I, too, was confused by the lack of anything regarding disk 4 in the supplied documentation.
I had previously started Gothic II last year and eventually got side-tracked at a decision point and when I was about to get back to it, I heard about this expansion and that it was going to be available in a month or two.* And, that I'd have to start the game again to play the expansion.
So, after getting Gothic II Gold for Christmas and uninstalling my old Gothic II, I installed the new one starting with disk 1. "Hmmm, it didn't need disk 4" I said to myself.
I then put in disk 4 and see that it wants to install the Night of the Raven part. "Oh! I get it" I tell myself and install that disk. But now my just-installed Gothic II is gone and only the NotR part is left. That didn't seem right. So, I uninstall NotR and reinstall the first three disks, and now I've got Gothic II back.
I figure that the NotR part is to be installed *after* finishing the original Gothic II. Something like what VHLM just wrote (I believe)...
Originally posted by VHLMagic:
Hi all,
Well I got this game for Christmas and am enjoying it so far. I wondered about the 4th disk and what to do with it but after just reading this thread I will wait until I finish the game to install and see the rest.
I have not gotten that far in it yet but working on it to be an apprentice.
I have been playing this back and forth with Might and Magic 9 so will take a while to get through it.
As I said....so far...so good.
I'd worked through to a ways into chapter 2 (again) with my newly installed Gothic II by the time I noticed this thread. And, as expected, I didn't see anything that differed from what I recalled from my first time playing the game.
But, this thread made it clear to me that the NotR part is *supposed* to be installed over the original Gothic II, modifying those things it wants, and you then are supposed to play from the start.
So, I installed disk 4, and started up NotR. It saw my old saved Gothic II games. On a whim, I tried loading one of them. The restore stalled about half way, and I needed to use CTRL+ALT+DEL to kill the non-responsive program.
Thus, I now tossed all my old saved games and started NotR again.
It is a new version of the original Gothic II story line. With the start of the game fairly fresh in mind, I've been able to compare the two and, in general, I've liked what they've done so far in altering the story line and the game world.
I also believe that if you listen closely enough you can often tell the newly inserted dialog from the original as the voices sound a little different.
But, my point here, VHLM, is that unless you're happy with playing all the way through to the end of the original Gothic II and then doing it all again with NotR, you're better off tossing your saved games, installing disk 4 now, and starting over as soon as possible, as otherwise, the time you spend with just the 3 disk install is, well maybe not entirely "wasted", but close to that.
* The "month or two" naturally became more like 6.