Interesting lore tidbit the thing the Illithids fear most is a prophecy of an Illithid borne with the identity and memories of the host, allegedly it would spell the end of their race.

In the old lore, the Illithid are from far into the future. They traveled back into the past because the stars were dying. And it's implied that they may have descended from humans. It would be kind of interesting if this is a predestination paradox and your character actually becomes the progenitor of the Illithid race. Because if you have Illithid powers, then you can create Illithids and when you die, you can become an Elder Brain. So future Illithids traveled back in time and created their own race.

I was trying to keep away from the tadpole powers on my first run (wanted to be the hero type character). But then I saw the node that lets you turn a normal hit into a critical hit and was like "oh well, guess I'm a squid face now".

THANK YOU. Finally, someone who ACTUALLY talked about these instead of going "oh, you'll ruin everything if you know, so I won't _actually_ tell you anything". Thank you so much for providing actually useful content in an easily digestible format. Stay awesome.

I really wish they had made this story about the Mind Flayer prophecy of the Adversary. The idea of a mind flayer that retains the mind of the original host, and destroys all mind flayers. That would have been a great story hook.

This is an extremely helpful video. The game certainly pushes you to use the tadpoles, has a unique UI for it, and narratively assures you it'll be fine but I wasn't going to trust Larian to not be pulling a long troll on the player. The design language has been "things that are obviously bad ideas will likely turn out badly" so far and letting tadpoles crawl around your skull tends to read as one of those.

That last section on if using the powers lead to a good or bad ending was really all I was looking for. Thank you for clearing that up for me. Onward to adventure I go!

Thank you so much for so completely showing it off, with a spoiler warning, and then actually following through. I am the kinda guy that don't care for spoilers (oftentimes I like being a tad spoiled) and I really wanted to know if my "theory" was correct, and you answered that with this video. Great work.

It is nice to have a modern game where you are allowed to be the Bad Guy, rather than just being "The Anti-Hero" or "The Hero who is an A-hole but has good intentions".

One thing to not about Psionic Backlash is that the damage procs before the spellcaster finishes casting. I've had it kill low HP casters outright before cancelling their cast and saving a party member.

If Astarion is open to it, I wouldn't want him to go full on mindflayer, but him getting the second tier so that he can fly sounds useful for the gloomstalker rouge build.

I love your BG3 videos. Have stumbled upon your channel because of them and am really glad I did. Great job on these videos!!

Had to stop at the third tier discussion since im not up to that part, but thanks for clear mention of when youre moving further into deeper spoilers. I agree, Luck of the Far Realms is so damn op, best of the initial set available

Fun fact: Two of these powers work while in Moon Druid forms. When an Owlbear procs a prone effect the 1d8 Psychic damage from the "Fall damage" power procs. Also, the one where getting an enemies HP to X or less instantly kills them (X = number of tadpoles you ate) also works on Moon Druid. When you have eaten 20+ tadpoles this ability procs an enormous number of times.

It is crazy how must mechanics they invested in the game. great gameplay and beautiful story, I love it.

Man, thanks for that last part! That was the most important thing I was trying to research - whether using that crap will lock me out of endings. Nobody else had that info and you did, so I doff my hat to you, good sir!

This was the best spoiler ever! Since Baldur's Gate 2, I wanted an option like this. Thank you so much for sharing that!

For me, the game is amazing so far, and I'm just past the act 1. Never knowing if you are doing the right thing, being under pressure from companions, I actually doubt my steps and let myself be convinced into doing things that were not my plan. I haven't had an experience like this in ages. Even though I've decided to do a "clean", dope-less run, I somehow ended with a tadpole upgrade after drinking a specific elixir, and noticed it too late. So I'm stuck with it for now. Though the upgrade panel didn't appear, and it's just one power... Also, turns out you can make another shot of said elixir through Alchemy. Not sure what it does, but I'm sure gonna test it on my pet vampire.

One thing I love about this game, is that it doesn't shy away from giving the player the option to take power - real actual mechanically beneficial power - in exchange for a less tangible concept. Morality, ethics, self. If you want to power game it, you should take all the tadpoles you can get. You should let Astarian do that one thing. Etc. But depending on how you want you role play, and depending on which companions you do/don't want to upset, you might pass on incredibly useful powers. And they really are powerful and change the balance of the game, it's not like you made a pact with a devil and now you multi-class into Warlock for flavor. These Illithid abilities throw balance out the window sometimes, and it's awesome. And to think this isn't even the only thing in the game where you get to make that sort of choice.

cheesus crust been looking everywhere for an actual FULL look at the skill tree **** the rest of the community posting content on this. THIS is actually what i needed so see. Thank you!!!

