Gothic

Gothic

OK, got the entire series plus Forsaken Gods and Arcania last month on the Steam Sale for 20 bucks after waiting for a sale on Go G that included the original (why do I suspect it was a last minitue attempt to get Jo Wood some money?)

Played Gothic 1 for a long time, then dropped it some time in chapter 2 when the game started making every quest "run half-way across the map from the old-camp to the sect camp, who will tell you to run to the old-mine (which mind you, is on the complete opposite side of the map)" ect. ect. which was tiring even with acrobatics being fun (sadly this skill seems to be absent in G2).

I started Gothic 2 after growing tired of G1 from the above (16 something hours, will likely go back in the future), and have just entered chapter 2 (get the proof from the valley of the mines), then started the Not R area and just finished the pirate quests to get the bandit armor. Went 2h milita (I read Paladins are a Magic Knight) and started raising my Strength and 2h until they cost 2AP per point, then I learned the 3 languages and have been hording points for the past 6 levels.

Questions for Gothic 2

1. Build suggestions
2. Are all vendors equal in what they will pay me? I've been sitting on a bunch of useless gold objects because I don't want to find they can be sold for more elsewhere after liquidating them (not that I haven't been able to afford anything yet).

Can someone help me out here?

I'm playing Gothic 1, and just recently I followed Mordrag to the New Camp, gave some water to the peasants and distributed the free ganja from Baal Kagan. Now Lares has sent me to talk to Mordrag again...but I can't find him. I've pretty much been around the entire camp twice, and Mordrag doesn't seem to be there. Nor does he seem to be listed on the map I have of the New Camp.◊ Where is he?

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He should be in the bar at the lake.

Have you decided how to build your character yet? If you plan on becoming a mage I highly recommend you join the fire mages in the old camp.

Also feel free to ask me anything about Gothic 1-3 + Risen 1-3.

edited 17th Mar '15 1:00:19 PM by Kiefen

Ah, I was wondering if he might be in the bar. I haven't gotten in there yet, the guys at the door keep kicking me out. It's weird that the map doesn't mention him as being there, though.

Although I'm inclined to leave my choice of camp as late as possible, I've been leaning towards the Old Camp so far.

edited 17th Mar '15 1:09:21 PM by Meklar

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For your first run the Old Camp will be a good choice.

I did pretty much everything I could on my first trip to the New Camp, then headed to the Sect Camp (which I hadn't yet visited). Interesting place, some of the nicest scenery I've seen in this game so far. There seems to be an area out in the back full of insects and some sort of strong aquatic monsters that I can't fight yet. There was also some sort of farm, I stole all the plants from it and nobody seemed to mind.

Now here's the thing. I got a quest from Ghorim to go fetch Harlok and have him take his turn at the weed-masher. The Internet informed me that the correct way to accomplish this is to beat Harlok up until he agrees to go, so I did, without too much trouble. After a brief recovery, Harlok started heading towards the masher area, and I followed him. However, he took a different route than I did; I'd been sticking to the ground level so far, but he went up a ladder and took part of his trip along an overhead walkway. Upon reaching the pair of ladders that go down to the masher area, he wandered around awkwardly for a short time, then tried to mount a ladder, failed, and promptly plummeted to the ground, knocking himself out again and, apparently, becoming unable to recover this time. This seems like it completely breaks the quest I'm supposed to do. I hadn't saved, so I can go back to shortly before he falls off the walkway, but I'm not sure how I'm supposed to prevent him from making the same mistake again.

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Convincing him to go to the stomper should already fullfill the objective. If you want him to be alive anyway (he isn't plotrelevant past that quest) you should try to sleep right after talking to him, if you switch to a different daytime he should be teleported to his designated place which after the quest would be the stomper.

If all else fails you could cheat him back to life by typing "bmarvinb" to activate the marvin-mode, that mode allows you to overtake other characters in your focus by pressing "O" and reset them by pressing "F8" (which also slightly unstucks them in the process) it is then closed by typing "b42b".

edited 23rd Mar '15 1:18:21 AM by Kiefen

I ended up running straight back to the masher area and found he was already there. It seems the game only requires him to physically walk there if the player is nearby.

