To run Gothic 2 on Steam, just use the Workshop beta branch and get mods off of the workshop. Here's my mod list:
- Script Patch (Only available for English and Russian versions)
- Ninja
- Union - Patch for Gothic 2
- Categorized Inventory (The other mod diverges from the original style too much. This one is minimalistic and just categorizes things)
- Union Thief Helper (Only for pickpocket icons next to NPC names so you don't have to keep a list yourself if you are playing a rogue)
- zNoFriendlyFire (So you don't accidentally smack the shit out of Diego or Bilgot)
- Quick Loot (Only for items so you don't spend 2 minutes picking up 5 mushrooms)
- Show Weapon Range (Script Patch introduces several undocumented melee weapons to the game and this is the only way to know their attack range without digging into the files)
- D3D11 Renderer Mod (It makes the game a little more stable for me. Also the only acceptable graphics mod. Forget about all the other silly texture packs out there. None of them respects the original color scheme and visual style at all. Just make sure to disable the rain and/or rain effects, it sucks major ass and it rains every single day. If you want to use normal maps, get the Normalmaps_Original.zip and extract it to "Gothic II\System\GD3D11\Textures\Replacements". To make it work for Script Patch, rename the folder as "Normalmaps_*MODNAME*", so in my case, it's "Normalmaps_2792250061_G2A_NR_SCRIPTPATCH_EN". I don't know if this modname comes out the same as everybody else. If it's different, just save a game and go to your Gothic 2 folder and go by the name of the save folder)
Most other useful mods are already incorporated into Script Patch like traders unequipping their best weapon when bartering, torch hotkey and whatnot. The rest of the so called utility or QOL mods I would highly recommend against. Stuff like sprinting is completely unnecessary and moreover game breaking. Most enemies in the game are designed to run a little bit faster than you to be lethal so you don't just end up recklessly aggroing everything and be able to run away at any time. Plus, Chapter 1 is really the only time you get to take your time to tread around and smell the roses in Gothic 2. With the NOTR expansion, there are already 3 static map teleporters accessible on day one, and you get teleportation runes as early as Chapter 2. There are also ample amounts of speed potions littered throughout the game, way more than enough to keep the effect on permanently. Really, travel speed has never been a problem in Gothic 2.
Now let's talk about the Script Patch. It's an all-in-one mod package that is playable right out of the gate, so you don't have to scour the internet to get a bunch of little things. I recommend it if you are looking for an easy solution and don't want to worry about having to work around some of the notable bugs left in the game. Off the top of my head, you can have Lares lead you to Onar's Farm first without losing the option to take the ornament to Saturas. You can use transformation scrolls however you want without any unintended stat changes. You can go to Gorax and buy a new teleportation rune to the Circle of The Sun after you've convinced Pyrokar to go, so you don't have to run around twice if you didn't do the quest in the proper order. Many items that used to look the same now have different easily distinguishable models. Like Bosper's bow is now labeled and doesn't just look identical to a regular hunting bow so you won't end up accidentally selling it. Lots of little QOL addons here and there. One I really liked is how after you've picked the lock of a chest, the lock would stay unhinged, so visually you can tell whether or not you've already opened that chest. Or the option to remove used keys to help reduce the amount of unnecessary inventory clutter. There are just many good changes in the mod in general, most I think I didn't even notice during gameplay until I consciously made the effort to look. And that's great because that's the sign of a good patch.
Unfortunately, having said that, they did not come without a price. And it goes without saying, it's just like every other community patch out there, it is more like a MOD than a real patch, and thus should be treated as such. It more than overstepped its boundaries and "fixed" many "bugs" that didn't need to be fixed at all, and in some aspects, even decreased the QoL and made the game worse. I've played the Gothic games many times and couldn't help but notice A LOT OF unnecessary changes, ranging from questionable to downright awful. Here's a list of some of the declines:
- Many high tier weapons from merchants are moved to later chapters, with some taken out completely.
