Highlights
- Some players are requesting changes to the character Minthara in Baldur's Gate 3, as they believe she is underutilized and difficult to recruit.
- The fastest way to add Minthara to the party involves a comically evil decision and results in missing out on other quests and content.
- Larian Studios' Patch 1 did not fully address players' concerns about recruiting Minthara, and making her easily recruitable may not be likely due to the game's balance between good and evil playthroughs.
Some Baldur's Gate 3 players are asking Larian Studios to make changes to Minthara, arguing that the Drow Paladin is the game's most underutilized companion for no good reason. Minthara has been a popular romance option in Baldur's Gate 3 since the game's early access days, but recruiting her has always been an exceedingly costly task.
Warning! Baldur's Gate 3 Act 1 and 2 spoilers ahead.The fastest way to add Minthara to the party is to help the Goblins raze the Emerald Grove in the first act of Baldur's Gate 3. Doing so is treated as a comically evil option, which is why many players end up missing out on the game's only Drow companion. Ignoring the quest entirely also makes her recruitable in Act 2, but results in less XP and nearly identical downsides as raiding the refugee camp, most notably by forcing players to miss out on many quests, loot, and merchants. Razing the grove also comes at the cost of losing three other companions, while ignoring the quest line will have players miss out on Halsin.
Dissatisfied with this state of affairs, a vocal portion of the fandom has now taken online to demand "justice for Minthara." A recent Reddit post from user RinVG asking for changes to the character amassed nearly 6,000 upvotes in less than 24 hours, while also prompting many additional pleas for Larian to make the Drow Paladin more easily recruitable. Some players opined that tying Minthara to an evil playthrough doesn't make sense because she herself isn't an outright immoral character, while others argued that the penalties for not killing her and the rest of the Goblin Camp in Baldur's Gate 3 are simply too great to bear.
The Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 1 introduced a number of fixes to Minthara's dialogue triggers and cutscenes, but without changing the underlying mechanics of enlisting her help. The possibility of Larian actually making her recruitable while still saving Emerald Grove seems somewhat dubious. While such a move could certainly be handled in a lore-friendly way because her moral allegiance is indeed fairly nuanced, the rewards for being evil in Baldur's Gate 3 are already rather slim.
Additionally, role-playing as an outright immoral adventurer requires Baldur's Gate 3 players to miss out on dozens of hours of content. Allowing non-evil characters to recruit Minthara would hence further exacerbate that imbalance between good and evil playthroughs, making it unlikely for Larian to opt for such a move in the future.
Baldur's Gate 3 is out now for PC. A PS5 version releases on September 6, and an Xbox Series X/S version is also in development.
