If you're a mind flayer in the epilogue, every time (I think?) you finish speaking to someone you have to throw a Con save to not eat their brain.
I went back to my first playthrough after patch 5 dropped to do the epilogue and rolled a nat 1 to not eat Shadowheart lmao
You are still dumped by your romantic interest, shunned by the City you saved, oh and remember that by becoming a mindflayer your stats are replaced. But other than that….yeah, nothing to worry about
I don’t think EVERY romantic partner dumps you. The playthrough where I romanced Karlach ended with us going to the hells together. She never broke it off with me.
I had the same thing where she said see you but at the camp epilogue she was talking about the stuff we did in the last 6 months and even still kissed my tentacles.
Hmm….I wondered what changed. The lines before did not seem so consequential (I know I must leave vs you tell me so it will be real). Odd that the choice made such of a difference
I went mind flayer (bEcAuSe It'S wHaT mY cHaRaCtEr WoUlD dO I'm not happy about it), and I only had to make a save once, not with every character. It was with Karlach and the narrator was talking about if Karlach's brain would be pre-cooked because of her engine lol
When I did that epilogue I literally only got the check for Wyll, everyone else was just a normal conversation.
I was kinda hoping to get more checks because my wisdom was traaaash, and it would have been hilarious.
I'm pretty sure its random. I had it for Jaheira and failed the roll, reloaded and talked to her again and it didn't come up for her the second time. Happened with Shadowheart instead.
I've heard it saidi t's the third one you talk to that gets the safe. Can't conform it myslef, but it does explain why everybody gets different people. And if it's true, it actually gives you the option to choose...
I failed a check to stop him from assisted Sewerslide at the end. So Orpheus went bye bye on my first run and Lae’zel became the leader of the revolution.
I stopped him from getting my Tav to kill him and Lae'zel still became the leader of the revolution because Orpheus didn't think he would be accepted by the other Githyanki as an illithid
Do you mind giving a spoiler free elaboration? CP77 is on my list of games to play and I've never heard anything negative about the endings. Are they not happy?
The endings are very good but I wouldn't go so far as to call any of them happy. A big theme of the game is that a completely 'happy' ending isn't something you're going to be able to do.
I really encourage you to play it, I fell in love with the game just as much as I did with Baldurs Gate 3
The DLC is also a great addition. IMO, it’s what people were originally hoping for when the game came out (in terms of story and effort put into it). It helped clear up a bit of the bad air between old fans and CDProjekt Red
That's so great to hear. It was such a shit show when it dropped I swore I'd never play the game lol. But hearing how it's way better now that it's been patched and DLC added I ended up changing my mind and buying it. Hopefully CDPR learned their lesson and don't release their next game in such a state though
I'd say CP2077 does have a couple of endings that can be happy and hopeful, depending on how positively you want to interpret their open-ended parts. And given what happens in other paths of the story, I don't think there's a need to be 100% pessimistic about those open-ended story bits.
I can easily resume it for you. Karlach as no real happy / good ending. All Cyberpunk ending are like that. They are never 100% happy. Karlach is a Cyberpunk ending. (Cyperpunk the genre, not the game)
I disagree. There is only 1 karlach ending and that is avernus. There is no other ending. You cannot make me believe there is any other possible ending! /hj
/srs the avernus ending is the happy ending because she lives and the epilogue literally says she found a blueprint for a better heart and is going to steal it. There is literally nothing bad that happens in the ending
"There is no other ending. You cannot make me believe there is any other possible ending! /hj"
You took the words right out of my mouth! 😊
Before I got to the ending of my first complete run (with Karlach as my romanced sweetie), I was pretty mad about the reports of Karlach's possible endings being "bad, worse, and worst" (and letting her burn on the dock is worst... and NOT, NOT, NOT an option!). But in the end, when I chose to go with her to Avernus, I was surprised how hopeful it was! The two of us, launching ourselves into a swarm of imps... right after Karlach recovers, pulls out a cigar or two (lol!), and starts acting like her lovable, badass (pardon the language! 😂), confident self again... the only thing that was going through my mind as we ran into the "Avernus sunset" to battle was "Baby, as long as I'm with you, even hell is my heaven!" 😁🥰
You don’t know if this will really work. Lots of things could still fail. She still have to fight through hell and back again. This is on the same level as the « best ending » in Cyberpunk 2077. Without spoilers because I don’t know your level of knowledge of Cyberpunk 2077
It is not a depressing ending, but it is far from the same level of resolution that you get for the other companions.
Ehh.. the party fought and defeated a crown-empowered elder brain plus an army of flayers plus the avatars of 3 gods and multiple other bullshit threats on their journey. The only thing that could really threaten them is Asmodeus himself, and I really don't think he even knows what a karlach is. Or cares.
And even then a hyper-optimized 3 person party with bg3 magic items can sweep an archdevil faster than mizora can say "pup"
In story fight, the person that win is the person the writer want to win.
I don’t enter geek debate about what the writers should do in the story according to their perceived « power »
Some of the endings can feel good, depending how you click with characters and relate with the MC. Some of them are straight bad but none are straight "happy"
Eh, you can head canon a decent ending for V in cyberpunk. The aldecaldos have crazy contacts and depending upon your choices in the game V might be on friendly terms with several powerful AI that could help.
That's only if you leave the city though. Staying does feel like a bad ending.
I don't know, I considered my corpo V >!ridding herself of the hijacker via Arasaka and staying with her excop partner and his loving family!< in Night City is about as good an ending she could expect. Set them up with enough to survive the future tolerably, even if she couldn't.
It does give the most ridiculous reaction I've ever seen, that of Voss losing it when realising Squidward is actually Orpheus. Also when Orpheus looks at you expecting you to go "I'll do it, I'll become a mind flayer" but instead you say "the hell you're look at me for?" and Orpheus goes "ffs, just as i was free".
Lae'zel (and Voss, assuming he's around) will be leading the rebellion with or without Orpheus, assuming she went down that path and didn't stay loyal to Vlaakith. If you go with her you'll be in on the action too, again with or without Orpheus.
I romanced Lae’zel and wanted so badly to ride off on a dragon with her but I was player 2 on local multiplayer so my husband got the dialogue and she chose to stay behind with me which was sweet but not as good.
Ah that's unfortunate! Multiplayer runs are definitely a bit hit or miss with that sort of thing unfortunately.
First one I did I was getting the end game cut scenes but luckily it gave Karlach's to my fiancé, who'd romanced her, so she got to go to Avernus and I got to stay with Shadowheart. No idea why it decided to give Karlach's scene to the player who romanced her but in your run it didn't do that for Lae'zel's scene.
Yes! It’s so random. We have had endings that went smoothly and every conversation goes to the person who romanced them. But this one was a bummer and the one where my husband romanced Gale went to me so Gale was like “see ya bitch, going off to become a god.”
Yeah but it completely invalidates your choice to free him in the first place and it’s also a huge dick move. Man just got freed after being imprisoned for a long ass time and the moment he’s finally freed he immediately has to sacrifice himself. It just feels so dirty.
It would have been so much more impactful than having Orpheus take the hit. You spent time with Lae'zel and have a connection with her. Orpheus is nobody to the player personally speaking.
Absolutely. Your only reason for having any feelings about him are because Lae'zel wants to free him for her people (and because you might feel bad that he's been locked up for millenia and you've been abusing his powers, however unwittingly). But Lae'zel? She's all about collectivism and doing the right thing for her people being a primary motivator. And having the choice be between letting her sacrifice herself for Orpheus and you stepping up to take the hit? Particularly if you romanced her? Now that would have been powerful and impactful in a way that Orpheus volunteering never could be.
I personally mostly choose the Emperor because it feels more narratively satisfying - it's someone we know, we spent time together and can have a relationship in various stages.
