I have played Gothic 3 for hundreds of hours many times since 2006 when it was released. I estimate anywhere between 500 to 1000 hours in game. However, the hours logged here on Steam only reflect my full playthrough of Gothic 3 Content Mod 3.1 with all the underlying mods like Consequences, Alternative A.I. and Alternative Balance, Community Patch, Quest Packet etc.

This is my experience of Gothic 3 Content Mod 3.1 I spent 115 hours in it.

When I was installing Content Mod 3.1 I made sure to change as much as it was possible to mimic previous Gothic games, especially Gothic 2, so I installed Gothic 2 creature skins. I also took part in selecting key moments of Gothic 2.

I have to say that new skins look pretty amazing, true to lore and make the game darker, more serious and overall look of the game seems to be more serious too compared to vanilla.

I enabled armors sold with reputation checks which altered the game balance a little bit as it was no longer possible to easily farm gold and go to the best vendor right away to get the best armor. You either had to find non faction armors somehow or you had to earn them by farming reputation but because I wanted to play long game and beat as many quests as possible before I started taking out key NPCs and taking over cities (besides consequences mod can make certain things impossible to do if you burn bridges), I had to stay away from best faction armors.

Luckily, the mod adds plethora of new items with new textures to the game. That includes weapons, armors and even a couple of magic relics like the shadow scepter which in essence allows you to cast Fog spell without learning it or using scrolls. Those rewards are evenly distributed through out the world. Some are hidden as blueprints, some carried by newly added and old NPCs, some are put for sale on some npcs. some lie in chests and hidden places and others are given for completion of certain quests, old and new. Sometimes buffing lacklustre rewards of some of the old quest line endings. So it was always interesting to complete quests and see what I'd get.

Mod also adds a few misc items like scrolls, I believe large health and mana potions were not a part of vanilla Gothic 3 but it has been some time since i played it so I might be mistaken and I never really paid much attention to it before. Oh and it also adds many crafting recipes for new potions, including permanent. transformation effect ones

So during installation you can select some key events that happened in Gothic 2 that were players choice. I believe there were 3. One of them was which apprenticeship you took. They only slightly affect starting stats and skills, I chose smith so I had a little more strength and I believe one smithing ability learned.

Another one was which faction you joined in G2. And the final one was in regards to what you did with Beliar's Claw which if you played G2 you know is a special Beliar's Sword that you can feed with your maximum health to make it deal more damage. And Beliar's Sword can change between 1 handed or 2 handed. And depending on which skill was higher in G2 you'd get the corresponding copy. Not sure if you could alter it later at the shrine.

Anyway, what I do not understand is that even though you have an option to keep Beliar's Claw in game as a sword and possibly a rune but I chose it as a sword, you cannot choose what kind of a sword it will be in the check boxes. It is by default a 2 handed sword. And I did not really like using 2 handed weapons, I felt they were kind of weak in Alternative Balance on Hard.

It would be nice if they coded it so that you could feed it your life energy and make it deal more damage as well as switch between 1H and 2H at Beliar's Shrines. I did not like how they ported the sword in game and it was useless to me.

I played in English. Quest pack comes in English too but some of the lines are badly translated. Some are translated very well. Most of lore books in Fire Monastery are not translated at all because life is too short to spend it on translating Gothic lore apparently, well I get it.

I could tell which quest was from vanilla and which line was from vanilla and which was a new quest and a new dialogue because the new content is not voiced. So I could read it instead. I did not mind it and it allowed me to really understand what's different. The subtitle change speed is adequate. Mostly I did not have to read too fast but there were cases I had to speed up and sometimes I did not manage to read the full line. I used Nvidia Shadowplay when I was really curious to save a replay and read it.

As for the quests themselves, they seem to be alright. Lore friendly, some of them are even interesting in terms of what's going to happen. They can provide some of the best rewards in game and they still feel balanced compared to how hard the quests can be. There are some choices to be made here.

Some quests require you to cover a lot of ground in a search for something so you can't really complete them at the start of the game. Some quests require you going back and forth between NPCs in different cities so you need teleporter stones. Some of the quests you pick up at the start of the game and gradually complete them as you explore and some serve as riddles. I have to admit I even googled completion of one or two of them.

