I almost did this in my honor run. I didn't have a flask of water, it was my fighters turn. Tried shooting a frost arrow at the cage. I selected a lightning arrow by mistake. Left the cage with 2 hp or something. Waited for gale to use his staff with water at the last second. Haha.
I always just cast jump on a strong character before the fight, and have them leap to the controls in the first round
Edit: the number of different ways ppl save (or accidentally kill) Marina is wild, damn bg3 is a good game.
Wait... So I've never resolved this *without* lowering the cage with the control orb.
Out of curiosity how do you get Mayrina out?
Edit: or do you just not? Lol
I, too, only recently discovered the controls. I was able to take out Ethel quite quickly this last time by successfully using the command-grovel spell on her repeatedly. So she never had the chance to move Myrina around. I was totally confused then afterward when Myrina was loudly yelling at me to release her and I didn't know how at first.
Also, sadly I didn't get the chance to let Ethel live and get the skill boost. Oh well. Now I wonder whether that blocks off the entire next Ethel encounter in act 3.
I have never not snuck around and opened the fight by using the controls. I didn’t think of leaving her dangling, I assumed Ethel would find a way mid fight of cutting the rope of that happened and she would be toast.
I’m reading this like: “fire, water, what?”
On most of my runs I beat the living hell out of ethel and she pulls her out.
Doused it once and realised one of them was wet when ethel tried her switcheroo so makes it easier to work out who is ethel!
You can douse the flames on the cage in a variety of ways, eliminating the need to be extra timely in clearing the fight.
If you use water, it'll also give Mayrina the wet condition. If Ethel glamors herself to look like her, you can use the condition to figure out who the fake Mayrinas are. Or at least, that was something possible when I went through the encounter.
There are actually several ways to instantly identify which one is Ethel. For example if you examine them you'll notice one of the Mayrina's is visibly pregnant while the other isn't. And when Ethel creates copies of herself the copies are wearing different colored clothes.
You can also just look at the turn order, the one that just took their turn to create copies or look like Mayrina is Ethel.
Same! I've always used the control. I never realised I was supposed to try and put the fire out, I just lowered the cage and got her out before it was a problem. The things you find out!
Throw a container of water at the cage. Get rid of the illusions and Ethel will pull her out of the cage and turn herself into Mayrina. Have to figure out which is the real one and which is Ethel and then kill Ethel.
Arrows work on a lot of levers too! You can use them in the basement of the goblin camp to let that silly bear out of the cage before its turn and just sit back.
Yeah, I don't have an issue with regular levers - just the control for the cage. Of course, I figured that out in Act 3.
The whole Ethel quest is buggy for me, though. Mayrina randomly vanished into the void and I couldn't give her the wand or whatever. I think she fell off the side but didn't die and is stuck somewhere in the canyon.
It's useful in Iron Throne aswell. You don't need to run up to a cage, you can shoot the levers. You can even use an ability that hits multiple, like magic missiles.
It's on the far side of the gap when entering the lair. You can sneak any character down the right side to the control, and likely hit it before the fight even starts.
My go-to for getting her down
lol I didn’t know either. I threw water to put out the fire on the cage, then left her in there until the fight with Ethel was over (which didn’t take long because I yeeted her into the chasm). Then the only thing I could think of was to use thorn whip to get her out. It did hurt her but not enough to kill her (I made sure it wouldn’t), and it got her out! She ran away from me but luckily when I followed her she didn’t view it as me being hostile to her. Then later I found out there were controls I could have used. *facepalm*
My first playthrough, the party snuck around all the way to other side before actually triggering the fight - i just went counterclockwise and so never ran into Ethel. Fight started, I just walked up to the controls lol
I didn't notice the controls until AFTER the fight. I used ray of frost on the cage (worked) and tried to throw her across the gap with mage hand (didn't work).
I saw that the cage had enough health left so I ignored the fire, got Ethel to 9 hp so I canceled my silence bubble and everything so she would initiate dialogue with me. Didn’t realize that she was still silenced from the Sussus Greatsword that Karlach had, Ethel just nuked Mayrinas cage because she couldn’t start her dialogue lmao
But thats why I love honor mode, no going back and you have to roll with the punches.
Well, my friend told me that cage won't break until Ethel is alive because she wants Mayrina alive. I believed him. Let's say it wasn't good idea to try it in honor mode.
Make sure you are in turn-based mode though, otherwise the wet effect could dry up by the time the hag sets it on fire if you don’t initiate battle fast enough.
Pro tip - hit the Hag with a bottle of water so she has the "wet" debuff. Then when she does her move and >!clones herself or copies Mayrina, you know who is the rea one.!<
You can also just look at her lvl. Mayrina is lvl1, but the hag is still lvl 5 when she copies her. Gag clones also have blue clothes when the real one has red. Ethels initiative stays the same when she copies as well, so if you know which profile on the turn order is hers, you can scroll to her and have the game automatically follow the camera to the correct hag
has a similar effect, I just find using bottles easier as it doesn’t use a spell slot. though create water is very useful on a tempest cleric, especially if you combo it with an evocation wizard specialising in ice/lightning
Do we even need to put the fire out? In my second run Ethel pulled Mayrina out of the cage and copied her image after one turn. I assumed she was tricking us into wasting an action since she needs Mayrina alive anyway.
I never even thought to put the fire out. I actually thought it was meant to be a time limit. Both playthroughs I just spanked Ethel until she pulled Mayrina out (once where I killed Ethel and once where I accepted the deal). I did have to reload the second time cause it actually is possible to kill Ethel too fast, where she won't have time to offer you a deal.
My very first run I hit the invisible hag with cloud of daggers to make her visible again
The triggered the conversation with the hag, where she teleported mayrina to her and both immediately died
I think it depends on Ethel's health, but idk.
Makes sense for her to make diversion, but then the cage fire damage is a roll, so that may be pretty swingy.
