check out all the forests and kill every animal that you can find... if possible one by one. take everything you can take from them and sell it somewhere and try to buy a better sword or armor...

nooooo i hate that in a agem.. anyway - where can i get better weapons? i haevnt bought a single weapon int he game cause all the merchants haeve useless stocks. and i need waaay more strengh to be alble to wear a mercenary heavy armour

There's no difference between weapons that are found and weapons you can buy, i.e., you won't find anything cool or unique while exploring. If you're playing a melee based character you need to sink a ton of points into strength to be able to wield the better weapons. Armor-wise I don't recall them requiring strength, just costing ore. And, unfortunately, Trilarion is right in that Gothic 1 and 2 do require a bit of 'grinding' to increase your levels as there aren't a ton of side quests.

Edit: Never mind, I thought you were talking about G1.

Eh? I'm around level 26 of chapter 3 in Gothic II and I never had a problem with a lack of side quests. Talk to every NPC (who's actually someone and not just a "citizen" or some other town filler) and use quick travel (runes and warp pads) only when you're certain the road has been cleared. Using these methods, I got to where I am now with pretty much no grinding. Granted, I did a large chunk of the Night of the Raven quests at the end of chapter 2 so that probably gave me a good 10 or so extra levels, but if you're playing vanilla Gothic II, the quite drastically reduced cost of levelling up skills would more than balance out the lack of NotR XP.

As for mercenary sidequests, Lee usually has something per chapter, as does the guy who stands around the front of the farmhouse (I forget his name). Also, Thekla not only also provides side quests, but also rewards you with stew that gives permanent strength boosts.

I found the 'grindy' part in G2 came prior to the expansion content at the start of Chapter 2 mostly due to the difficulty of the the enemies in certain areas. Once you start Jarkendar/expansion stuff it's pretty smooth sailing -- at least for a melee character as I was able to buy that overpowered Typhoon weapon the water mages sold.

It may've helped that my character is an archer and thus can kill pretty much anything with a bit of creativity in regards to terrain.

Gothic was my first taste of European CRPG's years ago when it first came out. I was absolutely in love with that game for months. Shame how the last 2 in the series haven't been up to snuff.