Too difficult to bother with.

[ExecutiveOdin]

I was looking forward to playing all the gothics plus arcania and then the risens before moving onto elex but this NOTR difficulty is just too much.

I typed a huge thing describing my experience but Ithink everyone knows. The increase in LP to level, the constant instant death crits, every enemy having a ton of HP and damage. And to top it off I have about 20 quests in my journal and can't seem to complete any of them. I just get no clues or even options to ask people things.

I've beaten Gothic. I've played the normal version of 2 when I was a kid. I've played the Risens too. This game is a special kind of bull.

[[P]etya]

Originally posted by EolSunder:

What you have to remember is damage is different than Gothic 1. Where in 1 if you had 30 strength and a 30 weapon it did 60 damage, minus monster armor, chance for critical if trained up, etc. In gothic 2, damage is like D&D, you have a range of damage, so if you have 30 strength and 30 weapon, you do 1-60 damage instead of 60. So you might be able to kill that wolf, or bandit in just a couple hits if your damage hits are high, or it might take you 10 hits. Unlike 1, saving before a fight usually can mean the difference between you taking a long time to kill something basic, or beating them up fast in a couple hits.

The same goes for things attacking you. Often they can chew you up super fast with high damage rolls, other times its a hit and return hit for a while until you or them are dead. Just takes a bit more saving than in Gothic 1, where you usually just saved before opening chests.

Eh, you are wrong. Gothic 2 NotR's melee damage formula is this:
(Weapon Damage + Strength - Resistance)/10 min 5 damage
And critical strike deals 10 times more damage, so that's why weapon stats and damage are so ramped up.

I tried to play normal Gothic 2 without NotR, but I'll be honest: vanilla Gothic 2 is just too easy. You can get the best weapon as early as Chapter 1 and use it. The damage formula is the same as in Gothic 1, so you pretty much hack'n'slash your way through the game.

NotR isn't the most balanced game, but it tried to curb the generalist playstyle down, which allowed the player to use the best of every weapon type, but it also allowed more room for generalist playstyle with the bonuses. Except you don't get to use the best weapons if you don't focus on one attribute. NotR is actually easier in that regard that it makes easy to cast scrolls. Scrolls is the most integral part of the game, if you don't use them, then expect the game to be much more difficult. You can kill everything in Khorinis in Chapter 1 with the help of scrolls. ;)

[EolSunder]

ah so its 10% of total damage basically, and a critical strike will deal full damage. Gotcha. So the stat bonus is the chance of the critical strike, so with 100 you'll do full damage each hit since each hit is a critical.

So a weapon with 30 and 30 strength, 60 damage would do 6 damage a hit, with a chance of the critical doing the full 60. Generally. Ick, thats a horrible way to do it. Basically making every fight a save first, then redo until you get some criticals finishing the fight easier. At least with 1 i didn't have to save before fights with general creatures, just with the chest spamming.

[[P]etya]

It might be a horrible way to do it, but it was basically for discouraging the player to inflate only basic statistics. It hurt the non-melee users more or less, because they are slowed down in the early game more, but without this correction most players would only pump up strength until they get the best sword available without any penalty. And this penalizes the player who did that, because the best sword would only do 35 damage. Some people actually do this still, because there is actually a strategy which involves inflating your strength without other combat stats and going into fistfights, because the damage is calculated by Strength - Resistance in that way. Once you had enough LP, you can start raising your combat statistics. It isn't a newbie friendly strategy and you need to be a hardcore pro to pull it off, but such things aren't impossible, just mechanically intensive and the game was meant to reward that, but brainlessly pouring all your points to one attribute to swing the best weapon available in Chapter 1 and kill everything? Nah, Gothic 1 rewarded that and it encouraged people to pull off the famous Scar exploit. Other games reward that as well, but NotR meant to punish it.

