Busy Saturday Was Busy
Aug. 16th, 2025 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickMostly with chores and BG3-related stuff -- here's the write-up for your edification:
Cleaning, Laundry, & Vaccination: As you might imagine, this trio took up a good portion of my day – though, fortunately, not TOO much more than a regular Cleaning Saturday. Here’s how it went down for each:
Cleaning – I started by stripping my sheets and dusting all the shelves above my bed before we left to get the vaccinations at 10:30 AM, then just picked up where I’d left off when we got back around 11:15 AM. Managed to finish all the dusting and Swiffering before lunch shortly after 1 PM, then picked up again with the vacuuming around 1:45 PM, finishing up around 2 PM. Not too bad – just took a bit with the interruptions!
Laundry – Threw in my load of sheets, blankets, and PJs at the end of the loads Mom was doing – went into the washer around 11:30 AM, came out of the dryer around 2 PM! Though it took me a while to fold it because Mom made me another frozen hot chocolate as a snack this afternoon, and thus I was trying to drink that while getting my stuff put away. XD So yeah, ended up finally finishing that around 2:45 PM. Not ideal, but the frozen hot chocolate was worth it. :P
Vaccination – As stated above, we left at 10:30 AM to head to the CVS, and – after a brief moment of worry where they had to make sure that Mom’s Medicare covered the vaccinations – we all got stuck! Me with the covid vaccine, Mom and Dad with flu and covid (I can’t get the flu shot anywhere but work, otherwise my insurance gets snippy). The guy doing it was really nice and efficient too, which was great. :) My poor arm is a little sore, but it’s nothing major. That being said, I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep on my right side as I usually do tonight, which MIGHT end up being a problem...we’ll see!
Baldur’s Gate III: I did end up returning to the Nautiloid to finish off the tutorial level today – partly because I just really wanted to keep playing BG3, and partly because I did finish my cleaning a bit late, as per the above, and I thought trying to squeeze Fallout 4, the write-up of the play session, and the FO4 Playthrough Progression update into the remaining portion of the afternoon would be a bit stressful. We’ll resume the trip through the Mechanist’s lair next weekend, when I won’t have any dusting or vacuuming or vaccinations hanging over my head! In the meantime, here’s how Smiler’s remaining time learning the ropes of BG3 on the Nautiloid went:
A) I picked up right where I left off yesterday, with Smiler having just rescued and recruited Shadowheart and looted the backpack near her pod (again, hope that wasn’t your stuff, girl :P). I promptly had them head over to the console near the front of the room that I knew from experience would wake up the cultists for a nice XP-boosting fight, taking a moment to have them check the sigils atop each button to see if they could puzzle them out. Amusingly, they failed the Arcana checks for the first and third buttons (which – let me check the wiki – are “Unleash,” which makes the pair radiate psonic energy that presumably damages you, and “Annihilate,” which kill them instantly), but succeeded for the second, discovering it was labeled “Aggression.” As that was exactly what I wanted, I had Smiler tap that button, releasing the cultists from their “sapped” state and causing them to spring to their feet ready for a fight!
...they were then immediately taken out by Us clawing the first one to death, and Lae’zel slashing the second with her sword before knocking him unconscious with a pommel strike. XD Easy 10 XP for everyone in the party! And an easy 6 gold, quill pen, and old bottle for Smiler after they looted the bodies. :P
B) Speaking of looting, with the cultists taken care of, it was time to collect the rest of the goodies in the area! Smiler thus went over to the organic “desk” at the back of the room, near the sphincter to the helm, to collect the Dark Mind (a brain-in-a-jar you can hook up to a machine in Act 2 to see what it’s thinking) and a burnished necklace, and to read the Illithid Manuscript (describing a “githyanki warrior and a thousand years of darkness”) nearby. There was also an Elaborate Reliquary chest sitting on the left side of the “desk,” but that was locked – and as Smiler had no Thieves’ Tools, they needed to find the key to open it. And there was only one place to find that key –
The side room with the lady in the pod that you can accidentally change into a mind flayer! Which, of course, I wanted to do because I was curious to see if there would be a reaction from Shadowheart. So, after having Smiler loot the dead thrall at the entrance for the gold key they needed (plus a spare scimitar to sell), and getting a “You are beautiful” from the other intellect devourer wandering around the place (thanks Not Brain Friend!), I had Smiler check on the woman in the pod, then head over to the console behind her. They quickly checked to see if they could figure out what the sigil above the button said – nope, failed the Arcana check – then gave it a press –
And cue the poor woman in the pod suffering an absolutely horrific transformation into a mind flayer! D: Causing Lae’zel to say her usual “changed at the pull of a lever?!” line –
But getting no reaction from Shadowheart at all. Which made me a little sad, as I was pretty certain she SHOULD have a line...and looking it up on the wiki, she does! “That could have been me, if you hadn't gotten me out of my pod…” I’m not sure why the line didn’t play – maybe the game just prioritized Lae’zel’s reaction because it’s likely you’ll transform the woman WITHOUT Shadowheart there? (As normally when you come into this room it’s to find the rune to free Shadowheart from her pod – Smiler just got lucky and was able to release her without it.) Either that or it’s a line you have to trigger by clicking on the pod as her… *checks the wiki a bit more* Okay, it does say at the top that in certain party combinations, other people might have prioritized lines, so yeah – quite possible the game prioritized Lae’zel’s reaction. Slight shame, but I suppose if I want to hear the line, that’s what YouTube is for.