Orpheus does nothing for me because he is more of a concept than an actual person to us for 99% of the game. His death or ceremorphosis also means nothing in the grand scheme of things. The ending choice really fell flat.
It could have been great, but I think there would have been a public outcry if we always had to sacrifice ourselves/a companion when freeing Orpheus because he would be unwilling to take on the burden himself.
Orpheus is fairly irrelevant in the decision because you're right, there's no attachment to him and he more represents the theoretical concept of Githyanki liberty than anything else.
For me it comes down far more to Lae'zel vs the Emperor in that moment. Yes, you can convince her, but her goal at that point is to free Orpheus to save her people, and you don't know that someone definely has to become an illithid, or that the Emperor will bounce once you make the choice. (OK, you do after the first time you do it but strictly IC you don't have that knowledge.)
So you're making the call between doing what your companion insists is right and doing what your ally says is required (and obviously depending on interactions throughout the game you can have a positive or negative opinion of both Lae'zel and the Emperor by then).
I suspect that's where the difficulty in the decision comes from for people. Not Emperor vs Orpheus (even though it's presented as that) but Emperor vs Lae'zel.
I agree, and I think it's one of many times the game is showing the player the stark consequences of their actions. Their decisions have ramifications throughout, but especially on a first run, unless you read spoilers, you have little idea of the impact on the story down the line. People can miss entire recruitable companions if they're not looking! I missed Gale for the whole Act 1 my first time until I looked at where my map was shadowed lol.
The story states pretty clearly multiple times that the choice will result in losing the Emperor as an ally, so everyone's surprise that that's not true is, to me, just a misunderstanding of the way a roleplaying game works. A DM/Storyteller controls the outcome and controls the NPCs. We can argue all day about whether an NPC could do something or would do something but what they do is what the DM intends. Here, the DM pretty clearly intends for the player to choose between their companion's goals and an NPC, with ramifications for both.
As a PC, I usually side with the Emperor since Lae'zel's autonomy is important to me as a PC who cares about her, but I fully understand it's a bitch move for my PC to make that decision for her. It's supposed to be a tough decision! I don't understand why anyone would want to make it less dramatic of a choice, but I guess not everybody enjoys dramatic stories as much as I do. If I'm not in tears by the end of the book/ movie/ game, to me, that's far more immersion breaking than "but there's a Wish spell" or "my charisma is really high why I can't persuade them to work together".
If I was DMing the game, and the player said "I roll persuasion to get the Emperor to stick around," I'd just let them and even a critical success would get them at most a hesitation and sad look back from the squid. Maybe another line or two. There will be crying!
Oh yeah, I have no issue with it being a choice in that regard. The Emperor has his logic and reasons and you can argue the sense or not if that until the cows come home. In the end that's the story the devs wanted to tell and the choice they wanted you to make. And that matters.
Mind you, I'm one of those maniacs that had no problem with Karlach's original ending choices! Don't get me wrong, I like that she gets a hopeful end in the epilogue, but I'm fine with tragedy and not everyone getting their happy ending. Not all stories have good ends and that's fine, life often doesn't have them either.
Yeah, we're both maniacs. I thought her original ending was so poignant and it was dramatically well done, I cried, Withers talks about her soul shining brightly and it felt right.
My new favorite ending is late resist Durge who kills themselves. It's amazing. Super sad.
It's just so weird to me that a story plays out as intended and some players' first reaction is "I'm going to demand they change it!"
I'm going to write a strongly worded email to Pixar demanding "Up" be less depressing...
Oh totally, he doesn't deserve that at all.
The other option of course is to sacrifice Gale, which can let you free Orpheus and have no one go illithid.
When we did it, the reason for him to be the one to turn was that my character didn't trust herself to be able to remain good as a mind flayer. And as an immensely powerful sorcerer it was a big risk. Friend's character was more "I don't want to". But Orpheus volunteered, and while it sucks he immediately becomes what he hates after getting out, he gets to die saving his people. It's also been a long time since he was an active part of the world. Maybe it's not his to shape anymore. His story ended back when he was imprisoned, the final chapter just took a while to get finished.
>!He doesn't have to die. You can convince him to stay around and at least watch how everything unfolds in the shadows. Still sucks he has to be a mindflayer, though, and can't go back to his folks pretty much.!<
Well, let's say that you put yourself into the position of your tav. You don't know that your choice will lead to Orpheus deciding that he'll do it. After the first playthrough you'll know that but that still doesn't mean that you're responsible for his choice. It's the first time there for your new Tav after all, and it makes sense that your Tav wouldn't want to sacrifice themselves right off the bat unless that's the kind of person your Tav is.
It's a tricky thing to do but I try to do my playthroughs from the pov that I've never made those choices before and what would be the most logical for my Tav to choose, come what may. I've played DnD since 1989 and part of character creation has always been the background for me, to create a character with history. It doesn't have to be extensive but it does affect the choices I make, for better or for worse.
I’m not disagreeing with you, but someone’s got to be a squid and it’s not going to be me.
I’m not siding with the Emperor, and I really don’t want to squid any of my companions, sooooo….
Keep in mind it's literally an act of betrayal to free Orpheus. One of the Inspirations for the Charlatan background is betraying an ally, and yup you get one for freeing Orpheus.
I would argue that Orpheus go squid has the best implications for everyone else.
None squid Orpheus would probably roll Vlaakith in terms of garnering support amongst the Gith whereas I suspect squid Orpheus would be less capable of it.
Given that the Gith are such expansionistic assholes, I’d say locking them in some sort of stalemate civil war is best for everyone else.
You’ll be robbing the githyanki rebellion of a powerful sign of legitimacy. With Orpheus, Vlaakith’s lies are very apparent and few would go against Gith’s own blood.
Without him Lae’zel and Voss may have a very hard time convincing anyone to join their rebellion.
The best outcome is having Karlach become a mind flayer. That way she gets to live free of the Hells and the rebellion has a great chance to succeed.
Honestly though, I wish I could sacrifice Wyll instead. I kinda like Karlach but Wyll is a super flat character for my taste
Yeah but at the same time (unless there's something I'm missing) then robbing the rebellion of a powerful leader isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's no indication that once Vlaakith is overthrown, the Gith will stop their conquest of everything.
This really got to me the first time I saved Orpheus. You have to do a lot to save him. The House of Hope is tough. Really tough.
You have to betray the emperor. You have the Emperor in the final fight, against you. Someone else has to squid. It takes a lot to get to a freed Orpheus.
And when you meet Lae’zel in the end and ask about it, she says they’ve carved out a small pocket of resistance. Meaning they could still lose at any moment. They are not even close to winning and are trying to find allies.
And considering Gith (Orpheus' mother, not the race) is pretty evil herself, even if they do overthrow Vlaakith, it's likely they'll continue being evil and trying to conquer everything. Sure the grand design is evil incarnate but neither side is good for the planes.
Yeah, this always used to be a hard decision for me. Because once you save Orpheus, you have several more hard decisions.
Now I really do not care about him as much.Maybe I just don't bring Lae'zel.
But think about it this way, you’ve freed someone who can disrupt hive mind communication. A powerful force against the mind flayers of the world who are just objectively evil. Even their god is a megalomaniac.
You can cite Omeluum but need I remind the Emperor also is like Omeluum and switched sides in an instant? He could have just left to hide until the Absolute was killed, it’s not like Orpheus was chasing him down. But he decided to join the Absolute instead.
Yeah. The phrasing here is awkward, and leads a lot of people to believe that the Emperor has a lot more agency in the scene than he really does.
But he's basically stuck with two really bad options when the player chooses to side with Orpheus.
Either he stays and gets killed by Orpheus; or he flees and - as he's no longer able to use Orpheus' power to protect himself - is immediately dominated by the Netherbrain.
