Bite vs no Bite
I talked about this a bit after patch 5 came out but thought I'd throw down the wall of text because I see people bringing up not being bitten anymore on facebook and reddit a lot but don't like throwing down the wall of text on those sites as much so I'll do it here. Note a lot of this is speculation and observation on my part along with a bit of opinion so I could be wrong about some of this. As of patch 5 Larian "fixed" the bug where Astarion would confess he's a vampire but then the bite scene would happen anyway. Some people are still getting the bug but it seems to be primarily durges that still end up with both on occasion. I speculate it's due to older saves or the fact durges have more cut scenes and things get jumbled. With that said the fix in Patch 5 has seemed to have made Astarion more likely to confess vs bite. Many people have reported him confessing as early as shortly after entering the Grove and having not gone far enough down the road to find the boar (that likely hasn't even spawned yet) or go to the underdark or talk to Gandrel (Gur hunter in the swamp) which previously were all the main triggers for the confession or bite depending on various factors such as number of long rests and approval, so it's almost definitely a bug as timeline wise it would mean he's spilling his big secret after about a day meanwhile everyone else stays pretty quiet about their own secrets for a fairly decent amount of time, and finding out everyone's big secrets is basically the whole companion part of the story in Act 1. I personally think Larian may have tried to over correct because before patch 5 people who actually run around playing the game and don't just chain long rest on the beach to get all the cut scenes were almost always getting bitten their first long rest and complaining about it. Personally I hope Larian tweaks it again because while many people don't like him biting and would prefer for him to just confess, he shouldn't be confessing (or biteing) 20 minutes after you recruit him because it doesn't make sense from a story angle and should take longer and likely be tied to approval or doing certain interactions like talking to Gandrel or going to the underdark to proc just like specific things trigger the other companions to reveal their secrets. Also those who like the bite scene and/or wish to romance him miss out on I believe a max of 15 approval from not getting the bite scene which is huge especially when playing a good aligned character and players shouldn't have to miss out on so much approval because Astarion is currently like a toddler with a secret he can't keep to himself. Thank you for reading my ramble.