They had to do this to bring melee combat on par with ranged combat, because the latter always had to put points into accuracy, otherwise they are always forced to find an area the opponents couldn't get to and shoot them down from close.

Besides other combat stats actually require less effort to raise... It only takes 24LPs to get 34% crit chance and you will also swing faster. At 60% you will swing even faster. It's a bit of a roll of a dice sometimes, but you are given a lot of chance in melee to maneouver, so it is only natural that you can't do always full damage.

[EolSunder]

its not a huge deal, really like Gothic 1, just save before fights, if it doesn't go well reload and try again. Plus early on many ways to vastly inflate your killing ability such as summon and transformation scrolls for pretty cheap. Im at the point now basic animals aren't dangerous (wolves, rats, flies), but middle ones can be (boars, wargs, etc). In a few areas one scroll can take out everything that is dangerous (like using a summoned skeleton to wax the lizards near the starting area tower), or a transformation into a beast to zip in and take out overly tough bandits early in the lighthouse, bridge, etc.

[ExecutiveOdin]

It's been over a year now since I've played this and made this topic but I am happy the discussion is still going on.
I figured I'd revisit my thoughts having almost no memory of the game anymore.

When I played NOTR I remember being excited meeting the NPC along the road. Reaching the city I think I was dead set on joining the...paladins? I think that's right I wanted to go fighter this time. The first time the game felt really off was when I talked to the guy on the docks. It just didn't feel right in a story standpoint that he offered me all these factions options and I don't remember why I felt that but I did.
After leaving the first town I stopped feeling fun in the game. All the one shotting and the LP increases for stats just bummed me out.
I started over again and again trying to make NOTR fun and work for me but when I installed the NOTR remover patch I had such a great time in the game and it felt more like part of the series I was enjoying so much.

[m4djoker]

Or you could go full try hard and install the Returning 2.0 mod, jeeze now THAT is hard ^_^

[EolSunder]

Like i said, you aren't suppose to kill everything in chapter 1. Many get discouraged that fighting a boar is dangerous in chapter 1, and they really get annoyed when running into harder foes scattered about (wargs, goblin skeletons, etc). But your not suppose to kill these things easy, they are very tough foes, not made for new players. A good vet player can kill them, or someone who knows the tricks, but really they are for later.

When you start, wolves, flies, and low level foes seem dangerous. But after 10 levels or so, your skill are good enough that you don't really fear them. Mid level foes are now dangerous (lizards, maybe boars, some bandits). You still have 4 chapters! your only in chapter 1, your not suppose to go in slaughtering wargs easy.

But vet players know you can. You can spend money on summon and transformation scrolls, you can buy any "slay undead" scroll you can find and waste mid level undead very easy for only 75 gold. You can transform into a powerful beast and just slaughter half the island if you want. But doing that will rob you of money you can get by skinning beasts and looting bodies, which you can't do transformed. So you have to decide.. lots of easy experience as a shadow beast killing half the island? or the money you lose by not being able to loot skins, teeth, weapons from bandits, and many stuff since bodies disappear quite quickly after a while.

You can make the game tougher as a pure mage, very difficult early on but vets can handle it, and vastly powerful later in the game, if you survive that long lol. Or you can make it easy and just whip out a 2 handed paladin in chapter 1 and kill stuff very easy early with just 1 weapon skill to worry about.

[[P]etya]

The "not supposed to" wasn't true even in vanilla. In vanilla you could use the best weapons of the game as early as Ch1. In NotR you had cheap spell scrolls. Can't deal with an Elite Orc? Shrink it. Skeletons die to 2 Fireballs and you can wipe out bandit groups with two Fire Storm scrolls. The only issue in Chapter 1, or issues are Wargs and Shadowbeast, but you can learn how to 1v1 a Shadowbeast, but you are really unlikely to be able to fight Wargs 1v1. However with bows you can massacre Wargs if you have enough munition and you are able to find a spot where they can't get you. Of course a good bow and and around 60 dex is necessary.

