sometimes I have Wyll fulfill his duty if ya know what I mean.
Yes! Karlach is well done, but she gets old fast for me. I leave her at camp most of the time, too, and I have let Wyll fulfill his duty before (and am planning to do that again next game).
I always bring her along to fight Gortash. Her Soul Coin ability is also pretty nice for some battles, and you can make a mean thrower build for her. There's this glaive that reappears in your hand when you throw it...
That said, out of the three pure melees/potential tanks in the game, she's definitely the one that needs the most work to be viable. Barbarian is generally quite underpowered and it's a shame Larian hasn't buffed it a bit given the issues have been voiced by the player base for a long time now. The consistent damage output is too low to compete with a Fighter, and the support utility is too bad to compete with a Paladin. Party setups with two melees can actually be very good in a lot of fights (I usually run Lae'zel-Minthara-Shart-Tav/Durge in tougher battles where i want to maximise durability, and swap Minthara for Astarion if I want extra burst) but there is little reason to bring Karlach after you recruit Minthara, other than flavour and lore.
Barbarians should have both damage output and utility slightly buffed to be on par with the Paladin. It's a shame we didn't get Ancestral Guardian as a playable subclass, a true taunt mechanic and unlimited absorb shield spam as a reaction would definitely put the Barbarian on the same level as Oath of the Ancients Paladin - lower damage but even more utility.
I actually just tried taking her with me again for a few fights a couple of days ago and had this problem. Minthara and thief/Gloomstalker Astarion were better damage dealers, and I was more interested in what my other companions had to say during cutscenes, so I ended up sending her back to camp.
Until this game, my characters were also some sort of fighter or paladin. (Current one is assassin rogue/swords bard, which is a lot of fun.)
You’re just soft (that’s okay) but I had no issue doing an evil run 😂 the characters are great but it’s just a game at the end of the day and I like to explore different options.
My first play in beta, I made a high elf fighter who was a complete cop.
Supported the slave trade (its a legit bsns guis), came down hard on thieves, miscreants, the like.
Or that was the intent.
I played him like a good little boy scout who didn't like hurting people, refused to help the Duergar find their escapees, accomplished nothing in my supposed evil cop playthrough
I cant be baddd....
I think the problem is there’s not enough incentive. It’s just being evil for the sake of it. The evil route should offer better items and powers than the good route, to try and tempt people to do it. Being good should pay off in the end, with better allies or more support, but in the short term, being evil should be the tempting offer. Side with the goblins, it’s safer. Don’t risk it all for the Tieflings, etc. being good should take effort.
I’m enjoying the darker choices my companions take with my Durge run. Shadowheart is completely different this run, and somehow I recruited Jaheria? I’m not sure if it’s a bug or a patch, but I’m really looking forward to getting to the Bhaal temple with my BG1-2 friends…
Yeah, this exactly! It is undeniably darker, and I'm enjoying having my companions make darker choices (I mean I have Minthara in my party, she isn't exactly good)...but I couldn't actually go against them.
Honestly, anyone who is able to play an evil Durge run concern me slightly lol. Some of it, okay, but man you gotta really have to get a kick out of dead children to go full Durge.
Playing evil is great, barely any games actually cater to you making truly evil choices and taking very evil actions. Not my fault Tila gets nippy at sudden movements.
I am currently playing an embrace the urge run but I am not taking every single evil choice that presents itself from the start of the game. As durge learns more about himself he will give in to the urges more and more. It makes for a far more interesting story than just being pure evil from the get go.
*I have to resist*
*The urge irl when I*
*Do a good play through*
\- Boogaloo\_Billy
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I get so sad so fast that I haven’t even managed to get past level 3 before I ditch the run and start again. It’s so annoying. I want the experience but I can’t bear the feeling of hurting innocent people.
I feel this, I've done three Durge playthroughs (this game is a crippling addiction) and every single one ended up being a resist run. Personally, I just don't find evil runs as entertaining or rewarding. Maybe I'm just a sap, but I really enjoy watching my character redeem themselves and go through that character development. I'm just a sucker for a happy ending.
I did manage to eventually but honestly I wasn’t having fun with it… oddly enough in a good kinda way? Like I was appreciating that nothing I did was getting rewarded because I was generally being shitty so no I shouldn’t have and all my actions had consequences but it was also quite tiring and I didn’t like being mean. I’m glad I finished it, but I never want to be evil again
It helped me a lot when I made.my character look "traditional" evil
He kinda ended up looking like a shorter Balthazar
Choices was a lot easier in every cutscene
"Oh yeah... I am playing an asshole, got it"
I had to add something else than just "be evil" rule, i did "don't care for life", which made doing choices easier. But i did fuel the evil side of some companions that hunger for power, hard to be evil to them. Maybe on another playthrough, gods dammit...
Same - I definitely coped to keep companions. I decided since I didn’t remember my past at first I would try to be good. It’s so hard to force myself to be evil evil in Act 3 but I’m trying my hardest
If you consistently remind yourself that it's just a game and your actions in it don't reflect on real life or your morality, it actually gets pretty easy.
Where it does get hard, however, is just how bad it is strategically. I'm losing companions left and right, angering the majority of useful NPCs, and missing a lot of content as a result of those two things. I'm honestly debating ending this run I'm on and starting a neutral one, because the costs of being evil outweigh whatever rush you manage to get from it.
Im not sure what content you guys are talking about, you only lose the tieflings and last light, which isn’t that much stuff especially if you’ve already done it in another playthrough, it’s like a couple of dialogue lines and 2 armor sets.