Now I have another problem. Baal Orun gave me the quest to give the swampweed harvest to Cor Kalom. I tried giving him the 4 weed I had picked earlier, but he complained that he wanted at least 100. I went back and got the 50 each from the two farmers, and picked another 4 on the other side of the swamp, then went back to Cor Kalom. He still tells me that he needs at least 100 and turns me away without taking any, even though I have 108. Does the quest require me to have exactly 100 in my inventory? If so, how do I drop the extra 8?

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Mhh odd I've never heard of that bug. Try moving 8 swampweed into a chest and then talk to Kalom again.

For the record, giving Cor Kalom exactly 100 swampweed (after dumping it all into a chest and then taking out 10 at a time up to 100) worked for me.

I'm level 8 now, and seem to be tough enough to beat up some of the NPCs. I beat up Lefty without taking damage; it was actually kind of annoying, because the very first time I did it I took no damage, but I forgot to save, and then it took me like 30 more tries to do it unscathed again. Anyway, I think Baloro's Weapon is the final quest I need to do in the first chapter (Diego says I qualify to join the Old Camp anytime I want), but I don't have any grapes or cheese. Cavalorn has some cheese, but he has a lot of other cool stuff as well and I was thinking of beating him up and stealing it (I'm gonna need lots of dough to buy the good gear from the merchants). What exactly happens if you do this? I know all the Old Camp shadows and guards (and some of the diggers) are allied and will protect each other, but Cavalorn isn't near the other Old Camp people. If nobody sees me beat him up, what are the consequences, if any?

Also, is there any kind of time limit to this game? I've found that sleeping is the cheapest way to heal, and I need to heal quite often, but this causes many days to pass. Is that okay?

edited 24th May '15 7:13:37 PM by Meklar

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Beating up Cavalorn shouldn't cause any problems, since there are no witnesses you won't get trouble in the old camp.

Unless an NPC tells you to do a quest within X days ( I am not even sure if Gothic 1 even did have a quest like that tbh) nothing should be time-limited.

I ended up buying the cheese legitimately. No need to go around making enemies just yet, except when a quest demands it.

Now I'm not sure how I'm supposed to qualify for admission to the Sect Camp. I thought I'd done everything necessary to impress the gurus. My only currently active quests are Baloro's Weapon, Admission to the New Camp and Admission to the Swamp Camp, and my quest log suggests that I've impressed all five gurus (although Tyon still only sighs when I address him) and completed Ghorim's Replacement, The Swampweed Harvest, Canvassing of Customers and New Souls for the Brotherhood. However, Cor Kalom is still acting like I need to impress more gurus. I don't actually intend to join the Sect Camp, but I want to make sure I've otherwise gotten all the experience to be had from those quests. (Unfortunately, I've already failed to qualify for the New Camp, because I gave Diego the list without knowing about how it figures into the quest.)

Incidentally, I've also discovered an amusing combat tactic. Most types of ground-dwelling monsters, once alerted, will pursue me even into water, and have a unique swimming animation while traversing deep water. However, they can't actually attack me while swimming, yet I can still attack them if I'm within melee range. So if I alert a monster and then swim across a stream or pond and wait on the other side, I can hit the monster before it reaches the shore, and sometimes even block it from getting onto the shore entirely. I was able to defeat a shadowbeast this way without taking any damage, despite being only level 9. :)

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don't try this with bloodflys though they can hover over water which makes transforming into them a fast way of travel. Monsters not attacking you in water is actually handwaved in later games, water being the domain of Adanos the god of Balance.

So have you decided on your build yet ? Technically every build is viable and you can get enough skillpoints to max two stats incl. weaponskills, so most endgame buils end up as Hybrids.

I know, it doesn't work on the bloodflies. However, I'm tough enough now that I can kill bloodflies in one hit, so I'm not too concerned about them.

Also, I've found I have to be careful not to kill a monster in water that's too deep, or else sometimes the corpse will sink and I won't be able to get at the loot. But hey, that's what save scumming is for. :)

So far I've just been pumping strength, but it's about to hit 100, which I gather is the limit that I can get from training. After that, I dunno. Magic seems to be really hard to use (I had to use a scroll of sleeping magic on one of the cult novices for a quest, and I'm still not sure what keyboard sequence actually accomplished it in the end), but I might want to train a bit of it if there are some useful spells I can get. I also don't know how bows work yet, but my impression is that ammunition is limited in supply and gets used up by firing, so I'd rather not commit myself to relying on a non-renewable resource.

