I originally wrote this as a comment on another thread, but I thought it may be helpful for others that generally like to be the ‘good guy’ in games, but may be looking to try the evil Dark Urge storyline in BG3. I’ve now added some to it as well. This community has been so helpful to me, so I hope this helps some of you too! And please feel free to add your own pros and cons in the comments.

Summary: I did the evil durge run because I wanted to see the other content and get the achievements for the bhaal stuff, but as a traditional good player… I admit it was painful. I really didn’t like making those choices and had a lot less fun but there are interesting new experiences and I hope this helps you through.

Here’s my list to help you either decide to try it, or not, and have some guide posts/tips for what you’re getting into.

Pros - Getting to ascend Astarion without any real consequences because his chaos and attitude after works fine with it and he is more powerful after - Getting to go dark justiciar with Shadowheart which trivializes the showdown at the cloister and her attitude doesn’t really matter because ditto as above - Getting the slayer form from Bhaal which makes the Orin fight a joke and a lot of others too tbh (NOTE: You can first get the slayer form by killing Isobel before Marcus takes her, or then killing her in the fight against Ketheric. You can still get the slayer form if you let Isobel live, kill Orin, and then accept Bhaal as your god, but you’ll have missed some fun uses of the powerful form and won’t have the same Bhaal’s chosen type experience when confronting Orin.) - Less side quests so a faster path to the end game because most of the companions either leave you like Wyll and Karlach or never get to join at all because you kill them, but you can recruit Minthara which I only did to see her story. Keeping Gale is a saving throw on the night after the slaughter of the grove. - And finally the end game is way easier. Simple summary is… you skip the gortash fight completely by just agreeing to partner with him in the throne room scene. Either kill the murder targets yourself, or kill the red dwarf and take his bag, and go pledge yourself with Sarevok. Then after you kill Orin you can either go kill Sarevok first (because he asks you to come back) or don’t and just go back to meet Gortash, act tough, and he will agree to meet you at the elder brain in the morphic pool. The elder brain kills him almost instantly in the scene before you roll against it and the emperor rescues you. With the Emperor you lie and agree to ‘partner’ with him, he eats Orpheus’ brain, and the Emperor helps you fight the elder brain. Then at the last second of the fight with the actual brain, you get the option to shank him and take control where you can bring about the rule of Bhaal, blah blah blah, game over. - All of this is a much faster gameplay, allows you to skip most quests in all 3 acts, and makes the final battle pretty easy as well. Even easier if you all evolve the tadpoles, because why not?

Cons - All the stuff others have mentioned about going evil after playing a good one. It’s just painful to hurt characters you care about. - Leveling SUCKS because you’re so short on quests in act 1 that hitting act 2 can be a bit rough because you’re XP poor (it does even out by end game though) - You don’t get the pixie blessing in act 2 because you follow the drider all the way to moonrise and he peaces out by climbing the tower, but even if you kill him later the pixie inside the lantern is dead by then. This means someone in the party has to carry a moon lantern, which has a limited radius, and it was exhausting to deal with in the dark shadows because someone would always wander and I’d get yanked into turn-based to get them back in the light before the Shadow Curse would hurt them. Not game breaking, but irritating. - the companion dialogues are a lot less engaging in my opinion, everything is all gloom and doom and power, and most of them are pretty negative about your actions even though they do their own shit - the relatively famous mostly unavoidable murder of Alfira. Yes, you can mess with the game in a few ways to avoid it, but that’s not the point of an evil playthrough. It’s supposed to happen, but I love her so much that this hurt a lot - the irritating wisdom saves to prevent your insane character from doing shit that will straight fuck with your party / playthrough. For example, I was romancing astarion and one of the durge camp scenes is killing your romantic interest, but I needed a good rogue to open shit, dammit, AND his ascended form is helpful in final battle so I had to save scum there until I was able to wake him instead of kill him. And if I had killed him I wouldn’t have been able to finish his quest line which was helpful XP before elder brain fight

Achievements You Can Get - Embrace Your Urge: Either kill Isobel in Act 2 at Last Light or in Ketheric fight, or wait until you kill Orin in Act 3 and accept Bhaal. Whenever you do this, you will get the Slayer form to transform. - Murder in Baldur’s Gate: Either kill the murder targets yourself, or kill the red dwarf and take his bag. Go meet Sarevok, agree to be an unholy murderer, kill Valeria, and bam. - Sins of the Father: Do all the pieces to follow Bhaal. Then, as mentioned above, work with the Emperor until the brain is dying, game will give you the choice to betray him, shank him, choose to rule in Bhaal’s name

TL;DR - In conclusion, I’m glad I did it to see the evil content and get the achievements, but it’s not something I’ll ever return to, and now I’m playing a spunky little halfling who’s here to save the world and I’m loving it again!

If you read all this, thank you, and please add your own comments below!