Basic Tips?

[Taiwan Number One]

Enjoying the game so far, except for the combat which at times is aggravating. I've beaten both Risen 1&3 so I'm somewhat familar with PB games. General tips(limited spoilers please) would be appreciated though I do have some more specific questions.

1) How am I supposed to fight multiple enemies? In Risen you just dodge to keep enemies in front of you, but there doesn't appear to be a dodge in Gothic 3.

2) How scarce is gold? Can I afford to play around a little or do I need to be frugal?

3) How scarce is XP?

4) Do chests contain anything good? They did in Risen, but not in Risen 3 or Risen 2 from what I hear.

Thanks to anyone who replies.

[kris.aalst]

In Gothic 3, a ranged character is a lot easier to play than a melee character, especially when it comes to animals. Human opponents can be fought more easily melee style but still ranged is easier, especially when facing a bunch of opponents.

1) You can use a shield to block attacks. When facing human opponents, you can also parry (=block without a shield so with your weapon) but that's less effective. Ranged attacks and kiting works best against multiple opponents, animal or human.

2) I think the amount of gold you'll make is pretty balanced. You'll gather a ton of gold but some items like armor cost a lot of gold, so that evens it out a bit. Training your skills will also require gold. There is certainly room for some shopping sprees, though, so you don't need to worry about gold a lot.

3) XP aplenty. You'll be able to max at least 75% of the stats and skills.

4) Chests sort of 'level up'. The contents are random but the more chests you open, the higher quality the items will become overall.

All of this goes for G3 with the Community Patch (CP) installed. G3 vanilla was a different story altogether and one I wouldn't advise you to play through. I also advise you to try the CP's Alternative AI, you can switch it off at any time if you want. If you want a more challenging experience, you can switch on Alternative Balancing (AB) but that may be better left for a second playthrough. Also, you need to start a new game if you want to use AB as you can't switch it on or off anymore once you started.

[Kongha]

What Kris.aaist said. Go with the CP installed, dont use alternative AI and have fun with a arrow/magic chracter. Melee is woeful in the first run through of the game.

Have fun, its still a great game and there is so much to explore and enjoy.

[B-Rad FIT Rider]

Learn Fireball and Fire Mage as quickly as possible, it's a pretty lethal combo. There is only a small handful of enemies that are immune to fireball.

[Taiwan Number One]

Not surprised to hear magic is strong as that was case in Risen, but I've always preferred melee. Thinking of using a halberd as I've read there is some circle spin attack that's useful against groups and it just sounds cool.

Meant to say this earlier, but thanks for the advice and tips everyone.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Melee is broken in this game due to stun-locking and lack of target locking. Way to go is ranged, then magic as soon as possible. Later mana regeneration.

About the XP, you should be able to learn pretty much everything. If you apply the community patch, you can turn on Alternative Balancing, which adjusts a lot of bonuses and spell requirements to make it more important to decide on your path earlier, but it also lowers the requirements for mana regeneration.

[HiSaZuL]

Well... I guess I'm pretty late for the party but I'll still chime in, perhaps will help somebody else.

1. Always play with community patch. It's utterly unplayable without it. No amount of love for the series can make unoptimized bugfest that is Gothic 3 look like something that came from "fun" universe.

2. There are 2 options in CP(community patch):
Alternate AI - mostly good idea to use it... it makes fights a bit less stupid. Yes it also limits the number of opponents that can attack you at the same time based on difficulty but don't assume that you will not get stunlocked to death by wolfs. Wolfs have obscenely fast attack animation... if you transform into wolf you can kill something without it even being able to draw weapon....
Alternate Balancing - it's a bag of mixed reactions for me. It does wonders for armor/weapons/, making some of items previously giving a mediocre advatage over previous more effective and worthwhile... a bunch of other things in it are absolutely worth it like changed damage mechanics and so on... read the manual for it it has most of the details... most. On the other hand... it goes to extreme with forcing you into a specialization. It's not really fun finishing the game as level 70 mage and having 5 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spells, it just isn't. It may not affect melee as much as a mage where you cought up double... triple... quadruple for every single damn spell and there are a LOT of them. But some things even from utility realm went to absurd cost. Regeneration costs 5 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ times more to train then vanilla.... it won't save you during combat... it never could. Unless you opened the menu and waited for regen to top you off... that was killed with CP but honestly waiting for an hour to heal was not really the way to go. So you gotta make up your own mind about pros and cons of having AB on. I have it on... but I add about 20 stone tables and a bunch of King Sorrels at the start of the game to offset the nerf to ancient knowledge gains from tables and bookshelves. Another thing that made no sense to me. Buff to permanent potions with only 50 King Sorrels in entire game is kind of... ya... no thx.

