WEREWOLF ISLAND Walkthrough Guide, Baldur's Gate

Werewolf Island Walkthrough Guide

Welcome to my Werewolf Island walkthrough for Baldur's Gate, a cRPG developed by BioWare in 1998-99. As with the legendary Durlag's Tower, Werewolf Island is a major side quest added into Baldur's Gate by the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion. This adventure, which can be kicked off upon the party's arrival in the northern town of Ulgoth's Beard, not only tells a tragic tale of lycanthropes, but it is also infused by Realmslore that pertains to the great seafaring explorer and founder of the city of Baldur's Gate, Balduran.

Most likely, through exploration of the city, we will have already located two fabled artifacts that once belonged to Balduran: Helm and Cloak.

As gnomish loremaster Dushai suggests, perhaps we shall discover the fate of the explorer himself on the island...

... and we wonder whether more Balduranic artifacts may be found there, too.

Mendas

First, though, we have to find a way to set sail. Enter Mendas:

Mendas, who claims to be a scholar and archaeologist hailing from Waterdeep, also claims that the Merchant League have discovered the wreckage of Balduran's ship - "The Wandering Eye". However, it was a stormy night and the sailors were forced to retreat or become shipwrecked themselves. 

Going on like Volo does, Mendas claims that the merchants are unjust, that they bully people with no power, and that they are now in possession of sea charts that pinpoint the island's location. The merchants want to utilize the island in order to cheaply restock and refit their ships, which in turn allows them to navigate the Trackless Sea all the way to Evermeet, without stopping at expensive ports such as those of Lantan and Sundrah. 

The "greedy merchants", Mendas goes on, want to plunder Balduran's 300 year-old wreckage for gold and jewels. In the process, he fears they will destroy the artifacts along with Balduran's logbook - both key to understanding the explorer's fate. 

Suspiciously well-informed of the goings-on of the island, lacking a Waterdeep accent, and known by locals for being an eccentric...

... Mendas is all-too-ready to charter a boat for us in the hope that we may beat the merchants back to the Balduran wreckage. In the meantime, he requests that we "retrieve" the sea charts from the Merchant League Counting House in the city of Baldur's Gate. We can of course disagree to this under-handed, clearly illegal act, but there is no other way to set sail to the island.

Get the Sea Charts

Counting House Location

Thus, we make our way to Baldur's Gate city. The Counting House is a newly-renovated building situated in the east.

(Pre-TotSC expansion, the Counting House was under renovation and did not contain much of interest.)

Now, there are two ways to acquire the sea charts: survive guard interrogation and follow that up with a simple FedEx quest, or just kick down the door, kill the guard, crewmen and captain, and then loot the charts from the captain's cold, dead hands. 

100% stealthy infiltration is unfortunately not supported as a solution because the charts cannot be pick-pocketed from the captain. This is a real pity.

Anyway, it actually does not matter how we go about the theft, but by way of dialogue is the most amusing. 

The easiest way in:

Or:

And then:

The other responses result in us being exposed for the imposters we are. And Ulf's idea of "arresting us" is to start poking us in the guts with the pointy end of his sword. In that case, we are forced to flee or fight. Disappointingly, aggro on the ground floor does not put the second floor on alert. Logic dictates that a ruckus downstairs would be heard upstairs, but no.

Captain Tollar Kieres

So, regardless of how we handled Ulf, the captain and his many guards are non-hostile upstairs. We end up interrupting the captain, who is busy making final preparations to set sail to the island in search of the wreckage:

Option two forces us to instigate aggro (force-attack) and option three invites aggro. Thus, it's option one if we don't want to kill anyone. 

However, we learn at the Blushing Mermaid that a hefty sum is needed in order to pay the tab racked up by the sailors' binge drinking. Having kindly footed the bill, Baalor Ale is our reward from the barkeep.

Back at the Counting House, the ale hits the captain like a ton of bricks, causing him to hand us the sea charts as he dozes off.

Candy from a baby...

It is unfortunate that the Ulf and Captain dialogues do not check for Reaction. Instead, the swashbuckling bluffs are just a matter of choosing the correct responses. But this is no doubt due to time limits of a dev cycle, so I won't mention lack of Reaction checks again in this series of posts, though I will mention any future employment of Reaction checks if they result in something tangible or extra-flavorsome.

Trackless Sea

Back in Ulgoth's Beard, Mendas rewards us with 2,000 GP for delivering the sea charts. He then requests that we meet him at the docks, at which point we can milk another 4,000 GP out of him before setting sail (Reaction check). Thus, our pockets are lined with gold as the voyage towards the Trackless Sea begins...

Note the versatility in the tone of the writing. The writer soundly handles swashbucklers, old crones, exotic accents, stern guards, drunkards, level-headed barkeeps and standard narration - all equally well. This is what happens when you have a naturally gifted lead writer who penned 70% of the game's text, as opposed to 20 writers and 10 "narrative designers" who learned how to write in a university.

What we are seeing in these dialogue screencaps - in all my BG write-ups - is a distinctively non-modern employment of syntax, vocab and tone which approximates that of AD&D 2nd Edition literature, and was all but lost in Shadows of Amn. Thus, the original BG sports an authenticity with which only Icewind Dale can compete.

Continued in Part II.

1. Durlag's Tower Walkthrough	2. Durlag's Tower Level 1	3. Durlag's Tower Level 2
4. Durlag's Tower Level 3	5. Durlag's Tower Level 4	6. Aec'Letec
Werewolf Island Walkthrough	Baldur's Gate Walkthrough	Baldur's Gate 1 (Index)