Trying to make 2026 awesome: Dune, BG3, and Quest 3S

Hey all, welcome to 2026! I've had a really hard time writing on my blog lately. I don't know what it is . . . I guess after Dune and all my cancer nonsense of last year, I just fizzled out a bit. If you don't mind (I'm sure you don't), Imma just journal a bit here and catch up to the present. M'kay? M'kay!

1- Real Life -- Couple things to note here. Mom died. It's ok. She lived a good, long life. I officiated the funeral for the family, and my company granted me a week of bereavement leave. I wrote up her obituary and went with my sister to decide on the casket, flowers, and etc. It was painful, but necessary and important family work.

My kids were very respectful pallbearers

At the same time, I got hit with the Flu that's been going around. It's like 2025 was trying to give me a final punch in the gut.  Can 2026 just be a bit more awesome please?  Luckily Tamiflu knocked it out of me in time for the funeral.

As for cancer, well, I'm still doing immunotherapy infusions every three weeks.  It's my new normal.  Hopefully, my upcoming CT Scan shows continued improvement.

2- Dune -- yeah, I haven't really logged on to do anything on Dune more than just refilling my base's (and Dylan's bases') power supplies. It's dry gameplay that just isn't that fun.

Oh, you know, just spending an hour collecting fuel cells to power the bases . . .

On the upside, everybody on our server's sietch is jumping ship to a different sietch and changing over to a new guild, so that might actually get me logged on to do the same.  I don't know. When a game becomes nothing more than chores you have to do, it feels a bit . . . dead.  The third DLC is supposed to be dropping sometime early this year though, so if that happens, I'll for sure be joining in to play through more of the story.

3- Baldur's Gate 3 -- I should probably dedicate an entire blog post to my recent playthrough of BG3, and actually, yeah, I think I'll do that at some point. The short story of this playthrough is that my son started DM'ing a game that takes place in the Feywild, and I'm playing a clown-based Mischief cleric named Dandy Goofus.  I was so excited about this character that I made him over in Baldur's Gate 3 to see how he plays.

Clown makeup secured!

The original goal was simply to get him to Act 3 so I could get him the clown makeup from the circus, but I ended up really going crazy on Act 3 and doing everything I just kind of skipped through in the past.  That means I actually helped Shadowheart with her Mother Superior problem. That means I helped Asterion become a Vampire lord. That even means I saved Minsc, fought Raphael, destroyed the steel watcher factory, and got Orpheus's hammer.

BG's newest vampire lord in the house!

Really, all that's left in this play through is to get the last Dribbles the Clown body part (this is just some clown-to-clown good deed stuff I need to do), finish up the Orin fight, and take the final fight to the brain. I'm near the end, and I kind of don't want it to end. :(

4- Quest 3S -- I got TWO Quest 3S's for Christmas: one for me and one for my youngest. They were on sale for $200 at Costco during the holidays, and I couldn't resist.

I've told a few people who read this blog already, but I'll repeat myself here: I don't think I realized how devastated I really was when I had to return my Quest 3 engineering model to Meta when WIMO folded. It felt like a larger metaphor in my life for some reason (as weird as that may seem). I put that thing on after opening up my Christmas present and played Smash Drums until the battery ran out. It felt really good. It felt really cathartic.

Smash those drums!

I've played a few other games on my Quest 3S since Christmas, and that means, if I can get to it, I've got more fuel for the blog post dumpster fire in me!

~~

Anyway, that should catch you up on the holidays and the start of 2026. Thanks for reading, and let me know your thoughts. I love hearing from readers and old friends. I appreciate it and hope your holidays went well and that your 2026 is starting off right.

Happy Dueling!

The Friendly Necromancer and Baldur's Gate 3

Ok, it's done.

It didn't go to plan. It wasn't very pretty, but I beat my third playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3--this time playing as Thomas Lionblood, the Friendly Necromancer himself.

I have the whole two-hour-long final battle uploaded to YouTube if you really want to put yourself through that.

I don't know what happened to my mind here. I mean, this morning I went to work for a couple of hours, got a haircut, and then came home to play some BG3. Somewhere while logging out two nights ago right at the entrance to the fight and this morning, it feels like I just forgot how to be a necromancer.

