Various Thoughts

If you’ve heard anything about this game, it’s probably something along the lines of “It’s not a real Gothic game!“. That’s a lie, as it absolutely is a successor to Gothic 3 in just about every way… albeit a simplified one.

Leveling-up has been reduced to raising combat abilities alone (as non-combat ones have been removed); three each for melee/magic and two for ranged. The spell system has also been simplified into three 3-tier main spells and four or so rune varieties, which act like infinite-use scrolls. While these changes are drastic, they’re perfectly in-line with the simplifications made between Gothic II & 3 (and nothing much is lost with the spell count reduction besides summoning, as only a handful were ever any good anyway).

Two less severe changes are the switch from giant open maps to a mix of large maps and dungeon/corridor-like areas, and the flattening of the difficulty curve. The map change will be an issue of personal taste, and personally I felt Gothic 3‘s huge map quickly wore out its welcome while the sequential large maps to explore in here ended up more manageable (though the dungeon sequences are pretty bad). The difficulty change is what I suspect caused the most wailing and gnashing of teeth, as no longer can you wander into an enemy that will one-shot-kill you with no warning (unless you’re playing on the hardest difficulty with a glass canon equipment setup). However, melee is still king at early levels while magic still ends up more efficient late-game.

Things that haven’t changed, despite some of the baseless complaints that I’ve seen to the contrary, include the protagonist personality (still sarcastic), the character depth (the side-characters are exactly the same as they were in the two prequels… Lester might actually have more of a personality here), and the voice acting quality. Some other things that haven’t changed are the quests (decently varied and most of the main ones give you multiple ways of completing them) and the combo->dodge->combo melee style.

Notes:
– Use a guide to find the collectibles, as some are hidden maliciously.
– Don’t sell anything that doesn’t have ‘Loot’ in its description; keep a scythe if you want the Belial reward.
– Sold items disappear the moment you close the dialog.
– Oddly enough, the Belial Scythe is only useful for Ranged builds.
– There does not seem to be any sort of respec option.
– Once you hit a Magic Power of 85+ you can switch over to a Firebolt-first strategy.
– Inferno deals the best magic damage while Slay-enhanced lightning is a good finisher.
– Raising both Ranged and Magic is somewhat redundant.
– Blocking is pointless.
– Locked doors are tied to quests, and some of the tunnels in the North Stewark area will remain inaccessible depending on which main path you choose.

Well, Gothic 3 is now finished. Went with the neutral ending and didn’t bother with any of the ‘Destroy the Rebels!’ or ‘Liberate the City from the Orcs!’ quests. Ended up with the following naked stats:

The snow area is a pain in the ass, both because there are tons of enemies and because it’s set up vertically as well as horizontally. I actually stopped looting things here and switched over to a magic-first attack strategy because there’s just far too much stuff to kill and melee is such a crapshoot. It’s very grindy. Not helping matters is that the neutral ending requires you to walk across literally half the world map (from the northeast corner of the snow area to the far west midlands area). At least the Hailstorm and Time Bubble spells are both pretty good. Some things to be aware of if you decide to play this game:

• General
• Do not turn on the Community Patch Alternative Balancing option if you do not know what to expect; being stuck with a subpar build can really ruin your day.
• The Alternate AI option is fine though.
• If you load a saved game, NPCs will have both lost HP and stolen weapons restored (this includes summons).
• Raising Endurance is a waste.
• You shouldn’t bother raising HP until the very end of the game, once you have everything else you want.
• Raising Mana is useful, but you’ll want to get Mana Regeneration first.
• The Resistance to Cold/Fire skills are useful in the relevant areas, but you can get those free from armor.
• Resistance to Poison is useful if you keep getting hit by Bloodflies.
• Acrobatics and Resistance to Disease are both completely unnecessary.
• Strength
• Melee is really bad compared to magic.
• You can apparently only learn Regeneration from two characters, and only once you’ve resolved the Rebel/Orc war.
• Hunting
• The three animal part skills are necessary for a number of quests.
• Bows are pretty good, but the hit detection is weird sometimes.
• Ancient Knowledge
• If you run from town to town you can get your Ancient Knowledge fairly high by reading books and buying Stone Tablets.
• The Mana Regeneration and Quick Learner skills are fantastic and you should try to get them as soon as possible.
• The Druid skill is basically useless, but the other 3 ‘Mage’ skills are essential if you plan to use damage spells of the relevant type.
• The basic Ice Lance spell is pretty godly since the charged version freezes most targets solid.
• Summon Demon is good, but note that anyone not in your party will attack it on sight.
• Frost Wave and Ice Explosion are too slow to be good for much of anything.
• Poison and Terror are good utility spells for when you need to single out a particular target.
• Amnesia is a panic button spell for when you’ve accidentally attacked an ally and don’t have a recent save.
• You can only learn the highest level spells once you’ve chosen a god to support in the endgame.
• Thieving
• The Pickpocket skills are worthless.
• Master Thief combined with the Sleep spell basically breaks the game.
• The Lockpick skills, the first two at least, may as well be essential.
• If you ever see a chest named something other than ‘Metal’, open it. You don’t have to take what’s inside, but the more you open the better the treasures get.
• The Knockout skill is inferior to the Sleep spell.
• The Murder skill is kind of cool but ultimately just a novelty.
• Smithing
• Prospector allows you to complete a number of quests much quicker.
• Sharpen Weapon is good if you use swords.
• The weapon-creation skills are only really worth it if you use 1H swords.
• The Pure Ore skill isn’t worth it at all.
• The Heavy Armor skill is decent, but not really good enough to spend points on.
• Alchemy
• There’s no need to ever spend LP on Alchemy.
• Brew Permanent Potions is good.
• Poison Arrows is decent, but Poison Weapon is pretty bad.
• You’ll rarely need Mana Potions once you get the Mana Regeneration skill.
• It’s doubtful you’ll ever need Transformation Potions.

Calling this the ‘midpoint’ is a bit disingenuous, since this is an open world game similar to the Elder Scrolls series and doesn’t have specific story chapters like its prequel. However, I do have 6 Fire Chalices and equipment in the middle/high-middle range of effectiveness (twin crafted/sharpened Bastard Swords, Ranger Bow, & Light Assassin Armor). So, having just unlocked and reached Ishtar I figured this is as good a place as any to mark as the halfway point.

When I first started out I tried to ‘clear’ the area around each new populated area before moving on. Due to the static leveled nature of the game this turned out to be quite inefficient and I switched to getting from town to town as quickly as possible while only really exploring the specific areas quests sent me to. Picking up the Quick Learning skill as soon as possible was in fact a very good idea; waiting so long was a mistake and you can get it even earlier than 9th level if you rush from town to town to collect all the Ancient Tablets being sold. I ended up making three more mistakes though. The first was learning the Pickpocket skills, the second was learning the Frostwave spell, and the third was learning both Sleep and Knockout (Sleep is exponentially better if you have the Master Thief and Water Mage skills).

Pickpocket works similarly to how it did last game, except success is based on your Thieving level and you don’t get experience for succeeding. This isn’t so bad on its own, what makes it worthless is that with the Master Thief skill and Sleep spell you can can steal everything a target has on them with no chance of failure. 15 LP for a chance at stealing small amounts of Gold is quite obviously far worse than 10 LP for being able to steal a target’s entire inventory essentially at will. As for Frostwave, the damage is considerably reduced the further away the targets are, and the Freeze effect doesn’t last very long and ends immediately if the target is attacked. So it’s basically useless.

Aside from those issues and the Russian roulette nature of melee combat it’s been more or less smooth sailing through the desert area in my self-appointed quest to unlock Ishtar. In retrospect I’m not really sure why I wanted to unlock it since I planned to use a Master Sword rather than learn Master Two-Weapon Fighting… but then again maybe I will learn it since making a Master Sword is incredibly difficult; while the recipe can be easily bought, one of the ingredients apparently only shows up in sequential rare chest loot. Character stats at this point are as follows (Big Game Hunter and Resist Heat are from equipment):

My path from here is murky. I need to try out the Ice Explosion and Hailstorm spells to see if either does decent damage at a decent range, and if so then I’ll probably try to get Ancient Knowledge up to 300 for Mana Regeneration. Otherwise I guess I’ll pick up the Bless Weapon spell, raise Dex to 200 for Master Two Weapon Fighting, and then try to find some better swords.