C) Anyway – with our unfortunate accidental victim transformed, it was time to finish looting this room and the one Shadowheart had been trapped in before braving the helm! Because we couldn’t leave any goodies behind, don’tcha know. Smiler thus went around both and acquired:
I. 3 gold and a bronze necklace from a dead thrall at the back of the transformation room (the one carrying the rune that normally powers Shadowheart’s console)
II. The Slave Mind brain-in-a-jar sitting nearby the dead thrall (again, to hook up to that machine in Act 2)
III. The Chest of Smart Containers (from my “smart containers” mod), the bottle containing all of the FaeRun dyes (from the FaeRun Colors mod), and two healing potions from the “tutorial chest” right next to that (where all good modders stick their stuff, just to be safe)
IV. And 11 gold and another onyx gem from the Elaborate Reliquary back in the main room once Smiler opened it up with the key (mind flayers really like onyx for some reason)
So that was all good – definitely didn’t want to leave the Nautiloid without getting my smart containers or my dyes! (Granted, I believe both also appear in the Camp Chest (which appears in all your various camps in the main game), but as I have a party-expanding mod, getting the first Chest of Smart Containers means that, between that one and the Camp Chest one, I should have enough smart containers for Smiler AND all of the origin companions. Might as well make sorting their inventories easy for everyone! :P)
D) And so, with all the good loot looted, it was time to move onto the helm! Smiler led the way forward, first into the antechamber with the restoration machine (in case you need healing) and a cerebral aquarium (their contemplation of which was interrupted by Lae’zel declaring that they were almost at the helm and that when they reached it, they should do exactly what she said...but not by Shadowheart’s follow-up asking who put her in charge and that she’d act on her own, thanks. I am starting to worry that something is blocking some of Shadowheart’s little one-off cutscenes from playing), then – after an autosave – into the helm itself! Which, as usual, was a chaotic mess of mind flayers and various cambions battling each other. The mind flayer fighting the devils’ leader, Commander Zhalk, told Smiler and company to head to the transponder and connect the nerves to get them out of Avernus already –
And with that, combat started! Complete with a 15-turn counter for reaching the transponder before – okay, I presume before the ship crashes, either as a result of another dragon attack from the githyanki who followed it to Avernus, or the various devils and demons attacking it. I tried looking up what happens online if you don’t make it to the transponder in the time limit, but the only video I found on the subject was from Early Access and just showed a “your party has been defeated” game over message. *shrug* Anyway, Smiler, Shadowheart, Lae’zel, and Us had to reach that transponder quickly – but first, they had to take care of the imps and hellsboars in their way while Zhalk and the mind flayer duked it out! Here’s how that went:
Round One: Us went for the nearest imp with their claws, but unfortunately missed; Shadowheart very successfully used Guiding Bolt to take out an imp farther away; Lae’zel was unable to Lacerate the Lesser Hellsboar in their way with her sword, but was able to shove it back a bit; Smiler took out the imp Us missed with a Gilded Eldritch Blast (seriously, it makes me so happy that their Eldritch Blast can be yellow) and grabbed some leather armor and a shortsword off a dead thrall. The Lesser Hellsboar then tried to attack Lae’zel, but missed, phew.
Round Two: Us scrambled over and clawed the boar; Shadowheart ATTEMPTED to follow up with a Concussive Smash from her mace but missed; Lae’zel managed to kill the boar with her sword; and Smiler kept looting bodies, getting another light crossbow from an imp and another shortsword off a dead thrall.
Round Three: Everyone just started heading toward the transponder as the only combatant in the way was Zhalk, and he was being kept busy by the mind flayer. However, as Shadowheart got closer to the fight, I was like “oh hey – I know there’s a small but non-zero chance that you can get this guy to drop his sword if you use Command on him! My friend Squid got it on their current run, after all! I should have Shadowheart–
“...Shadowheart doesn’t have Command in her prepared spells. And I can’t change what spells she has prepared as long as the gang’s in combat. And there’s no getting out of combat in this situation. ...do I really want to reload to try getting the sword via Command drop?”
“...yeah, fuck it, there was an autosave right before we entered the room. Come on folks, let’s try this again!”
E) And so I reloaded. XD Hey, come on, I had to give the whole “make Zhalk drop his sword” thing a try! The Everburn Blade he carries isn’t the best sword in the game, but it’s still a good early game weapon, and I figured it was worth attempting to get it. If only for Lae’zel’s sake. :p So yeah – I rewound time to right before the gang entered the helm; had Shadowheart swap out one of her spells for Command; gave her a crossbow so she’d have a non-magical ranged option (because I now needed her two spell slots for Command); and restarted the fight! Here’s how the second attempt to reach the transponder went:
Round One: Shadowheart went first in this time and smacked a nearby imp with her mace; the Lesser Hellsboar went second and attacked poor Us, slashing 5 hit points off Brain Friend with its tusks; Us missed clawing it back in retaliation; Lae’zel fortunately succeeded on her attempt to Lacerate it in this timeline and killed it outright with one sweep of her sword; a crossbow-wielding imp farther into the room missed its shot against Lae’zel; and Smiler hit said imp with a Gilded Eldritch Blast in retaliation for 1 damage. ...I guess they ARE supposed to be terrible in a fight. XD
Round Two: As Zhalk took some hits from the mindflayer, Shadowheart killed the imp nearest her and looted the crossbow off its friends corpse and the shortsword off a nearby dead thrall; Us just scrambled forward, doing their best to keep out of harm’s way; Lae’zel pulled out her longbow and used a Hamstring Shot on the crossbow imp, halving its movement but not quite killing it, then went and grabbed the leather armor and shortsword off one of the other dead thralls before running up to stand by Shadowheart; and Smiler hit the crossbow imp with another Gilded Eldritch Blast, killing it, before running over and looting the crossbow off its corpse. :P
Round Three: Shadowheart got another crossbow off another dead imp herself, then tried Command: Drop on Zhalk (who was still having a bad time against the mind flayer) – sadly, he made his saving throw, so I had her just run to the next dead thrall and grab the shortsword off them. Us then scrambled over to where Smiler was; Lae’zel moved forward, near Zhalk and the mind flayer; and Smiler used Dash to cover more ground and loot more bodies, getting yet another onyx off a dead mind flayer and a spare dagger off an imp.
Round Four: I made a quicksave, then had Shadowheart try again to get Zhalk to drop his weapon – when he made his save again, I quickloaded to rewind time and keep the spell slot (just in case we needed healing) and had her just move up further. Us dashed over to Smiler; Lae’zel ran to a dead imp and got a handaxe off it; and Smiler triggered the brief cutscene where they see red dragons flying around the ship and Lae’zel tells them to hurry up already before scurrying over to another organic table and killing one of the newly-spawned-in imps with a Gilded Eldritch Blast. Yay!