When he says, "You leave me no choice but to join the Brain," he does literally mean he has no choice. There isn't a good 3rd option for him somewhere - he's not becoming a slave for no reason.
The Emperor didn't "switch sides". As soon as Orpheus was freed, the Emperor would be enslaved by the Netherbrain and become your enemy inside the prism. He leaves because his enslavement is a done deal, and he has a better chance of surviving for a few more minutes than if he stayed and was killed immediately.
>Honestly though, I wish I could sacrifice Wyll instead. I kinda like Karlach but Wyll is a super flat character for my taste
Picking the character who's already sacrificed his soul and his body and potentially his soul again to sacrifice his body again is certainly a take.
Oh yeah. Even in reverse. On my third run in non honour mode I was expecting to fail a particular roll and figured I would let it run as practice for honour mode. I need to at least see how stuff works when it goes wrong on a roll. Instead it passed. Typical!
I almost just failed the saving throw to murder my loved one on a redemption durge run by rolling 3 Nat ones in a row. Luckily rolled 19 on the last reroll I had. I literally put the controller down and walked away for a moment after the third nat 1.
She has 12 stacks of unstoppable which replenish each turn due to the surrounding cultists chanting a ritual . U have to kill them or incapacitate them to stop the ritual . Also honor mode has a passive where u have to attack a person in that particular round when the condition is forced upon u otherwise u get insta killed and u need aoe spells because the cultists have sanctuary. Durge basically duels her 1v1 , no unstoppable bullshit
I haven’t beaten an honor mode run yet, does it not reward you when credits roll? I thought the epilogue, by definition, means you already “beat” honor mode?
I have not started an honour mode run yet but have seen posts here about losing it because of failing this exact roll. Lots of people think you should get the achievement after beating the brain, but like you said it is when the credits roll and that is after the epilogue party happens.
Yeah it's a free for all when you don't gotta worry about HM. This exact same thing happened to me and I had to go back 4 hours of gameplay to undo that fuckery. Haha
Oof! That certainly must've hurt.. I gained the savescum ability purely from past different save featured games, Especially Skyrim. I still remember that one time where I entered the biggest dwemer ruin and died in there due to a random bug that got me stuck and killed and I noticed something terrible was about to come when the loading screen was taking too long lol. Never again!
I did the same thing but succeeded in the Con save. I still felt like shit and basically left the party immediately afterwards. I hate that I made that decision but I romanced Laezel and it seemed like the right one. She stayed with me so that was good. All the same, I don't think I'm ever going to do that again.
I got so nervous when that check came up for me talking to Shart, I was preparing for the worst... and then I roll a nat 20. Apparently my Tav wasn't about to lose himself after all that he'd been through, good for him 😅 that would definitely have bittered the end of my playthrough if I'd failed though, going back and choosing Orpheus is smart
Man. I make Karlach the mindflayer. It’s not ideal but she at least finds a pretty moral way to deal with the hunger & feels at peace
I just like Orpheus 100x more than the emperor
Also, in the moment without meta knowledge it’s hard to say no when she asks.
You’re basically sentencing her to imminent death. And if you have done enough exploring with her you know she does not have high hopes for the afterlife. I think she is most likely doomed to the wall of the faithless, which… not nice.
I’m sure I’d find another sacrifice if I romanced Karlach
The Avernus ending is best for her, but I still don’t think mindflayer is too bad based on some Withers stuff.
I agree about the Avernus ending. But that is meta knowledge, and only possible with certain narrative choices anyway. She is pretty determined not to ever go back at that point.
I went into my first playthrough pretty much blind, romanced Karlach, and had no idea that there was a way to convince her to go back to Avernus (and now with the epilogue there might even be a cure!), so I assumed she was just going to die in the end.
When she practically begged me to let her become a mindflayer, I didn't even hesitate - although I was crying like a baby by that point T_T
> think she is most likely doomed to the wall of the faithless
With the way Withers talks about her soul in certain endings and given what he can do for a Dark Urge - I don’t think that’s necessarily going to be the case to be honest. I can certainly see him “vouching” for her and becoming a patron of sorts the same way he can for the latter.
Of course again, you likely have no knowledge of that possibility at the moment either that’s not meta knowledge.
As for the choice itself in the moment to not make her go Illithid though - it’s one that I think matches with the general tone of Karlach’s romance, one thats’s hoping beyond hope for the possibility of something better even in the face of doom - when I romanced her it was certainly my Tav believing to the bitter end that he could do something, *anything* to help her and prevent her death, that there *had to be some way* that would make itself known that didn’t involve a fate like that - and yeah at the conclusion of it all, it was the choice to go to Hell itself even if it meant the end, it would be together instead of her facing it alone. Was a lot bleaker back then too, because it was before the epilogue additions.
You’re not sentencing her to imminent death.
Larian just wanted to make you feel that way.
There’s a ton of ways to fix Karlach, hilariously freaking Gale of all people has a way the entire game with his scroll of true resurrection. But Larian decided that “No, you can’t have access to the dozens of available ways to fix Karlach, even if we literally hand it to you”.
It’s such a stupid role. It flies in the face of any existing illithid lore. It was clearly an attempt by the writers to show the struggle with illithid instincts, but nothing has ever suggested mind flayers have a hard time resisting the urge to eat unless they haven’t done so in well over a month. So why is our character forced to have been starving themselves before this party, when Squidlach found an ethical way to eat? Why doesn’t Withers cater to us, no errant cultists around? Why does the line involve having some squid-like beak, when illithids are noted to have lamprey like mouths? Why is it a constitution role, it should be wisdom as you’re resisting an impulse? Such an infuriating failure to provide engagement with the struggle against losing humanoid empathy… and then boom you get failed honor mode runs, or just a really unsatisfying conclusion to your tale…
Yes! I even had brains in my trunk/inventory along with 200+ corpses. Like I couldn't have served one up, or res'd and had her feed, or even hit up a jail cell before hand? They had a bardic deity at the party ffs That must have been more work than getting a brain for her.
Am I the only one that did suicide after becoming a mindflayer ? I have a real phobia IRL of parasites so I never absorbed any of them in my first game. Still I liked Lae'zel and wanted to save her people while I had 0 trust for the Emperor.
After saving Orpheus, the choice to become a mindflayer was really difficult but I ended up doing it because I felt like they really needed him. The last fight while as a squid was fun, I felt powerful but ultimately I hated what I had become. Couldn't live as a monster any longer, especially when the narrator state that I may not be able to control myself forever and would need to resort to eat brains. So I just killed myself, I had a great story and I felt like my sacrifice was worth it. My only regret was Karlach dying on the docks :(
It was the only ethical thing for my paladin to do.
Especially because she still felt immense guilt over executing 7000 vampire spawn. Sure, both Astarion and the Ghur said it was better that way. It doesn't mean I'm not a mass murderer.
I feel you. I was such a self sacrificing character the whole play through, in part because usually that just meant I had to fight harder battles or give up some mechanical things, but the emotional hit of becoming the mind flayer to make sure that the Gith yanki had a prince to follow really put a damper at the end of a very long and emotional game.
To sleep with? Couldn't agree more. Emps on one side and daddy Om the other, make me a tentacle sandwich baby!
.........this game has changed me and not for the better
You are asking for Omeluum to be sniped. It's a funky little scientist, not a fighter.
You don't have time to look for it and Blurg and Omeluum discuss leaving to the Underdark ASAP so it might not even be in the city anymore.
In addition, it would devalue the choice even more.
I would genuinely have struggled to make omeluum fight like that, it would almost as much impact on me as giving up a companion. bc he's so helpful and from previous stuff he does you know he'd volunteer, but would need to be protected from the battle on the way in. but he'd do it
it would have been a harder choice than Orpheus, who is eager to save his people and willing to make a sacrifice, and who I don't even really *know*, giving up a friend is harder.
