Gothic 2 DX11 patch

[ghostdog]

IMO G2 notr is the best open world arpg that has ever existed. A game that easily surpasses anything TES ever aspired to be. Combat is hard and rewarding, the world is alive, coherent and interesting. Exquisitely created, hand crafted areas provide you with some of the most pleasurable exploration you'll ever experience. The cities are teaming with life, the taverns and port with seedy characters and the night with thieves robbing unsuspected residencies. Paladins, mages and mercenaries are ready to provide you with their skills, each offering a different gameplay experience. A multitude of nicely inter-weaved quests will send you into the vast areas of the island, exploring the various camps, the ancient ruins and the myriads of secret areas/stashes and points of interest scattered in the wilderness. With the notr addon/expansion, G2 was refined as whole into an absolutely great game.

 

[Ivan]

CAN't WAIT. gonna finish this asap and get started! avoiding DX11, what are the essential patches mods for G2?

some questions though: does the sequel ease some of the grievances I've had with the first

combat against mobs (5 wolves, 12 goblins, etc) sucks because you can't hit more than 1 enemy; changing target is a pain since when the mob moves in they're usually moving around.

ladders. fffsss

something that pisses me off about the exploration, which is the same complaint I hold against STALKER SoC, is that you can't fully explore because certain stashes are "locked" by special keys. I explored the sunken structure the Necromancer once lived in but didn't find shit, until he later sent me to go there. tell me G2 fixes this like how the expansions to STALKER did

update: ran into a Down In The Bonehoard scenario where I needed a bow to hit a switch, thank Christ this lets you spawn items.

 

[Obsequious Approbation]

I do not think there are any essential patches. Maybe player kit or whatever it's called, for the widescreen resolution fix.
If you have a problem with the combat, and especially multiple opponents, I reckon you're going to love coming back to the Valley of Mines in G2.
Regarding ladders: I can't seem to recall encountering too many of them in the sequel. Can't think of a single one right now, actually. The discovery of stairs in Myrtana supplanted ladders, no doubt.
The locked chests are there to stay, alas. I remember finding one on a farm, then in chapter 4 someone gives you the key to it. There's also the locked door at the Pass. The latter doesn't matter, really, since you couldn't kill shit in there until you're ready.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Replaying Gothic 2 at the moment, gave the DX11 renderer a try but it makes everything way too dark at night (can't see shit, seems like ambient moon light isn't implemented or something), plus I can't run it at anything higher than 1080p.

Regular renderer does 4k (after fixes) and game looks pretty great as is. I really like the look of oldschool solid polygons and textures as opposed to the washed out, overbloomed mush we get these days.

 

[nomask7]

IMO, Gothic 2 shines in main story related gameplay, game world, mood, and so on. I think it's relatively weak in terms of open world exploration simply because the loot system in the game is minimalist and even when you find something awesome you can't use it until late game or something. Still, you should explore a little, if only to find the teleport stones (I did say a little).

There are some exceptions, especially related to character build maximisation. One such exception is finding all the dragon roots scattered around the game world if you want to create a strength based character. You can brew permanent strength increase potions from dragon roots, so they're the main motivation to explore if you have a strength based character. It's been a while, but I'd recall that in the expansion pack areas, there are some other rather solid motivations to explore, but in terms of the main game areas, brewing potions and gathering ingredients is probably the only important reason why you'd want to explore generally speaking. If you don't want to do that but want to gather them anyway, there are maps online that reveal all the locations of the herbs. You actually need to do this if you want to beat the Valley dragons with a strength based character without using help and magic scrolls. If the game had Steam achievements, you would get like the rarest achievement in the game for beating the dragons in that manner.

 

[Haplo]

Strongly disagree. Exploration is great and rewarding. There's even one end-game class weapon that can be found in Act 1 (though a challenging fight awaits). It does require high strength, but if you dedicate your build to it, it can be wielded in the same act.

It's a great game indeed. I agree that it's the tightest and best open world action cRPG. Witcher is bigger in scope, story and obviously has far more modern graphics, but here we have much better character development progression and better, challenging combat. And no level scaling/bloat, limited item bloat.

 

[nomask7]

Strongly disagree. Exploration is great and rewarding. There's even one end-game class weapon that can be found in Act 1 (though a challenging fight awaits). It does require high strength, but if you dedicate your build to it, it can be wielded in the same act.

I was thinking of that same weapon. Funny how we would think of the same thing if the exploration really was great and rewarding rather than just one weapon most people will never be able to wield anyway.

Strength requirement 160!!!!!! How would you go about wielding it in Act 1? Would this involve spending several hours searching for dragon root plants and using pretty much all the strength potions in the game, doing all the side quests in Chapter 1, killing everything you can find, oh and doing the addon areas before chapter 2 and exhausting them? Nice job ruining the fucking game.

Or maybe you're thinking of vanilla Gothic 2 where it was heck of a lot easier to reach high strength than with the changes brought to the game by the addon... I don't think it's actually possible to do it in Chapter 1 in NotR regardless of what you do. You'd have to work hard to be able to do it by chapter 4.

EDIT: And you shouldn't put all the points into strength anyway. You can triple your damage just by putting 20 learning points into to-hit. From 10% to-hit to 30% to-hit effectively triples the damage per second, for example.

 

[Haplo]

Yes, I played vanilla Gothic 2. It took a bit of effort, but was certainly doable.

 

[nomask7]

Yes, I played vanilla Gothic 2. It took a bit of effort, but was certainly doable.

Well, genius, everybody else is playing Gold, with learning point requirements being exponentially higher.

 

[throwaway]

Which weapon are you guys referring to? Is it the one guarded by 2 skeletal warriors near that black troll?

I'm actually another who's mainly played vanilla Gothic 2, the adjustment from it to NotR made NotR probably the hardest video game I've played, Dark Souls included.