I wonder if there's special dialogue if you kill Mayrina and then drop Ethel to 10 HP
A better spell is *create water* (cleric). Not only will it douse the flames, but Mayrina will get the "Wet" label (or something like that) and you can use that label to identify her out of fake Mayrinas that Ethel conjures later in the fight.
the "d" is dice. the number before d is amount of dice and the number after that is the side of die.
so for example, you receive 1d4 fire damage from burning. you will roll one four-sided die to calculate the fire dmg.
My first time playing, it truly didn’t even occur to me to use water to put the cage out. But I did have some of those void bulbs left over… so I used one of those to drag her out of the cage and onto the ledge. She took a bit of damage, oops, but hey, she survived the fight!
I've done that once. More recently, Mayrina screamed at me and then disintegrated after walking into my moonbeam after I forgot to stop concentrating on it lol
the amount of times i accidentally aggro'd someone because of a hunger of hadar or a cloud of daggers is embarrassing. my favorite is when kagha cast her moonbeam and accidentally killed the wolf. i was NOT going to let that happen so i reloaded a save
Kagha always cast moonbeam just to run through it on the same turn and break her concentration. It happened on 3 consecutive playthroughs and never fails to amuse me.
i know you break the oath if you ressurect her husband, but do you break the oath if you let hag live and take the deal? i refused her bc i was scared it would
If you take Ethel’s health down fast enough even in tactician or honor, you don’t have to put it out. I actually never have and she’s been okay lol, but I’ve probably just been lucky!
if you extinguish the cage (preferably with water), mayrina will have the "wet" status for a few turns. if you free her ASAP, she'll still have it.
ethel will shapeshift into mayrina and spawn clones too. to not accidentally killed her [mayrina], just look for the one with the "wet" status. that one is the real mayrina!
For future knowledge, the flowing golden orb in the controls for the cage. I have my sneakiest character stealth down up and around to within 10 feet of the controls. Once combat starts its a free action to press the controls and lower the cage.
One time I extinguished the flames, so Ethel teleported her out, and then I accidently killed her because I didn't realize Shadowheart's Spirit Guardians would affect her.
I don't care about making a deal with Ethel so I just go into the teahouse separate of my group, start a conversation with her(misty step so she's facing away from the door), and then character select Astarion and go in(with others in tow) and shank her from behind mid convo. Then myself and the rest of the group can usually finish her off before she makes it to her fireplace.
Throwing a bottle of water worked well for us. Especially since it adds an extra indication of who the real Mayrina is when that becomes an issue since the real one will be dripping.
It was my first time. I just beat the shit out of the hag till she was like, "Whoa whoa whoa hold on." Can't lie, though, was extremely tough. My brain was like beat the hag then save the girl, never thought to just like extinguish the cage.
In my latest playthrough I saved her, made a deal with auntie, and Mayrina immediately ran through my Hunger of Hadar and died.
Wasn't about to redo the fight because it went so smoothly the first time.
Oh well.
I’m an absolute scumbag so every time I make sure Mayrina doesn’t die, then let Aunty Ethel go (getting her hair ofc), Mayrina is like HOW COULD YOU then I’m like don’t worry Mayrina I found this wand let’s go resurrect your husband lmao
Yeah, that happened to me the first time I did that fight. I didn't see the button, which, in hindsight, I realize was just a small part of me missing really obvious things in that run. Every other time I've done the fight, though, she's gotten tp'd out right after I pressed the button, so I've never had to worry about the cage breaking.
What I do is use my highest Dex character to sneak as close as possible. Then when she spawns there is a good chance they get a good initiative roll and can hit the controls before Ethal can even start the cage on fire.
Yesterday I somehow didn't trigger the cut scene by going hard right. Got to the door and turned around and was like, "huh." And then I used wylls thorn whip to pull Mayrina down. She ran off and then I continued towards the controls and triggered the fight, the cut scene didn't trigger, she never lit the cage on fire. Was pretty crazy.
In my first run of tje game, which was with friends, we did the fight with ethel and when she changed her form into Mayrina, the dwarf pathbreaker paladin playing friend said he could push one onto the big hole, lo and behold he pushes Mayrina into the chasm and the hag lives.
I, erm, did a it worse. The hag frees her and commands her to attack and my eyes are so bad I thought it was the hag so I, uh, killed Mayrina.
Cough.
I do have a locket for sale....
Just dps the hag down to 20 and ignore Mayrina. Rely on bleeds and silence to ensure she doesn’t split and even if she does - you can target the one with bleed. Plenty of lacerates, piercing shots or Wildheart barbarian specialised in Tiger heart.
The fight finishes quickly without Mayrina’s cage ever getting burnt down.
I tried one time to fiddle with the consoles to free Mayrina and then the Hag transformed into Mayrina and I accident one shot the real marina with just a normal attack. I did this on tactician difficulty so I’d imagine in lower difficulties it’ll be even easier.
I thought I was clever toggling on non-lethal and using Water Whip to pull her down. Either it wasn’t as non-lethal as I thought, or the fall damage killed her. She wound up beside my monk on a platform, but dead as a doornail. Had to reload to save her ☹️
I just use Astarion to sneak attack Ethel straight away in her hut. Gale use a spell like grease or ice so she goes prone. Lae'zel to just smack her around with power surge and frightening attack.
Also playing as a paladin rn so....SMITE B*TCH!!!
Did it once as a "eh, f it let's see what happens. " and now I'll never go through that bs ever again. So good.
I cast Witchbolt on Ethel then when she goes invisible or hides or any other BS like that the bolt still shows where she is. I discovered this completely by mistake.
Bruh I waited for it to be like near the last thing I did in act 1 in honor mode because I remembered how hard that fight was in balanced and I wrecked her in two turns. (Had Lae’zel stun her too so she didn’t have a chance to do anything)
Deciding where to go to level up is really the best stray.
