Baldur’s Gate 3: How To Recruit All 6 Origin Party Members

Short Tavs, rejoice - we can finally get in on the kissing action. Thanks to Baldur's Gate 3's first major patch, romance partners will finally squat down to kiss shorter races like dwarfs and halflings. We will no longer be forced to kiss their belly buttons while they awkwardly look on, removing one of the funniest oversights in Baldur's Gate 3.

Finally, our short of stature players can frolic in the realm of smooching once again thanks to Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 1. 

The question of when Baldur's Gate 3 would release on Xbox, if ever, was uncertain until this week, not because of messy console exclusivity politics, but because of console gaming's gradual transformation into a wonky kind of PC gaming. 

In Baldur's Gate 3, if you want to change your party, you have to individually dismiss and recruit members at your camp. This means wandering around and sifting through dialogue to say "Go away" or "Come with me". It's not the most intuitive system, especially as their inventories don't transfer automatically, and has left a lot of people sticking with their original squad rather than faffing about. This is exactly why fans want Baldur's Gate 3 to adopt a party select screen.

Earlier this week, a YouTuber called Mae blew the Baldur's Gate 3 speedrunning community wide open, despite most of us still being engrossed by the first act. Upon discovering an exploit that uses Gale to cast Enhance Leap, Mae hopped her way to the game's final credits in a startingly short ten minutes and three seconds, mostly thanks to a cop-out ending you can take that skips the game's entire third act.

I'd never felt so out of place in Baldur's Gate 3 than earlier this week, when I finally stepped onto the streets of Baldur's Gate and promptly became the most grotesque creature in the city. Act 2 had done a real number on my party, and you could smell it from a mile away: my face was caked with blood both dry and fresh, cheeks bruised purple, and armor smeared with a hummus of mud, blood, and viscera.

Minthara is a possible party member that you can recruit in Baldur’s Gate 3. But depending on your choices, the route to getting on your side can change drastically. In our case, we’ll be tackling how you can recruit Minthara if you’ve decided to take the evil path through the game. And if Minthara has ended up in the jails of Moonrise Towers, this is your one opportunity to recruit her while you can. So, let’s save Minthara from the Moonrise Towers in Baldur’s Gate 3.

Someone has completed Baldur's Gate 3, from start to credit roll, in just over ten minutes. Yes, ten minutes. A game with a 35.5 hour main story, 94 hours for a completionist run according to How Long to Beat, and it was over so fast I couldn't tell what was going on. Speedrunner Mae managed this incredible feat over the weekend using just the origin character Gale, an extremely powerful jump ability, and a specific set of choices that end the game just a little earlier than people might anticipate.

Act 2 of Baldur’s Gate 3 introduces players to the Shadow-Cursed Lands — a vast region infected with a terrible malady that dishes out extreme damage when you’re not protected by light sources. The entire area is filled with deadly enemies that pull you away from your precious light or try to knock the torch right out of your hands. If you want to survive for long, you’ll need to find a permanent solution to the Shadow Curse.

Fellow fans of a mid-playthrough character makeover rejoice, forBaldur's Gate 3 should be rectifying its biggest mistake sometime in the future.

Baldur's Gate 3 has been out for a week so let's check the tape, shall we? Larian Studios posted a big infographic of first week stats and most things check out: Elves are popular and gnomes are gnot. Everyone likes petting the dog and also talking to animals. My fellow Paladins are on top of the class choice, nice. But wait, 35% of you decided to assault the Emerald Grove? Over a third of us are going the evil route? Actually, I'm a little proud.

When you arrive at Grymforge, a majority of the residents there are likely not too happy to have you arrive in Baldur’s Gate 3. These are all True Souls, the ones working with the Absolute Cult, and they’re in a crisis: their leader has recently fallen in a cavern and is stuck behind a pile of rocks.