ArcaniA: Gothic 4 Walkthrough

2. General hints and tips

A couple tips for Gothic difficulty:

Refer to the "Legend" achievement (In Miscellaneous) for some very important information!

Never use your shield to block melee attacks. Why not? Because it's worthless. Enemies on Gothic difficulty will spam their unblockable, highly damaging attacks. The best way to survive is to roll out of the way (Left Analog Stick + Y). If you spend time blocking, you're just gonna be destroyed by the wave of unblockable attacks. Not to mention that when you let go of Y and lower your shield, there's a one second delay before you can attack. This often leads to you getting hit. The only thing shields are good for are their stats. And sometimes it can be nice to block spells and arrows while your regeneration heals you a bit.

You should start off your journey by investing your skill points in the Discipline skill tree. You should raise Discipline up to the fourth unique skill, Hail of Blows. This skill is great because sometimes you'll stagger an enemy when you hit them, and with Hail of Blows you can just keep hitting and staggering them until they die. You'll also get passive bonuses to your melee damage and your total health, both of which are very useful.

You might also want to invest one point into the Mettle skill tree, so as to get the unique skill Lunge Attack. This will allow you to begin your attack further away from your enemy.

Invest one point in the Dominance skill tree as soon as it's unlocked, so as to get the Lightning Bolt spell. Lightning is amazing for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its ability to stun enemies for 4 seconds. Dominance's fourth unique skill, Slay, will also make getting magic kills much easier, as it kills any enemy at 30% hp or less. Note about Slay: Do not invest in Slay until you've gotten the "Sniper" achievement. Being able to stun enemies when they've got about 10 - 20% of their HP left, and then shooting them in the head is the best way to get that achievement. So do not upgrade to Slay until you've gotten that achievement.

Items with + Health Regeneration are going to be your best friend. They will help you avoid using healing potions, and thus put you one step closer to getting "Richer Than Diego." If you really don't feel like waiting for the regenartion to heal you, use a bandage. They don't sell for much gold in comparison to healing potions, and they heal you for a a lot of HP.

Don't be afraid to use your bow. By the time I got all the achievements related to the bow, I still had about 300 arrows remaining. Make sure to explore everywhere (Which you should be doing anyway!), so as to find all the chests containing arrows and other goodies. Just don't go overboard with the bow.

Now, this might be obvious to you, but I didn't figure this out until I got to Tooshoo: Runes are on a cooldown, and you can use them as much as you want. I thought they were a one-use, extremely powerful item. They are extremely helpful, and the cooldown is relatively low, so be sure to use them when you find them. There are stronger versions of each rune. The strong ones will glow brightler. Also: Each version of each rune is on a separate cooldown, so for instance, you can use the weaker rune while the stronger rune is cooling down.

Enemies can't jump. If you jump on top of a rock, they'll often be unable to follow, and thus, unable to attack you. After a while, they'll give up and go back to where they were before you engaged them.

You have infinite inventory space, so there's no need to go out of your way and sell things to a vendor. In fact, don't sell anything at all until you get to a certain point. Refer to "Richer Than Diego" in Miscellaneous achievements for more info on this.