Sunday, January 20, 2008

Gothic 3 skills, tips and tricks

This is a small guide to Gothic 3 for people who don’t want to waste learning points on useless skills. Some general gameplay tips are also included.

I played the game with last official patch v1.12, some bugs I’m going to mention might be fixed in later community patches (v1.5 is the most recent). Also, I haven’t played as mage yet, so these hints probably won’t be much useful to you if you want to use magic a lot.

Essential skills

There are three basic classes in Gothic 3: fighter, archer and mage. I prefer the mix of fighter and archer. I haven’t yet played as mage so I can’t give you any tips on that yet. I recommend these skills for non-magic character (I don’t list their pre-requirements):

  • Fighting: sword master, orc slayer, strong shield parry, regeneration
  • Hunting: bow master, orc hunter
  • Magic: none
  • Smithing: forge ore weapons, prospector, sharpen blade
  • Thieving: pick difficult locks, make excuses
  • Alchemy: none
  • Other: endurance of the wolf, resistance to cold, resistance to heat

Useless skills

Hunting

  • sneak on wild animals - you can just shoot them from distance or outrun them with a sword.

Smithing

  • forge pure ore weapons – don’t waste your time and learning points on this skill. You won’t be able to get any recipes for pure ore weapons. You can’t get much better weapon that self-forged and sharpened bastard sword. It’s just not worth the effort.

    Note: You can learn this skill only from Hammer Clan’s smith and it involves a very flustrating quest where you gotta get approval from 3 other ore smelters in Nordmar, but two of them run out of villages in the meantime and you end up wandering around Nordmar and looking for them for hours (and after you finally find them, then you’ll find out the “pure ore” skill is actually worthless :)). Someone on forums suggested following tip for this quest: smiths walk out villages right after you get the quest. So quicksave, teleport to Fire Clan and follow its smith to find out its destination. Then quickload and follow the the smith of Wolf Clan.

    Update: It's tricky to get pure ore recipes and weapons. There are special unnamed chests in the game containing rare items. The more of these chests you open, the rarer items you find, including pure ore recipes and weapons. As far as I can tell, there's no other way to get them.

    IMHO it sucks, because how can you figure that out by yourself while playing the game?! You can't, unless you read the walkthrough. Best weapons should be available through quests, not by this random "system".

    And then there's another question - is it worth it? As I've checked the weapon descriptions, best weapon has about 160 damage. Self-forged and sharpened bastard sword has 110 damage and it's quite easy to raise damage by increasing your strength, so I don't think that pure ore weapons are worth the trouble it takes to get them.

    More info about unnamed chests and their content

Thieving

  • pick impossible locks – while not really a useless skill, it’s better to put your points elsewhere. Chests with impossible locks are rare in the game and you can open them with „open locks“ scroll, just make sure you always have some in your inventory.

    Update: If you decide to search for special unnamed chests containing rare items, this skill will be useful to you in the long run, because they all have impossible locks.

  • pick pockets – not very effective unless you put half of your learning points into thieving skill. I learned to pick difficult pockets and it usually just annoyed me – you steal by choosing a option in dialogue, so dialogue window opens for persons who have nothing to say and it hinders you, you’re often caught and then you gotta quickload which hinders you even more, so I didn’t even bother stealing, except when clicking on "pickpocket" dialogue option by mistake, usually followed by quickload.

    In few cases when you need to rob someone, there’s a workaround: whack him and then use “amnesia” spell scroll (when you cast it upon unconcious person, he/she forgets your crimes).

