Here are some for those having difficulty early on. Sorry if they've been covered before:

- Zoom out your TPP view. The scroll wheel zooms out (and back in), while moving the mouse itself pitches the view up and down. This eagle-eye view is helpful to see over rises in the landscape, peer over cliff edges, etc.
- But sometimes trees and such get in the way, so use your radar. Whip out your bow / crossbow and slowly turn in a circle to scan for targets. This is helpful for finding hidden targets that you suspect are nearby (at night, for instance), and for IDing targets you've found through regular exploring
- Swinging your weapon left and right continuously will take out Orc Warriors eventually. He may get a few hits in, though, and they hit hard. In other words, it ain't foolproof and you should have a recent save ready to load.
- In some cases you can use Sneak (x key) to, well, sneak up behind enemies and get into attack range undetected. This will allow you to get in a couple hits for 'free'. I used this yesterday on a sleeping Shadow Beast (snores like my old cat did : D ).

One thing the game doesn't tell you is that certain fights are prearranged to have you knock someone out. Therefore, if you accept a quest to, say, 'teach that guy a lesson', you will only knock him unconscious once he reaches 0 health. In other words, don't worry that you'll accidentally kill the person since the game knows you're just trying to make him go sleepy-time. Once down, you have a short window of time to loot the snoozing target.

If you want my two cents, not all of the skinning skills are worth anything, especially in the base game. Learn basic skinning from Bosper the bowyer by becoming his apprentice and leave it there, unless you need to take the claws of a specific snapper.
In terms of melee I've found one handed weapons to be superior if you have good reflexes. Especially in NOTR. You really need to be able to jump backwards at any given moment.

If you have a hard time at the beginning of NotR with killing creatures start exploring!
You won't succeed if you keep trying to kill too powerful creatures, you will get frustrated.
Instead explore, and "peel" the world out of the creatures like an onion, layer by layer.

Some tips to make chapter 1 easier:
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/gothic_series/well_i_just_finished_gothic_ii/post16

anyone have tips for chapter 4? Salamander men and Orcs in hordes... I am 26 Paladin and not seeing the light of day... so frustrated.

Have you cleared out Jharkendar again? There are lots of less challenging enemies there to level up on. Jharkendar refills with new enemies in chapter 4, so even if you've previously cleared it out you'll find new foes in this chapter.

It's a bit late now but you should also take down as many enemies as you can before advancing the plot because each new chapter and/or major plot point adds a lot of new enemies to the world regardless of whether the existing ones are still there, so if you have left the orcs and such alone until now they will have huge numbers.

I cleared out what i could find.
Am now considering going to Jharkendar again like you suggest.

It just seems so strange that I am having such a hard time when i covered most if not all quests up until chapter 4 and then rolls in a chapter that just has you drown in futility. I am 28 now and am scrambling to increase my basic skills. I have yet to use my STR potions or TH tablets because I would like to continue to TRAIN them...

Now I was asked to kill the Orc Colonel in a cave outside of Korinis... 2 Warlords standing guard... What are the developers thinking here?


EDIT:

I managed to beat the game.

I was holding off (on my second playthrough) on taking the strength potions until I had TRAINED it to 100 via trainers. I managed to pull one of the Warlords back separate from the other :). The game became so much easier once I was able to wear my Dragon Slicer and then finally the Barbarian's Axe. Too easy in the final chapter actually. The initial stage of chapter 4 seems unbearably hard if you do not have your Strength boosted above the 100+ and 70%+ In your main weapon skill. Once you get the skill and strength up.. the game becomes a joke.

[SPOILERS]
I had to cheat myself threw the final doors of the temple (i think the switches in the rooms were glitching and the last dragon eye door did not budge even after reading the note and getting the key.) to actually get threw to the dragon and back to the ship.