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Gothic II Survival Guide
Version 1.1, 2/27/04
Jim Wahl (alterEgo)
jimwahl meridian-enviro com
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ABOUT THIS GUIDE
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I began writing up some tips for my brother after he told me he wanted to play
Gothic II. There were a few things that I wanted him to know before starting
the game; a few things that would have made my own initial reaction to the
game MUCH more positive had I known them. While Gothic II is an AMAZING game,
some areas of the game can be improved by taking a little time to understand
or tweak them.
I've never written a FAQ before, but after I wrote the items below for my
brother I realized that there are probably MANY other people out there who
could benefit from these pointers as well. And seeing how there is currently
only one FAQ on GameFAQs (albeit an excellent one), I decided I'd make a guide
out of this. So here it is. I only hope it can help others increase their
enjoyment of this great game.
This FAQ is what I call a survival guide. It will give you a few pointers to
get you started out on the right foot. This is obviously not a walkthrough or
a full-fledged strategy guide. This guide covers a few things either not
explained in the manual, or not explained well. In addition, it will give a
few pointers on how to tweak the game so that it will play better FOR you and
ON your computer. I've found these pointers in various places and discovered
some on my own, but this is the first that I know of where they are together
in one guide. Even if you're a veteran at the game, you may find something of
worth below.
LEGAL CRAP
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You may not reproduce this guide on any digital or print media without my
permission. However, any website is welcome post this guide on their site, as
long as it remains whole, intact, and unchanged. I would only ask that any
page that contains a link to a copy of this guide include the version number
and possibly either my name or online handle (Jim Wahl and alterEgo,
respectively). I would also ask that if you should post this guide on your
site, that you simply send me a quick e-mail to inform me who you are or what
site it is that you represent that is now posting my guide.
I will ALWAYS have the very latest version of this guide posted to
www.GameFAQs.com first, as I have a great respect for that site and appreciate
all their hard work. Therefore, if you want to make sure this is the latest
version of this guide, please go there.
VERSION HISTORY
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- 1.1 (2/27/04)
- Added I.1.e: bloodDetail
- Re-wrote II.2: Original Gothic controls option.
- Added II.6: Monster respawns
- Added II.7: WASD controls vs. ESDF controls
- Added II.8: My control setup
- Added V.4: Don't be stingy
- 1.0 (1/4/04)
- Released the guide.
CONTENTS
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Section I: Technical Pointers
1) Editing Gothic.ini
a) Quicksave & Quickload
b) Potion hotkeys
c) ZMouseRotationScale
d) Removing intro videos
e) bloodDetail
2) Renaming Vdfs32e.exe
3) Memory (RAM) demands
Section II: Gameplay Basics
1) No mouse pointer
2) Original Gothic controls option
3) Take all items
4) Right mouse button
5) Knocking out vs. killing NPCs
6) Monster respawns
7) WASD controls vs. ESDF controls
8) My control setup
Section III: Learning Points & Proficiency Levels
1) Gaining & using Learning Points
2) Increasing weapon proficiency
3) Weapon proficiency defined for 1H & 2H
4) Weapon proficiency defined for Bows & Crossbows
Section IV: Combat
1a) General description
1) Lock onto enemies
2) Combos
3) Moving quickly during combat
4) Right & Left attack keys
5) Parry
Section V: General Strategies & Pointers
1) Getting more stat increasing items
2) 1H or 2H?
3) Ranged weapons
4) Don't be stingy
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| SECTION I: Technical Pointers |
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1) In the directory where you installed the game, go into the
system\Gothic.ini file. Most settings have a decent description, and you can
go through the file and test things one by one if you want. In particular,
these are the important ones:
a) Change "useQuickSaveKeys=0" to "useQuickSaveKeys=1". This will turn on
quicksaves. F5 will quicksave, F9 will quickload. However, NEVER do either
while in a conversation, in the inventory menu, etc. If you do, things
could get screwed up, or the game could crash. Also, I've found that if you
are locked onto an enemy while doing a quicksave, when you return to the
game after the quicksave is finished, you won't be able to actually hit the
enemy. You will have to "unlock" the enemy and then re-lock on. Perhaps
it's a feature the creators put in to make it harder to "cheat" your way to
beating difficult enemies?
b) Change "usePotionKeys=0" to "usePotionKeys=1". This allows you to map
keys to the ability to quickly quaff a potion with the stroke of a key,
rather than having to go into the inventory. This is a real life-saver
during long, tough, battles. The developers didn't like this ability. Bah!
What do they know? :)
c) Also, if you find looking left and right with the mouse to be way too
slow and unresponsive (I do), even after maxing out the mouse sensitivity in
the in-game menu, change the value of "zMouseRotationScale". The default
value is 2.0, but I found that a value of 4.0 made the game MUCH more
responsive and enjoyable.
d) Changing "playLogoVideos=1" to "playLogoVideos=0" will stop
those goofy company logo videos from playing when you start the game up,
which makes loading the game much quicker.
e) If you set "bloodDetail" to 3, the game will generally be more bloody.
Don't expect any blood baths, but basically whenever anyone (yourself, NPCs,
monsters, etc.) is significantly hurt, they will leave a blood trail where
they walk. That might aid in tracking wounded prey, or perhaps you just like
to see more blood in your games!
