this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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I've recently begun to wonder whether there's so much free wine in the world because the water is undrinkable. I would say "I have too much alcohol and I didn't even have to work for it" is definitely first-world, and sanitation would greatly improve lives.
It's kind of ruining my roleplay a little bit. I can't not pick up supplies because what if I need them later, but I used to enjoy putting effort into long resting over a meal that didn't sound gross, and now we all just get fucking wrecked every night with these mystery bottles I took off a zombie in a ditch.
Edit: The difficult terrain would probably come first, but at least taking an involuntary shower on my way to Gale means he'll never again talk to me about how good I stink.
Not wine. Fruit is expensive and it takes too long. Mild beer was the go to. Like 2% so low enough it's functionality impossible to get plastered but kills a lot of pathogens and it's as easy to make as forgetting some barley in a barrel.
Most bottled fruit juice us actually mildly alcoholic as well.
Beer isn't made by leaving barley in a barrel... It's cooked. Also wine was and is the preferred drink in southern Europe since the Romans who looked down upon the "barbarians" who drank beer.
All this "people drank beer because water was unsafe" is just an urban myth: https://lemm.ee/comment/4891280
True adventurers drink their supper.
It's a very commonly quoted - and heatedly discussed - factoid that water was usually polluted and generally considered undrinkable, mild alcoholic beverages were the norm.
It's not a factoid but an urban myth, historians are quite clear about this.
Water was – generally – safe to drink, and people drank alcohol for sustenance and because it was less boring than water. They also didn't write that much about drinking water, because it was completely natural to drink it and readily available. Besides, the low-level "small beer" isn't safe because of its alcohol content, it still goes bad rather quickly, but because it was made with clear water and barley cooked.
https://zythophile.co.uk/2014/03/04/was-water-really-regarded-as-dangerous-to-drink-in-the-middle-ages/
https://www.medievalists.net/2023/05/drink-water-middle-ages/
Sounds like heaven, until you develop alcoholism.
Lol, wow. Now I feel completely different about all this wine I found in a zombie infested distillery. Dang it, Bobby!