- Major decline in itemization here. You can no longer buy high tier weapons early on. I've done a few different playthroughs and I think 2H builds were hit the most. I'm fine with taking away the really end game weapons like Berserker's Axe (200 DMG) and Dragon Slicer (190 DMG) because it's virtually impossible to get enough strength to wield them in the early game anyway, so it makes no difference. But making something like the Heavy Two-Hander (135 DMG) to only be available for purchase starting in Chapter 4 is retarded. It just makes the weapon obsolete. By the time you're in Chapter 4, you're on the dragon hunt, and at that point, your build is mostly complete. You're certainly going to have more than enough strength to use Dragon Slicer as a 2H fighter. The only other way to acquire this weapon is by killing a heavy guard at the end of the expansion, so unless you rush for it awkwardly in Chapter 2, a better weapon like Cutlass (145 DMG) ends up filling the spot. Bear in mind that the better Cutlass is still available for purchase and can easily be acquired in early Chapter 2 at the pirate camp. What the heck.
- The worst is easily removing both the Stormbringer (150 DMG) and the Rune Power (115 DMG) from Canthar. Now the only way to get the former is by abusing some transformation spell and snatch it off of the Ice Dragon's hoard. I've always found such methods to be rather cheap and tend to shy away from running past monsters to get loot in just about all games, especially to the point of skipping a major boss like this, but you literally got no choice here, it is the only one in the game (two more are available in Chapter 6 but it's way too late so they don't count). Then there's the Rune Power, which was a highly versatile 2H sword that served as the perfect bridge between early and mid game. It is the best weapon with the best range in between the weaker early game staves and true mid game weapons like Heavy 2Hander. Only two copies exist in the game now, so you either have to again, just run past monsters on the path to the fire dragon to steal it, or you get pigeonholed to play the expansion area in Chapter 2. Just why? Why the fuck would you remove these weapons off of merchants altogether? One of the core designs in Gothic is that you more often than not have multiple ways to acquire an item. An orc weapon for example, which is needed for starting an apprenticeship, you can get from the cave behind the city, or off of the orc scout at the nearby camp, or take it off of Cipher, or just beat up an actual orc warrior somewhere, etc. How is the original designers putting these weapons on some merchants a bug? Where is the issue here?
- Actual Balance Changes. In addition to what I've mentioned above, here are some more changes off the top of my head that directly alters the balance:
- Ulthar's Wand (Range 120 -> 140. This is significant because 140 range is a huge deal. There were only two weapons that had 140 range, namely the Large Ore Dragon Slayer and Orc Elite Sword, with the former being a mercenary only end game weapon available only in Chapter 5. High weapon range is kind of redundant in the late game because you can trade blows all day with heavy armor, but in the early to mid game, when you have to rely more on finesse and avoiding damage to win fights, having a 140 range weapon in Chapter 1 is pretty ridiculous)
- Fire Rain doing multiple ticks of damage (Orc Elites used to be able to survive one Fire Rain so you had use maybe something like a Storm spell afterwards to finish them off. Now they just die immediately to the Fire Rain)
- An extra Ring of Strength is added to Bennet's stock in Chapter 2 (Super early to have one right at the start of Chapter 2. The only one you could get in the original game was from Huno, which meant you needed to play through most of the expansion to get it. Moreover now you get two rings, which makes the Ring of Power that grants +4 to STR and +4 DEX rather obsolete, especially if you go pure melee)
- Thekla gives 5 bowls of soup regardless of guild (This takes away from becoming mercenary a little bit. You could already get the dragon egg potion that gives +3 STR as other guilds)
- Multiple goblin berries are added to various merchants throughout the game (Maybe there are 4 or even more in total, I'm not entirely sure, but I know for a fact I've gotten at least 3 new ones off of merchants. One is available as early as Chapter 2 at the castle. This was done I guess to compensate for removing goblin berries from paladins' inventories, but I don't know if a lot of people actually go around and whoop every paladin in the game to farm the berries. I know I didn't. So here you can easily end up with several more of this rare herb than you normally would, which adds up to at least +9 DEX if you brew potions with all of them. Quite a substantial amount of stat points)
- Praying to Beliar for 500 gold now costs 10 max hit points instead of 3
- Tom drops a new El-Chapo that grants +5 to 1H instead of the El-Bastardo with +8 (Quite a bummer here. Strength based swords with skill bonuses are pretty rare. This was the only El-Bastardo in the game)