Round Five: Shadowheart kept on the move, picking up a piece of jade from a dead mind flayer before killing the other imp with her crossbow; Us scrambled over to Smiler, as they do; Lae’zel picked up a caustic bulb (a throwable that causes acid damage) and a Mucoid Shell (random gross shell that I guess is just vendor trash), then shot the new hellsboar with her bow for five damage; and Smiler picked up the void bulbs (which pulls creatures in toward it) and caustic bulb near them before taking out the hellsboar with, you guessed it, a Gilded Eldritch Blast. XD
Round Six: With the enemies blocking the transponder now dead, and me guaranteed to end things very soon, I figured Shadowheart could officially spend her final spell slot on one more attempt to get Zhalk to drop his weapon with Command – sadly, he made the final save and thus kept a good firm hold on it. Meeeh – sorry, Lae’zel! Shadowheart then got a handaxe off an imp; Lae’zel and Us both moved up; and Smiler looted a topaz off a dead mind flayer before using Dash to get almost but NOT QUITE to the transponder! Like, they were RIGHT in front of it, but didn’t have the movement to interact with it. Probably because I had them check the final dead imp and hellsboar for goodies first. XD Look, it’s just good for them to to have stuff to sell!
Round Seven: Two more cambions spawned into the antechamber and started Dashing their way to the helm – but as that took up all their action, all that did was allow the one who actually made it into the room to see Smiler step up and touch the transponder, ending the fight with nine turns to spare. Yay!
F) And with that, my playsession ended with the cutscenes of Smiler connecting the nerves of the transponder, only to get tossed away by another dragon attack before they could properly pluck them to decide a destination; Smiler getting thrown around the helm as the ship careened wildly through space-time, before managing to grab the console and finally pluck the nerves; the ship crashing onto the beach near the Emerald Grove (watched by some of the side characters, including two of the goblin leaders, Dror Ragzlin and Minthara); and Smiler being knocked out of the side of the crashing ship by some debris and falling helplessly head-first toward the beach...only to be caught by some mysterious force right before a deadly landing. I ended things with Smiler waking up on the beach the next morning, surprised and pleased to find themselves in one piece, but well aware that they needed to find someone to help them with the parasite slowly turning them into a mind flayer…
And with me taking one quick moment to dye their starting armor with the Amaunator dye to finally make sure they were wearing the right color scheme. XD And actually, I’m very pleased with the results – Smiler looks swag. :D Here, see for yourself –
Swanky, right? Though I do think their old Bard jerkin was a little more their personal style...ah well, I can definitely work with this! Next time, they explore the Ravaged Beach, recruit Shadowheart, and we do some level ups! With me deciding if I’m going to Warlock Level 2, or starting the Bardlock early...we’ll see!
Writing: Okay, so, between the cleaning taking so long, the write-ups for my gaming (above) and YouTube watching (below) taking so long, and some general end-of-period distraction, I didn’t really get to doing any PROPER writing. But I was determined to do SOMETHING, so midway through all my summarizing, I took a break to throw some BG3 Smiler History into the master doc:
A) They’re still the child of Dr. Kelman in this verse, though I haven’t decided yet if Kelman or their unnamed, unknown mother is the elf
B) Like VITD Smiler, they ran away from Kelman and his house of horrors at the age of 12
C) Their run led to them getting lost in the woods, and while stumbling around scared and trying to find help, they were contacted by Mar-Mal, an eldritch being who had just figured out how to make contact with the plane of existence Faerun is part of. Mar-Mal offered to help them if Smiler promised to spend their life trying to make people happy – Smiler agreed, and Mar-Mal sealed the pact by infusing them with a bit of their essence, giving Smiler their glowing yellow eyes and causing them to laugh hysterically. This led merchants Matt and Carol Alton to them, and they took in the lost kid as their own child
D) First boon Mar-Mal ever bestowed upon Smiler? Making sure no one could ever misgender them again – anyone referring to them automatically uses “they/them” pronouns, even if they’re trying to use something else
E) Smiler learned how to play the lute after being inspired by their new uncle Felix’s love of music (thus explaining why they’re a Bardlock)
F) Smiler’s job at the time they got captured was as a traveling alchemist, with their business Alton’s Alchemicals being run out of their wagon
Not a huge amount of stuff, but it gives them a bit of a backstory! And we appreciate that. :)
YouTube: As it turned into another Baldur’s Gate III day, I figured I ought to watch another Baldur’s Gate III video – and you guys know what that means: watching another one of Proxy Gate Tactician’s ridiculous challenges! :D Tonight’s video was “Can You Beat Baldur's Gate 3 By Doing Nothing?” Obviously the answer to that is “no, what are you talking about, is this some sort of weird joke video” – but as it turns out, Proxy meant specifically doing nothing in combat – his Halfling Stan could move around and do things normally so long as there WASN’T a fight going on, but once one started, he and all of his party members (basically anyone Proxy could control) were not allowed to do ANYTHING but end their turn. Basically, it was the Pacifist Run times eleven. So, with that ruleset in place, was the answer to the question posed by the title still “no?”
Nope – the answer was “yes – if you GLITCH THE FUCKING HELL OUT OF THE GAME.” XD Yeah, there’s no way to get through the game even semi-legitimately by doing nothing during combat, but if you’re willing to exploit the hell out of every weird glitch you can, you can make it to the end. Examples of Proxy straight-up breaking the game to complete this utterly ridiculous challenge included:
A) Proxy using a fun jump glitch with Halfling Stan to skip the fight with the imps where you met Lae’zel – which took Proxy ten minutes because the game wasn’t feeling his attempts to cheese it
B) Proxy straight-up creating a SECOND player, the short king rogue Lee, via a second instance of the game and turning the run into a faux-multiplayer one to get around a weird restriction the game puts on certain spells before you have your first fight – specifically, he created Lee so he could use Mage Hand to trigger the cutscene to get on the helm, which – when triggered this way – puts the person in charge of the Mage Hand DIRECTLY NEXT TO THE TRANSPONDER for some reason O.o That’s a weird bug!