I ran in with 7 undead and they all were instantly wiped out by the Dominated Red Dragon and his thrall buddies. After that, I just kind of hobbled along, getting counter-spelled and beat up.  At one point it started looking kind of bleak for me then I remembered . . . Oh . . . my . . . freaking . . . gosh . . . dang. I have allies to call forth to help me fight, what am I even doing?!

Calling the thrall

Anyway, eventually I got up to the brain's battle area. I laid down a cloud kill, cast a couple clouds of daggers, threw out a couple disintegrate scroll spells, and won the day in just a couple rounds. I'll take it. 

Everything's Fine . . .

Playing as a necromancer was not bad. I read the Necromancy of Thay book. I trained a lot of necromantic spells. I played as nicely as a necromancer could. If this was Wizard101, you could say the school of Ice was my secondary school. There's really nothing much of note here other than I wish I would have had a bit of a better performance in the finale, but hey, a win is a win!

My final team consisted of Halsin the Druid, Karlach the Barbarian, The Friendly Necromancer himself, and Brianna Brightsong the Bard.

A druid, a barbarian, a necromancer, and a bard walk on to a boat . . .

I know I know. I'm hearing you say it already in my mind, "Brianna Brightsong the Bard? I thought you were going to recruit Alfira?!" 

Somehow I misunderstood that I would have to download a mod to recruit her and even at that, she'd be a substandard companion. To those ends, I opted to see what my old buddy Withers had as far as hirelings and subbed in a cute little halfling bard in her stead.

Little in the middle!

She was a pretty cool character in the end, wearing plate armor and singing her way from the College of Swords, a subclass of bard I had never played before. Her biggest drawback was simply those stubby little legs. The best thing about her however was that D10 bardic inspiration. With that I was able to replace Asterion for most lockpicking needs. It felt like there was a lot of versatility with the character for sure though since she could cast, heal, tank, and inspire. She was not a bad character to run with at all.

... And without a question, Halsin was a fantastic addition to the group. He could heal, he could dps, and he had incredible survivability.  At the end of the day, druids are just super OP. 

Nothing better than turning into a dinosaur that gets 3 attack rolls.

. . . with that, I'm officially tired of playing BG3 for now. Hopefully I can get back to some other games and simply enjoy the fact that I put 267 hours on the game by playing a friendly necromancer, an everquest beastlord, and my old OC Avantador, the Dragonborn bard.

Happy Dueling!

Baldur's Gate Act 2 complete for Thomas Lionblood

Thomas Lionblood has now finished Act 2 of Baldur's Gate and destroyed the evil Kethric Thorn. 

The Friendly Necromancer says "Bai Felicia" to the Evil Necromancer

I've been playing gobs of BG3 lately (an unhealthy amount of gob to be honest). Playing a "friendly" non-lethal necromancer has proven challenging, but I always seem to find corpses lying around that I can harvest undead from. Now at level 8 (just turned 9) I'm able to summon some pretty amazing thralls of undead to follow me around.  I can't wait to see what it's like at level 12!

Me and THIS army, that's who!

Along the way I've managed to encounter a few things I've never run into before on my previous 2 play-throughs.  A friend at work told me there was a way I could become "The god of the fish people" in their words.  I was like, "Wait, are you talking about the Sahuagin? Because I ran into those at a temple in Baldur's Gate."  And she was like, "No, I'm talking about the Kuotoa."  And I was like, "WHAT?! There's Kuotoa in this game?" Badda bing badda boom . . . I'm now the god of the fish people.

My first commandment should have been to get rid of the fish smell.

Also while stumbling around in the Underdark looking for Kuotoa, I managed to run into a Spectator and have a horribly difficult fight.  Thank goodness for small damage magic missiles to wake up people from their paralyzation.

Not an easy fight at that level.

I've also swapped out Wyll for Halsin after successfully thwarting a gigantic gang of ne'er-do-wells that was hellbent on destroying his portal to another dimension. I had failed that once before on another playthrough, so I kind of knew what was coming and was able to prepare for it.