 

[Ivan]

so the finale was underwhelming but returning to the Old Camp was awesome.

final thoguhts: wonderful item progression, great world to explore, no handholding, hilarious voice acting, shitty combat.


really hyped to start Gothic 2

 

[Ivan]

should i be using the community patch for Gothic 2?

 

[Haplo]

Which weapon are you guys referring to? Is it the one guarded by 2 skeletal warriors near that black troll?

Yep, the Dragon Slicer.

 

[Doktor Best]

combat against mobs (5 wolves, 12 goblins, etc) sucks because you can't hit more than 1 enemy; changing target is a pain since when the mob moves in they're usually moving around.
.

This is not Diablo man. Fighting numerous enemies at once is supposed to be challenging and dangerous, as gothic is one of the very few arpgs where enemies think in groups. Hitting several enemies at once would completely diminish the realistic approach to the combat design. You are no Jack Lalannes Powermixer, you are a human being.

If you work much with back- and sidesteps though you can handle groups a bit better. Timing also is of essence because taking a hit always means getting stunned for a short time and multiple hits from multiple enemies mean stunlock and certain death.The combat system seems clunky at first but it has depth and everyone who complains about it is simply doing it fucking wrong.

 

[Ivan]

groups is fine, i'm talking about the rare instances when you get MOBS. idk if magic has area of effect but melee was p. painful


started Gothic 2. fucking love it. exploration is great, controls are more streamlined (interact w single click), music is awesome. finished everything until getting to the city. wonder what that earthquake was about. also wondering about the deity statues.


reminds me of Witcher 1

 

[Haplo]

Yeah, same genre. But character development, progression and world building is actually better in Gothic.

 

[nomask7]

should i be using the community patch for Gothic 2?

I don't know the details of what it fixed, but I'd recall that Gothic 2 Gold still had one game breaking bug, in addition to one or two other bugs you probably don't want to witness. When I reinstalled Gothic 2 recently I didn't hesitate to apply all the patches I could find for it. My understanding is they don't change the base game in any way, people usually respect Gothic 2 too much to want to mod it.

 

[nomask7]

Which weapon are you guys referring to? Is it the one guarded by 2 skeletal warriors near that black troll?

I'm actually another who's mainly played vanilla Gothic 2, the adjustment from it to NotR made NotR probably the hardest video game I've played, Dark Souls included.

You can complete NotR even as a noob. I know, because I did. You can do this by avoiding monsters as much as you can and using powerful magic scrolls and NPCs for the rest. Even like this, the game has one or two tough spots in terms of just pure combat, and avoiding monsters is rather challenging and was more so with the default view distance, but it's very doable, not to mention fun. (Or you can choose a magic caster or bow man as character and lulzroll through the game as god.)

 

[Sigourn]

Anyone who can run Gothic 2 with the DX11 renderer with full graphics and no stuttering mind give me their PC specs? I really want to play Gothic 2, but I would like to do so without stuttering and DX11 is supposed to help with that... I don't even want to run it will full graphics.

My computer:

 

[Mozg]

groups is fine, i'm talking about the rare instances when you get MOBS. idk if magic has area of effect but melee was p. painful

Any place you gotta fight a horde is a smart time to burn a scroll in G2G.

 

[nomask7]

Anyone who can run Gothic 2 with the DX11 renderer with full graphics and no stuttering mind give me their PC specs? I really want to play Gothic 2, but I would like to do so without stuttering and DX11 is supposed to help with that... I don't even want to run it will full graphics.

My computer:

Have you tried lowering the view distance? Start with some low value and see if it helps.

The game was never meant to show you distant landscapes or even anything reasonably far away. It was meant to be covered in fog and monsters appearing out of the fog when you got nearby. Running it with huge view distance is very GPU intensive because unlike newer games, it actually renders all the details as far as you can see without changing into background landscape at some point.

 

[Sigourn]

Anyone who can run Gothic 2 with the DX11 renderer with full graphics and no stuttering mind give me their PC specs? I really want to play Gothic 2, but I would like to do so without stuttering and DX11 is supposed to help with that... I don't even want to run it will full graphics.

My computer:

Have you tried lowering the view distance? Start with some low value and see if it helps.

The game was never meant to show you distant landscapes or even anything reasonably far away. It was meant to be covered in fog and monsters appearing out of the fog when you got nearby. Running it with huge view distance is very GPU intensive because unlike newer games, it actually renders all the details as far as you can see without changing into background landscape at some point.

I'll try reinstalling the game now and see what happens. Everyone was praising this DX11 renderer, but to me it actually made FPS worse, even if I tried disabling most of the new features.

 

[Sigourn]

No edit button, what the hell? Anyhow, no, I just can't seem to get good FPS unless I disable almost everything, at which point I'm not even sure if vanilla Gothic II looks better.

 

[Ivan]

my game looks gorgeous and I didn't use the DX11 mod.

I used these three:
- gothic2_fix-2.6.0.0-rev2.exe (http://www.worldofgothic.de/dl/download_278.htm)
- gothic2_playerkit-2.6f.exe (http://www.worldofgothic.de/dl/download_168.htm)
- g2notr-systempack-1.1.exe (http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/threads/1340357-Release-Gothic-½-—-SystemPack-(ENG-DEU))

 

[Sigourn]

my game looks gorgeous and I didn't use the DX11 mod.

That's the Gothic II magic right there. I remember playing it straight after finishing Gothic I, and thinking it looked like a next-gen game (well, for its time). The trees, the vegetation, the everything.

I'll leave my Gothic II playthrough for the future (and Gothic 3 and Risen in consequence), when I get a better PC so I can avoid the stutter and enjoy it at its max. A shame, but I don't want my experience tainted.