So far in Gothic, I’ve been to the Sect Camp and I’ve been to the New Camp. Neither impressed me. The Sect Camp are a bunch of always high, overly religious types and the New Camp guys are mostly just thugs. I mean, sure, the Old Camp guys are also mostly thugs, but at least they’re thugs with a cool armor. This is why I decided to join them. I wasn’t anywhere near that point, though.

Impressing the Old Camp

I still needed to impress Fingers, Dexter and the arena master whoose name I forgot. Fingers wanted me to learn a thieving skill (I opted for sneaking), so I needed to invest a whole level of skill points into that. Dexter wanted me to obtain a potion recipe from the Sect Camp and the quest log was strongly hinting at me stealing it, so I probably needed sneaking for that as well.

The arena master wanted me to win an arena battle. I tried challenging the New Camp fighter, but I failed miserably. He basically took me down with one swing of his weapon. Then I tried challenging the weakest fighter there, the one from the Old Camp, but he also beat me without any issues. Obviously, I needed one more level’s worth of skill points invested into strength to. This meant I needed two more levels in total, and I was sort of out of the easy quests to solve.

Monster Slaying

I decided to roam through the area between the three camps, killing anything I’m able for a while. My session was mostly spent this way. First, I went towards the new camp, because I remember there being plenty of mole rats and scavengers in the region. At this point, I could kill those with no danger for me. I could also tackle wolves quite easily and even kill lizards, as long as I’m very, very careful.

How to Fight Lizards?

Actually, the lizards gave me a lot of trouble, until I figured out the way to fight them. They love to retreat from being hit, which blocks my damage. The trick is to block their first attack and then quickly swing before they’re able to get away. You can’t block forever, though, because then they just break through the block. Blood flies can be killed in a similar fashion, though I don’t need a lot of strategy with those any more – they’ve become easy enough as it is.

Just as an estimate of how many monsters I killed, when I came back to the Old Camp, I had over a 100 pieces of meat, a bunch of wings and plenty of skins.

Of course, I also stumbled into brand new monsters I had no chance against. Lurkers are extremely rare and I can actually do damage to those, but they kill me in two hits and I barely scratch them, so there’s no point in trying those. I also ran into a couple of snappers (they look like dinosaurs). These guys have a huge aggro range, so it was very annoying trying to get to the weaker monsters around them. They also kill me in a single hit, so I’m not even close to being able to beat them.

Lastly, I stumbled into one monster I won’t be able to beat in any foreseeable amount of time – the Shadowbeast. These guys are, from what I understand, some of the toughest enemies in the game. There’s one of them in the woods between the Old Camp and the Brotherhood. I tried attacking it just to see if I can scratch it, but I didn’t even get a chance to hit it. Luckily, their aggro range is much smaller compared to the snapper’s, so I managed to clear most of the scavengers, wolves and blood flies around them.

All of this took me well over an hour and gained me about a level and a half. I got back to the Old Camp and spoke to Fingers, hoping he’d teach me how to sneak. Apparently, the master thief of the Old Camp can’t do that. Instead, he sent me to Calvalorn, a hunter in a hut on the way to the New Camp, just down the first hill.

Cavalorn taught me how to sneak for a cost of 10 skill points. I immediately repaid the favor by sneaking through the back of his shack, looting his chest, taking the key to his storeroom and then looting the store room. This got me a bow, a nice amount of arrows and a bunch of ore and other stuff. Now that I can sneak, I’ll get real rich, real soon.

There’s time for that later, though. For now, I needed to take a break, so that was it for today.

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