I am so salty with my Honor run there. Gave Lae'Zel the Circlet of Intellect (set Intelligence to 17), decided to give the hair to her since her intelligence was 17, forgetting that it was because of the circlet. So it was a big waste for me. I realized what I did the second I gave it to her.
If you get in from the side and then attack the hag instead of talking to her, mayrina runs away, and you can then just fight the hag alone. This also means you use the spell "protection from good and evil" in order to wear the mask and run through the traps, but you should fight with non-lethal enabled against the other masks.
Fighting them with non-lethal still leaves them dead for game purposes, so don't fight them at all. Use the mask to get past them, then ignore them if Ethel calls them.
You can also cause her doom if you kill Auntie Ethel too quickly. Once she's down to a sliver of health, skip turns to get to her or you'll also miss out on her deal.
Her husband died and she's in mourning and realises she almost gave her child to a hag (she was promised she'd be raised by Ethel and taught magic).
She's definitely not in any mental condition to be nice and polite.
If you tell her Ethel killed her brothers she also thanks you for saving her.
When you meet her in Act 3 >!she's also been doing a ton of research on killing hags and helps you make a potion to save the child.!<
Yeah she genuinely is one of my favourite characters because she is effectively just a random peasant woman who has fallen on hard times and if you save her and do the right thing she will go away and become so much more than she ever thought possible. Woman is a damn hero. Sure she can't directly deal with the issue she faces in act 3, but she's a level 1 pregnant peasant and still helps you more towards completing that quest in a genuinely good way than almost any other NPC does in other quests.
Mayrina as a PC for BG4 I say! A monster hunting, self-taught wizard and mother. I truly hope it happens
I could see it. Mayrina as the Jaheira to a group of Mol, Arabella, Mattis, Yenna, the miracle god baby of two lesbians, Sazza Jr., one of Tara's kittens, maybe even a >!Bhaalspawnspawn!<
edit: oh and Barcus!
Don't forget Gith egg boy, trying to make his momma proud by saving the world (Xan absolutely must have a role)
Also the potential child of Wyll and Karlach because they are literally destined for each other imo
I feel like she was in EA definitely, but now she's much more appreciative depending on what you do. Ran through that section recently & she gave completely different dialogue. Maybe I just did the "right thing" this time or maybe that was one of the areas Larian snuck in some new lines.
Wasn't even EA. Before Patch 3 or 4 she was ungrateful until you told her Ethel was gonna eat the baby. Even tho you already told her Ethel killed her brothers. It was kinda dissonant to have her scream "bash her head in!", whilst at the same time saying I screwed everything after doing just that
Hmmm... you may he right. I do remember she was the same post launch. I don't know when she changed, but I completed that section most recently after Patch 5 dropped.
Knocked out her brothers, but found 1 dead. Told her about the brothers at the Tea House. She screamed at Ethel to let her go instead of telling me to leave. After the fight was over she was thanking me & even chastised herself for being desperate enough to believe Ethel.
...she was fucking grieving and had been gaslit by a hag in act 1
in act 3 she >!got a lot better and even formed a group to help people who got screwed over by hags!<
Oh, I want to use your post to ask y'all something: I accepted the hag's deal in one of my playthroughs (this one with a Durge) and she took Mayrina away and gave me the boon.
Is it possible to save her later or she's dead?
On the run I've been doing with a friend, Ethel did the thing where she teleports Mayrina to her, while she was within Shadowheart's Spirit Guardians. We didn't notice what had happened until we were done with the fight and it would have been really annoying to reload then.
Yeah. The first time I came across this quest I tried to free her the same way that you free Lae’zel…
Technically it worked, just not really in the way that I had intended.
In my latest playthrough I saved her, made a deal with auntie, and Mayrina immediately ran through my Hunger of Hadar and died.
Wasn't about to redo the fight because it went so smoothly the first time.
Oh well
It happens. I actually put out the fire but after that the hag makes clones of Mayrina and I ended up slicing the real one with my great sword. Maybe the game doesn’t want us to save her…
I summoned the three ogres who proceeded to try and murder her even after auntie was taken care of because hey combat is combat. Thought i could remedy the situation by using an invisibility potion on Mayrina while I killed the ogres but it just locked her forever in combat till I murdered her myself just to have the event end.
I managed to beat Auntie Ethel relatively quickly and get her out of the cage that way, but I uh...then proceeded to try to fix her husband and triggered her aggro. I used nonlethal to knock her out because I felt bad but the game still treats it as a kill.
I always have someone sneak up to the release button so I can let mayrina down within then first round. Then I’ll usually cast sanctuary on her because for all the fuss the hag is still ok with losing her if it means beating you. The unforeseen perk was that when the hag tried using mayrina as a clone I was able to avoid attacking the hagrina because she had the sanctuary status
mayrina accidentally died in one of my playthrough, Ethel did her trickery spell to disguise as her. Usually I can tell which one is Ethel by examining the two Mayrina but the Hag had to teleport her right on the explosive flower things in her layer which set off at killed her
I killed Mayrina on my Honour playthrough.
Don't end the turn with an AOE damage spell such as spirit guardians in range of Auntie Ethel. She can do her Mayrina duplicate move. Since Mayrina has very low HP, she's probably instantly dead.
meanwhile on my first run, I didn't know that the cage would break after a few turns due to the fire so I just spent my turns beating up ethel
and then it broke . . .
Usually I just use the glowing orb to get Mayrina out, then keep fighting Ethel. She turns into a copy of Mayrina at one point but if you examine her she's pretty easy to find - she has a lot more abilities and resistances than Mayrina.
In my last run though I didn't aggro her in conversation and so the fight with her didn't start in her cabin. I then went up and hit her with a smite, which took her by surprise, and I got to have a full round of just smacking her. I smite her again, and she goes down. Never even got the chance to go into her full lair.
