Gothic 1 Remake Starter Guide | Beginner Tips and Tricks

In this Gothic 1 Remake Guide, we'll teach you the basics of the game, how to stay alive, and guide you through the opening hour of the game with a step-by-step starter guide walkthrough.

How to Play Gothic 1 Remake

First, we'll teach you the basics of Gothic 1 Remake. After that, we'll give you a short walkthrough for the opening moments of the game.

Understanding Your Stats

At the start of the game, there are four core Stats that you can see on the Stats page in the menu.

• Health: Your bog-standard life meter. When this reaches 0, you die. Your Health goes up each time you level up. If this reaches 0, you die.
  
• Mana: The source of your magical power. You only get so much mana in a day; you'll need to rest in order to recover it, so use it wisely. You won't be able to actually use spells until you complete the quest "The Price of Magic" for Torrez in the Old Camp.
  
• Strength: Strength determines the damage of your melee attacks; it also serves as a limiting factor for which melee weapons you can wield.
  
• Dexterity:[/b[]
  As you train in various skills, you'll be able to see your ranks in said skills on this same page.

The Basics of Survival

Gothic 1 Remake is a fairly standard action-adventure RPG. There are no "survival" elements like you'd see in many modern RPGs such as hunger, thirst, or a need for sleep as far as we can tell. Primarily, your main concern will be keeping your Health above 0.

That said, combat in Gothic 1 Remake has a pretty steep learning curve. You can and will die very quickly if combat goes bad; that leads us to our next point.

Save, Save, Save

It's important to regularly save your game manually in Gothic 1 Remake. Aside from the chance of combat going wrong, poor dialogue choices can lead to undesirable outcomes (including instigating a fight that you have no chance of winning).

While the game does have autosaves, you can very easily lose a hefty chunk of progress due to a bit of bad fortune. Make sure to regularly save your game!

Combat 101

Unlike some other games in the genre, Gothic 1 Remake has four different ways of attacking tied to the four directions: left, right, up, and down. These choices are split across four different inputs.

In the early game, this doesn't matter very much; timing your attacks, dodging, or blocking at the right time is much more important. Later, however, you'll gain the ability to execute combos by making the correct inputs.

Hostile creatures, once downed, will die. Humans, however, will lie on the ground in a "downed" state. You can still loot them in this state; however, they will eventually get back up and attempt to flee or continue fighting you. When fighting multiple human opponents, it's often prudent to finish them off so they don't get back up.

Naturally, Gothic 1 Remake also has ranged attacks and magic, neither of which you'll be able to get immediately. These both work much as you'd expect: simply aim, and fire.

Dodging can help you avoid damage, and it appears to have some invincibility frames if you time it right. Blocking, however, doesn't totally prevent any incoming damage; rather, it just greatly reduces it.

Finally, it's very important to understand that enemies will hit like a truck on Gothic difficulty (Which is normal difficulty); even the earliest of early-game enemies can kill you in one or two hits. Do your best to avoid damage, where possible, until you're more confident in your fighting abilities.

How to Heal

There are essentially three ways to heal in Gothic 1 Remake:

1. Rest in a bed for enough hours, as long as you've been awake long enough.
   
2. Consume food or a potion to restore health.
   
3. Pay a healer, once you find one.

Sleeping is the cheapest option for restoring your health, as it's essentially free. Sleeping also advances the time and restores your Mana (as long as enough time has passed).

However, Gothic 1 Remake has an odd rest system. You cannot sleep at any time and regain your health; you must be awake long enough. Every 3 hours of in-game time spent awake banks you 1 hour of healing during rest, up to a maximum of 8 hours.

If you try to sleep without any saved-up rest time, you won't heal at all. Spend some time running around in the world to build your rest time back up.

Additionally, Snaf will give you 3 Meatbug Ragout for free every day once you've helped him cook it for the first time. If you're too critically wounded to venture outside of the Old Camp, you can rest until the next day and get some free healing that way.

How to Learn New Skills

You can barely be considered a fighter in the early game of Gothic 1 Remake. Getting stronger and having a fighting chance requires two distinct things: leveling up, and training in skills.

Leveling up works exactly as you'd expect — killing enemies and completing quests give you XP, and getting enough XP will advance you to the next level. Each level increases your Health a bit and gives you 10 Learning Points, which can be expended at skill trainers.

Skill trainers, in turn, can teach you specific abilities (or improve existing abilities) as long as you have the Learning Points and you meet any other conditions they might have, such as completing a quest, giving them specific items, or paying them. See our Skills Guide[techraptor.net] for more on how to learn new skills!

Starter Guide Walkthrough

Now that we've explained the basic mechanics, it's time to kick off the Starter Guide portion of our Gothic 1 Remake guide! We'll take you through the opening moments of the game and help you make your way to the Old Camp safely.

Entering the Colony

After getting unceremoniously chucked through the barrier, you'll land in the water at the edge of the Colony. Some rather unfriendly people greet you, after which you'll meet a much nicer man named Diego.

Diego is a sort of big brother to the newcomers in the Colony. He has no apparent ulterior motives or desire to steal from you, and he is generally always helpful to you. Take the time to talk to him at length and learn a little more about the world. Then, get ready to move.