Alchemy

  • Don’t put your learning points into alchemy, learn it from books instead, there’s a lot of them in the game. You actually don’t need to have high alchemy skill - you will mostly brew only health and endurance potions and you can do that from the start of the game.
  • Don’t waste your time trying to learn how to make poisons and how to use them to poison your weapon or arrows. Make poison skill is bugged, you can’t learn it. You can learn how to poison weapon, but I wasn’t able to actually do it, when I finally got me some poison from trader in Mora Sul. I think it might be bugged as well. Finally, you can learn to poison arrows, but it’s not very practical skill because poisons are very hard to come by.
  • Brew permanent potions – not a very useful skill. You brew them from king sorrel and certain plants with permanent effects. These plants raise your attributes by themselves, permanent potions just double their effect (for example: dragonroot raises strength by 1 point, potion made from it raises strength by 2 points). Problem is that you won’t find many king's sorrel plants in the game, so you can brew only a few permanent potions. Just eat permanent effect plants instead of making potions from them.

    Update: There are about 50 king's sorrels to be found so if you search for them you will easily earn more points then you use to learn Permanent potion skill. Thanks for the tip, Percy.

  • Brew transformation potions – this might come in handy, but I prefer druid stones, which you can use over and over again, while transformation potion can be used only once. My favorite beast to transform into is snapper, which is very fast and has high endurance, so it’s convenient for running long distances. You can get snapper druid stone from druid in camp south of Geldern.

Other

  • Resistance to weakness – you won’t need it at all.
  • Resistance to poison – you will rarely need it, get some antitode potions instead (and if you don’t have them, just keep drinking drink healing potions, poison will subside after a while).

Other skills I didn’t mention are in between essential and useless category – I didn’t found them especially useful, but they’re not a waste of learning points either.

General tips

  • If you equip shield, you get armor bonus. (You don’t have to actually use it.)
  • Most effective fighter equipment is bastard sword (self-forged, sharpened and blessed) and paladin shield (because of the armor bonus) – you can get both without too much hassle. There are better weapons than bastard sword, but you can finish the game thrice in time it would take you to get them, so they aren’t simply worth it.
  • When you fight with companions, watch the distance – you can easily whack them by accident and then they might turn against you. However, they are very useful as a shield - usually they can’t die, so put them in the „first line“ as a primary target for enemy attack and whack enemies from behind or shoot them from distance.
  • You can make a lot of money by forging and selling weapons, especially bastard swords, which you can sell for 4800 gold coins (probably more if you can haggle). It’s also good to have prospector skill, because then you get twice as much ore from ore veins. Learn it as soon as possible so you have more ore at your disposal.
  • If you want to get somewhere far away, there’s a lot of enemies in your way and you’re too inexperienced to beat them, just run through them and jump like crazy while you’re at it. You can outrun most of your opponents. It’s good to learn endurance of the wolf skill and have some endurance potions ready, because you can’t run if you have no endurance points left.
  • If you want to be an archer, I recommend you to learn to handle bows and ignore crossbow skills. Only advantage of crossbow is its dependence on strength attribute, which is higher than your dexterity if you’re a fighter. But bows also deal good amount of damage and are faster - speed matters a lot in long-range combat, you can shoot a few arrows, then run back a shoot some more. With crossbow you usually have only one shot, because it takes a long time to fire a bolt.
  • Spellcasters are the most dangerous opponents in the game, especially if they are among group of fighters. Here’s how to beat them: learn resistance to heat and cold. Increase both by amulets, rings and armor. When you spot a spellcaster, make sure your endurance is at maximum and run to them. Jump, dodge and hide behind obstructions to avoid their spells. Once you reach them, they’re easy to beat in close combat with series of quick attacks, just keep whacking them.
    If you encounter group of two or three spellcasters, try to separate them from each other. Lure them into wilderness, where monsters keep them busy. Get some companion which will act as a shield.
  • Archers and crossbowmen, are not as dangerous as spellcasters, but they still pose a big threat, especially if there’s a small group of them when you‘re conquering a camp or liberating a town.
    Firstly beat archers, then warriors - you want to avoid situation when you’re surrounded by fighters and archers shoot at you from distance. If you run close to archers and start swinging sword, they usually stop using bows and draw close-range weapons instead, which is cool because you don’t have to worry about them anymore.
  • You can get one of the best helmets early in the game: First paladin’s helmet. It’s in Geldern, in the shamans’ house, on the table. Just steal it, it’s easy.
  • Fancy a good shield? How about a paladin shield, the best shield in the game? Easiest way how to get one is to take it from renegade paladin Kurt at the pass to Varant – just be prepared to fight a lot of bandits before you get to him.