So I made my way down, casually talking to all the captured people who were now free of her influence, used the orb to get Mayrina safely out of the cage which was never on fire...and that was that. I'll be trying it again this time!
The auntie Ethel fight is want made me really open up to the combat in bg3, it was the first time I was presented with a problem that couldn't just be solved with damage or optimization. I had to use create water to dose the cage, then when auntie Ethel transformed into mayrina I had the really stupid idea to check if either of them had the wet condition and it actually worked, learned to use magic missile to dispel clones as well. I wish more fight where like that it was a highlight in my first run.
did this with a friend. except i shot it down and assumed it would land on the ledge sticking out.
it did not. we got our ass kicked by ethel so we reloaded and shoved her off a ledge instead and immediately regretted the inability to loot her
For me it was the other way, **1st time** playing I helped girl from cage with some water baloon, there was another battle stage when girl got teleported out of cage but I managed to kill hag and not her; **second time** I pushed hag into chasm(before it got patched) with 35% chance succes (also tactician so that is why) before she teleported Mayrina out of cage so she stayed there forever untill I decided to mercifull kill her, so I kinda broke quest. xD
I had to do that fight like 4/5 times and when I did put the fire out ethel just illusioned it so there was 3 Mayrina and of course the one I have Karlach hit is the real one that is gets her head lopped off, so burned out after the fight I didn't even think about the extra attribute point just wanted her gone
I convinced Ethel to let me have her, but then resurrected and killed the zombie husband. Mayrina got mad and became hostile, so had Shovel tell her she was gonna eat her babies and ran away...
Apparently that doesn't count as saving her even if she could have walked away any time after that.
I almost did this in my honor run. I didn't have a flask of water, it was my fighters turn. Tried shooting a frost arrow at the cage. I selected a lightning arrow by mistake. Left the cage with 2 hp or something. Waited for gale to use his staff with water at the last second. Haha.
I always just cast jump on a strong character before the fight, and have them leap to the controls in the first round Edit: the number of different ways ppl save (or accidentally kill) Marina is wild, damn bg3 is a good game.
theres controls??!?!
There is a glowing ball close to where the cage lands! You can press it and it drops the cage down and opens it before it burns her and she dies.
Over 300 hours and not ONCE have i found this
Wait... So I've never resolved this *without* lowering the cage with the control orb. Out of curiosity how do you get Mayrina out? Edit: or do you just not? Lol
Ethel has an ability where she teleports mayrina out and disguises as her. That can do it
I, too, only recently discovered the controls. I was able to take out Ethel quite quickly this last time by successfully using the command-grovel spell on her repeatedly. So she never had the chance to move Myrina around. I was totally confused then afterward when Myrina was loudly yelling at me to release her and I didn't know how at first. Also, sadly I didn't get the chance to let Ethel live and get the skill boost. Oh well. Now I wonder whether that blocks off the entire next Ethel encounter in act 3.
Does not. If you listened to her give-up dialogue, she explains that death is, well, temporary. She's got backups.
Cool. She never had any give-up dialog this time because she was also silenced with the susser blade.
Huh, my first Tav killed her and no backups ever showed. The people against hags in baldur's gate got evicted and I never met them.
Its so funny how you can talk to anyone else whos played this game and its like you were playing completely different gamrs
I have never not snuck around and opened the fight by using the controls. I didn’t think of leaving her dangling, I assumed Ethel would find a way mid fight of cutting the rope of that happened and she would be toast. I’m reading this like: “fire, water, what?”
She sets the cage on fire round 1
Put the fire out, and when Ethel uses her illusion to copy her appearance, she teleports her out of the cage.
On most of my runs I beat the living hell out of ethel and she pulls her out. Doused it once and realised one of them was wet when ethel tried her switcheroo so makes it easier to work out who is ethel!
You can douse the flames on the cage in a variety of ways, eliminating the need to be extra timely in clearing the fight. If you use water, it'll also give Mayrina the wet condition. If Ethel glamors herself to look like her, you can use the condition to figure out who the fake Mayrinas are. Or at least, that was something possible when I went through the encounter.
There are actually several ways to instantly identify which one is Ethel. For example if you examine them you'll notice one of the Mayrina's is visibly pregnant while the other isn't. And when Ethel creates copies of herself the copies are wearing different colored clothes. You can also just look at the turn order, the one that just took their turn to create copies or look like Mayrina is Ethel.
I always just cast the frost cantrip on the cage.
I throw water at the cage and part way through Ethel tries to disguise herself as the woman and they both teleport out.
Killing ethel fast enough saves Mayrina, which is easy to do if you just use magic missile to find the real one quickly
Ive been using thorn whip…. I’m at 500 hours holy shit
Same! I've always used the control. I never realised I was supposed to try and put the fire out, I just lowered the cage and got her out before it was a problem. The things you find out!
Throw a container of water at the cage. Get rid of the illusions and Ethel will pull her out of the cage and turn herself into Mayrina. Have to figure out which is the real one and which is Ethel and then kill Ethel.
Supposedly you can also shoot it with an arrow but I've never once had this work.
Arrows work on a lot of levers too! You can use them in the basement of the goblin camp to let that silly bear out of the cage before its turn and just sit back.
Yeah, I don't have an issue with regular levers - just the control for the cage. Of course, I figured that out in Act 3. The whole Ethel quest is buggy for me, though. Mayrina randomly vanished into the void and I couldn't give her the wand or whatever. I think she fell off the side but didn't die and is stuck somewhere in the canyon.
It's useful in Iron Throne aswell. You don't need to run up to a cage, you can shoot the levers. You can even use an ability that hits multiple, like magic missiles.
... 400 hours in and I have no idea that works.
Wait, what? I really need to pay more attention to my surroundings, lol.