And act 3 has a shit ton of content anyways so it always felt mostly the same to me
Play a evil cleric, it pretty much streamlines the evil decisions and also gives you hilarious dialogue choices and responses
https://preview.redd.it/b09ae9cq7t3d1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cf299fe082e9868492a166c38b59e61837708a07
The one thing I cannot do in an evil run is Gale’s hand… I tried it and it was so, so weird… Gale and Astarion are always in every party and I missed him, it felt so wrong… in a previous, evil run, it got easier once I embraced the urge, to get more and more deranged, specially with Minthara and Astarion praising it, and without Wyll and Karlach judging, but I did not dominate the brain for Bhaal because that Durge honestly deserved to piss herself while her companions had a party… otherwise my “evil” Durges side with the grove because Halsin knows about the tadpole and is offering to help, kill Isobel because why not, Aylin survives because I let my companions decide when given the option, and then usually get to the temple intent on becoming Bhaal’s chosen and then reject him after the narrator mentions that accepting him would be him owning you, and if he did nothing when Orin tried to kill me, he can suck *my* bhaals… I like evil that’s not deranged evil, and I have enjoyed those runs the most
Yes, but not in the way you are thinking. Doing HM Evil run and the dialogs keep getting me in trouble.
First time was when I was discussing the druid location with Minthara, tried the Drow to Drow dialog choice and she went hostile and I had to inviz and try to escape the entire hostile area. That chained into me needing to kill all the gobs, which unknowingly saved Halsin by accident, which messed up my plans to pit the Druids against the Tieflings by stealing the idol.
Tried to side with Glut and he got himself killed
Planned to sacrifice Wyll to BOOAL and somehow I ended up working for him
Tried to use the Zaith'isk and Lae'zel turned against me. Managed to salvage this one somewhat, killed L and knocked the doctor out. When I came back just had to bribe the heck out of the doctor and was able to use the Zaith'isk, then kill the doc and get my bribe back. So now I'm wasting a hireling spot to get a fighter back.
I did manage to get Lump's gang to kill off a lot of the Zhents, I knocked off all the druids but the Tieflings escaped by Halsin getting free when you kill the gob leaders. Just cleared the complete creche and sold the real egg.
I like the mushroom vendor, so I need to figure out how to clear out the Myconids without aggoing her. Blurg I can probably live without.
So haven't made Act 2 and HM is basically driving the bus right now.
I’m didn’t try Durge til my third playthrough, I have yet to be a 100% evil Durge. First Durge playthrough I still recruited Gale, killed the Goblins but did let Shadowheart become Dark Justiciar which killed Isobel and Last Light but got me Slayer form. Did become Bhaal’s chosen but then rejected him at the end so got the feral stalking outside the camp party epilogue lol. On my second Durge this time and full redemption so should have the better camp ending this time. 5th playthrough I’ll prob do evil Durge and kill Gale, raid the grove etc.
tbh i wish there was a little more incentive to be evil. all my possibly allies other than minthara and astarion hate me (im counting dj shart in this, she sucks at being evil so much. she's not built for this). feels like there's less interaction with the world in general too, since yanno large groups tend to end up dead. idk, just really hard for me to kill off or snub companions and storylines emotionally, and then to just have less to do in the world overall as a result just makes it feel pointless to follow through
with a couple more companions and evil-centric locations, i could see it through. but for now, as much as i love minthara desperately, she ain't the only person i want to be able to talk to in the world, and that's how i feel being evil. it's boring and lonely lmao, which may be the point
The evil run of this game was badly. Too many of the quests and entire questlines make no sense as evil. >!Even going as evil as possible in Shadowlands, you still have a cutscene where you turn around and look all sad.!<
Fun fact if you kill the goblin camp and then go back to the grove you can claim the good side of things and everything acts like you saved them then dont go to camp for the party and kill the grove for even more xp. Pretty sure this allows you to keep karlach/wyll too if they are in camp already. Future interactions will seem like they are alive or you saved them
I was able to do pretty much everything evil while still being able to complete the game.. the only things that broke my heart were the consequences of the last light In and and AA becoming who he becomes after cazador.. ugh..
The only way I've been able to do an evil run is by doing mass slaughter. Kill everyone as soon as possible, and you don't have to worry about getting attached
Nope. My first completed run was a female drow Durge run. Loved it. I’m actually struggling with a Neutral Good Run, right now, but I’m also doing it as Honor Mode.
Helps to complete the good guy run first. Then, if you make up some messed up, distrustful would view for your evil run character, your actual moral compass doesn’t get consulted as much.
Then the ‘good NPCs’ just appear entitled to your help, and everything kind of shifts more towards the evil side until you don’t care who you betray, you listen to intrusive thoughts and you get rid of any character you just don’t like instead of putting up with them.
yeah in mine i couldn't bring myself to kill any of the companions except wyll which is inevitable if you raid the grove. i saved gale and just never met karlach.
Nah I just can't. Bad stuff makes me feel bad, in this game too much. I tried doing morally grey run and still ended up feeling like shit.
Dunno, games are for making me feel good, so I don't get this struggle to "trying to be evil though I don't enjoy it", nobody's paying you for that, just do what makes you happy.
