Gothic II/Cheats

As explained on Gothic II/Getting Started, Gothic II with NotR is hard. Too hard.

Don't consider yourself a cheater for following the instructions on this page. You're merely fixing the broken difficulty on an otherwise amazing game. The changes you make will be saved in your next savegame (unless indicated otherwise), so you only have to do this once.

Which suggestions you actually use and what numbers you enter is up to you, it depends on how reasonable you want to make the difficulty.

Open the stat screen (b), type "marvin" and close the stat screen. Now open the console by pressing F2. When you're done with everything below, open the stat screen, type "42" and close the stat screen again to disable Marvin-mode. The changes you made to your stats, items you inserted, etc will remain.

God mode
If you enter "cheat god" on the console, you activate God mode. This removes the challenge as far as combat is concerned and won't be saved in a savegame, for this reason it's not recommended.

Learning points
If you enter "edit abilities" on the console you can fix your stats. In Gothic 1, this screen also listed "lp". (learning points) While no longer listed on screen, you can still give yourself learning points here. On the edit abilities screen, type "lp = 500" and now you have 500 learning points.
 * Why this doesn't break the game: the trainers are limited in what they can teach you. You can't increase your stats indefinitely with endless learning points. Also, the levelling system is utterly broken. If you complete all quests that don't involve combat (which you're far too weak for), you may achieve level 3 or so, giving you 30 learning points. That's not remotely enough to take on bandits, which you're supposed to do. Also, in Gothic 1 you could buy and use any runes if you had achieved the required circle. In the sequel, runes mostly have to be created and that will cost LP. Effectively discouraging you from trying the various spells (which was the fun part!), and many of the spells you will likely hardly ever use because you either don't find them effective or they don't fit your style. It's unfair to spend LP on something when you can't really know in advance if it'll be of any use.

HP/strength/dexterity/mana
On the edit abilities screen, enter "attributes". You'll now see numbers 0-7 with their values that represent your hitpoints/strength/dexterity/mana. (to do: which number corresponds to what?)

Increase your mana to 50 or more. (could also be done with a trainer using the free LP above)
 * Why this doesn't break the game: you're merely avoiding a tedious grind. You could cast one spell on a monster, find a bed, sleep, return to the monsters, cast another spell, wash, rinse, repeat. That's not fun! The idea of limited mana is that in a fight, you have to make a choice which spells will be the most effective and perphaps take down some of the enemies with regular weapons. On the other hand, even with unlimited mana this doesn't make the game actually easy because the more powerful runes won't be available until later.

Increase your hitpoints to 500.
 * Why this doesn't break the game: it may seem ridiculous as you start with less than 50 HP, but you won't get adequate armor.. well, ever. Even with 500 hitpoints, bandits and Wargs (a wolf-like animal) will kill you if they're not alone. Also, same as with mana: you could return to a bed and sleep or ask a healer like Vatras to heal you for free after every single fight, but that's a tedious grind. And regenerative health hadn't been invented yet when this game came out.

Increase your strength to 200. (could partially also be done with a trainer using the free LP above)
 * Why this doesn't break the game: in Gothic 1 this would mean one-hit kills for most enemies. In Gothic II, it's unclear how anything works but this doesn't make you invincible in any way. It just means you're doing some damage. Also, you're supposed to have some strength. If you stand up for Sarah (near the beginning of the game), she'll give you a "pirate's cutlass". A sword that requires 60 strength. But there is no way in hell you can achieve this level until perhaps halfway into the game. And by that time, you'll have found something better. And the sword sells for next to nothing. (see below) So the sword is worthless, but clearly it should have been a useable reward for being nice to her. And how nice would that have been? Increase your strength so you can use the reward you earned.

Increase your dexterity to 30. Or 300. (could also partially be done with a trainer using the free LP above)
 * Why this doesn't break the game: as the levelling system is broken and you need some dexterity to pick pockets, you may need this. If you don't learn the pick pocketing skill, perhaps you can do without this. If you increase dexterity a lot (like 300), you'll be able to pick pocket anyone without effort. Considering the game offers little indication of whether or not you can pick someone's pockets, you might as well do that too. The game does say "it would be easy/hard/nearly impossible" to pick any given character's pockets, but this message remains even if you crank up your dexterity to 300 which allows you to pickpocket anyone without fail. You can't properly tell beforehand if you will fail or not.

Armor
First take off all your armor like suits, rings or amulets if you have any.

On the edit abilities screen, enter "protection". You'll now see numbers 0-7 and corresponding armor type values. (weapon, arrow, storm, etc, to do: which number corresponds to what?) All should say 0 if you disabled your armor items.

Enter 0=100, 1=100, 2=100, 3=100 etc until all values say 100. You now have 100 protection against everything. Any armor you put on comes on top of this. You now have 100 armor "naturally", similar to how animals have protection without using any armor items.
 * Why this doesn't break the game: bandits and other relatively low-level enemies will kill you before you have a chance to attack them properly, often with one-hit kills while firing multiple times a second. They are way overpowered, but changing the power of all enemies can't be done without modding the game, so instead you increase your armor.

Gold
On the console, enter "insert gold". This will insert a leather satchel for you to pick up. Open your inventory and use the satchel and a message will appear on screen that you've been given 1000 gold and a -100 XP cheater malus. No need to be bothered about the malus, it's not much (kill 2 or 3 monsters to make up for it) and you can get free LP anyway. Repeat as needed.
 * Why this doesn't break the game: in the first Gothic game, merchants gave you half the value for any loot (weapons, food, books, anything) you found. In the sequel, they give you only one sixth. They only pay 30 gold for an item that's worth 200. Even real-life pawn shops are not that egregious. And if you move an item from your inventory to a merchant and back, your gold simply vanishes into thin air. It's not a matter of having to make a choice of which item to buy. It's a matter of looking at everything the merchants offer and just wondering how much fun you could have if you weren't 593 gold short of buying that 600 gold sword. The in-game economy has been utterly broken and in addition: who likes being broke? Later in the game, you'll get some means of earning money and depending on how you play, you could after some time end up with more gold than you know what to do with. But probably not in the first chapter.

Teleportation runes
If you only want to avoid grind, insert these once you get to the place on foot. You've made it, no need to hike for real-life minutes on end going back-and-forth from place to place unless you want to. You may want to in the beginning (the world is beautiful), but eventually you'll probably get tired of it and once you are familiar with the map and cleared all the ways of monsters in the chapter you're in, what's the point in walking if you don't want to?

On the console, enter insert [item] to get any item. The teleportation runes: