Topic: Baldur's Gate 3

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@Th3solution Oh, Sol, don't ever worry about boring me! If I was bored of you, I wouldnt have pages upon pages of exchanges with you over the years. You may have noticed we have an equal love for yapping, and I'm not just putting that on as an act for you! Promise. (Future Tjuz here: apparently I have instantly proven my verbosity in this same message, as I need to split it in two to even post all of what I wrote.) Glad to hear the romantic paths are open to all genders. I suppose it'd be odd if they'd limit it in this particular game with non-binary being an option as gender. What would you base the romantic options on in the case of playing a non-binary character, had they wanted to stick to stricter options? If they would've made that as the only option to romance all, then there'd be no reason ever to choose specifically male or female since you can present yourself either way as non-binary anyway. It would've done nothing but open a completely unnecessary can of worms.

I haven't played either of the original two games. My CRPG experience is limited to Divinity: Original Sin and Wasteland 3. Clearly I have a knack for jumping in with the third of a franchise. The thing with the old CRPG games is that I find myself turned off at the prospect of limited voice acting as well as knowing that they were a lot more complicated than the ones I've played. At least the first I'll be exposing myself to with [i[Rogue Trader[/i] eventually, since that doesn't have full voice-acting either. Maybe that'll end up softening the blow on that front and make me more open to the older fare if I don't mind it as much as I think I would. The fact that there's returning characters you mention does now give me fear of missing out... but oh well, you can't have it all. I apparently already have a decade ahead of me with this game alone!

Speaking of the fear of missing out, you just gave me the worst possible answer to my innocently posed question. I knew you would answer honestly! How dare you? I just told you I wouldn't even be able to live with missing out on Minthara, and you go ahead and tell me there's a bunch of other major side quest chains I could miss out on if I don't do everything perfectly. This game is going to test my limits in terms of trying not to Google literally everything possible to miss the least amount of content. At least I'll have you by my side as I go along, so I'd appreciate any heads-up on stuff you think I might appreciate that I should be careful not to lock myself out of as I update you on my adventures! I really wonder where on this 100 to 300 hour scale I will end up landing. I'm going to assume positively somewhere in the middle, since despite my best efforts, I doubt I'll end up being quite as thorough as you were.

And don't worry, Karlach! I will save all the Tieflings I possibly can. I think I've already helped out every little ***** part of Mol's enterprise. If my morality is able to overcome the aiding of petty thieves, I should have no further issues helping the Tieflings to the best of my ability. Famous last words. I did already see there was an achievement for saving all possible Tieflings from certain death, which... I must admit was part in my decision not to straight up murder Pandirna. It all comes back to this woman. She truly lives in my mind rent-free. I can't promise I've saved them all up to this point, because lord knows what I've missed already, but I think I'm doing pretty good on that front at the very least. Let's hope I didn't accidentally miss anyone I desperately needed to help for Karlach's sake!

Speaking of Karlach, I have now officially met her. Remember when I told you I was going in a straight line to her and kept getting distracted? Yeah, turns out this line wasn't actually so straight after all. In fact, I just realised as I came to her that I already saw this NPC quite a few hours ago and simply didn't clock it was her. I must've gotten turned around somewhere and thought i was working my way towards her as I actively walked away from her... Oh well, she's with me now! I have been wondering if I screwed up in one place earlier. I got to Waukeen's Rest. That one town that's entirely on fire and is over a bandit hideout. Wyll was saying to me I could've done more to save the civilians who were still in there. I'm not sure how I should've done so, because they were already dead by the time I saw any of them except for the few guards still prancing around! My theory is that either 1) he's a victim-blamer and taking advantage of my need to help every NPC to make me feel bad, or 2) I shouldn't have taken a long rest standing right at the entrance. Maybe the passage of time is what made me unable to save civilians I might have otherwise been able to. Oops if so. If that's true though.... why did you sleep like a little angel and not warn me, Wyll?!

I can totally understand struggling with the combat. I can, because in spite of my previous experiences, I'm not always doing too hot either. Let's just say Withers has already gotten some good business out of me by this point. Sometimes I'll just run into combat headfirst only to realise afterwards... wait, I'm so dead. That actually happened earlier with one of the Gnoll groups, but that brazen display paid off when I got the whole sequence where you could use your tadpole to control the leader of the pack and have them pick off the rest with you. Until I failed a skill check in the end and that same leader still wanted to eat my guts afterwards. Ha, too late. I already eliminated all of your back-up! (Though admittedly he still killed half of my party successfully in his lonesome.) That all goes to say: you don't need to feel bad about your combat prowess initially, because even a "professional" like me is struggling likely the same amount as you were! I am just glad to hear that it all gets a lot easier as you level up and get more overpowered.

