Should You Allow the Emperor to Evolve You in Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3)? Explained

You’ll be met with plenty of difficult choices that have far-reaching ramifications in Larian Studios’ CRPG sequel. While some decisions are pretty cut and dry, there are a few that are morally grey that may give you pause for thought. If you’re wondering whether you should allow the Emperor to evolve you in Baldur’s Gate 3, you’re in the right place. Let’s get into the deets, shall we?

What Does the The Emperor’s Choice Mean in BG3?

When you reach the titular Baldur’s Gate and enter the Astral Plane, you’ll encounter the Emperor who is far from your average Mindflayer. After some lengthy chatter, he’ll pose a question to you: Would you like to evolve?

Basically, The Emperor wants to trigger the next stage of your tadpole’s lifecycle, though you’ll still retain your own independence as well. This is a very important interaction that has a pretty dramatic impact on your character’s playthrough.

What Happens If You Accept the Emperor’s Tadpole?

If you do choose to evolve your tadpole in Baldur’s Gate 3, the Emperor will give you a gift — an Astral-Touched Tadpole — which you can eat to unlock powerful Illithid perks in your skill tree. You can either choose to eat the Tadpole yourself, or open your mind to it. If you open your mind to it, the Tadpole will be placed into your inventory and you can give it to one of your companions to eat at a later stage.

Essentially, the Astral-Touched Tadpole gives you access to the outer ring of skills in your Illithid Power skill tree. For example, you’ll be able to gain powers such as expertise in Charisma, Mind Sanctuary, Displacer Beast Shape, and Fractured Psyche, which are all incredibly powerful perks.

However, the tradeoff is that your physical appearance will be affected permanently: your character will be accursed with some rather ugly black veins all over their body. Additionally, your party members won’t be best pleased by your decision, either.

From what we can gather, however, accepting and eating the Emperor’s Tadpole will not impact your ending in any adverse way.

What Happens If You Don’t Accept the Emperor’s Tadpole?

Interestingly, while the Emperor will accept your decision, they’ll still give you an Astral-Touched Tadpole for your character to use as they wish. So, even if you don’t accept it, the Emperor will still give it to you in the end.

Should You Accept the Emperor’s Tadpole in BG3?

Ultimately, you’ll get the Astral-Touched Tadpole either way. However, eating it is a different story. Whether you should eat the Tadpole or not comes down to whether or not you want those Illithid powers.

Yes, you’ll have to put up with some garish black veins all over your body, but if it gives you access to some of the most powerful abilities in the game, we think it’s not such a big deal. Nevertheless, if you want your character to stay pure, we’d suggest giving the Tadpole a miss and perhaps gifting it to one of your companions instead. Thankfully, it doesn’t influence your ending. Really, the choice is ultimately yours!

And, voila! That’s everything you need to know about whether you should allow the Emperor to evolve you in Baldur’s Gate 3. For more, here’s how to get the bag of Holding and how to change dice skins. For everything else, stick with us here at Twinfinite.