Halsin is the best!

Halsin is fun to play with his shapeshifting abilities. He has a wild plethora of wild shapes he can morph into; although, for some reason, those animal shapes really get in the way of the dialog camera sometimes. Just sayin'. 

Anyway, next up will be to try my hand at getting Alfira the bard to come and join up with me in Baldur's Gate since I've never done that before. It's going to be hard to swap out Asterion for Alfira, but a friendly necromancer gotta do what a friendly necromancer gotta do.  Sorry, Asterion.

I'll just have to make sure she's good at unlocking doors and chests I suppose.

With any luck, I'll be done with this play-through in another week and I can move on to Path of Exile 2.  (I'm through Act 1 in PoE2, but BG3 is totally all-consuming right now).

Happy Dueling!

Playing the BG3 Friendly Necromancer Character?

Ok, SORRY. I thought I was done with Baldur’s Gate 3. I really did, but then I remembered I also really would love to make a Friendly Necromancer in the game . . .  and . . . well . . . here we are: Thomas Lionblood from Wizard101 in Baldur’s Gate 3.

Medium Length Blue Hair -- check!  Elfish, Youthful good looks -- check!

Now, there’s really no way for me to actually simulate your standard Wizard101 necromancer in Baldur’s Gate 3. There just isn’t. There are no cards for spells, no power pips, no massive health drain spells, and certainly no traps, charms, and all that jazz – this isn’t a turn-based, family-friendly card game. That all said I CAN do non-lethal knock-out damage.

Non-lethal Necromancy for the win!

For now, I’ll just be going with your standard “Wizard” Necromancer.  I say that because there’s more than one way to skin a Necromancer in D&D. Death Domain clerics are actually going to be one of the latest and greatest things to hit Baldur’s Gate 3 with the release of Patch 8.  You could also do a Warlock with an Undead Patron (Although, I don't think that's a thing in BG3 . . . only D&D?), a Circle of Spores Druid, an Oathbreaker Paladin, or perhaps you could even do a kind of Bard Necro-dancer type build (I do love my bards).  Thomas Lionblood, however, is definitely a wizard from a wizard school type of Friendly Necromancer.

I'll mess around with a Necronomicon and be super friendly about it while I do.

Now I just need to figure out what his supporting cast will be. I’m currently leaning toward a fighter, cleric, and warlock combo to go with my necromancer. It definitely seems balanced, but I’m not sold on it yet. If my summons are good enough, perhaps I don’t really need the fighter and warlock . . . I don’t think I can replace the cleric though . . . I’m addicted to healing spells.

I tried running with a Monk hireling for a bit, but I don't know if I love it

Hmmm . . . if I could complete his major quest in Act 2, then maybe Halsin would be a good alternative or perhaps Alfira?  

Anyway, these are future me problems. For now, I’m just happy to be The Friendly Necromancer playing a friendly necromancer in Baldur’s Gate 3.

Happy Dueling!

BG3 es fini and the Everquest Beastlord Build

People of the Friendly Necromancer!  In the past week I have wrapped up two (count 'em, TWO) play-throughs of Baldur's Gate 3. What a fantastic game. Even now I'm feeling compelled to start up a new character download a few mods, and do this all again! But no . . . no . . . self-control is necessary here. I have some Wizard101 and Path of Exile 2 in my very near future.

OK, so first, my buddy Dylan and I finished up our playthrough with Moonstar and Avantador. It was a pretty interesting journey where we crashed through the game, failing all kinds of encounters, and skipping all kinds of side content to reach the final conflict. We even failed our final battle once. We even failed the trip up to the final battle once, but it was nothing we couldn't overcome on our second try. 

The best Firework Show Baldur's Gate has ever seen!

To make matters even better, Moonstar and Shadowheart finally hit the sack together. You have no idea all Dylan went through to riz that character up.

Blush!

Unfortunately Laezel left me and went to be a slave to her queen. I tried to stop her, but she was all Marty McFly about her density, I mean, her destiny.

Bye Laezel! Enjoy servitude!

