Beryl and Saffron: Update 11

Published by

atcDave

August 27, 2024

Call of the Lost Goddess

Well that was fun…

More?

I’ll start with the obvious. This is a beautiful, professional quality quest mod for BG2. Very well written and very well produced.

Players may know that the Goddess Waukeen is still missing from the time of troubles. This adventure starts with clergy of Waukeen asking you to help find their missing matron. As soon as you have a brief conversation at the small temple (chapel?) of Waukeen in the Government District of Athkatla the BIG temple of Waukeen just north of town is added to your map. So there’s no reason way you can’t go there almost right away in the game. It does claim to add 8-10 hours of gameplay. I wasn’t actually keeping time, but that seems about right. That makes it a fairly big sub-adventure.

But its quickly obvious this adventure is heading to the Abyss. It might be an interesting challenge to head there right away, but it might be smartest to do a few other adventures first. For this first playthrough with it, I choose to do it last as I approach endgame (I will do Watcher’s Keep now before I face Irenicus, but otherwise its the last thing in this run). I specifically didn’t want to worry too much about combat so I could focus on the story, characters and puzzles. And that is how it worked out, none of the fights were hugely challenging, even against the named “big bads” towards the end. It is sort of amusing to go after a boastful demon who wants to feast on your innards or something and destroy them (my mighty Halflings!) with nary a scratch. My personal challenge was I did NOT want to sleep while I was there!

Make no mistake, some of the climactic fights could be quite challenging to a lower level party. I would think it could be tough until your mid-teens on levels.

The story is very well written. It is based (or “inspired”) by a PnP 3E module, that I’m not familiar with so I can’t testify how closely. So many characters are colorful and entertaining. I do have to admit this is a longer romp through the Abyss than I really care for. Seriously, its a disgusting and depressing place. I did follow the story, played the part of a shady mercenary with a bit of bloodlust. Towards the end, I was pleased when pretenses were dropped and I could just carve up the disgusting demons. On this first play through I feel like I left a few things hanging, things I’ll want to pursue a little differently next time.
And that may be the main take-away. I DO see myself playing this again. Maybe even leaving it on as a regular part of all future builds. I waffled on that a little as I was playing; because, well again, the Abyss is a disgusting place. But the denouement is actually pretty satisfying, and that makes up for a lot of disgusting.

2 responses to “Beryl and Saffron: Update 11”

Zeno

August 27, 2024

I’m looking forward to trying that one out – it’s installed in my current run. Although I think Keira, Kord, and Imoen will need a few “feel good” quests when they make it back to Athkatla before diving into something like this. They’ll clear out things like Trademeet and Nalia’s stronghold first. They’ll need to recover their bearings a bit before doing something like diving into the Abyss.

I often feel like BG2 would be better if it were a bit stingier with the XP. If you try to do everything you out-level stuff pretty quickly. I didn’t do much more of the initial Athkatla stuff than needed to raise the money to go after Imoen (although I did use a mod that increased the required gp to 40K). But Keira is L17 now and they just reached the Sahuagin city. By the time they get back even Firekraag may be on the easy side.

I like the picture – although Beryl looks much taller than Saffron in this one. Maybe just perspective. The setup looking like they’re in an infected intestine or something is suitably grotesque. I’m working on a page specifically about perspectives. I played with that a lot while working on my Spellhold page. It was interesting that I had to do more than say “view from afar” or the like to get that to actually happen.

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1. atcDave
  
  August 27, 2024
  
  Yes I agree strongly that too much is given out too fast. That’s actually one of the things I like best about SoD, it’s fairly miserly with experience and let’s you play around at those middling levels for a while.
  
  this module actually takes some time for not a huge haul (maybe more generous with treasure than experience?).
  
  To me, the irony of that may be that I’m sort of the fast train now to the end of the saga. The team is powerful almost to the point of being unbeatable now, so it’s really just a matter of tearing through the remaining content to the end. Also, I believe the game hands out smaller rewards for hitting Watchers Keep now than if I wait until I’m actually into ToB.
  
  For the art, it was admittedly sort of an afterthought. It was inspired by a moment you will recognize when you get to it! I believe my description was “inside a giant stomach fighting a tentacle”. ‘Nouf said!
  
  it’s definitely not one of my favorites! It’s one of those that came back with a lot of “Can’t show that!” Sort of warnings! That was sort of the point I wanted to make though. The mod is well done, but it is ugly in places! It really makes me miss the big but pretty forest and mountain maps of the first game!
  
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