The Deadliest Foe in the Game. Baldur's Gate 3, Nine Hells Challenge Episode 71

[@kaimuu]

I've never seen that secret room under the tollhouse before, crazy just how many things you miss even when you think you've gone through everything

[@Melth]

@@kaimuu the game is quite amazing that way! I'm still learning about new things too

[@semioriginalguy]

It’s been an absolute treat following the series. I haven’t had the chance to play BG3 but this has been a treat to watch the game through this gameplay.

[@Melth]

Thank you! It's always nice to hear that people enjoy my series even if they're unfamiliar with the game

[@semioriginalguy]

@ I played the heck out of BG 1+2 so this is a nice addition to the lore

[@VERY_TALL_MAN]

Great stuff, I can’t wait to see how you tackle Moonrise Towers and the Oubliette! The oubliette and the subsequent mind flayer colony after Ketheric pt.1 are some of my favorite parts of the game. The whole level - design, art, atmosphere, etc… is fleshed out to a degree that I haven’t seen anywhere else. Such detail for mind flayers and their colonies makes them that much more creepy, and that much cooler as enemies! I also love that they give you that whole level to go all out and really play with all the tools they’ve given you. Good luck! …also I hope you dont die on the moving platform. I HATE that bug!

[@Melth]

@@VERY_TALL_MAN moving platforms are almost as dangerous as Gerringothe! I definitely enjoy the moonrise towers battles quite a lot. I just uploaded the mindflayer colony video a week or so ago. It's definitely great part of act 2! Though for me, there were a couple of teasing hints of how it COULD have been even better. The resonance stone you find for example is a lore thing from the 3.x era when mindflayer society and culture was much more fleshed out and interesting. I'd have loved to be sneaking into a mindflayer colony from that era even more! Likewise the one secret githzerai you can talk to is cool, but reminds me how I've been saying it would have been great to have Githzerai in other parts of the game.

[@rotoninja]

Hello, just wanted to thank you for the hours of conduct and helping me get through Honour Mode first playthrough. Or, should I say strugglethrough as my MC was an Orc Barbarbian leading a lot of conversation failures. Also, I tend to focus on fashion over function 😄 - anyways, it worked out.

[@Melth]

Nice job on your honour mode run! I'm glad I could help

[@hi117117]

You actually stabbed him 6 times and he stopped complaining!

[@Melth]

Yep! Turns out he wanted 6 stabbings all along

[@petewilcock]

For the second shatterable floorboards, you can just attack and destroy the gold statue. It falls forward and crashes through them. A fun interaction I found.

[@Melth]

That's really neat!

[@Rontti_]

Can't wait for Moonrise Towers battles and Myrkul fight especially. I wonder if he's even possible to defeat without taking damage with his legendary action retaliation

[@Melth]

I can only think of 2 ways to avoid damage from Myrkul's legendary action (blinding him doesn't work for some reason, even though it does work on most other legendary actions): 1) Trigger it by having the summoned Shadow from the shadow lantern attack him first. That shadow is your one and only available ally that is 100% immune to necrotic damage 2) Be in a globe of invulnerability at the time Unfortunately I can't do either of those things. I just recorded the video of beating Myrkul a couple of days ago, and the only damage I took was one poke from that legendary action. Per my challenge rules, I'm not allowed to use scrolls of invulnerability yet. And I didn't have the shadow available because I unsummoned it for being useless many videos ago.

[@martinmalic]

This boss is quite vulnerable to banishment due to her low charisma

[@Melth]

@@martinmalic just like Balthazar!

[@lnsatiabie4364]

In my first playthrough (full blind of course, as intended), there were many many things that I missed in act 2 because of how hidden they were or because some random seemingly unconnected NPC died in act 1. However the toll house is one area I voluntarily passed up on, after getting full wiped before my first action on balanced difficulty.

[@Melth]

@@lnsatiabie4364 understandable! Although there are a ton of secret areas in here, it turns out you didn't miss much in terms of useful gear or setting info

[@ttmcoffee6806]

18:24 you don't really need to expend limited resources on the vault strength check, since you can retry that check any number of times with no downside

[@Melth]

Good to know. I could have had a more suitable character do it too, but I mostly wanted to just get it done quickly to move on with the video

[@danny234555]

Yeah, Tollhouse caused a few deaths in my party's first run. I 100% thought that throwing 1 gold at a time would cause SOMETHING to happen. I did that for about 5 minutes straight (mostly to annoy my friends), but it's just a loop. At the end of the day when we saw the ability that was causing her damage, we just dropped all the gold we were carrying onto the floor and she was useless.

[@Melth]

Yeah, once you know how it works, it's easy to deal with My first battle against her, pretty much the whole team got OHKOEd and then I looked through the combat log to find what kind of stupid ability had done 500d12 damage or whatever, and then look up how it worked on the wiki

[@Deerber]

Mmmmh, interesting. In my first blind honor run I also remember having a hard fight here, as I didnt know about the gold scaling (duh). I was lucky enough to have spread my party around though, and I guess that's what saved me. She downed one but I managed to take her down before she could do the same to the others. As a matter of fact, I didn't even realise the attack had an AoE until now, lol. The fact that it's also AoE is WILD XD

[@Melth]

Nicely done! As I recall, I'd just come down a ladder so I was badly clustered up and got annihilated as a result.

