Can I Beat Baldurs Gate 3 [Honor Mode] with these 9 restrictions? | Ep 12

[@rheiagreenland4714]

Come for the challenge run, stay for exposition on the bizarre origin stories of different types of demons

[@Melth]

Something for everyone! 😂

[@justinmoseley6440]

Great bit of context. Gotta love a bit of bonkers Catholic church; "quick burn them all...."

[@unwise6518]

In Shadowheart's defense, it's very hard to avoid getting brainwashed by a cult when you're a child and the cult can wipe your memories

[@Melth]

That's sorta true about the memory wiping stuff, but I did get the impression most of the memory wiping was willing. It's also not like she was in a sealed environment with no knowledge of the outside world. She might be a bit less culpable than a member of a real cult who perpetrates murders or something, but not a lot less. She had plenty of previous knowledge of the world and how awful Shar is, and she personally took part in torture, and she continued to see and experience the outside world but seems to have just kept drawing in new victims

[@Sam-nt8nk]

@@Melth The memory wiping was not willing. There is a note you can find in Act 3 that she wrote at some point where she explicitly says she doesn't want to lose her memories.

[@IliumGaming]

​@Melth what a cynical take on her

[@Melth]

@@IliumGaming maybe so. I've really gone back and forth on whether I liked or hated Shadowheart as I experienced more of her story. Having done a complete run with Shadowheart in the party, I settled currently on hating her but with the caveat that it might be because of bad writing rather than her being genuinely loathsome in-character. Her writing in act 1 and act 3 was mostly reasonable and presented a decent enough story arc of her becoming her own person. (Albeit I am NOT willing to overlook the fact that she starts off as a proud perpetrator of torture and states that other people deserve to be killed for opposing her religion. I stand by my position that torturing people for your god is not ok and 'just following orders' is not an acceptable excuse for it) But in act 2 her writing was so bad (or nonexistent) that it ruins the whole story arc and makes her look utterly selfish on a scale beyond even Astarion. Again, that might be a mistake by the writers/programmers making her look worse than they intended if you follow certain paths. But I have to form my opinions with the script as I saw it, not what I would want it to be if it was written better. And what I saw of her in my playthrough of act 2 presents her as the evilest member of the party full stop.

[@Sam-nt8nk]

@@Melth I assume you're referring to how she doesn't really care about anything other than becoming a Dark Justiciar? I don't think that's particularly unreasonable for her to do considering the amount of brainwashing they did on her. Listening to her talking about Dark Justiciars like a kpop fangirl does get really old really fast thought.

[@cabbageTCG]

for anyone not doing this with the hardest possible combat encounter challenge, you can make the fight much easier if you stealth kill the eggs before engaging her. An alchemists fire usually does the trick and those are in abundance especially if you already cleared the hyenas. great vid melth!

[@Melth]

Yep! You can also use a fire arrow similarly. It's easy to snipe one egg cluster from the treasure room. One other useful trick: don't kill every egg. Leave one alive per cluster so the matriarch wastes a whole turn just trying to get one baby into the fight

[@Greenicegod]

With the missing child poster from last episode, and the veritable cornucopia of dangers in and around the town, it could very well be that each of the missing children were taken by a different threat. Like if the townspeople confronted the necromancer, he'd say "I swear I only took the one child!"

[@Melth]

Heh, yeah, and that'd be typical d&d I suppose. Can't have the silly adventurer lifestyle without 100 different types of monsters living within a mile of every settlement! I do suspect though that there was intended to be a single explanation in-universe for the missing children. I suspect they might have changed some of their ideas midway through developing it though. For example, Shadowheart seems to have a connection to the village, but that's impossible timeline wise

[@croaker97]

Wow, that harpy fight was so clean. I didn’t know that pre-positioning on that second ledge would give you so much extra crushing damage. Nicely done!

[@Melth]

I didn't really know that either; this is my first run where I use much throw damage. Normally I just snipe them from up there with crossbows.

[@croaker97]

@@Melth Btw, apparently there is a bug now where if the crushing damage from a thrown attack kills the enemy, you don't get the XP from it. So beware for future videos! I have tested and confirm it is a problem in honor mode.

[@Melth]

@@croaker97 yeah, a commenter pointed that out and I rewatched all my videos. I've lost 255 experience to that! Quite painful, that's much more than you get from even a big boss fight in act 1. I did find that I could fix it, however. After counting the exact amount of XP missed, I can just use modding tools or something like cheat engine to add that amount of bugged XP back

[@taxevasion4736]

Fun fact about the Harpy encounter: Casting the Silence spell stops people in it from being Lured, for obvious reasons. Nice that they put that in there (it also saved my Honor Mode Run) In my earlier Honor Mode run, I was about to get party-wiped to the last Harpy, but it decided to finish off Gale and then died from his corpse’s Necrotic Aura.

[@Melth]

Neat timing that Gale's aura saved you there! And that sounds like a job well done with silence too. It works to stop a lot of things it logically should, which is great! I've never done much with it though because I don't want to stake my run on assuming they think of everything and make silence block all the effects I think it should

[@yhnujmik987]

Calm emotions can also be used to keep you from getting lured with the added bonus of not interfering with your own casters ability to use spells. You can step out of the silence bubble to cast and come back in, but if that would provoke an attack of opportunity, that could be bad. Calm didn't help Mirkon but that was fine because otherwise the little idiot tries to melee the harpies. I found it better to let him trudge slowly towards the singer while we killed off the other harpies first. Seriously, kid, if I just cast Sanctuary on you, could you please NOT immediately lose it trying to punch the scary bird people?

[@Melth]

@@yhnujmik987 I don't think I've ever had Mirkon attack the birds; he always tries to run away for me and usually does a decent job as long as he gets a turn in the first place.

[@goombots-zb4xe]

Really love how you’ve been explaining everything in great detail both combat strategy and both bg3 and dnd lore really well done

[@Melth]

Thanks! I always want my videos to be informative as well as entertaining

[@dodoking4]

I do find it funny that the only story character that you recruit that's honest with you right from the beginning about her intentions and desires is lae'zel who, ironically, is the least trustworthy out of all of them.

[@Melth]

Come to think of it, Karlach is pretty honest and open about everything. If anything, other people are lying about her, but she herself is very honest

[@Deerber]

​@@Melth Karlach is the best ❤️

[@Melth]

@@Deerber I dunno, she's nice and all but she's deeply and frustratingly and dangerously stupid. Halsin or Jaheira are probably my favorites of the companions, combining brains with being good people

[@Deerber]

@@Melth Fair point. I'm playing a not-so-bright half-orc myself, so they go along mighty fine 😁

[@Melth]

@@Deerber fair enough!

