First time playing Gothic

Well, I decided to join a faction. I thought about it thoroughly and decided to go with the Magicians of Fire. Why? I certainly haven't been training my magic yet. The reason I went with them is because the faith called me (lol!). They honestly seem like the least evil faction there could have been, whereas both the Militia and the Mercenaries had some dirt on their hands.

I was also heavily considering the Mercenaries, because they seemed a bit "better" than the Militia, in terms of protecting the farmers and stuff, and I was also intrigued by the smith who could teach me to smith magical weapons! That *almost* made me join, but I thought the Monastery was the place for me .

So, I look forward to whatever path I take next. I'm not too concerned with the "perfect build" or anything like that. I already have a little bow skill, so maybe I can continue that still, or if I switch to magic perhaps, I'm not sure. Maybe I'll be the island's first bow-wielding magician, who knows?

So, I joined, and that's where I left off in my last session.

I thought the Militia were generally clunky, because they didn't protect people in the harbor district, they raided farms and stole from the farmers like thugs. Definitely not the people I wanted to side with.

The Mercenaries seemed alright, except they also pressured the farm owners into submitting to them, such as the 2 mercenaries at Akil's farm who tried to kill us all. I never met Onar, but Lee's plan to starve the paladins into submission did not seem like a very nice thing to do (hehe!).

So, Daron was a cool mage, Vatras is one of my favorite friends thus far and he seems like a good guy (although he's a Water Mage, of course), so I thought, why not? Let's go for it. The monastery was also beautiful to look at, in an excellent spot in the mountains and the theme music for that area was amazing!

Explored it a bit in my last session and it was utterly brilliant.

OH, and it was so intriguing to me to see what was behind that dang door that I wasn't allowed in! Curiosity got the best of me.

So, after joining the Magicians of Fire, I had to do my novice duties to gain access to the library. These proved to be really simple, almost *too* simple, as I thought the process of being a novice who does mundane activities until he proves himself would have been a little more involved. In the end, I managed to do most of the tasks within a one hour play session, so while it was nice to make a lot of progress in such a short period of time, I was left wanting a bit more from this section of the game.

Once I was allowed into the library, the game progressed even faster. I read one book and decided to demand the Test of Fire. So, before you know it, I was in front of the High Council getting tasks ordered to me to complete for this test. After getting my tasks I set out to try my hand and figuring out these encrypted clues.

It wasn't too hard to figure out, but I did feel quite rewarded once I realized I was on the right path. Instead of a magical glowing trail, or a magic compass pointing exactly where I needed to go, I was expected to use my brain a little bit, and I really appreciate that aspect of this game. I managed to find the runestone by following the statues of Innos, which was great fun when I figured out that I just might be on the right path. I even predicted that I would be attacked over the object, and sure enough it happened, hah!

I guessed wrong about the "summoned living rock", and thought that it was the black troll up near the hunter in the rocky clearing. I thought this because I could have sworn the hunter told me it was a rock troll in there, but it was actually a black troll.

The best part of this whole test was figuring out that I needed the Sacred Hammer to complete it. This was a guess on my part, and I did know the history of the hammer as Garwig explained it to me. I only figured that it would be needed to defeat this living rock beast, so I used the handy spell of sleep to put Garwig asleep and grabbed the hammer. Good thing I did because when I finally found the magic golem (which was in a spot I was not expecting at all!), I felled the creature in one fatal blow. I was so happy when my plan worked that I was giddy for awhile at how this game was jsut beautifully designed.

What I love is that you have to talk to everyone, you have to use your brain a little bit to piece together what exactly to do next. No one tells you, "Go get the hammer to use against the golem.", and many players could have gotten stuck at a point like that. Heck, only the very curious players would even know the hammer exists, because you have to seek out the room it's being kept in (which is quite out of the way itself), and then figure out that you can put the guard to sleep to take it! Wonderful design right there, just perfect.

So, I completed 2 of the 3 tasks and was well on my way, until Master Hyglas informed me that I didn't have enough Learning Points to learn how to create runes! Oh, no!! I'm level 7 and a whopping 1630 XP away from level 8, with nearly all the lower level creatures killed on the map. I'm going to have to really scour the areas and get very creative to figure out how the heck I'm going to level up. I'm thinking if I can buy some scrolls to take down enough lurkers I should be alright.

So that's where I'm at so far. Just great stuff. All RPG developers should be required to play the first 2 Gothic games before making an RPG! These games are *that* good.