Considering that you later learn that the cloakwood druids are shadow druids...
Seniyad isn't one of those shadow druids. If you have Jaheira in the party, she specifically greets him as an old friend, while the shadow druids attack immediately if she's there.
I tend to let that be the deciding factor in how I play this out; side with Seniyad if Jaheira's in the party, side with Aldeth if she isn't. This feels like a conflict in which neither side is in the right.
Has anybody tried casting Detect Evil on Aldeth? That would probably settle the issue once and for all. XD
As for the original situation, ThacoBell is right. Aldeth doesn't ask you to help him hunt the druids for sport. His side of the story is that the druids have killed one of his friends because they were engaging in their "right" to hunt wild beasts for sport. When the druids show up, they claim that Aldeth and his friends drew first blood by killing the druid who initially tried to get them to stop. Aldeth claims that this is a lie, so there's a couple of different possibilities here:
1. Perhaps Aldeth IS telling the truth, as far as he knows it. For all we know, he may not have been personally involved in the druid's death; one of his friends might have killed the druid without Aldeth seeing and claims innocence. As ThacoBell mentions, the Shadow Druids DO have a presence in the Cloakwood, and they are actively hostile to the normal druidic faction as well. It's entirely possible that Seniyad's druid was killed by the Shadow Druids who then framed the hunters, or just left the scene, and Seniyad's group came upon the dead druid and drew their own conclusions.
2. Aldeth is lying and he and his fellows DID kill the druid. We don't know the circumstances in which it happened, whether it was cold-blooded murder or the druid attempted violence when it became clear the nobles wouldn't call off their hunt and the nobles were just defending themselves, but regardless, it does mean that Seniyad has blood restitution on his side.
I personally think that Aldeth is Lawful Neutral. He likely believes quite firmly in his "rights" as a noble, and as someone pointed out earlier, he betrays you to the Flaming Fist after you're framed for Rieltar Anchev's death because, well... if you ARE a wanted criminal, it is his duty as a law-abiding citizen of Baldur's Gate to hand you over to the authorities, and let justice take its course to determine your guilt or innocence.
Has anybody tried casting Detect Evil on Aldeth? That would probably settle the issue once and for all. XD
...
I personally think that Aldeth is Lawful Neutral.
According to the game files... he is. You were right on.
There's little practical benefit to any of his hunting. He's a noble hunting for sport, not sustenance.
The question is whether he gets his jollies by hunting his fellow man, or merely the local wildlife. Even in a fantasy setting where killing "evil" races is often treated as acceptable regardless of circumstance, any goodly hero can be expected to draw the line at killing your fellow human being solely for the joy of killing them.
Seriously, NOTHING in game indicates he is hunting people for sport. I have no idea where you are getting this idea. I'm also not sure where you're getting the diea that he wants blood. Nowhere does he ask you to kill anyone. He jsut wants you stop the druids from murdering him and his friends. Like, do you really think Shadow Druids are at all capable of being the innocent party?
@jmerry Seniyad is still willing to murder an old "friend" for the crime of wanting all the information before letting him murder a hunter. This does not reflect well on Seniyad. "Sorry Jaheira, we are totally fellow druids and know each otehr well, but you are asking too many questions. Gotta kill you know."
Seriously, NOTHING in game indicates he is hunting people for sport. I have no idea where you are getting this idea. I'm also not sure where you're getting the idea that he wants blood. Nowhere does he ask you to kill anyone. He just wants you stop the druids from murdering him and his friends.
There's little practical benefit to any of his hunting. He's a noble hunting for sport, not sustenance.
The question is whether he gets his jollies by hunting his fellow man, or merely the local wildlife. Even in a fantasy setting where killing "evil" races is often treated as acceptable regardless of circumstance, any goodly hero can be expected to draw the line at killing your fellow human being solely for the joy of killing them.