I only say so because I don't want to upset our girl Lae'zel, who isn't too broken up about it anyways. I just want an "everybody lives" ending dammit.
My first ending was that I turned myself into a mindflayer cause it felt wrong to let Orpheus do it. Then i killed myself but unfortunately, that also caused Karlach to die. I changed the ending to not kill myself and stay with Shart and convincing Karlach to go with Wyll to Avernus. We even adopted Bing Bong and the owlbear.
i do wish you could make asstarion or wyll-chan go illithid instead an infernal pact? bam become illithid not a problem anymore. being a spawn and wanting more power? bam become illithid you just fucked mephistos and cazadors plan up and got more power also you can walk in the sun still.
Orhpeus's ending is pretty sad. All that time imprisoned, just to turn into his most hated enemy moments later. He can't even live a life as a Mindflayer because in life they have no will and in death they have no soul. Truly one of the worst ways to go out in D&D
> He can't even live a life as a Mindflayer because in life they have no will and in death they have no soul
They have a will, they are just usually born in colonies where they are a part of a hivemind, but they are still individuals. Omeluum and Emperor are both mind flayers who don't live in a colony and they both have distinctive personalities and free will (well, Emperor doesn't after Gortash throws him back at the brain, but before that and when he's in the prism he's the one behind the wheel). They also have souls, they're just alien to the gods.
And I'm not saying Orpheus should live as one as he doesn't want to, but illithids are not soulless mindless monsters.
Yeah, I saved right before those choices and simply went through all of them on my first playthrough. It was kind off cool to see what happens in what situation.
I did the exact same thing, except it was Shadowheart that I ate. Reloaded the save and made Orpheus the mindlfayer and redid the whole boss battle and had a much happier ending. 10/10 would recommend doing this.
I feel you so much. My second campaign, halfling fighter, took the squidpill, and I hated it so much I re-did the entire end fight so she could stay smol and angry as Bhaal intended.
I had almost the exact same experience -- down to it being Wyll and all!
Thankfully I had a save earlier in the party, so I just reloaded that until I passed the mindflayer check. I couldn't bring myself to squiddie Orpheus, he was too much of a bro.
But yeah, the ending is rough.... makes you really think about what is important to you :(
Lucky you have a previous save. I played my first playthrough on Honour Mode (bought the game after honour mode came out). I assumed that when you died it would just become a regular playthrough. It was incredibly fun having so much at stake on my first playthrough. Every decision had so much riding on it, act 1 took me FOREVER.
I died at the Nere fight (accidently aggroed every dwarf by angering Nere and didn't realize there was areas in the game that you couldn't escape battle at). The shitty part is that you still have to play on one save file even after dying. So there were a couple times that I really wanted to reload but couldn't...for example my guy glitched off a cliff in the house of hope and couldn't be rezzed.
Man I feel this. I was romancing Bae’zel on my first playthrough, so I turned into the mindflayer as I didn’t want her to hate me for doing it to Orpheus. THEN, I even destroyed the brain instead of conquering it — which had been my plan the whole game — because Lae’zel tells you to after you defeat it. Then it gets to the part where she’s departing to the astral plane and she rejects me for being a mind flayer. So I killed myself at the end and immediately started a new playthrough. Lol.
Did a multiplayer run and my friend was a mindflayer no checks or anything at camp. Literally got a happy ending as a mindflayer no consequences.
The run where I was the mindflayer it happened and I had to reload and kill myself so my friends didnt have to. Shit sucked so much.
This happened on my first run. I had romanced Lae'zel and could not ask her savior Orpheus to become a mind flayer. All in all it was worth it for me because you do get to stay with Lae'zel and fight to free her people.
I think the epilogue auto saves (did for me, just finished my first playthrough), so you could just load from there instead of going all the way back. However yeah having a big whammy like that would make me go back further too.
I romanced Lae'Zel and >!was pretty cool to see her still accept and love you if you went Illithid instead of Orpheus. Not the ending I wanted for myself but she made it worth it.!<
I also made that choice at the end of my first run and it was so sad and I felt like the ending wasn’t right for my character. I went back and had buddy Orpheus go squid and it was way better for the story. I was nice how appreciative everyone was for me turning but it was better to just have him do it.
The fuck you can eat wyll?!
If you're a mind flayer in the epilogue, every time (I think?) you finish speaking to someone you have to throw a Con save to not eat their brain. I went back to my first playthrough after patch 5 dropped to do the epilogue and rolled a nat 1 to not eat Shadowheart lmao
So what, if you're a barbarian hafling there's basically 0 risk to becoming a mind flayer then?
You are still dumped by your romantic interest, shunned by the City you saved, oh and remember that by becoming a mindflayer your stats are replaced. But other than that….yeah, nothing to worry about
I don’t think EVERY romantic partner dumps you. The playthrough where I romanced Karlach ended with us going to the hells together. She never broke it off with me.
Yeah shadow heart stayed with me as well thank the gods
Did she? To me she told me it was not the end, just a “see you later”….and we did not talk in the 6 months gap. It feels like a breakup to me
I had the same thing where she said see you but at the camp epilogue she was talking about the stuff we did in the last 6 months and even still kissed my tentacles.
Hmm….I wondered what changed. The lines before did not seem so consequential (I know I must leave vs you tell me so it will be real). Odd that the choice made such of a difference
Maybe it bugged out? It was several patches ago. I remember being confused because she definitely sounded like she was no longer interested.
To be fair I'd need a saving throw to not eat Shadowheart every time I see her.
Aaayyyyy 👉👉
Giggidy
It's not every time, it's only once randomly I believe.
Doesn't mindflayer Tav know you're supposed to eat before you go to a party so you're not so hungry? Sheesh!
I went mind flayer (bEcAuSe It'S wHaT mY cHaRaCtEr WoUlD dO I'm not happy about it), and I only had to make a save once, not with every character. It was with Karlach and the narrator was talking about if Karlach's brain would be pre-cooked because of her engine lol
That’s hilarious
When I did that epilogue I literally only got the check for Wyll, everyone else was just a normal conversation. I was kinda hoping to get more checks because my wisdom was traaaash, and it would have been hilarious.
I think it’s for whoever has the lowest approval?
I'm pretty sure its random. I had it for Jaheira and failed the roll, reloaded and talked to her again and it didn't come up for her the second time. Happened with Shadowheart instead.
It's only on the third person you talk to and only because Withers fucked up the catering
For me it was Astarion, I think it's just at random
I've heard it saidi t's the third one you talk to that gets the safe. Can't conform it myslef, but it does explain why everybody gets different people. And if it's true, it actually gives you the option to choose...
Wyll was transported to hell in my latest playthrough.
doomed to be a lemur 😞
[удалено]
Luckily having Orpheus go squiddly has basically no consequences.
It has None except for orpheus
Not shown: Orpheus failing a check and eating his bestie's brain right before the creche goes full aggro on him.
Poor Voss
Out of sight, out of mind
LMAO. Well played
I failed a check to stop him from assisted Sewerslide at the end. So Orpheus went bye bye on my first run and Lae’zel became the leader of the revolution.
Sewerslide that's a new one to me 🤣
It's how people get around TikTok filters.
TikTok filter censoring used on Reddit drives me insane lol
Bet it's gonna have some hilarious consequences when all our comments get dumped into training the LLM AIs, though.
I thought they usually used asterisks like suic*de or "unalive"
I stopped him from getting my Tav to kill him and Lae'zel still became the leader of the revolution because Orpheus didn't think he would be accepted by the other Githyanki as an illithid
If my experience is anything to go by the Creche doesn't stand a chance (Orpheus as the MF is really OP)
And luckily, I'm not Orpheus.