I was able to take everything I learned from the playthrough with Moonstar and Avantador and use it to make my trip through the finale a perfect trip with Volt. I had gathered a MEGA ton of heroes and helpers, which made everything easy with the dragon fight. I mean, it wasn't without a few challenges, but without my playthrough with Dylan, I wouldn't have known the best use of Shadowheart's Divine Intervention comes right before you trash the netherbrain.

Bye Bye Giant Brain!

As you may recall, Volt was my experiment in building an Everquest Beastlord in Baldur's Gate 3. I'd say it was pretty successful.  To those ends, he’s a glorious 2 monk, 5 Ranger, 5 Cleric.

Similarities to Everquest Beastlord:

• He’s got a pet. When I call a pet out, it’s typically a Bear and it’s awesome at goading attacks. For a while I was even using special demonspirit gloves that would give him extra resistance to pretty much everything, which was great.

At fifth level, your pet gets introduced to helmet hair

• He’s got a slow spell and heals. This was a main requirement for me and is why I spec’d him all the way to 5th level cleric in the Domain school. That’s how he’s sporting his slow spell. It’s pretty epic.

Such a good debuff

• He’s a dual wielder with martial arts. Having two weapons and mixing it up in melee with your pet was always what set the Everquest Beastlord apart from the other pet classes (necromancer and Mage specifically).

If only Everquest models looked this nice!

Where things start to get different is just the nature of Baldur’s Gate 3 and the D&D gameplay:

• Use of psionics. The illythid tadpoles I add to my character’s brain are giving me all kinds of psionic abilities. One thing that’s actually pretty cool is the ability to shapeshift into a Displacer Beast. I suppose the argument could be made that the ability to shapeshift into a beast is very much in line with a few of the AA abilities in the Beastlord’s repertoire.
• Scrolls and potions. I mean, scrolls and potions give you access to every spell in the game. You’re not going to see a beastlord casting Disintegrate and Firewall in Everquest. On the other hand, Haste Spores are very in-line with casting haste, and poison being applied to your weapon strikes is also very “Everquest beastlordy.” Again, you could argue these things make up the gaps.
• Dragonborn aren’t Iksar. I mean, if I could play as a lizardman in Baldur’s Gate 3 I probably would. There actually is a mod that changes Dragonborn into Lizardmen, which doesn't seem horrible -- just not my pointy iskar from Everquest.
• Bears aren’t a good pet for Iksar (although they are for Barbarians). In Everquest, your Iksar pet is a little dino puppy/stegosaurus thing. Rangers in BG3 get your choice of bears, wolves, falcons, spiders, and boars (I believe). Again, there is a mod that will allow you to get a Dilophosaurus pet at level 7, but that wouldn’t work with my build anyway. I suppose the argument could be made that the flexibility of the type of pet you can summon is way cooler than Everquest's system anyway.

So there you have it. I'm very happy with the amount of value and fun I've gotten from Baldur's Gate 3. If you're concerned about the mature things you can encounter like Moonstar rizzing up Shadowheart, there's a toggle for that so you can turn it off.

Overall, I really love this game.

Happy Dueling!

Blink your eyes, lose half a month: Brawl Stars, BG3, and more!

Hi readers! Am I the only one who feels like January is flying by like blink your eyes, lose half a month? This is crazy. Maybe it's just because I've been either hard at work, watching hockey (I have a new fascination with the Utah Hockey Club), or playing either Brawl Stars or Baldur's Gate 3. I feel like I've been ignoring my faithful few readers! Sorry! Let me take a second here and catch you all up.

Brawl Stars

I continue to kind of suck at this game. It's alright though--I'm still having fun.

The Brawl Pass this season is called Starr Force and involves more cartoon-esque character skins. I love the little animations they do on these things. Of all the heroes in this video, my favorite obviously is Berry, who recently got a buff and a beautiful, new hypercharge ability.

I am tempted to buy this one just because I'm feeling the gold pinch lately. 

In other news, Buzz Lightyear is still in the game, still overpowered, and I think people are genuinely over it. Once Buzz is gone, the game can return to normal. It was fun for a while, but I think we (the collective we of Brawl Stars Players) can move on here soon. Please? It feels like Buzz overstayed his welcome.

