Gothic II: NotR - requesting build advice

[JDR13]

Jharkendar -> Mine Valley is the easier path overall.
Mine Valley -> Jharkendar is more atmospheric.

Atmosphere is subjective. I think both areas are great in different ways, but I disagree that VoM is easier. If anything, I think it's slightly harder at least in terms of enemies.

 

[unfairlight]

VoM is easier.

I think he meant that you can earn good skills and gear in Jharkendar before going to Valley of Mines, which makes Valley of Mines considerably easier.

 

[catfood]

Step 1 - get some iceblock spells
Step 2 - find a mage enemy
Step 3 - hit enemy until he is at <5% health
Step 4 - iceblock him
Step 5 - wait for the iceblock spell to slowly kill and then loot his corpse
Step 6 - ???
Step 7 - PROFIT!

Spoiler

 

[unfairlight]

catfood
Yeah, I found out about the same thing in my playthrough by accident. Got a lot of good spells a lot earlier than intended that way.

but if you manage to kill them using the damage over time of the Ice Block spell, they drop a bunch of runes, including Fire Rain and some spell that sends out a skull that deals 666 damage to anything it touches and uses all your mana.

 

[catfood]

I finished the game again after all these years. It was as good as I remember it. I'm sad that we'll never see an open world action RPG of this caliber ever again.

I played as a mage like I said. At the end of the first chapter I put points into two-handed and strength. I also abused the shrines to give me permanent stat boosts. Then I kinda added a few more points into strength and two-handed and used points for important skills such as tablets and mana. At some point in the mid game I had about 130 mana points. 90 of them were trained + mana points from the shrines + a tablet or two + a permanent mana pot or two. The other 40 were from the two priest rings + the priest amulet. This set gives you 40 mana. Nice. This was me in chapter 4. I cleared all the orcs by using a combination of speed potions, the storm spell, a lot of running around and luring them back to the ram. The storm spell is very interesting: it costs 100 mana; it has a long casting animation; however it also has a decent duration meaning that you can run around for about 5 or so seconds with an AOE effect around you that will damage everything in a certain radius (it even breaches geometry); a lizardman/orc warrior takes 2 shots and an orc elite takes 3. Dragon snappers were easily dispatched with the lightning bolt spell. Trolls were a bit of a problem and the only spell that I found to work on them was storm, up until I got fire rain that is. Speaking of which this spell is as awesome as I remember. It rapes everything in sight (and beyond). It doesn't instantly kill orc elites though, for that I used that ultimate death AOE spell, I forgot what it was called. Once I got my mana trained up to 120 I learned the last level of the ancient language and I also learned how to brew permanent mana potions. I ended up with almost 360 mana as you can see. I also ate 450+ mushrooms so that's another 45 mana right there. Everything else I got from tablets/potions/plants.

The dragons I killed using the following strategies:

- swamp dragon - with the help of the two dragon hunters of course
- stone dragon - chomped his ass transformed into a snapper dragon
- fire dragon - same as above but it was a bit of a close call (DAMN YOU REGENERATION)
- ice dragon - demon scroll
- second to last dragon - two demon scrolls
- last dragon - 4 or 5 demon scrolls (the problem is that you have to be careful so that the first creature that your second demon sees is the enemy otherwise it will attack your first demon)

I learned a grand total of ONE rune in the entire game: the fire arrow because the game requires it. The rest I either found laying around or I got them off of enemies by abusing ice block (yeah, yeah I'm a cheater, I know).

 

[Sukhāvatī]

I'm sad that we'll never see an open world action RPG of this caliber ever again.

Give Gothic III a go.

Spoiler

Seriously though.

 

[T. Reich]

I'm sad that we'll never see an open world action RPG of this caliber ever again.

Give Gothic III a go.

Spoiler

Seriously though.

NO.

Try ELEX instead.

Spoiler

ELEX!

 

[catfood]

I'm sad that we'll never see an open world action RPG of this caliber ever again.

Give Gothic III a go.

Spoiler

Seriously though.

I played it when it was first released but I didn't finish it due to obvious reasons. I completed it later with the community patch/fix thing. I used an archer build which was super OP. Next I want to play as a mage, but not right now as I'm all burned out after 75 hours of G2.

 

[Sukhāvatī]

I'm sad that we'll never see an open world action RPG of this caliber ever again.

Give Gothic III a go.

Spoiler

Seriously though.

I played it when it was first released but I didn't finish it due to obvious reasons.

Aye, I recall the literal 3 minute long load times.

I completed it later with the community patch/fix thing. I used an archer build which was super OP. Next I want to play as a mage, but not right now as I'm all burned out after 75 hours of G2.

Aye, that's fair. I really enjoyed the open and seamless changes of environs and cultures in G3; I don't think I've seen it done better in any other game and never see it mentioned in people's critiques, whether positively or negatively for whatever reason.