C) Proxy pretty much skipping the entirety of Act One – save for pulling Gale out of the waypoint, talking to a few people for XP, and visiting the grove to sell a bunch of shit to Auntie Ethel (startled to find that Zevlor and company had actually lost the fight against the goblins upon arrival) – via judicious uses of jumping past his problems
D) Proxy discovering that Dame Aylin was kind of useless in the fight against Ketheric Thorm by herself, and thus using the power of Mage Hand to buff her with some handy potions and “kidnap” all the other potential combatants (via picking them up with a strength-boosted Mage Hand to throw and then quickly canceling the action so he could then carry them off to another location) while the other characters were locked in a cutscene, giving her a better shot at actually beating the boss fight. ...it still took her like forty tries to do so, but she did it in the end!
E) Proxy abusing the fact that, if you insult Dolly Dolly Dolly (the pixie who you can free from the Moonlantern to get her bell and her blessing to protect you against the Shadow Curse), she will turn you into an animal, to get her to turn Stan the Man into a frog during the SECOND Ketheric boss fight and taking advantage of the fact that this BRIEFLY gets you out of combat to waypoint out to the bridge to leave Act 2. Yes, without killing Ketheric – so long as you see one specific cutscene of the Absolute’s army marching toward Baldur’s Gate, you can leave without murdering him, apparently! Things Larian did NOT account for (at least on Patch 7)!
F) Proxy getting around an extremely mandatory fight with the githyanki who invade your camp right before Act 3 starts (where you’re EXPECTED to flee from them into a portal into the astral plane in three turns or less) by having Gale leap into a chasm, then swapping to his dead body to get out of the cutscene and use the still-buffed Mage Hand (the real hero of this run) to carry Stan and Lee’s sleeping bodies over to the portal spawn point, so they could immediately use it once they woke up and combat began
G) Proxy then using the “insult Dolly turn froggy” exploit to get the Mysterious Artifact in Stan’s inventory (it’s not normally there in this area because, well, you’re INSIDE it), which allowed him to lock Stan into examining it and keeping him from getting pulled into the combat that automatically triggers when you talk to the Emperor; then using Mage Hand to trigger the convo, then throw out an iron flask and set a Spectator (big tentacle monster with a big old eyeball) on the enemies. It INITIALLY looked like it was another failure, as the Spectator waited to attack anyone until the Emperor stopped talking, but after Proxy NEARLY gave up, it finally started killing githyanki, and the fight was won without Stan and Lee having to do a thing but watch, yay~
H) Proxy twice using a convoluted “kill this character, stuff them in another character’s inventory via reverse pickpocketing, then trigger the game to do a specific thing that prompts that character to teleport, then do some bizarre nonsense to tag along on that teleport” scheme to get into dev-only planes of existence (where characters and objects hang out until they are needed) and just straight up steal Gortash’s and Orin’s netherstones from those planes, completely eliminating the need to fight them. Like, damn, dude, that was a complicated but clever workaround!
I) Proxy then sneaking off to the Morphic Pool to fail to confront the Netherbrain and thus get sucked back into the Astral Plane by the Emperor for the chat on how to defeat the damn thing...only to discover that Spectator was still around. Cue the Emperor throwing hands with it, getting hit, blaming Stan, and leaving, then Raphael showing up to offer his last-minute contract, ALSO throwing hands with the Spectator, getting hit, and leaving, forcing Stan and company into a game over. Fortunately, after a misstep with trying to hide the Spectator with fog (which both the Emperor and Raphael took offense to), Proxy was able to have Stan turn the Emperor invisible to stop the fight, then click on Orpheus to force the game to open a portal to the Upper City while keeping the Emperor’s loyalty. Not sure how that worked, but I’m not entirely sure Proxy did either, so…
J) And finally, Proxy refusing to take the easy way out of having Gale just blow up the brain with his Netherese Orb to complete the game, instead hiring one of Withers’s, er, hirelings to jump to their death so he could switch to their dead body to get out of the “climbing the brain stem” cutscene (a rare sentence); then using Mage Hand to shove one of his characters away from the brain stem to break the cutscene and teleport everyone up there with a bunch of enemies just waiting for them to step on the brain itself before attacking; then carefully bringing everyone along the non-brain-flesh pathways along the side to set up the Emperor channeling the power of the netherstones into the Netherbrain BEFORE combat begins (so he didn’t have to use movement or an action DURING combat); then using Dolly Dolly Dolly’s pixie bell and the artifact to lock Lee and Stan in conversations to make sure they didn’t get pulled into combat; THEN having Gale turn them both invisible with a potion while the revived hireling summoned a rat on the brain itself to get combat started so the Emperor’s portal to the representation of the Netherbrain’s will would open; THEN having the invisible characters drop a runepowder barrel next to one of the brain’s own “Negation Orbs” (used to drop platforms out from under the characters during the fight) and a whole fucking TON of explosive barrels and whatnot Proxy gathered up during Act 1 nearby on a platform that wouldn’t be destroyed to get the brain to blow itself up. Killed all the characters in the process, but it also defeated the Netherbrain, and as THAT was the whole point of the challenge…
Yeah – it was a trip. XD Oh Proxy, you always do the weirdest things in your videos, and it’s always such a delight… Oh, and as a bonus, in the intro, he showed what happens if you don’t get to the transponder in time in the Nautiloid! Apparently the entire floor gets caught on fire and all of your characters burn. Good to know!
Aaand now it is very late and I really should get to bed. XD Here's hoping my sore arm doesn't keep me awake...anyway, plans for tomorrow include working on tumblr drafts over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); probably playing some Sims 4 to work on Smiler's Potion Wagon (because I would like to get it done); doing my best to start final edits on Chapter 5 of "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland;" and doing the usual "combine workout and YouTubery" thing to watch Jon's latest F:NV YOLO Remastered video! Hopefully all achievable goals. *nods* Night all!