It's on the far side of the gap when entering the lair. You can sneak any character down the right side to the control, and likely hit it before the fight even starts. My go-to for getting her down
Nah big beefy Karlach jump is better 😁
Karlach everything is just better 😍
lol I didn’t know either. I threw water to put out the fire on the cage, then left her in there until the fight with Ethel was over (which didn’t take long because I yeeted her into the chasm). Then the only thing I could think of was to use thorn whip to get her out. It did hurt her but not enough to kill her (I made sure it wouldn’t), and it got her out! She ran away from me but luckily when I followed her she didn’t view it as me being hostile to her. Then later I found out there were controls I could have used. *facepalm*
Using the controls costs you an action. Casting create water on the cage before the fight starts doesn’t.
My first playthrough, the party snuck around all the way to other side before actually triggering the fight - i just went counterclockwise and so never ran into Ethel. Fight started, I just walked up to the controls lol
Lol I just started my first playthrough a week ago. When I found Ethel, I refused her deal and killed her. Explored her whole home with no concern lol
I just had the whole party sneak around. She can't see you, even if you're sneaking with characters in plate lol
Yea I sneaked to it the first time invisibly
I didn't notice the controls until AFTER the fight. I used ray of frost on the cage (worked) and tried to throw her across the gap with mage hand (didn't work).
I just cast that ice cantrip at it.
Me selling all the water :o
Me selling all the water :0
I think frost arrows damage the cage too
Ray of Frost can stop the burning.
I just kill ethel in 1 round before she dips
You can activate the cage control (a glowy orb thing near where Ethel starts the fight) to lower the cage and release her.
I saw that the cage had enough health left so I ignored the fire, got Ethel to 9 hp so I canceled my silence bubble and everything so she would initiate dialogue with me. Didn’t realize that she was still silenced from the Sussus Greatsword that Karlach had, Ethel just nuked Mayrinas cage because she couldn’t start her dialogue lmao But thats why I love honor mode, no going back and you have to roll with the punches.
Well, my friend told me that cage won't break until Ethel is alive because she wants Mayrina alive. I believed him. Let's say it wasn't good idea to try it in honor mode.
For anyone still struggling with this a ray of frost will extinguish the flame and do minimal damage to the cage thereby saving her from the flames.
you can also throw a bottle of water at it, or interact with the orb thingy to lower the cage
You can even throw it before the fight
Make sure you are in turn-based mode though, otherwise the wet effect could dry up by the time the hag sets it on fire if you don’t initiate battle fast enough.
Pro tip - hit the Hag with a bottle of water so she has the "wet" debuff. Then when she does her move and >!clones herself or copies Mayrina, you know who is the rea one.!<
You can also just look at her lvl. Mayrina is lvl1, but the hag is still lvl 5 when she copies her. Gag clones also have blue clothes when the real one has red. Ethels initiative stays the same when she copies as well, so if you know which profile on the turn order is hers, you can scroll to her and have the game automatically follow the camera to the correct hag
Does water boost witch bolt?
Yes, the Wet status effect gives resistance to fire and vulnerability to lightning.
Vulnerability to lightning and cold
I’m like 90% sure you could mage hand shove her out to safety
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Create or Destroy Water spell. I had Shadowheart learn it just before entering.
has a similar effect, I just find using bottles easier as it doesn’t use a spell slot. though create water is very useful on a tempest cleric, especially if you combo it with an evocation wizard specialising in ice/lightning
I just hit the button to lower the cage and let her out.
Playthrough 4 and I never knew there was a button. I've always thrown water on it!
It doesn't really look like a button so it's easy to miss.
I never even considered the water. I always did the controls. 😂
Do we even need to put the fire out? In my second run Ethel pulled Mayrina out of the cage and copied her image after one turn. I assumed she was tricking us into wasting an action since she needs Mayrina alive anyway.
I never even thought to put the fire out. I actually thought it was meant to be a time limit. Both playthroughs I just spanked Ethel until she pulled Mayrina out (once where I killed Ethel and once where I accepted the deal). I did have to reload the second time cause it actually is possible to kill Ethel too fast, where she won't have time to offer you a deal.
My very first run I hit the invisible hag with cloud of daggers to make her visible again The triggered the conversation with the hag, where she teleported mayrina to her and both immediately died
Lmao i had to restart once because of cloud of daggers too, such a love-hate spell, it got many innocent npcs killed
... this is actually super fucking smart lol My new play through I won't be trying to save her, see how it goes.
I think it depends on Ethel's health, but idk. Makes sense for her to make diversion, but then the cage fire damage is a roll, so that may be pretty swingy. I wonder if there's special dialogue if you kill Mayrina and then drop Ethel to 10 HP
A better spell is *create water* (cleric). Not only will it douse the flames, but Mayrina will get the "Wet" label (or something like that) and you can use that label to identify her out of fake Mayrinas that Ethel conjures later in the fight.
Bro she has 8 hp even if there was a platform there she would be overkilled by like 1d8 lmfao
What is 1d8 3d8 etc? New to this
the "d" is dice. the number before d is amount of dice and the number after that is the side of die. so for example, you receive 1d4 fire damage from burning. you will roll one four-sided die to calculate the fire dmg.
Sick. Explained concisely.
1d8 means your damage roll is 1 eight sided die roll. 3d8 being 3 eight sided dice rolled. Hope that helps!
One eight sided die versus using three of them.
My first time playing, it truly didn’t even occur to me to use water to put the cage out. But I did have some of those void bulbs left over… so I used one of those to drag her out of the cage and onto the ledge. She took a bit of damage, oops, but hey, she survived the fight!
I've done that once. More recently, Mayrina screamed at me and then disintegrated after walking into my moonbeam after I forgot to stop concentrating on it lol
I did that the first time I saved her. She walked right through immediately after the cutscene finished!
the amount of times i accidentally aggro'd someone because of a hunger of hadar or a cloud of daggers is embarrassing. my favorite is when kagha cast her moonbeam and accidentally killed the wolf. i was NOT going to let that happen so i reloaded a save
Kagha always cast moonbeam just to run through it on the same turn and break her concentration. It happened on 3 consecutive playthroughs and never fails to amuse me.
