Gothic 2 + NOTR question thread (may contain spoilers)

Hi all,

Instead of polluting other threads I'll start a thread like Fluent did for his playthroughs.
As with Fliuent, please try not spoil the game itself. I'm having fun with that.

I sometimes do not like to get stuck though, so for example :



1. A quick question. Do chests respawn items between chapters ? I'm just wondering if I should go through all the chests again. I assume not.

2. I am now in the addon world. Just went in. Is it always the case that stone things have no resistance against 'blunt' weapons ? I tried killing a stone sentinel with my sword and it killed me. I used a skullsplitter and it died in two hits.

3. My fire arrow didn't damage the stone sentinels at all. Are they immune to all magic ?

4. I'm afraid I've been going a bit too much jack of all trades.
I'm playing as a mage
I have no LP anymore and I have the following stats at lvl 17:
Strength : ~72
Dex : ~42
HP : 450+
Mana : ~45 (still have several tablets to use, but I'm not sure if I should train my mana up first a bit. It just costs so many LP)

Can get animal trophies : Skin, claws, teeth and dragon snapper horn
Can read tablets lvl 3
Can make normal mana and health potions
Can create lvl 1 (fire arrow) and lvl 2 runes (fireball, ice lance or arrow, not sure which one now).

What do you think ?

1. No

2. I can't remember if certain weapons were more effective against the stone guardians, but it makes sense that blunt weapons would work better.

3. No, but iirc they are highly resistant to some magics.

4. I think you need to concentrate more on being a mage.

Followup for 4.
Should I invest in Mana only from now on then ?

That's critical. On the one hand you'll only get the higher magic circles later in the game. But the add-on area is very difficult, and you would need them now.

Hopefully I don't get massacred by the critters

I totally envy you.

I finished my 4th play through about a year ago. My first play through had me doing 5+ hours sessions. No movies, books or television my first time through - no time for anything else.

Feel free to mess up, you're likely to replay.

edit: Last night I was trying to figure which game to start, Divinity Original Sin or Might and Magic 10. And I had a brief moment of sadness because while I expect both games to be good, I knew they would not be as immersive as G2.

Dajjer, you should try replaying but using a completely different mindset.

For example, play as a righteous paladin (has to report every crime and can only do the 'right' thing in the eyes of Innos), or as a rogue hunter (that always goes for the money, doesn't help people unless he can gain directly from it and only fights with a bow).

Really immerse yourself in the role.

At first that was my plan to play as a righteous mage, but then I decided I wanted to know what the Thieves' guild quests were about and so on.

If I play again anytime soon, I would go for a righteous Paladin.

I always role play when ever I play a good RPG. And it's always good to have a code that's why I can never play evil. Otherwise the tiniest of slights and I am offended and you are dead. What kind of game world would that be to play in where I go on rampages because I am evil. (Answer-a short one)

Example

INT. - General Goods store - Day

Evil Me
How much for the curved sword?

Shoppkeeper
200 gold

Evil Me
Tis a straight sword you piece of scum - DIE

I loot the body and the store but since the game only allows the NPC to have 20 gold I get mad and kill the first civilian I see once I leave the store. This brings in the Town guards who I also have to fight and kill. After their deaths, I leave town with a bounty on my head. Still needing that curved sword I head over to Free Haven

Well, in Gothic you'd have been ass-whooped by the merchant if you try that too early

Well it seems my build isn't too bad for now. I can kill all critters next to the bandit camp with relative ease. I'm going to go into the library of scholars next …

Ok, Orcs are still a pain. My magic isn't strong enough yet and I can only kill them one by one in melee as three strikes and I'm dead.



Got through the library alright. Sentinels are easy enough and using two ice lances, I can kill the fire devils in melee afterwards.

Your build sounds about right, except the dex. That's likely to end up being useless, but it's only a few points so it doesn't really matter.

Anyway, if you can deal with fire devils, you're doing it right. They're about as tough as it's likely to get anytime soon, as you won't be forced to actually fight Orcs for some time. Well, with the exception of the ones you've already taken care of, and they get sliced'n diced pretty good by the pirates. I love that quest by the way.

Glad you're having fun with Gothic 2! It's one of those games I definitely have to play in the future as I've heard just great things about it.

Good luck with your play-through and have fun .

Thank you everyone.

A spoilerish question:

1.

If you can try to minimise spoilers that would be good.

As a sidenote, playing as a warrior mage is quite fun and seems possible. I might have a harder time in the end game due to lack of mana, but for now it's good as I can easily kill fire lizards with my ice lances, while I fight humanoids with my longsword


EDIT :

One more question :

2. When should I stop training mana before I use my permanent enhancers ? I'm at 64 mana now.

Well, I've played further anyway. I hope I didn't miss anything big.

I'm now back in the Valley of Mines. Trying to get to the right places isn't easy when things can kill you in two hits.

Tip is to save often !

Lizard man are way too difficult for me for now. I can handle orcs one by one with ease, but my magic isn't strong enough yet. Ice Block would be useful.

Game is still amazing though. I like the pace and I like that I can still be killed by things even though I'm 40 hours into the game.

The pace is great. You get some talk then some fight then some talk then some fight.

It's not a massive dungeon crawl or a massive book.

1) Nope, you didn't miss anything.
2) Well, the cost scales. At 90+ it'll require 4 points per mana, at 120 it's 5 and that's the max cost per mana. Basically, you're going to have to make a choice: Either try to push through to 90+ with 3 points per mana (it'll cost you about 90 points to get 30 mana needed, so that's 9 levels), or you can just start using the permanent stuff now.

Personally, I'd probably start using it now, in addition to spending some points in ancient language (rank 3, if you haven't got it already). Also, you can increase your max mana by eating a lot of mushroom (the smaller of the two grey kinds, I don't recall the name) and giving a lot of stone tablets to Vatras (save up as many stone tablets as possible - the more you have, the more mana you get).

Hey,

Thanks. I didn't realise the thing about the stone tablets, so it's too late now. Haven't found any for a while. I did have 11 or 12 when I came back from Jharkendar.

I have already all three ranks in ancient languages. The only tablets I have not yet used are the magic ones. My character is a good battlemage right now.

In chapter 3 now and will go into the valley of mines soon with the eye.

Having skeletons has been quite useful lately as I am neither strong enough in battle or strong enough in wizardry to really kill much.

I can kill one orc warrior at a time with the ice lance.

I now also have ice block, so single seekers are a piece of cake.

50 hours in and still can't get enough.

I certainly did not have this feeling with Gothic 3 …

It felt too massive and badly paced. too many fetch quests. Combat was quite boring as well.

IMO G2 is the masterpiece of open world RPGing.

And sadly they simply don't make too many of these types of games. You'll probably do a replay sometime in the near future. (My second replay was with NOTR and as a mage).

As far as G3, it took a while for me to complete. I think I had at least 3 aborted attempts until I finally finished it last year. Funny thing though is that as massive and badly paces as it is, it's still better than the 95% of all the RPGs.

Also G3 had a better ending (pace, story and sequence) than G2. And the way G3 ended makes a G4 sequel problematic, but still welcome.