Gothic 3 Bugs, broken quests, crash-spots, graphics errors, voice errors, etc...

How many times has your game crashed?


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    39
About 20 times, most of them occurred after I started using Magic (this was with patch 1.08). Quick-saving right after teleporting, or with fire effects (like a burning corpse) around probably accounts for about two thirds of the crashes.

Other (known) issues that havent been mentioned yet:

The journal: Besides quests not registering/unregistering there is the matter of the journal not recording all important info, and sometimes recording FAULTY info like "go north" when the target is to the SOUTH. The journal should contain more information and, if there is a logical reason for an NPC to give false directions, put it around the lines of "xxx says the target is to the north".

The beginning sequence Sometimes the conversatiosn with Lester, Gorn, et al doesnt trigger at all. Apparently things have to be done exactly in order.

Void issues[/ I've had both wolves and a certain fire mage in a cave NE of Montera go through walls. I had to use Marvin and goto to find him.

NPCs failing to reach their destination while walking in the background After 57 game days Milten hadnt reached the monastery yet. Marvin+Goto found him in central Nordmar, pitched up against an ice golem and some goblins. My guess is that he would have reached the destination eventually, but that it would have taken a long time. If I accidentally had gotten close to him during my travels he might have gotten into combat and died though. My guess is that PB handles such travel by simply teleporting the NPC when the main char is out of range, and that the triggers for the teleporting are bugged. I've had similar experiences with NPCs supposed to join rebel camps (and that in cases where I had killed off all the wildlife on the way). It also happened with a silver (?) wolf hunter outside Silden who took TWO weeks to get back to his cabin after hunting, in spite of it being within viewing range of the wolf pack:p

AI pathfinding Horrid, like in many other games. Exploitable when enemies cant find the way (I became a dragon slayer on top of the peak N of Geldern using a simple bow), frustrating when NPCs are unable to follow you (a certain slave got stuck multiple times on the way out of Mora Sul).

Any quest where you are supposed to work in tandem with NPCs They run straight into packs of wolves/rhinos/snappers before unsheathing their weapons. Particularly frustrating when the NPC is a lightly armoured bow user (Diego, many hunters). This also goes for quests where NPCs are supposed to go somewhere on their own (more people for Okara, etc) where they tend to be killed off by wildlife unless you either are out of range (then they teleport) or kill off the wildlife before they start walking... Ironically quests where you run with NPCs are fairly easy, as they can outrun most wildlife...

Quest triggers in the above quests Taking a hunting quest as example: An in-quest trigger only goes off if you reach a certain destination (usually in the middle of the pack of wolves that I use as an example) BEFORE killing off the wolves. Upon reaching the destination the NPC says something along the lines of "here we are, lets rock". Without this trigger the quest might not register as complete in the journal (this happened with my silver wolf quest). It is however extremely unlikely that the destination is reached before combat against the wolves is initialized, and the outcome of the combat is either the death of the NPC or the killing of the target pack, both making it impossible to trigger that stupid dialogue. The NPC will however still register the quest as completed and reward you!

Sometimes NPCs and enemies are spawned close to each other Minecrawlers entering Okara, the humans in the Vengard Temple battling orcs and attracting ALL orcs in the vicinity, a certain hunter between Ardea and Vengard getting slaughtered by wolves, and Orc caravan from Nordmar killed by wolves and boars before you get close to it.... This happens on an inconsistent basis. Sometimes this might be intentional, but (as it occasionally and as inconsistently happened in earlier Gothics as well) I suspect it is a bug. In the orc caravan case it makes a quest trivial.

Graphics glitches along the mountain pass leading from Trelis to Varant There are some unfinished textures along the way, particularly around a bandit camp just before the fallen paladin.