2) The first time you run the game, it will run a little program (Vdfs32e.exe)
that checks out your hardware setup, and configures the game to run
efficiently with your setup. It is supposed to do this only once, but for
whatever reason for many it will do this EVERY time, which makes loading the
game take a LONG time. So, after you've run the game at least once, rename
the executable to something else. It's located in the System directory, and I
renamed mine to "_Vdfs32e.exe". I haven't experienced any negative effects
from doing this. I _did_ let it re-run after I put another stick of memory in
my system, however.
3) Performance is a little iffy at times. This game eats up RAM like no
other. I started playing the game when I had only 256MB of memory. I then
upped that to 512MB, and the game ran MUCH smoother. So I'd suggest turning
off as many programs in Windows as you can afford to while playing, especially
if you have less than 512MB. Also, what I've gathered is, as you move through
the world, the game loads stuff into memory, and this loading will make the
game stutter a little, and seems to happen no matter WHAT resolution, detail,
etc. you're using. However, once stuff is loaded into memory, it should run
fairly well, depending on the size of your memory. For example, the first
time you walk down a street in town (the town is MUCH worse than the
wilderness) you will experience stuttering while everything on the street gets
loaded. However, if you now turn around and head back down the same road, you
shouldn't experience much stuttering as that stuff is now in memory. It's not
that this method is unique to this game alone, it's just that this is the
first game I've really noticed it in. Even with my fairly kick-ass system
that will run Max Payne 2 at high-res. with full eye candy no problem at all,
I could not, no matter what, get rid of ALL the stuttering in this game. It
doesn't make the game unplayable, though, just a little annoying at first.
And perhaps you'll have a better experience, so who knows?
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| SECTION II: Gameplay Basics |
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1) No, it's not a problem with your mouse: there is no mouse pointer in the
menu system. You use the forward, backward, and straffe keys (or arrow keys)
to navigate around in menus. Pressing the left mouse key does work to make
selections, however. It's a little clunky at first, but it works, and you
won't miss the pointer.
2) There is an option in the Controls menu to use the original Gothic control
system. In my opinion (which is rather redundant, since this whole guide is
my opinion :.), you do NOT want to use the original Gothic control system.
Having played both Gothic 1 and Gothic 2, I prefer the Gothic 2 control system
by a LARGE degree. The Gothic 1 control system is over-complicated. Instead
of a single key press for a single action, you are required to use two. For
instance, to do a simple attack in Gothic 2, you just hit the left mouse
button (LMB). With the Gothic 1 control system, you have to hold down the LMB
AND press the forward movement key. To do side attacks with Gothic 2
controls, you can simply map one key to the left side attack and another key
to the right side attack. With the Gothic 1 control system, you have to hold
down the LMB and hit either the left or right movement keys. Now, this in
itself doesn't sound too bad, but it REALLY becomes a pain when you are trying
to move WHILE attacking (straffe around a monster, for instance), and you have
to constantly hold and release the LMB. Even if you are just coming to Gothic
2 after having played Gothic 1, I would suggest you stick with the revamped
Gothic 2 controls. It may take you a half hour or so to get used to it, but
you will be glad you did as you play through the rest of this 50+ hour game.
3) To take all of a particular item in a chest or similar, hit your jump key
('space' for me). For instance, you open a chest and find 49 gold pieces. A
single left click takes a single piece, and holding down the left mouse button
gradually takes them all, or you can just hit the 'jump' key and take them all
at once. Took me a while to figure that one out, and is VERY nice now that I
know it.
4) In any place where you might use the "Esc" key (advance dialogue without
waiting for NPC to finish their spoken line, close a treasure chest, exit a
menu, etc.), you can also use the right mouse button. Just another small
convenience I've discovered that helps a lot.
5) When you attack an NPC with a bladed weapon and deplete their HP, they go
into something like a "swoon" status: they fall down to the ground
unconscious, but NOT dead. About 10 seconds or so after knocking them down
(and taking their belongings if you want), they will get back up. They'll
obviously be pissed at you, but unless you provoke them again, they won't
attack. There IS a way to make them friendly toward you again, but you'll
discover that while playing the game. :) If you attack them while they're
unconscious on the ground, you WILL kill them for good (as well as seriously
piss off anyone else nearby). The animation when killing an NPC is kind of
gruesome, but kind of cool, too, so do it at least once just to see it. :)
Attacking someone with arrows or crossbow bolts (and magic, I believe) will
automatically kill them rather than put them in a "swoon" state. Also, there
are a few NPCs that WILL die automatically instead of "swooning."
6) When you kill a monster, it will NOT respawn. Meaning that if you find a
wolf in a particular valley and you kill it, that same wolf will NOT return to
that valley after you have left and come back. If you do find a wolf in that
valley later in the same chapter, chances are a different wolf has just
wandered into that area. Therefore, you can go around the whole map and
literally kill off ALL the monsters. However, when you advance to new
chapters, some monsters WILL spawn out in the wild. However, the number of
monsters spawned at the beginning of new chapters will NOT repopulate the map
as full as it originally was, and new, stronger, monsters may appear in areas
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