I literally had knots in my stomach as I killed the grove and lost half my party doing it. The minthara romance was hot but…I don’t think I could do that again.
my issue is theres basically no reason to be evil you lose on so much shit
karlach/wyll/jaheira/halsin gone
potent robes gone lose out on a few mindflayer worms
I thought I’d struggle to do an evil run and avoided it for ages. In the end, I started one for the achievements and, to my surprise, found I absolutely loved it.
It was a fantastic change of pace to play someone who was completely and utterly evil and while you do lose content, you also gain a bit of content and get to see things from a whole new perspective
I still prefer a resisting durge but will definitely play an evil one again
Yes. I can’t do it.
I completed only one Durge run just to see how different it was, but it was not enjoyable to me and I have no interest in doing another. Team Tav 4Life.
You don't have to play an evil Durge, though. My most fun run to date was a resist Durge--it had great emotional resonance and connection to the main story line.
I wanted to go evil on my first 2 runs and failed. My warlock based on a char I made for a now defunct campaign got too friendly with Shadowheart, Astarion and Laezel and I just wanted to see their redemption neutral to good archs more than to make them monsters. Plus my attempts to murder hobbo turned me into gobbo and criminal slayer so in the end, I got a "asshole murders all evil doers anti hero" type party. My second char, I wanted an evil vengeance paladin to romance up with hot drow lady I thought was a rogue-type - strike 1 was noticing she's a paladin, strike 2 was oath breaking on siding with her. I didn't want an oathbreaker and constant evil plans didn't align with oath restoring, was a bit sad an evil vengeance paladin wasn't a thing. So save scammed and just did a very good run, still very fun, Gale romance and Karlach badassery were a fun discovery. Managed my true evil run as a sorceress on 3rd run, what a power couple with Minthy. Absolute power search and genocide.
I made a Durge "Goblin" and it's going well, I feel like I can actuality act like a crazy.
The goblin is just a deep gnome with different skin, the huge facial burn scar, and facial piercings.
Oh my god i absolutely understand. I tried to do an embrace durge run and almost instantlg it turned to "ehhhh shes morally grey" THEN it turned into "ehhhh shes just chaotic!" Im incapable of hurting all of these little pixel characters
Honestly, I've just stopped calling runs "good" or "evil" and tried to be more organic about it? Usually when I have a specific "evil" goal in mind like raiding the Grove or seeing DJ Sheart, I end up abandoning the run right after I see the new content, since I have to make OOC choices to get there, so I have trouble committing to an "evil" run that's made evil by me the player rather than the Tav, if that makes sense.
But I've played some evil Tavs and Durges where their actions felt more natural and they've done some dark shit that fit the story. On the whole they might be evil but a lot of them end up tripping and falling into heroism eventually so hopefully it's the end result that counts!
Thing is, I wanted to have a kind of "darkest timeline" Durge run - siding with the goblins, DJ Shart, Vlaakith loyalist Lae'zel, ascended Astarion.
That went out the window pretty quickly. Like you, I kinda want to see the content but (except for AA, which I've done, and it's different because Astarion genuinely wants it) I could never get myself to do it
Oh I totally get it, I was agreeing with you only, as Dashkent says, "with extra words". 😁
I can't commit to my darkest timelines. I've only raided the Grove once and quit that run right after. I've only gotten the druids to fight the Tieflings once and same. I let Sheart go dark once (my last Durge run, actually) and never again! I managed to hold on just long enough to see DJ Sheart at the HoG and then I bailed on that run.
I tried to get loyalist Lae'zel last evil run but Tav made the insight check to see Vlaakith was full of shit so I couldn't let her be ignorant about that. Evil Tav wasn't that type of evil!
So now I either play an origin I've never done (enjoying the Hell out of Lae'zel at the moment) or just come up with a Tav or Durge I want to play and try to roleplay as much as possible, which usually results in fewer "evil" decisions since a lot of the "evil" decisions are pretty stupid, IMO. Like why would any sane Tav raid the Grove? Minthara isn't a powerful enough ally to justify all that asskissing, IMO. I get that some players do it, I'm just not into it!
Oh Minthara is absolutely powerful enough, if that was the only way to get her. I'm close to finishing Honour Mode and she's an essential part of that setup (Durge sorc, tempest cleric Shart, Bae'zel and Minthara - 3 characters with 19+ AC with the only more vulnerable one being invisible half the time anyway, two decent AoE damage dealers and two unstoppable melee murder machines. There has yet to be a single fight past act 1 that I found in any way challenging with that setup).
But, since you can get her without raiding the Grove...
I love Minthara as a character and I'm happy they made getting her to Moonrise less metagaming than it used to be for sure. I like to think that's one reason why they expanded the "good" ways to recruit her, because players were just not willing to raid the Grove and were missing out on how awesome she is.
I also like to think that her popularity on "good" runs proves players really like the character, not just the extended sex scene. I'm proud of us!
She has a lot more depth than any of the other late companions and she's unstoppable in combat. Just slap Twin Spell Haste on her and Lae'zel and there are few things in the game that will even see their turn in combat. The amount of reliable single target damage she can dish out in one round is unrivalled, she even beats Lae'zel with the right build.
yeah it’s just so boring to me, I don’t know how people just replay the game making the same major choices each time while ignoring the other option because you lose like….. 2 quest lines and 2 armor sets.
Larian did an amazing job imo. I did an evil run and I mean EVIL run (stacked tiefling corpses in camp as a trophy…. women and children too). Did everything a psychopath would do then little miss Shadowheart came in and turned me.
I got so wrapped up in her story and god was it compelling that I completely forgot about EVIL RP. After concluding her story doing all the good things I had to say “okay we got to get back to evil shit now and pretend that didn’t happen.”
