Interesting lore tidbit the thing the Illithids fear most is a prophecy of an Illithid borne with the identity and memories of the host, allegedly it would spell the end of their race.
I wonder if it makes any difference story-wise if you play as a gith and become the illithid... Because it would be a delicious irony if the former slave race brought forth that feared mindflayer.
In the old lore, the Illithid are from far into the future. They traveled back into the past because the stars were dying. And it's implied that they may have descended from humans. It would be kind of interesting if this is a predestination paradox and your character actually becomes the progenitor of the Illithid race. Because if you have Illithid powers, then you can create Illithids and when you die, you can become an Elder Brain. So future Illithids traveled back in time and created their own race.
There as theory too the Ilithid are a evolution of the Aboleths, they conquer the galaxy, because there not more worshipers de god die and they on the war started before time. But, with the stars dying, they came back from future but not interact with Aboleths of this time. The Aboleths have a perfect memory of any detail what happened, and pass this memories to they offspring, so every Aboleth knows their kingdom and fall because the fight against the gods e after that. This happened when "Time was before the time", was millennia before the fight between the Gods and the Giants, before the war against Obyriths. Mordam, I will see the video for my second playthrough, but I belive it's the same quality of the other of the channel, its save in my playlist.
Its old lore but it is still canon. They come from the far future, but the ported back to 2000 before the dawn of man as we know. So for us they always were here.
All true. But said old lore also had the idea that Ao and the other "overgods" of the setting originally found realmspace as a dying reality. And re-set said reality with the introduction of Shar and Slune as counter-balances to entropy. I've always theorized that this dying reality is the mirrored past to the future the illithids came from. That once the twin goddess actually conclude their contest the forces of entropy begin to slowly erode the material reality of Realmspace.
THANK YOU. Finally, someone who ACTUALLY talked about these instead of going "oh, you'll ruin everything if you know, so I won't _actually_ tell you anything". Thank you so much for providing actually useful content in an easily digestible format. Stay awesome.
@@JimmyMon666 Letting you turn into a Mindflayer is so damn cool, I'm so happy it's a feature. Now if only Tieflings could turn into Cambrians (cool wings)
I haven't watched and do wish to remain spoiler-free, but I do wanna say that I'm still taking tadpoles and using them anyway, whatever happens. It's more interesting to risk it and find out! That said, I'm sure it's helpful for those who have reached whatever point is important to reach, for those it's best for vids like this to simply give the warning then give the info instead of trying to hold the info back
Freakin-A. I just want an idea what do these things do to the point I don't mind some spoilers and people straight up just won't to tell. All my google queries led to very vague answers.
This is an extremely helpful video. The game certainly pushes you to use the tadpoles, has a unique UI for it, and narratively assures you it'll be fine but I wasn't going to trust Larian to not be pulling a long troll on the player. The design language has been "things that are obviously bad ideas will likely turn out badly" so far and letting tadpoles crawl around your skull tends to read as one of those.
That last section on if using the powers lead to a good or bad ending was really all I was looking for. Thank you for clearing that up for me. Onward to adventure I go!
I don't think that it does. Like if you only go within the first ring or something to take a couple of nice very useful and powerful perks along your whole journey in the beginning. It's not like if you consume one your fucked that's it you're going to become a mind flayer for the rest of the game. Because on each tadpole before you consume it and taking you in deeper you have a choice to do it or not
What I think happens is that it becomes increasingly more difficult to reject the further mind-flayer transformations. So if you take more powers, the game throws harder saving throws at you when you have the astral or supreme tadpole.
I was trying to keep away from the tadpole powers on my first run (wanted to be the hero type character). But then I saw the node that lets you turn a normal hit into a critical hit and was like "oh well, guess I'm a squid face now".
I mean, as he stated, you can still be a hero using the powers, tho. You have your free will every step of the way with the illithid powers. You're just deciding if you ultimately want to be a squid person. Lol
I really wish they had made this story about the Mind Flayer prophecy of the Adversary. The idea of a mind flayer that retains the mind of the original host, and destroys all mind flayers. That would have been a great story hook.
@@odst123451 both you and the emperor retain your original minds, and defeat the super duper omega brain, defeating the other mindflayers in the process
…and basically turn them back into humans, for all the good that’d do. I wish you could connect to them and turn them lawfully good. That’d be amazing, IRL or not.
Thank you so much for so completely showing it off, with a spoiler warning, and then actually following through. I am the kinda guy that don't care for spoilers (oftentimes I like being a tad spoiled) and I really wanted to know if my "theory" was correct, and you answered that with this video. Great work.
Had to stop at the third tier discussion since im not up to that part, but thanks for clear mention of when youre moving further into deeper spoilers. I agree, Luck of the Far Realms is so damn op, best of the initial set available
One thing to not about Psionic Backlash is that the damage procs before the spellcaster finishes casting. I've had it kill low HP casters outright before cancelling their cast and saving a party member.