Now this sounds like a lot of complaints, but there are only two major issues. First the crashes (that destroy save games if they occur while quicksaving). This is apparently dealt with by 1.09 which I havent tried (I finished the game before 1.09 was released and I want to not have all quests in fresh memory before starting over). It also seemed to be avoidable, since I only had a few crashes (and NO save-crashes) before starting to use fireballs... The second and quite fundamental flaw is that of NPCs getting slaughtered in the wilderness unless you clear the path before them. This is idiotic and hurts the immersion of the game quite badly, and I think Piranha Bytes will have to do some major changes to fix it (force-teleport NPCs in an unrealistic way, code a completely new AI that tries to avoid enemies or run through them, make the NPCs always follow the PC rather than choose the path to a destination, that kind of re-engineering).

As for the Okara needs more people quest the initial poster seems to have missed the miner who sits by a campfire to the Southeast (?) of Okara. The quest would however not finish even after I picked up this guy and the four others mentioned in this thread.

In spite of my complaints I had great fun completing the game:) The real bummer is the babysitting of NPCs.

As for tech details I'm running the game with a P4-3GHz, Geforce 6800GS, and 2Gb RAM. It is smooth on medium/medium viewing distance (or whatever the first two bars are called?) settings with medium texture details, except for when fighting large groups of enemies (sand crawlers or orcs in liberation quests). On those occasions I lower texture details and the nicest viewing distance. Loading times are horrendous, and there is quite a lag when equipping a torch (both due to loading of new textures?). I also disable post-processing and use the lowest for of Anisotropic filtering (turnign the latter off will make everything distant look REALLY ugly).
 
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I don't know if anyone reported this already, but I believe the manadrain for some spells are bugged. I haven't tested them all.
I don't know if this is supposed to happen, but using spellscrolls costs twice as much mana as indicated by your "spellbook". I haven't bought a spell yet so the spells itself may be accurate. For example the spell Amnesia is supposed to drain 30 mana from the hero but if you use the spellscroll Amnesia then it drains 60 mana.
Another bug is with the spellscroll telekinesis. It supposed to drain 50 mana but it drains all my mana (=100) everytime. But when I have only 50 mana left, then the spell works just as fine. Which would indicate that there's something fishy going on.
 
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I get Where's the guru crash messages once in a while... I've probably seen it happen 5 or 6 times now.
 
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And I thought 'wheres_the_guru' was just a bug that infested *this* site ... ;)

I was fortunate ... no gurus for me.
 
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I can't find an alchemist that teaches me to make poisons... I found 3 of them that offer to teach me but they'll take my gold and I'll see the text appear stating that I've "Learned" poison making or whatever but the dialogue option to train with the NPC and learn the skill doesn't go away and the skill doesn't show up in my character screen and I still can't make poisons. I lose my gold but not my learning points. Is this bugged for everyone or just me?
 
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That's a known bug or not implemented feature!!
 
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Bummer... I wanted to poison myself =p
 
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Level 47, I finally got a show stopping error! In Faring Orc Arena, game always crash to desktop after finishing the second round. Since I deleted the demo, I have yet encountered any "wheres_the_guru" bug.
 
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Oct 25, 2006
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I never had the demo installed on my computer and I get the guru crash error message somewhat frequently... so I doubt the primary cause is the demo.
 
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I had no problems with any arena quest/fight!!
 
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Aye, I haven't had any problems with arena battles yet... I think I have one or two more arenas to visit though. I haven't finished the game yet but I've explored about 85% of the map so far.
 
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I had no problems with any arena quest/fight!!

I am talking about the one inside the castle of Faring. You have to become champion of Mora Sul first. My game always crash after the second fight, even with the same opponent. (lost the first encounter)
 
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Oh! I haven't done that arena yet! Well... wish me luck! =)
 
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I've never lost an actual arena fight. My problem is going out of the circle while fighting. I'd like to know how come my opponent can step outside the circle, but I can't!!
 
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The Faring arena problem is not a show stopper. When the game freezes, ALT+TAB out and select "Ignore" in the error message box that says something about a script error and Z_SPECTATOR_SOMETHING state. Resume. Note that the error will re-occur every time you return to Faring afterwards.
 
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Oct 29, 2006
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Thanks, I will give that a try. Oh, yeah...I was forced out of the ring through the fence... Not that I would ever lose a fight to one of those worms :D
 
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