[@GMtheTurtle]

i just finished my first honour mode run having romanced lae'zel and freed orpheus. she does quite the 180 in act 3 and by the end i was even surprised compared to the same ending when she isnt romanced by tav. and i called the emperor out on his manipulation and saw a whole different side to the stelmane relationship. Wild to see the cold and calculating side after just a single push. keep up the entertaining gameplay and lore explanations !!

[@Melth]

Sounds like an interesting run! I'm looking forward to talking about Stelmane and how creepily the emperor lies about his relationship with her. Putting together the puzzle pieces, Wyll of all people makes an offhand remark about Stelmane that exposes the emperor as a liar. And there was also an outside source before the game came out that revealed she'd had her mind ruined in a battle with a mindflayer

[@zachdouglas3323]

God im addicted to this series

[@Melth]

Glad you're enjoying it!

[@Treecington]

Commenting for the algorithim. Great videos Melth. Love the unique approach and deep lore you bring to these videos. Keep it up!

[@Melth]

Thank you, I'm glad you like the style, and I'm always happy to share lore I think is interesting

[@Dima666Air]

I realy like how you play it like a normal person. Most of honor mode players first just clean all non combat quest on map and underdark to get higher lvl and then with that easy clean all content

[@Melth]

Yeah, I never liked that when watching those runs. Especially how a lot of them just choose to talk their way through a lot of the tough encounters. That's why I made a rule not to do that, etc. Of course there's still a balance to be struck. It would be suicide to rush into the most dangerous fights now at level 4, so I'm trying to tackle the fights which are both manageable and logical from a roleplay perspective, while leading to good power ups that will expand what I can do

[@Conzor563]

To add to your devil soul discussion around 15 mins: In older editions, specifically Fiendish Codex II Tyrants of the Nine Hells, Devils explicitly very rarely offer bargains for souls. Instead they try and push you towards Lawful Evil because they get first dibs on your soul if they corrupted you before you die. Raphael's line encouraging you to shop around, borrow beg and STEAL is him doing this. Encouraging you to get desperate, break the rules. Even if you refuse him until Act 3 he says explicitly he doesnt want your soul in the bargain, he knows he's going to get it eventually if you take the deal and help him get the crown.

[@Melth]

Yeah, that's the old lore but it doesn't seem to hold with the portrayal in this game. In this game they seem to present a pretty simple transaction of boons for souls. I don't like all the changes this game (or 5E in general ) made to the lore, but I do try to focus on this game's version of the lore when evaluation what characters do. I just bring up older lore to point out changes, or when there's a void and no new info in this game or 5E or whatever. As much as I think it would be clever if Raphael was trying to corrupt you, I wouldn't read to much into the use of the word steal there. "Beg, borrow, and steal" is just a very common idiom, you know? And Raphael uses a lot of common idioms. Besides, stealing something that will save your life isn't the kind of thing people go to hell for in d&d usually. There are gods of theft and most of them are chaotic neutral rather than evil

[@Deerber]

Can't wait for the matriarch! And damn, that harpy fight was clean. Loving this!

[@Melth]

Thanks! The matriarch fight is... Less clean. Some *really* weird and buggy stuff happened, as you'll see in a few days, turning it into a near disasted

[@Dragonking3787]

"Do they rewlly deserve to live if one Hobgoblin cant wipe them out?" Ayo? Astarion rubbing off on you, eh? 😂

[@darthimperious1594]

The source of Demonology: Fanfic Authors of the Middle Ages too proud to admit they made it all up. History is so hilarious sometimes. That said, selling your soul to a devil is not ALWAYS as bad as you make it out. I mean, in 99.99% of the cases, it is, but occasionally you'll find some particularly ambitious and lucky mortal that happens to rise through the ranks of the devils (or demons, depending on how they lost their soul). I still wouldn't take my chances, though. Oblivion is likely the better option for anyone outside of a devoted evil character, but they may be tempted by the mind flayer powers, as well.

[@Melth]

@@darthimperious1594 theological history in particular is like that almost all the time

[@ShandrensCorner]

About spiders: The Danish word for Spider is "Edderkop" It would make a lot of sense for there to be a connection between that and the "Attercop". I think its meaning is something to the effect of "Poison-head"

[@Melth]

Another commenter said the same thing, yeah. That makes sense, I bet it comes from a shared Germanic root word. A lot of old words in English do

[@MSlocum669]

Your initiative roll was insane on that harpy fight, made it so much easier on you. Nice use of verticality, I often forget to do so.

[@Melth]

Alertness on 2 characters and +3 dex on everyone makes a world of difference!

[@lilmisu3667]

perfect time for a video buddy, i just cooked and was looking for something to watch, this playthru is probably the top of the list in that regard, youre so awesome!!!!

[@Melth]

Thanks, sounds like fun timing!

[@lilmisu3667]

@@Melth oh for sure😂 i am very curious, unless im indiscreet at which point its fine if you dont want to answer but what did you study? you sound like you know a heck ton of history or just seem very cultured generally

[@Melth]

@@lilmisu3667 thank you! I try to know about a wide variety of subjects. Like a bard! I studied economics and math and history in college, and I learned a lot of other things on the side

[@Cthulhus_Mum]

Mol being irresponsible seems like good writing to me. She’s meant to be - what, 9? 9 year olds are still pretty much sociopathic monsters, and she’s doing her best for what *she* sees as important - but yeah, she’s not a responsible grown up, and she isn’t written as one.

[@Melth]

Yeah, I don't expect grown-up morality from her. I do think she's worse than an average kid though. Certainly worse than all the other tiefling kids in game. And reveals more and more of her badness as the game goes on, after presenting herself falsely as some sort of protector figure for the other kids. They seem to believe her about that, but it's just not true from what we see.

[@zulenka7347]

The sparkle hands no longer grant lightning charges on thrown attacks as of patch 5

[@Melth]

From what I can see, they absolutely do still give lightning charges on thrown attacks. The wiki says they don't, but it works 100% of the time for me.

[@byebye806]

I've been really enjoying this series, both combat strategy guide and random history lessons. Looking forward to the next one

[@Melth]

Thanks, glad to hear you like it!

[@KodyackCasual]

Hope actually has a surprising amount of lore; though a good bit of it doesn't get shown off. The short version is Raphael offered both her and her sister a deal. Her sister accepted and is the character Korilla who shows up and helps you get away from Gut if you get yourself captured. Hope refused, which surprised Raphael and made him interested in trying to convince her. He first tried to offer her a better deal, which she also declined, so instead he effectively kidnapped her with Korilla's help and has been torturing her to try and break her into finally giving in and accepting his offers and giving up her soul. There's a bit more tangential stuff, but Hope is actually why Raphael will not let you accept the deal when he first presents it. He finds that boring ever since the first person refused his offer; now he wants all his "interesting" clients to refuse first, even if he has to make them refuse. That potential desperation is his motivation and what he craves. His "vice" as it were.

