Minthara Approval Stopped Raising

[Talbot]

Asked about this on Reddit and got no help, hopefully someone here knows a fix.

I'm in late Act 2, Minthara's been stuck at 11 approval for a while now, and I looked up some guides to try and get that higher but either the guides are out of date or something's wrong. She didn't approve either of me talking the dock guy into killing himself or of sassing Rolan, both of which are supposed to be triggers for her according to the wiki.

I've tried taking her out of the party, going back to Act 1, making sure she's standing super nearby the conversation (which is risky because turns out if you're controlling her instead of Tav before the fight starts Roland will just attack her when it ends), so far nothing works. I was still getting approval for her at the brewery, but I think that was the last time, and this makes two events that all the guides agree she should be approving of which got no response.

Is this a known behavior/are there any known fixes, or do I need to download a mod or something to work around it

[RollerPig]

I'm not sure I follow. I never looked up any guides. If your trying to romance her, when you first rescue her make sure to go through ALL her dialogue. Tell her nothing is her fault and that your going to seek vengence and take control the brain.

After killing Kethric...later at camp you will get additional dialogue and she'll ask "what do you see me as"

With 1-4 selections...freind,lover,ally etc.

Thats it, theres no special approval im aware of (i think you get like 20 for killing Kethric and 10 for freeing her with a possible 20)... If not you can continue with her into act 3 until you get the camp dialogue

There are more opportunities in act 3 to build her approval. Shes essentially neutral evil so reflect that when you speak with her. Shes one of the easiest to build necessary approval for romance because just saving her and completing the main quest I believe yields you 40 approval

[Talbot]

Originally posted by RollerPig:

I'm not sure I follow. I never looked up any guides. If your trying to romance her, when you first rescue her make sure to go through ALL her dialogue. Tell her nothing is her fault and that your going to seek vengence and take control the brain.

After killing Kethric...later at camp you will get additional dialogue and she'll ask "what do you see me as"

With 1-4 selections...freind,lover,ally etc.

Thats it, theres no special approval im aware of (i think you get like 20 for killing Kethric and 10 for freeing her with a possible 20)... If not you can continue with her into act 3 until you get the camp dialogue

There are more opportunities in act 3 to build her approval. Shes essentially neutral evil so reflect that when you speak with her. Shes one of the easiest to build necessary approval for romance because just saving her and completing the main quest I believe yields you 40 approval

So my problem is not that I don't know how to romance her, it's that actions that are supposed to give +1 approval are not giving it, so who knows if the +20 etc. from the later quests will, and I don't want to go through however many hours to get to that if I'm going to need to backtrack to an earlier save before I triggered whatever bug is preventing the other little actions that should be giving her approval from doing so.

[Worlord]

11? Wow, she really hates you. But still, you should be able to score some points with her. I even play a good person and I can usually get her approval up to 65 or so. Although she complains about pretty much everything I do, and that make it difficult to get higher than that.

[Favonius]

I've noted too that some of the actions reported as giving approval are not. I'm using the knock-out solution in act 1 + rescue in act 2 to recruit her, maybe that's a difference from siding with her in act 1.
Specifically, i had no approval during the one-that-was quest (whatever how he's named in english), and one or two other things. Worked with entertaining the party during dialogues with Thorm's family though.
But all these are very minor pluses to approval, the main approval comes from the main quest. And the guides are accurate in act 3 as far i know, so not a real problem for me.

Note that you never get approval nor dispapproval if the companion is making the action or the dialogue himself. I guess that is a glitch or a bug.

[Talbot]

Originally posted by Worlord:

11? Wow, she really hates you. But still, you should be able to score some points with her. I even play a good person and I can usually get her approval up to 65 or so. Although she complains about pretty much everything I do, and that make it difficult to get higher than that.

Again, my concern isn't that I don't know how to get approval with her, it's that what's supposed to get approval with her... isn't.

Originally posted by Favonius:

But all these are very minor pluses to approval, the main approval comes from the main quest. And the guides are accurate in act 3 as far i know, so not a real problem for me.

Yeah, my main concern is just that if these little ones not popping mean that one won't pop either, and I don't want to have to backtrack to before whatever broke it after that far from where I am now, you know? Hopefully you're right about it being based on how you recruited her, I also did the knockout thing.

