Thanks! I'm pretty new to the world of downloading games. It's good to have options for stuff Gog might not have.

I only scanned most of the replies here to see if this was mentioned, and didn't see it. If I'm repeating what someone else said, my bad. :)

When you advance chapters, the world is repopulated with monsters. IIRC, they just respawn where you killed them the chapter before, only in smaller numbers.

So, rushing through the first chapters, you miss A LOT of easy XP if you don't explore the whole world looking for somewhat easier quests and monsters. They are scattered all around, and there are somewhat safe routes to navigate the entire island looking for them.

I'm currently playing Chapter 1, and I'm about to get to level 11. The entire world is fairly cleaner of monsters and animals than it was before I started. :)

I'm planning to go the Mage route this time, BTW. Maybe it's just not the best for a first playthrough, if you want to focus only on the main quest the first time. But you'll still have to slow down a bit in any other class.

There are no respawns in Gothic 2. There are just spawns.Sometimes you will lose a few XP because different kinds of monsters in the same area will attack each other. But that's a small ammount. You do not have to kill the orc elite in chapter one. It will still be there later on and it will not respawn...

OK, I wasn't very clear... when I said "monsters", I meant mostly animals, or at least "irrational" monsters. I wasn't considering the Orcs as "monsters", in other words. And respawn may not be the best term either, but the world is certainly repopulated to a degree at the beginning of each chapter. And as far as I know, that only happens if you depopulate it first.

For example, if there's an area with a pack of wolves in Chapter I, there will probably be a smaller pack of wolves, or one of wargs, or maybe even a shadowbeast in its place when you get to Chapter II... but only if you've killed the wolves in Chapter I, IIRC. If you haven't, they will still be there, and the other monsters will not spawn till the beginning of the next Chapter. That's a fair bit of extra XP you're missing out on early in the game. Of course, I never once played through this game without combing the entire world for all the kills I could get in Chapter I, so maybe my memory serves me wrong?

As for my current playthrough, I'm still at Chapter I, now at level 13 and halfway to 14, and only now I've joined the Monastery. Soon I'll have a chance to check if I'm misremembering something; I'll be sure to come back here and tell you guys either way. :)

It does not matter whether we are talking about wolves or Orcs. The spawns that happen when you reach a new chapter are always the same (although there are some differences depending on the class your character). It does not matter at all whether there are still monsters left in the area where the spawns happen. There will just be more monsters than before. And it can get very crowded that way. For example in the orc ring around the castle where a lot of Orcs will spawn when you reach chapter 4.

It is a good thing to kill everything you can, because the XP are all that matters in this game. But if something is too strong you can always come back in a later chapter. You do not have to worry about missing any XP because a monster you could not kill, would not be able to respawn. There are simply no respawns. The is the same ammount of monsters in the game. No matter when you chose to kill them.

Man, you live and you learn... I've been away from the game this whole time, but now that I've resumed playing it and came back here to the forums, I finally saw your post. I didn't know about that at all! Thanks for the clarification.

That info will surely speed up the game for me, as I always tried to kill everything I could on the first chapter (taking a loooooong time to do so), so as not to miss the precious, precious XP. :)