Tadpoles... Did you eat them?

[Sardorim]

Spread the love or just focused them on one character?

Did you use the "Special" tadpole at the start of Act 3 and/or share it?

[squat_instructor]

vacuumed all of them like there's no tomorrow, splitting or not is up to the party setup

[Flan]

Not going to lie Shart, I'm literally 20 tadpoles in a man suit at this point.

[MewTressym]

In my personal playthrough nope.

In my joint MP playthrough with my son I did eat 2 tadpoles for "Luck of the Far Realms" and stopped after that.

Then we realized that if one of us did eat a tadpole, then the NPC's would treat his character like they had also done it too.

[Kernest]

Nope.

And honestly, the whole concept kinda freaks me out, so I don't think I'm ever doing a playthrough where I use any tadpoles let alone turn into Illithid myself.

[Mike Garrison]

"Eating" it is not a good choice, unless you are sure you only want that character to use it. If you just "open your mind" to it, you can let multiple characters get the effect.

[Amethyst_Cat]

Nom nom

[guppy]

Nope.

The entire "hook" for the game is "get rid of the tadpole in your head", I really don't understand why people would go "you know what, I'm not only going to ignore that but add to the problem" but apparently fully 50% of players chose to do just that (per the achievement).

Larian really screwed the pooch with their total lack of consequences for making bad/evil choices:

- Ignore the main plot line and do the opposite?
- Have a guy lobotomize you with an ice pick?
- Have a guy whip you bloody in the name of evil god?
- Make a deal with an evil fey creature?
- Sell memories to the evil good?
- Make a deal with the a Literal devil and doom the world?
- Sellout to the thrice fallen hero?

In each case you get a power up with no downside or consequences story wise.

Where if you do a 'good guy/gal' play through you are rewarded with... the exact same ending, just having a less easy time getting there.

To top it off (massive spoiler)you literally have to turn one of your party members into a monster to even be allowed to get to said ending
Seems they the moral of the game is "Evil pays well and have no downside"

[Mike Garrison]

Does there have to be a "moral of the game"? Does there have to be a "good ending"? (I know the answer to that is "no", because there are games with no "good endings" at all.)

If you want a moral to this story, maybe it is: "Some decisions make things easier for you, but don't feel right. Whether you make those decisions or not is up to you."

Do you need to get rewarded with "the good ending" in order to make those decisions, or is the reward just that you are making decisions you can respect?

[One Man Army]

The game is already dead easy on Tactician by just playing normally (no min-max and so on).

Tadpole powers will make the game even easier with no consequences, so for primarily this reason I do not eat/use tadpoles except for the default "Detect Thoughts" power that we get from the start.

It also makes no sense to add more of them to your brain, when the entire journey is about finding a way to remove them.

[Hyena]

Shared it, free flight ability and no downsides.

[guppy]

Originally posted by Mike Garrison:

Does there have to be a "moral of the game"? Does there have to be a "good ending"? (I know the answer to that is "no", because there are games with no "good endings" at all.)

If you want a moral to this story, maybe it is: "Some decisions make things easier for you, but don't feel right. Whether you make those decisions or not is up to you."

Do you need to get rewarded with "the good ending" in order to make those decisions, or is the reward just that you are making decisions you can respect?

The game tells story though the means of interactive decisions, would it not be grand if those decisions had an impact?

Say if you chose to give up your humanity in pursuit of power that had a consequence other than 'well you finished the game, you are absolved of your sins'

Instead there is none, hell you even get an achievement for giving into temptation.

[Wiwra]

I didnt used any in my 1st playthrough, tho I plan to eat them a lot in second just to see what happens.

How that exactly even works like I collected like 20 tadpoles in my camp chest and I saw how big they r in game, like hand long, if I was gonna put them to the brain there would be no brain at all, just wiggling tadpoles xD

[SuRge]

I put one in Astarion and never put any in anyone again. (At least, not until my evil power-hungry playthrough). They made every effort to just make the Illithid UI scream "Yeah this is is probably not healthy. worms drilling into your brain."

Evil, I tell ya.

[Seagal]

I've never used the tadpoles. I did once and selected a power for the achievement, but reloaded right after. I don't even pick Illithid dialogue choices.

[Agony_Aunt]

Originally posted by guppy:

Make a deal with the a Literal devil and doom the world?"

Well, that one does have a consequence. So does siding with the Emperor.

Also using the Gale bomb in Act 2 does, although you don't get an end scene for that showing all the people in the region dying.