Cleaning, Laundry, & Vaccination: As you might imagine, this trio took up a good portion of my day – though, fortunately, not TOO much more than a regular Cleaning Saturday. Here’s how it went down for each:
Cleaning – I started by stripping my sheets and dusting all the shelves above my bed before we left to get the vaccinations at 10:30 AM, then just picked up where I’d left off when we got back around 11:15 AM. Managed to finish all the dusting and Swiffering before lunch shortly after 1 PM, then picked up again with the vacuuming around 1:45 PM, finishing up around 2 PM. Not too bad – just took a bit with the interruptions!
Laundry – Threw in my load of sheets, blankets, and PJs at the end of the loads Mom was doing – went into the washer around 11:30 AM, came out of the dryer around 2 PM! Though it took me a while to fold it because Mom made me another frozen hot chocolate as a snack this afternoon, and thus I was trying to drink that while getting my stuff put away. XD So yeah, ended up finally finishing that around 2:45 PM. Not ideal, but the frozen hot chocolate was worth it. :P
Vaccination – As stated above, we left at 10:30 AM to head to the CVS, and – after a brief moment of worry where they had to make sure that Mom’s Medicare covered the vaccinations – we all got stuck! Me with the covid vaccine, Mom and Dad with flu and covid (I can’t get the flu shot anywhere but work, otherwise my insurance gets snippy). The guy doing it was really nice and efficient too, which was great. :) My poor arm is a little sore, but it’s nothing major. That being said, I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep on my right side as I usually do tonight, which MIGHT end up being a problem...we’ll see!
Baldur’s Gate III: I did end up returning to the Nautiloid to finish off the tutorial level today – partly because I just really wanted to keep playing BG3, and partly because I did finish my cleaning a bit late, as per the above, and I thought trying to squeeze Fallout 4, the write-up of the play session, and the FO4 Playthrough Progression update into the remaining portion of the afternoon would be a bit stressful. We’ll resume the trip through the Mechanist’s lair next weekend, when I won’t have any dusting or vacuuming or vaccinations hanging over my head! In the meantime, here’s how Smiler’s remaining time learning the ropes of BG3 on the Nautiloid went:
A) I picked up right where I left off yesterday, with Smiler having just rescued and recruited Shadowheart and looted the backpack near her pod (again, hope that wasn’t your stuff, girl :P). I promptly had them head over to the console near the front of the room that I knew from experience would wake up the cultists for a nice XP-boosting fight, taking a moment to have them check the sigils atop each button to see if they could puzzle them out. Amusingly, they failed the Arcana checks for the first and third buttons (which – let me check the wiki – are “Unleash,” which makes the pair radiate psonic energy that presumably damages you, and “Annihilate,” which kill them instantly), but succeeded for the second, discovering it was labeled “Aggression.” As that was exactly what I wanted, I had Smiler tap that button, releasing the cultists from their “sapped” state and causing them to spring to their feet ready for a fight!
...they were then immediately taken out by Us clawing the first one to death, and Lae’zel slashing the second with her sword before knocking him unconscious with a pommel strike. XD Easy 10 XP for everyone in the party! And an easy 6 gold, quill pen, and old bottle for Smiler after they looted the bodies. :P
B) Speaking of looting, with the cultists taken care of, it was time to collect the rest of the goodies in the area! Smiler thus went over to the organic “desk” at the back of the room, near the sphincter to the helm, to collect the Dark Mind (a brain-in-a-jar you can hook up to a machine in Act 2 to see what it’s thinking) and a burnished necklace, and to read the Illithid Manuscript (describing a “githyanki warrior and a thousand years of darkness”) nearby. There was also an Elaborate Reliquary chest sitting on the left side of the “desk,” but that was locked – and as Smiler had no Thieves’ Tools, they needed to find the key to open it. And there was only one place to find that key –
The side room with the lady in the pod that you can accidentally change into a mind flayer! Which, of course, I wanted to do because I was curious to see if there would be a reaction from Shadowheart. So, after having Smiler loot the dead thrall at the entrance for the gold key they needed (plus a spare scimitar to sell), and getting a “You are beautiful” from the other intellect devourer wandering around the place (thanks Not Brain Friend!), I had Smiler check on the woman in the pod, then head over to the console behind her. They quickly checked to see if they could figure out what the sigil above the button said – nope, failed the Arcana check – then gave it a press –
And cue the poor woman in the pod suffering an absolutely horrific transformation into a mind flayer! D: Causing Lae’zel to say her usual “changed at the pull of a lever?!” line –
But getting no reaction from Shadowheart at all. Which made me a little sad, as I was pretty certain she SHOULD have a line...and looking it up on the wiki, she does! “That could have been me, if you hadn't gotten me out of my pod…” I’m not sure why the line didn’t play – maybe the game just prioritized Lae’zel’s reaction because it’s likely you’ll transform the woman WITHOUT Shadowheart there? (As normally when you come into this room it’s to find the rune to free Shadowheart from her pod – Smiler just got lucky and was able to release her without it.) Either that or it’s a line you have to trigger by clicking on the pod as her… *checks the wiki a bit more* Okay, it does say at the top that in certain party combinations, other people might have prioritized lines, so yeah – quite possible the game prioritized Lae’zel’s reaction. Slight shame, but I suppose if I want to hear the line, that’s what YouTube is for.