Okay... now that I got that off my chest moving on to actual gameplay.

DO NOT LIBERATE CITIES, until you are sure. You can only liberate 2 cities from each faction before they got ham on you and attack on sight. You don't want to miss on 70% of quests in a zone because you liberated some backwater dump simple because you could. FYI orcs guarding ruined temples in Varant are considered as cities for the purpose liberations. The temple near Trelis is not however. Nordmar is the only place where you can butcher the other side with 0 consequnces... orcs there are hostile from get go however and nobody cares if you kill every single one of them. Nordmar is relaxing that way.

XP... well... depends on whether you have AB on or off. If it's on... don't try to be jack of all trades unless you are willing to help yourself with console. If it's off you can learn all the spells and skills by the end of the game. Also CP gives some animals a chance to respawn after a bit of time(it's a chance... not gurantee) so that is some extra xp as well. There are ways to squeze xp even early on. Like beating up npcs but not killing them, it gives you xp once but it's an equivalent of you killing them without you killing them. There is also pickpocketing but the gain from it in XP would only pay for 2 ranks with AB on.

Gold is not plentiful in the sense that the coins you find are not enough for anything. But making money is possible and it's possible to swim in gold as well. What you find is pittance... but higher tier weapons sell for thousands to over 10k. If you spend time collecting stuff and converting into most gold efficient item to sell gold is not a problem even with AB on. 10 iron ore to me is worth more then 10 gold nuggets, why? because with smithing those 10 peices of iron ore that are worth peanuts can be crafted into a bastard sword that sells for 4.4k gold. With prospector skill 1 iron vein = 4.4k gold.

Loot... there is a misconception that still hangs even years later that all loot is random. Why that is so... is beyond me. All containers with loot have a "loot table". Lets take a wooden chest with round top as example it has 1 loot table on it ts_treasure_low basically bottom of the bottom of the barrel and random, next is a wooden square box with a bit of metal decor called "chest" that comes with ts_treasure_normal self explanatory and still random and there is the metal chest with ts_treasure_big. There are also quests chests with part predetermied and part random and some normal looking chests with say teleporter stone in it and rest random but where I'm going with it are the top tier chests. There are 4 top tier chests wtih CP they got proper names. Heavy chest, Old chest, Large chest, Solid metal chest. Solid metal chest still uses ts_treasure_big loot table but also gets ts_treasure_XXL it gets even better loot. Large chest comes again with ts_treasure_big and ts_unique_gold ... these have a much larger amount of gold couple hundred coins. Now this is where random becomes not so random. The most valuable chests are Heavy chest and Old chest. Same as the previous they are equivalent to metal chest with their random part... BUT.... their second loot table is called ts_unique_weapon and ts_unique_magic for a good reason. Both types have a list of 1 unique item they give in sequence, meaning it doesn't matter which chest and where you looted just how many were looted before, they give their unique item based on nothing but amount of them opened previously. Heavy chests have unique or rare item while Old chests have one unique or rare magic item. There are a total of 48 heavy chests and about 90% of unique weapons come from them. A few can be bough... there are some top tier bows that are actually sold but melee weapons.... best you can find in shop is about a 3rd of what you get in 48th heavy chest not even. Weird system? Yep... but it sure as hell rewards exploring and paying attention. There are only 48 of heavy chests in total some are pretty well hidden while others are just hard to loot because a boss of a city sits right next to it. If you want to see the order and the list - http://wogen.wikia.com/wiki/Gothic_3_Unique_Chests
Think a few items are not in their correct order but its like 1 or 2.

If you'd like some personal opinions on skills/spells and what to get asap, what is largely a waste of space, what can be taked much much later with no downside... ask away. That will be an even longer rant tho.

[Kongha]

HiSaZuL
good information, thank you for taking your time to write down your experince :)

[Maddin]

Well Melee with Alternative AI will ♥♥♥♥ you over hard.
Without it, melee is just fine but becomes a bit boring with time.

[justgli0]

Originally posted by Maddin:

Well Melee with Alternative AI will ♥♥♥♥ you over hard.
Without it, melee is just fine but becomes a bit boring with time.

Yep. You should play with alt A.I for sure if you want some challenge.

[MIND ЯEWIND 2]

1.Fighting with many beasts is very difficult as in real life.You get overhelmed very quickly,just dont mess with goblins and wolfs or use some glitch,jump on rook and shoot bow and arrows.

2.Economic in G3 is balanced.

3.Plenty of XP everywhere,just use brain.

4.Ofcourse! Most treasure like forgotten chests are quarded by very though enemies,so you wont be able to loot it soon. Its not RNG cra p like many other ,,rpg" games has.

[Maddin]

Goblins are the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ worst enemies. I rather fight 6 orcs than fighting 2 goblins.