If Astarion is open to it, I wouldn't want him to go full on mindflayer, but him getting the second tier so that he can fly sounds useful for the gloomstalker rouge build.
It is nice to have a modern game where you are allowed to be the Bad Guy, rather than just being "The Anti-Hero" or "The Hero who is an A-hole but has good intentions".
cheesus crust been looking everywhere for an actual FULL look at the skill tree **** the rest of the community posting content on this. THIS is actually what i needed so see. Thank you!!!
Fun fact: Two of these powers work while in Moon Druid forms. When an Owlbear procs a prone effect the 1d8 Psychic damage from the "Fall damage" power procs. Also, the one where getting an enemies HP to X or less instantly kills them (X = number of tadpoles you ate) also works on Moon Druid. When you have eaten 20+ tadpoles this ability procs an enormous number of times.
Thanks for the heads up at the beginning of the video. I was on the fence about watching this for spoiler reasons but I'll make sure to come back after I finish my first run.
For me, the game is amazing so far, and I'm just past the act 1. Never knowing if you are doing the right thing, being under pressure from companions, I actually doubt my steps and let myself be convinced into doing things that were not my plan. I haven't had an experience like this in ages. Even though I've decided to do a "clean", dope-less run, I somehow ended with a tadpole upgrade after drinking a specific elixir, and noticed it too late. So I'm stuck with it for now. Though the upgrade panel didn't appear, and it's just one power... Also, turns out you can make another shot of said elixir through Alchemy. Not sure what it does, but I'm sure gonna test it on my pet vampire.
Lol. I also use pet vampire from time to time, now on goblin, so he can use the tadpole and dominate them. He seems one of the few characters that enjoy using them so he had become my lab mouse. I try to not use much of tadpole powers myself, my character has enough bs in his head(Dark Urge origin).
@@Samuel_Ou1209 act 1, the Illithid alchemist from the Muconid village. The one you gather fungal samples for. Side effects of treatment attempt. As a compensation you can also get a ring from the same npc, that gives advantage on save rolls against getting Charmed.
+1 Please, notice the question senpai! I'd like to do no tadpole run but I'd also like to use a fun power every once in a while so if I can go consequence-less up to some point, I'd like to know it.
One thing I love about this game, is that it doesn't shy away from giving the player the option to take power - real actual mechanically beneficial power - in exchange for a less tangible concept. Morality, ethics, self. If you want to power game it, you should take all the tadpoles you can get. You should let Astarian do that one thing. Etc. But depending on how you want you role play, and depending on which companions you do/don't want to upset, you might pass on incredibly useful powers. And they really are powerful and change the balance of the game, it's not like you made a pact with a devil and now you multi-class into Warlock for flavor. These Illithid abilities throw balance out the window sometimes, and it's awesome. And to think this isn't even the only thing in the game where you get to make that sort of choice.
1 VERY important thing to know, if you play multiplayer, is that the illithid pool is shared as well between the people in your party, wish i knew this before swallowing 5 parasites by myself.
I experienced something strange, I got Survival Instincts and I never used Tadpole powers. I have done my best to avoid them in spite of the power gain. I don't understand how this happened. I am a pure Bard. Edit: it seems you get it by resisting the Tadpole in the Underdark quest as well.
Thanks for another great video. Yes, there were spoilers, but nothing I didn't guess would be happening. Avoiding these powers on my first bard goodie playthrough but might take them up on my warlock.
Concentrated Blast is very decent with the right setup. Get the Awakened trait from the Gith Creche, so you can use illithid powers as a bonus action. And then you can use the Friends cantrip to meet the Concentration prerequisite (Friends can also be cast while silenced, which can be situationally useful for this combo) as a main action and then trigger the Concentrated Blast as a bonus action. The 3d6 psychic damage baseline is almost twice as much damage as Fire Bolt, so even without the bonus damage from targeting a Concentrating enemy you're still getting double the value for what is essentially an at-will/cantrip ability. And with the bonus damage you're looking at another factor of 2 over Fire Bolt, plus the self healing. So, it's not seriously competing against your higher level spells (though if you can target someone with Concentration then it does the same damage as level 2 Scorching Ray) but as a better-than-cantrip fallback action if your main is a caster (use Friends for arcane, use Guidance/Resistance for divine).
Thanks for the video, and doubly so for the spoiler warning. I'll revisit this one after my first playthrough. Onward to 300k. All glory to the algorithm.
I very much appreciate this video. I didn't want too many spoilers on the powers and everything I just needed an idea of where that path would lead. So its nice to know its not as evil as the game leads you to believe.
The displacer beast transformation is a bit odd to me. It would have made more sense to transform temporarily in a Mind Flayer (only giving you the abilities of the Mind Flayer NPC, so it sets you apart from the final transformation) And switching it with a small (and obviously less powerful) Elder Brain form when you have taken the final transformation.
One of my favorite characters was my Duergar Old One Warlock, who essentially went crazy as a side effect of his mind being more visible to Far Realms beings (Sort of like attracting demons as a Psyker in 40k). Anyways, he was absolutely getting his hands on as many tadpoles as possible, because the more tadpoles he shoved in his brain, the more clear the voice of his patron became, though he never did actually become a mind flayer: He loved his mustache very dearly.