Thank you. I know I shouldn't have spoiled it for myself, But I was actually finding it hard to know what to do after speaking to the guardian.

I experienced something strange, I got Survival Instincts and I never used Tadpole powers. I have done my best to avoid them in spite of the power gain. I don't understand how this happened. I am a pure Bard. Edit: it seems you get it by resisting the Tadpole in the Underdark quest as well.

Thanks for the heads up at the beginning of the video. I was on the fence about watching this for spoiler reasons but I'll make sure to come back after I finish my first run.

One spoilery thing you didn't cover that I'd quite like to know is if the inverse happens - do you get a unique ending for not using them at all?

One of my favorite characters was my Duergar Old One Warlock, who essentially went crazy as a side effect of his mind being more visible to Far Realms beings (Sort of like attracting demons as a Psyker in 40k). Anyways, he was absolutely getting his hands on as many tadpoles as possible, because the more tadpoles he shoved in his brain, the more clear the voice of his patron became, though he never did actually become a mind flayer: He loved his mustache very dearly.

Passing the DC 22 to persuade Lae’zel was fully worth it.

You will be an outcast unless you happen to know the disguise self spell

1 VERY important thing to know, if you play multiplayer, is that the illithid pool is shared as well between the people in your party, wish i knew this before swallowing 5 parasites by myself.

The displacer beast transformation is a bit odd to me. It would have made more sense to transform temporarily in a Mind Flayer (only giving you the abilities of the Mind Flayer NPC, so it sets you apart from the final transformation) And switching it with a small (and obviously less powerful) Elder Brain form when you have taken the final transformation.

No mention of how busted cull the weak is on a fully kitted tadpole enjoyer. Outright executing enemies you get to 15 or 25 hp is so delicous especially if you are the dark urge. Set up kills with your companions and wipe the with Durge.

Concentrated Blast is very decent with the right setup. Get the Awakened trait from the Gith Creche, so you can use illithid powers as a bonus action. And then you can use the Friends cantrip to meet the Concentration prerequisite (Friends can also be cast while silenced, which can be situationally useful for this combo) as a main action and then trigger the Concentrated Blast as a bonus action. The 3d6 psychic damage baseline is almost twice as much damage as Fire Bolt, so even without the bonus damage from targeting a Concentrating enemy you're still getting double the value for what is essentially an at-will/cantrip ability. And with the bonus damage you're looking at another factor of 2 over Fire Bolt, plus the self healing. So, it's not seriously competing against your higher level spells (though if you can target someone with Concentration then it does the same damage as level 2 Scorching Ray) but as a better-than-cantrip fallback action if your main is a caster (use Friends for arcane, use Guidance/Resistance for divine).

Going in blind as a dark urge gith, I vehemently refuse any tadpole powers. I permanently have equipped the mind shielding ring, and don’t use the tadpoles. Have like 14 tadpoles banked lol. My dark urge is the only power I need.

Thanks for another great video. Yes, there were spoilers, but nothing I didn't guess would be happening. Avoiding these powers on my first bard goodie playthrough but might take them up on my warlock.

Gonna come back to this after my first playthrough, thanks for callin out the spoilers!

I unlocked all of them and was a little disappointed that there isn't an achievement for it.

Eyy! Mortym with the information that I both want and need! Thank you, as always. Praying for your continued success.

I very much appreciate this video. I didn't want too many spoilers on the powers and everything I just needed an idea of where that path would lead. So its nice to know its not as evil as the game leads you to believe.

I've been avoiding the tadpoles for pretty much the whole game. I've made it to the last parts of act 2 and now I'm learning that there's no great consequence to dipping into those powers to some extent. Hmm.

Thanks for the video, and doubly so for the spoiler warning. I'll revisit this one after my first playthrough. Onward to 300k. All glory to the algorithm.