C) Anyway – with our unfortunate accidental victim transformed, it was time to finish looting this room and the one Shadowheart had been trapped in before braving the helm! Because we couldn’t leave any goodies behind, don’tcha know. Smiler thus went around both and acquired:
I. 3 gold and a bronze necklace from a dead thrall at the back of the transformation room (the one carrying the rune that normally powers Shadowheart’s console)
II. The Slave Mind brain-in-a-jar sitting nearby the dead thrall (again, to hook up to that machine in Act 2)
III. The Chest of Smart Containers (from my “smart containers” mod), the bottle containing all of the FaeRun dyes (from the FaeRun Colors mod), and two healing potions from the “tutorial chest” right next to that (where all good modders stick their stuff, just to be safe)
IV. And 11 gold and another onyx gem from the Elaborate Reliquary back in the main room once Smiler opened it up with the key (mind flayers really like onyx for some reason)
So that was all good – definitely didn’t want to leave the Nautiloid without getting my smart containers or my dyes! (Granted, I believe both also appear in the Camp Chest (which appears in all your various camps in the main game), but as I have a party-expanding mod, getting the first Chest of Smart Containers means that, between that one and the Camp Chest one, I should have enough smart containers for Smiler AND all of the origin companions. Might as well make sorting their inventories easy for everyone! :P)
D) And so, with all the good loot looted, it was time to move onto the helm! Smiler led the way forward, first into the antechamber with the restoration machine (in case you need healing) and a cerebral aquarium (their contemplation of which was interrupted by Lae’zel declaring that they were almost at the helm and that when they reached it, they should do exactly what she said...but not by Shadowheart’s follow-up asking who put her in charge and that she’d act on her own, thanks. I am starting to worry that something is blocking some of Shadowheart’s little one-off cutscenes from playing), then – after an autosave – into the helm itself! Which, as usual, was a chaotic mess of mind flayers and various cambions battling each other. The mind flayer fighting the devils’ leader, Commander Zhalk, told Smiler and company to head to the transponder and connect the nerves to get them out of Avernus already –
And with that, combat started! Complete with a 15-turn counter for reaching the transponder before – okay, I presume before the ship crashes, either as a result of another dragon attack from the githyanki who followed it to Avernus, or the various devils and demons attacking it. I tried looking up what happens online if you don’t make it to the transponder in the time limit, but the only video I found on the subject was from Early Access and just showed a “your party has been defeated” game over message. *shrug* Anyway, Smiler, Shadowheart, Lae’zel, and Us had to reach that transponder quickly – but first, they had to take care of the imps and hellsboars in their way while Zhalk and the mind flayer duked it out! Here’s how that went:
Round One: Us went for the nearest imp with their claws, but unfortunately missed; Shadowheart very successfully used Guiding Bolt to take out an imp farther away; Lae’zel was unable to Lacerate the Lesser Hellsboar in their way with her sword, but was able to shove it back a bit; Smiler took out the imp Us missed with a Gilded Eldritch Blast (seriously, it makes me so happy that their Eldritch Blast can be yellow) and grabbed some leather armor and a shortsword off a dead thrall. The Lesser Hellsboar then tried to attack Lae’zel, but missed, phew.
Round Two: Us scrambled over and clawed the boar; Shadowheart ATTEMPTED to follow up with a Concussive Smash from her mace but missed; Lae’zel managed to kill the boar with her sword; and Smiler kept looting bodies, getting another light crossbow from an imp and another shortsword off a dead thrall.
Round Three: Everyone just started heading toward the transponder as the only combatant in the way was Zhalk, and he was being kept busy by the mind flayer. However, as Shadowheart got closer to the fight, I was like “oh hey – I know there’s a small but non-zero chance that you can get this guy to drop his sword if you use Command on him! My friend Squid got it on their current run, after all! I should have Shadowheart–
“...Shadowheart doesn’t have Command in her prepared spells. And I can’t change what spells she has prepared as long as the gang’s in combat. And there’s no getting out of combat in this situation. ...do I really want to reload to try getting the sword via Command drop?”
“...yeah, fuck it, there was an autosave right before we entered the room. Come on folks, let’s try this again!”
E) And so I reloaded. XD Hey, come on, I had to give the whole “make Zhalk drop his sword” thing a try! The Everburn Blade he carries isn’t the best sword in the game, but it’s still a good early game weapon, and I figured it was worth attempting to get it. If only for Lae’zel’s sake. :p So yeah – I rewound time to right before the gang entered the helm; had Shadowheart swap out one of her spells for Command; gave her a crossbow so she’d have a non-magical ranged option (because I now needed her two spell slots for Command); and restarted the fight! Here’s how the second attempt to reach the transponder went:
Round One: Shadowheart went first in this time and smacked a nearby imp with her mace; the Lesser Hellsboar went second and attacked poor Us, slashing 5 hit points off Brain Friend with its tusks; Us missed clawing it back in retaliation; Lae’zel fortunately succeeded on her attempt to Lacerate it in this timeline and killed it outright with one sweep of her sword; a crossbow-wielding imp farther into the room missed its shot against Lae’zel; and Smiler hit said imp with a Gilded Eldritch Blast in retaliation for 1 damage. ...I guess they ARE supposed to be terrible in a fight. XD
Round Two: As Zhalk took some hits from the mindflayer, Shadowheart killed the imp nearest her and looted the crossbow off its friends corpse and the shortsword off a nearby dead thrall; Us just scrambled forward, doing their best to keep out of harm’s way; Lae’zel pulled out her longbow and used a Hamstring Shot on the crossbow imp, halving its movement but not quite killing it, then went and grabbed the leather armor and shortsword off one of the other dead thralls before running up to stand by Shadowheart; and Smiler hit the crossbow imp with another Gilded Eldritch Blast, killing it, before running over and looting the crossbow off its corpse. :P
Round Three: Shadowheart got another crossbow off another dead imp herself, then tried Command: Drop on Zhalk (who was still having a bad time against the mind flayer) – sadly, he made his saving throw, so I had her just run to the next dead thrall and grab the shortsword off them. Us then scrambled over to where Smiler was; Lae’zel moved forward, near Zhalk and the mind flayer; and Smiler used Dash to cover more ground and loot more bodies, getting yet another onyx off a dead mind flayer and a spare dagger off an imp.
Round Four: I made a quicksave, then had Shadowheart try again to get Zhalk to drop his weapon – when he made his save again, I quickloaded to rewind time and keep the spell slot (just in case we needed healing) and had her just move up further. Us dashed over to Smiler; Lae’zel ran to a dead imp and got a handaxe off it; and Smiler triggered the brief cutscene where they see red dragons flying around the ship and Lae’zel tells them to hurry up already before scurrying over to another organic table and killing one of the newly-spawned-in imps with a Gilded Eldritch Blast. Yay!