No mention of how busted cull the weak is on a fully kitted tadpole enjoyer. Outright executing enemies you get to 15 or 25 hp is so delicous especially if you are the dark urge. Set up kills with your companions and wipe the with Durge.
I've been avoiding the tadpoles for pretty much the whole game. I've made it to the last parts of act 2 and now I'm learning that there's no great consequence to dipping into those powers to some extent. Hmm.
Going in blind as a dark urge gith, I vehemently refuse any tadpole powers. I permanently have equipped the mind shielding ring, and don’t use the tadpoles. Have like 14 tadpoles banked lol. My dark urge is the only power I need.
Great information, as expected from you. It's also great that you're taking great care when it comes to spoilers (some are obviously unavoidable in a video like this). 👍 Another thing that caught my eye immediately is, how much better your game looks than mine. Especially when it comes to the hair of the characters. Mine always look frizzy, somehow. The shadows look strange too at some points. I know that it could be a resolved when choosing TAA as your Anti-Aliasing option, but then my whole picture looks washed out. Maybe someone has an idea how this can be solved. After spending a lot of time tinkering with the options and still with no solution, I just took it like it is for now.
DLSS sorta solves this issue, but also adds blurriness. I prefer no AA and a bit of Sharpen, it makes the game look crisp, but it does sometimes suffer from odd shadows.
The Non spoiler split at start. HUGE UP's for that.. I'm not usually too hard on this kind of stuff, but this game uniquely is a BIG DEAL!! lol.. Giving us the option, well played.
The powers can be a game changer being able to fly on every character is kinda crazy and black hole perfect grouping tool makes some characters aoe spells much more useful
When he saiz spoiler he means major major spoiler! It will take away the mystery of what happens if u give in into the tempation.. so i suggest to take his warning about spiler siriously!
Can you still get the full flayer abilities without turning into a squidface? Or maybe able to transform yourself back into your most likely maticulously designed character appearence? Or are you stuck as squidward once you take that final tadpole for the full transformation?
This is helpful! I am doing a psychic damage playthrough as a paladin with wrathful smite, and subclassed into a bard. It's rough since the devs seem to have this hatred for adding it into the game without it being niche, near non existent, or bad.
You can use illithid power as bonus action point which is huge bonus if you play as paladin due to concentration blast skill Spoiler: Sit on illithid chair in gith creche and consume the power by passing saving throw check
Would love when the game has sometime to ferment, that a max good mind flayer pro/con, versus a neutral mind flayer pro/con, and a pure evil mind flayer pro/con are compared and contrasted.
The abilities are just so all over the place. On one hand you can fly and persuade your worst enemy to go and hug that mimic. On the other hand you can disable all of your abilities to turn into an angry kitten.
@@MortismalGaming I guess the morality you mentioned, or being locked out of endings because you used the tadpoles too much. Is there something like that or is it just a skill tree that affects NPC opinion?
@@reezuleanu1676 I finished the game after unlocking all of the tadpole abilities and it didn't seem to have any major impact on the endgame story line or endgame cut scenes.
he mortym, great channel. i really like your personality and take on life and games. how about a longer playthrough series of bg3? i would love to see that. take care.
Thank you, so that is how you get displacer beast. Thank you Mortismal. I've totally been holding back, which has been hurting my being able to get approval from Astarion. Now, I have the tools. Wow! It is playing havoc with my OCD! Ouch!
you can convince them that is a good thing, or a necessary evil, like fight fire with fire... I got all the companion on board so far, but is just act 1...
I just finished the first act of the game, with the visitor/gaurdian being like “use your tadpole powers”. So I did…and I didnt like when the narrator said “you’ve lost something you’ll never get back”. It felt like full admiral ackbar there and I reloaded.
Funny, i didn´t use any of the mindflayer powers/parasites in my first run, but let myself be turned into one at the end. thought "well i am not evil and i transform into one for the greater good, if people cant stand me this way, not my problem."
I love cull the weak especially after stacking up as many tadpoles onto one character by the end game if i so much as tickle enemy's to around 20 hp they instantly die and cause some minor Pychic damges to those around them, very useful to beat like 3 or 4 enemys to around 25 hp/30hp and then have a huge cull of them getting like a free 20 dmg per character I attack
Everyone flying around instead of getting stuck and having having to manually jump (weak ass Gale) is huge. One downside of spreading out the tadpoles, rather than maxing out illithid powers on one or two characters, is that Cull the Weak gets better and better at melting enemies the more tadpoles a character has consumed.
I think I encountered a bug. I had 2 of the parasites in my inventory. I tried using one but was told that in time it would be revealed later how to use them. A couple in game days later, I was reorganizing my inventory and cntrl clicked both parasites to drag them into a bag. While dragging them to drop in the bag, I was prompted to consume the parasite and did it. Nothing happened afterwards and both parasites were gone. I have not talked to the guardian about it using the tadpole. It looks like I wasted 2 tadpoles, and I may have to roll back my save and lose some progress.
