Gothic Returning 2.0 - The most ambitions mod and the closest thing to a GOOD remake that we ha

[Salvo]

One of the most bloated and artificially hard mods in existence

 

[Cryomancer]

One of the most bloated and artificially hard mods in existence

I disagree. Pick dragons for eg, then be able to cast circle 6 magic makes perfectly sense as they are legendary creatures. They being able to summon monster and heal thenselves too. Their nasty breath attack too. Being close to a ice dragon lair dealing cold damage and to a fire dragon, fire damage also makes sense. It din't fell bloated. Quite contrary. Vanilla dragons fells like a cakewalk.

Also, Returning allows you to be a Xardas apprentice, instead of a sheep of Innos.

 

[Salvo]

One of the most bloated and artificially hard mods in existence

I disagree. Pick dragons for eg, then be able to cast circle 6 magic makes perfectly sense as they are legendary creatures. They being able to summon monster and heal thenselves too. Their nasty breath attack too. Being close to a ice dragon lair dealing cold damage and to a fire dragon, fire damage also makes sense. It din't fell bloated. Quite contrary. Vanilla dragons fells like a cakewalk.

Also, Returning allows you to be a Xardas apprentice, instead of a sheep of Innos.

You have a skewed perspective because as soon as someone dangles a bit of necromancy in front of your face you start drooling
But also that's part of your charm so don't change

 

[thesecret1]

I dunno, I enjoyed the difficulty. Was the best aspect of the mod, actually

 

[Murk]

re: Returning and/or alt balance.

What do the special gifts from innos do? The ones that are 250 karma.

Based on the janky translation one adds 100 damage for 2handers, but not sure what the last option does as it just says "two hander".

 

[Ravielsk]

I have to be honest here. As impressive as mods like Returning or Xeres Returns are I almost universally hate them. They are the definition of a "bloat mod" adding so much that the original game is completely smothered underneath it all. The survival mechanics for example have no place in Gothic period because the world is so small. You are never more than a few minutes away from a settlement and so the only way to do survival stuff is through making the player stop every few minutes to drink/eat because apparently the MC has the most broken metabolism known to men. Or the absolutely barely fan-fiction tier writing in Xeres where all the characters from the old camp(Gomez and his bunch) were resurrected as deathknights but lost all their memories making their inclusion completely toothless.

Its cool to read about it in the changelog but in-game it just feels like this immense chore to deal with.

 

[Anthedon]

With the amount of work that went into Returning they could have made a self-contained mod, like a smaller Archolos. That would (presumably) feel much less jarring when you play it.

 

[Ravielsk]

With the amount of work that went into Returning they could have made a self-contained mod, like a smaller Archolos. That would (presumably) feel much less jarring when you play it.

If memory serves me right then it initially started as something much more reasonable. More like Die Welt der Werurteilten but for Gothic 2, only later did it morph into this hambeast of a mod. Its a classic case of too much time in the oven. The ingredients, the recipe and the temperature were all just right but they left it in the oven for too long and now its burnt and most of that great work is just a waste.

For example the insane overuse of vegetation in Returning probably started as a simple tweak that added a bit more vegetation here and there but as the development dragged on someone kept adding more and more until they had to edit the textures underneath it all for it to look serviceable and since they spent so much time with it they were not going to just walk it back after it became apparent that it looks like crap. The end result is a mod with two vegetation settings:
either A. a overabundance of grass that hides literary any item that happens to be on said ground
or B. with no grass so you can see what is actually on the ground but now everything looks like shit covered with one tiled ground texture

 

[Cryomancer]

For example the insane overuse of vegetation in

Why not just ... Install the no grass patch?

 

[Ravielsk]

For example the insane overuse of vegetation in

Why not just ... Install the no grass patch?

B. with no grass so you can see what is actually on the ground but now everything looks like shit covered with one tiled ground texture

 

[Cryomancer]

By your avatar, you seem to be a fan of water mages. Guess what. You can be a water mage in ret 2.0 but not in vanilla.

 

[Anthedon]

With the amount of work that went into Returning they could have made a self-contained mod, like a smaller Archolos. That would (presumably) feel much less jarring when you play it.

If memory serves me right then it initially started as something much more reasonable. More like Die Welt der Werurteilten but for Gothic 2, only later did it morph into this hambeast of a mod. Its a classic case of too much time in the oven. The ingredients, the recipe and the temperature were all just right but they left it in the oven for too long and now its burnt and most of that great work is just a waste.

For example the insane overuse of vegetation in Returning probably started as a simple tweak that added a bit more vegetation here and there but as the development dragged on someone kept adding more and more until they had to edit the textures underneath it all for it to look serviceable and since they spent so much time with it they were not going to just walk it back after it became apparent that it looks like crap. The end result is a mod with two vegetation settings:
either A. a overabundance of grass that hides literary any item that happens to be on said ground
or B. with no grass so you can see what is actually on the ground but now everything looks like shit covered with one tiled ground texture

The version I used actually had a "middle" setting for the vegetation issue, it looked alright and you could still see herbs etc. Of course the will o'wisp amulet meant I didn't bother with looting things manually for long.

 

[Cryomancer]

What does "spiritual restoration" from the high robes of Adanos do? I played this game a lot as water mage and necromancer and never understood.

