The Gothic FAQ v1.0
"How to Be a Cheap Ass"
--------------------------------------
By Mochan
created February 4, 2002
last modified February 4, 2002
===============================================================================
cheap adj(1509) 1: at minimum expense
2: gained with little effort
3: obtainable at a low rate of interest
4: STINGY
ass (bef. 12c) 1: any of several hardy gregarious mammals (genus Equus)
that are smaller than the horse and have long ears
2: a stupid, obstinate, or perverse person
===============================================================================
DISCLAIMER
-----------------
This FAQ written while playing Gothic v1.08j
All things written herein were tried and tested using that version only.
If anything does not work for you, it might be the game version. If you
want to get in contact with me for any reason, write the e-mail above but
PLEASE include this tag in your subject line:
[GOTHIC FAQ]
Thank you.
===============================================================================
TABLE OF CONTENTS
===============================================================================
DISCLAIMER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Why this FAQ was written
2. How to Be a Cheap Ass
2.1. INFINITE FOOD!
2.2. Free Skin!
3. LEGALESE
4. CREDITS
5. OMAKE!
===============================================================================
1. Why this FAQ was written (Wala lang, bored ako)
===============================================================================
Gothic is a nice little game that is everything the utter sheep
Ultima 9 should have been. Whatever, this game has its problems
but overall it's a good game to play and I do not regret playing
it at all.
However, it is terribly difficult to get a foothold in this game
at the start, be it due to missing mice, devilishly tough enemies,
or whatever. So here I am to help you make the best out of yourself
and if you are having any trouble playing this game at all, you've
come to the right place.
Some things to consider first, though:
1.) This game uses the mouse!!!
I've heard numerous complaints that some people couldn't get the
mouse to work. Rest assured it works. At least on my PC, in my
version. I don't see the cursor though. I've never seen the cursor.
It really feels like a console game, that you have to press up and
down to cycle through menus. Unfortunately, the mouse buttons are
set and you can't reconfigure them, M1 is for "USE" and M2 is for
"JUMP."
That's enough for now. In the future I *may* add a more conventional
"how to play Gothic" portion somewhere over here to help people play
the game, because understandably the interface is... unorthodox to
say the least. But I don't feel like it right now so I'll shut up
right here.
End lecture.
2.) A question from me: How's your game performance? The game slows
down on my machine a bit. I have a Athlon XP1600 and a 32MB GeForce
2 card, I think that's fine, but I only have 128MB RAM. Do you guys
think this is why the game slows down on my rig when lots of people
are on-screen and there's lots of scenery details? I'm using
1024x768x16 at 60% visual range right now, at first I was at
1024x768x32 at 100% without any problem, but as I went along the
game started chugging. Any input?
===============================================================================
2. How to Be a Cheap Ass
===============================================================================
Well, to be honest I don't have too many tricks yet. I've only been
playing the game for two days. But I have found out some nice things
that you might want to know about.
2.1. INFINITE FOOD!
Yes, believe it or not, my cheating genius has exploited a bug in
the game which gives me an unlimited supply of food! This probably
doesn't sound too impressive if you've been playing Nox or something
where food is laughable. But in Gothic food restores life AND acts
as currency in the barter system. In other words, with unlimited
food you're financially set for life, and you need never fear
suffering from wounds again! So what's the secret?
Step 1: Kill a Scavenger or Molerat, easy prey even for a level 0
dweeb (which is what you are at the start)
Step 2: Get the Raw Meat
Step 3: Go to any of the camps and look for a cooking Pan. It's
those grey little things stewing over a fire. Now stand in front
of it it, and it should say "Pan".
Step 4: Open your inventory and select "Raw Meat". Hold the Use
button down, and you should crouch before the pan, as if you
were going to cook the Raw Meat with it.
Step 5: Do NOT press Up or initiate any action, just let go of
the Use button. Now look at your inventory again and look at
your Raw Meat. It's now double the quantity!
Step 6: Repeat. So if at first you have 1 Raw Meat, after this
you will have 2 Raw Meat! Nice. After a while you'll have hundreds
then thousands, I stopped at 60,000+ pieces of Raw Meat, that
should be more than enough to keep you financially and healthily
fit for the rest of the game. And if not, just find another
frying pan.