So overall only the Wargs are the only enemies you might not be able to fight well in Chapter 1. The rest are manageable.

[sunt viu, exist]

If you think notr is hard... try playing returning 2.0 on max difficulty - that is true nightmare for an rpg... and I managed to do it

[Daemonic]

Vanilla NOTR is giga ez... o,O

[EAX]

even tho the thread is old but im on the same opinion.
I wanted a playtrough from G1 to G2 and see further but already stuck in G2 thanks to NotR.

Started as a firemage and cant get past one dragon, lacking useful skills, lacking gold permanently, lacking mana, lacking everything.
Even tho i basicly flipped the whole game world up side down in order to get everything beforehand and use glitches and bugs like knocking down "Biff" to give him a proper weapon, finding each skillpoint and what else not.

My entirely useless mage is stuck at killing dragons, w/o NotR the game was fine, it didnt require to abuse bugs and glitches all day long in order to finish it.
Like Biff bugged out, he doesnt want to go anywhere anymore and the swamp dragon cant be killed because cypher and rod are also bugging out, so is the dragon permanently flying and regen health.

the current state of the NotR Version is an unplayable mess on steam to say the least.
Theres also an extra potion of new bugs into this game since THQ touched it, hence requiring other patches and mods and whatever.
Game is just a mess, just glad i didnt repurchase the Switch Versions and replayed on PC instead to see it beforehand, wouldve been a major waste of money.

Just like Gothic 1, the uncarefully added patches from THQ and the community add a bunch of issues such as the game not even working anymore, so it requires different patches to fix that, however atleast G1 is in an playable state and isnt entirely broken in terms of balancing / progressing like NotR is.

[ExecutiveOdin]

OP here and I appreciate the thread still being active.
I have a couple gothic threads that get bumped once or so every two years. It's fun.

Looking back after all this time I feel like I disliked NOTR and ELEX for the same reason.
The progression just doesn't feel rewarding or fair.
ELEX even more so since your stats do literally nothing other than gate new gear, but then upgrading gear makes the stats arbitrarily higher.
I think my biggest quit moment on ELEX was when I grinded out to equip a sword and was like "cool, the next sword is going to take like 8 levels to use and I'll have to put all my points into nothing except for combat stats. But instead I'll just upgrade this current sword I CAN use."
Then I upgraded the sword and its stat requirements changed in a way that would have made me need to level 6 more times.
Same sword, but now it's "sharpened" so it takes 15 more str and dex.
Lame.

[profestus]

If you struggle with NotR, I can understand that. Classic is way more friendly. To play G2 classic, you can shoose it as a launch option.

[MasteryOff]

NotR is heavily skewed to 2H or bow characters.
Bow characters can with 30% talent kill a good amount of enemies.
For 2H the talent needs to be 60%, but after that most of the enemies fall like flies.
Problem is to get there.
Over the years I got a feeling what to do and in which order. It is still a struggle,
but after reaching that point NotR is a fine game.
ELEX has the same problem.
Until level 9 or so, all and everything wipes you.
After that you have enough healthpoints and attributes to beat one enemy at a time.
Slowly starts the snowball effect, but again, after that point you slowly are able to
clean the map.

[Olszak]

I love gothic 1 and gothic 2 notr but I can acknowledge that the crit formula is cringe. I don’t want my damage be reliant on RNG that much. First 3 chapters are okay, but after that It gets really annoying till you get 100% cirt chance. You could easy kill a group of lizardmans or die in one combo from one while doin no dmg to him at all. Also the dragons regen tied to fps is a big issue when your game have that much rng in terms of dps.

This is whay I recommend to play as mage, you delete half of rng and even if your more tactical - all of it since enemies will have a hard time to hit you and roll a dice.

Man I love gothic but the chapter 4 in notr give me no chill and I just use a speedruns strats (no glitches, just scrolls of transformation and demons) to get over it asap.