Minthara is one of Baldur’s Gate 3’s most interesting companions, but only a select few people tend to see much of the Drow Paladin in their playthrough because recruiting her typically requires you to help her slaughter Tiefling refugees. Despite this, fans have found creative workarounds to recruit her without having to engage in genocide, but in Baldur’s Gate 3’s fifth patch, Larian has implemented a streamlined way to add her to your team.
According to the patch notes, Minthara will now appear in Act 2 at Moonrise Towers if she is knocked out in her boss fight in Act 1’s Goblin Camp, rather than killed. To do this, you’ll have to switch to non-lethal attacks during the fight so you aren’t dishing out fatal blows in the battle, and we’ve got a guide on how to do that if you need some help. So if you don’t actually take her out for good, she’ll show up a few hours later when you reach Moonrise Towers in the Shadow-Cursed Lands and her story will continue from there. It still requires a bit of forethought, but now you won’t have to play things out of order, use Polymorph to turn her into a goat, and then use Dominate Beast to drag her all the way to Moonrise Towers yourself.
I’m of two minds on this. I liked that Minthara was essentially a “hidden” party member for people willing to do reprehensible things and that we wouldn’t all get to see every character’s story in each playthrough. I love difficult choices, and making a call about how willing you are to do evil things to establish a relationship with someone is a compelling decision. But I also really respect the lengths fans went to in order to try and circumvent this restriction, and because it worked within the game’s systems, Baldur’s Gate 3 recognized it accordingly. So if nothing else, Larian including this option feels like a “gg” from the developers to its players.
Minthara’s new recruitment method is only one of the many things included in Patch #5, which also brings a new epilogue and permadeath option.
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