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Version used for review: 3.7.

Aura Glimmershine is a gnome artificer, a new thief kit from the Artisan. She’s a character that fulfills an already crowded niche in Baldur’s Gate—that of the excitable, pink-haired goofball. However, through the strength of her personality she manages to stand out in her own right rather than fade into comparison to Alora and Neera.

A large part of Aura’s uniqueness as a character comes from her individual character quirks and her history, the latter of which can be laid on a bit thick. She’s an artificer—inventor of gadgets and doodads–originally from Lantan, an island in the north known for its impressive technology. However, she has more recently arrived in the Sword Coast from Kozakura, a nation in the continent of Kara-Tur. As Kozakura is greatly inspired by Japanese culture, so too is Aura… to middling effect. The readme. for the mod contains a FAQ section, which includes this tidbit of insight.

“Q: A cutesy anime-inspired gnome? Uhh… seriously?

A: Yes, it’s whack. These ideas come to me on a whim. Aura was inspired by some JRPGs I was into at the time and is a mishmash of multiple concepts. Hopefully, her writing is good enough to make the premise work“

Unfortunately, I think Aura works in basically every aspect other than this premise, and I can’t help but feel it’s because the premise came first and then Aura was built atop it. Despite it being the weakest part of her character, it isn’t terrible, and it shouldn’t be enough to dissuade you from this mod.

When Aura was younger, she begged her parents to be allowed to travel the world, and thus she found herself on a trade ship sailing away from Lantan, only for the ship to be struck by a terrible storm. She woke up on a Kozakuran island with her memory lost. She was taken in by a priestess and over the next two years slowly regained her memory.

Because of this, Aura thinks of Kozakura as home just as much as Lantan. It’s a rather convoluted way to give a character intimate knowledge of several cultures, and it results in a lot of exposition. Too much exposition. Had I not been actively trying to understand what was going on in order to write this review, I probably wouldn’t have had the willpower to pay attention.

Not to say that there aren’t positives to Aura’s storyline, but I feel that the whole Kozakuran aspect of her character is ultimately unnecessary. She is interesting enough as a character considering her Lantanese origin, her personality, and the staggering amount of things she can do as an artificer. It’s clear that Aura, as a mod, is a labor of love for the author. As a reviewer, however, I can say confidently that the complexity in Aura’s history and her class (or classes!) is too much to ask of a player to handle all at once.

On the positive side is Aura’s individuality. She’s much of what you would expect just by looking at any one of her numerous portraits, yes, but she’s enjoyable to have around. Her high intelligence is offset by her meekness, and she will often express excitement over new artifacts or places, only to be embarrassed over her excess of emotion. She’s bookish, and she likes animals and having tea parties with her friends.

If you so desire, you can become one of her friends through a series of talks that span the original campaign in Baldur’s Gate. These talks will involve tea parties, talking about your respective histories and families, as well as some light flirting, provided that you’re female and meet the 12+ intelligence and 10+ charisma requirement.

Aura is not interested in men, which I admit personally is a breath of fresh air. For those interested in such things, lesbian romance options have been incredibly scarce in the Baldur’s Gate games. Beamdog well and truly missed the mark with Hexxat and despite Corwin being one of my personal favourite companions, she is likely to remain SoD exclusive. Queer options all around are rough outside of Siege of Dragonspear.

These flirtatious dialogue options won’t lead to much in BG1, but in Siege of Dragonspear a mutual attraction can blossom into the beginning of a romance. Both the player character’s and Aura’s attention are taken up by the war with the crusade, however, so it takes a while to blossom and doesn’t last terribly long before the player is whisked on their way to Amn.

In general, Aura’s writing in SoD is a great improvement over BG1, and I think it’s due in part to less focus on her Kozakuran history. For the most part, it’s just Aura being Aura, and that’s all I wanted from her the whole time. Tea parties and inventions galore!

Aura features some extensive player-initiated-dialogue in which you have access to a series of flirts and questions you can ask about her history and her family. She goes into quite some depth, so if you’re interested, it’s there. If not, it’s completely optional.

Throughout the entire mod I didn’t encounter any spelling errors, although there were some slight formatting issues at times. Aura features some minor parenthetical descriptions, and although they were not incredibly frequent, it does stick out somewhat. If that doesn’t bother you, ignore me!

I started writing this next paragraph with “Aura has a quest that involves…” and then I was stumped. I truly cannot remember what the quest was even about, only that it had an insane battle at the end of it taking place on the bridge outside Baldur’s Gate.

Okay, reviewing my notes…

When you meet Aura, she says that she’s looking for someone. That someone is Tadahashi Saitō, a ronin that Aura once made a powerful katana for. When you reach Baldur’s Gate, you are greeted by someone who warns you of Saitō’s assassins, who eventually make an attempt on your life. Saitō is still after Aura so that he can gain Aura’s Lantanese knowledge of smokepowder, AKA explosives.