EDIT: I managed to fix the earlier problem with the quests, too. I noticed that when I asked Cor Kalom about joining, although he refused, I still got a new journal entry. It turns out that I then needed to go ask Baal Tondral, and after he said I had his approval (creating another new journal entry), then Cor Kalom changed his mind.

edited 28th May '15 5:44:05 PM by Meklar

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Finished the game!

The story really picked up after the end of the first chapter, and my impression is that the rest of the game felt about the same length as the first chapter alone. I went essentially pure melee, only using magic for quests and teleporting, and using bows a little towards the end when a convenient situation arose. The later part of the game actually felt easier than the early part, and by the end, with my upgraded ore armor and three pieces of the best protection jewelry, most of the monsters could barely touch me. I did drink a bunch of stat-boosting elixirs in the end, but could have done without them. I was also expecting to have to fight the Sleeper toe-to-toe, but the game just ended once I stabbed the fifth heart, without even having a fifth demon lord spawn.

I can't say I was terribly impressed with the game. Some aspects were done very well, above all the 3D artwork and aesthetic design that went into creating the game world. The music was also good, and the sense of character progression, while skewed towards the later part of the game, still felt pretty solid. The control scheme was kind of bizarre and unnecessary, but not something I wasn't able to get used to after a while. My main criticism, though, is the combat. In particular, enemies who have dodging capability and can consistently dodge my blows 50 times in a row until I manage to back them into a wall, yet can hit me every time if I let my guard down for even a moment. This fault alone did a great deal to make me feel frustrated and reduce the game's enjoyability.

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So I have just downloaded the first game (cause the one disc of game that I had was broken in a fit of rage months ago) and I have also downloaded Dark Mysteries mod.

Any changes I should be keen on? Any patches? I heard some OS have problems with the game; I used to play it on XP but now I am on 7. I haven't played game in months, although I do know how it plays. Heck, it was one of my first RPGs.

I plan on playing NotR, which I still have, and maybe the third one which I have yet to beat. If I find it.

I have also finished the mobile game years ago and played a little of Arcania.

edited 13th Sep '15 4:18:10 AM by PinkCelebi

"Screw it, I AM going to enjoy this game!"

I haven't played the Dark Mysteries mod myself.

For the game to run on 7 you might need this fix for it to run properly.

If you have an Nvidia GPU you should also update it's drivers past Version 260.89, because drivers older then that can't run Gothic 1&2 on Win7.

Feel free to ask me anything.

Against my better judgement, I've started on Gothic 2 (this is with NOTR). And although I've tried to get as far as possible without asking for help...well, I guess it was bound to come to this sooner or later.

I'm in chapter 3 (and quickly developing a healthy loathing for seekers) and I've collected all the ornament parts and given them to Nefarius. The water mages have done the ritual, and Nefarius told me to get the completed ornament from Saturas, but Saturas says he won't give it to me until Vatras says I'm trustworthy. I headed back to Vatras, and he says he wants me to find the person responsible for selling weapons to the bandits, and Martin says he needs solid evidence before he can act. The problem is, before going to Saturas I had already talked to Fernando and turned over the evidence. What happens now? Am I just permanently locked out of the NOTR questline? (Not that I have any hope of finishing the game without the extra XP anyway.) I was thinking of beating up Fernando and taking the stuff back, but that seems like a bit of a dick move and causing a fight in the upper quarter under Lord Hagen's nose is not something I'm keen on doing. Or should I just reload to my most recent save before talking to Fernando and do all the work over again?

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Vatras will trust you when you join the "Ring of the Water", but the Weapon trader quest is unrelated to joining them, you will have to complete "Where are the missing people?", if you have trouble with that quest jump into the sea from the harbor and swimm to the right (north on your map) until you find a shore, the person there will point you towards the culprit

If you still want to complete the Weapon trader quest: Even if you give him all evidences you have, him admitting counts as one and you can still get another Bandits rapier from a bandit camp.

Which faction did you join?

