For the first Gothic game, we gave you get-rich-quick schemes. For Gothic II, this didn't seem appropriate. For all its beauty and marvel, Gothic II is (even) less forgiving than the first Gothic game. If you make a few poor decisions early on, you're in a world of hurt.
This page will attempt to help you avoid at least some mistakes. Early in the game, there are two things that are incredibly scarce: gold and learning points. And it's easy to squander both.
Merchants can rip you off[edit]
In the first Gothic game, merchants gave you 50% rounded up of the value of the loot you found. This was very reasonable, so the developers got rid of it. Now you get one sixth rounded down. An object that's worth 200 gold will sell for no more than 30 gold. As if this wasn't bad enough, the trading system has been reworked. In the first Gothic game, you put stuff from your inventory and the inventory of the merchant in the center, hit enter and you were given the option to accept or refuse the deal. All this changed. Whenever you press the "use" key (no direction needed anymore), you bought/sold the item! And if you made a mistake, tough luck. You accidentally sold an item you really need for one sixth of its value? You can buy that item back, no problem. Full price.
Indeed, simply by moving an object back and forth between your inventory and the inventory of a merchant, your gold will magically vanish. Save before dealing with a merchant. You won't regret it.
Praying[edit]
For the love of Innos, don't pray to the statues! Or at least, don't give Innos your gold until you're swimming in it. The statues give you either nothing or a tiny but permanent stat boost like a few extra hit points. This can be useful when you're swimming in gold anyway, but at the start of the game this is a terrible deal. You need your gold.
Leather satchels[edit]
You'll find leather satchels here and there with descriptions like "there are a few coins jingling inside". Hint: there are several on the roofs of the houses in the harbor district. When dealing with merchants, they'll give you (as usual) just on sixth of the value. While this may be obvious to some, you have to use the leather satchel in your inventory! Doing so will convert the leather satchel into a number of gold coins, the only currency merchants really care about.
Lehmar's Ledger[edit]
As soon as you can, do Lehmar's Ledger.
Guilds and learning points[edit]
How much learning points it costs to increase a stat depends on what guild you join. Mages for example can learn mana cheaper. Look this up to avoid wasting learning points. The standard advice "learn one-handed weapons and put some points in strength" from the first Gothic game is not good advice for the sequel. If you do that, you won't be able to defeat anything meaningful and get stuck because you can hardly level up beyond level 3 as everything keeps killing you.
Don't cum to Nadja early[edit]
No, that's not a typo, she works in the Red Lantern and there is an FMV and, well, you'll see when you get there. It'll cost 50 gold to "see" her and she has some information. This information about the missing people isn't immediately useful, so don't go there as soon as you enter the city.
Don't pay for weapons and training[edit]
Unless you know what you're doing. There are some weapons laying around. The Wolf's Tooth for example will cost you 550 gold from a merchant. Or you can pick it up for free from Erol. It's not even that much better than the wolf knife Cavalorn gave you for free if you helped him with the bandits. For training, some trainers will demand some gold upfront before even telling you what they can teach you. Best to savescum, because paying 50 gold to a trainer for something Lares can teach you for free is a waste.