A6 - HERBOLOGY

Learn about gathering herbs in Gothic 1 Remake. Discover their uses for healing, mana, stat boosts, alchemy recipes, and selling for gold. Tips on finding and respawning herbs.

Picking up herbs wherever you go can really make a difference if you later get to learn the various Alchemy skills. If not, most of them net you some good coin, and like foodstuffs some of them are excellent for replenishing HP and Mana. Specific rare herbs that are used in making the strongest potions can also permanently raise your stats simply by eating and is worth quite a bit.

Another note on gathering herbs though - they have an air of randomness to them. That is, some herbs seems to appear in the same spot every time, but others seems to show up on completely random locations. And taking about randomness - there's a sneaking suspicion herbs actually respawn during the game, and not between chapters where most solid respawning happens. Some times you can really scourge an area running back and forth to be sure you got all the herbs, but a little later when walking through the same area you suddenly find another herb right in your path, in a location so obvious you are almost certain you would have picked it up last time. They either spawn here and there random, or the designers spent months extra making sure every little herb was placed in the most intelligent spot possible...My gold is on the former.

Gathering herbs is also a matter of knowing where to look. Most herbs have a connection to the foliage around them so you quickly learn what you are likely to find just by looking at your surroundings. Swampweed grows around swamps, mushrooms grow in shaded spots usually around tree roots etc - it will come to you naturally as you play.

Also don't worry about having to pick up EVERY herb as there is plenty to go around. Starting chapter 2 the first time around my character had several hundreds of the most common herbs, so dont be afraid to use them for a little healing or mana replenishing on the fly either.

The rare herbs are often in special locations, but you will find them by natural progression and exploring. Some of them even must be spawned by certain triggers, and some can even be bought from merchants later in the game.

In the herbs table, "Alchemy" means the herb is part of a potion or other alchemy recipe, so you might want to conserve those for that purpose. "Stat Bonus" indicates a rare or special herb that is either used for the strong +5 stat potions, eaten plain for the permanent bonus listed, or other anomalies. Consult the Alchemy or Skills & Statboosters appendix for more info on how to process these.