The one good, new thing coming out of the Toy Story promotion is the Pizza Planet deals and events that are now running. You can pick up great little prizes in exchange for the pizza slices you earn, including a brand new brawler character named Meeple, who is . . . a meeple made of meeples. A cheating Meeple at that. Check out his video promotion.

This game is absolutely crazy. I love it. All I need is 15 more pizza slices, which I should earn tomorrow, and then I can unlock the new hero. woot!

Baldur's Gate 3

A couple weeks ago, my old buddy Dylan and I both got the bug to play Baldur's Gate 3 together and the hit team of Moonstar and Avantador were back together. We crashed through the end of Act 2 without much trouble and promptly skipped off to the final act.

Bai Myrkul!

The town of Baldur's Gate proper is pretty great. Where else can you take on a quest to find a flying cat that eats delivery pigeons and discover severed body parts of a clown?  Baldur's Gate is the only place to be for wacky side quests.

Bad dad joke clowns are the worst clowns

As for main quests, we just recently took down a lady who liked to wear meat suits (not Lady Gaga unfortunately), and we seem to be on our way to confronting the last "absolute" God before dealing with the Elder Brain situation.

Meat suits for everyone!

Progressing with Dylan also meant that I could play more of my Everquest Beastlord in BG3. It's my second play-through, and I don't want to get ahead of my original play-through. As for the character itself, Volt's gameplay is definitely more "sneaky" than our pretty straightforward Fireball and Moonbeam spell light shows from when Dylan and I are playing Moonstar and Avantador. 

I suppose that's the influence of having Astarion in my party and being a bit squishy as a Ranger/Monk/Cleric hybrid as a main character.  My bear pet needs a serious upgrade to be honest. It's dying in one or two hits these days. Although for all intents and purposes, playing a real beastlord in Everquest felt that way sometimes when you were just one level away from getting a new pet summoning spell.

Other Stuff

Outside of those two games, my old friends in Team Spode are working through the latest expansion in Guild Wars 2, but my interest in that game has been waning lately. 

I have dipped my toes into Marvel Rivals, and it is in fact giving me HUGE overwatch vibes. I need to get back into it again. Playing Dr. Strange with a superhero team in a 6v6 pvp game was a blast.

Man, he was super fun to play

So there you go!  That's about all I've been playing. I still want to write up an article on the remaining two boards of Bounce Arcade and finally get back into playing more Asgard's Wrath, but while my mother-in-law is still in town, it's been difficult to play any VR. (She stole my office space and I'm stuck in the basement.)  

I'll be writing more as I can!

Happy Dueling!

Fully Milking BG3 Act 1

 As of tonight, I've officially stepped into Act 2 of Baldur's Gate 3!

Why wouldn't I let a Drider show me the way to Moonrise Towers? What could go wrong?

I really did try to milk Act 1 for all I could get out of it though before moving on, There was a side trip to a Goblin hideout where I pretty much slaughtered everyone and everything along the way. Then I took a trip over to the Monastery and the Githyanki Creche 

The lack of handrails is slightly concerning. Is there a Safety Officer in the Monastery?

That was actually pretty fun! I can't believe Dylan and I just walked right passed all this side stuff. Inside I found a bunch of loot and adventure in a broken-down monastery, including a pretty great fight with giant eagles in the highest reaches.

Sorry about disturbing you in your nest and all that . . .

I honestly can't even remember how I stumbled into the Githyanki Creche, but while I was there I recovered an egg, I destroyed a couple of high-ranking Giths, and even managed to irritate the Githyanki wanna-be Goddess herself.

Sorry for killing all your gith friends, Vlaakith

Finally, I sought out some harpies I remembered that I had forgotten and explored an underground cave where the Zhentarim were holed up.  To be honest, I felt pretty murderous here at the end. I was killing everything in sight.

It's like I'm a cooler Iksar with a Barbarian's Wolf pet

By the end of it all my Everquest Beastlord experiment was level 7 in total (: a Level 2 monk / Level 3 Beastmaster Ranger / Level 2 Knowledge Domain Cleric. Honestly, I'm not sure I like taking 5 levels of cleric just to get a slow spell, but I'm on a quest and have to make it happen now!