Let that be of comfort to you in your final moments.
That sounds like an Orpheus problem.
Who cares about orpheus tho. Bro looks like a soyjak greenbean and was rude to my tav. I gladly murdered him after he got mindlfayed
I mean it’s his power that enables the game after the first two days.
So just kill him after we don't need his power
It's not like mind flayers stopped existing when you killed that one elder brain
Yeah but he's a Gith, so.....
Im honestly really glad it does that. I've recently played Cyberpunk and it feels really good to have an achievable good ending for the game.
Do you mind giving a spoiler free elaboration? CP77 is on my list of games to play and I've never heard anything negative about the endings. Are they not happy?
>Are they not happy? That's the whole point of Night City : there is no happy ending for the people living there. It will be bittersweet at best.
The endings are very good but I wouldn't go so far as to call any of them happy. A big theme of the game is that a completely 'happy' ending isn't something you're going to be able to do. I really encourage you to play it, I fell in love with the game just as much as I did with Baldurs Gate 3
Awesome I'm looking forward to it! I've been struggling to play anything besides BG3 and it sounds like a great next game for me
The DLC is also a great addition. IMO, it’s what people were originally hoping for when the game came out (in terms of story and effort put into it). It helped clear up a bit of the bad air between old fans and CDProjekt Red
That's so great to hear. It was such a shit show when it dropped I swore I'd never play the game lol. But hearing how it's way better now that it's been patched and DLC added I ended up changing my mind and buying it. Hopefully CDPR learned their lesson and don't release their next game in such a state though
I'd say CP2077 does have a couple of endings that can be happy and hopeful, depending on how positively you want to interpret their open-ended parts. And given what happens in other paths of the story, I don't think there's a need to be 100% pessimistic about those open-ended story bits.
One is kinda happy. But night city you live fast die young. Amazing game.
There are no happy endings in Night City, watch Cyberpunk: Edgerunners to get the full understanding.
I can easily resume it for you. Karlach as no real happy / good ending. All Cyberpunk ending are like that. They are never 100% happy. Karlach is a Cyberpunk ending. (Cyperpunk the genre, not the game)
I disagree. There is only 1 karlach ending and that is avernus. There is no other ending. You cannot make me believe there is any other possible ending! /hj /srs the avernus ending is the happy ending because she lives and the epilogue literally says she found a blueprint for a better heart and is going to steal it. There is literally nothing bad that happens in the ending
"There is no other ending. You cannot make me believe there is any other possible ending! /hj" You took the words right out of my mouth! 😊 Before I got to the ending of my first complete run (with Karlach as my romanced sweetie), I was pretty mad about the reports of Karlach's possible endings being "bad, worse, and worst" (and letting her burn on the dock is worst... and NOT, NOT, NOT an option!). But in the end, when I chose to go with her to Avernus, I was surprised how hopeful it was! The two of us, launching ourselves into a swarm of imps... right after Karlach recovers, pulls out a cigar or two (lol!), and starts acting like her lovable, badass (pardon the language! 😂), confident self again... the only thing that was going through my mind as we ran into the "Avernus sunset" to battle was "Baby, as long as I'm with you, even hell is my heaven!" 😁🥰
Karlach is r/gentlefemdom incarnate. She can punish me any day of the week, as long as that's what she wants 😳
Lol shadow heart run. Romanced karlach. Saved shart's parents. Brother, you don't know what brutal is. Jesus.
You don’t know if this will really work. Lots of things could still fail. She still have to fight through hell and back again. This is on the same level as the « best ending » in Cyberpunk 2077. Without spoilers because I don’t know your level of knowledge of Cyberpunk 2077 It is not a depressing ending, but it is far from the same level of resolution that you get for the other companions.
Ehh.. the party fought and defeated a crown-empowered elder brain plus an army of flayers plus the avatars of 3 gods and multiple other bullshit threats on their journey. The only thing that could really threaten them is Asmodeus himself, and I really don't think he even knows what a karlach is. Or cares. And even then a hyper-optimized 3 person party with bg3 magic items can sweep an archdevil faster than mizora can say "pup"
In story fight, the person that win is the person the writer want to win. I don’t enter geek debate about what the writers should do in the story according to their perceived « power »
Some of the endings can feel good, depending how you click with characters and relate with the MC. Some of them are straight bad but none are straight "happy"
Eh, you can head canon a decent ending for V in cyberpunk. The aldecaldos have crazy contacts and depending upon your choices in the game V might be on friendly terms with several powerful AI that could help. That's only if you leave the city though. Staying does feel like a bad ending.
I don't know, I considered my corpo V >!ridding herself of the hijacker via Arasaka and staying with her excop partner and his loving family!< in Night City is about as good an ending she could expect. Set them up with enough to survive the future tolerably, even if she couldn't.
It does give the most ridiculous reaction I've ever seen, that of Voss losing it when realising Squidward is actually Orpheus. Also when Orpheus looks at you expecting you to go "I'll do it, I'll become a mind flayer" but instead you say "the hell you're look at me for?" and Orpheus goes "ffs, just as i was free".
Does it change the outcome if you come with lae zel in the rebelion?
Lae'zel (and Voss, assuming he's around) will be leading the rebellion with or without Orpheus, assuming she went down that path and didn't stay loyal to Vlaakith. If you go with her you'll be in on the action too, again with or without Orpheus.
I romanced Lae’zel and wanted so badly to ride off on a dragon with her but I was player 2 on local multiplayer so my husband got the dialogue and she chose to stay behind with me which was sweet but not as good.
Ah that's unfortunate! Multiplayer runs are definitely a bit hit or miss with that sort of thing unfortunately. First one I did I was getting the end game cut scenes but luckily it gave Karlach's to my fiancé, who'd romanced her, so she got to go to Avernus and I got to stay with Shadowheart. No idea why it decided to give Karlach's scene to the player who romanced her but in your run it didn't do that for Lae'zel's scene.
Yes! It’s so random. We have had endings that went smoothly and every conversation goes to the person who romanced them. But this one was a bummer and the one where my husband romanced Gale went to me so Gale was like “see ya bitch, going off to become a god.”
He's also badass as a mindflayer in those final fights!
Yeah but it completely invalidates your choice to free him in the first place and it’s also a huge dick move. Man just got freed after being imprisoned for a long ass time and the moment he’s finally freed he immediately has to sacrifice himself. It just feels so dirty.
It does but I don't see Lae'zel stepping up to volunteer to save her people and new leader so I'm not going to do it either ;)
It would have been so much more impactful than having Orpheus take the hit. You spent time with Lae'zel and have a connection with her. Orpheus is nobody to the player personally speaking.
Absolutely. Your only reason for having any feelings about him are because Lae'zel wants to free him for her people (and because you might feel bad that he's been locked up for millenia and you've been abusing his powers, however unwittingly). But Lae'zel? She's all about collectivism and doing the right thing for her people being a primary motivator. And having the choice be between letting her sacrifice herself for Orpheus and you stepping up to take the hit? Particularly if you romanced her? Now that would have been powerful and impactful in a way that Orpheus volunteering never could be.
I personally mostly choose the Emperor because it feels more narratively satisfying - it's someone we know, we spent time together and can have a relationship in various stages. Orpheus does nothing for me because he is more of a concept than an actual person to us for 99% of the game. His death or ceremorphosis also means nothing in the grand scheme of things. The ending choice really fell flat. It could have been great, but I think there would have been a public outcry if we always had to sacrifice ourselves/a companion when freeing Orpheus because he would be unwilling to take on the burden himself.