The 4th chapter seems to give Mages the short end of the stick. While Paladins get a bunch of Orc warchiefs to kill and Mercenaries get hoards of Lizardmen and the Dragon Eggs they guard, Mages just get a ‘Find the Possessed’ quest which results in an amulet that protects against stifling. It’s a bit useful, sure, but the Dragon Eggs or combat XP would have been better. All classes get a ton of new spawns in the add-on world (Dragon Snappers, Trolls, Skeletons) and Valley of Mines (Orcs, Dragon Snappers) which combined with the Dragons equals quite a bit of XP to be gained.

Chapter 5 once again seems to give Mages the shaft. Here Paladins and Mercenaries get their best armor while Mages get a potion that gives +5 Str & Dex. I could understand Mage armor having the lowest Weapon/Arrow/Dragon resistances… but it also has the lowest Magic resistance. Respawn-wise there’s only a relative handful of new Seekers wandering the main area, so the XP gained here is rather paltry. My naked stats at the end of this chapter looked like this.

The final chapter takes place in a new area infested with Orcs, Lizardmen, Undead, Seekers, and even a couple Dragons. 4/5-on-one battles here are rather common so if you have access to Fire Rain or Wave of Ice Runes/Scrolls now’s the time to use them. Make sure to save two Wave of Ice castings for the Dragons though. Lots of XP and stat-boosting potions here.

In the end there only really ended up being 3 notably useful spells: Ice Block (incapacitates most things), Ice Wave (incapacitates multiple things at once, even Dragons), and Fire Rain (kills everything around you). There’s no point in spending LP on Runes for any other spells when scrolls will suffice.

I kind of want to try a replay with a Dex-focused Mercenary now, but I think I may wait a bit and instead go right into Gothic 3. I’m a bit worried that there don’t seem to be any comprehensive walkthroughs for it, but unlike with this game it’s supposedly extremely difficult to cripple your character in the 3rd game with unoptimized LP usage… so maybe I’ll be okay doing a ‘blind’ playthrough.

About to start chapter 4 now with the main area, add-on area, and Valley of Mines (except the dragon lairs) all cleared. Naked stats at level 39 are: 84 Str, 88 Dex, 81 Mana, 59 1H, & 38 Bow with 71 LP currently available. In case it isn’t obvious, I’ve been saving all the permanent Mana bonus items/rewards. Initially I wasn’t going to use them until I hit 124 (which is when raising it would cost 5LP per point)… but I don’t think I’ll gain enough levels to make it that far, and so will instead use them once I hit 94.

At this point a few things have become clearer and I’ve had to revise my earlier plan. Learning Ice Lance was a mistake (it’s faster and cheaper to kill things in melee) and I’m going to skip learning the Awaken Golem spell since there are plenty of scrolls lying around. I think I’ll also skip Destroy Undead since the only thing it seems to be really useful for are Shadow Warriors (Skeleton Mages turned out to be very easy to kill in melee), which are rare.

Seekers ended up being a joke since their direct damage spells are the same as yours (i.e. bad). Sure they might cast Rain of Fire, but you can clearly see when the spell switch happens and they should be long dead before then. Compared to the hoards of Orcs and Lizard Men I’ve had to clear out so far they’re a walk in the park. Speaking of Lizard Men, I find it odd that they die quicker than Orcs.

One last thing to note is that the Gold/NotR version of the game has removed most of the stat-boosting items from the Valley of Mines. Elixirs that used to be in remote locations are gone, Dragon Roots appear to be gone, the lone King’s Sorrel is gone, and most of the Goblin Berries are gone (I found two; there used to be 9). So keep that in mind when planning your build.