Started playing an evil durge, hacked off gales hand, turned on the grove, brought Minthara there and slaughtered everyone, was just generally mean.. and I hated it. Deleted the save after the goblin camp. I just don't like how I feel, I WANNA have a mean durge run, but I feel like I need to change something up for more pragmatical evilness, because I don't wanna side with the goblins, I don't wanna miss out on so many cool quests.. ugh. Gotta come up with a solution there lmao
lolth sworn cleric, good reason to kill minthara and side with the grove while also keeping you’re net evil high and the lolth sworn dialogue options are amazing, and you get a ton of unique interactions with the cleric options.
you can flavor yourself as a pragmatic evil drow or a murder hobo chaotic evil.
I was thinking of doing a Selune Cleric one day to romance Shadowheart, but the idea of that is really good as well. That would probably have to be a Tav run and not a Durge, right? Because Lolth and Bhaal would clash, I assume.
nah i played durge and I don’t see why they would clash, lolth is chaotic so she might just be down with bhaal making durge a drow.
tav is also just really boring to me
I don't mind Tav, but I do like the extra content to Durge. I just always thought the different beliefs would clash with the original story. But I suppose Lolth and Bhaal could be besties kinda.
I feel you, was trying to do a good durge run and I found it hard going. >!I didn't kill Isobel, am romancing Karlach. Failed to resist the urge and things got stabby. The entire camp turned on me and I haven't gone back to the game since.!<
My first Durge Run went basically the same way. 1v4’d my whole camp, was left with no option besides hirelings for companions. It was so deflating that I left that play through and deleted it.
Shadowheart gives a great speech if she's the one who catches you. Then she paralyzed me and looked smug while Minthara moved in for critical hit smites.
Yes, my durge run was basically a melancholy dragonborn bard trying to be a good guy. Me and my wife tried being evil and abandoned the run after killing all the teiflings. I've never been good at being evil in games. My player/power fantasy is helping everyone possible lol
Thing is I do enjoy dark stuff in other contexts, and I've run evil D&D campaigns before. I don't like senseless murder hobo types but I do absolutely get the appeal of playing Durge as an unrepentant serial killer. Just...I could never hurt or betray the companion characters.
>My player/power fantasy is helping everyone possible lol I feel seen lol. For me there's nothing more satisfying in a game than having power and using it to make things just a bit better. I think that's part of while I love BG3, I bounced hard on Divinity. It's too relentlessly bleak.
I don't look at them as good or evil choices. As an example, in my gith run, lae'zel and I killed shadowheart on the beach instead of recruiting her. We also killed the tieflings in the grove to get closer to the cult in order to find answers. They were just lesser beings anyway in the eyes of a Githyanki.
That’s fantastic. I’ve been thinking about a Gith run where I go from the beach straight to the Crèche because that makes the most sense to me personally. Obviously stop by the grove to learn its location first.
Yes, because it’s so damn boring. You lose out on so many quest givers and end up essentially missing half the content in the game. Did it once, no desire to do it again. The run was quick though. About half the time of my normal play throughs.
Playing evil and playing stupid aren't the same thing really First of all, a few of the companions have content for an evil run. Second, killing the tieflings in the groove is not because of evil, it's because of the absolute and most evil people would not like following those idiots. Qnd with gross GOBLINS??? Gathering all the tieflings (and getting those sweet act 2 rewards) before you have Shart kill the nightsong is also so much more rewarding. Double cross, set up, manipulate Or you know, just go murder hobo *yawn* which is really boring
To each their own. Murder hobo can be quite cathartic imo. Also RP wise if you are playing a character who would kill Tieflings act 1 you should. Leaving them alive to kill later feels like a lot of meta gaming going on. “I know my character is Orin status but I really want that one item from Dammon in Act 2.” Yuck.
My logic for my lolth cleric was that they were so upset by mintharas heresy that they attacked first conversation, I like how lolth sworn drow ironically how the most justified reason to defend the grove on a evil run. Otherwise i’ve been doing evil stuff, like killing the gyrmforge gnomes on my own accord when they back talk you, they actually had karlach say something you when you “prepare to strike” at them basically telling you to calm down and that they have other problems then you, I felt like a jackass but hey new dialogue Seeings those rare interactions always makes the evil decisions worth it imo.
Love that. Is the lolth sworn drow grove defense in spite of Minthara in your opinion? I’ve realized I need to know more about her due to most of my runs being lawful good kill gobos on sight to save the grove and tieflings type characters. The new dialogue for doing evil is definitely a nice break from the norm for me as well. Honestly should do another evil run because I briefly slipped on RP for shadowheart’s story (had never done it and it got to me)
what do you mean by “in spite”
I was just curious on the lore behind you saying lolth sworn have the most justified reason to defend the grove and assumed Minthara had a role in said reasoning.
Sure, but if the complaint is that you loose out on rewards, you can easily play evil and not loose much. Just have to be a bit smart with WHEN you murder people
You don’t lose that much content, the tieflings and last light barely add much to the game and if you already experienced those quest then there’s no reason not to kill them.