One Step Back

Your first instinct may be to immediately follow Diego down the road. Don't. Instead, go to the small wooden fortress-like structure nearby. This is the "Exchange Zone," a trading post where items shipped in from the kingdom get sorted.

You can find a piece of Ore and some other loot here, such as a Beer on the ground and a Pipe in the outhouse.

Note the difference between items and objects with tan coloring and red coloring. Items with tan text can be safely interacted with, with no immediate penalty. Items or objects marked in red are considered the property of others, and touching them will be interpreted as a crime if you're caught.

You can attempt to sneak around and steal some stuff if you'd like; though, I'd recommend saving your game before attempting any theft.

The Road to the Old Camp

When you're done with the Exchange Zone, head back the way you came and walk down the road you saw Diego go down.

Make sure to explore the area thoroughly, including the wilderness on the sides. There are a lot of useful items to be found if you take the time to look around. For example, two Wild Berries can be found on the grass to the left of the road's start.

Just past this, you'll see some Meatbugs on the ground. Go into combat mode and kill them; they're defenseless, and their meat is a good early game source of healing.

A short distance later, you'll see a gate. Climb up the ladder and talk to Orry; he'll give you a bit of info about what to expect ahead. You can also safely take an Apple on the right side of the upper deck.

Climb back down and continue forward. A short distance ahead, you'll see a small wooden structure with a chest in it. Open the chest to get some loot; make sure to collect any Wild Berries nearby.

Slightly further ahead is an entrance to a mine; head inside to get a Pickaxe. As Orry explained, a Pickaxe is an unwieldy weapon of last resort, but it's better than nothing. Grab it, and you'll automatically equip it.

After that is a fork in the road. The path to the left goes to the high ground and, eventually, a bridge. The lower path leads to the Old Camp eventually. We're going to take a detour to the left path on the high ground to get some useful items.

When you reach the bridge, climb up the cliff to your left. You'll find another mine entrance which has a Torch and another Pickaxe. While you don't really need another Pickaxe to use, you can always sell it in town later to earn a little Ore[techraptor.net] (that is to say, money).

Go back to the bridge. A short distance ahead, you'll see a sword sticking out of the ground. Save your game here, because you won't be able to get that sword as easily as you might think.

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Grab the sword, or fight the Molerat? Decisions, decisions...

Your First Fight

Slowly walk to the edge of the bridge. You'll see a "Molerat" just ahead. It is basically impossible to grab the Rusty Sword without attracting the attention of the Molerat, so you effectively have two choices here:

1. Try to fight and kill the Molerat with your Pickaxe
   
2. Grab the Rusty Sword and run away

Note that there is no quick way to equip items; you'll have to go into your inventory to do it, and time does not stop while you're in your backpack. If you decide to grab the sword and run away, make sure you have enough distance between you and the Molerat before trying to equip your new weapon.

Return to the Molerat. This is a good opportunity to learn how to fight, so take it. Practice fighting the Molerat and dodging until you can kill it without taking any damage, even if you have to reload your save a few times.

When the Molerat is dead, investigate the surrounding area. Walk down the cliff to the left of the bridge and you'll find a "Widow's Veil" plant that you can pick up here. Make sure to check the cliff underneath the right side of the bridge, too, as you'll find two "Hellcap" mushrooms that you can eat or sell here.

Continuing Down the Road

Keep moving down the road. A short distance ahead, you'll find a clearing. There are some Ore Nuggets to be found in the cart on the left. On the right is a Club and some Arrows next to a Junior Scavenger. As before, you should fight and kill it for the meat, taking care to save your game beforehand in case things go wrong.

Ahead of the clearing is yet another Junior Scavenger; kill this one, too. You will encounter their adult versions later on ahead; do not assume that the adults will be as easy to fight as the children, as they're much tougher.

There isn't much of interest after this fight; simply keep moving down the road. As you descend the cliff, you'll see a banner pop up announcing the start of Chapter 1.

Meeting Ratford and Drax

At the bottom of the road, you'll see two men wearing blue scarves. This is Ratford and Drax. As with Diego and Olly, take the time to talk to them.

Drax, in particular, is a skill trainer[techraptor.net] (a.k.a. a "Teacher"). For the price of 1 Beer, he'll give you the ability to learn hunting skills from him; you may as well get it over with now. You can't afford his training, but you should unlock his training anyway for the future while you're here.

Note that Ratford and Drax are both competent combatants. If you get in trouble with the enemies ahead, you can run back to these hunters, and they'll kill them for you. You'll miss out on the XP, but you can freely loot the dead creatures without them caring. You can use the same tactic with Guards and other NPCs, if needed.

The road by Ratford and Drax has forks going to the left and right. The left path is the safest; it will take you directly to the Old Camp. The right path goes by several enemies and is fraught with danger. I'd advise you take the safer left-hand path for now; you can always come back later to fight the creatures here.

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Continue Reading This Guide at TechRaptor!

[techraptor.net]

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[Garkin]

You'll find Drax's hunter's knife just past the corpse with the club. If you return it to him, he'll reward you with a shortbow.

[TheJamesClark]

Sleeping does restore your health but only once per day.