16 | October | 2023 | The Ancient Gaming Noob

When last we left the attempt of Potshot and myself to co-op our way through Baldur’s Gate 3, we had managed to defeat the second boss in the goblin halls, Minthara the drow, and had liberated Halsin the druid, who likes to go around in bear form and kill goblins, a posture that worked for us.

Baldur’s Gate 3 splash screen

That left us with Priestess Gut, the third and final boss we needed to slay. We had a run-in with her last time, which did not end well for us.

This does not end well

Priestess Gut is in a large hall with an entourage of goblin helpers who were, as a group, too much for us to take on. Even with the addition of the level 5 bear druid, I wasn’t sure how well this would go, so I went to Google to see what the internet suggested for Priestess Gut. This consensus was:

Use parasite persuasion to get her alone and assassinate her in private.

Cool. I could see that working… had we not had an open brawl with Dror Ragzlin a couple of posts back that turned all the goblins hostile to us.

We were now kill on sight, so sauntering up to have a polite conversation was no longer an option. The optimum path is apparently to get her done first. Having blown that and not being at all keen to save scum our way back to when the gobbos were all friendly and chatty with us, we went looking for a way to control the tactical situation in order to keep the goblin numbers from simply overwhelming us. Our last run was on some open area that allow the hostiles to come at us from three sides and burn us down quickly.

So we decided to make our stand on a wooden bridge just around the corner from the room, wooden bridges having worked out so well with Minthara last time. I realize now, once again, that I did not take very many screen shots of this fight. But I have a mini-map image that gives the tactical situation.

The cunning plan

We set up on the wooden bridge, which is only wide enough to allow creatures or characters to stand two abreast. Two individuals can block the bridge, so our more powerful melee characters could stand up front with the casters and ranged behind for support. Also, Marcos, our rogue, had more bottles of grease and some special arrows ready to make this tough on the goblins. This was going to be great!

So we set up to do that, then sent Lae’zel out with bow and arrow to take a shot at Priestess Gut, then run back to our lines.

Sniper Time!

That part worked fine. We got the whole room aggro on us and they did, indeed, follow us up the steps and to the start of the wooden bridge. Marcos threw a bottle of grease onto the bridge as Lae’zel passed and we were rolling.

There was, however, a problem getting everybody into their final position. We had the casters and the rogue up front and the bear in the back to support Lae’zel in the initial phase of the plan to keep her alive, but then the whole thing turned into a “Three Stooges all try to walk through the same door at the same time” situation as I tried to get Marcos the rogue back from the front line while getting the bear up to maul some goblins. This was something that probably would have gone more smoothly with a single player doing the positioning, or even in co-op if we had announced our intentions aloud… but somehow we muddled through and got everybody into their place.

Things were still not quite going to plan. The goblins seems reluctant to walk out on the grease coated bridge and, when Marcos threw another bottle of grease to coat where they were standing, we found ourselves coming up short on ways to set the whole thing alight.

Then the explosive arrows that Marcos was counting on turned out to be of the AOE knock-back variety, which was fun, but they neither blew up the bridge nor set the grease on fire. Our plan was not coming together as… well… planned.

And then there was Priestess Gut, who took an aid and decided to run around the back way to hit us from the rear. Fortunately that was a bit of a hike, so we were able to fumble our way into a re-adjustment. We started falling back to the door at our end of the wooden bridge, which finally enticed the goblins to step our onto their fully greased end, at which point Shadowheart finally landed a fire spell and set them all on fire. Good for a laugh.

Then Lae’zel and the bear made it to the doorway just in time to have Priestess Gut come down the ladder into the room on that side. With Fergorin the cleric they managed to close with Priestess Gut and take her down fairly quickly.

More like Priestess Guts, amirite?

Quest complete! Now we just had to live long enough to reap the rewards.

Priestess Gut’s companion was on the other side of a wall with a gap through which spells could be cast, but which a player could not pass. So I sent Lae’zel up the ladder to the platform between the two rooms and set her to sniping with her bow. The aid was a caster and I thought this might end up being a ranged duel. But no, the aid was keen to close ranks with Lae’zel and came up the ladder on his side only to get the heave-ho with a well placed shove. Still the best feature of the game for us. He tried that a couple more times until the fall damage finally did him in.

Meanwhile, Fergorin and the bear had returned to the bridge front, the bear finally squeezing past everybody to start mauling goblins. In the end, there was a big mess on the bridge and no goblins left alive.

The goblin ranks dead on the bridge

Time to save! Then we went out to loot the field and get everybody patched up with a short rest. There was a pair of big spiders in a cell beneath Priestess Gut’s throne and I started to try and communicate with them… but then realized we had places to be and wasn’t sure if I wanted to pooch our success by getting tangled up in spider business. We let the spiders be.

Halsin, meanwhile, was very happy with us, thanked us, promised us rewards, then said he would see us back at the druid grove then disappeared like every escort quest mob ever.

We cleaned up a bit more. Marcos picked the lock on Volo the bard’s cage.

Nice roll, lots of bonuses

He too was effusive in his praise, promising a song for the ages to tell the tale of our heroic efforts, then dipped out like Halsin with a “see ya!” Another quest complete.

So there we were, op success, just needing to get back to the druid grove. We did what seemed natural to us and headed for the front door to start our walk back. We had cleared most of the goblins it seemed. We ran into some on the inside of the front door… two guards on the main floor and three ranged guards up high on either side… and managed to take them out.

Battle inside the front door

We were not sure what kind of reception we would get on the other side of the front door. I mean, there was a chance that they hadn’t heard anything, that we might just walk past them, maybe brain tadpolling somebody at need… or it might end up being a fight. Either way, we got ready, saved, then stepped out.

Then things went really bad. Yes, everybody outside had received the word that we were to be slain on sight and we never made it off the front step before we were not much more than a pool of red mush on the slabs.

Front door melee time

We fought it out to the bitter end just to see how many we could take down before that ogre simple stomped us. The answer was zero. We managed to kill zero.

So Potshot restored the game while I went to Google to see how others had managed to get back to the druid grove after having defeated the three bosses. I was imagining that maybe there was a back door to the place me might sneak through or some such.

But no, the answer was, “I just used the waypoint and teleported back to the Emerald Grove.”

“Waypoints? What are these waypoints?” I was thinking. We you play a game in, at best, once a week sessions, sometimes the mechanics slip your mind. So once we were back into the game and standing there inside the front door, I opened up the map and, sure enough, there at the upper right were some waypoints.

Places to go

We picked the Emerald Grove Environs and insta-traveled out of there.

We had to poke around a bit to find our way back into where the druid were, but once we found our way in we were able to turn in some quests, which got us all up to level 4, and hear some of the back story and prep for our next tasks. Halsin, in particular, was not happy about how things had been going while he had been away.