NOTE: I'm not entirely sure if you can exceed 65,000 pieces, since
games usually use a Short for these quantities, which lets values go
up to some 65,000+. I tried it, nothing happened. I'm just assuming
that's the limit. I was actually surprised it didn't go negative,
which is usually what happens.
2.2. Free Skin!
You actually don't need this trick after learning the Raw Meat trick
above, but it's good for laughs.
Step 1: Learn "How to Skin Reptiles" from Drax or whoever.
Step 2: Go to the Brotherhood swamp camp. Run to the swamp and find
a swampshark.
Step 3: Run close to the shark and have it chase you. Run towards
the Templars. If they stop chasing run back to them and hit them or
just make them chase you again. This can be hazardous but with
practice you can do it.
Step 4: Watch Templar whack Shark and then pick up the skin when
it's dead. That's a free 100 Ore!
Step 5: For fun, lead the shark over to the novices and the Baals
harvesting swampweed, and watch it kill them (if they don't run
away). Hmm, this can get you in trouble finishing some quests, so
don't do it, but it is fun to watch. ^_^
NOTE: This works with any monster actually, but it is quite
dangerous to try it with some enemies (like Snappers, who are
faster than you!)
Okay, those are all the tricks I have right now. Sorry, I've only
been playing for about 15 hours.
Please read my Evil Summoner FAQ also available at GameFAQs which
will tell you what you can do with this document. Or you can try
my Counter Strike Tactics FAQ (I think Gamespot calls it the Zen
of Counterstrike, whatever that meams). Do not do anything with
this material until you have read either of the two. Or else. Heh
heh heh.
To my Internet provider PLDT DSL who finally after months of my cursing,
coaxing, and pestering, finally decided to approve my application and
let me get on the net to upload this for your viewing.
Since this FAQ is so pathetically short and devoid of content, I think I
will do a mini-review here for your reading (dis)pleasure and to make this
FAQ a bit longer and less embarassing.
Setsuna's silly little Gothic Review:
---
Gothic is a nice little (or big?) RPG which reminds me a lot of Ultima 9.
NO! Do not take that badly. Ultima 9 was crap, but Gothic gets things right
where Ultima 9 messed up big time.
First of all, the game looks a lot like U9 -- third person view with full
3D landscape. The world is very interactive, though not quite as fully
interactive as the Ultima world. Still, this game is a big improvement
because it doesn't have all the silly things that made U9 such a bad game.
GRAPHICS
The graphics are nice, they are not exactly breath-taking or stunning by
today's standards but for an RPG they are good. The character models aren't
exactly pretty, you yourself look like an idiot but overall the graphics
are good. However, you should be using at least 800x600 resolution or they
will look bad. But if you run at 1024x768 they are quite nice indeed.
On the downside clipping is still a big problem, hey what 3D game doesn't
have this problem, arms still go through walls, if you fall down a cliff
onto rocky ground actually your body will look embedded in the rock (maybe
it is, hmm). The people in the game really look barbaric though. Whatever.
The world graphics are a bit static, you won't see moving trees or
shrubbery here like in Ghost Recon or Hitman, the water effects are
normal and not worth commenting on, overall decent graphics, but nothing
incredible.
SOUND
Sound is very impressive, every single line of every single conversation
(and there is a lot) in the game is voice-acted, this game is practically
no-reading required. However, on the down-side many voices are shared.
For instance, Cavalorn is a very distinguished gentleman who talks with
a rather haughty accent. But when you piss him off by standing in his
way for instance or drawing a weapon he uses the default "get angry voice"
which everyone else in the game uses. Ah well, we must cut corners
somewhere.
One more thing: where are the WOMEN in this game?! Are all the convicts
men or something? Someone tell me there's a hot babe somewhere in this
game aside from the Saving screen. I mean I got this group picture and
there's a red-head in it. There has to be a girl here somewhere right?
The music on the other hand is nothing special. The music changes to fit
the mood of whatever's happening. During morning the music is different
from nighttime, and when you're in combat the music becomes a stirring
action piece. But the music actually reminds me for some reason of the
new music from Ultima 9 (I'm not so sure why, but they sound similar).
This is NOT good, since the new music in U9 was very boring (the classic
tunes remixed in U9 were good, but the new music was mostly terrible).
GAMEPLAY
This is the good part of the game. The game is non-linear, in that you
can go anywhere and do whatever you want. There are a bunch of
quests for you to do, and you can accomplish them more or less in
whatever order. However, each quest has a set outcome, I don't think
you can take multiple paths to solving a problem like in Fallout 2.