In the process of beating those quests you can earn a lot of extra experience points as many small tasks in these quests give you adequate amount of EXP. But I guess they tried to balance it out with an option to reduce the amount of EXP you get from monsters (available on install). Otherwise, if you beat all content this mod has, including new enemies etc. without even farming animals which respawn btw, you are looking to reach a higher level than in Vanilla. I was level 79 by the time I beat all the quests I cared to beat (I admit I skipped some boring quests like killing 5 undead commanders in Varant), however I beat all the new quests and freed Varant, Myrtana, Nordmar and also destroyed all Rebel camps

In Vanilla Gothic 3 it is apparently easier to learn many skills and spells, many of them require fewer points and fewer pre-questies skills and spells to learn.

However, I did not notice Alternative Balance (which mostly refers to pure numerical changes) to affect my gameplay much. And I played Forsaken Gods with Community Patch shortly before. Some of the community patch changes made in into Alternative Balance.

Anyway, as there are a lot of new balanced armors and weapons, a lot of new EXP and quests, I did not feel like I was ever in need of skill points so I did not feel the AB to be taxing at all. In fact, most of those spells and skills felt rather cheap to acquire and others that I needed also required a skill or a spell that I wanted so I would get it anyway.

For instance I was able to both master thievery, have warrior skills, and some magic. Knockout skill at 40 thievery is an essential skill for insta kills or knockouts, for robbing cities and taking out hard humanoid targets if you sneak up from behind. If you have green reputation in a city you can knock out anyone you like and rob them all, right in front of other people's eyes.

By the end game I became a real paladin, I had over 700 health that I started investing into in the End Game for sieges, I had over 230 mana, not too much hunting but I was able to wield an Orc Ripper and extract all trophies. Smithing went to nearly a 100 when you really need 60 to get armor buffs, 159 ancient knowledge, over 400 strength

(by the way, after 250 in any stat you have to pay twice as many skill points to level it up so it is best to wait with permanent potions until you get to 250, same with all the other stat bonuses like from arena fights, millstones etc) and over 100 alchemy. I did not invest any points into ancient knowledge or alchemy, I mostly just read books and tablets.

I acquired some what I consider must have spells like sleep to disarm and win arena fights combined with knockout skill, terror spell for assassinations (strong willed enemies will follow you out of towns, weak willed ones will run away and can be stopped by using sleep or you can just send onlookers away), taming which is very strong especially if tame things like wargs or wolves. You can even tame “tamed” lions and the really strong boss wolf in Nordmar. But mostly it is handy as you can find things to tame anywhere. For a warrior it is important to have someone to draw agro in a big fight especially so that you can deal significant damage from a side or stunlock the enemy. Wolves and wargs are the best in terms of stunlocking someone. Trust me, I felt that in Vanilla.

For Fog I used shadow scepter though I consider that spell essential. I paired it with AoE ability of my choosing which is Flame Wave since I was a paladin and did not have access to stronger AoE spells and eventually ran out of scrolls for them. Flame Wave deals more damage based on amount of mana it costs against its corresponding rival spell Ice Explosion, for which you have to have 30 more ancient knowledge, worth 150 ancient knowledge. Flame Wave costs 90 mana and Ice Exploision 150 mana. Flame Wave does 400 fire damage and ice explosion does 600 energy damage. But flame wave has a burning dot. Overall, flame wave is more efficient when it comes to mana per damage. And you can learn it at any Innos Statue unlike Ice Explosion for which you have to travel to Varant and complete a quest that might be hard for a new mage.

Fog creates an invisible barrier around you through which projectiles do not pass, and enemies can’t go through, but if they get locked in within they will attack you. I was able to cast fog cast 3 flame waves drink large mana potion cast fog again and repeat while it lasted. Sometimes fog will block your targeting so you have to move within it slightly.

If I went full Dark Mage with the double spell duration and damage and instead of Flame Wave used Lightning Strike that does 1000 energy damage base (without double dmg) and have fog last twice as long I would be game breakingly strong. I still managed to clear cities solo without rebel help and nordmar camps using fog+flame wave combo as a paladin. Easily. On hard with rebalance.

Overall, Summoning Spells seem to be better for slaying large amounts of enemies based on their ancient knowledge requirements and if you want to save your skill points this is the way to go. It has plenty of useful spells. Lightning Strike is cheaper than Meteor and is in the same school as Fog so you benefit from only having to take Dark Mage instead of also taking Fire Mage. Lack of Fire Rain or Hailstorm does not matter here. Those spells are underwhelming compared to Meteor/Lighting Strike

Shield Parry is an essential skill because it allows you to block all attacks with this mod. In vanilla monsters strike you through your block no matter what, but in this one you can block their attacks at the cost of stamina, sometimes you will be pushed if the attack is strong but you will still block it. Shadowbeasts become a triviality in melee. Besides a good shield will add defense bonuses to you stat wise

While there is plenty of new things you can craft, unfortunately it seems like the food you can cook is the same 10 recipes that are available in Vanilla. Well maybe there is like 1 extra recipe.