Great video, just the information i was looking for, i didnt want my character to become an ugly mind flayer but now that i know its a choice to make i just wont do it!
And so we add another permutation to the list of all possible kinds of play through (i.e. normal/origin/dark-urge character and/or team members) and to the list of skill pools we can fish from when thinking builds for our characters and/or team members. Is this the infinitely re-playable game? Thanks for your videos!
My current character is staying away from using the Illithid power but on my 2nd playthrough, I'm thinking of making a warrior who embraces that power.
Great vid, as usual! I'm pretty much at the beggining at act 3 and I've never used the Illithid skill due to the fact I'm persuing the "good" ending. Now, will the ending be affected if I used a couple of those?
@@CalTNlaughs back in exclusives I enjoy and lack of notorious bugs in many games on release. I mean, I love my PC but I can’t deny consoles have have clear advantages and I usually play my ps5 at this point.
Was there any payoff in your original run for not using any tadpoles/powers? I don't really want specifics, just an indication of if there was something special there (at least narratively) for the people who avoided using the tree entirely.
I wish there was a mod to let us play a Mind Flayer from the get go and just RP that we're actively tricking our party members by making them see us as whatever. That would be so great... Maybe a DLC will let that be an option.
Interesting lore tidbit the thing the Illithids fear most is a prophecy of an Illithid borne with the identity and memories of the host, allegedly it would spell the end of their race.
Also soul.
I wonder if it makes any difference story-wise if you play as a gith and become the illithid... Because it would be a delicious irony if the former slave race brought forth that feared mindflayer.
@@nyarparablepsis872 My current play through is as a Gith, so many unique dialogues its interesting, but we'll see, haven't even completed act 1 yet.
Soo.. like every gnome illithid?
@@Geraduss I want to do gith next, really looking forward to that experience
In the old lore, the Illithid are from far into the future. They traveled back into the past because the stars were dying. And it's implied that they may have descended from humans. It would be kind of interesting if this is a predestination paradox and your character actually becomes the progenitor of the Illithid race. Because if you have Illithid powers, then you can create Illithids and when you die, you can become an Elder Brain. So future Illithids traveled back in time and created their own race.
There as theory too the Ilithid are a evolution of the Aboleths, they conquer the galaxy, because there not more worshipers de god die and they on the war started before time. But, with the stars dying, they came back from future but not interact with Aboleths of this time.
The Aboleths have a perfect memory of any detail what happened, and pass this memories to they offspring, so every Aboleth knows their kingdom and fall because the fight against the gods e after that. This happened when "Time was before the time", was millennia before the fight between the Gods and the Giants, before the war against Obyriths.
Mordam, I will see the video for my second playthrough, but I belive it's the same quality of the other of the channel, its save in my playlist.
Its old lore but it is still canon. They come from the far future, but the ported back to 2000 before the dawn of man as we know. So for us they always were here.
All true. But said old lore also had the idea that Ao and the other "overgods" of the setting originally found realmspace as a dying reality. And re-set said reality with the introduction of Shar and Slune as counter-balances to entropy.
I've always theorized that this dying reality is the mirrored past to the future the illithids came from. That once the twin goddess actually conclude their contest the forces of entropy begin to slowly erode the material reality of Realmspace.
So we're Fry from Futurama
@@ReaperGrimm5594 The true overarching quest in Baldur's Gate 3: Become your own grandparent.
THANK YOU.
Finally, someone who ACTUALLY talked about these instead of going "oh, you'll ruin everything if you know, so I won't _actually_ tell you anything".
Thank you so much for providing actually useful content in an easily digestible format. Stay awesome.
@@JimmyMon666 Letting you turn into a Mindflayer is so damn cool, I'm so happy it's a feature. Now if only Tieflings could turn into Cambrians (cool wings)
I haven't watched and do wish to remain spoiler-free, but I do wanna say that I'm still taking tadpoles and using them anyway, whatever happens. It's more interesting to risk it and find out!
That said, I'm sure it's helpful for those who have reached whatever point is important to reach, for those it's best for vids like this to simply give the warning then give the info instead of trying to hold the info back
Freakin-A. I just want an idea what do these things do to the point I don't mind some spoilers and people straight up just won't to tell. All my google queries led to very vague answers.
@@KuroiShiAnimu To be fair, Mind Flayers are created via ceremorphosis. Cambions on the other hand are born offsprings of humans and demons.
This is an extremely helpful video. The game certainly pushes you to use the tadpoles, has a unique UI for it, and narratively assures you it'll be fine but I wasn't going to trust Larian to not be pulling a long troll on the player. The design language has been "things that are obviously bad ideas will likely turn out badly" so far and letting tadpoles crawl around your skull tends to read as one of those.
The negative effects have definitely just been cut before release. Just like Karlach's heart replacement.