[@Melth]

I knew that about Korilla yeah. What I don't know in terms of Hope lore: Is it just a coincidence her name is hope? Why in the world does she have a magic house in Avernus/who is she? Korilla just seems to be a standard warlock type

[@KodyackCasual]

The short version is that Rapheal made the house (in hell), effectively, for her (It's possible it was her house previously, and Rapheal took it to the hells for his own purposes). Hence his naming of it, because he's a theatrical devil. Too theatrical for his own good. Why she has the powers over the house, I can't particularly say; In DnD lore, names have power of course, so it's entirely possible that in naming it what he did, Rapheal gave her that power- there are other options here, all based on Rapheal's hubris and such, but those are just speculation. It could also just be that, in being there so long and so deeply tied to it, the house *is* a reflection of herself and "is" Hope. The name is a coincidence that likely drew Rapheal to her in the first place, though, that much is clear.@@Melth

[@BlacknBlue97]

Yes! Started the series last week and just got caught up today. Well done on this series!!

[@Melth]

Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying it so much. It's fun to make too (At least most of the time. There'll be an exception next episode 😅 )

[@danny234555]

Yeah at 11:35, that's a dark urge line. I believe he is alluding to the crown of Karsus heist here.

[@Melth]

Definitely a dark urge line, but I think he's probably referring more to you being a pure evil entity like himself rather than to the crown heist in particular. One of his other lines with the dark urge praises your murderousness and says that that's not his own particular style of evil, but he respects it nonetheless.

[@wekashipo7507]

I have never seen the harpy fight go that smoothly. Can't wait to see how you handle the matriarch. That fight was not kind to me and my friends in honor mode.

[@Melth]

It was rough for me too, partly due to some weird bugs. And a horribly inaccurate ability description which I trusted 😅

[@wekashipo7507]

@@Melth Oh boy, now you've got me worried about the outcome.

[@Melth]

@@wekashipo7507 I won't spoil anything, but it should certainly be an edge of one's seat battle

[@GiliamVermeulen]

Regarding the frame drops. Have you tried switching between DX11 and Vulkan on the launcher? I get random stutter on DX11 for some reason.

[@Melth]

I can't get it to open at all with Vulkan for some reason. Never have been able to.

[@noxnox8554]

That's such a good point about the Shar worship reveal. This girl is walking around the Sword Coast with like ..3-4 symbols of Shar in plain view. It's so weird to me

[@Melth]

So obviously a Shar worshipper that clearly she must be a Mask worshipper doing a false-flag operation!

[@ChaosmanOne]

You harp on Mol being all bad and such, but look at her! If you'd been through whatever it was that she's been through as a kid (namely your city being sucked into the Hells where who knows WHAT happened), you'd likely be a little hard too.

[@Melth]

But consider that she's by far the worst of the tiefling kids, and pushes the others into crime and gives them suicide missions like stealing from harpies, and only she benefits from this. She also abandons them after pretending to care about them. Furthermore, her city wasn't just in some mundane disaster or foreign occupation by other humans or something, she literally went to hell. She saw firsthand that devils are the absolute worst, that evil results in an eternity of damnation and suffering, that devils constantly cheat and break deals, etc. And she learned NOTHING from that. She decides to deliberately work with the same pure evil beings that ruined the city and hurt everyone she knew!

[@AlexM18723]

Love the series Melth! I'm new to all the lore as my first exposure has been BG3 and really enjoy your explanations. I've noticed your comments about Laezel and it seems that overall, the Gith get a more positive portrayal in the game than might be fair. I wondered what your take is on the emperor and eventual choice in Act 3? Can you forgive his treatment of Stelmane given his helping Tav and the alternative?

[@Melth]

I'd say the githyanki in general get the mostly negative portrayal they deserve EXCEPT for Orpheus and Lae'Zel. All the horribly evil main characters like Lae'Zel and Astarion are given waaaaay more sympathy than they deserve compared to the evil creatures we kill like mind flayers or something. Mind flayers have a biological need to kill people for example, Lae'Zel just thinks murdering sentient beings is fun. Astarion tells a sob story of how his cruel master made him eat rats while the master ate the people Astarion brought him... and the focus is on poor Astarion having to eat nasty food rather than on the helpless Innocents Astarion helped Cazador murder. Orpheus doesn't get that kind of main character protection, but they do just kind of try to slip it under the radar that the very fact that he is a first generation githyanki and NOT a githzerai makes him horribly evil ipso facto. He would have been around and would have been one of the leaders in charge when the gith race split culturally on the question of "Should we be murderers and tyrants who try to oppress everyone in the galaxy?" This is not a nuanced question! There are not two reasonable sides to that question! Orpheus apparently decided that yes he wants to tyrannize and brutalize all the weaker races in the galaxy, and thus he's a githyanki rather than a githzerai. He just wants to be in charge of the tyranny apparently rather than letting Vlaakith have all the fun. (One new epilogue does say that Orpheus is now trying to make peace with the Githzerai to ally against Vlaakith, but again if he was not a horrible person he would BE a githzerai!)

[@Melth]

Got distracted from the Emperor there. The emperor is definitely evil, and anyone who thinks otherwise is being very gullible. But he's not as bad as half our party really. His horrible treatment of Stelmane is what ascendant Astarion wants to do to EVERYONE basically. Shar worshipping Shadowheart wants to murder the entire universe and subject every being in creation to eternal torment. The emperor is barely a blip on the scale in comparison. I think taking the opportunity to kill the emperor is perfectly justified the instant he stops helping us save the world, but likewise I would consider it justified to immediately take down ascendant Astarion once the Netherbrain is dealt with, etc.

[@AlexM18723]

@@Melth This is such a good response, thank you for taking the time to write it! I think the Emperor is an excellent character. It presents an interesting moral quandary to learn about the past actions of someone we are otherwise predisposed to like, as not only have we chosen the Dream Visitor's aesthetics but they have been crucial to our survival. Siding with the Emperor should then weight pragmatism/individualism against morality, but there is some tension there where, as you point out, there is both hypocrisy closer to home and a worse outcome on the horizon with Orpheus! Cannot wait to catch the rest of the series, hope you make it all the way through!

[@Melth]

@@AlexM18723 I agree, I think the dynamic with the dream visitor and the discovery first of the emperor and then that the emperor (unlike some other mind flayers such as Omeluum) is just manipulating and lying to us is pretty great. Certainly thought provoking. The one part I don't like is how the emperor will abruptly abandon his single goal of staying free of the Netherbrain and immediately go join the Netherbrain the instant you decide not to listen to him. That was a moment of godawful and incoherent writing for a character who was otherwise well-done.

