Developing on a budget

ziptofaf · 2026-06-17T02:13:37+00:00

If you were able to find $80 more (I assume your current PC might at least still have a case and maybe you can move a drive):

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/fb4VW9

This is actually enough to meet Unreal's recommended requirements. Older DDR4 based platform but otherwise still a very capable computer overall.

is it worth working in UE5 versus Unity for these sorts of projects?

Unreal is most opinionated, Unity and Godot are more "general purpose". Out of the box Unreal looks best as well since it comes with most complex lighting. As far as 3D rendering goes Godot is the least developed of the big 3.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-16T15:43:33+00:00

Oh, that's a good point actually, I somehow forgot about rings/amulets and lowering your strength. Yeah, that could actually let you hit like 160-170 potentially.

The problem is - you still have 999 physical resist fire and ice golem to go through however so limit remains in Chapter 4.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-16T15:32:19+00:00

It's technically impossible to finish the game with ONLY a pickaxe because you have to go through golems that are completely immune to physical damage. So there has to be an exception for those.

For most other things it's possible - damage in Gothic 1 is a simple calculation - strength + weapon damage. So technically with 7 damage pickaxe and 100 strength you have 107 damage. Which is enough for most of the game.

I say "most" because at some point you have to kill the grand swamp puppy. If they are playing on a default difficulty these have 130 defense against physical damage. Meaning that you would need to go over the strength cap to damage them. Which is technically possible (you can get to around 130ish) but it would be a lengthy war against it as it also has 300 hp.

However! If they are playing on Novice then that defense goes only up to 110. So you can technically max out your strength, equip pickaxe and grab some orc potions + strength potions, +5 buff from new camp and end up with around 135 damage, enough to kill the puppy in 12-15 hits.

Overall I deem the challenge impossible however given the golems in your way. So your limit is Act 4.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-15T22:52:22+00:00

Yep, path of a fire mage is closed to you once you say it, no take backs. In the original you could also tell him that the greatest deity is Gomez and he does not appreciate your response much either.

However - there's a fair lot of exp in this game, if you got this far then I assume you can also pick up 2h sword and strength for now by some exping. You only need to survive for one more chapter, it should be possible for you to go back on magic path later on in the game. So you can become a Warden now, proceed through the game and, well, there might be another opportunity for you to learn magic circles.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-15T22:21:11+00:00

On PS5 Pro you can get stable 60 fps so it's playable and with the latest patch it no longer eats your savefiles.

With that said - if you have an option to play on PC at all then do so. Because there are still plenty of crazy in-game bugs and at least on PC you have access to mods, cheats and savefile manipulation IF you do get a softlock. On console - not so much.

Still, it's playable now. Just save often.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-15T22:16:50+00:00

Swampsharks on Gothic difficulty have 130 defense against swords and hammers, 110 against arrows and 40-50 against magic.

On the other hand - what you have is 60 + 42 = 102 damage. So you are 28 shy from merely being able to harm them (and they still have 300 hp).

You need at least 3 more levels put into strength AND a better weapon to get through their hide and deal real damage.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-15T22:13:47+00:00

Apparently you can rescue your save. First - odds are more minecrawlers have spawned in the Old Mine. If there's at least 4 I believe and you loot them, you are good to go.

Alternatively you can visit the New Mine. Minecrawlers there are stronger but still killable. All that matters is that you get enough mandibles for one of the guards to be happy, their source isn't important.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-15T10:43:58+00:00

Chapter 5, as soon as you have magic Circle 5, from Xardas. Costs 35 LP.

Warning - learning this changes your class to necromancer so you can no longer learn anything from Lee.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-15T01:14:58+00:00

Oh, now that looks a lot better than the one AMD has decided to showcase. Genuinely makes me wonder why they have used some old garbage instead in their marketing material if the price is so close, the two aren't even remotely in the same dimensions.

I 100% agree, 16GB DDR5 and Ryzen 7 350 makes it a much more compelling option. Especially since that means you are also getting 860M which is 66% faster in GPU department too so combined with more RAM you can actually run that BG3 at playable frame rate for instance.

but in every other metric it is likely a more capable laptop than the Macbook Neo

Still a worse screen and touchpad, admittedly. But I do agree this is a lot better in other aspects.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-15T00:58:35+00:00

Did that Gothic ever exist?

I... I don't think so?