That last section on if using the powers lead to a good or bad ending was really all I was looking for. Thank you for clearing that up for me. Onward to adventure I go!
I didn't quite understand.. SO let's say I take in a couple of tadpoles, would that imply some kind of negative repercussion?
@edgarjovaca yeah, Im wondering if having a few tadpoles is going to screw you over or not.
I don't think that it does. Like if you only go within the first ring or something to take a couple of nice very useful and powerful perks along your whole journey in the beginning. It's not like if you consume one your fucked that's it you're going to become a mind flayer for the rest of the game. Because on each tadpole before you consume it and taking you in deeper you have a choice to do it or not
What I think happens is that it becomes increasingly more difficult to reject the further mind-flayer transformations. So if you take more powers, the game throws harder saving throws at you when you have the astral or supreme tadpole.
You can eat as many as you want including the first special one but not the one that completes your transformation
I was trying to keep away from the tadpole powers on my first run (wanted to be the hero type character). But then I saw the node that lets you turn a normal hit into a critical hit and was like "oh well, guess I'm a squid face now".
I mean, as he stated, you can still be a hero using the powers, tho. You have your free will every step of the way with the illithid powers. You're just deciding if you ultimately want to be a squid person. Lol
@@DSTkunnwho will need to eat people.
@@razorflossrazor2937 Let's be real, there's enough bandits running around Faerun that I can eat guilt-free for centuries.
@@jaredouimette1 True but nobody wants to live next to a person who will eats people to survive even if they go after acceptable targets
@@razorflossrazor2937 thats nice, but alignment-wise, you go to heaven, so who cares
I really wish they had made this story about the Mind Flayer prophecy of the Adversary. The idea of a mind flayer that retains the mind of the original host, and destroys all mind flayers. That would have been a great story hook.
i mean, thats literally basically what happens
@@odst123451 both you and the emperor retain your original minds, and defeat the super duper omega brain, defeating the other mindflayers in the process
How about a fucking spoiler warning next time you ruin it for everyone, @@jake120007?
@@jake120007 But so far not the entire species.
…and basically turn them back into humans, for all the good that’d do. I wish you could connect to them and turn them lawfully good. That’d be amazing, IRL or not.
Thank you so much for so completely showing it off, with a spoiler warning, and then actually following through. I am the kinda guy that don't care for spoilers (oftentimes I like being a tad spoiled) and I really wanted to know if my "theory" was correct, and you answered that with this video. Great work.
I love your BG3 videos. Have stumbled upon your channel because of them and am really glad I did. Great job on these videos!!
Had to stop at the third tier discussion since im not up to that part, but thanks for clear mention of when youre moving further into deeper spoilers.
I agree, Luck of the Far Realms is so damn op, best of the initial set available
One thing to not about Psionic Backlash is that the damage procs before the spellcaster finishes casting. I've had it kill low HP casters outright before cancelling their cast and saving a party member.
It is crazy how must mechanics they invested in the game. great gameplay and beautiful story, I love it.
If Astarion is open to it, I wouldn't want him to go full on mindflayer, but him getting the second tier so that he can fly sounds useful for the gloomstalker rouge build.
It is nice to have a modern game where you are allowed to be the Bad Guy, rather than just being "The Anti-Hero" or "The Hero who is an A-hole but has good intentions".
cheesus crust been looking everywhere for an actual FULL look at the skill tree **** the rest of the community posting content on this. THIS is actually what i needed so see. Thank you!!!
Fun fact: Two of these powers work while in Moon Druid forms.
When an Owlbear procs a prone effect the 1d8 Psychic damage from the "Fall damage" power procs. Also, the one where getting an enemies HP to X or less instantly kills them (X = number of tadpoles you ate) also works on Moon Druid. When you have eaten 20+ tadpoles this ability procs an enormous number of times.
Thanks for the heads up at the beginning of the video. I was on the fence about watching this for spoiler reasons but I'll make sure to come back after I finish my first run.
For me, the game is amazing so far, and I'm just past the act 1. Never knowing if you are doing the right thing, being under pressure from companions, I actually doubt my steps and let myself be convinced into doing things that were not my plan. I haven't had an experience like this in ages.
Even though I've decided to do a "clean", dope-less run, I somehow ended with a tadpole upgrade after drinking a specific elixir, and noticed it too late. So I'm stuck with it for now. Though the upgrade panel didn't appear, and it's just one power...
Also, turns out you can make another shot of said elixir through Alchemy. Not sure what it does, but I'm sure gonna test it on my pet vampire.
Lol. I also use pet vampire from time to time, now on goblin, so he can use the tadpole and dominate them. He seems one of the few characters that enjoy using them so he had become my lab mouse.
I try to not use much of tadpole powers myself, my character has enough bs in his head(Dark Urge origin).
@user-li5cr6wv5b Could you please tell me what Act and who give you the elixir? I want to avoid accidentally drinking it.
@@Samuel_Ou1209 act 1, the Illithid alchemist from the Muconid village. The one you gather fungal samples for. Side effects of treatment attempt.