Great information, as expected from you. It's also great that you're taking great care when it comes to spoilers (some are obviously unavoidable in a video like this). 👍 Another thing that caught my eye immediately is, how much better your game looks than mine. Especially when it comes to the hair of the characters. Mine always look frizzy, somehow. The shadows look strange too at some points. I know that it could be a resolved when choosing TAA as your Anti-Aliasing option, but then my whole picture looks washed out. Maybe someone has an idea how this can be solved. After spending a lot of time tinkering with the options and still with no solution, I just took it like it is for now.

I don't thing my Bard would go down that route. When I do my Necromancer run though... I doubt my undead minions will care about the Davy Jones beard.

Suggested order for selecting Illithid power in the first 2 rings(selecting perks from these inner two rings has no negative outcomes for your character): 1) 2-1 Favorable Beginnings(S) 2) 2-2 Luck of the Far Realms(S) 3) 3-2 Charm(A) [front-liners who want to hold aggro should not use this for a Reaction] 4) 10-1Transfuse Health(B) [only useful for characters with a big health pool] 5) 10-2 Perilous Stakes(S) 6) 8-1Concentrated Blast(C) [active power that you won't use often] 7) 7-2 Cull the Weak(S) 8) 8-2 Psionic Backlash(A) 9) 1-1Psionic Overload(A) [active power that is godlike if you have multiple attacks per turn] 10) 1-2 Ability Drain(A) 11) 9-2 Shield of Thralls(A) 12) 11-2 Stage Fright(A) 13) 4-1Force Tunnel(B) [only useful for Tanks] 14) 5-2Replusor(B) [highly situational, not that useful] 15) 4-2Displace(D) [highly situational, not that useful] NOTE: The #-# notation refers to the clock position(1 to 11) & ring postition(1-inner ring, 2-middle ring) the perk is located on the brain power-tree.

When he saiz spoiler he means major major spoiler! It will take away the mystery of what happens if u give in into the tempation.. so i suggest to take his warning about spiler siriously!

Thanks for the non spoiler run down! I'll be back in a week or two.

Well I got 1.16 in before spoilers but gave me all I needed to know! Thanks!

My favorites are a favorable beginning and luck of far realms too. 😊 Thank for your very interesting video!

Screw ilithid powers, i am looking at that sweet (probably broken) crit hit on spectator on the start of the video. That was some stacking haha.

Everyone flying around instead of getting stuck and having having to manually jump (weak ass Gale) is huge. One downside of spreading out the tadpoles, rather than maxing out illithid powers on one or two characters, is that Cull the Weak gets better and better at melting enemies the more tadpoles a character has consumed.

a thing of note is that you can't reset the tadpole too. that's something i wish i had known before using them lol

Thanks Morty son! Another informative video with attention paid to spoilers for those that don’t want it. You are awesome ! ❤️💀

The Non spoiler split at start. HUGE UP's for that.. I'm not usually too hard on this kind of stuff, but this game uniquely is a BIG DEAL!! lol.. Giving us the option, well played.

Was busy playing it, this game exceed everything I expected.

I just finished the first act of the game, with the visitor/gaurdian being like “use your tadpole powers”. So I did…and I didnt like when the narrator said “you’ve lost something you’ll never get back”. It felt like full admiral ackbar there and I reloaded.

The powers can be a game changer being able to fly on every character is kinda crazy and black hole perfect grouping tool makes some characters aoe spells much more useful

Would love when the game has sometime to ferment, that a max good mind flayer pro/con, versus a neutral mind flayer pro/con, and a pure evil mind flayer pro/con are compared and contrasted.

Thank you for the non spoiler section. Do you think you'll do a review or explanation into the mechanics of the dark urge at any point?

Thank you so much I don't care about spoilers and I wanted to figure out if I'd be pushed into a specific ending if I used the first tier.

I absolutely loved using them my first play through especially when you unlock the outer ring gets insane being just able to fly

Great video! Really loved the conlusion.

These abilities are really fun I'll probably adapt them for a tabletop game and give them to Mind Flayers for a bit extra power.

Excellent video. Answered every question I had around this critical choice.

Can you still get the full flayer abilities without turning into a squidface? Or maybe able to transform yourself back into your most likely maticulously designed character appearence? Or are you stuck as squidward once you take that final tadpole for the full transformation?

This is helpful! I am doing a psychic damage playthrough as a paladin with wrathful smite, and subclassed into a bard. It's rough since the devs seem to have this hatred for adding it into the game without it being niche, near non existent, or bad.