[@sauracifer3557]

Can't wait to see how you destroy the goblin camp Me and my friend started a honour mode run aswell, and I accidentally aggroed the whole camp while I was talking to those goblin kids as a drow Luckily the wall was a excellent choke point and we placed a spike growth and a cloud of daggers and watched them suicide into it

[@Melth]

Nicely done! I've got a plan which should demolish the whole camp with no spells spent I think. Mostly just using the terrain

[@Melth]

Just recorded wiping the whole goblin camp! I've always found that the biggest obstacle is actually getting the whole camp to aggro at once, instead of only fighting you in small squads, which makes it too easy. So I had to practice a setup which would reliably get them all to fight me more or less at once.

[@PuskasMarton]

7:36 You can also talk to Zevlor after stopping the ritual for the (one of the) best gloves in the game assuming youre not doing a no healing run like here.

[@Melth]

Would you really say they're that good? Resistance to damage sounds nice, but I think this run demonstrates pretty well just how doable it is to avoid taking any damage in the first place. I'd rather have gloves that boost my offense and thus my means to negate damage before it occurs.

[@PuskasMarton]

true but how many gloves do you find earlygame that do so? most of them are in act 2 and beyond and even then if youre not confident that you can eliminate something in 1-2 turns or you roll like shit on initiative, that blade ward effect is a lifesaver. I know the item list since I played a shit ton and this elliminates the need to run any other defensive item, at least on my party. And guess what: ppl dont usually do no dmg runs where every attack they make is from a different area code. @@Melth

[@Melth]

@@PuskasMarton I'm not telling you you're wrong to like them. Use them if you like! I do think that there are a pretty good number of offense focused gloves available quite early though. The archery gloves are just a shopping trip and one goblin fight. The sparkle hands will usually be found on the way to getting Zevlor's gloves. And Kushigo's gloves don't even require a fight to get once one is in the myconid village, which can be accessed fairly easily. Even the gloves of the absolute from the first goblin boss have a decent offensive effect, making foes more vulnerable to crowd control or powerful blast spells to follow.

[@PuskasMarton]

The gloves have a save DC of 8 and no modifyers, it never triggered for me. I tested it like a madman since the other Bane effects applied all the time. (Harold, The Baneful, sacreficial axe) You are right though, there are enough of them to arm a party, but I prefer to have a cleric on AoE, healing and buffing duty. Bless and Blade ward on 4 ppl with a single bonus action is too efficient for me to pass up. @@Melth​

[@Melth]

@@PuskasMarton I get the gloves to trigger pretty often. It's true the DC is low, but you do get multiple tries. I guess if I was taking more damage I would consider the Zevlor gloves instead until I go buy one of the two really strong pairs of gloves in githyanki town at least. But I tend to do that fairly early in the game too

[@RebelsAreWe]

Hey Melth! Looking forward to this one.

[@Melth]

Good! I think it was a good one. I recorded it in one session with what will be episode 13, though it ended up being so long that I decided I should cut it into two

[@deathlordkiller11]

Loving the series so far learning so much about a game i had over 200 hours in. Would you be able to turn up the character dialog volume because I struggle to hear the interactions without being on max volume.

[@Melth]

I'll try to boost the game audio further starting in ep 16 (I've already finished 13-15 at a similar volume level)

[@deathlordkiller11]

@@Melth Ok thats great to hear, thank you :)

[@WSPBane]

Thanks for the info about the idol. First time I played I didnt take the quest from Mol cause I didnt realize what the reward was so I ignored it. But that is a great ring and well worth swiping the idol. I was still afraid I might start a riot lol. But with Kharga gone the druids are easier to deal with. Plus that one druid is just an ahole. Even if you turn Kharga to the rightside he is still an ahole so I was glad this time to take out any of them that sided with her. My only regret is I couldnt save Silver!

[@Melth]

Sounds like we're both agreed about what a jerk Marcoryl is! Always glad to kill him along with Kagha. I've seen Silver stupid himself to death in a couple of fights One time I had just beaten the shadow druids and still had a spike growth on the ground. For no reason, silver decided to walk right into it and spike himself to death. At which point Rath attacked me as if it was my fault the wolf has no brains 😅

[@xenbre]

This series is amazing, I like your storytelling and point of view on various thigs. Have you considered lifting this to another level? I mean once you update your setup to get rid of lag you could maybe work on some better production, fine tune volume levels, make that information that you present on screen a bit prettier and maybe put a background behind it, some logo and short intro etc... I have been watching a lot of content about BG3 and RPG's in general for last 20+ years and your content is among the best, it would be a shame if you don't grow this channel and I really think most of what you need to do is just address the lag issue and production quality. Also, you can steal the idol when you clean goblin stronghold, just Mol is near the gate and not in hideout but you can still get the reward. Keep up the good work :)

[@Melth]

Starting on episode 16 I've got a new computer and a new approach to the audio. Beyond that though, I'm not entirely sure what kind of improvements you have in mind. I'm not an expert on videos, and these are the best I know how to make. Glad you enjoy the series so much!

[@xenbre]

@@Melth I meant something like a few seconds intro and outro like a logo for channel with some music, and maybe when you put text overlay over the video to instead pause video and put text on some background or image just for a few seconds so it is easier to read. If you grow the channel enough you could get somebody to do it for you.

[@afxtal]

Oh man I can't wait for Spider Matriarch!

[@Melth]

T-minus 94 hours till the spider matriarch!

[@yhnujmik987]

Wait a second, did you just ask 39:38 if the Tieflings deserve to live if they can't handle one goblin leader still being alive? Lae'zel Approves!!!

[@Melth]

The off screen weakness of the tiefling certainly does bug me a bit! We can see from their stats and sheer numbers that they should be able to take care of themselves against a goblin or two, so it feels very silly to find out that every single one will somehow die if even one goblin leader is alive... Even if you slaughtered every other goblin so that the leader must apparently be soloing the entire tiefling army

[@mikeydg52]

Hello Melth, this series has been very enjoyable to watch but i am curious on why Druid over any other class Lae’zel could’ve been, you explained your reasoning some in previous videos but spore Druid doesn’t seem more impressive compared to any other class as the reaction is weak, and the extra necrotic damage falls off. I’m just curious to hear more about why that Druid is chosen as Druid is my favorite class in Baldurs gate and D&D. Thanks for the content!