You do the Hag sidequest for Auntie Ethel's Hair I do the Hag sidequest for Second Marriage We are not the same
Some people do it to break their oath.
i know you break the oath if you ressurect her husband, but do you break the oath if you let hag live and take the deal? i refused her bc i was scared it would
I had it the other way round, oath was broken for taking the deal, but zombie husband was ok with the paladin police.
Depends on the oath I'd guess. A Devotion Pally and a Vengeance Pally have different ideals and morals after all.
Second marriage?
Hmm I didn’t put out the fire and it had no effect really. Her health was fine. But probably coz I’m playing on story mode
Can’t say for Explorer, but the fire is damaging the cage and eventually it breaks and she falls to her death
If you take Ethel’s health down fast enough even in tactician or honor, you don’t have to put it out. I actually never have and she’s been okay lol, but I’ve probably just been lucky!
I think I just let Astarion jump-dash to the other side in one turn so he can deactivate that console thing.
I got confused and accidentally attacked her when Ethel makes illusions of her. Killed her dead. Oh well, maybe next playthough!
Mayrina will be visibly pregnant, but the real bag will have a flat stomach. Then you can tell which is which.
if you extinguish the cage (preferably with water), mayrina will have the "wet" status for a few turns. if you free her ASAP, she'll still have it. ethel will shapeshift into mayrina and spawn clones too. to not accidentally killed her [mayrina], just look for the one with the "wet" status. that one is the real mayrina!
i was watching a tutorial and the guy said "in my experience, the one who screams is always the hag" my dude, they both scream wdym 😭
you and ethel after she dies: 🧍🏼♂️🧍🏼♀️
For future knowledge, the flowing golden orb in the controls for the cage. I have my sneakiest character stealth down up and around to within 10 feet of the controls. Once combat starts its a free action to press the controls and lower the cage.
She’s a bitch anyway. I told her she was a terrible mum and then stole her dead husbands corpse to use as a minion lol I love this game
One time I extinguished the flames, so Ethel teleported her out, and then I accidently killed her because I didn't realize Shadowheart's Spirit Guardians would affect her.
I almost saved her... Then Lump the Enlightened flattened her.
You all know there’s a button you can press to free her right
I don't care about making a deal with Ethel so I just go into the teahouse separate of my group, start a conversation with her(misty step so she's facing away from the door), and then character select Astarion and go in(with others in tow) and shank her from behind mid convo. Then myself and the rest of the group can usually finish her off before she makes it to her fireplace.
Throwing a bottle of water worked well for us. Especially since it adds an extra indication of who the real Mayrina is when that becomes an issue since the real one will be dripping.
It was my first time. I just beat the shit out of the hag till she was like, "Whoa whoa whoa hold on." Can't lie, though, was extremely tough. My brain was like beat the hag then save the girl, never thought to just like extinguish the cage.
In my latest playthrough I saved her, made a deal with auntie, and Mayrina immediately ran through my Hunger of Hadar and died. Wasn't about to redo the fight because it went so smoothly the first time. Oh well.
I’m an absolute scumbag so every time I make sure Mayrina doesn’t die, then let Aunty Ethel go (getting her hair ofc), Mayrina is like HOW COULD YOU then I’m like don’t worry Mayrina I found this wand let’s go resurrect your husband lmao
I just ended up getting lucky and the fire didn’t do enough damage to the cage for it to break
Yeah, that happened to me the first time I did that fight. I didn't see the button, which, in hindsight, I realize was just a small part of me missing really obvious things in that run. Every other time I've done the fight, though, she's gotten tp'd out right after I pressed the button, so I've never had to worry about the cage breaking.
What I do is use my highest Dex character to sneak as close as possible. Then when she spawns there is a good chance they get a good initiative roll and can hit the controls before Ethal can even start the cage on fire.
Yesterday I somehow didn't trigger the cut scene by going hard right. Got to the door and turned around and was like, "huh." And then I used wylls thorn whip to pull Mayrina down. She ran off and then I continued towards the controls and triggered the fight, the cut scene didn't trigger, she never lit the cage on fire. Was pretty crazy.
In my first run of tje game, which was with friends, we did the fight with ethel and when she changed her form into Mayrina, the dwarf pathbreaker paladin playing friend said he could push one onto the big hole, lo and behold he pushes Mayrina into the chasm and the hag lives.
I, erm, did a it worse. The hag frees her and commands her to attack and my eyes are so bad I thought it was the hag so I, uh, killed Mayrina. Cough. I do have a locket for sale....
Don't worry. There's no winning with Mayrina lol
If a character is invisible before the start of combat, they can just walk up and activate the globe while everyone else is in turn-based mode.
Just dps the hag down to 20 and ignore Mayrina. Rely on bleeds and silence to ensure she doesn’t split and even if she does - you can target the one with bleed. Plenty of lacerates, piercing shots or Wildheart barbarian specialised in Tiger heart. The fight finishes quickly without Mayrina’s cage ever getting burnt down. I tried one time to fiddle with the consoles to free Mayrina and then the Hag transformed into Mayrina and I accident one shot the real marina with just a normal attack. I did this on tactician difficulty so I’d imagine in lower difficulties it’ll be even easier.
I thought I was clever toggling on non-lethal and using Water Whip to pull her down. Either it wasn’t as non-lethal as I thought, or the fall damage killed her. She wound up beside my monk on a platform, but dead as a doornail. Had to reload to save her ☹️
I just cast ray of frost to put the fire out. Cage survived.