Saitō wants to meet Aura in private, and so she sneaks away to the bridge where you then chase after her and have a climactic battle with Saitō himself.

I’m simplifying things a LOT here, but things are very straightforwards after all of this. It’s a fine quest in of itself and it knits some great rewards, but the exposition dumps are difficult to sit through. The author knows the quest’s shortcomings well, and improvement is evident in all areas in Siege of Dragonspear.

The writing that the mod puts on display is solid, with a few hiccups. I enjoyed Aura as a character a fair bit, and her banters with other companions were quite entertaining too.

The real meat and potatoes, so to say, is when we look at Aura’s class. Aura is an artificer. Or, depending on your installation, either an artificer/priestess or artificer/mage. The artificer itself is complicated and powerful enough alone, so that’s what I chose. However, I will briefly touch on the priestess class.

Unless you select artificer/mage as Aura’s class upon installation, her stats don’t truly matter all that much. They are decent but she will always have low HP due to her low constitution and Hit Die.

I will be displaying many of Aura’s abilities that make her invaluable to any party, but there are so many items and abilities that detailing every single one of them would be an exercise in frustration and I guarantee that it would bore you. I’ll let you go over it all yourself if you download the mod, and I recommend selecting a couple of things you like and sticking to them until you fully understand what they do. I got very overwhelmed by everything here and I found it hard to grasp most of the items and abilities Aura had.

She can create extremely powerful potions and explosives, for a price. The names should give you some idea of what they do. They’re almost all more powerful than their generic counterparts.

Aura has several unique abilities as an artificer:

As you can see, Aura comes with some incredible utility, but it can be a bit much to handle to start off with. She also comes with many unique items gained from her quest, as well as her personal equipment.

The real standouts, however, are the items that you get that aren’t designed to be used by Aura. She can enchant items you find around the world and retrofit them to serve another purpose.

There are more. Far more. But part of the fun is finding these weapons and trying them out, so I won’t spoil everything. Aura is incredibly powerful to the point of being overpowered if you use her correctly. I, however, did not use her correctly, and she fulfilled the role of party thief who can create healing potions when needed and has a powerful summon in SoD.

The priestess kit is interesting, but ultimately I think Aura is better off as a pure artificer due to the experience cap in BG1 and SoD. Here’s a brief overview of what the priestess provides:

– May use the Spiritual Blessing innate ability once per day.

SPIRITUAL BLESSING: The priestess invokes a prayer to heavenly spirits, bestowing a random blessing upon the target. There is a 25% chance of gaining +2 THAC0 and +10% increased damage, a 25% chance of gaining +2 to Luck and Saving Throws, and a 25% chance of gaining +2 to Armor Class and +10% resistance to all damage. Regardless of the blessing, the target is also healed for ten hit points and cured of all diseases and poisons. However, the fickle nature of spirits means there is a 25% chance that no blessing is granted at all. From 12th level onward, Spiritual Blessing is cast in a 15-ft. radius around the priestess, affecting all allies.

– From 6th level onward, may cast True Seeing as an innate ability once per day.

Spiritual Blessing seems quite powerful if you get the good benefits, but the real power comes in when it can be cast as an AoE spell. It’s a handy buff that will only increase Aura’s value. The kit comes at the price of not being able to use blades, but Aura will be at range with her unique bow anyway. Aura cannot backstab regardless, so it’s up to you how you want to build her.

Aura has a lot of portraits, and they’re all pretty good.

As you can see, there are a lot of options, and I’d be surprised if you didn’t take to at least one of them. I used the AI generated default portrait, and despite it looking a little wonky close up, when its in the party bar it blends in quite well. Ultimately I think I prefer the third BG1 portrait, which was the old default before the Artisan decided to go all in on AI-generated imagery for their projects.

Aura has a two custom voicesets, the more recent of which is certainly an improvement. Both sets are available, as are all the portraits. Aura is well voiced, and she fits in well with the other companions, but her voice has this oddly tinny sounding effect on it. I prefer it to most home-recorded voices, but it can be a little distracting before you get used to it.

Aura, with all her portraits and quirks, is a fun character to use. The Artificer is truly a behemoth of a kit, and while I appreciate the lengths that the Artisan went through to make it, the class never truly clicked with me. I know that I may be in the minority, though, and there are certainly things I did really enjoy. If Aura was a less interesting character then I wouldn’t have bothered to try the class out at all, but I’m glad that I gave them both a chance. Aura is a fun companion to bring along and I’m immensely looking forward to her BG2 release.

Thanks for reading.

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