Gothic Chronicles Of Myrtana: Archolos mod for Gothic 2

[Tacgnol]

Incidentally, if you drink the bloodfly cure for Jorn you get a perma HP bonus.

The potions from the quest chain involving Bodowin in Chapter 5 also give perma bonuses (one of them nearly instakills you, but didn't kill me in my game).

 

[notpl]

I know this is pretty old but:

LP costs for learning magic circles are just insane:

1st circle - 20 points
2nd circle - 30 points
3rd circle - 40 points
4th circle - 50 points

What the actual fuck is this?!

Why is that insane exactly? Compare this to weapon skill costs:

from 10% to 30%: 20 points
from 30% to 60%: 60 points
from 60% to 90%: 90 points
from 90% to 100%: 40 points

That's 210 points total. Maybe as low as 170 if you end up using a weapon that gives a +10 bonus. Total cost of all circles is 140 and there's no rune crafting so you can dump rest in mana just like weapon users would dump into STR and/or DEX. Seems to me like pure mages have it a lot cheaper in terms of LPs.

Are you not going to train weapon skills as a mage at all? How are you going to kill enemies till you are strong enough to afford fighting with spells primarily? Is it even possible to beat a game like that? Must be some outright sadistic shit if you ask me.

I am currently in chapter 5, level 43 here are the numbers without any gear, you get stripped off of it in the very beggining of the chapter and I haven't got past that part yet. I can say it's not as bad as I initially thought, but it still is pretty shit.

The thing is, you are looking at the complete picture of a fully developed character, not at what it takes to get there. You see, melee users (can't speak for marksmen, the last time I played ranged build in Gothic was many years ago) have a very smooth progression in comparison to the mages - they slowly but surely accumulate power and kill things faster and faster as they level up. You are not really required to go to obscure places and look for specific items to further develop your character. This is not the case with mages, you have to hunt down books and runes, it's not something terrible, but it's more nuanced then you might think, let me explain.

The hard part about about acquiring books and runes isn't about knowing where they are, but knowing how to get them. For a melee user becoming stronger is straight forward: pump weapon skill, pump strength and equip the strongest weapon you can. Due to how melee damage scales with strength and generally dumb AI, you don't even have to go out of your way to hunt for rare weapons, you will do just fine if you just pick whatever you can find on your way. But when it comes to magic various bullshit starts blocking your way:

1. Ok, I think I feel like learning the first circle of magic, but where do I get the books? Ok, I found one during a quest, good thing it didn't really require me to fight anything scary. Oh, so to get another book I have to fight through a bunch of animals and loot it from abandonned house? Ok, I guess I will spend my LPs on training some melee skills first, gotta get past those damn monsters somehow. What's that? Are magic staves 2h only? Well fuck, guess I'm locked into a shitty animation set with awfully long recovery times now. Don't know wether I'll be able to afford to train my strength enough to equip the all around better one handed weapons, so better be safe than sorry;
2. So there's a rune that I feel might make my life easier in the future, but to pick it up I have to get past a shadowbeast somehow. Oh and I barely have any gold with me, I guess if I learn some hunting skills then I might be able to sell various trophies to merchants and make some gold in the process, may be I'll even be able to sneak past that abomination and get the rune I want. I don't know which hunting skills are truly useful, so I better learn them all, they don't seem to be expensive LP wise anyway, the more the merrier, right?;
3. Ok, training mana costs too much LP and I still have to save some to learn the next magic circle. But look, I have a lot of rare herbs in my inventory, may be I can get a big boost to my stats if I learn how to make permanent potions. Holy shit, I need 60 LPs to do that, that's more than I have right now and I haven't been training for the last few levels at all, this better be worth it (it totally is) or else I'm screwed;
4. Shit, my fighting skills are so bad at the moment, I've spent all of my LPs on other things and I don't have anything left to spare. Getting better gear requires me to advance the plot and that requires me to kill several tough opponents, I have to come up with something... Right, the scrolls, but I have to learn how to transcribe them first, because powerful ones are rarely found in the world and getting them from merchants is just too expensive, guess I have to find a way to get some LPs to finally fucking learn this skill;