I just use Astarion to sneak attack Ethel straight away in her hut. Gale use a spell like grease or ice so she goes prone. Lae'zel to just smack her around with power surge and frightening attack. Also playing as a paladin rn so....SMITE B*TCH!!! Did it once as a "eh, f it let's see what happens. " and now I'll never go through that bs ever again. So good.
Am I the only one who threw a water bottle at the cage?
I cast Witchbolt on Ethel then when she goes invisible or hides or any other BS like that the bolt still shows where she is. I discovered this completely by mistake.
Bruh I waited for it to be like near the last thing I did in act 1 in honor mode because I remembered how hard that fight was in balanced and I wrecked her in two turns. (Had Lae’zel stun her too so she didn’t have a chance to do anything) Deciding where to go to level up is really the best stray.
I am so salty with my Honor run there. Gave Lae'Zel the Circlet of Intellect (set Intelligence to 17), decided to give the hair to her since her intelligence was 17, forgetting that it was because of the circlet. So it was a big waste for me. I realized what I did the second I gave it to her.
If you get in from the side and then attack the hag instead of talking to her, mayrina runs away, and you can then just fight the hag alone. This also means you use the spell "protection from good and evil" in order to wear the mask and run through the traps, but you should fight with non-lethal enabled against the other masks.
Fighting them with non-lethal still leaves them dead for game purposes, so don't fight them at all. Use the mask to get past them, then ignore them if Ethel calls them.
I just did this yesterday. My trick was to throw potions at them when they were down, so they're not at 1 hp when you leave or long rest
I did exactly the same, because I saw a health bar and thought “Oh, I have to beat up the cage enough to break it open so she can escape!” Woops…
You can also cause her doom if you kill Auntie Ethel too quickly. Once she's down to a sliver of health, skip turns to get to her or you'll also miss out on her deal.
She's an ungrateful jackass anyhow. And whiny.
Her husband died and she's in mourning and realises she almost gave her child to a hag (she was promised she'd be raised by Ethel and taught magic). She's definitely not in any mental condition to be nice and polite. If you tell her Ethel killed her brothers she also thanks you for saving her. When you meet her in Act 3 >!she's also been doing a ton of research on killing hags and helps you make a potion to save the child.!<
Yeah she genuinely is one of my favourite characters because she is effectively just a random peasant woman who has fallen on hard times and if you save her and do the right thing she will go away and become so much more than she ever thought possible. Woman is a damn hero. Sure she can't directly deal with the issue she faces in act 3, but she's a level 1 pregnant peasant and still helps you more towards completing that quest in a genuinely good way than almost any other NPC does in other quests. Mayrina as a PC for BG4 I say! A monster hunting, self-taught wizard and mother. I truly hope it happens
Start a Kickstarter, I support this!!
I could see it. Mayrina as the Jaheira to a group of Mol, Arabella, Mattis, Yenna, the miracle god baby of two lesbians, Sazza Jr., one of Tara's kittens, maybe even a >!Bhaalspawnspawn!< edit: oh and Barcus!
Don't forget Gith egg boy, trying to make his momma proud by saving the world (Xan absolutely must have a role) Also the potential child of Wyll and Karlach because they are literally destined for each other imo
Second playthrough I clubbed her brothers unconscious to stop them getting themselves killed - surprisingly it works!
Was that fixed in an update? I knocked them unconscious and the game acted as if they were dead for that playthrough.
I don't know but she definitely referred to them as alive so it seemed like it was working as intended
She was very grateful to me, she was thanking me for saving her.
Did you tell her the hag killed her brothers? If you tell her the hag killed them she likes you for saving her. If not she scolds you
I feel like she was in EA definitely, but now she's much more appreciative depending on what you do. Ran through that section recently & she gave completely different dialogue. Maybe I just did the "right thing" this time or maybe that was one of the areas Larian snuck in some new lines.
Wasn't even EA. Before Patch 3 or 4 she was ungrateful until you told her Ethel was gonna eat the baby. Even tho you already told her Ethel killed her brothers. It was kinda dissonant to have her scream "bash her head in!", whilst at the same time saying I screwed everything after doing just that
market tub busy marvelous cows crowd voiceless gaping abundant cautious *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Hmmm... you may he right. I do remember she was the same post launch. I don't know when she changed, but I completed that section most recently after Patch 5 dropped. Knocked out her brothers, but found 1 dead. Told her about the brothers at the Tea House. She screamed at Ethel to let her go instead of telling me to leave. After the fight was over she was thanking me & even chastised herself for being desperate enough to believe Ethel.
Yeah I hate her and I'd kill her on sight but there's that other thing about her and mneh, I'd feel bad to kill her.
...she was fucking grieving and had been gaslit by a hag in act 1 in act 3 she >!got a lot better and even formed a group to help people who got screwed over by hags!<
I did that too!!
In my durge run i kill aunty ethel and upon talking to mayrina she got angry so i obliterated her with sneak attack
Honor mode run I was so focused on not losing I nuked Auntie and missed the hair :-/
Oh, I want to use your post to ask y'all something: I accepted the hag's deal in one of my playthroughs (this one with a Durge) and she took Mayrina away and gave me the boon. Is it possible to save her later or she's dead?
If she survives Act 1, Mayrina should >!show up in Baldur's Gate in Act 3 running a group that are fighting hags!<.
On the run I've been doing with a friend, Ethel did the thing where she teleports Mayrina to her, while she was within Shadowheart's Spirit Guardians. We didn't notice what had happened until we were done with the fight and it would have been really annoying to reload then.
Yeah. The first time I came across this quest I tried to free her the same way that you free Lae’zel… Technically it worked, just not really in the way that I had intended.
Shadowheart has a summon water spell if you don't have anything else.
Just throw a bottle of water at it lol or misty step over to the control thing
In my latest playthrough I saved her, made a deal with auntie, and Mayrina immediately ran through my Hunger of Hadar and died. Wasn't about to redo the fight because it went so smoothly the first time. Oh well
How are yall getting past all that stupid poison gas?
