Last time in Gothic, I was just about to leave the Old Camp with the first focus and the Almanac ready to be delivered to the New Camp. Today, I didn’t waste much time, making my way straight there.

I Got Distracted by Respawning Monsters

Of course, it wasn’t exactly a direct route. As I said previously, monsters respawn in Gothic, so I was basically charging from scavenger to molerat, to a lizard, to a blood fly, to a black goblin, etc., along the way. Black goblin, you ask? Yup! With my new armor and my awesome Sword of Death, black goblins now die in a single hit, without even being able to touch me. I actually cleared a small cave with about a dozen of them along the way to the New Camp, but Fraps failed to load so I won’t be showing you many screenshots today.

I Spoke to Cronus and Saturas

I got to the new camp and a guy who was a friend of Lester from the Brotherhood, told me to talk to Cronos, the water mage walking on top of the shaft with the ore pile. I’m supposed to convince him to let me see Saturas, the water mage leader. I actually thought I’ll be forced to do fetch quests before I’m allowed to see the boss, but it turned out I just had to tell Cronus everything and that would be enough for him to give me the password I needed to enter the inner water mage area.

This was basically a whole extra district of the New Camp with a merchant, some trainers and various other NPCs. The most important one, of course, was Saturas, the water mage leader. I told him what I have and described what happened at the Sect Camp. He told me what he needs to detonate the ore and hopefully, destroy the barrier.

Now, I head this plan at the start of the game and it seemed illogical to me. An explosion that’s able to destroy the barrier is bound to do damage to everything else as well, right? It turns out, the game actually considers this. Saturas tells me that the explosion would be of magical nature, so it would only destroy magical stuff. I still think there’s bound to be some unwanted consequences, but at least it sounds less dangerous than it did at the start. Basically, the ore would be destroyed, the magical items would be destroyed and the barrier would be destroyed.

I Need to Get the Focus Stones

There are five focus stones in total and unlike Y’Berion, Saturas needs all of them. He gave me a map, a scroll to teleport back to the New Camp and told me to go to their alchemist for more help. The alchemist gave me 20 potions and sent me on my way.

The map was basically the entire prison colony, with a pentagram drawn on top of it. The five corners of the pentagram are the locations of the focus stones. I already had one, so I could safely eliminate that one. It was time to get the other four.

I Teamed up With Milton to Get the Second Focus

The first focus was in that crypt with the undead I died in already earlier in the game. By following the map, I approached the crypt from the other side and stumbled into Milton, the fire mage from the Old Camp. He was also interested in the crypt, but for a different reason. Apparently, there’s an orc repelling talisman in there. We agreed to help each other and he did his part immediately, by giving me a scroll that was supposed to kill the zombie in there. Regular weapons can’t hurt it, so that’s why the scroll was needed.

I got inside the crypt, with Milton following and about 10 seconds later, I was running for my life. The skeletons are easy enough to kill one at a time, but like the goblins, they do love surrounding you, so pretty soon I was swarmed and I was dying. I’m not proud to say this, but I ran off and left Milton in there. Once I was able to recover for a bit, I charged back in and managed to kill a few before running back out. After a couple of these “brave” scenes, all the skeletons were finally dead and Milton was somehow still alive. I readied the spell from the scroll and targeted the zombie. He died in agony.

I got the focus and gave Milton the talisman. I made my way towards the next focus.

I Pillaged an Orc Temple (or Something)

I made a wrong turn while on the way to the next focus, stumbling into a valley with a small pond, several orc statues and two orc warriors guarding the entrance to a temple of sorts. The temple was just one big room, but it had several potions arranged around an altar, as well as three chests I was able to loot. There was ore and arrows inside, as well as several lock picks per chest, so overall, even with the lock picks I broke, I came out ahead.

I corrected my heading by checking the map and started making my way to the next focus again.

I Fought Bloodhounds and Found a Hammer

The second focus was close to the Sect Camp, up the mountain with the huge waterfall. I remembered the place because a few quests ago, when I was still a shadow, I fought and defeated a bloodhound there and shortly after got killed by another one.

I knew what to expect and I wasn’t wrong. The place was full of bloodhounds, with a few orcs here and there. It was a mountainous region, filled with ruins. I actually found a small room behind a door in one of the ruins. There was a chest inside, with the usual loot (potions, ore) and one unusual item – an orc hammer. This thing did 2 more damage than my Sword of Death, so I decided to try it out.

I was right to do it. A short distance past the room, there was a bridge with a golem on it. I can’t be sure because I haven’t tried it any other way, but I choose to believe the hammer did extra damage to the golem, because I killed it in a few hits and got 500 experience for it.

