Mage vs. Dragons in Gothic 2

[McGruff]

I've finished Gothic 2 as a melee, but never as a mage so I decided to try it.

The iceblock/hack away tactic quickly became me weapon of choice. It got me through the add-on quite easily (Raven was no problem).

I have developed my character thusly:

Strength 80 (to make the hacking as fast as possible)
dexterity around 45
Mana 100 (can kill a single orc witout having to recharge mana)

Sort of a battlemage type. I think I have around 20 lp left.

But now it's time to fight the dragons and I might be stuck. After finally meeting Cipher and Rod I attempted to get through to the swamp dragon.
Rod didn't even survive and Cipher isn't much help. Any magic spell I can cast doesn't even hurt the dragon (Large Fireball included). How do I kill these guys?

I read that the summon demon scroll kills them, but

a) I used the only one I can find to kill the orcs in the desert.

b) it seems cheap. Can't I win by myself?

Did I develop my character badly? Am I screwed?

Any help is appreciated. I love Gothic 1 and 2.

[Gor_Na_Drak]

Welcome to WoG. §wink

Battlemages are my favorite too. Since you mentioned Raven I'll assume that you are playing G2 with NotR. And NotR can be pretty unforgiving if you don't build up properly. And since you've played through before as a fighter I'll assume you know you have to talk to the dragon first with a fully charged up Eye before attacking.

The problem I see is it seems you have put too many points into str and dex for a mage character. (Not sure how many you put into melee combat or your bow,x-bow, but I'll assume you put some into those.) NotR favors pure builds. You can build hybrids but it's best to lean much more in one direction than two, and you probably should never try going with all three.

Lightning has always worked well for me when facing the dragons as a mage. But you need high amounts of mana in order to cast enough times without having to stop and down mana potions to counter the dragons fast health regen.

My advice to you is to use help in the form of summons spells, or use the dragon hunters like Biff (you can pay him to follow you around). And it's not cheap for a mage to use a summons. It's what they are there for. ;)

You may want to reload a past save, so you can keep Rod alive long enough to help you and Cipher with the dragon. And remember lightning and summons are your friends.

[Hellbilly]

Hoard all the Summon Demon scrolls you can get, and other summon spells. Even a summon goblin skeleton spell can be lethal against a dragon... if you combine it with a Shrink Monster spell, that is! Summon some gobbo skeletons for cannon fodder, shrink the dragon, and in no time the wee dragons go "splat".

Summon Demon spells are few and don't come cheap, but they're worth every penny. And later on, the rune comes in handy, although then more often than not you'll play the role of bunny against tougher foes whilst the demon picks 'em off one by one.

[McGruff]

Thanks for help. I re-did the swamp dragon, making sure that Rod survived and hired Biff on top of it. The three of them killed it in less than ten seconds.

Then I gathered up the remaining summon Demon scrolls. There were two left at the monastery, so I'm still one short.

Believe it or not, the demons kept dying on me. They could only solo the dragons about 50% of the time. I figured out that distracting the dragon with some slashes would give the demon the opening it needed to get in its hits.

So I still have to slay the ice dragon. And if I remember correctly, get past Sylvio's gang.

I wish I could find another summon demon scroll, but I've been to every trader and there are none left.

[Trokar the White]

There are four up to chapter four: In chapter 1 you can get one from Zuris right away, there are the two you already know about in the monastery, and a fourth can be bought from Engor in the castle. I think you can find three more later in the game, but I usually don't pay attention to those scrolls as I only need them in chapter four and not later.

[Dino]

mage vs dragon is easy mode.

Summon a bunch of skeletons and game over.

Oh and the undead is a joke. You just use Army of Darkness spell scroll and then cast 2-3 rain of fire and down he goes. A really disappointing final boss.

[McGruff]

I don't know if I'm playing a different mode than you, but summoning a bunch of skeletons didn't work at all for me. The dragon crunched them with no problems.

The only thing that worked was the demon in conjunction with distracting the dragon enough for the demon to get his hits in.

Anyway, I finally finished that part of the game. It really has been a long time for me playing this game, because I could have sworn there was more stuff to do in between the dragons and leaving on the ship.