- Bartok magically spawns his long bow only when you go hunting with him so you can't just whoop him and take his bow, without learning how to skin animals beforehand (As far as I can tell, beating Bartok up was the only way to acquire a long bow in Chapter 1, so now you got to progress to Chapter 2 first if you really want one)
- Fireball rune costs 5 LP to learn instead of 10
- You get +1000 XP instead of +500 for bringing Diego to the old barrier exchange point
- Various XP bonuses are added throughout the game like recruiting Lester or Lares in Chapter 5, each one grants +500 XP like all the other recruits. There were also some minor ones like showing the thieves' guild sign to Nagur, which gives +50 XP
- Garvell's quest offers higher XP earlier in the game as opposed to later in the game like ALL other chapter dependent quest XP rewards (This is straight up a new quest mechanic)
- Citizen clothings are buffed so people wearing them take less damage from your sorry ass (10 -> 15 is a 50% increase and quite significant in the beginning of the game)
- Damage resistances are adjusted on various enemies (Most notable being the snapper pack leader, who now has the same damage absorption as regular snappers at 60 instead of 30. I'm pretty sure PB deliberately halved it to provide an easy solution for super weak players that are still having trouble killing a regular snapper so they don't end up soft locking themselves. Killing the pack snapper is required to progress the main quest)
- Certain merchants sell items that they never did, including items that required specific skills to get (Now you can get troll tusk from Lutero to make a Shrink Monster rune without having to learn how to pull teeth and kill a troll yourself, I guess to make some of these hunting skills even more worthless)
- Ring of Water members refuse to speak with you if you are wearing Ring of Water armor. A complete, utter pointless change. Sure, something similar already existed in the original game. I remember not being able to speak with other guardsmen without being in uniform, but look at the big picture. Such mechanics have always been bad. They accomplish nothing but decrease QoL, serve zero purpose other than to produce more unnecessary micro-management and annoyance for the player. The Ring of Water armor is a strong early game armor. It is more protective than all light faction armors and relatively easy to acquire, so you're probably going to be wearing it a lot in the early game. Having to take it off every single time you want Vatras to heal you or talk with Lares just straight up sucks ass. Even worse, you still got to put back on your faction armor when speaking to other faction members, so it sucks twice as much ass now. Yes, I know it has been said in some of the dialogue lines that we should never wear the armor in town, but it's a video game, you just have to take liberties sometimes for the sake of the gameplay loop.
- Minor changes that have no bearings on gameplay but are just FULL RETARD and make me question the makers' knowledge on the material.
- For example, Lares now wears his Ring of Water armor instead of his citizen clothes in Chapter 6. Didn't you guys made it a point to force the player to strip off the Ring of Water armor before he's allowed to talk to all those NPCs, because it's supposed to be secret guild that nobody should talk about, nobody should ever be seen with the armor on and all that bullshit. Yet, here's Lares, wearing the armor right in front of a whole bunch of dudes that have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the Ring of Water. Yes I know Lee mentioned it, and by association of being in the New Camp in Gothic 1, a passable case can be made for Gorn and maybe even Wolf or Torlof, but what about Angar, Diego, Milten, Lester, Mario, and worst of all THAT PALADIN GIRION? For Christ's sake, Lares is literally standing right in front of Diego, talking to him the entire time. What the fuck is this? I've played the game many times, and at the end, the protagonist literally asks Lares, "Well you don't seem to care about all this, don't you?", where he replies apathetically, "Yeah, I mean I always knew you were going to pull through." He was just chilling and hanging out. He didn't give a crap about the threat in the first place. Him wearing regular clothes was perfectly fine and one might even go as far as to say, it actually reflected his personality and level of investment in the whole thing. Come on, I know they thought making Lares wear actual armor would make it seem more epic like we're all putting on our best gear to face the baddie, but try and study the damn material first. If you absolutely must make him wear a real armor, let him wear his old mercenary armor. He's still a mercenary at the end of the day, and that's what he would have worn, now that he's no longer spying on the city but is still in the presence of people that have no business with the Ring of Water.