That does bring me to one thing I've been wondering as well. I have to imagine that using the tadpole for powers might bite me in the butt eventually... but it's so satisfying! How much did you engage with that particular power fantasy? Even knowing that this might affect me negatively in the long-run, I don't know how I'll even be able to resist such fun times. Maybe I'm more like the evil-aligned Minthara than I would've given myself credit for. Hopefully not at the cost of growing tentacles at the end of it all. Not-tadpole-related level-ups are frankly just incredibly overwhelming, so I will fully admit to simply googling the best feats/skills/spells/whatever to take whenever I get a level-up. I really do not have the patience to read through it all and choose myself. Call me lazy, but I've never been one to dive deep into making optimal builds through my own brainpower. Like I said before, that's what I relied on my co-op partner doing while I just pick away at enemies with a little fire burst here and there. I can't say that's going to be enough here sadly...

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@Th3solution Message two...

As for the comparison between D:OS and BG3, they are remarkably similar. Obviously this one adapts a lot of the rules and moves from the tabletop, but in terms of how the combat handles, it feels like I'm playing those other games all the same. Environmental manipulation, positioning of characters, finding good combinations of abilities... it all harkens back to those games for me. I would say that despite the different flavour, the combat really doesn't feel different at all. Even with the dice rolling during the combat, the percentage chance of specific hits in those previous games gave a lot of the same effect. If you enjoyed the combat here, I have no doubt that you'll be similarly satisfied by the gameplay of D:OS.

Now, I do have to admit that I am in the minority of a lot of D:OS fans. I prefer the first a lot to the second. That'll sound like heresy to most regular fans of those games you'll meet, so take my feelings here with a grain of salt. I never actually ended up finishing the second game despite putting more hours into it than I ever did the first. Both my co-op partner and I were just over it at some point. We didn't have as much fun as with the first, and there still seemed no end in sight four acts in. We just had to end it right there and then. Yes, the writing is overall less good in the first. It has more of a humorous, exagerrated tone to the dialogue as opposed to the more dark fantasy feeling of the second. Yes, the companions barely have any personality and their personal story arcs are total nothing-burgers. Yes, the first game has Jahan as one of the companions, who is possibly my most hated companion in all of RPGs. But something about the first one just felt incredibly charming to me. I appreciated the more light-hearted tone, the lack of companion depth didn't bother me, and the story was good enough that it kept me invested and interested in seeing how it unfolds over time.

Meanwhile, the second one just felt like a pacing nightmare to me. It has five acts, and I can practically tell you barely anything about what my goal in that whole time was. Not necessarily because it was unclear or anything, but I just found it largely uninteresting. I never felt pressed to continue in the same way I had 11-hour days with my co-op partner in the first entry. And one of my biggest gripes... the combat system. You know how in Baldur's Gate 3 you can manipulate the environment to create all kinds of hazards on the battlefield? Maybe you had a few fights here or there where it became totally chaotic and the whole floor was on fire. In D:OS2, that was every single fight. It didn't matter if you were fighting a large group of enemies in a fort or a sheep on the road. Somehow, you will always find the entire battlefield covered in all kinds of hazards within one or two turns. It was exhausting, frankly.

But my even bigger gripe was the armour system. To do any actual damage to any enemy, you need to first exhuast their armor. Basically every single enemy came with a mix of physical and magical armour. Some would have more of the former, some more of the latter. My co-op partner was a physical player while I was focused on magic. Without empyting their armour bar first, you could not use any spell or attack where the soul purpose was to give the enemy any type of condition. Want to make them fall asleep with a spell? Sorry, they have magic armour. Want to daze them for a turn? Sorry, they still have physical armour. You needed to first focus on doing as much damage as possible to destroy their armour before you could even tactically start thinking about the full array of special attacks you had on you. You can imagine that as a mage, this was especially more infuriating. The whole point of my class is to give the enemy downsides in all kinds of weird variety in ways! Yet here I was, blocked by having any actual fun with my class because of this armour system.

