Gothic 3 Gone Gold.

[mortiz]

So should Gothic III be re-named to Virtual Gardener?

 

[SuAside]

a new gothic patch is out. the patchnotes make me hopeful, but you know how those things can be deceiving.

either way, they make me want to start over (and fix some of my mistakes i made on my first char).

 

[Montez]

Did they fix wildlife being unstoppable killing machines or crossbows being near useless? Those are the only two things that are really bugging me so far.

Also, I'm not sure if I just haven't got the hang of the new combat system yet or what, but one-handed weapon use seems pretty suicidal. I'm level 15 right now and if it weren't for halberds I don't think there's any way I would have gotten this far, since every enemy in the game seems to have a greater reach than me and everything just quick-hits you to death if you let them get close.

 

[Tannhauser]

Did they fix wildlife being unstoppable killing machines or crossbows being near useless? Those are the only two things that are really bugging me so far.

According to the change log (though it doesn't seem to list all the changes they made) and various Gothic 3 forums, they have fixed those two issues. Apparently armor has been fixed as well, now providing substantial reduction in damage.

Unfortunately for me, the patch didn't solve my particular problem. After less than ten minutes of play, the game will crash with the charmingly obtuse message ""Gothic3.exe caused a EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION in module engine.dll." I've been trying everything I can think of to solve the problem, but it looks like it will take a patch to fix it. Currently the game is in an unplayable state on my computer.

 

[SuAside]

Did they fix wildlife being unstoppable killing machines

i tested and boars seem to hit less fast as they used to, so at least it's a bit better. i didn't test with other stuff.

or crossbows being near useless?

crossbows were never useless, Montez. sure, they cant be used for kite abusing, but they were far from useless. you need to recognise when the use of a crossbow is practical and useful. you cant simply think that the crossbow is a kind of bow and use it in the exact same way.

i havent checked the crossbow changes though.

Also, I'm not sure if I just haven't got the hang of the new combat system yet or what, but one-handed weapon use seems pretty suicidal.

1h+shield is indeed worthless. don't bother with it. i fought through one third of the game with it. needless to say it was slow and extremely frustrating.

dual wield or 2h are the way to go (i prefer dual wield).

I'm level 15 right now and if it weren't for halberds I don't think there's any way I would have gotten this far, since every enemy in the game seems to have a greater reach than me and everything just quick-hits you to death if you let them get close.

run in, use a quick hit to make the enemy recoil (probably need some swordskill for that of course) and then start normal fighting. often the fight is lost if you don't get the first hit. dont forget the multitude of special attacks (quick attack, attack from parry, normal attack, power attack, coup de grace)

as for wildlife, simply never try to melee it (unless the beast is distracted)... because that's just hopeless most of the time.

Apparently armor has been fixed as well, now providing substantial reduction in damage.

paladin armor (and artifact jewelry) was already kinda nuts, so i didn't notice much of a change.


anyhow, I also finished the game yesterday. i was rather surprised. i hadnt expected the game to end that way. while i had searched the entire land, i didn't expect it to end without one particular epic fight, but it did (well for me anyway). i took the goody twoshoes ending & it was rather boring. it was way too up beat for an ending (even for the 'good' ending), going so far that i really hated it. in hindsight, the neutral (adanos) or pseudo-evil (xardas) endings might reveal to be a lot more interesting.

 

[Montez]

crossbows were never useless, Montez. sure, they cant be used for kite abusing, but they were far from useless. you need to recognise when the use of a crossbow is practical and useful. you cant simply think that the crossbow is a kind of bow and use it in the exact same way.

I recognize that they're different weapons, I just thought that they were useless even in the context of crossbow use. The damage difference wasn't that much from bows, they had a tiny range, and you had to wait through the entire reloading animation (about 2-3 seconds, by which time whatever you were shooting is on top of you) before you could swap weapons. I preferred crossbows in Gothic 1 and 2, but so far in this game I haven't come across a situation where I'd rather use my crossbow than a regular bow, even with Strength>210 and Hunting Skill at 120. By the time you can snipe things with a crossbow they really aren't much of threat anyway.

The patch did fix my main complaint though (being trapped in a 2-3 second animation after every shot), so I'll start using them more.

