chautemoc: Note: all items here apply to Gothic & Gothic II, except the Gothic 3 Community Patch. Also, some instructions and links are outdated. See
here for some updated info. I'm not on GOG much anymore, so feel free to PM me for any specific updates you want to see to this guide, or if you want to write a new guide, do that and PM me with it and I may replace mine with it. Alternately, write a new guide and message mods/staff and see if they'll sticky it.
DirectX 11 Renderer Significantly improves the graphics and performance in Gothic 1 & II by utilizing the much more modern DirectX 11 renderer. To get this working with Gothic, follow these steps:
1. Go to the system folder in the installation folder and make a copy of Gothic.exe called Gothic2.exe.
2. Install Report-Version: Gothic2.exe 2.6.0.0.
3. Install the latest version of the mod.
4. Run the game with Gothic2.exe (you can update your shortcuts for convenience).
(Thanks, Arkose)
See the link for a variety of other mods recommended for use in conjunction with this one.
Custom resolution For Gothic or Gothic II, open your gothic.ini file in the install folder and change the "zVidResFullscreen" items to your default resolution, and the zVidResFullscreenBPP item to 32. Now copy the file and rename it gothic.in, then open notepad and paste this text:
copy gothic.in gothic.ini /Y
gothic.exe
exit
Save this as gothic.bat (all file types) in the same folder. Launch as normal.
For Gothic II, use the unofficial patch below to improve FOV (this comes with potential concerns, though).
Gothic mouse controls Change the control settings to "alternative" in your in-game settings for somewhat reasonable controls by modern standards. Gothic controls were designed around a keyboard with mouse support added late in development, however, so the experience will never be great. Note to newbies: to interact, attack, etc., hold the left mouse button and use the WASD keys as appropriate to "direct" your action (eg. W to open a chest/attack forward, A or D to attack sideways, etc).
kohan69 recommends setting the mouse sensitivity line in gothic.ini to 3 instead of 1. Experiment with numbers 1 through 10 to find what you like best.
Gothic Unofficial Patch Popular patch by Ironkeep Studios which fixes many bugs still present in the latest official version. Some say it causes more problems than it fixes, so be cautious. My personal experience with Gothic was almost bug-free, so you may want to go without.
Gothic Textures Patch Significantly enhances the graphics of Gothic. Player Kit (below) required.
Gothic Player Kit Install this to play/use the fan made modifications (mostly adventures) found
here.
Unlock framerate (Gothic) After installing the Player Kit, download and install the patch above to unlock the framerate from 25fps to whatever your machine can handle. Should provide a much more smooth gameplay experience.
More blood To increase the amount of blood in Gothic / Gothic 2 (it was censored by the powers that be, if I recall), open Gothic.ini (found in your install folder) and change "bloodDetail 1" to "bloodDetail 3". This is useful for tracking enemies, also.
Stop NPC chatter If you're annoyed by the frequency of repetitive NPC chatter in Gothic, do the following:
-create 'speech' folder in _work/data/sound
-download the
NicoVDFS tool -set root path in NicoVSFS to _work/data/sound/speech
-open speech.vdf with it
-extract all files from it to the new folder
-delete speech.vdf
-search folder for 'smalltalk' and delete all files containing the phrase
The same can be done with Gothic 2 using
this version of the tool, though it seems to cause stuttering.
Thanks to alexei_net for this tip.
Gothic II IronKeep Community Patch Another series of bug fixes from IronKeep Studios. Also improves FOV on widescreen monitors and improves textures. One user warns against installing the full patch and going a more minimalist approach (details
here). As with G1, the game is pretty well bug-free, so you may want to skip this.
Gothic II Texture Pack Significantly improves the textures and meshes in Gothic II.
Command console In either game, enter the character/status screen and type "marvin" (no quotes). Exit the screen. You should see "Marvin mode" in the top left of the screen. Now, after hitting F2 to open the console, you can activate a variety of commands for various effects (see:
Gothic commands,
Gothic II commands).
One function which should prove useful to most is teleportation -- handy if you have to get halfway across the world and don't want to walk. To do this in Gothic, type goto waypoint [waypoint] -- in the brackets goes the location you want to travel to. See
for the list of accepted location codenames. For Gothic II, simply type the name of the desired location listed [url=http://www.worldofgothic.com/gothic2/?go=g2waypoints]here.
Gothic 3 Community Patch Very popular overhaul which was since incorporated by JoWood into an official package. It makes the game look and play better improved performance, mechanics, graphics, plus bug fixes, and a whole lot more. For all the details, consult the
. GOG has [url=http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/new_release_gothic_3/?staff=yes]confirmed the final version (1.74) is compatible with the GOG release.
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Further tweaking can be done by opening gothic.ini and reading descriptions. Be careful, of course, and keep a backup default copy in case you mess something up.
If I've missed anything imperative or useful, please let me know and I'll add it.
Just want to say that this post for "fixes" is no longer valid as the GOG version is up-to-date with 1.08k
Using the gothic1_Playerkit & SystemPack updates do not work as intended with Windows 10 after June 2022 Updates and result in failed launches or black screen softlocks of Windows Explorer.
A vanilla install of Gothic 1 works fine without any need to apply patches. Resolutions go upwards from 1440p 32bit and higher. Some of the patches provided in this post are no longer available and likely lost unless they are archived elsewhere.
D3D11 patch also fails to launch Gothic 1 (making a copy of the original and renaming it as Gothic2.exe)