It annoyed me so bad that we stopped playing entirely the first time within the first 10 hours. I was just not having any fun. The first one wasn't like that at all. Some enemies had resistances sure, but every enemy was immediately vulnerable to any particular spell you had. As were you to enemy abilities if you didn't have the appropriate resistances. It was so much more fun and felt so much more tactical! I was actually actively using my brain on who I should prioritise when, what conditions are best to force upon any particular enemy to turn the battle in our favour... I was not focusing for four turns at the start of any battle destroying armour before I could start doing any of the fun stuff while the entire battlefield engulfs itself in annoying flames. The only reason we got as far as we did the second time starting it was because I found and installed a mod for the both of us that completely erased the armour system. It upped the base health bars of enemies instead, but made you and the enemy vulnerable to any attacks (again, outside of resistances) from the get go. When that mod made the second game mirror the first combat a lot more again, I instantly had more fun with it. Minus the fact the whole battlefield was still a total hazard to deal with in every. single. fight.

Anyway, sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant. Clearly it still frustrates me to this day! I was delighted to see that Baldur's Gate 3 didn't share a similar system to that armour system, or I think I might have freaked out. I think the combat here is a lot more fun again without the added need of mods. And, uh, to get back to your actual initial question of comparison, I do think you might be disappointed in the D:OS games if you go in expecting the same amount of depth to interactions and events as you have here. Those games share a lot of similarities in different ways to go about missions for sure, but there's a lot less of the far-reaching consequences that you're already describing to me about this one. If you just take it for what they are, which are frankly more linear CRPGs while still having a good amount of freedom to express yourself, then you won't be disappointed. And yes, personally, I would recommend the first Divinity: Original Sin over the second by a good margin. But again, that is an incredibly personal opinion not shared by all too many!

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@Tjuz Ah, phew! Relieved that I’m not babbling on into the void where my well-curated thoughts are released into nothingness, only to fizzle and die like the embers on a DOS2 battlefield. 😄
Although seriously, I do often worry about being too long-winded, so I’m glad to hear it’s not an irritation. Because even though it takes me a day or two sometimes, I also very much enjoy reading your thorough and expansive discussion thoughts.

And don’t mind ol’ mama Ravix. 😂 He means well. That gave me a good chuckle anyway! He has a knack for public chastisement. 😆
———
So on with BG3…
Regarding the FOMO… I have to admit that I am cut from a similar cloth and couldn’t help but use Google from time to time in an effort to make sure I didn’t lock myself out of something. There’s plenty of opportunities for both approaches— That is, careful strategic Google assisted cheating, coupled with seat of your pants roll with whatever outcome comes naturally. Honestly, the game is so content-rich that you can do a complete blind run and still feel like you were thorough and didn’t miss out. And you can also do a very meticulous guide-following internet searched run and still feel like you missed stuff. As an example, the burning village you mentioned is one where I did like you and missed out on saving a person who can show up later with side quest content, so yup, you’ve already missed it! It’s ok, I did also. It’s one of the few times when there’s a time limit to getting in and doing something before the consequence is chosen for you. In this case, waiting too long before barging into the burning building to save the people does result in people dying who can be NPCs with storylines later. I only know this from reading about it later on.

[Side note: I really dislike the time-limit types of quests, especially when you don’t know time is ticking in the background without your knowledge. Alas, there’s a few of these in BG3. At least two others that I can remember off the top of my head. One of which telegraphs the strict time-limit, one of which does not. As you approach these I’m happy to give you a heads up if you want. I’m sure there’s many more however. I will say that some of the time limited consequences are tied to long rests, so when in doubt you can try to hold off on doing a long rests until you’re sure you’ve mopped something up.]

My approach was a hybrid of doing the occasional Google when things started to feel like a watershed moment happening, yet playing and rolling with the whole role-playing element of making decisions based on how I feel and living with the consequences. The game is so generous with the ability to save scum and reload (I didn’t realize until about halfway that you can actually save in the middle of battle, which is great for experimenting with different strategies), that you’re never too far away from doing a reboot if you notice that your actions are taking you down a bad path. Unfortunately, you’ll run across times when you realize the error of your ways and in order to get a more desirable outcome would require going back several hours to reload before a choice or battle outcome. Usually when I ran into those cases (like finding out hours later about the forementioned NPC in the burning building) I wouldn’t waste time going back and reloading.