As a compensation you can also get a ring from the same npc, that gives advantage on save rolls against getting Charmed.
@@ЯБезымянный-о5ф Can you visit Underdark from act 1 while doing 2 act or do you miss on something?
One spoilery thing you didn't cover that I'd quite like to know is if the inverse happens - do you get a unique ending for not using them at all?
I wonder that too, if there is any like rightful good ending if you don't use it?
Only question I had going into this video.
+1 Please, notice the question senpai! I'd like to do no tadpole run but I'd also like to use a fun power every once in a while so if I can go consequence-less up to some point, I'd like to know it.
Same!
Same, haven't been using them.
One thing I love about this game, is that it doesn't shy away from giving the player the option to take power - real actual mechanically beneficial power - in exchange for a less tangible concept. Morality, ethics, self. If you want to power game it, you should take all the tadpoles you can get. You should let Astarian do that one thing. Etc. But depending on how you want you role play, and depending on which companions you do/don't want to upset, you might pass on incredibly useful powers. And they really are powerful and change the balance of the game, it's not like you made a pact with a devil and now you multi-class into Warlock for flavor. These Illithid abilities throw balance out the window sometimes, and it's awesome. And to think this isn't even the only thing in the game where you get to make that sort of choice.
1 VERY important thing to know, if you play multiplayer, is that the illithid pool is shared as well between the people in your party, wish i knew this before swallowing 5 parasites by myself.
no
@@DVRKLXGHTyes
You will be an outcast unless you happen to know the disguise self spell
Thank you. I know I shouldn't have spoiled it for myself, But I was actually finding it hard to know what to do after speaking to the guardian.
I experienced something strange, I got Survival Instincts and I never used Tadpole powers. I have done my best to avoid them in spite of the power gain. I don't understand how this happened. I am a pure Bard. Edit: it seems you get it by resisting the Tadpole in the Underdark quest as well.
Eyy! Mortym with the information that I both want and need! Thank you, as always. Praying for your continued success.
Thanks for another great video. Yes, there were spoilers, but nothing I didn't guess would be happening. Avoiding these powers on my first bard goodie playthrough but might take them up on my warlock.
Concentrated Blast is very decent with the right setup. Get the Awakened trait from the Gith Creche, so you can use illithid powers as a bonus action. And then you can use the Friends cantrip to meet the Concentration prerequisite (Friends can also be cast while silenced, which can be situationally useful for this combo) as a main action and then trigger the Concentrated Blast as a bonus action. The 3d6 psychic damage baseline is almost twice as much damage as Fire Bolt, so even without the bonus damage from targeting a Concentrating enemy you're still getting double the value for what is essentially an at-will/cantrip ability. And with the bonus damage you're looking at another factor of 2 over Fire Bolt, plus the self healing. So, it's not seriously competing against your higher level spells (though if you can target someone with Concentration then it does the same damage as level 2 Scorching Ray) but as a better-than-cantrip fallback action if your main is a caster (use Friends for arcane, use Guidance/Resistance for divine).
3d6 = 3-18 dmg, 10.5 average
2d10 (you'll get your Illithid powers at around level 5, when your cantrips are upgraded) = 2-20 dmg, 11 average
Gonna come back to this after my first playthrough, thanks for callin out the spoilers!
Passing the DC 22 to persuade Lae’zel was fully worth it.
Thanks for the video, and doubly so for the spoiler warning. I'll revisit this one after my first playthrough. Onward to 300k. All glory to the algorithm.
I very much appreciate this video. I didn't want too many spoilers on the powers and everything I just needed an idea of where that path would lead. So its nice to know its not as evil as the game leads you to believe.
Well but thats basicly the spoiler!
The displacer beast transformation is a bit odd to me.
It would have made more sense to transform temporarily in a Mind Flayer (only giving you the abilities of the Mind Flayer NPC, so it sets you apart from the final transformation)
And switching it with a small (and obviously less powerful) Elder Brain form when you have taken the final transformation.
Well I got 1.16 in before spoilers but gave me all I needed to know! Thanks!
Thanks for the non spoiler run down! I'll be back in a week or two.
My favorites are a favorable beginning and luck of far realms too. 😊 Thank for your very interesting video!
One of my favorite characters was my Duergar Old One Warlock, who essentially went crazy as a side effect of his mind being more visible to Far Realms beings (Sort of like attracting demons as a Psyker in 40k).
Anyways, he was absolutely getting his hands on as many tadpoles as possible, because the more tadpoles he shoved in his brain, the more clear the voice of his patron became, though he never did actually become a mind flayer: He loved his mustache very dearly.
No mention of how busted cull the weak is on a fully kitted tadpole enjoyer. Outright executing enemies you get to 15 or 25 hp is so delicous especially if you are the dark urge. Set up kills with your companions and wipe the with Durge.
I've been avoiding the tadpoles for pretty much the whole game. I've made it to the last parts of act 2 and now I'm learning that there's no great consequence to dipping into those powers to some extent. Hmm.