You might have noticed that the skill-point costs increase with every 30 points you have in a skill, this means that the longer you save permanent boni(potions, stone tablets, etc)the more they pay off

and it also means that you will have to specialize in one branch since the game isn't really balanced around hybrid-builds(you can still get range+melee since crossbows now use strength and rapiers use dexterity)

edited 23rd Dec '15 4:05:19 AM by Kiefen

I've already met Skip, if that's what you're talking about. I haven't talked to him recently, but I thought I'd pretty much solved the mystery of the missing people. The latest piece of information I gave Vatras was that Lucia joined the bandits. I haven't actually found Lucia or solved the matter of the stolen dish, although I did find her note and return it to Elvrich. The only bandits that I know for sure are still extant on the map are the ones by the lighthouse, I guess I could kill them and see if they have bandit swords. Alternatively, I may have sold a bandit sword to a merchant at some point that I could buy back and show to Martin.

I've joined the militia, but Lord Hagen won't let me become a paladin even though I've been to the Valley of Mines and brought back the letter from Garond. He still says that 'being a paladin means devoting your life to the service of Innos' and that I have to prove myself worthy, but I don't know what that entails at this point. In any case, I figure I might as well do the NOTR stuff and get the experience to be had there before I pursue Hagen's requirements.

I studied up on the skills system early on and I'm aware of most of the details surrounding training costs and permanent bonuses. I haven't used any permanent bonuses yet, and I did Ignaz's quest and learned basic alchemy from him, although I still haven't learned advanced alchemy or the ancient language (nor do I currently have enough LPs saved up to do so, I've had to spend almost everything on combat skills in order to get by). I'm going dexterity/bows and have my base dexterity up to 69 at this point, I'll probably train to 94 before using permanent bonuses. I also haven't learned lockpicking, but the Internet indicates that it might be worth the LPs due to there being some extra stone tablets inside chests. Also, I've already given a small donation to Daron in order to get Thorben's support, I hope that hasn't prevented me from making the 1000-gold donations later.

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Okay, Skip should've marked the hideout of the bandits boss on your map(like this),it is the castle-ruin by the greatfarm, you will have to talk to their leader Dexter.

As for the bandits, the ones in the lighthouse are a chapter 5 quest, but there is still a bandit camp behind Akils farm(the one right in front of the great forest), if you follow the road that leads from the farm into the forest there should be a small cave to the left.

edited 23rd Dec '15 12:20:05 PM by Kiefen

I already cleared out the bandits in the cave near Akil's farm. Tried attacking the lighthouse bandits just now and I'm still not nearly strong enough to beat them.

I tried talking to Skip again too, but he just said 'I already said, I'm not telling you where the pirate hideout is'. I don't think I ever got a map from him, I only have Nefarius's map of the stone circles and Garond's map of the ore mines.

I haven't been to Dexter's camp yet, so I guess I'll have to try that. They'll probably just kill me on sight though, if I can even get there past whatever monsters are in the way.

Also, Canthar has been released from jail and told all the other merchants that I'm an escaped convict, so now I can't buy anything in the Khorinis marketplace. He also seems to have taken Sarah's place at the weapons stand, and Sarah's not in the hotel, so I can only imagine he's done something terrible to her. :\

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He will only offer you to mark your map if you have a normal world map with you, but it is not required to finish the quest, the only thing that is absolutely required are the orders you will get from Dexter.

Yes, the Canthar quest sadly is a Heads I Win, Tails You Lose situation for poor Sarah.

edited 23rd Dec '15 1:39:13 PM by Kiefen

Okay, I've basically finished Jarkhendar. Killed Raven, activated all the teleporter stones, did the various pirate quests. There are still some monsters left there that are too tough for me (and a few more that I never got around to killing, I'll go back if I need the XP), but for the time being I'm back in Khorinis and the Eye of Innos is up next. I know from online sources where to actually find the eye, but NPCs in the game have told me to try to follow Pedro, am I supposed to trail him somehow in order to maximize my XP from quests?

Also, I've started killing seekers; my dexterity is high enough now to pierce their armor, and although they still damage me way too fast for me to meet them in a fair fight, I've managed to manipulate three of them into terrain conditions where I could shoot them without them shooting back. That said, there's no way I can take on the trio at the stone circle, 1 vs 3 is not gonna work out against those guys. I'll probably just try the 'run in and run back out again before I die' trick (maybe with a couple of summons to absorb extra damage).

