First of all, this is my first post on gog.com, yay!

Second, this game is too hard, or maybe i just suck at combat? I can barely beat a single Goblin skeleton at level 7, I wasted some ability points to hunting trophy stuff so I'm lacking strength AND dexterity. The only way to beat enemies for me is to rely on their godawful pathfinding or using scrolls (which is too easy actually).

Should I have installed only Gothic 2 without NotR? They say it is too easy, but NotR seems to be some sort of developer vengeance for that criticism.

Now what I would like Gothic 2 to be like:

1. Faster travel: a horse, teleportation scrolls, anything. I know you can cheat to travel faster but that is rather cumbersome.

2. Double Learning points per level, or maybe even triple.

3. Faster combat: faster swings of the sword, easier combos.

As Gothic 2 NotR stands, it's an exercise in masochism, a strangely pleasant one at that, a great game one might say, but it could be an excellent game.



PS. I'm thinking of starting over (for the third time), can anyone recommend a killer character build for me. Mercenaries, mages, militia, when to join? and so on. I want to be able to kill a couple of boars with relative ease at level 5 at least. This was a bit of a rant, I maybe should have split it into several posts, but I hope that reading this isn't hopelessly boring.

Welcome! :-) Goblin Skeletons are quiet strong so it's no shame that you have difficulties with them on level 5. I'm not sure i've actually never played it without notr but yeah, probably you should have tried it without notr. btw every gothic veteran will tell you it isn't difficult at all. ;) That's more or less impossible, even the most advanced character has difficulties if he egages a group of enemies. Gothic isn't meant to be played that way, your character is a human beeing, and a wolf is able to kill a human beeing by ripping out his throat. no matter if it's a infant or some martial arts god(more or less).


Ok now that we've gotten that out of the way, i may have some useful advices for you. I am a sucker for melee combat so that's what i can tell you how it's done.
You know that you can't block attacks of animals, right? right but you can avoid beeing hit if you just move one step away(back) in the right moment. The second part is animals don't like beeing hit by swords and stuff. Most of them will retreat a little bit. That means if you let for instance a warg come at you and you step back when he jumps. you can attack it and cause it to jump back(ok, you should step back too to get enough distance). rinse and repeat.

some years ago i would have told you to have a look at some youtube videos where crazy people show how to defeat even the strongest enemies with the most basic equipment but nowadays you'll only find let's plays.

well... i may not have been that helpful, i'll try again tomorrow. ;)

Oh, yeah, level 7 is really not that much. run around kill everything that's weaker than you and avoid everything tht's stronger oh and do sidequests.

I got accepted to the Ring of water and things seem easier now, luckily I have enough strength for the quarterstaff which has a good reach. I still don't like combat in this game all that much. I wish this would have the combat from Die by the Sword (available from gog.com), now that game had fun and brutal combat! I should probably get DbtS for old times sake.

A little late but if you're still interested in making things a bit easier, check out NOTR Customizer and Height of Power Mods. These are both available at World of Gothic.
http://www.worldofgothic.com/

Thanks a bunch, NOTR customizer seems to be just the thing I need!

I would still recommend to you training the combat a little bit. As soon as you get the hang of it, it's a really fun system.

It''s all about timing and reflexes - circle your enemy, hit him at the right time, and block when he tries to attack you. If you're good enough you can even kill an Orc on level 1 (though it will take some time...).

And yeah, never take on a group of enemies - you're supposed to drawing them out separately.

And last but not least: If you come by a monster/enemy you can't kill, it's very possible you're not supposed to kill it yet. Gothic has no level scaling, so occasionally you will come across enemies that are far too strong for you. In that case you retreat, train a little bit, and when you come back some levels later, it's all more satisfying to kill it without too much trouble.