Hi all,

Just got this thing in a trade and am a little confused. The manuals leave a lot to be desired in explaining what is what.

There are 4 disks. The first three install Gothic II then it tells you to hit finish and Gothic II is installed. When I insert disk 4 it then installs Night of the Raven which I assume replaces some of the original Gothic II files and the game now becomes Gothic II with addon.

If I only install Gothic II without Disk 4 then I play off of Disk 1. If I install with Disk 4 then Disk 1 doesn't work and I am playing off Disk 4.

I installed all 4 disks, played a while, had a crash and then the game wouldn't start. When I'd click on the startup icon I'd see the hourglass, then the spinning disk icon and then...........nothing. I have now uninstalled the whole thing, reinstalled Gothic II (1st three disks) and have been playing for a while. I am now hesitant to install Disk 4 again in case I run into the same problem.

(sigh) guess I'll pull a Scarlet Ohara and worry about it tomorrow.

Will probably put disk 4 in again and hope it works with a new install.

Hi John

I'm playing this game right now and I was just as confused as you. The first 3 disks installs Gothic II, but when you install the fourth disk (NOTR) Then try to play disk one Gothic II isn't even installed Play disk 4 then it plays Gothic II and NOTR. This is what I did. I just installed disk 4 and forget about the first three. The game runs perfect. I think that the 1-3 disks are for people who just want to play Gothic II.The fourth disk is for us who want to play Gothic II and the addon. The manual is NO HELP. The fourth disk isn't even labeled NOTR, which really threw me off.

I hope this helps. I'm just about to enter the addon world Oh, one other thing that I don't understand is why 3 disk for one game and only one for two games.

Linda

John, I forgot to say that you play disk 4 for the game.

Linda

Thanks for the clarification Linda. If I feel real ambitious I'll uninstall it again and start from sctratch with disk 4 and see what happens. Nice of Jo Wood to explain all this to us.........NOT!

You cant install NOTR (disc 4) without installing the first 3 first.


But you can use a fix for NOTR to play it without the cd being inside the drive.

John, and lindy

I went to gamespot to see if I could find any mention of a problem, instead I got lots of glowing reports about this version of the game.
I would think(which is dangerous I know) that you can add disc 4 at any time you want..without uninstall and reinstall..but not sure about that.
You may want to check some of reports out..I only read 2 of them.

Ingie

And that fix is...................?

I got it working but had to install all four disks. When I tried just disk 4 I got an error message that a dll file was missing.

Trying to find help on the Jo Wood site is difficult to say the least. I could find no mention of NOTR. (maybe I wasn't looking in the right places.)

I'm playing the game by just installing the fourth disk. I had installed all four disk's, but then uninstalled everything and just install the fourth. It worked. I'm in the addon world now. I don't know maybe everything didn't uninstalled for me. I'm playing and having fun.

Linda

Gothic 2 Gold is a bundle of the normal Gothic 2 Atari sold the last 2-3 years and the add-on.
The first 3 discs install Gothic 2. You can play it with or without installing Night of the Raven, which is on the 4th CD.
Savegames are not compatible between both versions.
Experienced Gothic players should just install everything and enjoy a hard but rewarding game. Newbies should start with Gothic 2 and install the add-on when they´ve finished it once. Gothic 2 has enough replay value.

I bet the uninstall didn´t work. The add-on integrates itself into Gothic 2. It can´t run without the main game.

Hi all,

Well I got this game for Christmas and am enjoying it so far. I wondered about the 4th disk and what to do with it but after just reading this thread I will wait until I finish the game to install and see the rest.

I have not gotten that far in it yet but working on it to be an apprentice.

I have been playing this back and forth with Might and Magic 9 so will take a while to get through it.

As I said....so far...so good.

Yep the reviews I read were very glowing.


Have a grand time!!

Ingie

I, too, was confused by the lack of anything regarding disk 4 in the supplied documentation.

I had previously started Gothic II last year and eventually got side-tracked at a decision point and when I was about to get back to it, I heard about this expansion and that it was going to be available in a month or two.* And, that I'd have to start the game again to play the expansion.

So, after getting Gothic II Gold for Christmas and uninstalling my old Gothic II, I installed the new one starting with disk 1. "Hmmm, it didn't need disk 4" I said to myself.

I then put in disk 4 and see that it wants to install the Night of the Raven part. "Oh! I get it" I tell myself and install that disk. But now my just-installed Gothic II is gone and only the NotR part is left. That didn't seem right. So, I uninstall NotR and reinstall the first three disks, and now I've got Gothic II back.

I figure that the NotR part is to be installed *after* finishing the original Gothic II. Something like what VHLM just wrote (I believe)...

I'd worked through to a ways into chapter 2 (again) with my newly installed Gothic II by the time I noticed this thread. And, as expected, I didn't see anything that differed from what I recalled from my first time playing the game.

But, this thread made it clear to me that the NotR part is *supposed* to be installed over the original Gothic II, modifying those things it wants, and you then are supposed to play from the start.

So, I installed disk 4, and started up NotR. It saw my old saved Gothic II games. On a whim, I tried loading one of them. The restore stalled about half way, and I needed to use CTRL+ALT+DEL to kill the non-responsive program.

Thus, I now tossed all my old saved games and started NotR again.

It is a new version of the original Gothic II story line. With the start of the game fairly fresh in mind, I've been able to compare the two and, in general, I've liked what they've done so far in altering the story line and the game world.

I also believe that if you listen closely enough you can often tell the newly inserted dialog from the original as the voices sound a little different.

