The Druid Grove

Zosimus

(may contain spoilers)

So I wandered over to Trademeet, where they'd been having some animal problems and met with the mayor. He told me to take Cernd out to fix the problem with the druids, and some guy on the way out gave me a bottle of poison in case things didn't go as smoothly as the mayor hoped. After a few hours, I found the grove and my party caught 8-hours of shuteye. Well, as soon as we woke up some a-hole druid showed up and told Cernd that he wasn't welcome around those parts. He also mentioned that the new druidess in charge was bonded to the Earth and couldn't be killed.

Well, we started exploring and killed some trolls and spiders. Then we found a big troll den, and that took a couple of days to finish up. Then we found a bunch of nice druids fighting some trolls. We helped them out, but as soon as the trolls were unconscious, the druids started attacking us! I couldn't even get the trolls finished off, and before you knew it the trolls were back on their feet. So I assigned CHARNAME + Yoshi to the druids and Viconia + 3 to the trolls, and by the time the flail of ages finished the trolls off, CHARNAME was at 29 / 113 hit points. Viconia helped finish the druids off, and spammed her healing spells off. Then we rested, and she started casting more heals.

I found some sort of a bridge to a lady with a potion shop. She didn't have much to sell and didn't want to buy anything, so I said good-bye and headed west where I found more a-hole druids to play with. Edwin summoned some monsters on them, we chunked a couple, and we rested before going into the druid HQ.

Once inside, I found this weird druid circle thing and the head druidess herself. I told her to stop being stupid. She told me to go fuck myself. So I shrugged my shoulders, headed north, and poured the poison into the pool. Cernd came completely unglued on me, and I had to kill him. What was his problem? He was right there when the guy in town gave me the poison, but he didn't say a peep about it. Then the other druids showed up and demanded to know why I'd done such a thing. Well, you guys have been attacking me all day and didn't bother to be civil so you had it coming. The fight started. I knew I was in trouble when the second fire elemental showed up, and Edwin had to run around the little druid circle twice before the fire elemental broke off and went after someone else. A few of Edwin's summons turned the tide. Then we all huddled around Viconia begging for healing.

We rested up there, picked up what we could, and headed back to Trademeet. After getting the shield from the merchant, we dropped in to see the mayor. That bastard refused to pay us, told us we were not welcome in his town, and lowered our reputation!!! I couldn't believe it! No gold, no experience, and no lovin' -- what's up with that?

LILARCOR: Are we gonna kill something now?!

Yes, we are.

Two rounds later we sprayed chunks of the mayor all over his office. We killed his bodyguard too, but he didn't chunk. Then we went out into the foyer, and Yoshi took a few arrow shots at the girl till she went downstairs.

What a rip! How exactly is an evil party supposed to handle that thing anyway?

Yelocessej

"I knew I was in trouble when the second fire elemental showed up..." LOL

Arunsun

Mmh you are evil, hence not supposed to care about your reputation

But after about 12 years I have been playing BG2 I must say I never realized there was an evil option to solve this quest. Well I must be Good-aligned then. I just discovered recently there was one to the Windspear Hills quest

joluv

Arunsun said:

Mmh you are evil, hence not supposed to care about your reputation

This explains why only good people hire PR firms.

Zosimus

Reputation?! If I'd cared about my reputation, I wouldn't have dismembered the mayor (I took another hit to my reputation when I did so). I wanted the gold and experience, obviously!

Gallowglass

But @Zosimus, if you want to maximise rewards, you probably know that you'd be better off playing Good! At least for this quest (unlike numerous others) there is a distinct Evil path to solve it (as you have done).

Zosimus

I still think that if the mayor had 10,000 ready to pay me for my fine service that he should have had it in his desk. After I dismembered him, I should have been able to make off with the gold.

Zosimus

Anyway, how exactly do good-aligned players rationalise robbing the shopkeepers blind?

Gallowglass

Zosimus said:

I still think that if the mayor had 10,000 ready to pay me for my fine service that he should have had it in his desk. After I dismembered him, I should have been able to make off with the gold.

Fair point. But maybe he had it locked in an unpickable wall safe?

Zosimus said:

Anyway, how exactly do good-aligned players rationalise robbing the shopkeepers blind?

How it is role-played depends upon the individual player, but in many cases Good-aligned players don't rob the shopkeepers. They buy stuff instead ... with a Good-aligned party's high REP, it's not too expensive to do so.

SionIV

Zosimus said:

Anyway, how exactly do good-aligned players rationalise robbing the shopkeepers blind?

You get so much gold in BG:EE and BG2:EE that you don't need to rob anything, you can just buy it for the full price and still have money left. The only time I find it worth stealing from a shopkeeper, is right at the start of the game.

Border

I've played BG off and on for more than 15 years and I didn't know there are evil paths for the Druid's Grove and Windspear Hills quests. I guess I start a lot of evil characters but never play more than a couple of hours with them. I also have a bad habit of clicking through text without reading.... So, I didn't realize poison was an option.

Gallowglass

Border said:

I also have a bad habit of clicking through text without reading.... So, I didn't realize poison was an option.

That option doesn't even exist unless you're Evil-aligned. Good protagonists don't get the encounter with the guy who gives you the poison.

Border

That's also new to me. I didn't realize different options are available depending on alignment.

Gallowglass

Border said:

That's also new to me. I didn't realize different options are available depending on alignment.

Not usually, most quests work the same way regardless of alignment. However, there are a few (such as this one) where the mechanics of the quest actually change according to alignment. Obviously that takes significant extra development work to implement, so it's rare ... I'm not sure exactly how many other examples there are, but not very many.

I think sometimes it's looking at actual alignment, but I think more often it's based on REP (so that Evil-pretending-to-be-Good still gets the Good version of the quest).

Lord_Tansheron

I believe Firkraag also has such a choice, where evil-aligned characters have a dialog option to go and steal the deed to the Windspear Hills from Gareth Windspear. Good-aligned characters don't get that option, though Firkraag does mention the deed in passing iirc.