Gothic 3 is a great game, but you really must apply some updates and tweaks from the base game you will get on Steam before playing it. This guide will show you the basic patches and tweaks I would recommend for everyone, as well as more advanced mods you can apply that have been done by the community.

For motivation, here are before and after screenshots taken from the game after the basic steps provided in the guide, showing the graphical improvements you will see in addition to the basic game fixes and improvements in the patch.



Shown above: mountains north of Silden before patch and tweaks.



Shown above: mountains north of Silden after patch and tweaks.

When Gothic 3 first game out, I continually struggled with it to try to tweak it and reduce as much as possible the terrible blurry distant graphics and eye burning transition between near and far detail. In the original game, this was never possible, but with the current version most of these problems are gone and we can really enjoy the dramatic landscapes and views in the game.

The first thing to do is to install the latest community patch, which seems to be 1.75.14: http://www.worldofgothic.de/dl/download_478.htm

I've installed this over the Steam version, and it works great.

Unfortunately for some reason the patch doesn't seem to directly fix one of the most significant problems I have had with Gothic 3 -- the terrible view distance. It does seem to make it possible to fix it, however you need to edit the game's ini file to do this. Someone on the old forum posted a link to an improved ini file, however it doesn't directly work with 1.75.14, and has some problems.

Here is a link to the improved ini file I have created so far: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_w4zHK-Jy6rbENCRVR1WmJiMWM

You should be able to directly replace your current ge3.ini (located in your Steam apps dir at common/gothic3/Ini/ge3.ini), though you will want to make a copy of your original file just in case.

The main changes I made from the original "far distance" ini file was to rework the High graphics settings to include all of the advantages I really wanted (using highest quality textures, nice far view distances) without going overboard. This setting runs great on my GTX560Ti, using "High" settings. I don't recommend "Very High" -- it doesn't seem to make a notable visual difference. I also fixed a few issues such as reducing the ROI (the distance characters are shown) to avoid an issue with audio cutting in and out.

One other thing I would recommend is to go into the game's controller settings and completely turn off mouse smoothing.

If all goes well, you should now be able to launch your game with almost a whole new world before you. Here are some screenshots taken from on top of the tower in the initial town of Ardea, which you can use to see if the graphics tweaks have applied correctly.



Shown above: looking out from Ardea tower before applying patch and tweaks.



Shown above: looking out from Ardea tower after applying patch and tweaks.

(The key thing to note is the detail in the farther hills and trees. The difference will be much more obvious when you are moving around in the world.)

At this point you have the game in perfectly working shape and ready to be played and enjoyed. If you are the kind of person who likes to spend time tweaking things, you can read farther into this guide on the more advanced content .

For those curious, here are some more before/after screenshots from various places in the world, before these changes on the left and after on the right.



On high at Faring.




Cape Dun.




Looking south towards Silden.




At the dig near Trelis looking towards Varant.




Entrance to the dig near Trelis.




Looking over Bakaresh.




Looking down on Bakaresh.

I have been playing with the Questpaket and Content Mod enhancements, and can give some instructions for how to get and install them. I think the game is fine without them, but if you want to push it further these seem pretty good. Most of my interest in them is for the improved textures; unfortunately I can't figure out a way to get them installed with only the textures -- you'll need to settle for some modifications impacting the game, from new dialog that doesn't have spoken parts, to the additions of the Content Mod without those quests but a warning that some parts may not work well because it depends on the quests.

Note that, more than improved textures, these mods actually change the style of many of the textures. I generally like the new appearance they provide, but this can definitely be a matter of taste. To give you an idea of what you would be getting in to, first here are some comparison screenshots to the game running with only my basic tweaks (on the left) and the content mod textures (on the right).



On the Ardea tower.




Cape Dun.




On high at Faring.




Mountains north of Silden.




Looking south towards Silden.




Entrance to Trelis.




Looking on Trelis.




Stream by Trelis.




Entrance to the dig near Trelis.




Looking across part of Varant.




Oasis in Varant.


Before continuing, note again that installing these mods may have undesirable side-effects that slightly reduce the overall polish of the currently patched game. For example, I have noticed that some textures in caves appear darker than they problem should be, probably as a result of these mods.

Here's what you need to install them. First, download all of the pieces:

• Questpaket 2 update 4 AND its update for patch 1.75: http://www.worldofgothic.de/dl/download_433.htm
  
• Content Mod 2.6: http://www.worldofgothic.de/dl/download_489.htm

(This guide used to recommend Content Mod 2.5. Don't use that, use 2.6. 2.5 has some texture bugs that are very obvious in dungeons.)

You want to install them in this order: Questpaket 2 update 4, then update for patch 1.75, then Content Mod 2.5. This must be on top of a game already patched to Community Patch 1.75.14.

The installation for the Questpaket is all in German, so it can be a little confusing. Here are the options:

• "Grundinstallation" -- I think you always want this.
  
• "Interface - modifizierter Kompass" -- gives you a new interface with a compass. If you don't select it, you will get a new interface without a compass. If you want the old interface, don't worry, the Content Mod has an option to bring it back.
  
• "Sprachausgabe - Deutsch" -- spoken lines of new quests in German. Don't bother with this unless you are playing your game in German.
  
• "Vertontes Intro - Deutsch" -- replaces the game intro with a version with German dialog on top. Also don't bother unless you are playing in German.
  
• "Neue Myrtana-Texturen" -- some new textures.
  
• "Erhogte Sichtweite" -- something about increase eye height, I haven't been able to tell what it does.

Now you install the update for patch 1.75, which has no options.

Next install Content Mod 2.6. There are a couple significant options here to be aware of:

• You can select either "CM2.6(with_QP)" or "CM2.6(without_QP_Quests)". The former is the default, the latter is an option you can use to get rid of the extra quests that were installed by Questpaket. This can be nice, because if you are playing in English, those new quests don't have any English spoken dialog, so they can be pretty jarring when playing the game. I think you need to select one or the other of these, not both. It works for me to select only the second option. I don't know what happens if you select both or neither of them.
  
• In "Menu_Modes", "Orig_G3_HUD" lets you restore the original Gothic 3 interface.
  
• There are a bunch of options to replace textures of various in-world creatures with versions that look more like Gothic 2. If that's your kind of thing, go for it.
  
• The newest Content Mod also includes the "Consequences Mod". I have never played with this, so don't know how it impacts the game. You can turn it off at the end of the options.

Finally, you need to re-replace your ge3.ini file with the one from above, since the process of installing these patches changes it to a worse version.