But, my point here, VHLM, is that unless you're happy with playing all the way through to the end of the original Gothic II and then doing it all again with NotR, you're better off tossing your saved games, installing disk 4 now, and starting over as soon as possible, as otherwise, the time you spend with just the 3 disk install is, well maybe not entirely "wasted", but close to that.

* The "month or two" naturally became more like 6.

Don

Hi all,

Well I am confused as to leaving it alone and continue the 1st 3 disks or uninstall and just use the 4th disk. I am guessing that I should just leave it alone and just install the 4th disk when I am done with the first 3.

Is this what you are telling me FeathersMcGraw?

If so....then sounds like a plan.

If you'd be happy playing an unaltered Gothic II a second time (or more) trying different choices, and so on, then there's no problem doing the original Gothic II all the way through and then installing NotR and starting it all again.

What I was trying to say was that NotR is the same basic Gothic II story line, but with some additions and alternations. The intent of Gothic II Gold was that all 4 disks were to be installed and the game playing to be the NotR variation. It wasn't what I had originally guessed (that NotR was some extra chapters tacked on to the end of the original Gothic II story that you installed an played after completing Gothic II).

Thus I was trying to clear up some likely misunderstanding of another that seemed to match mine. I wasn't trying to say that the original Gothic II wasn't worth playing.

I don't understand the "limited to a few hours" above, either. I've poured dozens of hours into Gothic II (unaltered) and NotR, and since I'd already played through the initial parts of Gothic II once, and wasn't going back through it to see how things would have worked making different choices, I rather wanted to play what was new to Gothic II Gold and thus found that I'd "wasted" many hours during the end of my holiday time off from work.

croaker to GameBoomers

Magic, Lindy,Feathers, DABhand and John, if
I forgot someone, I'm sorry....
I read a few reviews from Gamespot to get an idea of the game.. the Gold Edition of the game ..I quote:

"The changes from this and the original Gothic 2 are that this Gold version includes the Night of the Raven addon, which is seamlessly intergrated into the game and story. It is a new area in which you can explore and do alot more quests. It really adds alot more game play to an already great game. I'm currently in this area and am loving it. It will also increase the difficulty, by quite a large amount. As you increase in your skills you'll notice they start to cost more learning points. This is why I mention above you'll really want to get every bit of xp you can find. It will also add new quests and items in the original Gothic 2 world."

I do not think anyone would be wasting your time playing the game without the "add-on" installed. I think, from what I read, this is a lot like what they did with Sacred, Sacred Plus and Sacred Underworld..and eventually Sacred Gold. And I know there are a few of us that played those together.
Hope this answers the questions for anyone.

Now:
Let's get back to the game. I am interested in your impressions of the game.
How is it comparing to Gothic?
And how are y'all doing in the game and what are you playing as?
How far into the game?
If one is playing with the expansion and one not all the better for the comparisons!!!

Ingie

It´s not the same storyline. The add-on has its own story which runs parallel to Gothic 2´s. It starts immediately. Xardas gives you a second quest.

No. The add-on was made to cash-in on a successfull game and the Gold version was released to make money again. TNotR came out 10 months after Gothic 2 in Germany. Most people who bought it knew Gothic 2.

Didn´t you find all the NPCs who offered to help you reach the main goals of the first chapter much quicker? And didn´t you see that the add-on ends in the middle of chapter 2? The overhead is 15 hours maximum and it can be brought down to circa 5 hours I think.

Everybody should feel free to install all 4 disks right away, but don´t start cursing after your 50th reload, when you find out it´s to hard without prior experience in the Gothic world.

I'm playing as a mercenary. When I played Gothic II I was a paladin. Yes,you are basically playing Gothic II over again. NOTR does offer new NPC's, new quest and a new world. If you are new to Gothic games I believe you should just play the first 3 disks. The controls take time to learn. In NOTR the monsters are harder to kill. I never played the first Gothic(wish I could find a game that doesn"t break my bank account).

Ingie, I'm in the addon world. I finished my visit with the pirate's, now I'm on my way to the swamp. I'm having a good time.

Lindy

Oh good for you Lindy..
Sounds like you and the reviewer and feathers are of the same mind.

Ingie

Well I finally got it straight (I think) and have played with the addon to the point of trying to enter the town.

However, I've had an "access violation error" twice and had to use ctrl/alt/del to get back to the desktop each time.

Anyone else had that happen?

No, I've had no error's, crashes,or freezes. Nada. I'm the one she thought she only installed the fourth disk.

Linda

Hi all,

Oh Ok now I think I finally get it.
Thank You for the explanation all and it looks like I will stick to playing the first 3 disks and later install the 4th.

This is the first time that I am playing this game so everyting is new to me.

All I can handle for now seems to be rats,wolfs and the big bugs.

I think I am at level 4 so am not very strong.

I have finally joined the Militia to become a Paladin later on.

My guy also joined the bow maker to be his apprentice.

I have not had any crashes yet so don't know what happened in your game oldman.

So far I am enjoying the game.

We are on the way to the mines.

I think if it were me, I'd do it the same way..load the 3 and play and win and then do 4..maybe another time or right then, depends on my mood..

Y'all have fun and post your adventures!!
I'm a very nosey GBer

Ingie

I played the original Gothic II a year or so ago and just completed the Gold edition. I installed all four discs and was rather alarmed when only the NotR icon remained on my desktop. However, once I began playing only minor differences were apparent in the beginning. The game was much, much more difficult but for anyone who has played Gothic II before, I heartily recommend installing NotR right away. The changes in the game are pretty flawlessly intergrated and the addon comes Near the middle of the game. Actually it expands the entire game rather than being simply an addition to the end.

Just my opinion, of course.