20 comments:

Oscar said...

Very nice tips, but if you see all the weapons with cheats you will see a lot of magic ore swords, this swords can´t be found anywere, so.. are this self forged ore swords?

Another question, im stuck in hammer clan with this furance thing because the blacksmith Ingvar is missing, i search him everyware without find him.
¿is this a bug? ¿how can i fix it?

lucastej said...

I checked the forums and it found out that you can actually get pure ore weapons and recipes for them, but in kinda weird way. Here's how it works: there are special chests in the game containing rare items. More special chests you loot, rarer items you get, including pure ore, recipes for pure ore weapons and weapons themselves.

IMHO it sucks, because how can you figure that out by yourself while playing the game?! You can't, unless you read the walkthrough.
Best weapons should be available through quests, not by this random "system".

And then there's other question - is it worth it? As I've checked the weapon descriptions, best weapon has about 160 damage. Self-forged and sharpened bastard sword has 110 damage and it's quite easy to raise damage by increasing your strength, so I don't think that pure ore weapons are worth the trouble it takes to get them.

Here's more info about special chests:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/920920/47253

Ingvar should be always in his hut in Hammer clan village, so it might be a bug. Try to patch game, but the you will probably have to play again from beginning.

Oscar said...

Thanks.
How can i bless a sword?

lucastej said...

I think you can bless swords at altars of Innos or Beliar. But I'm not 100% sure.

Vici said...

Hi, I have a problem... or actually just need help.
I have'nt been in Nordmar or Varant yet, but i have
liberated all of the cities in Myrtana unless Trelis
and Faring. When I went to Faring to go through the
pass of Nordmar, everybody attacked me :S why? Next
time i came there I brought with me Gorn, but a
shaman(or an magician) and some other warriors killed
him. is it possible to revive him? make him live again?

lucastej said...

Vici: I don't think it's possible, you can only heal your party members. I'm actually surprised that Gorn can be killed, I used him as a shield quite a few times during town siege. You know what they say: save early, save often :).

pup3t said...

I wonder aboutmistery skill in our heroes skill, you know that mistery skill?my friends and I, we are all gothic fanatics, but dunno nothing about that ''question marc'' skill.


Do you know something about that m8?

-
Sry fot missspel:S

Percy said...

There are almots 50 kings sorrel to be found so if you search for them you will easily earn more points then you use to learn Permanent potion skill.

Also Pick impossible locks is very useful since there are about 120-140 "unnamed chests" which contains special weapons and magic things(including permanent potions). Ofcourse you could use the open lock magic but you have alot of learning points in this game and using 5 for impossible locks is worth it.

Ofcourse you can have your opinion and I can have mine, just pointing it out.

Darkshadowe said...

This was really off, no offense, but maybe because i've played the latest patch. With the pure weapons forging skill, you said you can't get any recipes for them. I got one at level 15 for forge rune sword. It sells for 30,000 and the materials really aren't that hard to come by. Just sayin'.

Fry said...

ore swords arent worth it? isnt a large part of almost any game to get better equipment? you don't need any armor if you just increase your health a lot, but would you want that? the effort you put in it is just a game feature, not a trouble, right guys?

lucastej said...

pup3t: I've found some info about the "question mark" skill in this forum: "The ??? skill was a placemarker and was removed in the patch. There was specualtion that it was intended to be the leap attack skill similar to the barbarian skill in Diablo and Sacred. Probably was something like that, that was story boarded, but the SW developers could not implement." Sorry for the late reply.

Percy: "using 5 for impossible locks is worth it" it's not just 5 points, you also need to raise your thief skill points to 60. But you're right about the magic chests. I'm gonna leave a note in the article about it. As for king's sorrel, I've checked some forums and there are indeed 50 of them in the game, so I'm gonna update the article accordingly.