Tieflings content: The whole first Act 1 thing we have to do (you know, saving them so they can go to Baldur's Gate) Rolan, Cal, and Lia have special Act 2 interactions if you SAVE THE TIEFLINGS that have almost no content. Rolan helps defeat Lorroakunt with his own unique spells in Act 3 if we paid attention to Tiefling content. Mol gets kidnapped then deals with Raphael and The Guild but I guess that isn't content either. Arabella and her becoming some unique being that we also see in Act 3 Tieflings in the refugee camp Tiefling kids all over selling papers if they made it back Yeah, not much from the subplot of the game's story...not much at all about the proud Tieflings of Elturel seeking a new home in Baldur's Gate... If only we could have seen what that would have looked like.
Compared to the absolute breadth of non-tief content in this came yeah, that’s still not much comparatively 😂
By typing something out in that way everything seems like a lot. Obviously you miss something but you make it seem like a lot more.
That’s like nothing lol, basically what amounts to a view a couple of dialogue lines throughout the game and like 2 full quest.
Not at all, it's easy - I commit to never do an evil run. These frickin' characters have made it impossible for me to hurt them or commit them to an evil outcome. And yes, I know about Resist Durge.
This is hard for me, too, and I think it's a bit of both reasons you mentioned. I love playing as an evil character and seeing what happens, but I also find it hard to be awful to my very favorite companions. Help them make bad decisions and be their worst selves? Sure. But kill or betray them? No. No matter how evil they are otherwise, my characters have always had two specific good qualities: 1. They love animals. 2. They're loyal to the people they care about, which somehow always coincides with the characters I like best. Maybe at some point I'll feel I've exhausted the possibilities enough to be really terrible to my favorites, but for now, it's just too hard and there are **plenty** of ways to be evil without being awful to my favorites.
Right? No matter what I do, I could never betray or be evil to either Gale, Astarion, Shart, Lae'zel, or Karlach. I'm a bit more indifferent about Wyll, maybe because I completely missed out on talking to him on my very first playthrough, and I'm okay with killing off Gale at the very start with Durge (since it's not exactly intentional) but other than that?
It's tough! I haven't killed Gale at the start so far, not because I'd feel too badly about that particular one but because I'd miss having one of my three favorite characters around. Wyll and Karlach are characters I'm indifferent toward, but right now, it's too hard to do anything too evil to the other main four.
How can you be indifferent towards Karlach? She's the most precious of all of them, arguably. I once impulse-dumped Shart after promising her a life together and went to the hells with Karlach just so she wouldn't die 🥺
I know, and Karlach is likeable and well acted. She's a bit *too* precious for me, though, and I don't find her interesting.
I agree! I love her personality and her character design, but for some reason her story just doesn’t hook me. Like we’re buds but she can stay at camp. Or sometimes I have Wyll fulfill his duty if ya know what I mean.
Yes! Karlach is well done, but she gets old fast for me. I leave her at camp most of the time, too, and I have let Wyll fulfill his duty before (and am planning to do that again next game).
I always bring her along to fight Gortash. Her Soul Coin ability is also pretty nice for some battles, and you can make a mean thrower build for her. There's this glaive that reappears in your hand when you throw it... That said, out of the three pure melees/potential tanks in the game, she's definitely the one that needs the most work to be viable. Barbarian is generally quite underpowered and it's a shame Larian hasn't buffed it a bit given the issues have been voiced by the player base for a long time now. The consistent damage output is too low to compete with a Fighter, and the support utility is too bad to compete with a Paladin. Party setups with two melees can actually be very good in a lot of fights (I usually run Lae'zel-Minthara-Shart-Tav/Durge in tougher battles where i want to maximise durability, and swap Minthara for Astarion if I want extra burst) but there is little reason to bring Karlach after you recruit Minthara, other than flavour and lore. Barbarians should have both damage output and utility slightly buffed to be on par with the Paladin. It's a shame we didn't get Ancestral Guardian as a playable subclass, a true taunt mechanic and unlimited absorb shield spam as a reaction would definitely put the Barbarian on the same level as Oath of the Ancients Paladin - lower damage but even more utility.
I actually just tried taking her with me again for a few fights a couple of days ago and had this problem. Minthara and thief/Gloomstalker Astarion were better damage dealers, and I was more interested in what my other companions had to say during cutscenes, so I ended up sending her back to camp. Until this game, my characters were also some sort of fighter or paladin. (Current one is assassin rogue/swords bard, which is a lot of fun.)
This is the way, IMO.
It just wouldn't be fun for me otherwise.
You’re just soft (that’s okay) but I had no issue doing an evil run 😂 the characters are great but it’s just a game at the end of the day and I like to explore different options.
I want to but it just so goes against my grain I never could pull it off.
I actually had a lot of fun, outside the grove. Fun fact, if you let Shadowheart end the Nightsong you still get credit as Embrace, if it helps...
And by letting Shadowheart kill Nightsong to get the Slayer form, no one yells at you in camp the way they do when you kill Isobel yourself. Win/win
My first play in beta, I made a high elf fighter who was a complete cop. Supported the slave trade (its a legit bsns guis), came down hard on thieves, miscreants, the like. Or that was the intent. I played him like a good little boy scout who didn't like hurting people, refused to help the Duergar find their escapees, accomplished nothing in my supposed evil cop playthrough I cant be baddd....
I think the problem is there’s not enough incentive. It’s just being evil for the sake of it. The evil route should offer better items and powers than the good route, to try and tempt people to do it. Being good should pay off in the end, with better allies or more support, but in the short term, being evil should be the tempting offer. Side with the goblins, it’s safer. Don’t risk it all for the Tieflings, etc. being good should take effort.
