Various Thoughts

As with Gothic 3, calling this a midpoint isn’t quite accurate since the game’s only as long/short as you want it to be. Half the map is cleared though so it’s close enough.

At level 66 now and I experimented with both magic and ranged combat to see what ended up being the most powerful. Basically, it comes down to this:

Melee: 20x Exotic Hachet/Armor Opener (no element) at 200 Str = ~5500 Damage
Melee Boost: Strong Hand (Rank 10) + Berserk (Rank 10) = +500% Damage

Ranged: 20x Whistling Death (no element) and 20x Ornamented Quiver at 200 Dex = ~11100 Damage
Ranged Boost: Overdraw (Rank 10) & Multi Arrow (Rank 10) = +100% Damage and +4 attacks

Magic: 20x Eruption (Earth Rank 15) with 5x +Damage/+Level/-Cost = 9390 Damage for 1174 Mana
Magic Boost: 20x Concentration (Air Rank 15) with 5x +Damage/+Level/-Cost = +2370% Damage on 1 attack for 305 Mana

So melee is most efficient at low skill levels (you only ‘need’ Strong Hand and Berserk), ranged at high skill levels (you need all four passives), and magic is best for doing insane amounts of one-time damage (but requires a ton of vendor farming). I have not run across all the spell cards yet but the ones I have point toward magic being best as a support ability; Strength of God, Adamantium Shield/Reflection Shield, and Grapple Ivy/Freezing Wave are great at eliminating melee/ranged weaknesses. Summoning seems to be near-useless since the best summons max out at level 30.

Some other worthwhile things to know, in no particular order:

• Force Triple Buffering and Vsync in your graphic card’s settings to reduce the stuttering.
• Equipment can’t be stacked beyond 50.
• Spell Booster bonuses max out at 5.
• The best equipment starts appearing around level 40.
• One-handed axes stop appearing around level 50.
• Pure-piercing damage spears stop appearing at around level 50.
• Items can have a maximum of 5 enchantments.
• I’ve never seen the magic schools, Sneak, or Steal appear as +Skill equipment enchantments.
• I’ve never seen an enchanted dagger or swordbreaker.
• Only certain herbs are worth collecting.
  • Blue Eye/Screama Badilla/Ostrich Plumes if you want to make +50% magic stones.
  • Dotted Toadstool/Adder Brother to make poison immunity potions.
  • Saffron/Lavender/Centaurium/Nothern Frostroot for the permanent stat boosts.
• When making stat-boosting potions, use either 4 minerals and 6 mana/health potions or 10 herbs.
• When making stat-boosting potions try to make sure all the ingredients boost the same stat.
• Poison prevents mana regeneration.
• Berserk and Critical Hit don’t stack.
• Sneak does not affect Steal success or Lockpick crime reporting.
• Stealing often has to be done from the front/side of a target.
• If NPCs attack after Lockpicking something, running far enough away will usually reset them.
• Strength increases melee damage, Dexterity ranged damage, and raising the magic skills increases magic damage.
• Carry Weight maxes out at 500.
• Different enemies resist different types of damage; make sure to have both a bludgeoning and slashing weapon.
• There’s not much off the beaten path besides more enemies to kill.
• The only use for swimming so far was to reach 4 small islands, each with a stat-boosting potion.

Ever played Gothic? Well this game is just like it:

Clunky melee that lets you dominate with hit and run tactics, a large map to explore with enemies that don’t respawn, a difficult beginning until you pick up a level or two, a forced male MC with slightly jokey voice acting, the ability to attack/kill NPCs, a wide variety of skills to customize your character with, and tons of stat-boosting herbs scattered around the map to collect.

Been playing for a while now, reached level 33 and just got around to entering the first town to max out Alchemy in order to use all the permanent stat boosters I’ve been collecting from the ground and NPCs’ pockets (the Steal skill is actually good since it lets you find stat/damage boosters instead of just gold). Other good all-around early skills would be Lockpick (get it up to level 8 and keep it there) and Set Trap (traps do tons of damage). I haven’t used much magic (mainly just Heal) or any archery yet, but for melee you don’t really need anything more than Strong Hand and Critical Hit; I have Parry up pretty high but it never seems to do anything… and you shouldn’t be getting hit in the first place.

So yeah, if you’ve played Gothic II or III before you should feel right at home. If you haven’t, then it might be better to start with this since it’s more forgiving of character building mistakes (there’s a repeatable respec option available in towns that can reset your stat/skill points).