Seriously, NOTHING in game indicates he is hunting people for sport. I have no idea where you are getting this idea. I'm also not sure where you're getting the diea that he wants blood. Nowhere does he ask you to kill anyone. He jsut wants you stop the druids from murdering him and his friends. Like, do you really think Shadow Druids are at all capable of being the innocent party
We clearly both just think we read something different in this quest. Neither of us have produced any screenshots yet so we're both just working with memory.
It's been confirmed that they're not shadow druids so I don't know why you're still hung up on that. That much a simple trip to the wiki can verify.
I could very well be wrong but you seem to be getting incredibly frustrated that I haven't immediately accepted your recollection is superior to mine on nothing more than your say so.
@jmerry Seniyad is still willing to murder an old "friend" for the crime of wanting all the information before letting him murder a hunter. This does not reflect well on Seniyad. "Sorry Jaheira, we are totally fellow druids and know each otehr well, but you are asking too many questions. Gotta kill you know."
As of the 2.5 patch, if you have Jaheira in your party they will recognize eachother, and that will allow you to reach a peaceful resolution where nobody gets killed. This seems to be content taken from the Unfinished Business Mod, which refurbishes content that was in the code, but left out of of the playable game, because it was not ready for release.
This seems to be what @jmerry is referring to when they say Jaheira will greet him as an old friend. In the version of the game where they greet eachother as old friends, it sounds like only if the player pushes for violence, will they find it.
It's up to you whether you accept this interaction as "canon" or not but I'm just making sure everybody's on the same page here.
There's little practical benefit to any of his hunting. He's a noble hunting for sport, not sustenance.
The question is whether he gets his jollies by hunting his fellow man, or merely the local wildlife. Even in a fantasy setting where killing "evil" races is often treated as acceptable regardless of circumstance, any goodly hero can be expected to draw the line at killing your fellow human being solely for the joy of killing them.
Seriously, NOTHING in game indicates he is hunting people for sport. I have no idea where you are getting this idea. I'm also not sure where you're getting the diea that he wants blood. Nowhere does he ask you to kill anyone. He jsut wants you stop the druids from murdering him and his friends. Like, do you really think Shadow Druids are at all capable of being the innocent party
We clearly both just think we read something different in this quest. Neither of us have produced any screenshots yet so we're both just working with memory.
It's been confirmed that they're not shadow druids so I don't know why you're still hung up on that. That much a simple trip to the wiki can verify.
I could very well be wrong but you seem to be getting incredibly frustrated that I haven't immediately accepted your recollection is superior to mine on nothing more than your say so.
Not sure where you're getting the idea that I'm frustrated. I jsut finished a BG1 run recently and am just telling you what I saw. I wasn't aware of the changes made to that quest in 2.5 though. I haven't taken Jaheira through the cloakwood on this patch.
There's little practical benefit to any of his hunting. He's a noble hunting for sport, not sustenance.
The question is whether he gets his jollies by hunting his fellow man, or merely the local wildlife. Even in a fantasy setting where killing "evil" races is often treated as acceptable regardless of circumstance, any goodly hero can be expected to draw the line at killing your fellow human being solely for the joy of killing them.
Seriously, NOTHING in game indicates he is hunting people for sport. I have no idea where you are getting this idea. I'm also not sure where you're getting the diea that he wants blood. Nowhere does he ask you to kill anyone. He jsut wants you stop the druids from murdering him and his friends. Like, do you really think Shadow Druids are at all capable of being the innocent party
We clearly both just think we read something different in this quest. Neither of us have produced any screenshots yet so we're both just working with memory.
It's been confirmed that they're not shadow druids so I don't know why you're still hung up on that. That much a simple trip to the wiki can verify.
I could very well be wrong but you seem to be getting incredibly frustrated that I haven't immediately accepted your recollection is superior to mine on nothing more than your say so.
Not sure where you're getting the idea that I'm frustrated. I jsut finished a BG1 run recently and am just telling you what I saw. I wasn't aware of the changes made to that quest in 2.5 though. I haven't taken Jaheira through the cloakwood on this patch.
Fair enough. It's hard to read tone in text sometimes.
If you've just replayed recently then you're probably right. It's been a while since I did the quest right now. Gonna be paying special attention to it on my next go.