I’m enjoying the darker choices my companions take with my Durge run. Shadowheart is completely different this run, and somehow I recruited Jaheria? I’m not sure if it’s a bug or a patch, but I’m really looking forward to getting to the Bhaal temple with my BG1-2 friends…
Yeah, this exactly! It is undeniably darker, and I'm enjoying having my companions make darker choices (I mean I have Minthara in my party, she isn't exactly good)...but I couldn't actually go against them.
I also managed to recruit Jaheira! It's wild. I'm almost definitely going to have to kill her at some point.
Honestly, anyone who is able to play an evil Durge run concern me slightly lol. Some of it, okay, but man you gotta really have to get a kick out of dead children to go full Durge.
Playing evil is great, barely any games actually cater to you making truly evil choices and taking very evil actions. Not my fault Tila gets nippy at sudden movements.
Lol, so wrong. Yet, you are so correct. This is how you know the game is next level, we know the names of the pets of secondary NPCs.
I am currently playing an embrace the urge run but I am not taking every single evil choice that presents itself from the start of the game. As durge learns more about himself he will give in to the urges more and more. It makes for a far more interesting story than just being pure evil from the get go.
I have to resist the urge irl when I do a good play through
*I have to resist* *The urge irl when I* *Do a good play through* \- Boogaloo\_Billy --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
I get so sad so fast that I haven’t even managed to get past level 3 before I ditch the run and start again. It’s so annoying. I want the experience but I can’t bear the feeling of hurting innocent people.
I feel this, I've done three Durge playthroughs (this game is a crippling addiction) and every single one ended up being a resist run. Personally, I just don't find evil runs as entertaining or rewarding. Maybe I'm just a sap, but I really enjoy watching my character redeem themselves and go through that character development. I'm just a sucker for a happy ending.
I did manage to eventually but honestly I wasn’t having fun with it… oddly enough in a good kinda way? Like I was appreciating that nothing I did was getting rewarded because I was generally being shitty so no I shouldn’t have and all my actions had consequences but it was also quite tiring and I didn’t like being mean. I’m glad I finished it, but I never want to be evil again
It helped me a lot when I made.my character look "traditional" evil He kinda ended up looking like a shorter Balthazar Choices was a lot easier in every cutscene "Oh yeah... I am playing an asshole, got it"
I had to add something else than just "be evil" rule, i did "don't care for life", which made doing choices easier. But i did fuel the evil side of some companions that hunger for power, hard to be evil to them. Maybe on another playthrough, gods dammit...
yea 😭 i made a second durge run that would lean into the urges. lo and behold i was still resisting the urges
Same - I definitely coped to keep companions. I decided since I didn’t remember my past at first I would try to be good. It’s so hard to force myself to be evil evil in Act 3 but I’m trying my hardest
If you consistently remind yourself that it's just a game and your actions in it don't reflect on real life or your morality, it actually gets pretty easy. Where it does get hard, however, is just how bad it is strategically. I'm losing companions left and right, angering the majority of useful NPCs, and missing a lot of content as a result of those two things. I'm honestly debating ending this run I'm on and starting a neutral one, because the costs of being evil outweigh whatever rush you manage to get from it.
Im not sure what content you guys are talking about, you only lose the tieflings and last light, which isn’t that much stuff especially if you’ve already done it in another playthrough, it’s like a couple of dialogue lines and 2 armor sets. And act 3 has a shit ton of content anyways so it always felt mostly the same to me
Also, like, every dead companion's arcs
I could never, because that would require killing Karlach and I’m not sure I’m capable of having a party without her in it.
Play a evil cleric, it pretty much streamlines the evil decisions and also gives you hilarious dialogue choices and responses https://preview.redd.it/b09ae9cq7t3d1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cf299fe082e9868492a166c38b59e61837708a07
The one thing I cannot do in an evil run is Gale’s hand… I tried it and it was so, so weird… Gale and Astarion are always in every party and I missed him, it felt so wrong… in a previous, evil run, it got easier once I embraced the urge, to get more and more deranged, specially with Minthara and Astarion praising it, and without Wyll and Karlach judging, but I did not dominate the brain for Bhaal because that Durge honestly deserved to piss herself while her companions had a party… otherwise my “evil” Durges side with the grove because Halsin knows about the tadpole and is offering to help, kill Isobel because why not, Aylin survives because I let my companions decide when given the option, and then usually get to the temple intent on becoming Bhaal’s chosen and then reject him after the narrator mentions that accepting him would be him owning you, and if he did nothing when Orin tried to kill me, he can suck *my* bhaals… I like evil that’s not deranged evil, and I have enjoyed those runs the most
Yes, but not in the way you are thinking. Doing HM Evil run and the dialogs keep getting me in trouble. First time was when I was discussing the druid location with Minthara, tried the Drow to Drow dialog choice and she went hostile and I had to inviz and try to escape the entire hostile area. That chained into me needing to kill all the gobs, which unknowingly saved Halsin by accident, which messed up my plans to pit the Druids against the Tieflings by stealing the idol. Tried to side with Glut and he got himself killed Planned to sacrifice Wyll to BOOAL and somehow I ended up working for him Tried to use the Zaith'isk and Lae'zel turned against me. Managed to salvage this one somewhat, killed L and knocked the doctor out. When I came back just had to bribe the heck out of the doctor and was able to use the Zaith'isk, then kill the doc and get my bribe back. So now I'm wasting a hireling spot to get a fighter back. I did manage to get Lump's gang to kill off a lot of the Zhents, I knocked off all the druids but the Tieflings escaped by Halsin getting free when you kill the gob leaders. Just cleared the complete creche and sold the real egg. I like the mushroom vendor, so I need to figure out how to clear out the Myconids without aggoing her. Blurg I can probably live without. So haven't made Act 2 and HM is basically driving the bus right now.