The thing is in most Gothic modifications that add new things on a large scale new food recipes are also added. In Gothic 2 TC mod Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos for instance there is so much different food you can craft using all sorts of ingredients that fulfill different purposes it is incredible.

Archolos also makes use of permanent stat boost components that remain after you have spent all King Sorrel's to craft stat boosting potions. I would prefer instead of eating them raw to cook something that for example gives +2 to stat rather than just +1. Not as powerful as permanent potions but better than raw food. And to balance it out they would still require other rare ingredients that are spent for example on transformation potions etc.

This is especially useful if you do not part take in certain disciplines like aforementioned transformations. So I feel like this is a missed opportunity

Alternative A.I. is an attempt to rebalance the combat behavior of Gothic 3 NPCs. I would say it is a very important part of combat even if you do not include pure damage and health stats here.

Why do I say an attempt? Well it fixes a lot of old standing issues with Gothic 3 combat and makes combat feel a lot more like in Gothic 2 but unfortunately it does not fix everything. Some things become rather obnoxious as well.

In Vanilla and even in Gothic 3 Forsaken Gods with Community Patch I felt a lot of pain from Wolves, Wargs, Bisons, Ogres and Bloodflies. They would consistently stunlock me with attacks even 1v1. A group of those would be a really dangerous foe. Far more dangerous than final boss of the game. In fact those low tier nothing special kind of mobs were tougher than Dragons or the majority of “end game” monsters. They were a massive pain at the stat of the game (they were even tough on easy and I played on Hard, as A.I. behavior Is not affected by difficulty, difficulty only changes things like health and damage on enemies) and they were still a massive pain in the end game.

Another foes I hated absolutely were humans that had fists, or mummies, undead priests that had fists and magic. Fists are rather overpowered in vanilla when it comes to focusing a target. They can’t hit many enemies at once but they have insane lock on reach and can just endlessly stunlock you. And damn those undead fists hit hard. Not much you could do. And if you run out of reach far enough they blast you with magic.

Besides all that, all monsters of Vanilla Gothic and G3 CM Forsaken Gods are all masters of dodging and backstepping. Even the trolls. A huge troll can easily dodge back almost like a kung fu master.

Well Alternative A.I. aimed to fix it. And it mostly did.

Wolves no longer stunlock you. You can move backwards and hit them when they get close enough (good thing the game shows the length of your weapon, that I why I mostly used 1 handed swords that had 107+ reach, anything less and you would miss and get hit more). You can even catch wolves and shadowbeasts on their attack and counter it if you hit it in time. In other cases you can simulate Gothic 2 melee system where you hit and wait to continue a combo. In G3 you do not need to do that, there are no combos. But if you still time and wait with your attacks ala Gothic 2 you can consistently hit some animals over and over but if the flow breaks you will miss. I VERY MUCH enjoyed this. Because in Vanilla there was barely any flow. Now you can really become a master fighter.

Enemies who use fists against you are still tough and can sometimes do a lot of damage to you but they are much less aggressive. And this mostly refers to undead enemies. Most humans and orcs when disarmed are actually rather weak and you can stunlock them with sword attacks.

Dragons are no longer push overs and (thankfully do not look like chickens with re-skin). You can no longer stunlock a dragon into a wall. A dragon will counter you with a quick fireball and you will most likely die, they also have homing fireballs. Be careful.

Gargoyles are still push overs. Same tactics apply you can just noob one into a wall and kill it if you hit it continuously. They will sometimes land a hit on you if you do not do anything and just stand around.

Trolls in my opinion have become too weak and boring to fight. They no longer backstep but they also have get stunlocked in place when you hit them. They just get attached to the spot and can’t do anything. If you have a lot of stamina you will kill them without them retaliating once. If you run out of stamina you can still hit them faster than they attack you. They were more fun to fight without Alternative A.I. As it stands now trolls need to be stunlock immune to be an interesting fight.

Humanoids were rather weak in vanilla. Susceptible to pierce attack spam as they are about to get up. No longer works. Humanoids – orcs and humans now fight better. They block attacks completely and they do not get pushed back when they do, do not open up as much and can perform a series of strong attacks against you. They will always block when they are getting up so you can’t abuse the pierce. I actually had to develop a combo of my own when I pierce them, then do a heavy attack and they fall and as they fall, right after heavy attack I do one light attack and it connects as they fall.