I was trying to make you not worry too much about the FOMO and trying to do a perfect run, but I think I probably made it worse. I don’t know. Hopefully that helps!

Now, next subject— tadpole powers. Yeah, I struggled with that too, since I was doing essentially a “good guy” run. As you’ll see though, there will be a lot of moral ambiguity to most decisions and so you can definitely embrace the Ilithid powers and still have a good run. You may run the risk of losing some companions if you go too far with it, fair warning. I think those opposed to using the powers can still be persuaded not to leave if you have a good solid relationship score with them and have some decent luck with the dice. What I ended up doing though was dabbling in a few basic powers for a while, like maybe 3 or 4 and then I just stopped unlocking them because I was worried it would taint my character’s moral outcome. Lightly dipping my toes in a few of the early powers like this didn’t lock me out of anything that I know of, but there’s definitely consequences to going full tadpole mode. The choice is yours.

And thank you for your in depth DOS comparison and insight. It does sound like the battle system in DOS2 has some aggravating features, the Torturer workaround notwithstanding. 😅 I’ll probably get around to the series, but likely not soon. I have DOS2 on disc, so who knows if I’ll be able to play it in the disc-less PlayStation future 😛.

Have you had a chance to progress much over the last couple days? How is your character shaping up? Are there any areas or interactions that you’ve struggled with?

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@Th3solution @Ravix Mama Ravix has a bit too much of a knack for public chastisement if you ask me! The humiliation I've felt over the last few days... I will never recover. Just kidding. I'm actually going to be annoying about it and argue that if a game requires me to choose a specific talent in character creation to have fun with the combat, maybe their combat system isn't particularly well thought-out. Maybe this is just me holding onto my horses to save my life. Maybe it's a matter of stubbornness in the face of my suffering. Maybe I make a good point! Whichever one you want to go with. I will not elaborate further as to not dig a deeper grave, because I think I'm already at least six feet under.

I will say that on many occasions where I've intuitively killed a character I thought might reappear later, I have consulted the Google to see if they do. Luckily, I haven't run into any particular ones that I then felt were worth reloading for and saving, but I'm bound to experience that eventually if all your comments are any indication! If that makes me a save scummer, then so be it. I'll sleep better at night knowing I did not sabotage myself from any future content! Barring that poor woman who died in a house fire due to our lack of intervention... in my defense, mama Ravix: I was not actually aware of any burning building victims needing rescuing when I decided to take a good, ol' nap. It was the first time I long rested during the whole game. I got to Waukeen's Rest, saw there were soldiers inside which clearly had some sort of battle, noticed I was low on health and out of short rests and figured I should rest up in case I'd get into some kind of combat scenario with them. I did not scroll far enough to see there were people in need of saving! It looked like the danger had passed with all the corpses lying at the entrance with no active fights in sight! Besides, why am I, the hero of Fae'run, responsible for saving their necks when there are literal guards of that village standing outside the burning buildings doing nada?! Did they not hear the screams themselves? If even the guards didn't bother saving these people, maybe they weren't well-liked members of the community. Who am I to interfere? And yes, Ravix, please let me know who I burnt to a crisp exactly.

It makes me happy (and sad for you) that you also missed out on that particular person. If it didn't end up being a big deal for you in terms of missed content, then I should feel fine at the end of it without wondering "what if I just reload 200 hours?" I agree that time limits are no fun however. It's probably just an issue for us completionists rather than the average gamer, especially with how inconsequential some of these time limits probably ultimately are, but I wish games would cater to us exclusively. It's funny, because on one hand I love the concept of time-restricted stuff. It's one of the main reasons I was excited by Kingdom Come: Deliverance at the time they were going through the first game's marketing campaign, but I think I've come to realise that I enjoy it more conceptually than in reality. At least telegraph it obviously to me that I know where to put my priorities, because if I'm unaware, I will be exploring every nook and cranny in the map avoiding any kind of location of actual importance. If you know of one coming up from where I am in the game, do let me know!

I wish I had heeded your advice about saving in combat yesterday. I was 20 minutes into a big fight at the Goblin Camp and almost had everyone down when RNG decided to stop being in my favour and suddenly all my companions went from near-full health to brutally murdered in the span of two turns. That said, that fight's RNG was proper bollocks! I've been utilising Astarion mostly as a ranged fighter with his Misty Step, and I swear there were five turns in a row where he missed shot after shot... that all had around a 70% chance of hitting. Silvanus was having a field day laughing at me wherever the gods reside, no doubt. Managed to start the fight a second time with a considerably smaller amount of goblins joining in, so luckily it went over both quicker and smoother the second time. I've now killed every single goblin on the interior of the camp. That's where I've left off. Next up: the exterior of the goblin camp and killing everyone in sight there.

Speaking of the goblin camp, so yes, I have taken (I think) the appropriate steps to recruit Minthara. I got her temporarily hostile by shoving the eye in her room into a chasm. I was scared what kind of battle powers that might have since it was such an unknown entity, so it seemed the perfect candidate to start some hostility in-between our characters. I got her down with non-lethal melee strikes and killed everyone else in the room proper. She seems to have stayed nicely asleep in her quarters as I've gone through the rest of the interior one by one and killed them all, so I hope I've made the right arrangements. If there's anything I should look out for that I might have missed, let me know. I think I’ve done all the steps right, but you never know with a game as filled with miniscule little requirements for things here and there.

As for the tadpoles, I am slightly concerned to report that I now have five little worms swimming around my frontal lobe area. Thanks to your words of encouragement, I didn’t mind shoving them up there knowing it won’t have any ill effects for the time being. Unless I already went overboard going for the full quintet. My companions didn’t seem too keen on my newfound powers, but with some inspiration and explanation that I’m a bad, impatient gamer and need all the advantages I can get, they seem to all be well on board now. Even Lae’zel, who likes to unaffectionately refer to them as ghaik, seems pretty happy to do it now for the sake of our gods! It is kinda funny on a narrative level that I, a githyanki, am happily turning myself more into a mind flayer. Probably doesn’t really fit if I was roleplaying accordingly, but oh well.

Now, I’ll give a little update on the other things I haven’t mentioned yet that I’ve been up to:

Auntie Ethel has left the wilderness after I rudely invaded her home to save Mayrina from… herself. Seems like she’ll be back eventually if the mask NPCs are to be believed. I tried to keep all the masks alive, but made the mistake of removing their masks before Ethel was vanquished. Two of them perished as a result. And yes, I did use the magic stick to resurrect Mayrina’s husband as a zombie. I knew what I was doing. No way Ethel was actually planning to help her out like a good gal, but I figured it’s her choice ultimately. After the shock wore off, she seemed fairly content with her newly acquired zombie husband. See you in Baldur’s Gate if he doesn’t eat you on the way!

It took a good 30 hours, but Halsin has finally been saved. Glad he was still alive after I treated his survival as the least of my priorities. Or well. There’s a universe where he didn’t, because in my first attempt at the fight I actually let him get murdered. My bad. That was worth a reload, so he’s now returning to the grove to tell Kagha what a bad, bad girl she’s been. I went through the whole subplot with the Shadow Druids, so she’s already stopped the ritual. And of course, that was the perfect time for me to nick the Idol of Selune and give it to my girl, Mol. I got your back! Doing what Arabella embarrassingly failed to do. I hope I’ll get to join their little thieves’ guild when I get to Baldur’s Gate. I love my enterprising kids. Maybe we can all do a rendition of Sweeney Todd when we (hopefully) meet again.

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@Th3solution @Ravix You can save in the middle of conversations?! That seems a bit scummy even for my liking, but maybe a good idea whenever I have a dialogue choice where I'm not really sure if it'll have the intended effect. Like with Minthara and being able to choose some options, I wasn't sure which was the one that would let me get ouf of the conversation non-committal without turning everyone against me in the same second. I've been trying to be good with sticking to the dice rolls and been successful with that so far! I don't think I've reloaded for a dice roll specifically so far. It helps that even if you lose a dice roll, there's usually other ways to still get the desired result.

I'm excited for my camp to be showing a few more signs of life! Not that I have anything against any of my companions, but the group of six together with our resident skeleton and dog was starting to feel a bit stale. I'm happy to inject some new (non-violent) blood into the mix, and maybe to shove some tadpoles down people's throats while they're asleep. Thanks for the heads-up on Halsin's quest for thirst! Surprisingly, Gale has been rather chill with me so far except for the one romantic scene I unlocked. I don't know if my companions just hate me for unexplained reasons, or if they possible balanced the romance checks a bit better in recent patches. I did hear that the camp likes to throw themselves at you, but Gale has really been the only one to even attempt it. I decided to imagine a nice romantic walk on the beach without committing to any intimacy! Keep him on a leash, but teased.