- Another example is the change to the appearance of Lord Andre, who now wears paladin armor instead of the lesser knight armor in the original game. Again, just WHY? This was explained so early on, it's mind boggling that anybody can even get this one wrong. In fact, when you first meet Lord Andre, you can ask him about wanting to acquire the Eye of Innos. And his reaction? He couldn't care less. He just shrugs his shoulders and says he has never heard of it. He then goes on and says that doesn't mean anything because if there is indeed such a thing, then only the highest members of his order would know about it. HE LITERALLY EXPLAINS IT TO YOU HIMSELF. HE IS STILL JUST A KNIGHT OFFICER, NOT A HIGH RANKING PALADIN. On the other hand, Lothar, who does wear the paladin armor and is a legit high ranking paladin, throws a hissing fit and questions the main character on how the hell did he manage to come across such information. Good grief, just because the dude has LORD in his title and they put him in charge of the barracks, it doesn't magically make him a high member. PAY ATTENTION TO THE GODDAMN GAME.
- Then there are things like reusing the headdress and garb of the undead orc shamans in Gothic 1 for Hosh-Pak and the other orc shaman in front of the canyon desert. It looks super weird and goofy, since the gear was obviously designed specifically for ancient undead orcs to fit with the theme of the Sleeper Temple. In other words, it is CEREMONIAL FOR THE BURIED and not meant for living orc tribesmen. Seeing it worn in broad daylight by the orc shamans was a pure styles clash and just did not fit at all. The list goes on and on. Stuff like this are just wrong and butchered some of the delicate subtleties and finer details that were deliberate, consistent, and made perfect sense.
- Protagonist no longer wears his bracers and clothes underneath armor. This has been a thing since Gothic 1 and you would think if it was indeed an oversight, PB would have fixed it by now in a patch, definitely would have when Gothic 2 came out. The point of this was obviously to create an unique look for the main character, so he doesn't look exactly the same as everybody else. Of course, they looked at this as a bug, and now you have to stare at dude's bare arms and legs.
- Strange A.I. Behaviors. The patch claims to have better and cleaner NPC AI. I guess it's true in some cases but there is definitely some weird bologna going on. For instance, if you draw your weapon in town AS A BLOODY PALADIN, regular citizens would still try to intimidate you and yell at you to put it down. Even those bum ass farmers would be like this when they're under your protection as a mercenary. I'm pretty positive that this has never been a thing since Gothic 1. They also seem to see through walls a lot more now. Like if you go smack the gardener behind the town hall, the paladins inside the house would aggro on you. It's kind of silly.
- You can no longer buy Lehmar's book back from Thorben or Coragon after giving it to them. You can't even loot it off of their dead bodies if you beat them up, yet you can pickpocket it when they're standing right in front of you. What kind of ass backwards logic is this? So it's on their body and I can pickpocket it off of them, but the moment I whoop their candy asses, it just vanishes. Brilliant. I'm pretty sure PB intended it to be bought back, that's why they set the book to be worth 200 gold, so you pay 200 to buy it back.