Do you get the idea? What I mean to say is that mage is extremely LP starved till level 25 or so, because for him the requirements to become a strong character are extremely frontloaded. Can't travel the island without developing melee skills, can't make money without learning the trade first, can't afford to cast decent spell without learning master alchemy, because mana requirements can not be reasonable achieved with just gear and training, can't get better gear or learn next magic circle without going to the next chapter, etc. But when you get past that, you turn into a god that AOE nukes everything in sight and doesn't care about resource management almost instantly. A mage goes from a piss stained, AIDS ridden, dystrophic hobo to a divinity level with basically nothing in between, it's just plain garbage in comparison to a smooth progression that melee users experience, and the constant gatekeeping is just plain annoying, I don't even understand why it's there, melee chads become supermen in chapter 2 already, why do mages have to endure till chapter 4?

Overall, it's not as bad as it might seem, it's certainly much better than NoTR, but it still is pretty shit overall.

Mages are perfectly capable of killing anything with magic from the word "go." Spells have critical multipliers based on weather and monster type (lightning does double damage in the rain or to bloodflies, fire does double damage to undead, etc.) and the game adds dozens and dozens of new mana restoration foods and drinks. You can take advantage of a rainstorm to sweep entire forests clean with the starter lightning spell and level yourself up in chapters 1 and 2 just fine. You don't need to be killing shadowbeasts in chapter 2, the game is actually better if you progress naturally with magic instead of just abusing the simplistic melee combat to kill anything from the start in my opinion. Of course, any mage worth his salt is going to learn scroll-writing, and with scrolls nothing even theoretically poses a challenge from the start.

I agree the spellbook system is a mixed bag, on the one hand it added a huge thrill to exploration instead of just finding another fucking king's sorrel in any possible hidey-hole, but if you're bad at exploring it can definitely stall out progression as a mage. It is intended as an advanced playstyle compared to melee or marskman. Worst case scenario, the books are all buyable come the following chapter (circle 2 in chapter 3, etc)

 

[notpl]

Ok is there a plan for part 2 of Chronicles Of Myrtana or that was History of Khorinis?

Team has said on a few occasions that while they are proud of the work they did, they absolutely never want to touch gothic again. Many of them have already been hired by professional studios based on their outstanding work on the mod.

History of Khorinis is allegedly still underway, but they're obviously going very slowly if at all.

 

[Salvo]

By endgame Marvin is an absolutely unstoppable killing machine... there's no challenge to the game anymore.

 

[Tacgnol]

By endgame Marvin is an absolutely unstoppable killing machine... there's no challenge to the game anymore.

That is generally the Gothic progression curve. The primary challenge is usually the harsh early/early-mid game.

Ploughing through end game is the completion of the power fantasy.

 

[Salvo]

By endgame Marvin is an absolutely unstoppable killing machine... there's no challenge to the game anymore.

That is generally the Gothic progression curve. The primary challenge is usually the harsh early/early-mid game.

Ploughing through end game is the completion of the power fantasy.

I don't think the devs realise how broken the health regen potion is...

 

[Tacgnol]

By endgame Marvin is an absolutely unstoppable killing machine... there's no challenge to the game anymore.

That is generally the Gothic progression curve. The primary challenge is usually the harsh early/early-mid game.

Ploughing through end game is the completion of the power fantasy.

I don't think the devs realise how broken the health regen potion is...

Yeah it is pretty damn strong at that point in the game admittedly.

Though I ploughed through the final few fights without any pretty easily regardless.

 

[Zariusz]

By endgame Marvin is an absolutely unstoppable killing machine... there's no challenge to the game anymore.

During final act in city i killed most of enemies in 2-3 hits, and i think that is a good thing, we worked hard for this power, we earned it and we deserve it. Though Ulrik and Volker gave me some troubles.

 

[JarlFrank]

By endgame Marvin is an absolutely unstoppable killing machine... there's no challenge to the game anymore.

That is generally the Gothic progression curve. The primary challenge is usually the harsh early/early-mid game.

