Since it emerged from early access, Baldur’s Gate 3 has surpassed a lot of expectations, having attracted a huge amount of players keen to experience all it has to offer on PC, with those on other platforms now beginning to join in on the fun.
Despite some debate around the “cut content” data miners believed they’d found in the game’s files, it’s enjoyed a positive reception, left a lot of people hungry for more, and has a modding scene that’s already in full swing.
Some players have even begun trying out all manner of interesting speedruns and bizarre challenges in order to spice up their playthroughs. Now, one has managed to discover a way to recruit the game’s most morally ambiguous companion that avoids you having commit a bunch of murders. Well, sort of.
Have you spent hours pondering the moral implications of recruiting Minthara in Baldur’s Gate 3?
Warning: Spoilers for Act 1 of Baldur’s Gate 3 lie ahead.
This interesting find has appeared just in time to coincide with the arrival of Baldur’s Gate 3’s fifth hotfix. Among other things, the game's latest patch rectifies a bug which “blocked access to some of Minthara’s lines of dialogue,” and allows your romance with the Drow to rumble on into Act 3, with “new dialogues allowing you to explore and deepen the relationship.”
However, in order to get to that point, you’ve first got to have recruited her, which, provided you haven’t downloaded the mods by Rukongai that allow you to do so without having to kill a bunch of innocent druids and Tieflings in the game’s first act, will require you to do just that. Which is a bit of a bummer if you’re trying to roleplay as someone who isn’t a wee bit evil.
Reddit user Wulfrinnan reckons they’ve come up with a potential alternative that could prove preferable to straight up massacring some folks with your own two hands - though I will warn you, it definitely won’t leave your conscience completely clear.
The key to their method, as they explain in a post on the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit, is to steal the idol involved in the ritual your potential targets are taking part in as the Tiefling kids ask you to, stopping it, and then to simply leave without killing anyone. After telling Minthara about what’s happening, you just have to make a very leisurely return to the grove, so that all of the bloodshed has already taken place.
“You never killed an innocent,” Wulfrinnan reasons, “You just [accidentally] lit the fuse. Sure, [Minthara] credits you for softening them all up in advance for her, but you didn't really do anything.”
Thankfully, the sarcastic top comment on the post, which comes from user lofgren777 and reads: “Oh thank god. Desecrating cultural artefacts and framing children is much more my speed,” pretty much sums up the general reaction to the method from Wulfrinnan’s fellow players.
Regardless of whether you’re now trying to explain your actions in Baldur’s Gate 3 to The Hague, make sure to follow us for plenty of guides to its builds, mechanics, and locations.