For what it's worth, I've never sided with the druids in that encounter, even the first time I played it out. The druids just strike me as being 'holier than thou' douchebags...
@Chronicler "Fair enough. It's hard to read tone in text sometimes."
I totally get it. I'm of the opinion that getting tone out short forums posts is basically impossible.
That changes a bit when you get to know the posters more. I can usually divine where you're coming from @ThacoBell, for instance. Even the non-native English speakers aren't too hard to understand if they're here for a while and post in more than one discussion.
Yeah, the peaceful resolution is only possible in the EE. In vanilla BG you HAVE to side with either the druids or the nobles; no peaceful resolution is possible, even if Jaheira is with you.
Yeah, the peaceful resolution is only possible in the EE. In vanilla BG you HAVE to side with either the druids or the nobles; no peaceful resolution is possible, even if Jaheira is with you.
It's funny because Jaheira doesn't strike me as much of a peacemaker. She always comes across as the 'my way or the highway' type.
Yeah, the peaceful resolution is only possible in the EE. In vanilla BG you HAVE to side with either the druids or the nobles; no peaceful resolution is possible, even if Jaheira is with you.
Is the peaceful solution only possible with Jaheira in party?
This was also possible with BG1 NPC I think?
Yeah, the peaceful resolution is only possible in the EE. In vanilla BG you HAVE to side with either the druids or the nobles; no peaceful resolution is possible, even if Jaheira is with you.
Is the peaceful solution only possible with Jaheira in party?
This was also possible with BG1 NPC I think?
BG1 npc did have a peacful resolution, that lead directly into Jaheira's quest. So she was probably required for that as well.
@Balrog99 I've personally always had significant difficulties getting correct tone out of a short (up a paragraph) post. I don't know how widespread that is, but its my experience.
I just did the confrontation between Aldeth and Seniyad so I thought I would post some screenshots of the confrontation in question.
Aldeth's first speech:
Seniyad's first speech:
My attempt to mediate (I chose option 2 - which was probably out of character since I am Neutral Evil):
Seniyad's response:
I think it is an interesting encounter. My impression is that Aldeth is lying and that he and his friends probably did kill the druid who attempted to stop them from hunting but Seniyad is a fanatic who won't listen to reason. Seniyad's last speech is enlightening if you really want to go into the whys and wherefores because he says "you will suffer together with your hunter friends". So the real crime in Seniyad's eyes is not the alleged murder but the fact that Aldeth and his companions are hunters.
In the end they are probably both as bad as each other.
I sided with Aldeth because my fighter specialises in bastard swords and I happen to know that Aldeth has got a spare one lying around. Plus I hate druids and don't really need an excuse to kill them in the first place.
"They have this great aloe vera balm" is one of the stupidest, forced joke dialogue options I have ever seen and I will always side with Aldeth on that alone.
It would be a very interesting encounter with a difficult decision (because we don't know what really happened) if it wasn't for those stupid reply options which makes it clear that the devs expected any good aligned PC to side with Aldeth and also because Seniyad lets his arrogance and "holier than thou" attitude slip more than Aldeth. I think this is a biased encounter tbh.
I actually have three headcanons for this, depending on how I'm feeling on that particular day. 1) Aldeth and his companions accidentally killed a Druid in Wild Shape, thinking they were just hunting a wild beast. Incredibly difficult by game mechanics, requiring a critical hit on a Druid (that must be at least level 7) with like 3 CON, but... This event then spirals into the problem we now see, with Aldeth and co. not realizing they actually killed a druid, and the druids expecting them to know.
Alternatively, 2) Iron throne and guards at the mines are actually the ones responsible for the Druid deaths (some of the guards have arrows, right?) Druids retaliate at the perceived murder, and kill a hunter.
OR 3) Doppelgangers are trying to infiltrate the Merchant's League right here and now, but botched the job and only killed one of the hunters successfully. Hunters think it's a Druid that did it, and they kill a druid in retaliation.
"They have this great aloe vera balm" is one of the stupidest, forced joke dialogue options I have ever seen and I will always side with Aldeth on that alone.
