Gothic So how hard is NotR really?

After losing all my game saves for Gothic 2 (quite some time ago) to a hard drive crash, I never really got around to starting G2 all over again from the start. I've read a lot of good things about the add-on Night of the Raven and thought I might start over with it, but almost always it is mentioned, that it is also harder than vanilla G2 - a lot harder, if you believe some of the comments.

Now, I never was super-good in G2, but I got around ("Kneel before my mad fighting skillz!" ). My question to NotR veterans is, how much harder is NotR, really? Am I conforted with wargs and skeletons from the get go, or is it somewhat more sensible? Can someone who is not a hardcore mouse-twitcher survive longer than 5 minutes in NotR?

the addon is not that hard that you cannot kill stuff or you have to kill way stronger monsters.... the hard part is in the LP.... and the cost of certain skills... so you have more stuff to kill....

anyway i really suggest playing it since it fills up the gaps in G2 (simple ... i mean with no addon)

so have fun
EDIT: Also welcome to the forums

If you really think it's to hard, you can always use a toolkit for NotR -> With it you can make it at the same level of Gothic 2 or even easier.

NotR is clearly harder than G2 vanilla. This means the easy opponents are a little tougher and the tough opponents simply kill you with one blow if you get into negotiations with them too early.
Things get a little easier at the beginning if you play a straight fighter and don´t waste skill points on esoteric stuff. NotR adds 30 hours of content including a new world into the first two chapters. So there are always a lot of quests open to gain XP.
You should certainly play it if you liked G2 or Gothic. It´s hard to explain how many small improvements NotR adds.

I found NOTR rather frustrating, but enjoyable anyway. The character development has to be more focused, or else you end up gimpy through the first 40 hours and become angry (like me )

There's far more reloading in NotR, and you certainly need to think a lot more to get through it. Especially the LP costs for skills makes it tougher, so I'd plan out my character before creating one, and then only learn the skills needed - no more, no less. If you suddenly start learning other things, that are merely "nifty", you'll have a very hard time beating the dragons later on.

Also, make sure to pick up and save all the "Summon Demon" scrolls you can get your hands on. There's at least 2-3 fights I hardly ever manage without those scrolls (unless the character is built extremely well).

Edit: Personally I also feel that NotR is more enjoyable than regular G2 is. G2 + NotR is definetly one of my all-time favourite games.

Since I already had played through G2 a few times I only played the first three chapters with NotR, and it does add a lot to those chapters. If I was new to Gothic 2 I wouldnt think of starting without the add-in.

The Add-on adds a lot of permanent stat boosters (stone tablets). Since costs for improving stats and skills go up you should save this until you have higher skills/attributes, particularly those for your primary stats (e g strength for a fighter). One can also save 5LPs here and there by raising skills to just one point below the threshold (for instance I think sword skills become more expensive at 30, so raise to 29) and then raising it by 5 points in one go. It adds up to a few levels worth of points.

And I didnt find the game much harder (except for that you have to plan your character build, which I dont really like) before the chapter where dragon snappers are all over the world. Highly annoying creatures.

Harder monsters start appearing in normal locations starting with Chapter 3 or so.

The monsters are stronger and you need more LP later on in a skill -> 20 LP for 5 strength. Potions don't have the same effect -> they are weaker. Instead of selling for 1/2 the price, it becomes 1/3 now.
This is exactly why some people went for the NotR customizer in my previous post here, just to get it at the same level of Gothic2.

i thought PB intentionally made it difficult so that the players would spend more time role-playing, seeking & completing every last quest for those precious XPs. but thanks to this thread, now i know.. btw if it isn't obvious already, i didn't get to play vanilla Gothic2 - NotR was the only one i played.