Hammer clan mine

i have a problem whenever trying to liberate the mine, all the party members get killed and leave me fighting alone. is this common to everyone? that fatso, Thorald even turned on Lisk during the battle and they attacked each other. this is very poor AI.

Sadly most of the so called "help" you get from other party members is more like an escort mission. It is easiest to just go in and clear out the mine(or any other escort type mission) by yourself, then go talk to them to complete the mission and get the exp and bonuses.

in the end, that's what i'm planning to do despite the numerous orc warriors and shamans inside the mine.

During last weekends playthrough I used the allies for the first time, and I found that they were somewhat helpful even if two (out of the four I had recruited) died. To help their survivability:

Keep on moving as you kill off enemies: the enemies respawn in groups that include shamen, and I think you need to kill the "leaders" and the "boss" that are at certain points in the mine.

Take out shamen as soon as you spot them. They are the main killers of your friends since they wont "queue up" nicely and might freeze your allies with their ice lance attack. Focus on archers (which wont "queue up" either) once the shamen are taken out, then on the melee enemies.

Your allies can actually soak up a fair bit of damage and distract large groups of melee enemies while you take out the shamen.

I think you can hand out healing potions once a wave of enemies have defeated (do it quickly before you move on).

At any rate it helps a lot to have invested in HP if you want to melee your way through the mine (even more if you are doing it solo). Having 5-600 hitpoints is very useful.

They don't actually respawn, but they're all connected, so when you trigger the attack at the bottom, most of the cave will be drawn to you (often in packs). What I usually do is just find a good position for an ambush, and kill them as they come. When they stop coming, I move to the next spot. I often finish clearing the cave by the time I reach the furnace.

I find that the best use of followers is to have them do a bit of tanking - with "Heal Other", you can keep them up for quite a while.

Yes, they are connected (it works just like a city liberation quest in that regard).
I'm not sure about the spawning of new enemies (not respawning) in the case of the mine though. I have had new similarly composed groups of generic orcs pop up "behind" me both when attacking from below and above, and in the latter case they couldnt possibly come from the outside. I havent seen that kind of behaviour in other liberation quests.

I think you will spend a hell of a lot more in potions or "heal other" mana/scrolls, than simply doing it all yourself. I loaded a save just now and totally cleared the mine without using even a single potion of any kind. I was toting a flame sword, decent armor and about 250-300ish health. Lured them out one by one as best i could and did the mean deed on them. The shaman, or maybe it is shamen, whatever….tend to stay at the back of the attack. So you can pull even a large group away from the extremely deadly magic dudes and then run back thru that large group to attack the shaperson before the others can get back to protect him. Same thing with archer orcs. Just be sure to time your strafes so you don't get clobbered by a fireball/ice or archer missile when running in for the attack. After the archers/shaman are dead it is a simple matter to strafe and kill all the rest.

Originally Posted by Zaleukos
Yes, they are connected (it works just like a city liberation quest in that regard).
I'm not sure about the spawning of new enemies (not respawning) in the case of the mine though. I have had new similarly composed groups of generic orcs pop up "behind" me both when attacking from below and above, and in the latter case they couldnt possibly come from the outside. I havent seen that kind of behaviour in other liberation quests.

They are not spawning behind you, they are going through solid rock or walls. In G1 Gorn teaches you very early to clear everything behind you. That doesn't always work in G3 since you can be attacked from a creature stuck in a rock face beside, behind, under, or over you Hell I've been attacked by invisible creatures several times. I'd hear the "music" indicating I'd activated a creature, look in every possible direction and not see a thing, then………WHACK!

Yes, those invisible creatures (bugs) are what makes Gothic 3 a lesser game then the previous ones.

Originally Posted by Uriziel
In G1 Gorn teaches you very early to clear everything behind you.

Ah, such fond memories!

Originally Posted by Uriziel
They are not spawning behind you, they are going through solid rock or walls. In G1 Gorn teaches you very early to clear everything behind you. That doesn't always work in G3 since you can be attacked from a creature stuck in a rock face beside, behind, under, or over you Hell I've been attacked by invisible creatures several times. I'd hear the "music" indicating I'd activated a creature, look in every possible direction and not see a thing, then………WHACK!

That is certainly a possible explanation.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Ah, such fond memories!

Even if the frequency of bugs was lower it's not like the previous installments were perfectly polished either. One not so fond memory is that of Gorn going hostile to the player once hit by an(-y) enemy in the new mine (or was that resolved in the latest patches?)

Originally Posted by Zaleukos
One not so fond memory is that of Gorn going hostile to the player once hit by an(-y) enemy in the new mine (or was that resolved in the latest patches?)

is this a variation of the bug that causes the NPCs attack each other. it was really annoying if that happens. imo, there should have been a way to avoid "friendly-fire".

Even if the frequency of bugs was lower it's not like the previous installments were perfectly polished either. One not so fond memory is that of Gorn going hostile to the player once hit by an(-y) enemy in the new mine (or was that resolved in the latest patches?)

If memory serves me correctly that usually happened if you looted any of the bodies of the dead from the New Camp after they got attacked by the Old Camp.

Originally Posted by lanux128
is this a variation of the bug that causes the NPCs attack each other. it was really annoying if that happens. imo, there should have been a way to avoid "friendly-fire".

It's not due to friendly fire (which really wasnt much of an issue in the earlier Gothics if you used melee weapons). IIRC there was a bug inside the new mine that made Gorn go hostile when he was hit by enemy fire (or possibly when you looted corpses as JDR says, my memory is hazy and it's not something I bothered to study in detail back then), something that was hard to avoid given the amount of ranged enemies in there. It wasnt much of a problem since it was easy to stay out of his (and his pathfinding's) reach in the maze of the mine. It didnt affect events outside the mine since the mine was a different cell and "inside Gorn" from a technical point of view was a different character than the outside incarnation.

Friendly fire in G3 is an odd beast. It seems like you cant hit "party members" with friendly fire, only some (but not all) neutrals. I dont really mind friendly fire that much since it makes sense to punish one for using a halberd in the midst of a friendly crowd. The dumb auto-targetting that sometimes rather targets "friendly neutrals" than the neutral you want to make hostile is a much bigger problem…

i think i'm a bit fortunate because i first played Gothic 1 much much later than the release date so i had it all patched-up and the bugs were not much of a problem. it's a trend that i continued with the later series..

I didnt even notice the Gorn bug myself. NPCs are immortal until their work is done in G1, so I just left him behind to distract a bunch of enemies while I ventured further into the mine My problems were that I sometimes didnt get XP for killing with magic (fixed in the later patches) and quest trigger bugs in the orc cemetery (which never got fixed, it forced me to restart due to lack of backup saves).

I find that it is a good rule of thumb to wait for two patches before making the final judgment on games. For some reason all the games I like tend to be bug-ridden upon release. Medieval 2 TW, Football Manager, Gothic series…

The bug with Gorn is triggered when he is hit by enemy bolts (crossbows). He somehow believes that it was the main character attacking, and beats you up (doesn't steal anything and doesn't kill you). He might also throw you some odd comments if you try talking to him in there, stuff like "One of the members of the old camp is dead, and I heard your name in connection with it" (or something similar).

"Move" requested

I would suggest that the 'watch' moderators split this thread from JDR13's #10 post - and move it to a new thread in the Gothic 1/2 forum, renaming it something similar to "Gorn in the free mine bug" - removing my suggestion if required.

Regards
Wulf