[@Melth]

Glad you're enjoying the series! So first of all, given that druid is your favorite class, you probably would agree with me that druid offers a ton of useful spells which I want to have in my party. It's a great controller! And a good buffer and summoner later. I want a druid. Now in 5E the moon druid is brokenly good at low levels, but in BG3 they're pretty worthless because every other druid can transform almost as well as they can. Better in some cases, since other druids can transform and then immediately use a special animal action but moon druids can only transform and then attack. What about Land Druid? Honestly land druid is pretty great. I might pick it if I could use more spells/rest more. Its main perk is getting lots of spells after all. But I can't rest so I can't cast many spells. So land druid wouldn't give me much more sustainable power. Meanwhile the Spore Druid is a massive damage boost in the early game. +1d6 damage apiece on two attacks is great at level 3-4 or so when no one does good damage yet. And the 2d4 reaction attack will be pretty weak later, but I'd argue it's darned good now simply because it's a reaction and thus really good for my action economy. Lae'Zel was certainly doing competitive damage courtesy of her spore druid abilities, and she can basically do those all day. Later on in the game, the spore druid also gets some great spells like Animate Dead, but I would admit that there's probably a middle phase where Land Druid would be better than spore because Spore's necrotic damage has fallen off a bit, and land druid gets enough bonus spells to matter more. But in the late game, spore druid is absolutely the best druid, no question, because there's a stupendously good item that only works for spore druid.

[@mikeydg52]

@@MelthI really appreciate the response! I do agree Druid has some great spells and Lae’zel does great damage, spore Druid is actually my favorite Druid class which says a lot as Druid is my favorite class, I’ve had a lot of trouble finding Druids in hard content in baldurs gate 3 so I was very excited when i saw you took one! I’m going to be keeping up with this series as much as I can. Once again, thanks for the content it’s amazing!

[@Melth]

@@mikeydg52 glad you're enjoying the series! Spore Druid is in a weird place for me, where it's one of my favorite classes mechanically, but one I dislike narratively. I would never want to play a spore druid at an actual table. Who the heck venerates fungal symbiotes that spray necrotic spores everywhere? But in BG3 a druid is always a lot of fun to have in the party

[@yhnujmik987]

A good way to trigger Kaghas necklace is with a goodberry if you have a bonus action. Was great on my Titanstring bow using archer.

[@Melth]

Yeah, that or a healing potion (for people who use healing potions). You can also simultaneously benefit from Volo's ring that basically grants Bless when healing. To check my memory about one thing: most poisons in this game only apply their damage after the enemy's turn. Does Kagha's necklace work that way, or does it apply damage immediately?

[@yhnujmik987]

​@@Melth Fired up an old save and indulged in some intra camp violence to check; my recollection was that it applied the damage to each attack and that looks to be the case. My Swords Bard using Ranged Flourish added the Poison damage to both arrows. The necklace's description says "their weapon becomes coated in magic and deals an additional 1-6 Poison damage." So, its not a normal poison (though the target still had to make a saving throw vs Envenom), but more an magical imbuement like what you can do with that drake glaive. At the time I made the character I saw lots of people hyping ranged swords bards and they seemed to always go double hand crossbows and then maybe even dip thief for an extra bonus action. I knew from previous playthrough that I could get the Mystic Scoundrel ring early in act 3 and that I wanted my bonus actions to go there (and also that there were some good longbows in act 3 - Astarion has longbow proficiency as an elf and was my Swords Bard). So, until Act 3 he combined Hill Giant Str club with Titanstring Bow and the Kagha necklace. That extra damage per arrow made up for losing an offhand attack from twin hand xbows and I had other benefits like greater range.

[@yhnujmik987]

In act 3 that pure bard build was a monster combining the mystic scoundrel ring with diadem of arcane acuity which, when fully stacked gives a +10 to the DC's of your spells. Between Ranged Flourishes and Arrows of Many Targets I'd often get full stacks in the first round of combat and drop a ridiculously strong CC onto one or more targets. Crazy, crazy strong build. Of course, your play through has your restrictions, I'm just throwing this stuff out out there because I'm the kind that likes to know as much as possible and what all the angles are and figure there are others as well. That particular run I set the limit on myself of NO TAVERN BRAWLER which I wouldn't have done if I didn't know how good it was heh. And now you know another way in which limiting your access to healing consumables is costing you :)

[@Melth]

@@yhnujmik987 sounds good! Yeah if you can get a lot of damage bonuses and have swords bard to offset getting fewer attacks than a hand crossbow user, titanstring is definitely a powerful damage dealing build! For me, I think hand crossbows will be better because I can't rest often enough to do a decent number of ranged flourishes Likewise I'd love to be able to heal enough to trigger Kagha's necklace. Maybe I'll try it with goodberries. I have an ok number of level 1 druid and ranger spell slots I could spend to get those and I think it'd be ok per my rules. With The Whispering Promise too it might be pretty good for a while (if that works from eating a goodberry)

[@yhnujmik987]

@@Melth That's why I mentioned goodberries; since you are using a spell there's a real opportunity cost and I would classify them differently than healing potions. With four berries per cast they're the most efficient means for triggering things like the neck and ring. I often stretched out my number of flourishes by using special arrows for my first attack (dunno if I'm doing something wrong, but I can never seem to use them with an extra attack). The Arrow of Many Targets is especially good (though not readily available in Act 1 I don't think) because damage from things like Sharpshooter, the caustic ring, kagha neck, etc is NOT halved. So, I'd usually start with many arrow, fire or necrotic and then follow up with ranged flourish. Is the whispering promise ring available in Act 1? Volo's already replaced my eye and scampered off and I didn't acquire it ... I don't think I've seen a "what do you have to trade" dialog option from him in act 1; do you have to initiate it from the things on the bottom left?

[@jayrobitaille2402]

There are loads of great rings, but 95% of those are specialized. Ring of Protection is one of the true general purpose rings because there is not a single build that does not benefit from +1AC/+1saves when another one of the more general purpose rings that gives +2 acid damage to weapon attacks still requires you to be a fighter/paladin/barbarian/rogue/ranger or other class that regularly does weapon attacks to really benefit from it.

[@Melth]

Yeah, there are lots of rings that are pretty good, or are good on the right build. But whereas there are a ton of magic items in this game which are WAY stronger than any normal d&d items of their class, I'd say the rings are overall conspicuously weak compared to many d&d rings. By the end of my last run, I still had some characters with rings that barely mattered at all. (Other characters wished they had more ring slots to pile on more weapon damage rings and whatnot)

[@eimantastimofejevas9216]

Not sure if anykne asked already, how.astorian turns invisble after kill? I missed that part somewhere 😅

[@Melth]

I gave him the Deathstalker's Mantle, which is a special cloak the dark urge gets. It makes you turn invisible for 2 rounds after getting a kill. It can activate once per round

[@justinmoseley6440]

No killing the hatchlings, going to be interesting how you deal with that, can't wait.

[@Melth]

Certainly did make it tougher!