Got everything i need to know at 1:15 mark, but il leave the video on a background to give a view and leave a like. Thank you.
Took the words out my mouth well said with no spoilers
Going in blind as a dark urge gith, I vehemently refuse any tadpole powers. I permanently have equipped the mind shielding ring, and don’t use the tadpoles. Have like 14 tadpoles banked lol. My dark urge is the only power I need.
I unlocked all of them and was a little disappointed that there isn't an achievement for it.
Great video! Really loved the conlusion.
Great information, as expected from you. It's also great that you're taking great care when it comes to spoilers (some are obviously unavoidable in a video like this). 👍
Another thing that caught my eye immediately is, how much better your game looks than mine. Especially when it comes to the hair of the characters. Mine always look frizzy, somehow. The shadows look strange too at some points. I know that it could be a resolved when choosing TAA as your Anti-Aliasing option, but then my whole picture looks washed out. Maybe someone has an idea how this can be solved. After spending a lot of time tinkering with the options and still with no solution, I just took it like it is for now.
DLSS sorta solves this issue, but also adds blurriness. I prefer no AA and a bit of Sharpen, it makes the game look crisp, but it does sometimes suffer from odd shadows.
Excellent video. Answered every question I had around this critical choice.
Nice, thanks for the vid! Quality as usual
I don't thing my Bard would go down that route. When I do my Necromancer run though... I doubt my undead minions will care about the Davy Jones beard.
Thank you so much I don't care about spoilers and I wanted to figure out if I'd be pushed into a specific ending if I used the first tier.
Yeah Mort!!! You are a work horse 💪 of unbelievable strength brother
Screw ilithid powers, i am looking at that sweet (probably broken) crit hit on spectator on the start of the video.
That was some stacking haha.
The Non spoiler split at start. HUGE UP's for that.. I'm not usually too hard on this kind of stuff, but this game uniquely is a BIG DEAL!! lol.. Giving us the option, well played.
a thing of note is that you can't reset the tadpole too. that's something i wish i had known before using them lol
The powers can be a game changer being able to fly on every character is kinda crazy and black hole perfect grouping tool makes some characters aoe spells much more useful
When he saiz spoiler he means major major spoiler! It will take away the mystery of what happens if u give in into the tempation.. so i suggest to take his warning about spiler siriously!
Can you still get the full flayer abilities without turning into a squidface? Or maybe able to transform yourself back into your most likely maticulously designed character appearence? Or are you stuck as squidward once you take that final tadpole for the full transformation?
This is helpful! I am doing a psychic damage playthrough as a paladin with wrathful smite, and subclassed into a bard. It's rough since the devs seem to have this hatred for adding it into the game without it being niche, near non existent, or bad.
You can use illithid power as bonus action point which is huge bonus if you play as paladin due to concentration blast skill
Spoiler:
Sit on illithid chair in gith creche and consume the power by passing saving throw check
@@baddiegaming758 UNDERSTOOD CAPTAIN tyvm
Nice vid, fly is really good imo because it replaces jump and you always have it, plus it looks cool af
Thank you for the non spoiler section. Do you think you'll do a review or explanation into the mechanics of the dark urge at any point?
Sort of, it's not that complicated though
Would love when the game has sometime to ferment, that a max good mind flayer pro/con, versus a neutral mind flayer pro/con, and a pure evil mind flayer pro/con are compared and contrasted.
This was just what I wanted to know, cheers :D
I absolutely loved using them my first play through especially when you unlock the outer ring gets insane being just able to fly
The abilities are just so all over the place. On one hand you can fly and persuade your worst enemy to go and hug that mimic. On the other hand you can disable all of your abilities to turn into an angry kitten.
How big is there of a consequence of using them? Do you get a worse ending if you use the mind control power every once in a while?
Depends on what you consider worse, they don't assign a lot of morality to most of it
@@MortismalGaming I guess the morality you mentioned, or being locked out of endings because you used the tadpoles too much. Is there something like that or is it just a skill tree that affects NPC opinion?
@@reezuleanu1676 I finished the game after unlocking all of the tadpole abilities and it didn't seem to have any major impact on the endgame story line or endgame cut scenes.
@@kyuuzoryuusuke Kind of reassuring but also disappointing tbh. Thank you for clearing it up for me without spoiling anything champ.
he mortym, great channel. i really like your personality and take on life and games. how about a longer playthrough series of bg3? i would love to see that. take care.
Quick question. Does the half-illithid state change anything appearance wise? Do you look, or act differently in anyway?
Minor cosmetic change
These abilities are really fun I'll probably adapt them for a tabletop game and give them to Mind Flayers for a bit extra power.
Got to admit I had a different theory as to the source of the Guardian, very cool.
Lord British?
"These Worlds are Mine...do you like what you see?" - The Guardian
I used to use the one where you pull targets to you. It's great for pulling people into chasms.
Can't wait to watch this once I have gotten further!