- More Inconsistent Game Logic. Adding to the previous point, I think there is just more inconsistency in how the game handles items with NPCs throughout the game now. You can't just beat up Jan to get the dragon scales back after he used them up to make an improved armor. Alright, I can get behind that, yet for whatever reason, you also can't whoop him to get your 12000 gold back. What's stopping the player from doing that? What's stopping Jan from getting his ass whooped? Where did the gold go? I mean, just right before you get to the castle, you could pay Godar 1000 gold to get him to teach you how to get dragon blood and whoop him to get your money back afterwards. You can choose to split the loot with Biff and whoop him to get everything back. You can donate 1000 gold to Daron and beat it out of him. You can also buy a magic ore blade from Harad for 2000 and kick his ass to get the money back. And you can still hand the black troll hide over to Raoul to get all of his reward, rob him, and sell the hide to Bosper afterwards. By the time you can throw 12k on Jan, you're swimming in wealth anyway, so why single out the 12k on Jan? Either make an effort to clean everything up for some consistency, or don't fix it cause it ain't broke.
- Orcish Gibberish is back. The unintelligible orcish weapon names from Gothic 1 are restored for absolutely no reason other than for the sake of it. Instead of the neat "Light Orc Axe" or "Lizard Sword" or whatever, we once again get "KRUSH BUSHKAR". Do they ever sit down and think about why PB made these changes in the first place? I'm pretty sure not a single human in Gothic cares about what these weapons are called in the orc language.
- Cut content that should remain cut is restored. It may be different on other versions, but in the English version, they restored this weird "I can't open this lock" voice line that sounds completely off from the rest of the lines. The tone is very different and it sounds as if the voice actor is standing 20 miles away from the mic and it's 5 db lower. They also restored many of the human hit reaction and death sounds. The problem is that they're loud and don't sound as low-key and ambiguous as original ones. On top of that, it seems like they are used randomly so it's painfully obvious when they mismatch the voice of the NPC. There are some good ones like the seeker sounds, but why can't they just pick out the ones that are actually good and leave out the rest, or at least implement them properly. Another one that comes to mind is now you get the option to ask Huno the smith whether or not he can repair jewelry, but he'd just angrily yell at you with a recycled voice line: "I don't know ANYTHING!", completely out of the blue and out of character.
The rest is either okay or at worst harmless. Stuff like being able to just strafe past gate guards or gain infinite XP by robbing and reselling shadowbeast horns to Buster over and over again has always been pretty absurd. It's nice to see these blatant exploits fixed. Then there's stuff like fixing the infinite steel blanks glitch. I mean personally, I almost never start an apprenticeship with Harad. And even when I did, I usually don't learn any forging skills and just sell him whatever swords I can find in the game, so this particular exploit is really not my thing. It's definitely an oversight, but at the same time, being such an iconic bug, it's kind of a bummer to see it gone. It doesn't matter at the end of the day, you're going to get enough gold regardless.
A couple of two-handed hammers are also restored, one at 110 DMG and one at 170 DMG. They played it super safe with these. The hammers just deal blunt damage and have slightly shorter range than weapons of the same tier. For the most part, they don't really have any real purpose in the game. By the time you reach the required strength to wield these weapons, stone sentinels and golems already go down in 2 hits with an edged weapon anyway. Really, the only way to make them useful, without doing anything too drastic, is to repackage them as early game weapons, since that's the only time where you may need that blunt damage to punch through the resistance threshold of those golems. But then of course you run into the dilemma of overstepping your boundaries and messing with the balance. It's a lose-lose situation. Either they just sit there as something for cosmetics purposes, or you mess with the gameplay. Neither is ideal. I don't know, maybe that's why they were left out in the first place, just a hunch.
Overall, for the purpose of smoothing out the gameplay, the Script Patch mod is still worth it. It does many things right. It's playable out of the box and works well. And like I said, I didn't notice a lot of fixes and changes, which is the best thing you can ask for from mods like this. I just wish that all the bullshit changes like everything mentioned above were cleaned up and there was a version that included only the bug fixes and the useful, tasteful QoL changes.