Round Five: Shadowheart kept on the move, picking up a piece of jade from a dead mind flayer before killing the other imp with her crossbow; Us scrambled over to Smiler, as they do; Lae’zel picked up a caustic bulb (a throwable that causes acid damage) and a Mucoid Shell (random gross shell that I guess is just vendor trash), then shot the new hellsboar with her bow for five damage; and Smiler picked up the void bulbs (which pulls creatures in toward it) and caustic bulb near them before taking out the hellsboar with, you guessed it, a Gilded Eldritch Blast. XD
Round Six: With the enemies blocking the transponder now dead, and me guaranteed to end things very soon, I figured Shadowheart could officially spend her final spell slot on one more attempt to get Zhalk to drop his weapon with Command – sadly, he made the final save and thus kept a good firm hold on it. Meeeh – sorry, Lae’zel! Shadowheart then got a handaxe off an imp; Lae’zel and Us both moved up; and Smiler looted a topaz off a dead mind flayer before using Dash to get almost but NOT QUITE to the transponder! Like, they were RIGHT in front of it, but didn’t have the movement to interact with it. Probably because I had them check the final dead imp and hellsboar for goodies first. XD Look, it’s just good for them to to have stuff to sell!
Round Seven: Two more cambions spawned into the antechamber and started Dashing their way to the helm – but as that took up all their action, all that did was allow the one who actually made it into the room to see Smiler step up and touch the transponder, ending the fight with nine turns to spare. Yay!
F) And with that, my playsession ended with the cutscenes of Smiler connecting the nerves of the transponder, only to get tossed away by another dragon attack before they could properly pluck them to decide a destination; Smiler getting thrown around the helm as the ship careened wildly through space-time, before managing to grab the console and finally pluck the nerves; the ship crashing onto the beach near the Emerald Grove (watched by some of the side characters, including two of the goblin leaders, Dror Ragzlin and Minthara); and Smiler being knocked out of the side of the crashing ship by some debris and falling helplessly head-first toward the beach...only to be caught by some mysterious force right before a deadly landing. I ended things with Smiler waking up on the beach the next morning, surprised and pleased to find themselves in one piece, but well aware that they needed to find someone to help them with the parasite slowly turning them into a mind flayer…
And with me taking one quick moment to dye their starting armor with the Amaunator dye to finally make sure they were wearing the right color scheme. XD And actually, I’m very pleased with the results – Smiler looks swag. :D Here, see for yourself –
Swanky, right? Though I do think their old Bard jerkin was a little more their personal style...ah well, I can definitely work with this! Next time, they explore the Ravaged Beach, recruit Shadowheart, and we do some level ups! With me deciding if I’m going to Warlock Level 2, or starting the Bardlock early...we’ll see!
Writing: Okay, so, between the cleaning taking so long, the write-ups for my gaming (above) and YouTube watching (below) taking so long, and some general end-of-period distraction, I didn’t really get to doing any PROPER writing. But I was determined to do SOMETHING, so midway through all my summarizing, I took a break to throw some BG3 Smiler History into the master doc:
A) They’re still the child of Dr. Kelman in this verse, though I haven’t decided yet if Kelman or their unnamed, unknown mother is the elf
B) Like VITD Smiler, they ran away from Kelman and his house of horrors at the age of 12
C) Their run led to them getting lost in the woods, and while stumbling around scared and trying to find help, they were contacted by Mar-Mal, an eldritch being who had just figured out how to make contact with the plane of existence Faerun is part of. Mar-Mal offered to help them if Smiler promised to spend their life trying to make people happy – Smiler agreed, and Mar-Mal sealed the pact by infusing them with a bit of their essence, giving Smiler their glowing yellow eyes and causing them to laugh hysterically. This led merchants Matt and Carol Alton to them, and they took in the lost kid as their own child
D) First boon Mar-Mal ever bestowed upon Smiler? Making sure no one could ever misgender them again – anyone referring to them automatically uses “they/them” pronouns, even if they’re trying to use something else
E) Smiler learned how to play the lute after being inspired by their new uncle Felix’s love of music (thus explaining why they’re a Bardlock)
F) Smiler’s job at the time they got captured was as a traveling alchemist, with their business Alton’s Alchemicals being run out of their wagon
Not a huge amount of stuff, but it gives them a bit of a backstory! And we appreciate that. :)
YouTube: As it turned into another Baldur’s Gate III day, I figured I ought to watch another Baldur’s Gate III video – and you guys know what that means: watching another one of Proxy Gate Tactician’s ridiculous challenges! :D Tonight’s video was “Can You Beat Baldur's Gate 3 By Doing Nothing?” Obviously the answer to that is “no, what are you talking about, is this some sort of weird joke video” – but as it turns out, Proxy meant specifically doing nothing in combat – his Halfling Stan could move around and do things normally so long as there WASN’T a fight going on, but once one started, he and all of his party members (basically anyone Proxy could control) were not allowed to do ANYTHING but end their turn. Basically, it was the Pacifist Run times eleven. So, with that ruleset in place, was the answer to the question posed by the title still “no?”
Nope – the answer was “yes – if you GLITCH THE FUCKING HELL OUT OF THE GAME.” XD Yeah, there’s no way to get through the game even semi-legitimately by doing nothing during combat, but if you’re willing to exploit the hell out of every weird glitch you can, you can make it to the end. Examples of Proxy straight-up breaking the game to complete this utterly ridiculous challenge included:
A) Proxy using a fun jump glitch with Halfling Stan to skip the fight with the imps where you met Lae’zel – which took Proxy ten minutes because the game wasn’t feeling his attempts to cheese it
B) Proxy straight-up creating a SECOND player, the short king rogue Lee, via a second instance of the game and turning the run into a faux-multiplayer one to get around a weird restriction the game puts on certain spells before you have your first fight – specifically, he created Lee so he could use Mage Hand to trigger the cutscene to get on the helm, which – when triggered this way – puts the person in charge of the Mage Hand DIRECTLY NEXT TO THE TRANSPONDER for some reason O.o That’s a weird bug!
C) Proxy pretty much skipping the entirety of Act One – save for pulling Gale out of the waypoint, talking to a few people for XP, and visiting the grove to sell a bunch of shit to Auntie Ethel (startled to find that Zevlor and company had actually lost the fight against the goblins upon arrival) – via judicious uses of jumping past his problems
D) Proxy discovering that Dame Aylin was kind of useless in the fight against Ketheric Thorm by herself, and thus using the power of Mage Hand to buff her with some handy potions and “kidnap” all the other potential combatants (via picking them up with a strength-boosted Mage Hand to throw and then quickly canceling the action so he could then carry them off to another location) while the other characters were locked in a cutscene, giving her a better shot at actually beating the boss fight. ...it still took her like forty tries to do so, but she did it in the end!
E) Proxy abusing the fact that, if you insult Dolly Dolly Dolly (the pixie who you can free from the Moonlantern to get her bell and her blessing to protect you against the Shadow Curse), she will turn you into an animal, to get her to turn Stan the Man into a frog during the SECOND Ketheric boss fight and taking advantage of the fact that this BRIEFLY gets you out of combat to waypoint out to the bridge to leave Act 2. Yes, without killing Ketheric – so long as you see one specific cutscene of the Absolute’s army marching toward Baldur’s Gate, you can leave without murdering him, apparently! Things Larian did NOT account for (at least on Patch 7)!
F) Proxy getting around an extremely mandatory fight with the githyanki who invade your camp right before Act 3 starts (where you’re EXPECTED to flee from them into a portal into the astral plane in three turns or less) by having Gale leap into a chasm, then swapping to his dead body to get out of the cutscene and use the still-buffed Mage Hand (the real hero of this run) to carry Stan and Lee’s sleeping bodies over to the portal spawn point, so they could immediately use it once they woke up and combat began
G) Proxy then using the “insult Dolly turn froggy” exploit to get the Mysterious Artifact in Stan’s inventory (it’s not normally there in this area because, well, you’re INSIDE it), which allowed him to lock Stan into examining it and keeping him from getting pulled into the combat that automatically triggers when you talk to the Emperor; then using Mage Hand to trigger the convo, then throw out an iron flask and set a Spectator (big tentacle monster with a big old eyeball) on the enemies. It INITIALLY looked like it was another failure, as the Spectator waited to attack anyone until the Emperor stopped talking, but after Proxy NEARLY gave up, it finally started killing githyanki, and the fight was won without Stan and Lee having to do a thing but watch, yay~
H) Proxy twice using a convoluted “kill this character, stuff them in another character’s inventory via reverse pickpocketing, then trigger the game to do a specific thing that prompts that character to teleport, then do some bizarre nonsense to tag along on that teleport” scheme to get into dev-only planes of existence (where characters and objects hang out until they are needed) and just straight up steal Gortash’s and Orin’s netherstones from those planes, completely eliminating the need to fight them. Like, damn, dude, that was a complicated but clever workaround!
I) Proxy then sneaking off to the Morphic Pool to fail to confront the Netherbrain and thus get sucked back into the Astral Plane by the Emperor for the chat on how to defeat the damn thing...only to discover that Spectator was still around. Cue the Emperor throwing hands with it, getting hit, blaming Stan, and leaving, then Raphael showing up to offer his last-minute contract, ALSO throwing hands with the Spectator, getting hit, and leaving, forcing Stan and company into a game over. Fortunately, after a misstep with trying to hide the Spectator with fog (which both the Emperor and Raphael took offense to), Proxy was able to have Stan turn the Emperor invisible to stop the fight, then click on Orpheus to force the game to open a portal to the Upper City while keeping the Emperor’s loyalty. Not sure how that worked, but I’m not entirely sure Proxy did either, so…
J) And finally, Proxy refusing to take the easy way out of having Gale just blow up the brain with his Netherese Orb to complete the game, instead hiring one of Withers’s, er, hirelings to jump to their death so he could switch to their dead body to get out of the “climbing the brain stem” cutscene (a rare sentence); then using Mage Hand to shove one of his characters away from the brain stem to break the cutscene and teleport everyone up there with a bunch of enemies just waiting for them to step on the brain itself before attacking; then carefully bringing everyone along the non-brain-flesh pathways along the side to set up the Emperor channeling the power of the netherstones into the Netherbrain BEFORE combat begins (so he didn’t have to use movement or an action DURING combat); then using Dolly Dolly Dolly’s pixie bell and the artifact to lock Lee and Stan in conversations to make sure they didn’t get pulled into combat; THEN having Gale turn them both invisible with a potion while the revived hireling summoned a rat on the brain itself to get combat started so the Emperor’s portal to the representation of the Netherbrain’s will would open; THEN having the invisible characters drop a runepowder barrel next to one of the brain’s own “Negation Orbs” (used to drop platforms out from under the characters during the fight) and a whole fucking TON of explosive barrels and whatnot Proxy gathered up during Act 1 nearby on a platform that wouldn’t be destroyed to get the brain to blow itself up. Killed all the characters in the process, but it also defeated the Netherbrain, and as THAT was the whole point of the challenge…
Yeah – it was a trip. XD Oh Proxy, you always do the weirdest things in your videos, and it’s always such a delight… Oh, and as a bonus, in the intro, he showed what happens if you don’t get to the transponder in time in the Nautiloid! Apparently the entire floor gets caught on fire and all of your characters burn. Good to know!
Aaand now it is very late and I really should get to bed. XD Here's hoping my sore arm doesn't keep me awake...anyway, plans for tomorrow include working on tumblr drafts over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); probably playing some Sims 4 to work on Smiler's Potion Wagon (because I would like to get it done); doing my best to start final edits on Chapter 5 of "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland;" and doing the usual "combine workout and YouTubery" thing to watch Jon's latest F:NV YOLO Remastered video! Hopefully all achievable goals. *nods* Night all!