Thank you, so that is how you get displacer beast. Thank you Mortismal. I've totally been holding back, which has been hurting my being able to get approval from Astarion. Now, I have the tools. Wow! It is playing havoc with my OCD! Ouch!
Concentrated Blast can be good if you do smth like guidance so it’s a free 6d6 psychic for the cost of 2 actions
Yea i was just googling trying to find a relevant video and finding not much. Thanks for the upload.
Cull the weak is probably the best ability if you focus all your tadpoles on a single character.
any of the companions leave if you use tadpole powers?
you can convince them that is a good thing, or a necessary evil, like fight fire with fire... I got all the companion on board so far, but is just act 1...
No, none of them leave specifically over this, but some of them will leave based on other decisions
I just finished the first act of the game, with the visitor/gaurdian being like “use your tadpole powers”. So I did…and I didnt like when the narrator said “you’ve lost something you’ll never get back”. It felt like full admiral ackbar there and I reloaded.
I’ll admit I dabbled with the powers. Very tempting to give in. Especially as a Drow. Not going to lie ha
No one mentioned the bad sides.I didn't even accept the semi-transformation because I was afraid it would affect my character's choices.
i love periolous stakes on enemies let the whole party crit for 3 turns
Funny, i didn´t use any of the mindflayer powers/parasites in my first run, but let myself be turned into one at the end. thought "well i am not evil and i transform into one for the greater good, if people cant stand me this way, not my problem."
Damn. I wonder what class goes well with this. A Rogue, a Fighter, a Sorcerer? Decisions, decisions.
5:10 perillous stakes can actually be used on opponents too which make them vuln to everything and really easy kill
Great video! Thanks!
getting the game today and wanted to know the limits of how evil i can make my first character, thanks for hyping me up even more!
I am genuinely curious if I can develop these powers a little bit without inserting more tadpoles and what the consequences will be.
Turning into a mind flayer sounded like exactly what the dark urge would do. IT IS DONE
I love cull the weak especially after stacking up as many tadpoles onto one character by the end game if i so much as tickle enemy's to around 20 hp they instantly die and cause some minor Pychic damges to those around them, very useful to beat like 3 or 4 enemys to around 25 hp/30hp and then have a huge cull of them getting like a free 20 dmg per character I attack
Everyone flying around instead of getting stuck and having having to manually jump (weak ass Gale) is huge.
One downside of spreading out the tadpoles, rather than maxing out illithid powers on one or two characters, is that Cull the Weak gets better and better at melting enemies the more tadpoles a character has consumed.
I can’t watch this because I want to figure it out when I get there but thanks a lot mortism for all the love you’re giving bg3
I think I encountered a bug. I had 2 of the parasites in my inventory. I tried using one but was told that in time it would be revealed later how to use them. A couple in game days later, I was reorganizing my inventory and cntrl clicked both parasites to drag them into a bag. While dragging them to drop in the bag, I was prompted to consume the parasite and did it. Nothing happened afterwards and both parasites were gone. I have not talked to the guardian about it using the tadpole. It looks like I wasted 2 tadpoles, and I may have to roll back my save and lose some progress.
Great video, just the information i was looking for, i didnt want my character to become an ugly mind flayer but now that i know its a choice to make i just wont do it!
And so we add another permutation
to the list of all possible kinds of play through (i.e. normal/origin/dark-urge character and/or team members)
and to the list of skill pools we can fish from when thinking builds for our characters and/or team members.
Is this the infinitely re-playable game?
Thanks for your videos!
My current character is staying away from using the Illithid power but on my 2nd playthrough, I'm thinking of making a warrior who embraces that power.
Great vid, as usual!
I'm pretty much at the beggining at act 3 and I've never used the Illithid skill due to the fact I'm persuing the "good" ending.
Now, will the ending be affected if I used a couple of those?
No you are safe to use the first line and then get rid of it
Gonna try it on a future playthrough
For sure you look very old after you start the process of invoking them. That votes against them.
1 minute of this video was enough for me.
hello, what does it mean when you say half illithid? is there a change in appearance or does the change in appearance only happens at full illithid?
Still waiting for Sepetember…
Same 😢
Alas, I'm waiting indefinitely..
Xbox main here 💔
@@The_Babe Microsoft straight sabotaging you guys.
@@CalTNlaughs back in exclusives I enjoy and lack of notorious bugs in many games on release.
I mean, I love my PC but I can’t deny consoles have have clear advantages and I usually play my ps5 at this point.
@@Triqkshotcringe
Was there any payoff in your original run for not using any tadpoles/powers? I don't really want specifics, just an indication of if there was something special there (at least narratively) for the people who avoided using the tree entirely.
Not really, no
Thanks for the clear spoiler warning.
This might be a spoiler-y question but if you don't consume the supreme tadpole, but also don't squash it, are you ever forced to consume it later?
I wish there was a mod to let us play a Mind Flayer from the get go and just RP that we're actively tricking our party members by making them see us as whatever.
That would be so great...
Maybe a DLC will let that be an option.