I'm sorry to hear about your bad relationship with Mol. I'm glad you were able to salvage it in the end, presumably by giving her a truckload worth of gold. I don't know why, but I feel rather attached to this ragtag group of delinquents. Maybe it's a bit of a way of my wanna-be evil side to come out. I like to approach these games as either a morally grey character or one that's just straight up a butthole, but I do tend to get trapped into the heroic fantasy sooner rather than later. Probably part of why I picked a githyanki as my character, since I remembered from my first attempt at the game that they have a bit of a license to be nasty. I love the githyanki unique dialogue sometimes. It's always entirely uncalled for, but incredibly amusing. And, yeah... I did not really consider the taking of the Idol of Selune could have negative consequences when I snatched it. It was only when I interacted with an NPC afterwards who was like: "phew, hope nothing bad is going to happen now that we lost it!" that I was like... same. Hope I didn't doom you all! Anything for my girl, Mol.

You kept the zombie husband all to yourself?! How selfish! I figured he might stink too much to bring along with me, nor did he seem particularly capable at... well, anything. Mayrine could take him for all I care, frankly. How did Mayrina react to you taking her zombified husband as an eternal slave to do your bidding? I can't imagine that was her favourite outcome, especially if we do end up seeing her in Baldur's Gate again. Did you just spawn him in for a second to give them a little private time? The least you could do! I will say I do find it somewhat funny how every second NPCs dialogue tree will end in "see you in Baldur's Gate!" Is this really the only place of any note for anyone to travel to? Come on, y'all. Expand your horizons. Go to Neverwinter or something! Why are you all indirectly following me in my quest just to give me more content later?!

Oh, on a random side note before I forget, I do have to say I'm not a fan of how equipment works in this game. It's the age-old criticism of where "upgrades" give you seemingly such insignificant boosts to their respective traits that not a single piece of armour or weapon feels exciting. Looting feels more like busy-work than actually much of a reward as a result, which will make the impending inventory management to put together an acceptable load-out all the more boring, I'm sure. Some of the special traits the armour or weapons will have also just seem incredibly situational. Get one advantage throw on being Charmed, but only if it's a Owlbear attempting to do so in broad daylight while next to a water source. That's how reading the descriptions feels like sometimes, to which I just have to be like, cool? Thanks? I'm sure this'll come in great use almost never. At least the level-ups feel a lot more significant than they did in [i]Divinity[/i[, where it equally felt just like a number-go-up-type deal without much of a difference afterwards. They just switched it around to be the equipment this time around! I assume there's some part of that has to do with sticking to DnD-rulesets, but I'm not the biggest fan.

I have found the Necromancy of Thay book and already inserted the gem into it from the spider well. I was shocked to be succeeding three Wisdom checks in a row to be able to nail it, especially since my roommate warned me of how hard it was to get through it and how he had to reload it seven times. Made a good choice focusing my character on Wisdom thanks to their Druid nature! In general, maybe it's just confirmation bias, but Wisdom seems like one of the more important traits in skill checks. There seems to be basically always an option for it in any multiple-choice situation. Except for that time I was drugged and imprisoned by Priestess Gut and had to rely on my non-existing Athletic/Strength skills. Yes, yes, it was obvious she was suspicious. But my need to know what would happen if I just let her knock me out was too great. Since you're both possibly more on the wary side, I'm not sure you've seen the scene that unfolds if she chains you up and you then miss multiple skill checks. In case you didn't, I found it a really cool moment that when she eventually returns to your cell to eat you because you didn't turn into a Mind Flayer and she's bored of you, a portal appears. A woman walks out and slits Priestess Gut's throat, who then introduces herself as, um... Korrilla Flockhart? I don't know, something like that. Apparently one of Raphael the devil's little helper. Probably a scene many missed as it requires shutting your brain off from any warning signs and being a failure at multiple skills, but it was a really cool one nonetheless!

Uh, but to get back to the point without getting distracted. My current goal with the Necromancy book is to simply.. find another gem, I guess? I'm not sure when that's supposed to happen. I assume I haven't missed it with how thorough I've been, so I'm guessing this is a longer questline that'll resurface in a future act. Especially since you yourself are warning me it's a future investment more than anything!