Still, there's a lot to do and it's more or less fun doing it.
Many of the quests, though, still fall into the "FedEx Style" which
turn you into an errand boy running around the map fetching this and
that for whom and whomever. Although you will be running around a lot
in the game over the vast, lush world, it is still quite fun assuming
you're the nature-lover type who loves to stroll around the woods with
lots of wild monsters waiting to eat you.
Oh yeah, speaking of monsters, this game has a pathetic combat system.
It's the biggest complaint I have actually. First of all, it is very
hard to get a foot hold in this game, at the start you will likely be
mauled left and right by all the monsters. As you grow stronger and
learn better techniques this will abate, but it can be very frustrating
at the start. I suggest getting the Bone Bow in the mines (it's quite
easy to get if you know how, and it's a very good bow which will put
you away from danger's path. Hmm maybe I will write here how to get
the bow in a future update).
Basically to fight, you have to press the combat key to enter combat
mode, and hold the "USE" button down while pressing a direction key
to attack. Very awkward, to say the least, and sidestepping is also
not very smooth in this game. End result, it's quite hard to fight.
Better than the U9 system, I think, but still a bad system.
Morever, all your weapons are practically the same, there is no
difference from a sword, a mace, a scepter, or whatever. You all
use them the exact same way. So much for variety. There are only
basically two weapons in the game -- sword and bow. Each with many
different stats for damage and strength/dexterity requirements,
but in the end they're all the same weapons. Boring.
Speaking of strength and dexterity, the character system is very
bland and primitive. You cannot create your character, you start
off with this wimpy looking blond guy, and you just bulid him up
however which way you want (much like Planescape: Torment).
However you only have two stats: Strength and Dexterity. After
that you, have I think 8 skills: One-handed weapons, Two-handed
weapons, Bows, Crossbows, Sneak, Acrobatics, Pick Locks, and
Pickpockets. And also magic "on" skill. That's it. That's ALL!
That SUCKS! Talk about lack of variety. Even the AD&D system,
primitive as it is, was more advanced than this!
To make this game closer to perfect I would have liked to see
something at least like the Fallout perk system, better yet
the best RPG system ever made, the Final Fantasy Tactics job
system! Yeah. But unfortunately there's no such thing, I wish
you at least had special attacks in this game but there is no
such thing. Boring.
What else can I say... gameplay is more or less nice, though the
combat is a real bummer. There also seem to be numerous bugs
which can stop you from solving the game. Right now I closed the
gate to the Old Mine, and when I tried to open it again it WON'T
OPEN! Gundam! I think I'm screwed and actually at this point I
can't do anything more in the game. I think I might have to
restart from scratch or find a walkthrough with cheats in it. Ah
well. It sucks. Things like this should not happen in a game!
INTERFACE
The interface is primitive, to say the least. There is no mouse cursor,
you have to use the Up and Down keys to cycle through menu options. The
Z and Y keys are interchanged, I have no idea why. Keys are remappable,
but not all of them can be remapped. The left and right mouse keys are
set to "Use" and "Jump" respectively, and as far as I can tell it is
not possible to change these.
There is also no tutorial to ease you through the learning process. If
you're a veteran gamer/RPG player you can pick up easily from experience,
I can see problems arising, especially in using items or distributing
things during trade agreements. Well, good luck. When in doubt download
a more complete FAQ detailing all these things.
BOTTOMLINE
All in all, despite its problems, Gothic is a good game, it's easily
the best offering we've had since Arcanum. Hmm, wait, come to think
of it, I don't think there were any other RPGs on the PC since Arcanum.
Damn. You can see how sad PC RPGs are these days. Ah well. This is a
much needed game in a landscape that is devoid of its ilk. That alone
should make you buy it if you are an RPG lover.
Action gamers and RTS gamers probably won't like this game, RTS gamers
you are way out of your territory, action gamers will not appreciate
the flaky combat system and squiggly movement. However an RPG gamer,
especially the jaded Ultima fans who were expecting a lot from U9
but were let down miserably, will probably appreciate this game. So
go get it now, Avatar!
NOTE: I will probably revise this review after I play the game more,
after all I've barely played it for ten hours! Not enough time to
really review a game, you know.