[@holidaycomplex]

i think the lack of choice in the raphael thing is because a new player may sign a deal with him which they would be bound to for the entire game without full understanding of it. they'd only realize the impact of there actions so many hours later and may want to change there minds. id argue that this isn't even 'metagaming" because someone new to the world of DnD would by default have less understanding about the nature of its world than literally ANY player character they choose. by saving such decisions till they have appropriate knowledge it allows them to make an informed decision. there's a reason why the first act doesn't have many decisions that radically alter the dnd universe or the politics of the sword coast verses the second and third act. of course you may say that the choice should be there for people who know what they are doing, and i think that is fair. however i think keeping the player choice low in this particular interaction was a reasonable enough choice in this instance bc if they sign and then 100 hours in have their first ending fucked by something that happened maybe in the first 5 hours they probably would be veryyyyy upset lol

[@Melth]

I can't agree with that reasoning, if that's why they made their decision. Leaving aside D&D lore, I think the trope of 'Devils are evil and suggest tempting but terrible deals which you should never accept' is one tons of people are familiar with. It would also be easy to have more characters pipe up saying "Don't do this! It's a bad idea!" And if the player does it anyway, that's their fault just like you're allowed to do foolishly risky things like let a mind flayer eat your brain or assume the githyanki will be reasonable. Furthermore, we already HAVE the option to make a terrible deal with him and then change our minds later and fix it with a grand adventure. That's the obvious solution I think. Let us make a bad deal now in act 1, and then when we see it's a bad deal we have the option to fix it in act 3.

[@gorxela8982]

Looking forward to the Spider Matriarch fight, imo it's the most difficult fight of Act 1, especially at levels 3 or 4 when most players probably first encounter it. As for Raphael, well I always got the impression that he is a moderately sized fish thinking himself a huge predator just because for the real big sharks he is beneath notice. After all, what kind of really powerful devil could be killed with all of his servants and in his own House, his domain basically, by small party of lvl 12 adventurers. Him thinking that he could depose Mephistopheles is a lot of ambition and stupidity. Actually, I have a theory that all of the story of BG3 is basically a Mephistopheles' plot, considering how Durge and Gortash managed to steal the Crown so easily and without any repercussions, and Gortash just by accident stumbled upon the Grand Design plans that just so happened to be lying near the Crown. And If you think about it Mephistopheles can benefit from any outcome of the story.

[@Melth]

I have a similar suspicion about Mephistopheles. Though the elder brain also claims credit for the villains 'just happening' to find out various key bits of information that led them into doing crucial things

[@Melth]

I also agree that the spider matriarch fight is a particularly tough boss. Its stats are just very strong across the board and it has dangerous minions too. And then a super mode at half health that's overwhelming. Obviously its biggest weakness is it's own arena. Which I think is good design once in a while. Give us an especially rough boss , but some especially good ways to turn it's environment in our favor, etc.

[@exantiuse497]

You are definitely right about Raphael. People watch his post-credit scenes and go "wow, he's about to become ruler of the multiverse", without realising that he's all talk with nothing to back it up. He THINKS he is some mastermind schemer where everything ends up his way but in reality it's the opposite, no matter what he does he's screwed, either killed by the protagonist or gets the crown, picks a fight with a strong archfiend and gets smushed

[@Melth]

@@exantiuse497 I'd assume though that the vague powers of the crown would turn him from an inconsequential, arrogant twit who just THINKS he's clever into a genuine threat.

[@fabriziopantalone7307]

FYI, you don’t have to search individual character inventories. You can hit tab and there’s a search bar top left to search all inventories at once

[@Melth]

Thanks, yeah I just recently learned that

[@frrmrr4314]

Evening Melth, I personally had lagging issues with BG3 aswell and switching over to playing in Nvidia GeForce NOW has really saved my experience, maybe something for you.

[@Melth]

An interesting idea. One of my friends is using that, though she's using it because she doesn't have a good graphics card. Mine should be more than good enough for even the highest settings it's just... being weird now. In any case, I've been thinking for a while that maybe I should get a desktop computer to reduce fan noise among other things. I'll have one hopefully starting at ep 16, and that should solve this problem too

[@frrmrr4314]

@@Melth Understandably frustrating if you have a set-up that is good enough for even the highest settings, as someone who switched to laptop myself since 2023; Nvidia GeForce NOW was just a life-saver for me to support a high-quality experience. Wish we could help you out more here Melth!

[@Greatmaw-72]

Oh no ended on a cliffhanger 😢, I can’t wait to see spider matriarch fight 🫦

[@Melth]

It'll be... quite an experience!

[@yhnujmik987]

Don't know if any patches have changed things, but I used to make use of the Idol's aura constant apply spam to trigger the Diadem of Arcane Synergy so I'd usually start combat with active already.

[@Melth]

Sadly, I think patch 5 changed it to only work if you inflict a condition on an enemy. If the idol works on enemies, maybe that works? Perhaps testable.

[@MrEightythix]

​@@Melth im certain ive had the effect apply to enemies on runs in the past, havent tested since honour mode dropped though

[@Melth]

@@MrEightythix let me know how it goes if you try it

[@edielungreen]

The artifact protects all companions via Magic Pockets 😜😂🤣

[@Melth]

Of course! They weren't just a convenience, they were a key plot point all along

[@jayrobitaille2402]

SPOILERS: A bit off topic, since you have not gotten this far but I realized that Ketheric is really similar to a lich. This did not occur to me until one streamer I was watching pointed out that he was Undead on his stat block, when I had previously thought that the whole immortality shenanigans kept him alive (the Nightsong keeps him animated, he is otherwise long dead). So he is a higher level sentient undead that basically has an equivalent to a refractory (the Nightsong) and he even looks the part when you get him to transform.

[@Melth]

Yeah, he's definitely lich-like in many respects. Not quite the same and doesn't have any of the typical lich powers, but the parallel is clear

[@joshuanelsen8602]

Edderkop is also the Danish word for spider.

[@Melth]

Makes sense, probably both English and Danish are getting it from a shared Germanic root of some sort

[@bernardofabrica]

Sorry fir the question, but have you already said what the outline of your main character build is? or is that a suprise for the viewer? :p

[@Melth]

I think I've sort of said it. Warlock 2, Lore Bard 10 is the plan. Tons of sustainable damage, unmatched skills, the unique power of Cutting Words to make enemies fail attacks or saving throws, and great casting versatility. Losing out on 6th level spells isn't ideal, but I think it's worthwhile to get those sweet Eldritch Blasts. Especially here on honour mode where haste/bloodlust extra attacks aren't as good but Eldritch blast is as good as ever

[@edielungreen]

If you play as Shadowheart, you find out that she was subjected to a lot of torture and brainwashing as a child 😿

[@Melth]

True! And she also did it to other people. Magical brainwashing is the only reason I don't think she's the evilest party member. Even so, I find it very hard to justify traveling with her in-character most of the time. Shar is the probably the evilest deity in the entire setting, and Shadowheart's stated goals not only work directly against the party (giving the artifact to Sharrans when we need it) but also include extinguishing all light and life in the universe. Really, if our characters are ok with slaughtering mind controlled Absolute cultists it takes some thinking to come up with a good reason they wouldn't just do the same to Shadowheart We as players know she's under magical influence and could also have a redemption arc, but the characters wouldn't have any reason to treat her any differently than one of the random true souls we kill along the way

[@IshyJr]

I am slightly confused as to how your Astarion maintains a high percentage chance to hit his ranged attacks with your Sharpshooter feat on. I am using a shortbow and i almost always have to turn off his feat to get a reasonably high chance to hit. Can you explain what you did with your Astarion? Maybe i missed it. Great series so far!!