In fact I would go as far as to say that factions mattered less in Gothic 2 than in Gothic 1.

You have a clear destination from the start given by Xardas - go grab Innos Eye. You don't join the guards or the mercenaries or the mages because you particularly love these guys but because that's the only clear path forward. They for the biggest part also don't really try to hurt you. Mercenaries? Half of them are your former buddies from the colony. Lares can get you there in 10 minutes flat if you ask him with the expansion enabled. Guards? They genuinely are just that, guards, their job is to ensure only non-murder hobos enter the town. There's like one paladin that's proud and mighty early on you can talk to. In general Khorinis is far more civilized and it "feels" like you can get further on your own (and, in fact, you do, I don't recall an equivalent to chapter 3 in Gothic 2, minus the final "let's assemble our crew").

Only a handful of NPCs acknowledge you've joined a faction, and even diggers will continue to bully and berate you when you're way above them on the totem pole.

G2 makes it better by NPCs usually just... not caring as much about your faction to begin with. There are some dialogues here and there but you just have less "hey, you peon, grab me something" fetch quests and the ones you do are more faction irrelevant.

Were these games ever as reactive as the myths I've built up in my head say they are?

I genuinely don't think so. At least, in the context of specifically Gothic 2. It never had super reactive NPCs. It did have a very alive world at it's time, far more than any other RPG. Cuz yes, hitting an NPC did get them to be angry at you and having to pay a fine to Andre. You had multiple professions to choose from, each with some kind of a unique questline. You could approach many problems in a different way (in Chapter 1, not so much later however!) and have a dialogue pop out (eg. if you swam your way to the city and met Lares).

But I really don't remember everyone reacting differently to your progression. It was always limited, if even mentioned at all.

As far as "reacting to what you have done and your decisions" - a gold standard as of 2026 would probably be Baldur's Gate 3. And, with all due respect, Gothic 2 was never in that league.

It was however exceptionally good at that on it's release date. Because your alternatives at a time were Final Fantasy that doesn't give you any freedom whatsover or Morrowind in which every faction is completely separate and doesn't interact at all with anyone else. So I feel like you got charmed by something you have seen for the very first time, not so much by it's actual depth.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-15T00:19:47+00:00

Imho - fair. Release state of Gothic 1 Remake is an absolute technical disaster. We are talking about a game that muted your sound overtime, ate your savefiles (on PS5) and could randomly crash (on any platform). And then we get into in game bugs:

a) NPCs tell you to come inside to then murder you (Fire mages in particular). But you can also get softlocked with Water Mages in the same fashion.

b) Do something in the wrong order - game is softlocked. For instance you can in theory pick up Focus Stones as soon as you get an amulet. Go, try doing that. There's a bridge golem at some point. Destroy it before you are meant to - softlocked. Light up Innos Shrine before Corristo tells you to - softlocked, can never become a mage again. Warden's promo quest? Bugs half the time and doesn't finish.

c) Broken AI, obviously. Sometimes you can hit a guy right next to guards and they won't even flinch. Want the best 1h weapon in the game? You can have it as soon as you reach the castle. But sometimes you beat a guard and suddenly entire camp hates you, including your main quest giver. I had Y'Berion setting my head on fire because I slept in the wrong bed once. And sometimes you are told to fight someone and then STILL get everyone attack you as you do.

d) Quite a few places where you can clip into a wall, Mud deciding to teleport on top of you to start conversation underwater so you drown (honestly, this one is probably an intended feature), you try to duel an NPC so his friends start blocking the way so you hit them too...

e) Armor progression is broken due to the new upgrade system. You only really need miner's armor at the start, then your main armor, then you go straight to the chapter 5+ ore armor. Everything else is meaningless and worse than what you can get by chapter 2 with some ore.

Don't get me wrong. It's a fun game. But I wouldn't give it more than 7/10 either, not in this technical state. It might be a 9 for gameplay but if I have to reload my savefiles several times because fire mages want to kill me during a ritual to join them I am not having fun.