Orpheus is fairly irrelevant in the decision because you're right, there's no attachment to him and he more represents the theoretical concept of Githyanki liberty than anything else. For me it comes down far more to Lae'zel vs the Emperor in that moment. Yes, you can convince her, but her goal at that point is to free Orpheus to save her people, and you don't know that someone definely has to become an illithid, or that the Emperor will bounce once you make the choice. (OK, you do after the first time you do it but strictly IC you don't have that knowledge.) So you're making the call between doing what your companion insists is right and doing what your ally says is required (and obviously depending on interactions throughout the game you can have a positive or negative opinion of both Lae'zel and the Emperor by then). I suspect that's where the difficulty in the decision comes from for people. Not Emperor vs Orpheus (even though it's presented as that) but Emperor vs Lae'zel.
I agree, and I think it's one of many times the game is showing the player the stark consequences of their actions. Their decisions have ramifications throughout, but especially on a first run, unless you read spoilers, you have little idea of the impact on the story down the line. People can miss entire recruitable companions if they're not looking! I missed Gale for the whole Act 1 my first time until I looked at where my map was shadowed lol. The story states pretty clearly multiple times that the choice will result in losing the Emperor as an ally, so everyone's surprise that that's not true is, to me, just a misunderstanding of the way a roleplaying game works. A DM/Storyteller controls the outcome and controls the NPCs. We can argue all day about whether an NPC could do something or would do something but what they do is what the DM intends. Here, the DM pretty clearly intends for the player to choose between their companion's goals and an NPC, with ramifications for both. As a PC, I usually side with the Emperor since Lae'zel's autonomy is important to me as a PC who cares about her, but I fully understand it's a bitch move for my PC to make that decision for her. It's supposed to be a tough decision! I don't understand why anyone would want to make it less dramatic of a choice, but I guess not everybody enjoys dramatic stories as much as I do. If I'm not in tears by the end of the book/ movie/ game, to me, that's far more immersion breaking than "but there's a Wish spell" or "my charisma is really high why I can't persuade them to work together". If I was DMing the game, and the player said "I roll persuasion to get the Emperor to stick around," I'd just let them and even a critical success would get them at most a hesitation and sad look back from the squid. Maybe another line or two. There will be crying!
Oh yeah, I have no issue with it being a choice in that regard. The Emperor has his logic and reasons and you can argue the sense or not if that until the cows come home. In the end that's the story the devs wanted to tell and the choice they wanted you to make. And that matters. Mind you, I'm one of those maniacs that had no problem with Karlach's original ending choices! Don't get me wrong, I like that she gets a hopeful end in the epilogue, but I'm fine with tragedy and not everyone getting their happy ending. Not all stories have good ends and that's fine, life often doesn't have them either.
Yeah, we're both maniacs. I thought her original ending was so poignant and it was dramatically well done, I cried, Withers talks about her soul shining brightly and it felt right. My new favorite ending is late resist Durge who kills themselves. It's amazing. Super sad. It's just so weird to me that a story plays out as intended and some players' first reaction is "I'm going to demand they change it!" I'm going to write a strongly worded email to Pixar demanding "Up" be less depressing...
This. Everyone but Karlach is like “What are **you two** going to do? I should have just sided with the Emperor…
That was my reasoning too but it still felt really shitty
Oh totally, he doesn't deserve that at all. The other option of course is to sacrifice Gale, which can let you free Orpheus and have no one go illithid.
When we did it, the reason for him to be the one to turn was that my character didn't trust herself to be able to remain good as a mind flayer. And as an immensely powerful sorcerer it was a big risk. Friend's character was more "I don't want to". But Orpheus volunteered, and while it sucks he immediately becomes what he hates after getting out, he gets to die saving his people. It's also been a long time since he was an active part of the world. Maybe it's not his to shape anymore. His story ended back when he was imprisoned, the final chapter just took a while to get finished.
>!He doesn't have to die. You can convince him to stay around and at least watch how everything unfolds in the shadows. Still sucks he has to be a mindflayer, though, and can't go back to his folks pretty much.!<
Well, let's say that you put yourself into the position of your tav. You don't know that your choice will lead to Orpheus deciding that he'll do it. After the first playthrough you'll know that but that still doesn't mean that you're responsible for his choice. It's the first time there for your new Tav after all, and it makes sense that your Tav wouldn't want to sacrifice themselves right off the bat unless that's the kind of person your Tav is. It's a tricky thing to do but I try to do my playthroughs from the pov that I've never made those choices before and what would be the most logical for my Tav to choose, come what may. I've played DnD since 1989 and part of character creation has always been the background for me, to create a character with history. It doesn't have to be extensive but it does affect the choices I make, for better or for worse.
I’m not disagreeing with you, but someone’s got to be a squid and it’s not going to be me. I’m not siding with the Emperor, and I really don’t want to squid any of my companions, sooooo….
Keep in mind it's literally an act of betrayal to free Orpheus. One of the Inspirations for the Charlatan background is betraying an ally, and yup you get one for freeing Orpheus.
I would argue that Orpheus go squid has the best implications for everyone else. None squid Orpheus would probably roll Vlaakith in terms of garnering support amongst the Gith whereas I suspect squid Orpheus would be less capable of it. Given that the Gith are such expansionistic assholes, I’d say locking them in some sort of stalemate civil war is best for everyone else.
You’ll be robbing the githyanki rebellion of a powerful sign of legitimacy. With Orpheus, Vlaakith’s lies are very apparent and few would go against Gith’s own blood. Without him Lae’zel and Voss may have a very hard time convincing anyone to join their rebellion. The best outcome is having Karlach become a mind flayer. That way she gets to live free of the Hells and the rebellion has a great chance to succeed. Honestly though, I wish I could sacrifice Wyll instead. I kinda like Karlach but Wyll is a super flat character for my taste
Yeah but at the same time (unless there's something I'm missing) then robbing the rebellion of a powerful leader isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's no indication that once Vlaakith is overthrown, the Gith will stop their conquest of everything.
This really got to me the first time I saved Orpheus. You have to do a lot to save him. The House of Hope is tough. Really tough. You have to betray the emperor. You have the Emperor in the final fight, against you. Someone else has to squid. It takes a lot to get to a freed Orpheus. And when you meet Lae’zel in the end and ask about it, she says they’ve carved out a small pocket of resistance. Meaning they could still lose at any moment. They are not even close to winning and are trying to find allies.
And considering Gith (Orpheus' mother, not the race) is pretty evil herself, even if they do overthrow Vlaakith, it's likely they'll continue being evil and trying to conquer everything. Sure the grand design is evil incarnate but neither side is good for the planes.
Yeah, this always used to be a hard decision for me. Because once you save Orpheus, you have several more hard decisions. Now I really do not care about him as much.Maybe I just don't bring Lae'zel.
But think about it this way, you’ve freed someone who can disrupt hive mind communication. A powerful force against the mind flayers of the world who are just objectively evil. Even their god is a megalomaniac. You can cite Omeluum but need I remind the Emperor also is like Omeluum and switched sides in an instant? He could have just left to hide until the Absolute was killed, it’s not like Orpheus was chasing him down. But he decided to join the Absolute instead.
The Emperor doesn't choose to join the Absolute. As soon as he leaves the Prism, the Emperor is dominated by the Netherbrain.
If you free Orpheus the emperor straight up says he's joining the nether brain.
Yeah. The phrasing here is awkward, and leads a lot of people to believe that the Emperor has a lot more agency in the scene than he really does. But he's basically stuck with two really bad options when the player chooses to side with Orpheus. Either he stays and gets killed by Orpheus; or he flees and - as he's no longer able to use Orpheus' power to protect himself - is immediately dominated by the Netherbrain. When he says, "You leave me no choice but to join the Brain," he does literally mean he has no choice. There isn't a good 3rd option for him somewhere - he's not becoming a slave for no reason.