I'm really sucking at the game so far though, at least as a rebel; I've visited almost every city in Myrtana and done enough quests to see the chief orcs, I'm just starting to explore Nordmar, I can now take on packs of Wolves, Wargs, Snappers, Lurkers, etc...... yet I still can't liberate Cape Dun. No matter what I do I get destroyed about 30 seconds after talking to Wenzel. Hiding, running, fighting, bringing another rebel from Reddock - none of them work. One time I managed to clear out the whole area, only to have an orc run up and kill me while drinking a potion. I'm thinking about just joining the Orcs for good because I can actually DO their quests.

 

[SuAside]

I recognize that they're different weapons, I just thought that they were useless even in the context of crossbow use. The damage difference wasn't that much from bows,

only if you have the hunter bow perks. if you don't the crossbow greatly outdamages the bow.

they had a tiny range,

what? it does not... it fires just as far as a bow. (which is even beyond your line of sight)

and you had to wait through the entire reloading animation (about 2-3 seconds, by which time whatever you were shooting is on top of you) before you could swap weapons.

even with the old crap delay animation, you could kill an elite warrior orc before his buddies got into slugging range.

I'm really sucking at the game so far though, at least as a rebel; I've visited almost every city in Myrtana and done enough quests to see the chief orcs, I'm just starting to explore Nordmar, I can now take on packs of Wolves, Wargs, Snappers, Lurkers, etc...... yet I still can't liberate Cape Dun. No matter what I do I get destroyed about 30 seconds after talking to Wenzel. Hiding, running, fighting, bringing another rebel from Reddock - none of them work. One time I managed to clear out the whole area, only to have an orc run up and kill me while drinking a potion. I'm thinking about just joining the Orcs for good because I can actually DO their quests.

just let the paladin roam free, stay in the house (use the bottleneck to your advantage) until he has the first wave under controle, then go do ranged damage from the roof?

it was indeed frustrating the first few times, but if you've gone that far already you should have more than decent gear. i did it with total noobass gear. hell, i did it with the orcslayer+skullshield & a hunting bow.

 

[Tannhauser]

I have to agree with Montez, SuAside, before the patch I found the crossbow to be much less useful than the bow. Basically because of the delay, enemies would close to melee distance before the crossbow did much good. The only use I had for it was when I had a good sniping position, then the higher damage (no bow perks for me) gave it the advantage.

Montez, did you do the quest for the rebel leader in Cap Dun? Delivering the weapon bundles? I believe that will take a bit of the pressure off. To get past Cape Dun, I did what SuAside suggests, used the doorway of the lighthouse to my advantage.

 

[Montez]

Montez, did you do the quest for the rebel leader in Cap Dun? Delivering the weapon bundles? I believe that will take a bit of the pressure off. To get past Cape Dun, I did what SuAside suggests, used the doorway of the lighthouse to my advantage.

Yeah, I delivered the weapons bundles. I've been trying to use the doorway but the guy with the crossbow directly outside of it always ends up staggering me, and that ends up being it for me. The inside doorway is a little better, but I always get quick-hit and swarmed. I have managed to kill around a half-dozen myself while Wenzel is still working on his first one, but I end up with nearly zero hit points.

I'm going to turn all graphics settings to low and try it again, maybe squeezing some extra FPS out of my out-of-date machine will turn the tide.

 

[Montez]

Well, I finally liberated it. I let my hit points stay at the default the whole game, and just as a test I bought 100 more. Suddenly Cape Dun and almost everything else became a lot easier. HP's are a lot more effective than armor in this game, I guess.

Crossbows are still useless for me though. I don't know if it's a bug or what, but I absolutely can not hit anything unless it's 20 feet away from me, while with bows I can hit anything - even stuff that's off screen. Ah well.

 

[SuAside]

*very minor spoiler*

the best illustration for the power of the crossbow is probably the cave near the wheat thieves in Montera.

instead of going into the cave behind the wheat thieves, you continue north (kill a few snappers along the way) and find the trolls. kill the trolls by retreating behind trees (which are too close too eachother for trolls to pass through). once their lil' spot is clear, you have a chest, but also an overlook position to a part of the earlier cave. at the time, i had no bow talents at all. shooting with a bow from there was impossible (for a talentless huntard), however with a crossbow, i shot everything from the vantage point where they simply could not get to me. i think you can clear about one fifth of the cave this way, making progress into the cave a lot easier. this would've been a huge pain in the ass with a bow imo.

