Arcania: Gothic 4 Hints

Combat Tips

• 1 of 10: This game really punishes melee fighters something fierce (much like Gothic III did), so the number one best strategy for most combats is to use ranged attacks on enemies while retreating. This makes Precision and your choice of magic skills (Zeal is recommended) the two most useful skills in the game, with Stealth and Vigour being the next best.
• 2 of 10: When you're fighting a melee enemy, retreat constantly while firing arrows or spells at it. If you're using spells and run out of mana, switch to a bow while your mana regenerates. If you retreat far enough without killing your target, it'll suddenly stop attacking you and run frantically back to where you found it. This allows you to sneak up on it and get in some more ranged attacks before it starts coming after you again. (You can also shoot it while it retreats, though it may be hard to hit since it's running so fast.)
• 3 of 10: When you're fighting an enemy who has ranged attacks, you could try strafing left and right to dodge its attacks while firing your own, but that can cause you to miss a lot. It's usually better to retreat around a corner and see if the enemy will try to get closer to you, then quickly blast it before it can do you much damage. (Or charge it and use a flurry of melee weapon blows if you think you can make that work.)
• 4 of 10: When you get the drop on a group of enemies, hang back and use ranged attacks to lure them away from the group one or two at a time so you don't have the entire group chasing after you at once. This is particularly useful with weaker enemies that you want to kill with melee attacks in order to save on arrows.
• 5 of 10: If you max out the Zeal skill and get the Inferno effect, you can use it to easily destroy groups of enemies. Get close to the group and hit it with an inferno blast, then run up to the group instead of retreating. This is so the enemies in the group will all stay within the inferno's burning radius instead of leaving it to come after you. You'll have to dodge their attacks and may take a few hits before the inferno kills them all, but it's pretty easy to avoid power attacks and most other blows.
• 6 of 10: If you want to go against the above advice and have your character be primarily a melee fighter, decide early on if you want him to use two-handed weapons most of the time, or one-handed weapons with shields. Two-handed weapon users will want to put most of their early skill points into the Mettle skill, and one-handed weapon users will want to instead put points into Discipline. In fact, one-handed users should never put enough points into Mettle to get the Mighty Blow ability, since that'll interfere with their usual click-fast-for-rapid-hits routine.
• 7 of 10: Two-handed weapon users who get the Mighty Blow ability need to know several things about power attacks. Power attacks consume stamina, power attacks can't be interrupted by an enemy unless he hits you with a power attack before you complete yours (and vice versa), you can start a power attack before an enemy is in range, and you can move while hauling back for a power attack.
• 8 of 10: Those last two facts are particularly useful. After doing a backward roll to dodge an enemy's power attack, you can immediately start charging up one of your own. Wait until the enemy comes over to you, then release. It may help to push a movement key to get your swing to go in the right direction if you're not facing the enemy directly.
• 9 of 10: The melee fighter equivalent to the retreat-and-fire routine is to run up to an enemy, whack it a few times (or hit it with a power attack once), then immediately do a backward roll. Wait a second or so, then repeat. That's a bit more tedious and dangerous than the retreat-and-fire method, but it works pretty well.
• 10 of 10: If there's a tough combat you can't handle after several tries, and you don't want to wait and come back later, check the Consumables section of your inventory. Look for items that you can use right before combat that'll give you useful buffing effects, such as temporary increases to health and mana regeneration. Also, have your best healing items hotkeyed for quick in-combat use. When your health starts getting low, quickly roll out of harm's way and hit a healing item's hotkey.

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