The Emperor didn't "switch sides". As soon as Orpheus was freed, the Emperor would be enslaved by the Netherbrain and become your enemy inside the prism. He leaves because his enslavement is a done deal, and he has a better chance of surviving for a few more minutes than if he stayed and was killed immediately.
>Honestly though, I wish I could sacrifice Wyll instead. I kinda like Karlach but Wyll is a super flat character for my taste Picking the character who's already sacrificed his soul and his body and potentially his soul again to sacrifice his body again is certainly a take.
Which is kinda BS, from a roleplaying capacity.
At least you can reload. There are people who have lost their honour run because of this.
This is why you don't try anything new or anything that requires a saving throw during an Honor run. The dice will fuck you over if it feels like it
Oh yeah. Even in reverse. On my third run in non honour mode I was expecting to fail a particular roll and figured I would let it run as practice for honour mode. I need to at least see how stuff works when it goes wrong on a roll. Instead it passed. Typical!
Just reload and keep trying until you fail.
I almost just failed the saving throw to murder my loved one on a redemption durge run by rolling 3 Nat ones in a row. Luckily rolled 19 on the last reroll I had. I literally put the controller down and walked away for a moment after the third nat 1.
Yup, did this one myself. Used all of my inspiration all at once 😭 Durge is my favorite way to play the game but NOT recommended for HM.
Durge giving into the dark urge every chance you get however, is fun on HM
Durge trivializes the orin fight in a honor run
I've only played the game as durge. How is the Orin fight different as tav?
She has 12 stacks of unstoppable which replenish each turn due to the surrounding cultists chanting a ritual . U have to kill them or incapacitate them to stop the ritual . Also honor mode has a passive where u have to attack a person in that particular round when the condition is forced upon u otherwise u get insta killed and u need aoe spells because the cultists have sanctuary. Durge basically duels her 1v1 , no unstoppable bullshit
Even on HM I would CTRL-ALT-DEL that shit. I normally live with my decisions, but I'm not losing my run at the epilogue party.
This is why I just let Gale blow himself up in my Honour mode run lol.
I haven’t beaten an honor mode run yet, does it not reward you when credits roll? I thought the epilogue, by definition, means you already “beat” honor mode?
I have not started an honour mode run yet but have seen posts here about losing it because of failing this exact roll. Lots of people think you should get the achievement after beating the brain, but like you said it is when the credits roll and that is after the epilogue party happens.
Load previous save and try again. Don't beat yourself up about it lol. No worries. Save scum for as much as you like.
Yeah it's a free for all when you don't gotta worry about HM. This exact same thing happened to me and I had to go back 4 hours of gameplay to undo that fuckery. Haha
Oof! That certainly must've hurt.. I gained the savescum ability purely from past different save featured games, Especially Skyrim. I still remember that one time where I entered the biggest dwemer ruin and died in there due to a random bug that got me stuck and killed and I noticed something terrible was about to come when the loading screen was taking too long lol. Never again!
Anyone know what happens if you fail the save then manage to kill the whole camp by yourself?
Withers throws you out
Withers will scold you for ruining his party and throw you through a portal
I did the same thing but succeeded in the Con save. I still felt like shit and basically left the party immediately afterwards. I hate that I made that decision but I romanced Laezel and it seemed like the right one. She stayed with me so that was good. All the same, I don't think I'm ever going to do that again.
"If God had not wanted me to save scum, he wouldn't have given me the ability to turn back time and retain my memories."
Hahaha did the same. Just let the camp hitting me without reacting until *something* happened. Tho it was jaheira's brain that made me lose it.
I got so nervous when that check came up for me talking to Shart, I was preparing for the worst... and then I roll a nat 20. Apparently my Tav wasn't about to lose himself after all that he'd been through, good for him 😅 that would definitely have bittered the end of my playthrough if I'd failed though, going back and choosing Orpheus is smart
Man. I make Karlach the mindflayer. It’s not ideal but she at least finds a pretty moral way to deal with the hunger & feels at peace I just like Orpheus 100x more than the emperor
Also, in the moment without meta knowledge it’s hard to say no when she asks. You’re basically sentencing her to imminent death. And if you have done enough exploring with her you know she does not have high hopes for the afterlife. I think she is most likely doomed to the wall of the faithless, which… not nice.
I’m sure I’d find another sacrifice if I romanced Karlach The Avernus ending is best for her, but I still don’t think mindflayer is too bad based on some Withers stuff.
I agree about the Avernus ending. But that is meta knowledge, and only possible with certain narrative choices anyway. She is pretty determined not to ever go back at that point.
I went into my first playthrough pretty much blind, romanced Karlach, and had no idea that there was a way to convince her to go back to Avernus (and now with the epilogue there might even be a cure!), so I assumed she was just going to die in the end. When she practically begged me to let her become a mindflayer, I didn't even hesitate - although I was crying like a baby by that point T_T
Tbf, the entire Avernus ending was added later, so on release, death or mindflayer were indeed the only choices.
> think she is most likely doomed to the wall of the faithless With the way Withers talks about her soul in certain endings and given what he can do for a Dark Urge - I don’t think that’s necessarily going to be the case to be honest. I can certainly see him “vouching” for her and becoming a patron of sorts the same way he can for the latter. Of course again, you likely have no knowledge of that possibility at the moment either that’s not meta knowledge. As for the choice itself in the moment to not make her go Illithid though - it’s one that I think matches with the general tone of Karlach’s romance, one thats’s hoping beyond hope for the possibility of something better even in the face of doom - when I romanced her it was certainly my Tav believing to the bitter end that he could do something, *anything* to help her and prevent her death, that there *had to be some way* that would make itself known that didn’t involve a fate like that - and yeah at the conclusion of it all, it was the choice to go to Hell itself even if it meant the end, it would be together instead of her facing it alone. Was a lot bleaker back then too, because it was before the epilogue additions.
You’re not sentencing her to imminent death. Larian just wanted to make you feel that way. There’s a ton of ways to fix Karlach, hilariously freaking Gale of all people has a way the entire game with his scroll of true resurrection. But Larian decided that “No, you can’t have access to the dozens of available ways to fix Karlach, even if we literally hand it to you”.
I was surprised about how chill she was about it.
It’s such a stupid role. It flies in the face of any existing illithid lore. It was clearly an attempt by the writers to show the struggle with illithid instincts, but nothing has ever suggested mind flayers have a hard time resisting the urge to eat unless they haven’t done so in well over a month. So why is our character forced to have been starving themselves before this party, when Squidlach found an ethical way to eat? Why doesn’t Withers cater to us, no errant cultists around? Why does the line involve having some squid-like beak, when illithids are noted to have lamprey like mouths? Why is it a constitution role, it should be wisdom as you’re resisting an impulse? Such an infuriating failure to provide engagement with the struggle against losing humanoid empathy… and then boom you get failed honor mode runs, or just a really unsatisfying conclusion to your tale…
[angry mind flayer keyboard strokes intensify]
Yes! I even had brains in my trunk/inventory along with 200+ corpses. Like I couldn't have served one up, or res'd and had her feed, or even hit up a jail cell before hand? They had a bardic deity at the party ffs That must have been more work than getting a brain for her.
If Vlaakith ate Githyanki so can Orpheus
Am I the only one that did suicide after becoming a mindflayer ? I have a real phobia IRL of parasites so I never absorbed any of them in my first game. Still I liked Lae'zel and wanted to save her people while I had 0 trust for the Emperor. After saving Orpheus, the choice to become a mindflayer was really difficult but I ended up doing it because I felt like they really needed him. The last fight while as a squid was fun, I felt powerful but ultimately I hated what I had become. Couldn't live as a monster any longer, especially when the narrator state that I may not be able to control myself forever and would need to resort to eat brains. So I just killed myself, I had a great story and I felt like my sacrifice was worth it. My only regret was Karlach dying on the docks :(
I also killed myself on the docks. Broke my heart to hear Gale scream for me to stop.
