Welcome to the write-up for playthrough 7!
Character
I wanted to play a monoclass druid, as I have never really focused on that class before. Sure, we get Halsin and Jaheira, but they come in fairly late game, and I usually re-spec them, or don’t keep them around. My original plan for this druid was much less about ‘balance’ than Halsin is — I wanted her angrier, harsher, more of a Poison-Ivy eco-terrorist type. I wanted her name to be reflective of her incredibly thorny nature.
Therefore, meet Honeylocust!
While I initially was only going for Poison Ivy in spirit, I seem to have matched her aesthetic as well. Or maybe the bright red hair just works really well on the greenish skin.
As it turns out, it was a bit harder to be this harsh druid-first character than I thought. Not only does the game not-so-subtly push druids to be kind and loving to all living creatures, but there was competition.
There is already a character that pushes for isolation with nature and against outside forces: Kagha, the snake mommy that plays the ‘villain’ in the first conflict you come across in the game.
Kagha hates the fact that the druid grove has taken in outsiders/refugees. She blames them for all the issues of the outside world, scapegoats them for anything that goes wrong, and uses inflammatory language about them. Her plan is to Build A Wall of impenetrable thorns to block out the entire outside world. While some of the other druids speak up against this, most of them agree with her or are in the camp of “Well, it’s harsh, yes, but what else can we do? They shouldn’t have been here in the first place, and we need to look out for ourselves.”
My initial plan was to agree with her and push her toward isolationism. I wanted to see what would happen, particularly since my goal was to romance Halsin, who is indisposed at the beginning of the game (thus opening the door for Kagha’s coup) What would happen when he got back to the grove and it was walled off? Could his magic override it? Could he talk Kagha off the cliff through the wall? Would he hold off entirely on joining my party out of guilt?
The problem was that in order to do this, I would have to turn my back on the refugees in the grove. At first the task was to convince them to leave of their own volition. However, their leader explained that they cannot because of almost-certain death due to the risks on the road. That’s when the task turned to forcing them out anyway, by violent means if necessary, implying that the refugees would leave if their leader were to ‘disappear’.
Yeah, I just couldn’t do this. I hope I don’t need to explain why.
Another problem I discovered is that early game druid is very difficult. They don’t have any damage cantrips, and they aren’t proficient with any bow but shortbows. This means that they don’t do well at long distance, and have to be within melee range. However, early druids are surprisingly good at melee! This is because of shillelagh, a bonus action cantrip. It uses the spellcasting modifier for damage instead of strength, which was good, because those little twig arms didn’t have much strength.
Difficulty level
I stayed in Tactician and did keep my mods, but with a different overall feel.
Over a third of my mods were purely cosmetic: the pretty outfits that Honeylocust and Shadowheart are wearing, new hairstyles and faces, etc.
Another third were user-friendly interface kind of mods: several are improvements to the tooltips to make certain icons more visible, some make the characters move faster outside of battle so that she isn’t slowly meandering around trying to find things, some to speed up the digging animation.
I did keep the adjustable party limit mod, not to have a larger party running around, as I found that both too easy for combat and too cumbersome to get around. But the larger party limit makes it easier to bring several people out at the same time as the hirelings in order to get buffed. For example, I knew that I was going to use Wyll, Shadowheart, and Gale, but wanted to have Astarion do some thieving first. So all five of us, and the three hirelings leave camp in a group of eight, and shuffle around doing buffs. Then I dismiss the hirelings, dismiss Gale, and have a buffed Astarion as my fourth. I point him at whatever poor bastard is laboring under the weight of so many coffers, and off he goes. He brings the goodies back, gets a pat on the head, and then gets dismissed back to camp. Gale comes in, and I can start my adventuring for the day, without having to constantly swap hirelings in and out to buff.
Of the remaining third of mods, about half do make the game easier: gold becomes weightless (not other consumables, that is a different mod) so that’s one fewer thing to have to juggle around, and I got an extra feat at level 2 as well of level 4, more like typical D&D.
However, I did install just as many mods to make it difficult – extra encounters, more enemies, tactician enhanced to add extra HP and sometimes extra actions to enemies. As a result, I found battles to be much harder in this game than it was in previous playthroughs. I got a little cocky, and I messed up the timing of a big battle. As a result, one of my companions ended up making a very fine impression of raspberry jam.