[Favonius]

Dont worry, just doing the main quest in act 2, considering she's a noble and deserves respect, being confident enough to let het show her weaknesses and analyse them, supporting her, romancing her maybe and you'll be 100% approval in no time early act 3. You dont even have to be evil for that (showing interest in "strong" leadership does help though)

[Talbot]

Originally posted by Favonius:

Dont worry, just doing the main quest in act 2, considering she's a noble and deserves respect, being confident enough to let het show her weaknesses and analyse them, supporting her, romancing her maybe and you'll be 100% approval in no time early act 3. You dont even have to be evil for that (showing interest in "strong" leadership does help though)

I feel like I must be explaining the problem poorly. The issue is that her approvals are not triggering when those things happen, not that I don't know what things trigger them.

[Worlord]

Originally posted by Triumph.Talbot:

Originally posted by Favonius:

Dont worry, just doing the main quest in act 2, considering she's a noble and deserves respect, being confident enough to let het show her weaknesses and analyse them, supporting her, romancing her maybe and you'll be 100% approval in no time early act 3. You dont even have to be evil for that (showing interest in "strong" leadership does help though)

I feel like I must be explaining the problem poorly. The issue is that her approvals are not triggering when those things happen, not that I don't know what things trigger them.

So what you're saying is that you never get the "Minthara Approves." notifications even when you do something that should increase her approval?

[Talbot]

Yeah, though fortunately it finally fixed itself a few hours later. But I tested it ultimately on like five or six things that are "supposed" to give approval for her and none of them did.

[Chaosolous]

Guides are useless, use the wiki for everything. End of discussion.

https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Minthara/Approval

Use your overlay or Alt+Tab to bring that up while you play. When you interact with people or stuff, open that list and check which one gives the most approval for Minthara.

[Talbot]

I was using the wiki, but what it said would work, didn't (for about six hours, seemed to right itself after I beat Ketheric).

[Favonius]

Originally posted by Triumph.Talbot:

I was using the wiki, but what it said would work, didn't (for about six hours, seemed to right itself after I beat Ketheric).

I suspect approval system was a bit changed with patch 7 to account for her new recruitment method, and wiki did not get updated

[Adew_Cider]

Originally posted by Talbot:

Originally posted by Favonius:

Dont worry, just doing the main quest in act 2, considering she's a noble and deserves respect, being confident enough to let het show her weaknesses and analyse them, supporting her, romancing her maybe and you'll be 100% approval in no time early act 3. You dont even have to be evil for that (showing interest in "strong" leadership does help though)

I feel like I must be explaining the problem poorly. The issue is that her approvals are not triggering when those things happen, not that I don't know what things trigger them.

You were explaining the issue just fine. The original post might have been a little too vague, but it should have been clear what you were saying by the first clarifying comment. I'm glad the issue resolved itself for you. I'm having the same one. I found a comment from Reddit trying to find an answer, the link to which is https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/16gy837/comment/k0afb0i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

They said "I was stuck at 27 for all of Act 2, then she shot up to 64 in conversations that occurred right after we beat Thorme." This seems to line up with what you said about the problem fixing itself after you beat Ketheric Thorm.

After skimming through this approval guide ( https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Minthara/Approval#Act_Two ), there are a lot of opportunities for approval after defeating Ketheric Thorm, so what probably happened was her approval unfroze and they were able to get a lot of approval from those conversations. But the other way you could interpret their comment is when her approval unfroze, she instantly got all of the approval that she should've gotten from previous dialogue choices.

I find it really unlikely that her approval points were saved up, but that's what I'm hoping is the case because I do not want all of my dialogue choices to be wasted.

[Talbot]

My experience lines up with theirs, whether they were saved up or not it was possible to romance her basically immediately after the Ketheric stuff (which AFAIK is the only thing her approval much influences) so you should hopefully be good to go so long as it uncorks for you the same way it did for us.

[Rabidnid]

Originally posted by Talbot:

My experience lines up with theirs, whether they were saved up or not it was possible to romance her basically immediately after the Ketheric stuff (which AFAIK is the only thing her approval much influences) so you should hopefully be good to go so long as it uncorks for you the same way it did for us.

If you go back to act 1 after rescuing her she really hates you when you return. But all my playthroughs she reacted normally.