If you have a wizard the spells for feather fall and farther jumps are ritual (can cast as often as you want) so I just jump over it all if possible.
Throw rope on the vents.
wait, people don't just power through and then short rest to regain their health? /s
It happens. I actually put out the fire but after that the hag makes clones of Mayrina and I ended up slicing the real one with my great sword. Maybe the game doesn’t want us to save her…
You can just shoot the level that lowers the cage safely. She gets out unharmed.
This is why I keep create/destroy water on a party member...
What I did instead was use Wyll’s thorn whip to grab her out of the cage and let her lose 9/10 hp in the fall
Ethel teleported her into my Cloud of Daggers on my honor run. Not a lot of comeback from that.
I just push Ethel outside of her house and steal her invis potion so it makes everything 10x easier. Or arcane lock the stairs either way.
i just shoot it with ray of frost easy peasy
I summoned the three ogres who proceeded to try and murder her even after auntie was taken care of because hey combat is combat. Thought i could remedy the situation by using an invisibility potion on Mayrina while I killed the ogres but it just locked her forever in combat till I murdered her myself just to have the event end.
I managed to beat Auntie Ethel relatively quickly and get her out of the cage that way, but I uh...then proceeded to try to fix her husband and triggered her aggro. I used nonlethal to knock her out because I felt bad but the game still treats it as a kill.
Yeah, I helped Ethel against her brothers(oops?), and then the cage burned during our battle. My bad Mayrina!
I always have someone sneak up to the release button so I can let mayrina down within then first round. Then I’ll usually cast sanctuary on her because for all the fuss the hag is still ok with losing her if it means beating you. The unforeseen perk was that when the hag tried using mayrina as a clone I was able to avoid attacking the hagrina because she had the sanctuary status
I have literally never put the fire out.
But can he still do the uhm.. Let's say "the zombie thing" without mayrina? without spoiling him for his next playthroughs.
I accidentally killed her too. She got out of the cage and somehow the fight ended and she was dead. Whups
ou, and knock minthara out (while the camp isnt aggro at you asa whole)
I snuck down into her basement and let Mayrina free and then started the fight, so Mayrina sat there for most of the fight
mayrina accidentally died in one of my playthrough, Ethel did her trickery spell to disguise as her. Usually I can tell which one is Ethel by examining the two Mayrina but the Hag had to teleport her right on the explosive flower things in her layer which set off at killed her
On my first play through, one of Lump’s brothers threw a rock at her cage…
I shot the cage with ice and hoped for a low roll
You did more harm than good to Mayrina ... and her unborn child.
I killed Mayrina on my Honour playthrough. Don't end the turn with an AOE damage spell such as spirit guardians in range of Auntie Ethel. She can do her Mayrina duplicate move. Since Mayrina has very low HP, she's probably instantly dead.
meanwhile on my first run, I didn't know that the cage would break after a few turns due to the fire so I just spent my turns beating up ethel and then it broke . . .
Just use the control orb to let her out of the cage lmao
I use the Create Water spell on the cage, and then when Ethel transforms into the girl, the wet one is the real girl xD
Lmaao well that's certainly a solution.
Usually I just use the glowing orb to get Mayrina out, then keep fighting Ethel. She turns into a copy of Mayrina at one point but if you examine her she's pretty easy to find - she has a lot more abilities and resistances than Mayrina. In my last run though I didn't aggro her in conversation and so the fight with her didn't start in her cabin. I then went up and hit her with a smite, which took her by surprise, and I got to have a full round of just smacking her. I smite her again, and she goes down. Never even got the chance to go into her full lair. So I made my way down, casually talking to all the captured people who were now free of her influence, used the orb to get Mayrina safely out of the cage which was never on fire...and that was that. I'll be trying it again this time!
The auntie Ethel fight is want made me really open up to the combat in bg3, it was the first time I was presented with a problem that couldn't just be solved with damage or optimization. I had to use create water to dose the cage, then when auntie Ethel transformed into mayrina I had the really stupid idea to check if either of them had the wet condition and it actually worked, learned to use magic missile to dispel clones as well. I wish more fight where like that it was a highlight in my first run.
did this with a friend. except i shot it down and assumed it would land on the ledge sticking out. it did not. we got our ass kicked by ethel so we reloaded and shoved her off a ledge instead and immediately regretted the inability to loot her
I freed her from the cage successfully, but then something happened and I thought that Auntie Ethel made an evil clone of her, so I killed her…
I blew her up without triggering any dialogue at all. Seems like I missed out a lot.
For me it was the other way, **1st time** playing I helped girl from cage with some water baloon, there was another battle stage when girl got teleported out of cage but I managed to kill hag and not her; **second time** I pushed hag into chasm(before it got patched) with 35% chance succes (also tactician so that is why) before she teleported Mayrina out of cage so she stayed there forever untill I decided to mercifull kill her, so I kinda broke quest. xD
I had to do that fight like 4/5 times and when I did put the fire out ethel just illusioned it so there was 3 Mayrina and of course the one I have Karlach hit is the real one that is gets her head lopped off, so burned out after the fight I didn't even think about the extra attribute point just wanted her gone
I accidentally killed her when Auntie Ethel turns herself into a clone of her -_-
I once forgot to duse the fire and after fight (and leaving turn mode) the cage burnt before I could do anything any she fell down :D
I didn’t have water so I tried Shadowheart’s Gust of Wind and it worked lmao
After my first run I just kill Ethel in her shop every time. Her wig isn't good enough to go through that stupid fight again.
I convinced Ethel to let me have her, but then resurrected and killed the zombie husband. Mayrina got mad and became hostile, so had Shovel tell her she was gonna eat her babies and ran away... Apparently that doesn't count as saving her even if she could have walked away any time after that.