The Gothic series

[frogbeastegg]

I played for a whole 10 minutes before I had to put the game down for something else. Not long enough to form any opinions.

There's definitely no way to play this version of Gothic II gold without the expansion. I'm stuck with the ultra hard difficult and altered skill prices and levelling whether I like it or not.

With that in mind, is it better to invest in combat skills before the non-combat ones? Or should I look at some of the non-combat resource gaining skills to make some early gold with the aim of better equipment? Or a balanced approach? Out of the 4 weapons types, are there any which are particularly good or bad to invest in? From everything I've seen my early levels are going to be very hard to get, and all skills cost more to improve, so choosing poorly could make the game impossible.

What's with that god statue in the starting tower? Most of the dialogue options say it will lose you health, and the option to merely pray gets you hurt.

I've enabled quick save/load and potion hotkeys via an .ini edit I saw on some forums. Anything else like this I should know about?