 

[catfood]

I'm sad that we'll never see an open world action RPG of this caliber ever again.

Give Gothic III a go.

Spoiler

Seriously though.

I played it when it was first released but I didn't finish it due to obvious reasons.

Aye, I recall the literal 3 minute long load times.

I completed it later with the community patch/fix thing. I used an archer build which was super OP. Next I want to play as a mage, but not right now as I'm all burned out after 75 hours of G2.

Aye, that's fair. I really enjoyed the open and seamless changes of environs and cultures in G3; I don't think I've seen it done better in any other game and never see it mentioned in people's critiques, whether positively or negatively for whatever reason.

Yeah, the environment was very well designed. It's just a shame that the content was spread thin and consisted of MMO type quests most of the time.

 

[True Ukrainian]

ELEX is G3 in a more refined form. The content is more meaty and the world less "thin". Just ignore the atrocious finale. Also G3 will forever be tarred by Forsaken Gods.

 

[Jarmaro]

ELEX is G3 in a more refined form.

Underdeveloped Gothic 3 had better animations than ELEX.

 

[pomenitul]

I finally got G1&2 to run on my PC after several failed attempts over the years and it was very much worth persisting just for G1. I'm currently on NotR, which is also quite enjoyable for the most part and despite the obvious decline in terms of atmosphere, but I think it could have been a far more meaningful experience if playing as a pure mage (my jam) didn't mean getting pwned by groups of Seekers in chapter 3. Having to summon 5 goblin skeletons before quaffing a mana potion for the extra 3-4 minions just to kill a single one of these hooded motherfuckers for a measly 300xp is cool at first – in keeping with the general sense of masochistic dread that permeates the setting – but the progression just isn't there, and you can only backtrack to the nearest bed so many times before dying of existential tedium. I'm well aware that once you reach the sixth chapter, you acquire borderline world-ending spells, but getting there shouldn't be tantamount to 'lul here's your HP bloat and your infinite mana requirements (see also: wind fist) to slay a random critter that probably dies from a mere 3-4 1 gp arrows when you roll a ranger, u mad bro?'.

 

[Silly Germans]

I finally got G1&2 to run on my PC after several failed attempts over the years and it was very much worth persisting just for G1. I'm currently on NotR, which is also quite enjoyable for the most part and despite the obvious decline in terms of atmosphere, but I think it could have been a far more meaningful experience if playing as a pure mage (my jam) didn't mean getting pwned by groups of Seekers in chapter 3. Having to summon 5 goblin skeletons before quaffing a mana potion for the extra 3-4 minions just to kill a single one of these hooded motherfuckers for a measly 300xp is cool at first – in keeping with the general sense of masochistic dread that permeates the setting – but the progression just isn't there, and you can only backtrack to the nearest bed so many times before dying of existential tedium. I'm well aware that once you reach the sixth chapter, you acquire borderline world-ending spells, but getting there shouldn't be tantamount to 'lul here's your HP bloat and your infinite mana requirements (see also: wind fist) to slay a random critter that probably dies from a mere 3-4 1 gp arrows when you roll a ranger, u mad bro?'.

I also started to replay G2 with NotR a while ago and i must say that i liked the original Gothic 2 without NotR a lot more. G2:NotR is a lot more restrictive due to its difficulty. It does push you to do things in a specific order to proceed or you are severely underpowered. The original wasn't nearly as restrictive and felt better overall. I don't mind some difficulty but being the underdog the whole time for a prolonged duration is not enjoyable. It barely gives you sections where you can proceed freely without tiptoeing around enemies. It lacks those larger gameplay "plateaus" that you reached with every new armor back in Gothic 1, where you knew that you could now explore many new areas. The new areas that you can explore in G2:NotR with a level up and some new gear feel tiny and you really have to search for them. The original without NotR was better in that regard.

 

[Arrowgrab]

I also started to replay G2 with NotR a while ago and i must say that i liked the original Gothic 2 without NotR a lot more.

Which leads to the question: is it possible to get Gothic 2 without NotR anywhere these days? A search revealed that GoG used to have a version where you could choose whether to install the add-on, but they've changed it to one where you're forced to install it.

 

[Metro]

Not through legitimate means unless you found a physical copy.

 

[Arrowgrab]

To be quite honest, my main concern at this point is not so much legitimacy but the fact that all online discussions about the matter seem to be from 2010-2013, and while they mention various mods and the like that solve the problem, actual links to those seem elusive.

 

[Silly Germans]

If you own it on GoG asking the support to get you an old version could work. It might also be possible to do a rollback with GoG galaxy once you have installed it but i don't now with what version you'll end up, so it could fail. There doesn't seem to be a direct way to get the original version without NotR.

 

[Salvo]

Started playing this again with the Nostalgic Edition mod. Pretty good.