The one time I didn't pick everyone's pockets in Baldur's Gate 3 really came back to bite me

I'm still stupidly early on in my Baldur's Gate 3 journey - I did, after all, spend several hours replaying the start to see how different origin characters worked - but last night I had my first real run-in up at the chapel near where you crash land in the big nautiloid. I'd played this bit before in early access, so I knew to fireball the tiny bit of rope to drop the big stone down into the floor and take out the rest of the bandits hanging about up there pretty sharpish. But before I went down beneath the chapel (there were a lot of other nasty bandits down there last time I checked), I had a little extra nose around the outside, eventually discovering a locked hatch down a nearby cliff path that took me to the brilliantly named Dank Crypt.

Sensing not all was well down here, I went into hiding mode and gingerly crept around the place, looting the handful of corpses lying about of their gold and spell scrolls, but leaving their weapons. You see, I have a terrible habit in RPGs of stuffing my pockets with absolutely everything I can find. In Bioshock, I will scavenge everything out of every bin like some feral raccoon; in Skyrim, I had to enable a cheat code for infinite storage one time because I was so overencumbered (and couldn't bear to part with everything I'd picked up over the course of the quest) that I actually couldn't move. And in my early hours of Baldur's Gate 3, I started doing exactly the same thing, looting everyone's swords, daggers and crossbows up on the Nautiloid. Not to much effect, mind. Nothing was really that much better than what I already had. So I resolved to do better and resist temptation. And what a dumb idea that turned out to be...

At the end of the crypt, you see, there's a little definitely-not-creepy doorbell you can press to open up the sliding door of the mausoleum proper. As soon as you do this, though, trouble starts. And yep, those corpses whose pockets I'd just spent a couple of minutes rifling through all clacked back to life as undead skelly lads. The ensuing fight wasn't my finest hour. I hadn't rested in a while, and Gale and Shadowheart were a tad low on spell power, and the darkness (and probably dankness) of the crypt itself meant a lot of sword swings, arrow lobs and staff thwaks went flying past their targets.

Eventually, though, we pulled through, although not before glugging several health potions and unfortunately losing Astarion on some now very bloody steps. I was talking to Matthew (RPS in peace) about it afterwards, as I was having a bit of trouble reviving Astarion (I fear those steps have created a bug that means there's now an invisible obstacle in the way that prevents me from using one of the revive potions), and he casually let slip that I probably could have avoided the messiness of it had I robbed them of everything in their inventories beforehand.

GOSH DARN DANGIT, Baldur's Gate. The one time I try and be a better RPG player and not give in to my kleptomania is the one time it actually could have helped me. It's always the way, isn't it? I guess the moral of this story is that I should just steal everything, all the time, just in case, like some covetous gremlin who coos to their silverware while everyone else is asleep. I basically turn into Gollum when I play these games, so take that, relentlessly horny Gale... Bet you aren't so keen on my half-elf monk now, are you, precious?

In truth, I've since been back to the Dank Crypt to replay it, now will everyone's pockets fully emptied (because not only is save-scumming right and proper, but I also really do need to, err, fix my little Astarion step problem), and yes, it was approximately 73% cleaner than my previous attempt. The magical skells still pelted me with frost spikes and whatnot, but the big beefy sword chump was pretty much completely helpless. Ah, sweet victory. So yes, I will continue to indulge in my magpie ways, because that is clearly what Larian intended to be similarly right and proper here.