 

[Cryomancer]

One of the most bloated and artificially hard mods in existence

I disagree. Pick dragons for eg, then be able to cast circle 6 magic makes perfectly sense as they are legendary creatures. They being able to summon monster and heal thenselves too. Their nasty breath attack too. Being close to a ice dragon lair dealing cold damage and to a fire dragon, fire damage also makes sense. It din't fell bloated. Quite contrary. Vanilla dragons fells like a cakewalk.

Also, Returning allows you to be a Xardas apprentice, instead of a sheep of Innos.

You have a skewed perspective because as soon as someone dangles a bit of necromancy in front of your face you start drooling
But also that's part of your charm so don't change

Is not only that returning offers necromancy. It also offers a amazing necromancy. One of the best. For eg :

• Demonology is a separated skill which needs to be leveled alone
• Perma summons which drain mana constantly
• Bosses can banish low tier summons
• Reagents makes sense for dark magic runes
• Robes are amazing
• Blood sacrifice which allow you to sacrifice your own hp to empower your necromancy
• Mind control NPC among other utility dark spells
• You can learn the demoniac language and read grimoires
• You can find legendary grimoires like the necronomicon
• A lot of unique quests
• The quest to become a necromancer is quite interesting
• (...)

Sorry for the lateness to answer your post.

 

[Cryomancer]

Sinitar gaming showing the features of returning 2.0

• Orc city(0:00)
• Custom arrow making(0:15)
• Transformation runes(0:52)
• Returning bosses like the sleeper(1:16)
• New questlines(2:00)
• Real time pickpocketing(2:18)
• Magic flying carpet(2:42)
• Player own camp(3:10)
• New spells(3:35)
• Harder bosses like dragons and new epic fights(4:20)
• Improved weather effects(5:05)

And mostly important. New guilds. Mages can be necromancers under Xardas apprenticeship, water mages or gurus, you are no longer required to be a sheep of Innos.

 

[notpl]

I have to be honest here. As impressive as mods like Returning or Xeres Returns are I almost universally hate them. They are the definition of a "bloat mod" adding so much that the original game is completely smothered underneath it all. The survival mechanics for example have no place in Gothic period because the world is so small. You are never more than a few minutes away from a settlement and so the only way to do survival stuff is through making the player stop every few minutes to drink/eat because apparently the MC has the most broken metabolism known to men. Or the absolutely barely fan-fiction tier writing in Xeres where all the characters from the old camp(Gomez and his bunch) were resurrected as deathknights but lost all their memories making their inclusion completely toothless.


Its cool to read about it in the changelog but in-game it just feels like this immense chore to deal with.

For what it's worth, the creator agrees with you and is currently making a less insane mod called Outfaith. This mod cuts all of the fanfiction addon plot with the seekers (the secret ultra OP faction that is manipulating everything behind the scenes in Returning) and the bloated, grindy chapter 7 orc war and instead focuses on simply adding new spells/weapon types/factions etc and trying to meaningfully differentiate them for increased replay value. Basically, he's keeping the necromancers/swamp camp/water mages/other side guilds, condensing everything else, and trying to balance more for a core gothic experience than a grindy MMO smorgasborg. He admits that he made Returning at a time in his life when he was really into MMOs and it influenced his design sensibilities heavily.

 

[sosmoflux]

Any of this worth looking into? Or is Myrtana still GOAT?

 

[Cryomancer]

Any of this worth looking into? Or is Myrtana still GOAT?

I'm a huge magefag and loved this mod cuz I could play as an water mage and necromancer and loved the changes made into magic, summons have a mana upkeep and you no longer can learn army of darkness and other high level dark magic spell in Innos's monastery.

CoM I din't played yet. IS great for mages?

. This mod cuts all of the fanfiction addon plot with the seekers (

You can refuse the keeper in Xardas tower and ... Ignore 99% of keeper fanfic.

 

[notpl]

Any of this worth looking into? Or is Myrtana still GOAT?

I'm a huge magefag and loved this mod cuz I could play as an water mage and necromancer and loved the changes made into magic, summons have a mana upkeep and you no longer can learn army of darkness and other high level dark magic spell in Innos's monastery.

CoM I din't played yet. IS great for mages?

. This mod cuts all of the fanfiction addon plot with the seekers (

You can refuse the keeper in Xardas tower and ... Ignore 99% of keeper fanfic.

CoM does interesting things with the magic system and it's possible (and fun) to go pure magic. Difficulty is low overall so whatever you want to do generally works fine.

You can avoid joining the keepers, but nothing prevents the retarded chapter 7 content unless you just voluntarily stop playing at that point (like I did)

 

[Cryomancer]

You can avoid joining the keepers, but nothing prevents the retarded chapter 7 content unless you just voluntarily stop playing at that point (like I did)

Chapter 7 if you refuse to join keepers is just orc genocide + giving a message to the Paladin's lord + finding ores in a island. is the shortest chapter if you skip the worst fanfic.

 

[Cryomancer]

Anyway, did anyone managed to install the mod in Linux?

I was able to install in Linux with steam older installation but after a update, broke my installation, in steam version I was just running dx9 instead of 11. Now I wanna re play returning(again as a water mage) and in order to install on Linux since I can't make steam version work, I brought and re downloaded the GoG version.The normal game and installation of returning worked really fine. But IDK what I should put in the Heroic game launcher to launch returning.

I'm following sinitar guide :



And I just can't find the returning executable file