 

[Montez]

Turns out I'm just stupid - I was aiming way too low. Now that I've got the hang of it I'm using it a lot more. Still prefer bows though, if only for the fast reload time.

 

[SuAside]

yeah, but bows need to be drawn pretty far for them to deal decent damage (although they provide more mobility, of course).

either way, as i said before, both weapons have their place. each has a role to play.

 

[Wooz]

I have an important question; do arrows and/or crossbow bolts stay in enemies' bodies after impact?

 

[SuAside]

yes, and you can't recover them.

kinda funny at times though. you shoot an enemy (or ally for that matter) in the head & the arrow will stay in his head for the whole fight (one side the feathers, the other side the arrowhead sticking out. kinda like a bad halloween costume).

 

[Tannhauser]

Not a unique occurrence.

You know, I just noticed the other night that you can sharpen blade arrows, a neat little touch.

Anyway, what is with the question Woozie?

 

[Wooz]

I've recently become strangely fascinated with shooting arrows into peoples' heads.

Nothing quite like stopping the horrible dialogues in Oblivious with a well-placed shot in the back of the head.

Bandit, to another bandit: WELCOME from the Colovian Highl- *chok*-aaAUUrghhhlll

 

[SuAside]

You know, I just noticed the other night that you can sharpen blade arrows, a neat little touch.

only bladed arrows, of course. not the normal kind.

 

[Sander]

Well, I played this for quite a bit now. Got 3 'main' cities done and I'm exploring the desert now. Fun stuff.

Well, I feel it's just another Gothic title: adventure with quite a bit of RPG in the mix.

Likes:
- I like the new stat system, it gives you more diverse options. The only downside to it is that it severely degrades the usefulness of alchemy, as alchemy was supremely useful for stat-raising in the previous game (due to the stat-cost scaling), but is much less useful now that you can easily get the same skill upgrade much easier.

- Lockpicking mini-game is gone.

- You actually have a shitload of moral choices (mainly to do with liberating cities or not and destroying rebel camps or not).

- Orcs have now become more 'human'.

- Diverse setting with more cultures and conflicts added.

Dislikes:

- Orcs are generally pussies.

- Level scaling is absurd in comparison to the other two games. You get a lot of experience very, very quickly (or I'm extremely good, but I really doubt that). This leads to an overabundance of skill points to the point that I've been pouring every stat point into hit points and strength (pretty much meaningless since I have all the weapon 'perks' I want already) for the past 8 levels because I have no clue what else to do with them.

- A lot of different and new plants, yet a lot of them do pretty much the same thing. Seems like a dumbed down alchemy system, really. Diversity is only good when it serves a purpose.

- Party AI sucks. Your party members do nothing until you either hit or get hit by an enemy, and once they do something they start to attack everything in a 10 mile radius or so, forcing you to follow them and protect them even when they could've just ignored the beasts.

- 'Friendly fire' is a good idea, but not when done like this. If you accidentally hit a 'friendly' there's a very good chance he'll turn hostile and try to kick your ass even though such hits occur frequently in such a fight.
This gets worse when you have a party member and friendlies. I've had to redo a certain fight several times before I got it arranged so that my party member didn't accidentally hit or get hit by one of my friendlies and then start a war with them.

- Enemy AI is pretty stupid, since you can generally go the 'shoot, run, return, shoot again' tactic. This makes sense in the case of territorial animals and undead, but not in the case of intelligent bandits who are getting picked off one by one.

- Leaving 'restricted' areas is often done poorly, at times leading to you being attacked for being somewhere you were at previously, but left almost immediately.

- Dumbed down combat system. The best close combat tactic seems to be to just keep whacking and not stop no matter what happens.

- Performance is horrid and the clipping is pretty poor as well.

- The sun shines into your face, blinding you, *while you're in an underground mine, through the mountain*.

 

[SuAside]

- The sun shines into your face, blinding you, *while you're in an underground mine, through the mountain*.

did you patch? that's supposedly one of the things that was fixed in the first patch.