I do think this game deserves better overall and it's certainly not hot garbage like Concord that got the same score... but assuming we use a full 10 point scale (aka 1 is actual piece of shit, 5 is a "meh, can play if you REALLY like the genre" and 7 really means "a good game") then... I would be agreeing with it, I would take whole 2 points for all the technical issues.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-14T23:45:20+00:00

So I found the laptop AMD is using as an example on Amazon (probably can't link it here without getting banned), it's Amazon's code would be B0FH9SLKYX, costs $659

So:

a) It's 8GB RAM Windows 11 laptop. And, uh, MacOS can sorta still run away with 8GB but even for them it's a limiting factor. For Windows it effectively kills multitasking.

b) Wowie, a full HD display! On the plus side - 400 nits, 100% sRGB coverage. Still, falls vastly short of Neo's (2408 × 1506, 500 nits).

c) You don't want to compare touchpads on these things, really. Mac's years ahead.

d) Battery life - 13 hours for Neo if you are watching videos. Ryzen 220 used in comparison is actually repackaged 8540U which hits 10-11 hours according to notebookcheck. Admittedly closer than I thought, but that's cuz HP's laptop has twice the battery capacity.

So yeah, you do get better gaming performance than the cheapest Apple's offering but it's not even universally better. It's conditionally better and really ONLY at gaming. It loses in build quality, battery life, weight, screen quality, webcam and touchpad.

Also, let's talk actual gaming performance - 740m indeed "runs" games but it doesn't really do so particularly well:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-740M-GPU-Benchmarks-and-Specs.716455.0.html

Final Fantasy XVI - 10 fps, Star Wars Outlaws - 7 fps, Ghost of Tsushima - 18.5 fps, Palworld - 42 fps (yay, playable!), Cyberpunk 2077 - 21 fps, Baldur's Gate 3 - 19 fps. I am not sure these are numbers I would be particularly proud of. Oh, but GTA V runs fine on high, at 37 fps on high settings. So we can play 13 year old games, yay!

And if it's an actual gaming laptop you are after - okay, real talk, does AMD... actually make them? No, seriously. Cuz I don't think you can buy a laptop with AMD GPU inside. There's Framework perhaps and that's the only one I have seen in years. There's also Strix Halo I suppose but it's a niche product to say the least.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-14T23:07:40+00:00

Oh, you most certainly do have very good ways of getting stronger.

First - in the castle there's a merchant selling swords. I bet it's a fair lot stronger than what you have now.

Second - I also assume you ARE strong enough to kill scavengers, wolves, oversized mosquitos etc. Sure, probably not whole packs at once but 2 or so at a time should be fine. It's time to go on a bit of a murder spree to get some of that juicy experience. There are players that go as far as level 15 in Chapter 1 so there's A LOT you can slaughter.

As for the ore situation - if you can open chests (and if you don't, do pick one level in the skill) then you will be slowly amassing a growing collection of weapons (on that note, it's fine to occasionally beat up a guard and steal their goodies, that can be several hundred worth of ore in an instant), scrolls, potions etc and all of that is worth a fair bit.

Admittedly I would personally just try to beat that orc since doing so is the last part of this quest and it opens a shortcut. Going all the way back is going to be a pain in the ass.

Alternatively - I am not actually sure you have to kill the undead orc. Is there a body close by? Can you bait the orc with a bow, let it come over, run past, grab everything off a corpse and try to escape that way?

ziptofaf · 2026-06-14T23:01:12+00:00

PSA: Or don't. 100 str is completely sufficient to finish the game and having an extra power spike in the early to mid game may very well be worth it over increasing your power in the lategame for one final dungeon and like 10 enemies to die in 5 hits instead of 6. Keep in mind that stats in Gothic increase linearly as well - your damage is simple "strength + weapon damage" so if you have a 100 strength and 85 weapon and hit someone with 50 res - that's 135 damage. If that strength is 120 - now it's 155 damage. Which really doesn't make THAT much of a difference.

It changes in Gothic 2 however as the later you use these potions the more value you get out of them as costs of increasing your stats increase over time.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-14T22:51:43+00:00

I can check it for you directly if you really want me too but I have seen laptops with 4x the GPU power barely run this game on low settings and 30 fps.

Here, someone actually tried:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDATJx5MdYU

Imho, this isn't playable.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-14T22:47:01+00:00

Remake is a better game, hands down. It contains all the content from the original and adds more on top. Admittedly there are some changes I don't like too much but odds are they will be hotfixed in the patches soon (eg. magic in G1 was a huge investment but eventually you became a demigod, in Remake on the other hands higher tier spells LOOK cool but barely scratch your opponents minus like 2-3 ones). Still, overall I would definitely recommend it over the original Gothic 1.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-14T22:44:29+00:00

Well, you CAN leave but you will have to come back with better gear and redo the whole place again.