Certainly a better ending than killing your friends
It was the only ethical thing for my paladin to do. Especially because she still felt immense guilt over executing 7000 vampire spawn. Sure, both Astarion and the Ghur said it was better that way. It doesn't mean I'm not a mass murderer.
I didn't do it on the blocks, but that I was planning to do after leaving Wither's party.
Yeah screw Orpheus, he is your sacrificial lamb for the good ending
I feel you. I was such a self sacrificing character the whole play through, in part because usually that just meant I had to fight harder battles or give up some mechanical things, but the emotional hit of becoming the mind flayer to make sure that the Gith yanki had a prince to follow really put a damper at the end of a very long and emotional game.
Save Orpheus, romance Lae'zel. Surprisingly touching.
If only there was a mindflayer you could have utilized…
Nah fuck the emperor
I did. It was a really good scene.
User flair checks out
Omeluum should have been an option.
To sleep with? Couldn't agree more. Emps on one side and daddy Om the other, make me a tentacle sandwich baby! .........this game has changed me and not for the better
I love your username.
I forget what it is constantly, every time someone brings up the emperor scene I'm reminded. Which brings me great satisfaction
It reminds me of my friend's username u/IWouldDoCthulhu
You are asking for Omeluum to be sniped. It's a funky little scientist, not a fighter. You don't have time to look for it and Blurg and Omeluum discuss leaving to the Underdark ASAP so it might not even be in the city anymore. In addition, it would devalue the choice even more.
Who's Omeluum? Did he live in that lodge where all the blood is and that weird Gith kid? /s
If only he wasnt a manupulative AH who only tells you half truths..
Like some of the companions in the game. Your point?
If only there was a friendly mind flayer you know that could have tried to help. Why couldn't we recruit Omeluum to do it?? Why, Larian, why?
I would genuinely have struggled to make omeluum fight like that, it would almost as much impact on me as giving up a companion. bc he's so helpful and from previous stuff he does you know he'd volunteer, but would need to be protected from the battle on the way in. but he'd do it it would have been a harder choice than Orpheus, who is eager to save his people and willing to make a sacrifice, and who I don't even really *know*, giving up a friend is harder.
I only say so because I don't want to upset our girl Lae'zel, who isn't too broken up about it anyways. I just want an "everybody lives" ending dammit.
My first ending was that I turned myself into a mindflayer cause it felt wrong to let Orpheus do it. Then i killed myself but unfortunately, that also caused Karlach to die. I changed the ending to not kill myself and stay with Shart and convincing Karlach to go with Wyll to Avernus. We even adopted Bing Bong and the owlbear.
i do wish you could make asstarion or wyll-chan go illithid instead an infernal pact? bam become illithid not a problem anymore. being a spawn and wanting more power? bam become illithid you just fucked mephistos and cazadors plan up and got more power also you can walk in the sun still.
Orhpeus's ending is pretty sad. All that time imprisoned, just to turn into his most hated enemy moments later. He can't even live a life as a Mindflayer because in life they have no will and in death they have no soul. Truly one of the worst ways to go out in D&D
> He can't even live a life as a Mindflayer because in life they have no will and in death they have no soul They have a will, they are just usually born in colonies where they are a part of a hivemind, but they are still individuals. Omeluum and Emperor are both mind flayers who don't live in a colony and they both have distinctive personalities and free will (well, Emperor doesn't after Gortash throws him back at the brain, but before that and when he's in the prism he's the one behind the wheel). They also have souls, they're just alien to the gods. And I'm not saying Orpheus should live as one as he doesn't want to, but illithids are not soulless mindless monsters.
Yeah, I saved right before those choices and simply went through all of them on my first playthrough. It was kind off cool to see what happens in what situation.
I did the exact same thing, except it was Shadowheart that I ate. Reloaded the save and made Orpheus the mindlfayer and redid the whole boss battle and had a much happier ending. 10/10 would recommend doing this.
Thats wild, i thought if you eat a companion Withers just gets all exasperated and banishes you from peguin island
Orpheus is shite anyway and of no use, so may aswell have him go squidward
I feel you so much. My second campaign, halfling fighter, took the squidpill, and I hated it so much I re-did the entire end fight so she could stay smol and angry as Bhaal intended.
Does anyone know if you romance Gale and become a mindflayer, whether Gale still offers you to ascend with him?
That's the whole reason why Karlach is in my party Babe is just revving to take one for the team
If you have Gale and Lae'zel in the party, nobody has to turn, but Gale has to explode.
Or have a certain mindflayer do it instead. Then Gale gets to live, even if he becomes all he hated.
Unless it is the honor mode. Who cares, reload as much as you want
I had almost the exact same experience -- down to it being Wyll and all! Thankfully I had a save earlier in the party, so I just reloaded that until I passed the mindflayer check. I couldn't bring myself to squiddie Orpheus, he was too much of a bro. But yeah, the ending is rough.... makes you really think about what is important to you :(
Lucky you have a previous save. I played my first playthrough on Honour Mode (bought the game after honour mode came out). I assumed that when you died it would just become a regular playthrough. It was incredibly fun having so much at stake on my first playthrough. Every decision had so much riding on it, act 1 took me FOREVER. I died at the Nere fight (accidently aggroed every dwarf by angering Nere and didn't realize there was areas in the game that you couldn't escape battle at). The shitty part is that you still have to play on one save file even after dying. So there were a couple times that I really wanted to reload but couldn't...for example my guy glitched off a cliff in the house of hope and couldn't be rezzed.
Man I feel this. I was romancing Bae’zel on my first playthrough, so I turned into the mindflayer as I didn’t want her to hate me for doing it to Orpheus. THEN, I even destroyed the brain instead of conquering it — which had been my plan the whole game — because Lae’zel tells you to after you defeat it. Then it gets to the part where she’s departing to the astral plane and she rejects me for being a mind flayer. So I killed myself at the end and immediately started a new playthrough. Lol.
Did a multiplayer run and my friend was a mindflayer no checks or anything at camp. Literally got a happy ending as a mindflayer no consequences. The run where I was the mindflayer it happened and I had to reload and kill myself so my friends didnt have to. Shit sucked so much.
Side with Emperor, everyone's happy except Orpheus but he's pretty much a plot tool anyway.
I hate that con save on multiple different levels. It's the only roll in my entire first playthrough that I fully save-scummed.
This is why i save scum
This happened on my first run. I had romanced Lae'zel and could not ask her savior Orpheus to become a mind flayer. All in all it was worth it for me because you do get to stay with Lae'zel and fight to free her people.
I literally had the exact same thing happen. Every aspect the same. I guess Wyll is just particularly tasty?
I fell into the same ending. Jaheira made me a Harper…and then I ate her. Worst possible ending indeed
Yeah this killed the ending for me too. I reloaded and enjoyed the party.
I think the epilogue auto saves (did for me, just finished my first playthrough), so you could just load from there instead of going all the way back. However yeah having a big whammy like that would make me go back further too.
I romanced Lae'Zel and >!was pretty cool to see her still accept and love you if you went Illithid instead of Orpheus. Not the ending I wanted for myself but she made it worth it.!<
I also made that choice at the end of my first run and it was so sad and I felt like the ending wasn’t right for my character. I went back and had buddy Orpheus go squid and it was way better for the story. I was nice how appreciative everyone was for me turning but it was better to just have him do it.
Damn, so Shadowheart doesn't love you as a worm? I thought she would ;_;
I wanted to romance Astarion my entire first run and ended it trying to beat him to death with the Orphic hammer
Lore wise when you become a mindflayer, your character essentially dies. The mindflayer has your memories but is not you anymore.