Crazy how that godawful dialogue option is still funnier than 80% of Beamdog's forced humor.
"They have this great aloe vera balm" is one of the stupidest, forced joke dialogue options I have ever seen and I will always side with Aldeth on that alone.
Crazy how that godawful dialogue option is still funnier than 80% of Beamdog's forced humor.
This line is just painful. Beamdog's stuff was legitimately funny.
Idk guys, I just really hate most of Beamdog's additions. Humor is subjective, so I don't claim to have "the right answer." But I do feel the humor doesn't fit alongside the old stuff--even the bad old stuff, like the aloe vera line--and most new dialogues could be summed up with the options 1) Good, 2) Evil, or 3) Snarky. And a lot of the time it doesn't even matter which you pick.
Love all of the fixes and restoration of originally-planned content, and I love that the Enhanced Editions are stable unlike vanilla (I love vanilla, but there were crashes and incompatibilities all the time), but just personally I thought most of the original writing was atrocious and struck me like fan-fiction.
I really wish Siege of Dragonspear had been their own original game with zero Baldur's Gate tie-in as they initially planned, because there were glimmers of legitimate brilliance there when they didn't have to try and force everything into the BG narrative. (Corwin and Glint are absolutely top-notch characters IMO, while Hexxat is painfully awful) Beamdog deserves to make their own BG-like game, a la Divinity and Pillars of Eternity. I think they'd do a great job.
Comments
I tend to let that be the deciding factor in how I play this out; side with Seniyad if Jaheira's in the party, side with Aldeth if she isn't. This feels like a conflict in which neither side is in the right.
As an archdruid he should probably also be significantly more challenging than he is in gameplay terms too.
As for the original situation, ThacoBell is right. Aldeth doesn't ask you to help him hunt the druids for sport. His side of the story is that the druids have killed one of his friends because they were engaging in their "right" to hunt wild beasts for sport. When the druids show up, they claim that Aldeth and his friends drew first blood by killing the druid who initially tried to get them to stop. Aldeth claims that this is a lie, so there's a couple of different possibilities here:
1. Perhaps Aldeth IS telling the truth, as far as he knows it. For all we know, he may not have been personally involved in the druid's death; one of his friends might have killed the druid without Aldeth seeing and claims innocence. As ThacoBell mentions, the Shadow Druids DO have a presence in the Cloakwood, and they are actively hostile to the normal druidic faction as well. It's entirely possible that Seniyad's druid was killed by the Shadow Druids who then framed the hunters, or just left the scene, and Seniyad's group came upon the dead druid and drew their own conclusions.
2. Aldeth is lying and he and his fellows DID kill the druid. We don't know the circumstances in which it happened, whether it was cold-blooded murder or the druid attempted violence when it became clear the nobles wouldn't call off their hunt and the nobles were just defending themselves, but regardless, it does mean that Seniyad has blood restitution on his side.
I personally think that Aldeth is Lawful Neutral. He likely believes quite firmly in his "rights" as a noble, and as someone pointed out earlier, he betrays you to the Flaming Fist after you're framed for Rieltar Anchev's death because, well... if you ARE a wanted criminal, it is his duty as a law-abiding citizen of Baldur's Gate to hand you over to the authorities, and let justice take its course to determine your guilt or innocence.
Seriously, NOTHING in game indicates he is hunting people for sport. I have no idea where you are getting this idea. I'm also not sure where you're getting the diea that he wants blood. Nowhere does he ask you to kill anyone. He jsut wants you stop the druids from murdering him and his friends. Like, do you really think Shadow Druids are at all capable of being the innocent party?
@jmerry Seniyad is still willing to murder an old "friend" for the crime of wanting all the information before letting him murder a hunter. This does not reflect well on Seniyad. "Sorry Jaheira, we are totally fellow druids and know each otehr well, but you are asking too many questions. Gotta kill you know."
@ThacoBell is right.
We clearly both just think we read something different in this quest. Neither of us have produced any screenshots yet so we're both just working with memory.