Thank you, so that is how you get displacer beast. Thank you Mortismal. I've totally been holding back, which has been hurting my being able to get approval from Astarion. Now, I have the tools. Wow! It is playing havoc with my OCD! Ouch!

Got everything i need to know at 1:15 mark, but il leave the video on a background to give a view and leave a like. Thank you.

Concentrated Blast can be good if you do smth like guidance so it’s a free 6d6 psychic for the cost of 2 actions

Nice, thanks for the vid! Quality as usual

And so we add another permutation to the list of all possible kinds of play through (i.e. normal/origin/dark-urge character and/or team members) and to the list of skill pools we can fish from when thinking builds for our characters and/or team members. Is this the infinitely re-playable game? Thanks for your videos!

Got to admit I had a different theory as to the source of the Guardian, very cool.

Nice vid, fly is really good imo because it replaces jump and you always have it, plus it looks cool af

I used to use the one where you pull targets to you. It's great for pulling people into chasms.

Stage fright is the best based on name and effect. Too funny 😂😂

I’ll admit I dabbled with the powers. Very tempting to give in. Especially as a Drow. Not going to lie ha

Cull the weak is probably the best ability if you focus all your tadpoles on a single character.

Yeah Mort!!! You are a work horse 💪 of unbelievable strength brother

No one mentioned the bad sides.I didn't even accept the semi-transformation because I was afraid it would affect my character's choices.

Turning into a mind flayer sounded like exactly what the dark urge would do. IT IS DONE

For sure you look very old after you start the process of invoking them. That votes against them.

Yea i was just googling trying to find a relevant video and finding not much. Thanks for the upload.

Great vid, as usual! I'm pretty much at the beggining at act 3 and I've never used the Illithid skill due to the fact I'm persuing the "good" ending. Now, will the ending be affected if I used a couple of those?

Damn. I wonder what class goes well with this. A Rogue, a Fighter, a Sorcerer? Decisions, decisions.

My current character is staying away from using the Illithid power but on my 2nd playthrough, I'm thinking of making a warrior who embraces that power.

he mortym, great channel. i really like your personality and take on life and games. how about a longer playthrough series of bg3? i would love to see that. take care.

Quick question. Does the half-illithid state change anything appearance wise? Do you look, or act differently in anyway?

Funny, i didn´t use any of the mindflayer powers/parasites in my first run, but let myself be turned into one at the end. thought "well i am not evil and i transform into one for the greater good, if people cant stand me this way, not my problem."

New game plus with illithid powers carried over would be awesome.

Can't wait to watch this once I have gotten further!

Great video, just the information i was looking for, i didnt want my character to become an ugly mind flayer but now that i know its a choice to make i just wont do it!

getting the game today and wanted to know the limits of how evil i can make my first character, thanks for hyping me up even more!

I wish there was a mod to let us play a Mind Flayer from the get go and just RP that we're actively tricking our party members by making them see us as whatever. That would be so great... Maybe a DLC will let that be an option.

Ya, I been thinking about using/not using these powers... will see

Had to roll a 20 for lae'zel. I somehow won the roll. Then a 15. Won the roll as well. So now she's part of the worm crew

5:10 perillous stakes can actually be used on opponents too which make them vuln to everything and really easy kill

i love periolous stakes on enemies let the whole party crit for 3 turns

1 minute of this video was enough for me.

This was just what I wanted to know, cheers :D

Wow, that last ring of powers is STRONG. But gods damn it, I don't want to go all dark veins in my Good playthrough, lol. I did unlock all the powers in the first tiers, and started to unlock some on Astarian now that I'm maxed out and can't keep using tadpoles. But I didn't want to transform my character. Maybe next time around I'll embrace it.

Was there any payoff in your original run for not using any tadpoles/powers? I don't really want specifics, just an indication of if there was something special there (at least narratively) for the people who avoided using the tree entirely.

I love cull the weak especially after stacking up as many tadpoles onto one character by the end game if i so much as tickle enemy's to around 20 hp they instantly die and cause some minor Pychic damges to those around them, very useful to beat like 3 or 4 enemys to around 25 hp/30hp and then have a huge cull of them getting like a free 20 dmg per character I attack

You could just become a Mind Flayer and use Disguise Self every day to look normal. ;)