Darkshadowe: you are right about the pure ore weapons recipes, they can be found in "unnamed chests". I already wrote about it in earlier comment and I've just put this info to the article as well.

Fry: "isnt a large part of almost any game to get better equipment?" yes, but that game has to meet two conditions:
1) you should actually need the better equipment. Dunno about you, but I wiped out whole towns with bastard sword in G3 without much trouble.
2) better equipment should be worth the hassle it takes to acquire it - it pays to look for better armor in G3, but pure ore weapons IMHO aren't worth it because of flaws in game design (which might have been tweaked in later patches though).

Thank you all for the feedback!

Percy said...

Nice to see that you actually consider the things people write! :)

Many guide makers just tell me that i'm wrong and don't even check if that was the case.

Creds to people who use their brains(aka creds to you)

Cheers

Anonymous said...

Acrobatics is good to lower falling damage and most important: you never die from falling. That also means a quick escape on low health when you fight somewhere higher up. Just jump down and grab 1 or 2 potions and continue the fight while the enemy is finding a normal way down.

I prefer an archer/fighter type character as well, but I wouldn't ignore the crossbow completely. I generally carry both a normal bow and a crossbow. For slower opponents (zombies for instance) the crossbow is ok and for the faster ones like snappers or wolves its the normal bow.
Something you should be aware of as well is that crossbow damage does NOT go up with added strength. Normal bow damage will go up with half your hunting skill as bonus damage.

One of the essentials you picked is 'make excuses'. That's a skill you don't really need imo. Just don't try to take everything you can in a particular city and/or murder people at random.

One thing I found out is that taking out orc shamans is hard as an archer because they heal after you hit them a couple times. If you hit them with headknock arrows the moment they get up again you CAN take them down with just arrows and without them flinging spells at you.


You never mentioned large weapons in your guide as a fighter. Most of the them are worse than the onehanders for lack of speed, but the Krush Tarach (orc halberd) is an exception. The range of that weapon can keep almost any enemy at distance. If they can't reach you they can't hurt you, right?
Downside is the high strength of 400 needed, but with 200+10 sharpened+10 blessed it's a real killer.

Andreas said...

Everybody is talking about how the permanent potions aren't worth it and how there are not enough ingredients, etc. However, I've noticed that ingredients will grow back after 7 days if you sleep. I picked the King's Sorrell outside Ardea, remembered where it was and after a few days came back to the spot, sure enough: more had grown there.
So remember where you find the stuff and if you wait a bit you can get new ingredients from the same plants. But, of course, it takes awhile. I haven't tried sleep-spamming to get the stuff, so I can't say whether the grow back time is a result of days or game time.

Anonymous said...

my tip is for melee combat is simple:

have 400 strength, and use sharpened Krush Tarach

(or 500 and ogre morningstar)

Anonymous said...

I agree with Percy completely. I like people who actually take what other people write into consideration and actually 'waste' time to look for it! And for the pure ore weapons, the only reason why would one get the skill and search every freaking stone for the chests is that he is so obsessed in making them so when he finally gets one made, he sees he lacks 150 str points to use it! My friend did it once, and he went crazy after seeing the str lacking and started killing people at practically any city he saw at anyplace in GE3.

Anonymous said...

mi Consejo es para combate cuerpo a cuerpo es simple:

tener fuerza 400 y uso afilada Krush Tarach

pregunta donde la consigo

Anonymous said...

Thanks this info is quite useful.

Aaron said...

Hey all, I cant find Ingvar the smith. he is not in his hut, where he has been in a previous game. I have completed the mine clearing quest and now I cant get the benefits of it. Any thoughts?

Anonymous said...

The best thing to do with Shamens or difficult opponents is to use the Summon Lightning scrolls you find in metal chests. Stand at a distance until you have the desired enemy in your sights and use the scroll. I even used it on Zuben and the more difficult Shamens in Geldern.