But no - it was basically kill the dragons, find the crew, and sail.

Btw - I tried everything I could think of to clear Xardas' tower and nothing worked. Well, one thing did: the demons on the second floor get stuck in the doorway, and 15 minutes of crossbow bolts finally puts them down. But summoning me own demons was spectacularly ineffective, and no spells I have hurt them enough to make any difference.

I'll finish the last chapter now and see if NotR cleaned up any of those bugs the the originla Gothic 2 had in the ending.

Thanks for the help. Summoning demons truley was the only way to go for my type of character.

[McGruff]

I know I'm talking to myself here, but it's sort of like the video camera in the Blair Witch project for me, I guess.

My character really is screwed. I just bought the points for the Army of Darkness rune, and the mana cost is 150. As of now, on the ship , I have 116.

Hopeless.

I'm abandoning this. Maybe somewhere down the road I'll have the gumption to try Gothic 2 again to complete the mage thing. If I do I'm throwing everything I have into mana.

My game is right around 50 hours right now. When I finished regular Gothic 2 without NotR as a melee I ended up at at least 65. The mage path must be significantly shorter.

[Trokar the White]

Just to satisfy my curiosity, what else did you learn? I am playing as a dexterity based mage with 140 dexterity, 155 mana and I've learned all the most important spells. As well I am a master in 1H, 30% in bow, and I learned all the requisite animal processing. I'm having the most fun in NotR I've had in a long time building my character as a dex mage.

[McGruff]

My guess is my other stats were

STR 80
Dex 46
One handed - nothing
two handed - fighter, around 60%
bow and crossbow - whatever the tablets gave me.
I did lockpick, a bunch of trophies, sneak, read the ancient languages.
I did a fair amount of spells,maybe two per circle.

I think that's it. I had like 24 lp left, and 20 of those went to Army of Darkness (which I'll never be able to cast).

How did you get two stats up that high? I didn't put anything at all into dex besides the stone tablets, and I think I only increased strength to like 45 to use the Typhoon. Everything else was tablets or potions.

I know some people say you should save all permanent effect items until later in the game, but I didn't want to play that way. So I consumed everything as soon as I found it, just a like a person would do if the game were real life.

Anyway, my character is hopless by now. I just started a new game of Risen to try the mage path there; maybe that'll be more rewarding.

It would have been nice to get more in game guidance rather than spend 50 hours making a crap char. I don't like to browse internet solutions and walkthroughs, I like to figure things out for myself.

[Alwin]

If that's any consolation, playing a mage in Risen is easy as long as you use the right spell. Unfortunately, none of the Gothic-style games have good ways to curb mages' power, since the toughest obstacle is usually a "monster that deals much more damage than you with its own magic", which, of course, hinders non-mages even more.

Just in case you ever want to know, here is the game winning method in spoiler tags. Seriously, just play a warrior instead; melee is more enjoyable, challenging and skill-based (granted, there are still optimal methods, but they may not work in certain situations, yet even great amounts of monsters can be handled, as opposed to G3, which is strongly guilty in this).

The magic bullet crystal. Pump it and mana as well. Buy an ice crystal in case you ever need to slow something down; you can use it without spending LPs. The magic bullet kills fast, is easy to aim and is cheap. Leveled up, even the toughest monsters fall in moments. Oh, by the way, most endgame monsters are still melee. The rest tend to be alone.

[Trokar the White]

We were talking about NotR right?

Anyway, I have a list of all the stone tablets I've found in my own personal Almanac of the Possessed, so I just calculated at what point I could stop using learning points on dex and start using potions and tablets. I also have a map of all the goblin berries, king's sorrel and dragonroots, so I just use everything at the right time and I get all my stats up high around the third chapter. The only thing I did wrong was wasted my mana tablets too early and now I can't use shrink monster until too late in the game to make it fun. Oh well.

[McGruff]

How bad of a gothic player am I that my three main stats don't add up to your two main stats.

And you maxed out a skill while I'm in the middle.

§dumm

[Trokar the White]

Don't feel bad, I've been playing through the game once a week for the last 1.25 years. Given that I sometimes play other games that's about twenty times I've played through as a mage alone.