Happy Dueling!  

The Grym Truth

Hello friends and happy Blaugust to you all! I've been enjoying writing every day even if it's about random stuff I'm doing in random games.  I'm sure you've noticed, some days are better than others around here, and I kind of feel like today's post is one of those that will be swallowed up to time and forgotten pretty quickly.  Here I am anyway! Just writing about my crazy boss fight in Baldur's Gate 3 with my weird Everquest Beastlord D&D character!  Enjoy! 

YES! VICTORY IS MINE!

I returned to the Grymforge and decided it was time to forge that awesome suit of Adamantine Scale Mail and fight Grym himself.  Knowing that the fight was scripted to cause you to get the boss into the center (just off of center) and slam the giant forge hammer on him two times, maybe 3, that was definitely my goal.

After a reset from a fight gone wrong the first time, I managed to get him down the second time and win not only my freshly forged Scale Mail but also the boss's helm. 

Gotta love that crit resistance on that helm!

I put the Scale Mail on my beastlord and pushed the helm off to Shadowheart, the cleric. It worked pretty well to be honest. I haven't had any complaints so far.

After that, I decided to swing a hard left and see what was up with the fire elemental wandering the lakes of lava in the area. This fight also took a reset because every round that guy heals for a ton . . . basically up to full.  I managed to burn him down eventually and claim his spoils. 

One dead fire elemental, thank you!

The weirdest reward, however, lay just beyond the fire elemental on a small outcropping of rocks where a chest held what appeared to be a possessed amulet that wanted to make you giggle if you didn't make your saving throw.  

Man, being tickled to death and locked inside an amulet would suck

It's quite a tragic piece of jewelry as it turns out since the person whose soul is trapped inside died from laughing torture. This should be interesting!  I'm actually pretty excited to follow that quest and see where it leads me.

Man, it's pretty crazy how much Dylan and I missed on our playthrough before.  I'm pretty happy I've been able to experience all this extra side content I wouldn't have seen if I didn't get the crazy desire to play an Everquest Beastlord in Baldur's Gate 3.

Happy Dueling!

Grymforged Beastlord

I had entirely too much fun yesterday playing Baldur's Gate 3. My Level 2 Monk/Level 2 Ranger (aka the Everquest Beastlord project) finally dinged Level 2 Monk / Level 3 Ranger and now I can summon a beast to actually be a lord over. Man, I'm so bummed that one of the possible summons isn't a large lizard or a velociraptor. It'd be so much cooler for this character. On the upside, it is kind of neat that you don't have to choose just one summon as your perma-pet and stick with it. If I want, I can summon up a bear, a boar, a wolf, a raven, a frog ... all on a short rest refresh, which gives me a lot more versatility to be honest. 

Anyway, to ding that level, I did a bunch of snooping around in a far corner of Act 1 that I hadn't explored before and that caused me to run into some evil red caps and a terrifying hag!

She's terrifying.

Defeating that hag was pretty fun. Not only was just getting down to her lair an adventure, but the "save the girl" mechanic was pretty great. (side note: I saved the girl . . . let's not talk about me turning her dead husband into a zombie.) After that, I once again descended down to the depths of the Underdark. I had so much fun poking around in the remote corners of the map above ground, that I decided to do the same below ground. That led me to a fun jumping section of the map over by the Grymforge. 

I'm glad there's no jumping athletics check for this.

It was pretty great fighting a group of lava mephits that exploded upon death. I ended up spreading my party out to minimize the splash damage. Unfortunately, I had to redo this fight over a couple of times because I forgot to save twice before wandering into the next fight with the forge guardian.

Yeah, um, I wasn't prepared for a scripted fight when I'm used to just straight-up killing things. An enemy that's resistant to almost all forms of damage? Mmm, no thanks.

Karlach turn the wheel, turn the wheel, Karlach!

Not to worry, I'm saved and just waiting to finish this off. Gimme that adamantine scale mail! 

Happy Dueling!

The BG3 Beastlord Continues!

