Anticorp

In my first playthrough he was able to talk to Raphael outside of the Gauntlet of Shar. This time Raphael just left without ever giving Astarion a chance to ask any questions. So, I reloaded a save, did the whole House of Healing fight again, made sure to have Astarion selected when we approached the Gauntlet, and it auto switched to my character when the conversation started and he left again. Have they changed this sequence? Is it bugged? Do only certain dialogue choices give you a chance to barter?

I've added some instances to the instance filters, yet I continue seeing those instances. Is there something else that I need to do to block entire instances?

I hadn't tried it in 2 different playthroughs because it's rated really low online. But since I've used the other builds already, I figured I'd give it a go for Astarion in this new playthrough. He has an item that makes him invisible for two turns whenever he kills someone, which basically makes him a one man killing machine. For 3 different battles now I've split him off from the group and sent him out ahead to sneak attack the enemy group. Welp, reinforcements were never needed. He sneak attacks from range, turns invisible, moves away so he can't be detected, and attacks again. Each attack one-shots his victim, and he can make quick work of entire groups of enemies.

I can see that this build wouldn't be great for unexpected battles, or outright confrontation, but when you know that you want to fight, dang man! It's amazing.

If you happen to find that item that gives invisibility on kill, then I highly suggest getting a good bow, and giving assassin a try. It seems like it would be a good option for a playthrough without companions, as long as you are able to get back into stealth after attacking.

Every time I get a notification that someone has commented or messaged me it is back to the Show All option, even though I've set it to Show Unread a hundred times already.

But I doubt I could fight off one horse sized duck.