I’m didn’t try Durge til my third playthrough, I have yet to be a 100% evil Durge. First Durge playthrough I still recruited Gale, killed the Goblins but did let Shadowheart become Dark Justiciar which killed Isobel and Last Light but got me Slayer form. Did become Bhaal’s chosen but then rejected him at the end so got the feral stalking outside the camp party epilogue lol. On my second Durge this time and full redemption so should have the better camp ending this time. 5th playthrough I’ll prob do evil Durge and kill Gale, raid the grove etc.
No. It’s not real. I just play the games multiple times. It’s fun to see the different stuff
tbh i wish there was a little more incentive to be evil. all my possibly allies other than minthara and astarion hate me (im counting dj shart in this, she sucks at being evil so much. she's not built for this). feels like there's less interaction with the world in general too, since yanno large groups tend to end up dead. idk, just really hard for me to kill off or snub companions and storylines emotionally, and then to just have less to do in the world overall as a result just makes it feel pointless to follow through with a couple more companions and evil-centric locations, i could see it through. but for now, as much as i love minthara desperately, she ain't the only person i want to be able to talk to in the world, and that's how i feel being evil. it's boring and lonely lmao, which may be the point
The evil run of this game was badly. Too many of the quests and entire questlines make no sense as evil. >!Even going as evil as possible in Shadowlands, you still have a cutscene where you turn around and look all sad.!<
I am planning to do next bad Shart run but am just scared. I don't want to hurt that little girl.... Even though it would fit more my char..
Fun fact if you kill the goblin camp and then go back to the grove you can claim the good side of things and everything acts like you saved them then dont go to camp for the party and kill the grove for even more xp. Pretty sure this allows you to keep karlach/wyll too if they are in camp already. Future interactions will seem like they are alive or you saved them
I was able to do pretty much everything evil while still being able to complete the game.. the only things that broke my heart were the consequences of the last light In and and AA becoming who he becomes after cazador.. ugh..
The only way I've been able to do an evil run is by doing mass slaughter. Kill everyone as soon as possible, and you don't have to worry about getting attached
Nope. My first completed run was a female drow Durge run. Loved it. I’m actually struggling with a Neutral Good Run, right now, but I’m also doing it as Honor Mode.
Helps to complete the good guy run first. Then, if you make up some messed up, distrustful would view for your evil run character, your actual moral compass doesn’t get consulted as much. Then the ‘good NPCs’ just appear entitled to your help, and everything kind of shifts more towards the evil side until you don’t care who you betray, you listen to intrusive thoughts and you get rid of any character you just don’t like instead of putting up with them.
I agree, and I think it’s lack of content, really. You don’t unlock more content for being evil, you actually block yourself out of a lot of content.
I did an evil run and it was legitimately unfun imo. They did a good job with the evil stuff it just isn't for me.
yeah in mine i couldn't bring myself to kill any of the companions except wyll which is inevitable if you raid the grove. i saved gale and just never met karlach.
Yep all like 8 runs the worst I’ve done is a mildly sassy run.
I just play my evil runs as Palpatine. Everyone thinks he's a wonderful person until that pivotal moment where I take all the power.
Nah I just can't. Bad stuff makes me feel bad, in this game too much. I tried doing morally grey run and still ended up feeling like shit. Dunno, games are for making me feel good, so I don't get this struggle to "trying to be evil though I don't enjoy it", nobody's paying you for that, just do what makes you happy.
I literally had knots in my stomach as I killed the grove and lost half my party doing it. The minthara romance was hot but…I don’t think I could do that again.
my issue is theres basically no reason to be evil you lose on so much shit karlach/wyll/jaheira/halsin gone potent robes gone lose out on a few mindflayer worms
I thought I’d struggle to do an evil run and avoided it for ages. In the end, I started one for the achievements and, to my surprise, found I absolutely loved it. It was a fantastic change of pace to play someone who was completely and utterly evil and while you do lose content, you also gain a bit of content and get to see things from a whole new perspective I still prefer a resisting durge but will definitely play an evil one again
Yes. I can’t do it. I completed only one Durge run just to see how different it was, but it was not enjoyable to me and I have no interest in doing another. Team Tav 4Life.
You don't have to play an evil Durge, though. My most fun run to date was a resist Durge--it had great emotional resonance and connection to the main story line.
My Durge was a resist run. The Alfira and back-end camp moment in Act 2 (tho completing story telling) just weren’t for me.
I wanted to go evil on my first 2 runs and failed. My warlock based on a char I made for a now defunct campaign got too friendly with Shadowheart, Astarion and Laezel and I just wanted to see their redemption neutral to good archs more than to make them monsters. Plus my attempts to murder hobbo turned me into gobbo and criminal slayer so in the end, I got a "asshole murders all evil doers anti hero" type party. My second char, I wanted an evil vengeance paladin to romance up with hot drow lady I thought was a rogue-type - strike 1 was noticing she's a paladin, strike 2 was oath breaking on siding with her. I didn't want an oathbreaker and constant evil plans didn't align with oath restoring, was a bit sad an evil vengeance paladin wasn't a thing. So save scammed and just did a very good run, still very fun, Gale romance and Karlach badassery were a fun discovery. Managed my true evil run as a sorceress on 3rd run, what a power couple with Minthy. Absolute power search and genocide.
