Concentrating on
Gothic now. I'm still in chapter 1 as I don't have any big urge to advance in the story for now, as long as I am able to level up my character. I'm now on level 4, have level 1 in single-hand melee fighting and bow, so now I can also (barely) kill e.g. wolves and those lizard thingies. Orcs and orc-dogs are still out of a question, even my bow doesn't seem to do any damage to them yet.
This is the part I usually love in RPGs, concentrating on improving my character, levelling up, getting better gear, thinking "Damn orcs, you beat me now but just wait until I've become stronger, I'll wipe the floor with you and your orc-dogs...".
I am damn happy I happened to read this discussion:
Things I Wish I Knew Before Getting Far Into Gothic 1 Every game should have a "FAQ" like that! Especially the part about hunting skills, early in the game you meet a guy who can teach you all sorts of hunting things (how to get skins, claws, teeth etc. out of your prey, which you can then sell for money). I first thought they are less important than e.g. fighting skills and maybe I will look into them later in the game, but as that discussion suggests, you should get most of those skills as soon as possible because monsters don't necessarily respawn (until next chapter), so if you e.g. kill all the wolves without those skills, you simply lose money.
I think I now have all those hunting skills (including the one about extracting mandibles from minecrawlers), except one for which you apparently need to read a book from the New Camp. So now I can quite safely hunt all kinds of beasts and monsters, without losing any potential money.
The discussion didn't reach full consensus though, for instance whether pickpocketing skill makes sense. One person said it is useless because NPCs you can pickpocket don't have anything valuable or interesting (how many apples do you want to steal from NPCs?), but then another person pointed out that you get extra experience for pickpocketing, so it makes sense to have the skill and use it frequently, just for the extra XP.
I also read another discussion about ore mining. When I arrived to the old mine, it seemed to me you can mine ore yourself with your pick-axe... but apparently that is just a red herring. Sure you can keep hitting an ore vein for as long as you like, but you will not get any ore that way. The game developers seem to be trolling the players quite a bit...
So far so good. I've understood the game (world) isn't necessarily that big, mainly the few camps around the map etc., but in a way I am fine with that. Not every RPG needs to be Skyrim (or Daggerfall) in size.
EDIT: Also as I've understood you can only join one camp, so I guess I will join the old camp... but before doing that, it makes sense to do all the subquests in the other camps too, for the extra experience. So now I am visiting the New Camp to see what is to be done there, without properly joining their camp.