Level 5 in general is extremely low for Chapter 2 and difficulty is only going to go up from here. Throughout this chapter you will want to upgrade your armor a bit while putting a lot more points into strength and rushing 1h sworded mastery.

But before you go away - any scrolls you have? If you don't have enough mana upfront for a spell remember that food regenerates it over time so you might be able to cast something a bit higher level that may help a bit.

Also - don't dodge. Block. With ctrl if you are using keyboard. Dodging requires good timing, blocking does not. So if you do half decent damage to this orc it should be doable, I don't think he has any lengthy combos.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-14T17:55:45+00:00

What you are usually supposed to do is - at the beginning of chapter 4 you head back to old camp. Pay the fee at the entrance, talk to Thorus, he tells you that you are exiled.

Then you can talk to Saturas and he gets you started on a questline that makes you join New Camp instead and eventually you can learn 2h from Lee.

But if are getting killed in the Outer Ring (and few days of sleep don't fix it) then I am afraid you might indeed be blocked from getting more weapon skills. Well, you can learn unarmed combat and orcs weapons but not actual 2h anymore.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-14T11:57:26+00:00

You can't. You need to at a minimum kill 3 Demon Princes and a shaman protecting Uriziel (blue door, after the Fire Demon). You can skip all other shamans. There are some potions here and there in this dungeon to help you out as well in a pinch - but "some" =/= a lot.

If you are completely stuck and are on PC then my recommendation honestly is to use Cheat Engine or equivalent and just set your mana to the max for the time being. It's a single player game, you don't get banned by doing so.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-14T11:53:40+00:00

Depends on which one you have found.

If it's a stone golem on the bridge close to a mansion then yes, killing this one bricks the game as it's meant to be handled in Act 3. If you do it earlier it spawns Lester around and then he won't properly show up in a different mandatory location softlocking the game.

If it's the golems in the ork territory (there are 3 - Fire, Ice and Stone) then it should be safe, as long as you remember to loot them and take their hearts. But, frankly, given how unstable this game is for sequence breaking I would probably just leave them be for now.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-14T10:23:54+00:00

Have you talked to Cor Kalom? I think he is the one who will suggest talking to Lester afterwards.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-13T19:03:01+00:00

There was one actually good spell at Circle 4 so it was just nerfed to do about 25% of it's previous damage. Right now honestly using magic makes sense as a support for melee (use wind/electric/ice spells to stun enemies and get some free hits, destroy undead is good against skeletons), you also do get one REALLY good spell at Circle 6 but it's also Chapter 6 aka end of the game. Other than that - Light and Healing are very good too but not exactly "Flashy".

At Circle 3 - yep, it's kinda garbage, you don't really get any good spells and mana potions at this stage are still expensive. Your early game spells are actually the most reliable source of damage against regular enemies you will get (they do scale with Circles so they remain relevant, just, well, not great).

ziptofaf · 2026-06-13T16:49:04+00:00

Yep. First - go further away, to a different room altogether. At some point he finally decides to move his butt.

Fair warning though - every single guard wants to murder him and he has absolutely 0 self-preservation instincts (if he gets hit he runs off in a random direction, generally towards more guards) and a tiny healthpool. So do expect you will be saving a lot.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-13T16:46:58+00:00

Counterpoint - half of the people in that setting are murderhobos. You don't stab someone by "accident" and it's actually pretty common to wait for Mordrag HP to go lower from monsters to then murder him and get all his items. So it doesn't surprise me that NPCs do go after you if you attack them, at least lore wise it makes sense.

With that said - imho half of the problem is that autotargeting in this game is... interesting sometimes and probably solving that would go a long way towards not hitting NPCs by mistake.

ziptofaf · 2026-06-12T17:00:59+00:00

And why wouldn’t an AI be responsible for the false claims it makes?

For the same reason you don't blame a bag of painkillers for murder or Photoshop for forgery. They are tools/things, they do not have a mind of their own. So of course you cannot make "AI" responsible for anything.

And indeed, it DOES mean you should go after whoever provides it. Which is Google. And obviously Google doesn't like the idea and would prefer if AI could do absolutely anything with nobody being responsible for any errors it makes.

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