 Oh no!  The day ends in a couple hours and I haven't even started writing a blog post today!  *cracks fingers* I got this.

It's been a pretty great day today full of videogames and random fun with the family.  I'll talk more about the random fun tomorrow, but for today, let's talk a little bit about Baldur's Gate 3.

Time for Shadowheart to roll a nat 20!

The past couple of days I've been dipping back into Baldur's Gate 3 to continue a play-through of my Everquest Beastlord build I've been wanting to make.  I was hoping by the end of the day to be level 5, but I've ended up only at level 4. I'm now a level 2 monk and a level 2 ranger. 

The Beastlord and his crew

I'm liking it so far and the NPCs I've chosen to accompany me on this play-through are pretty great. I've got Karlach in my sights for a love interest, although it seems Gale and Asterion really want me to go after them. Speaking of Asterion, I'm loving my new vampiric thief sidekick. He's pretty great in combat. Shadowheart is also fantastic for healing everyone and adding a bit of burn with her cleric spells and flail.

The big battle for today was wiping out the entire goblin camp. It's a little crazy how I just destroyed that place. I started out trying to get in with my goblin insider friend I freed from prison, but then I just went full murder hobo on all of them and couldn't stop.  The very end involved me kiting a big group of goblins down a pathway and behind a waterfall.

Hiding behind a waterfall and murdering goblins one-by-one

I was hoping all that killing would get me to fifth level, but alas.  When I left off I had traveled down into the underdark and made nice with the myconids.  My next target will be the Druegar dwarves, but knowing that the battle ahead of me will take a solid half hour to an hour, I called it so I could run to my blog and type up a quick missive.

down down down we go into the Underdark

My next level for the Beastlord will be dinging level 3 as a ranger, and then I'll probably switch over to cleric for a bit.

It's been really enjoyable going back into the game, but I know at some point soon I'll have to stop playing so Dylan and I can finish our play-through.  He's been keeping us busy in 7 Days to Die.  Tomorrow's fun will be taking on another blood moon. It'll be great!

Happy Dueling!

Building a Beastlord in BG3?

 A couple days ago I got the weird pull to start a new character in Baldur's Gate 3. Dylan and I have been distracted from playing BG3 (mostly because of 7 Days to Die) and I've been missing it a bit.

I really want to multiclass a Ranger and a Monk to kind of recreate my Beastlord in Everquest. Unfortunately, you can't play a Lizardfolk in BG3, but you can play a Dragonborn, and so a Dragonborn I shall play!

Let's turn that frown upside down!

This is Volt, the blue dragonborn. Yeah, the name is kind of dumb, but I've never been one to come up with fantastic names anyway. 

I love the blue and pink coloration on him!

To recreate my iksar beastlord, my plan is to equally multiclass him as a monk and a ranger with a Beastmaster focus. Back in the day when I worked at KingsIsle, at one time we were playing a D&D campaign over lunch. I believe it was the Storm King's Thunder campaign. In that campaign, I was playing a lizardfolk, pure ranger beastmaster build, and I found it a bit lacking. I'm hoping that by splashing some Monk in the mix, it'll be a bit more fun and survivable.

Since Volt is only level 3 right now (2 monk/1 ranger), he can't really summon any creatures except for a little 2 hitpoint crab familiar. It's pretty silly. If it was a little 2 hitpoint lizard, I'd be in heaven.  Crab will do for now.

Volt and Mr. Crabs

Now that I think more on it, I guess to really build a Beastlord from EQ, I'd need to make sure I get some kind of slow spell, which probably would mean going Cleric to level 5 with a Knowledge Domain, Ranger to level 5 with a Beastmaster Subclass, and I guess Monk to level 2?

Anyway, I'm kind of excited to see how he ends up playing. Ultimately I'll be stopping my progression when I reach that part of Act 2 where Dylan and I are playing because I want that to still be our main game and not spoil anything.

Karlach is so hot . . . literally

I've really loved how different the game is playing now that I'm controlling 3 other characters and am getting to know these new personalities a bit better.  The Gith is staying back at camp this time.  

Happy Dueling!