[@maelstrrom2824]

It's hard to gain approval with Minthara during most of Act 2 but certain dialogue options after the Myrkul fight give you a lot of approval all at once. I guess I got lucky with initiative rolls whenever I fought Gerringothe...side note: I like using the initiative stat stick bows but the trade off is that I don't always have dual hand crossbows on my characters

[@Melth]

The stat stick +3 initiative bow is certainly one of the best items in the game! And I do sometimes get out the Act 1 +1 initiative bow when things are desperate and I need every little advantage I can get.

[@man_apologist]

the battlemage gloves would be fantastic with the hat or cap or whatever of arcane acuity, but theyre bugged and dont work at all and i think its been that way since release lol

[@Melth]

@@man_apologist a sad waste of a very fun item idea!

[@heisenberg9236]

Do you stream live or only post videos?

[@Melth]

I've never streamed, though I do sometimes think about branching out to straming

[@SaturnAT839]

Not to be nitpicky, but you can fight He Who Was when he has full HP I'm pretty sure.

[@Melth]

@@SaturnAT839 I suppose that's true, though he'd die effortlessly either way

[@MrMaurixz]

Hello again Melth, i've come back with another quick question, i'm sure someone must have asked this before, but i'll ask it anyways. I know that, as per the rules of this challenge, if a character dies, they're not coming back, but what would you do if Bhaalista were to somehow kick the bucket?

[@Melth]

@@MrMaurixz probably restart the run if he died

[@MrMaurixz]

@Melth Ah, I see, let us hope it doesn't come down to that then, but if the whole series so far is something to go by, I doubt that will happen, great job on the series!

[@Melth]

@MrMaurixz thank you!

[@harmennl21]

Hey. Just curious. Where are the latest age of mythology retold videos? It's become a bit of a Sunday ritual for me to watch those before I go to sleep. Really missed the one last week.

[@Melth]

I've been frustrated about that series because just after I finished the Greek campaign on Titan, they released a harder difficulty. I don't want to redo it all, but it also feels like the series isn't perfect anymore because now a harder mode exists.

[@harmennl21]

​@@Melth yeah i read about that difficulty. Haven't played it yet myself. I still find titan hard (and I don't even dare to attempt a deathless run). I do hope you continue with the series in one way or another. I really enjoy watching someone play the game and beating it with such skill plus I'm a Greek mythology nerd myself and enjoy your comments about the mythology of it all. Either way I can always rewatch your original series in which you did the original game deahtless. (for the fourth time)

[@Rafalord100]

@@Melthi think you should just keep playing from where you are, but on the harder setting from now on

[@Cerventous]

How do you have so much cash! That's wild

[@Melth]

@@Cerventous the cash only tells half the story. I also have an absolutely insane amount of value in scrolls and consumables that I was able to buy at fair value and could sell for fair value too, converting them back into another 50,000 or something in cash with nothing lost. Basically the key is just to know how prices work, which I talked about in a couple of videos. I only sold treasure with a character with maxed out persuasion, and only sold it to people who had 100 friendliness toward me. Thus getting the maximum amount of gold. This makes a huge difference. Likewise, I used my high persuasion character to do all the buying too. And in the early game where I couldn't max out my persuasion, I bought and sold as little as possible. Only selling enough treasure to buy things I needed immediately. Waiting until my persuasion modifier was higher.

[@Cerventous]

@@Melth Impressive. I've noticed that in your videos. Mega-optimisations. I've taken a few leaves out of your book and am applying it to my own campaign. However, it seems that I've been very willy-nilly purchasing scrolls and arrows and probably won't end up using all of them! I find it hard to know what I will be needing, now I have 10 scrolls of planar binding haha and now am struggling for cash. I have really enjoyed your videos, your approach is ruthlessly efficient (when possible) and learning about the wider lore has made me enjoy the game a lot more so thanks!

[@Melth]

@Cerventous I'm glad to hear my tips were helpful! The nice thing about extra consumable items is that, in the late game, if you can get a party member to have 15 persuasion, then you can sell those items for their fair value in gold. So if you realize you have too many of a particular scroll, nothing stops you from trading it in for gold or buying another more useful scroll or something with no money lost. To get to 15 persuasion, you'll want expertise (8), the ring of geniality you can buy from Barcus (1), and then usually a Cha modifier of +6 (attainable in act 2 with the Shar blessing or in act 3 with the hat called Birthright from Sorcerous Sundries or with the Shar mirror bonus or with Ulder Ravengard's sword.

[@nepereta3]

Curious: do you use the draconic glaive that can enchant other weapons?

[@Melth]

@@nepereta3 yes, that's currently active on one of Astarion's crossbows

[@hobbyhobbyhobbyhobby]

bro how do you have spell slots without ever long resting lmao

[@Melth]

@@hobbyhobbyhobbyhobby I use them very carefully! I make every single spell count. A few other things also help restore level 1 spells in particular, like using the spelldrinker bow every short rest for every character