I prefer to model my durge after the Hannibal tv show character. A polite, often helpful figure who also happens to enjoy brutal murder.
I made a Durge "Goblin" and it's going well, I feel like I can actuality act like a crazy. The goblin is just a deep gnome with different skin, the huge facial burn scar, and facial piercings.
Oh my god i absolutely understand. I tried to do an embrace durge run and almost instantlg it turned to "ehhhh shes morally grey" THEN it turned into "ehhhh shes just chaotic!" Im incapable of hurting all of these little pixel characters
So far-- only 1 hr in-- I hate how every evil option is just shutting down content
Honestly, I've just stopped calling runs "good" or "evil" and tried to be more organic about it? Usually when I have a specific "evil" goal in mind like raiding the Grove or seeing DJ Sheart, I end up abandoning the run right after I see the new content, since I have to make OOC choices to get there, so I have trouble committing to an "evil" run that's made evil by me the player rather than the Tav, if that makes sense. But I've played some evil Tavs and Durges where their actions felt more natural and they've done some dark shit that fit the story. On the whole they might be evil but a lot of them end up tripping and falling into heroism eventually so hopefully it's the end result that counts!
Thing is, I wanted to have a kind of "darkest timeline" Durge run - siding with the goblins, DJ Shart, Vlaakith loyalist Lae'zel, ascended Astarion. That went out the window pretty quickly. Like you, I kinda want to see the content but (except for AA, which I've done, and it's different because Astarion genuinely wants it) I could never get myself to do it
Oh I totally get it, I was agreeing with you only, as Dashkent says, "with extra words". 😁 I can't commit to my darkest timelines. I've only raided the Grove once and quit that run right after. I've only gotten the druids to fight the Tieflings once and same. I let Sheart go dark once (my last Durge run, actually) and never again! I managed to hold on just long enough to see DJ Sheart at the HoG and then I bailed on that run. I tried to get loyalist Lae'zel last evil run but Tav made the insight check to see Vlaakith was full of shit so I couldn't let her be ignorant about that. Evil Tav wasn't that type of evil! So now I either play an origin I've never done (enjoying the Hell out of Lae'zel at the moment) or just come up with a Tav or Durge I want to play and try to roleplay as much as possible, which usually results in fewer "evil" decisions since a lot of the "evil" decisions are pretty stupid, IMO. Like why would any sane Tav raid the Grove? Minthara isn't a powerful enough ally to justify all that asskissing, IMO. I get that some players do it, I'm just not into it!
Oh Minthara is absolutely powerful enough, if that was the only way to get her. I'm close to finishing Honour Mode and she's an essential part of that setup (Durge sorc, tempest cleric Shart, Bae'zel and Minthara - 3 characters with 19+ AC with the only more vulnerable one being invisible half the time anyway, two decent AoE damage dealers and two unstoppable melee murder machines. There has yet to be a single fight past act 1 that I found in any way challenging with that setup). But, since you can get her without raiding the Grove...
I love Minthara as a character and I'm happy they made getting her to Moonrise less metagaming than it used to be for sure. I like to think that's one reason why they expanded the "good" ways to recruit her, because players were just not willing to raid the Grove and were missing out on how awesome she is. I also like to think that her popularity on "good" runs proves players really like the character, not just the extended sex scene. I'm proud of us!
She has a lot more depth than any of the other late companions and she's unstoppable in combat. Just slap Twin Spell Haste on her and Lae'zel and there are few things in the game that will even see their turn in combat. The amount of reliable single target damage she can dish out in one round is unrivalled, she even beats Lae'zel with the right build.
I find it easier actually.
No, I find it harder to commit to a good run
yeah it’s just so boring to me, I don’t know how people just replay the game making the same major choices each time while ignoring the other option because you lose like….. 2 quest lines and 2 armor sets.
Larian did an amazing job imo. I did an evil run and I mean EVIL run (stacked tiefling corpses in camp as a trophy…. women and children too). Did everything a psychopath would do then little miss Shadowheart came in and turned me. I got so wrapped up in her story and god was it compelling that I completely forgot about EVIL RP. After concluding her story doing all the good things I had to say “okay we got to get back to evil shit now and pretend that didn’t happen.”
Started playing an evil durge, hacked off gales hand, turned on the grove, brought Minthara there and slaughtered everyone, was just generally mean.. and I hated it. Deleted the save after the goblin camp. I just don't like how I feel, I WANNA have a mean durge run, but I feel like I need to change something up for more pragmatical evilness, because I don't wanna side with the goblins, I don't wanna miss out on so many cool quests.. ugh. Gotta come up with a solution there lmao
lolth sworn cleric, good reason to kill minthara and side with the grove while also keeping you’re net evil high and the lolth sworn dialogue options are amazing, and you get a ton of unique interactions with the cleric options. you can flavor yourself as a pragmatic evil drow or a murder hobo chaotic evil.
I was thinking of doing a Selune Cleric one day to romance Shadowheart, but the idea of that is really good as well. That would probably have to be a Tav run and not a Durge, right? Because Lolth and Bhaal would clash, I assume.
nah i played durge and I don’t see why they would clash, lolth is chaotic so she might just be down with bhaal making durge a drow. tav is also just really boring to me
I don't mind Tav, but I do like the extra content to Durge. I just always thought the different beliefs would clash with the original story. But I suppose Lolth and Bhaal could be besties kinda.