I Teamed up With Lester to Get the Third Focus

Right after the bridge, Lester of the Brotherhood was waiting for me. He didn’t really explain how he dodged the golem other than “the Brotherhood has it’s ways” or something like that, but he did mention he was there to find some documents that might be useful in the future, provided I destroy the barrier. The documents are supposed to be in the same place the focus is, so we decided to team up.

This time, I had to explore a ruin filled with harpies. I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but Gothic is a buggy game. It crashes a lot and everything feels clunky. This should say something about how good the game actually is, though, since I’m playing it in spite of those flaws.

In any case, the bugs reared their ugly head here. Harpies are flying enemies and the game doesn’t handle flying well.  They kept flying over me, not being able to reach me, but also stopping me from hitting them because I couldn’t target them from directly below. I ended up spending a lot of time receiving unnecessary hits, running away from the harpies, letting Lester handle them and trying to squeeze in a bow shot or two every now and then. This made me burn through most of my grilled meat supply so I’ll have to find a frying pan as soon as I get to one of the camps.

Somehow, though, I did it. I cleared the ruin, found the documents Lester needed and all I needed to do was to get the focus. The problem was, it was out of my reach, on a platform I couldn’t get to. It was obvious what the game wanted me to do. Lester gave me a Telekinesis scroll and I could easily get to a ledge overlooking the platform with the focus on it. However, I didn’t have enough magic points to actually cast the spell.

For a moment, I actually thought about going back to a camp and investing some points into magic, but then I had a moment of inspiration. I tried to jump from the ledge to the platform, hoping to survive it and I just barely did it. Apparently, there was no need for telekinesis.

At this point, I realized Fraps wasn’t running, so I didn’t take any screenshots in this session. Because of that, you have these generic vistas with nothing on them. From this point on, though, I started taking them again.

I Ended Up in a Place Way above My Level

I had the third focus, but I wanted to explore some more, so I decided to make my way towards a tower in the distance. This was a huge mistake, but it ended up creating a fun situation, so I don’t regret it.

First, I went over a mountain and ran into a Stone Golem. I managed to beat it, but it had way more health than the Bridge Golem I already destroyed. It also gave me 1000 experience, so the increase in difficulty was justified. This is where it ended, though. A few meters away from the stone golem, there was an ice golem. This guy, I couldn’t even touch. It froze me with the first hit and killed me with the second.

I loaded my game and killed the stone golem again, before turning around and heading in a different direction. I wasn’t out of danger yet. This was definitely orc country because the whole region was filled with orc warriors and fighters, biters and a new type of enemies called raptors. The raptors are colorized like biters, but have a different shape and are way stronger, so mistaking them for biters at first was the death of me in the beginning.

Eventually, I managed to squeeze between the huge groups of enemies and made my way in the direction of the Old Camp. After a while, I saw something I recognized. It was the gate towards “orc country” near the Old Camp, guarded by two Old Camp guards. I ran for it, and this is when the fun part happened.

I Made a Commotion in the Old Camp

I managed to aggro a pack of orc hounds. It was a huge pack with about 15 hounds in it. I could probably kill a few of them, but there was no way I could kill the entire pack. I ran for the gate and the guards charged in, but the pack just ignored them, staying on top of me. I ended up running towards the camp and I almost reached the main gate before the pack finally gave up the chase.

At this point, I thought “why not”, so I pulled out my bow and took a shot at one of the hounds. The entire pack aggroed again and continued the chase. I lured them all the way into the inner ring of the camp, so in a few seconds, anyone who’s anyone in the camp ended up fighting orc hounds. I probably wasted some experience by doing this, but what happened was absolutely worth it.

I Maxed Out My Strength

I looted and skinned the bodies and then decided to spend the 20 skill points I had. I tried to invest everything into Strength, but it turns out, 100 points is the maximum you can invest into an attribute. I love being able to max out stuff in RPGs, so this is a plus for me, but it did make me worry a bit. That Ice Golem wasn’t at all hurt by my attacks, so I’m wondering if I’ll at least get some stronger weapons later on, since I won’t be increasing my damage with pure strength any more.

In any case, I got three of the five focus stones now, so I need two more. For now, I saved my game and decided to take a break. Tomorrow, I’ll get the last two stones.

 

 

 

 

Related Posts:

• Gothic [17] – Uriziel, Ore Armor and a Finished Game
• Gothic [16] – Back Outside
• Gothic [15] – Not Quite There Yet
• Gothic [14] – The Plot Resolves?
• Gothic [13] – The Plot Thickens