[@Melth]

I've stacked up several accuracy boosts on him to compensate for sharpshooter. +1 magic crossbows +2 archery combat style +2 high ground +2 favorable beginnings (on his first attack vs a target) +1 happy And then of course the usual 3 dex and 2 proficiency With the minus five that's still +8 to hit, which is plenty except against high ACs (where I use oil of accuracy or Bless) And then I often give him advantage by either blinding foes or turning him invisible

[@veg70]

I followed the same order of stealing the idol. But mol just doesn't give me dialogue to give the ring. The last honour run I got it tho. But when I started new honour run recently, everything I did is the same as the last one but she just doesn't let me finish the quest. I think it's because I installed tav hair mod. I also can't give noblestalk to Deryth

[@Melth]

I'm not sure. Mods can certainly cause a lot of problems, but there could also be some other cause in a complex game like this.

[@42sraf]

Didn’t watch the video yet incase you talk about it, but I’m curious what are the fights in act 2&3 that you think are going to be very challenging or might even end the run?

[@Melth]

Hm. Well several of the new legendary actions might turn ordinary fights into huge problems. Any of the random death knights that can cast Hellfire Blast or whatever it's called for 20d6 damage are also no joke if I happen to fail my save at the wrong time. At the very least they can annihilate enough summons to cripple my offense for the rest of the act. Gortash's room full of traps is an unpleasant and dangerous boss arena where a lot can go wrong with no chance to react to it. The horde of 10000 undead that try to kill Halsin's portal is no joke, since I won't be using exploits to control them. If I accidentally aggro Gerringothe Thorm without dropping all my money first, she has enough initiative to go first against almost any party and does effectively instant-death damage to any party in an AoE (which is horrible, horrible design incidentally). Not sure what Raphael will be like with both him and Yurgir having legendary actions, and being weaker than I am used to because I won't have as many extra attacks from bloodlust and haste on the new honour difficulty. The biggest threat of all though? If I ever stand next to a chasm without noticing it and get instant killed by some dwarf pushing me into 1 inch deep instant death water or something.

[@42sraf]

@@Melth for the portal defence wall of fire is really good, atleast to get rid of the ravens. Don’t think it counts as cheesing. Yeah, when I played on tactician Gortash was probably hardest fight in the game for me

[@Melth]

@@42sraf on my last tactician run I was able to wipe out 100% of all the enemies attacking the portal before time ran out. I'm hoping to repeat that here, for glory!

[@PillowOfEvil]

What are your pc specs for it to lag this much? I have specs that were mid in 2020, pretty low-mid now and I'm running it on max settings 1440p with zero issues.

[@Melth]

Yeah it's not really a specs problem. Whenever I ask it to auto detect the right settings, it sets to ultra because my specs were really good in 2021 are more than good enough for the game. It used to run smoothly while recording the game too, in my previous series for example. Something broke with patch 5 in particular and made it start lagging and I can't figure out what. In any case as of EP 16 I have a new computer and it runs perfectly again

[@PillowOfEvil]

@@Melth sweet. Once I get that far, that is. I'm following your playthrough with mine, so I end up watching ahead, then falling back to where I left off and then it takes ages to get to where you're at, because I only get to play uninterrupted like 2h a week? Two such sessions if I'm lucky.

[@Melth]

@@PillowOfEvil i know what you mean, I've been having trouble finding more than an hour or two to play per week lately. Especially since I need to spend a good chunk of my free time on editing rather than playing

[@mordecaiplatypus4300]

I doubt it'll happen, but if you end up wiping would you upload it? Would you restart the run?

[@Melth]

I don't think I'd restart the run. I'd probably upload it and continue

[@mordecaiplatypus4300]

@@Melth I hope you make it the whole way and get those golden dice!

[@Melth]

@@mordecaiplatypus4300 i hope I make it all the way too- though I don't think I can get the dice from this run, because as you might recall I got honour mode working via a mod here. The run began before honour mode existed, and then when honour mode came out after I'd already recorded episode 3, I found a mod to apply honour mode changes moving forward

[@FluffiestWalrus]

What are your plans for your level 6 magical secrets? I’m assuming warden of vitality wouldn’t be something you would go for with your ruleset, but do you have any thoughts on it for a more lenient ruleset?

[@Melth]

Hm. I hadn't actually thought about Warden of Vitality. If I understand it right, you basically spend a level 3 spells slot for the equivalent of 20d6 of healing divided among your party? Maybe more if you can get multiple bonus actions? That's about 70 healing overall, a good chunk for a mere level 3 spell slot I suppose! In any other run I'd say it's worthless because there is infinity healing available outside of combat with potions or rests. In a run like this without potions or rests I suppose it could be good. My current plan is to take Counterspell and then either Animate Dead or Hunger of Hadar or maybe this spell now that you point it out.

[@FluffiestWalrus]

@@Melth That's right! 20d6 healing which could be used out of combat to top people off. The other use case is with whispering promise to spread bless to party members in combat (probably pre cast it before combat to save the action and then trigger it each turn since it doesn't require concentration) I think that is particularly valuable since it is a bonus action to trigger during combat and doesn't require concentration so very efficient for action economy. Before you showed the value of dual hand crossbows on every party member it felt like a particularly good usage of the bonus action since there would often be little of value for a bard to use that on

[@fabriziopantalone7307]

@@Melth should probably go back for the bless on heal ring if you do!

[@Melth]

@@fabriziopantalone7307 iirc there are two copies of that right? Grat has one and Volo the other which I can't get?

[@fabriziopantalone7307]

it all stems from volos. sometimes grat has it, presumably because they took it off volo when they captured him. I've also heared stories of it winding up with Roah Moonglow. Still, as long as you're still in A1, it shouldnt be lost to you if you can still access all of them.@@Melth

[@Wiggins773]

Items such as that ring are unavailable for those characters that follow the urge or would do good alignment tasks . I don't like in this game how reward items spawn from the ether. Siding with the goblins for RP really limits item choice even though they should be lootable. Just my opinion.

[@Melth]

It's weird because a lot of items in this game DON'T just spawn out of thin air when you do a quest. A ton of quest rewards are available early via theft or bartering or trading. So the few like this ring stand out

[@Michael-br7ln]

Why do you get invisibility with astarian after killing something?