Lastly, there's the
Bonus Independent Training Mod. Gothic 2 NOTR has this unintuitive system of higher stats increasing LP cost that practically nobody likes, myself included. The mod makes it so the permanent bonuses are not taken into consideration when training, so you can use them whenever you want. I've tried this mod once, and I honestly would recommend against it, mainly because the game is just not designed for it. You end up becoming OP way too fast and even more OP in the late game, since now you can both train at a much lower LP cost rate AND apply permanent bonuses concurrently, whereas it was intended to be a compromise in the original game, a balancing act so to speak between gimping yourself too much to be more OP later in the game and having a smoother progression but possibly lowering your ceiling.
Also, just to illustrate how overblown this myth of having to metagame stat training in Gothic 2 is, here's a list of all permanent strength bonuses. I'm only including bonuses available BEFORE Chapter 6:
- +3 from apples (+3 to +7 or more, let's take minimum amount)
- +10 from praying
- +22 from stone tablets
- +5 from Thekla
- +33 from brewing strength potions
- +9 from found strength potions
- +3 from misc sources (Erol and stews)
- +30 from temp bonuses on gear
All adds up to a total of +115 strength. The end game mercenary 1H sword has a 140 strength requirement, which means you only need a measly 25 strength before you start applying permanent bonuses. That's 15 LP, one and a half levels. Doing most of the early game content gets you at least 15 levels in Chapter 1, or 20 if you push for it. Let's say you end the game at level 50, again you can easily push it to something like level 57 or 58 if you do everything, that's about 10% of your Chapter 1 LP and 3% of your total LP. Dealing 300 damage per blow (Damage formula is strength + weapon damage: 140 DMG from strength + 160 DMG from weapon), by default you already hit the key damage breakpoint for 2-shotting Lizard Men, Orc Warriors, and Wargs, three of the most common enemies in the game. Even if you go for 150 strength for the last major damage breakpoint for 3-shotting Orc Elites, that's still just 26 LP or 5% of total LP. It's nothing.
For paladins, this is even more absurd. Wrath of Innos only requires 100 strength to wield. In other words, you can literally go through the entire game without spending a single learning point on strength, and still be able to use your end game weapon. Sure, if you want to hit the same breakpoints as a mercenary with dragon sword, you would need 160-170 strength, but the LP investment is still going to be very low. In this case, it's basically the same as 2H weapons. End game 2H weapons require 20 more strength than 1H, or 30 if you want to use the big axe. That's 40 to 60 LP, or 4 to 6 levels. Still less than a third of the amount of LP you can gain in Chapter 1. And let's not even talk about dexterity based characters with their guaranteed crits. You get more than twice as many goblin berries than dragon roots for brewing stat potions, and much of the DEX bonuses can be acquired much earlier in the game than STR bonuses.
The only time where it's necessary to seriously metagame stat training is when you're going for something like a super 2H fighter with 250 strength, so you can 1-shot orc warriors with the Berserker's Axe. Still, this is only possible to accomplish in late Chapter 5 at the earliest. And yes, in this case, you're definitely going to have to gimp yourself for almost the entire game and ignore all secondary skills, and focus solely on strength and 2H combat skill. And yes, I also think you deserve to be miserable for choosing to play such an extreme build. And yes, you'll end up not getting to actually play the damn build because you'll turn off the game by the time Chapter 5 hits, that's when everybody becomes burnt out on Gothic games anyway.
From what I've heard, I haven't played it yet, Archolos uses the new bonus independent system and is actually designed around it. So just go play Archolos instead if the NOTR system really bothers you this much. It used to bother me a lot in the past, and even now, I still wouldn't call it a good system. However, for Gothic 2, it works better than the alternative. The people that say you got to hoard and hold onto the stat items for as long as you can, only use them when you reach Chapter 5 or until you reach 94 STR or whatever, are just making the game seem unnecessarily metagamey. They are going out of their way to worsen the experience. There is really no need to do that. Look at the actual math. Look at the numbers. Just get 20-30 points on your main attribute and you're pretty much good to go. Put more points in if you want to rely less on stat gear. If you're going for 2H, put 20-30 more points into strength.
I'm a bit of a sucker for early 2000s blocky 3D graphics with modern effects, heresy as it may be to some.