When you fight humanoids you have to consider blocking, parrying and your strategy. If you do not have a lot of health every fight is a different adventure and an encounter. Arena fights are especially tough, you can get stunlocked in those as NPCs in arena fights are extra tough in health, damage and aggressiveness. You can even get pushed out of the arena by their onslaught. But I would say it is mostly fair. Too bad they did not port dodge from Forsaken Gods. You could dodge to the sides and backwards. Here, if you are about to be pushed you can only jump up to evade. And you can also back away from attacks or block them with shield. Although dodge in FG was not perfect and sometimes would bug out. So maybe it is good that it is not here, besides it would trigger with double tap.

I would say that 2 handed weapon move set on NPCs has become rather toxic and OP with Alternative A.I. The thing about it is that NPCs have great reach, block very well and will spam the extra quick flurries of spin attacks that do great damage.

Any fighter with a 2 handed weapon will do that. But the worst are the orcs with glaives and even worse than those are mages with staves, undead mages and !zombies with pickaxes!. Zombies with pickaxes are the new wolves. They will stunlock you. They will make you suffer. An enemy that is supposed to be a weak one suddenly became strong. You only get 200 exp for a moldy zombie without exp nerf mod. And what’s worse those guys come in large large droves wherever they are. Be it temples or undead cities and caves. One strategy that works is spamming arrows while backing away without drawing string too much. Piercing them with swords. Magic. Trying to fight them head on is dangerous and you need a lot of health and defense.

Pickaxe moldy zombie is the bane of Alternative A.I.

Consequences mod brings more consequences for your actions. Take out an army? You are no longer accepted to see leaders of corresponding settlements, or even killed on sight. Reputation becomes too high? Other faction hates you. Kill someone, another person wants you dead. Steal something special, you pay for the crime in various ways. Work with an enemy, people notice a new quest comes up that has to do with you making up for your mistakes. Do too much good for one side, the other won’t talk to you until you kill your new friends. Help someone you shouldn’t have helped? You made a new enemy out of someone.

Overall, that was a lot of fun running into those consequences early on. That made me avoid doing certain things that I thought would cause change in how factions looked at me until the later part of the game. Of course I still happened to do some of those things. And then I had to pay the price. I had to think about my actions and what were the potential outcomes. Of course if you push back killings and important decisions until later in the game you can avoid the most grievous of them.

However, I also learned how to avoid consequences via in game mechanics. Mostly, people who warn you about consequences of your actions are the gate guards leading up to certain leaders. Mostly but not always so. So in order to push back some of those consequences you can either put the gate keeper (the one who initially talks to you about city reputation checks to be admitted to the leader) you can put them to sleep, make them run in terror before you get within their talk range and then easily pass and talk to the leader, or you can outright lead them somewhere and kill them so you don’t have to deal with them at all. (But only after you were admitted inside the leader’s quarters and before they rebuke you).

Would be better if more NPCs had those consequences dialogues and triggers and not just mostly the gate guards. Though some leaders have them too. But that is nitpicking. Maybe next version of consequences part of the mod will have it too. Maybe the upcoming story project will encompass it all.

Despite some of my critique I very much liked the mod. It was very fun to explore the game again with all the changes, as if I was playing a new game. I enjoyed almost every moment of it. Crafting was greatly expanded, there are NPCs that allow to smelt ingots and ore. The Gothic 2 skins and music made the game feel almost in the same vein as Gothic 2. So did the fixed combat. It was very atmospheric and engaging.

However, the ideas that Piranha Bytes had originally but could not implement due to development hell and time constraints were finished by modding community. Piranha Bytes wanted there to be consequences for things like killing npcs in cities and stealing that is why it is a part of vanilla game that NPCs stop you and blame you for bad things even if they did not see you commit them because it makes sense since it started after you came there.

Almost all the aspects of the game have been fixed, finished and perfected with this mod collection that is leading up to the install of Content Mod 3.1

The draw distance is pretty great too and you can even uncap it completely but you may experience some lag. My game lagged a little bit in waterfall area near Silden. And I also experienced crashes from time to time, probably had to do with game running out of memory eventually. Crashes were not happening too often and saving frequently made sure I lost no progress. Additionally, if a crash happened on loading a savefile they did not corrupt. I still backed up saves manually though.

I sincerely thank everyone who was a part in all of the aforementioned mods including the community patch. Thank you for making this possible. I enjoyed this greatly.