[@Melth]

Astarion has the cloak you get from being Dark Urge that gives you invisibility for a couple of rounds after every kill

[@alikay9721]

Love the series, but if I might suggest turning the voice audio in game up a bit, I find the discrepancy between the volume of your voice and the character's voices too big so I either have to settle for hearing you normally and them not at all or hearing them normally but having your voice be too loud.

[@Melth]

I keep turning up the game volume a bit episode after episode, and I'll keep working on it I guess! To me with headphones at least, both sound very clear at the present volume. I already recorded up to EP 15 at roughly this current volume level, but I'll try something new starting at 16

[@exantiuse497]

I really hate Karlach's reasoning with the soul coins. For one, she's supposed to be a heroic character, not someone that gobbles on people's souls for small damage boosts. Liches and demons eat souls, she is neither. For two, in prior lore destroying a soul coin freed the imprisoned soul within. Larian for whatever reason changed the lore so that destroying the coin destroyed the soul as well. If they kept the original lore it would make more sense that Karlach wants to consume them, she gets a power boost and frees a tortured soul, win-win. Larian changed the lore to make the writing make LESS sense!

[@Melth]

I agree, I always hated that. At least the impression I get from Larian's lore is that there's simply no way whatsoever to free the soul no matter what we do with the coin, so we might as well use it rather than let a devil use it. (And maybe we can cause deflation in the devil economy if we destroy their money supply, sending them into a long recession 😂)

[@exantiuse497]

@Melth Yea, that must be what they were going for, but I still don't buy Karlach's attitude for it. Any non-evil character should have issues with consuming souls, damned or not The closest real world analogue would be consuming human flesh. "There's no way to bring this guy back to life so why let his body go to waste". If a supposedly morally good character suggested that I'm sure most people would question the quality of the writing

[@Melth]

@@exantiuse497 well hm, I'd actually take more or less exactly that position there was some kind of food shortage or whatever and we were trying to save the world. If no one is harmed and someone is helped or possibly helped, niceties and food taboos are much less important than saving lives. Karlach at least arguably already knows she's in a situation like that, and she definitely will know she's on a quest to save the world next time the dream visitor visits. I still agree that it seems like weird, out-of-character dialogue from her in particular because she's an idealist rather than a pragmatist.

[@itsMrNiceGuy]

I actually hated mol for many reasons. The start was she gave me a 10 count and I was like what you going to do about it child. I then teleported did like 3 hours of gameplay killed the goblins came back to everyone happy then got close that a guard mol snitched to me on. Then I saved scum for a nat 20 for the dam roll. Then I realized the game allows you to knock out kids. Sucks I couldn’t. Kill her only 😭. But I realized in play-through 2 how irresponsible she is. And my dis like just got worst for her each playthrough.

[@Melth]

What I hated most about my first Mol experience is that after I talked my way past the guards (who apparently believed the known liar/thief rather than the hero who had saved them from first Kagha and then the goblins and had also personally saved like 60% of their children)... they apparently didn't get the memo about my familiar. For the rest of the playthrough, they kept trying to arrest my darned raven. With the Raven having -1 Charisma on a DC 20 check, all I could do was hope for a 20 that never came as they endlessly threw it in jail and then I sneaked it out until the next time my party wandered near a guard.

[@unwise6518]

1 in 400 crit miss with Shovel with advantage, wow

[@Melth]

Yeah, I don't like to complain about bad luck so I didn't say much about that at the time, but I did notice it was 1/400 when it happened 😅

[@moonman6359]

I typically have a character run down the well with enhanced leap, feather fall, and sanctuary very early on. Like, level 2. In turn based mode you can grab a lot of the loot down there and quickly get to the underdark. Lots of fast XP and overleveled loot.

[@Melth]

Yeah, there are lots of places you can just run in in turn based mode and grab lots of treasures and then escape for free if you have things like Jump and Sanctuary. I try not to do much of that though since it feels like an exploit to me. Not saying it's not clever, just not satisfying to me

[@moonman6359]

@@Melth Yeah, everyone needs to draw their own line somewhere.

[@thomasbotond2152]

I lost my honor mode run on the final boss yesterday

[@Melth]

Oh no! One of the spheres of annihilation destroying a platform, or something else?

[@thomasbotond2152]

@@Melth Yep! Fight ended two turns early because I had nowhere left to stand

[@Melth]

@@thomasbotond2152 I'm sorry to hear that, it sounds really frustrating after all that work

[@nio804]

Could you increase the game volume just a bit? It's difficult to hear even when you're not speaking and I'd like to be able to listen to the voice lines. I don't know if you can do it with your setup, but keeping the game audible and reducing the game volume dynamically when you're speaking would be nice.

[@Melth]

Hm. I don't know of a good way I can do that dynamically. I'd have to go through the entire video clip by clip lowering the game volume I think, which would be prohibitively time-consuming. I'll see if I can find a way. Honestly I'm a bit confused at this point because I've raised the game volume high enough that I can always hear it very distinctly when I listen to the video, but you're not the only one saying it's still too quiet. If I went much louder, I think it might get difficult to hear me when I'm speaking at the same time as a character

[@nio804]

@@Melth I unfortunately can't help with specifics either, but it sounds like a common use case so if you can figure out the correct keywords there's probably some software that'll do it. For me the problem is that if I raise the game volume high enough that it's comfortable, your voice becomes too loud.

[@NecroMantis]

Melth. You can use a compressor to duck the volume of the game when you speak if need be.

[@Melth]

@@NecroMantis hm. The only time I've used compressors in the past was for balancing Skyrim's hugely loud spellcasting sounds with its quiet music and dialogue. But using a compressor on my own audio channel always seemed to ruin it. Could you explain more about what you have in mind? My usual situation is that I have one track of game audio and one track of my audio, which I need to remove some laptop sound from. Both start off very quiet, and then I amplify both by about 13 db

[@NecroMantis]

Of course. I'd be glad to help. I can't speak to the specifics of OBS' onboard effects but you would put the compressor on the games audio channel and have it "listen" to the output of your voice audio. In music, we would call it sidechaining. When you speak, it automatically reduces the volume of your games audio channel. Then tweak to taste. Whatever plugin you use should have a sidechain or ducking feature that you can route audio into for this effect. Sorry if I explained that horribly.

[@bycensus3628]

Comment for the algorithm.

[@Melth]

Thanks! May the algorithm smile upon us 😅

[@WeAreLegion1]

I know this is an old video and you may have fixed your performance issues on your pc by now but i used to have some issues with the game and tried switching from directx11 to vulkan or vice versa and it fixed the problems for me.

[@Melth]

@@WeAreLegion1 thanks for the suggestion. On this computer the Vulkan option never worked for whatever reason. In any case, around episode 15 or so I got a newer computer and it has been smooth sailing ever since

[@WeAreLegion1]

@Melth cool glad you got it working better I know how annoying it can be lagging. Great job on the series.