Goals
I wanted to use the characters I don’t frequently use, so I kept Shadowheart, Wyll, and Jaheira in the group almost constantly. There were times that I would occasionally switch back to usual favorites like Karlach, and she’d have 4 level-ups she’d have to catch up on. It was weird. That being said, I did get more banter I haven’t seen before, since these characters were rarely out together.
One of the small goals I gave myself this playthrough was to create my own library at camp. Books and tomes are scattered throughout the world, on tables and bookshelves and nightstands. Sometimes they are plot-specific, but the majority of them are just fun things filling in the world. There’s silly ‘closed door’ style romance novels, historical texts, opinion pieces, and even small chapters of fictional novels. It’s a lot of world-building that was put in for something that many people may not even have the patience to read.
In previous playthroughs, I had noticed that many of the books were part of a set. “A is for Azuth, and other Gods” being one of them—a set that describes the gods alphabetically, each book going into three of them. I found books labeled Part XI, and wondered if I had come across I-X and just didn’t remember. I ended up finding II, III, VI, VII, IX, and XI. I can’t say that I found every book, so this could be user error, or that the writers intentionally did not fill in each one, maybe because they ran out of time, or maybe to make it even more realistic.
In the end, I had a library at camp that contained one of every book I had come across in the world. I left out memos, notes, ads, and pamphlets. I only collected what I considered to be actual books. By the time the game ended, I had 215 books in my camp library.
The downside to keeping it is that each book can sell for 14 gold, so 215 books meant 3,010 gold pieces that I left on the shelf! Luckily, by playthrough 7, I have become quite the loot goblin, and I could make up for it by selling everything else. Whatever I couldn’t sell enough to buy, I could just steal.
I also continued my search for the stuffed animal collection in BG3, and found more than I ever had before. The final count was 31 stuffed bears, 6 “unfinished” stuffed bears, 3 “surprise” teddy bears, and 6 stuffed owlbear toys. If we count them all, then grand total of 46. As a reward, I decided to have a picnic in the park with all my new friends.
Druid-specific
One of my goals was to explore being a druid as much as possible – wild shape to go into the burrows everyone else is “waaaay too big to fit”, using all the druid-exclusive dialogue, and generally being much more about nature than a true Baldurian (the game assumes your character is from Baldur’s Gate, regardless of what you headcanon as your own backstory)
I did find that there is much more druid-specific dialogue in the game than there were for previous monoclasses like Persephone the Shadow Sorceress last game. I would estimate that there are maybe three times as many druid-only lines than there are for the other monoclasses I’ve played. it’s one of those little details that makes it fun for me to try new runs.
I did stick with my initial role-playing of being someone that was sick of civilization’s shit, and was not going to pull punches. Therefore, this was a lethal run, the opposite of Persephone’s non-lethal run. I only turned non-lethal on a couple of times, and one of them was to try to avoid killing a hyena. (It did not work)
However, this also meant that I permanently killed Bill’s favorite character. To be honest, there is no reason NOT to kill her in Act 1 unless you already know (or have someone guide you) to spare her because she can join your party later. Given that Minthara is very anti-druid at the time you meet her, well, Honeylocust is very much about throwing the last punch.
Another goal in this playthrough was to find out what was going on with the dying tree. When you explore the Lower City, you come across a dragonborn druid trying very hard to heal a dying tree planted in the middle of the concrete. I have never understood whether this was a quest that got abandoned, or just a bit of worldbuilding, or just a tease. I was hoping with a druid character there, it might shed more like, but alas, no. The dragonborn druid doesn’t even acknowledge you any differently.
I was sure there had to be something to this. I was a druid with a druid lover. I would figure this out. I cast high level healing spells. I threw healing potions at it, remedial potions, elixirs of colossus, full water barrels. I cast restoration spells, remove curse, everything I could think of.
Nothing. This poor tree was stuck dying in the concrete no matter what I tried, alas.
I also tried to pick the options that were very animal-centric no matter what — giving in to whatever they wanted, asking after them, talking to them. It did not always go well.
You can see my Arcane Tower post for why I think this guy is an asshole.
Hirelings
My hirelings this time were Prunus (one of my favorite genus of trees), Mallow (one of my favorite types of outdoor garden plants, often symbolizing protection), and Lantana (an ornamental plant that often causes contact dermatitis to those who touch it) Each one designed to look similar to one of my favorite plants of their type.
Prunus stayed a full cleric, because warding bond, aid, and death ward are the backbone of hireling buffs.
Lantana stayed a full druid, because longstrider and heroes feast (in later levels) are a necessity for large parties.
Mallow, however, got changed around. She started in one level of wizard as usual, in order to be able to get mage armor, but then kept going in it. When she got to a subclass, she chose transmutation wizard, which has the possibility of making a DC 15 medicine check every time she does alchemy, and if she succeeds, she makes TWO of that potion instead of just one. Bill has already gone in depth on DC and checks work, so suffice it to say that Mallow went one level into rogue to get expertise in medicine, giving her an overall major boost for rolling, plus guidance giving a 1d4 (anywhere between 1-4) bonus when she worked on potions. Her success rate turned out to be somewhere around 94+%. You can find her full guide in Bill’s alchemy post.
Romance
It isn’t surprising that I romance Halsin in every playthrough where I have a poly partner, but the goal of this one was to find out if there was any difference in a monogamous relationship with him, and if the character was also a druid.
I turned down every character that tried to get with my Honeylocust (and who can blame them, she’s gorgeous) but I miscalculated one thing: Gale is so starved for connection that his standards are low. I think I chose the dialogue about petting his cat (not a euphemism) and it turned into an automatic semi-flirting scene that I did not intend. From then on, everyone started acting like we were in a relationship.
I ended up just ignoring every subsequent cutscene or bid for connection, which felt a little mean, but eventually the game realized that we were passing up a relationship, and Gale took it in stride. By the time that Halsin speaks his heart at the beginning of Act 3, my Honeylocust was “free to roam as nature intended.”
Halsin didn’t actually have anything different in the conversation where he proposes a relationship, which was disappointing. In the other playthroughs, he has brought up my other partner and states that he wants their approval (and maybe someday, their participation). In this one, he doesn’t bring it up, and the dialogue skips right to the part where he explains his poly standpoint.
However, there is a hilarious druid dialogue that occurs the morning after That Sex Scene.
I also found some more in-world party banter that I hadn’t seen before, including this gem (might not be accurate, as my memory is fuzzy from giggling):
Lae’zel: You’ve quite the appetite, Halsin. I’ll wager that you’ve bedded as many foes as you’ve killed.
Halsin: Hmm. Difficult to count that. A chimera has three heads. Does that count as one or three?
Lae’zel: A chimera must have been a challenging kill.
Halsin: Oh, kill… yes.
Oh yeah. Halsin may sound and act like a big sweet supportive lunk (and he is), but he’s also one of the absolute freaks in the game.
In total, there isn’t much that is different in a monogamous relationship with Halsin. He is still just as eager to start whether it is mono/poly, he still throws just as much of himself into it, and he still gives you the same option at the end of the game as to whether you want to go with him into the life he is planning.
He’s a sweetie, and always very communicative. It is a much more pastoral ending than some of the others (riding off on the back of a dragon, fighting devils in hell, etc) but hey, 50 years of Romantic era poetry can’t be wrong.
Wrap Up
If my goal for this playthrough had simply been to see what romancing Halsin monogamously would be like, I would have been disappointed. since there wasn’t much change. And to be fair, it is getting difficult to give myself new goals on things. However, this playthrough, I also got to monoclass a druid the whole way, and discover many talk options that wouldn’t have come up otherwise. I also got to have much more difficult battles due to all the extra mods, to the point that I’d lost a couple of companion characters. It was challenging enough that I thought it was fun.
The goal I am setting myself for next game is to try to do it “solo” mode. Meaning I will be turning down each companion that tries to join the party, and going it lone-wolf style. It isn’t going to be entirely solo though, as I still want to romance someone. Perhaps a character I haven’t romanced yet, although I’ve seen it a couple of times. Someone who wasn’t in this playthrough. Someone who would join me in the folie-a-deux “you and me against the world, babe.”
I would insert a photo here except she wasn’t in this playthrough.
However, I am predicting that in a dual run, the next playthrough will be extremely difficult for the Isobel fight. Isobel is a friendly character we meet in act 2, and it is absolutely vital to keep her alive. The problem is that she pretty much has a suicide wish. Despite me casting Sanctuary (which makes you invulnerable to damage unless you attack first) and literally walling her with a ring of allies, the ditz runs out and tries to attack people.
Well. That’s a concern for next time. At least for this time, I walked away feeling like I did good for nature, met most of my playthrough goals, and left the BG3 world a brighter place.