It's been confirmed that they're not shadow druids so I don't know why you're still hung up on that. That much a simple trip to the wiki can verify.
I could very well be wrong but you seem to be getting incredibly frustrated that I haven't immediately accepted your recollection is superior to mine on nothing more than your say so.
https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Seniyad
As of the 2.5 patch, if you have Jaheira in your party they will recognize eachother, and that will allow you to reach a peaceful resolution where nobody gets killed. This seems to be content taken from the Unfinished Business Mod, which refurbishes content that was in the code, but left out of of the playable game, because it was not ready for release.
This seems to be what @jmerry is referring to when they say Jaheira will greet him as an old friend. In the version of the game where they greet eachother as old friends, it sounds like only if the player pushes for violence, will they find it.
It's up to you whether you accept this interaction as "canon" or not but I'm just making sure everybody's on the same page here.
Not sure where you're getting the idea that I'm frustrated. I jsut finished a BG1 run recently and am just telling you what I saw. I wasn't aware of the changes made to that quest in 2.5 though. I haven't taken Jaheira through the cloakwood on this patch.
Fair enough. It's hard to read tone in text sometimes.
If you've just replayed recently then you're probably right. It's been a while since I did the quest right now. Gonna be paying special attention to it on my next go.
I totally get it. I'm of the opinion that getting tone out short forums posts is basically impossible.
That changes a bit when you get to know the posters more. I can usually divine where you're coming from @ThacoBell, for instance. Even the non-native English speakers aren't too hard to understand if they're here for a while and post in more than one discussion.
It's funny because Jaheira doesn't strike me as much of a peacemaker. She always comes across as the 'my way or the highway' type.
Is the peaceful solution only possible with Jaheira in party?
This was also possible with BG1 NPC I think?
BG1 npc did have a peacful resolution, that lead directly into Jaheira's quest. So she was probably required for that as well.
@Balrog99 I've personally always had significant difficulties getting correct tone out of a short (up a paragraph) post. I don't know how widespread that is, but its my experience.
Aldeth's first speech:
Seniyad's first speech:
My attempt to mediate (I chose option 2 - which was probably out of character since I am Neutral Evil):
Seniyad's response:
I think it is an interesting encounter. My impression is that Aldeth is lying and that he and his friends probably did kill the druid who attempted to stop them from hunting but Seniyad is a fanatic who won't listen to reason. Seniyad's last speech is enlightening if you really want to go into the whys and wherefores because he says "you will suffer together with your hunter friends". So the real crime in Seniyad's eyes is not the alleged murder but the fact that Aldeth and his companions are hunters.
In the end they are probably both as bad as each other.
I sided with Aldeth because my fighter specialises in bastard swords and I happen to know that Aldeth has got a spare one lying around. Plus I hate druids and don't really need an excuse to kill them in the first place.
Alternatively, 2) Iron throne and guards at the mines are actually the ones responsible for the Druid deaths (some of the guards have arrows, right?) Druids retaliate at the perceived murder, and kill a hunter.
OR 3) Doppelgangers are trying to infiltrate the Merchant's League right here and now, but botched the job and only killed one of the hunters successfully. Hunters think it's a Druid that did it, and they kill a druid in retaliation.
I suspect this was deliberate so no-one does side with the druids and miss out on Aldeth’s doppelgänger quest
This line is just painful. Beamdog's stuff was legitimately funny.
Love all of the fixes and restoration of originally-planned content, and I love that the Enhanced Editions are stable unlike vanilla (I love vanilla, but there were crashes and incompatibilities all the time), but just personally I thought most of the original writing was atrocious and struck me like fan-fiction.
I really wish Siege of Dragonspear had been their own original game with zero Baldur's Gate tie-in as they initially planned, because there were glimmers of legitimate brilliance there when they didn't have to try and force everything into the BG narrative. (Corwin and Glint are absolutely top-notch characters IMO, while Hexxat is painfully awful) Beamdog deserves to make their own BG-like game, a la Divinity and Pillars of Eternity. I think they'd do a great job.