Ploughing through end game is the completion of the power fantasy.

I don't think the devs realise how broken the health regen potion is...

Yeah unless an enemy can kill you in a single hit, the health regen potion is gonna make you win any combat that would otherwise be impossible as long as you manage to dodge attacks long enough.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Just started this. Is there an option or hack or slow or freeze the subtitles of NPC talk. I'm fucking old retarded alcoholic therefore reading subtitles under wghwjhkxcqwbnne wyckilaswevnkje conversations is like running a 100 sprint every time, while not watching the cut scene at all, because i'm dead from redding.

 

[JarlFrank]

Where the fuck is Ezekiel gone? I did his quests in chapters 1 and 2, he set up a market stall outside the inn in chapter 3, now it's chapter 4 and his stall is still there but I can no longer find the guy himself.

 

[agris]

A few other assorted questions

• If you buy alchemy mastery from Boromir or whatever his name is, do you still get access to all the stat increasing potions and recipes that the city alchemy master would have provided if you had apprenticed with him? i.e. does Boromir sell all of them if you bought his mastery?
  
• If you do *not* apprentice with the blacksmith as your first apprenticeship, is there any other way to master smithing?

 

[notpl]

A few other assorted questions

• If you buy alchemy mastery from Boromir or whatever his name is, do you still get access to all the stat increasing potions and recipes that the city alchemy master would have provided if you had apprenticed with him? i.e. does Boromir sell all of them if you bought his mastery?
  
• If you do *not* apprentice with the blacksmith as your first apprenticeship, is there any other way to master smithing?

I believe the alchemy master will always have *more* inventory for his apprentice than he otherwise would. You can learn master smithing in chapter 4 from the blacksmith in a town you gain access to in that chapter.

 

[Tygrende]

Are you not going to train weapon skills as a mage at all? How are you going to kill enemies till you are strong enough to afford fighting with spells primarily? Is it even possible to beat a game like that? Must be some outright sadistic shit if you ask me.

I don't think you have to go that far (though it is possible, I've done it in NotR) but going up to 60% in a weapon skill is way outside of what I'd consider a mage, more like a weird melee/magic hybrid. 30% is perfectly fine to get you through the early parts where you cannot rely on magic at all. It should be even easier in CoM because of copying scrolls. Being a mage in Gothic has always been like being a mage in low level D&D to me, lowest of low early but absolutely broken late.

 

[Fargus]

Ok is there a plan for part 2 of Chronicles Of Myrtana or that was History of Khorinis?

 

[ironmask]

Does anyone remember where Viktor is? I'm doing a quest for one of the vineyards and I can't remember where he is.

 

[Marat]

In the Silbach tavern.

 

[HoboForEternity]

i love this game. got into a cave with baby cave troll. they hit hard but easy to dodge, so I say "eh why not, take them down" managed to kill off 2 with some effort at level 14, looted the cave and at the entrance mama troll was waiting and it bullrush me to death. did everything all over again, this time snuck out and got out safely.

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

Does anyone remember where Viktor is? I'm doing a quest for one of the vineyards and I can't remember where he is.

I'm not going to suggest the heresy of quest markers, but some of the journal entries could be more helpful.

 

[Naerydan]

What's the trigger for Chapter 3?

 

[notpl]

What's the trigger for Chapter 3?

Arriving in the southern swamp with your plot guide from either faction quest.

 

[Naerydan]

What's the trigger for Chapter 3?

Arriving in the southern swamp with your plot guide from either faction quest.

Thank you.

 

[Zariusz]

Can you somehow resettle swamp camp after cleaning it from criminals in chapter 5? After watching certain ending slide i believe that maybe something can be done.

 

[Ghaad]

What's the trigger for Chapter 3?

Arriving in the southern swamp with your plot guide from either faction quest.

Thank you.

Actually, just getting to the location does not trigger the chapter change, you have to explore the area a bit and meet the welcoming committee.

 

[ironmask]

This is the best polish open world rpg game ever made. Witcher 3 can suck a dick.