Gothic 3 - Let the fan patches begin...

While PB was not able or willing to fix their own game, the fans can! The first fan patch for Gothic 3 has been released an fixes the Feuerkelch Bug, could be named goblet of fire bug in Englsich game versions - head over to PC Games for more details. Looks like Gothic 3 is becoming another Vampire like item for fan patches...
More information.

It seems like good news and bad news. Its great that fans are taking up this challenge and that there is hope of Gothic 3 being playable for non masochists. But on the other hand, with most of the player base being German, will there be English versions of these patches?

My thoughts exactly. I would love to see a patch for the American version that fixes the broken\missing skills.

Somewhat off-topic: Did Gothic 2 ever get any English patches? I reinstalled it the other day and went online to patch and all I could find was a german language patch and a lot of references to an add-on called Night of the Raven(?) which I also couldn't find. Not that I mind playing G2 w/out anything extra, but I always like to get the latest version I can. The 'official site " that I located hadn't been updated since 2004.

magerette, if you play (replay?) Gothic 2 make sure you have the Night of the Raven expansion; it adds a LOT of content. Great game.

I'm happy Gothic 3 will finally be fixed and eventually end up being the game it should have been on release. Problem is I already bought it when it came out and it's still so buggy it really isn't a game that I can enjoy. I'm looking forward to the day when I can install Gothic 3 and play through it without frustration.

If I recall correctly:
The English G2 version got updated before release, as the German version was out ahead of the English. So basically, the German version got patched, the English version came with the patches included.

Sir Markus said:

I'm happy Gothic 3 will finally be fixed and eventually end up being the game it should have been on release. Problem is I already bought it when it came out and it's still so buggy it really isn't a game that I can enjoy. I'm looking forward to the day when I can install Gothic 3 and play through it without frustration.

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I wouldn't get too excited yet, fan patches can only do so much. Some bugs, such as npc's falling through the ground or getting stuck in walls, require changes to the engine that fans aren't going to be able to do.

G2 was pre-patched. G2 Gold includes NotR.

G3 US still needs patch 1.12, AFAIK.

Gorath said:

G2 was pre-patched. G2 Gold includes NotR.

G3 US still needs patch 1.12, AFAIK.

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US Gothic 3 patches just fine with 1.12 international version does it not? At least it seemed to work on my copy.

The worst news, IMO, from all of this is that we're, likely, never ever going to see the alluded to SDK for G3, which makes this game deader than a doornail.

Yes, I've read several report thats the international patch works just fine on the US version. Aspyr is just a crappy publisher, is the problem as they appear to try to be moving from mainly half-baked mac ports a year or so late with a premium markup, to also include console and windows titles.

It is fine that the German version gets one or several fanpatches.
My concern is that the German Gothic 3 version and the US Gothic 3 version do get these patches, but no fan made patches will come for the UK version of Gothic 3 (which is the one I play).

The same goes for the add-on Night of the Raven. You can either buy a German version of the add-on or an US one, but - sadly - not a UK one. You can even buy a US version of Gothic 2+the addon, called Gothic Gold, but with the high shipping costs from the US Europe, then...

Hmm, according to jowood forums, that small patch works well with any language version.

JDR13 said:

Some bugs, such as npc's falling through the ground or getting stuck in walls, require changes to the engine that fans aren't going to be able to do.

Click to expand...

Fans *could* fix those problems, but it would be very difficult without access to the source code.

Thanks Gorath/Sir Markus for the clarification on G2 Gold in U.S. Found it here for $15 if anyone else is looking.

Fan patches can be quite effective. I think of Temple of Elemental Evil and all that the Circle of Eight did to add/restore content and fix many bugs. Though I don't know how broken it is, I hope Gothic 3 can get some benefit from the same kind of thing.

The unofficial bugfix package is up to version 1.1 and includes:

Frithjof-Fix by Hans Trapp:
This fix allows you to hand the last fire chalice to Frithjof. You'll get some dialogs and 1500XP. The quest will get solved.

Perk-Fix by FreeSergey:
This fix makes the perks "Fire Mage" and "Improve Armor" available. Teachers are Karrypto and Mannig.

Blacksmith-Sound-Fix by Valfaris222:
Sometimes when liberating a town a false sound was played. This is fixed now.

Speech fix for Musan by zyankali~:
This one fixes the missing dialog options and wrong dialog between Musan and the Hero.

Saw-Quest-Fix by AHO:
This fix solves the bug which caused Vandorn in Vanguard to expect 15 instead of 5 saws.

Slavegold-Fix by buecherwurm93:
This fix solves a bug which made a slave in Silden give you twice the gold you were meant to be given.

Stringtable-Fix by Humanforce:
This fix corrects many spelling and dialog errors. This might just be noticable in the German version.

More info and downloads:
http://forum.jowood.com/forumdisplay.php?f=661

Thanks for the details and the link!!

Thanks for the infos.

A lot of things are in motion. I would suggest to give them a few weeks to sort the organisational stuff out.

This is some great stuff - always excellent to see the fan community step up like this!

Thanks for the info Dark Savant, you're da man! (or woman)

Once again the community proves it is one of (if not *the*) best thing about the Gothic universe. If any of the PB employees truly believe the stuff they were spouting about doing right by the fans, they need to go out of their way to help to community develop these patches. Even better, they should lend a helping hand.

Our big two "L"s for "Losers"

Appears like the community is thriving well on making our two fine "companies" look ever more shabby, self-absorbed and ludicrous in their claims around this big blunder of theirs.

If one wouldn´t have a foreshadowing about the vainness of such a move, her or him could become very tempted to recommend stopping their fixing efforts and instead have a check of the value of these "proves of concept" (that an at least tech. patch is not as hard to achieve as it had been made appearing from official side - i mean, we´re talking about things partially as trivial as changing a line in a quest file! Plainly ridiculous!) for some legal action.
One that could force those to kindergarten pupils "Blowood" and "Fish `n Chips" together for yet delivering a last official, comprehensive patch.

One certainly would like to them whining and winding around then.

Am i sounding like i´m starting to wanna see some blood on the floor finally of those responsible?
Mhm, astonishing...


Ragon, The Mage

P.S.: Of course not everything might be as easy to fix as those identified by the community so far - yet the proclaimed necessity to have a rehashed engine in order to also fix tech. issues stands on feet of clay ever more by the day IMHO.
It would really be a relief if just s.o. could turn these into pressure that would get our "two big hunks" moving for some action on G3s persisting flaws.