In the meantime, there are a few other concerns going on. I killed the bandits in the lighthouse (it actually took several tries to keep them from killing themselves and wasting XP), and Jack invited me to walk back there with him, but I let him go on his own because his route goes right past a seeker. I hope I haven't wasted XP or some other valuable reward by not following him. Also, the cave near Akil's farm was repopulated with bandits at some point, and although I killed them, there's also a sheep in the cave with an option 'make the sheep follow you'. Is this part of some sort of quest I'm forgetting? So far I've left the sheep in the cave lest it get killed by a seeker, although knowing my luck, the game probably has a trigger where if the bandits are dead and I leave the sheep alone it dies automatically and I lose out on XP.

Another thing I'm worried about at this point is planning where my LPs go. I'm currently level 20 with 29 stored up LPs, but I only have the most basic level of alchemy and the first level of the ancient language (it seemed I had to learn it in order to talk to Quahodron, and I don't really care because I have a level 1 dexterity tablet and 2 dex would cost me 6 LPs anyway). To learn the next two levels of the ancient language would cost 25 LPs, and I only have a single level 3 dexterity tablet; the 6 dexterity would only cost 24 LPs even if I learned it after 94, so unless I assume that other level 3 tablets are worth the extra 1 LP (or that I'll be training dexterity past 124), it doesn't seem worthwhile. As far as elixirs go, it would cost me 28 LPs to learn the remaining levels of alchemy necessary to make dexterity elixirs, and I only have enough ingredients for 3 elixirs which in NOTR is apparently only 9 dexterity worth. Unless I train past 94, that's only the equivalent of 27 LPs worth. But there must be more ingredients lying around...right? Also, lockpicking is 10 LPs, that'd be worth it if I can find even 4 dexterity worth of tablets in chests, but how many are there really? There are a lot of locked chests to go through. People online indicate that one can expect to be at least level 40 by the end of the game, so that means ultimately 200 more LPs to work with...if I learned all the languages, lockpicking and enough alchemy to make dexterity elixirs, that'd leave a total of 166 remaining LPs to throw around. I currently have 79 base dexterity, so it would take 45 to train to 94 and then 120 to train to 124, doable but that leaves no room for training bow skill (currently 39%) so it's probably a bad idea. I would get at least 18 dexterity from elixirs + tablets, which means to hit 140 (for the best bow I currently own) I would need to train to 122, or 117 counting my dexterity ring, either way it doesn't leave much to invest in bow skill. Any advice on how to proceed with this?

Finally, I've noticed that in some large bodies of water there are fish swimming around under the water (a ray in the Khorinis harbor, and a giant fish in the pond near Onar's farm). Are these dangerous at all? Can one kill them for XP?

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Chasing Pedro will spawn like 4 NP Cs but they give negligible XP.

Grab-'n-run is what most people do with the eye in Not R since there are no "small" Seekers in Not R (Vannila!Gothic 2 had easy Seekers in Chapter 3 that only used Firearrows and had half the defenses)

Actually following Jack to the lighthouse isn't required, but you can ask him in Chapter 5 when you need to find a captain for your ship. If you escort the sheep back to Akil he will give you some XP, the quest itself isn't tracked in your log.

For Min-Maxing you will use your permanent boni when one point costs 5 LP (120+), there are 24 Kings Sorrels in the game, there are 19 Goblin Berries but Elite-Ors can drop them as well, so permanent potions can give you between 57 and 72 in dex at the cost of 23 skill-points, drinking them when these would cost 5 points saves you hundreds of LP. As for the Skill-tablets: There is only one Tier 3 Dex Tablet worth 6 points, however you can also get +6% in Bows and One-handed weapons and 7 x +15 Hit Points. Overall you can get 30% Bow-skill, 24% 1H-skill, +195 HP and 24 DEX through tablets as a Bow and Sword in Accord user. Here are maps for Herbs (Kronstöckel = Kings Sorrel) and Ta◊ble◊ts◊(Geschicklichkeit= DEX)

The fishes are just for decoration.

edited 31st Dec '15 9:26:40 AM by Kiefen