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Last Updated: 04 May 2026 @ 20:33 CE(S)T

Graphical Mods

There are loads of mods that are only concerned with making the original games look nicer. It is out of scope for this website to list them all so I will list those I think are most important or popular and leave a few links to find more.

D3D11 Renderer

The goal of this mod is lifting the dated original games up to the current standards, or at least closer to them. Both Gothic I and II are supported. The origincal source can be found here. Its features include:

  • Dynamic Shadows
  • Cascaded Shadow Maps, more than 1 Cascade produces much better shadows.
  • Increased draw distance
  • Increased Performance
  • HBAO+
  • Water refractions
  • Atmospheric Scattering
  • Heightfog
  • Normalmapping
  • Full DynamicLighting
  • Vegetationgeneration
  • Editor-Panel to insert some of the renderers features into the world
  • Custom-Built UI-Framework based on Direct2D
  • Rewritten bink player for better compatibility with bink videos
  • FPS-Limiter
  • Low-Latency borderless fullscreen Frame latency on a 144Hz refresh rate with v-sync
    • Borderless Fullscreen: ~28ms
    • Borderless LowLatency: ~10ms

Many people use this and I, personally, have not played any Gothic game without it for years.

Installation Instructions

  1. Prepare Wine prefix
    • Install the DLLs dxvk and vcrun2022 into your Wine prefix.
    • Add DLL overrides for dinput and ddraw (native, then built-in).
    • Remove DLL override for dsound (switch to built-in, then native)
  2. Download the GD3D11-${VERSION}.zip file from the Assets section in the latest release of this repository (kirides/releases).
  3. Unpack the zip file and copy the content into the Gothic\system\ or Gothic2\system\ game folder.
  4. When starting the game you should see the version number of GD3D11 in the top-left corner.
  5. As soon as you start the game for the first time after the installation you should press F11 to open the renderer menu and press Apply(\*). This saves all the options to $Gothic(2)\system\GD3D11\UserSettings.ini.

Normalmaps

Several normalmaps to be used in conjunction with the renderer can be installed. These are specific for the game or mod in use so be sure to install the correct one. Some can be found here.

4GB Patch / LAA Hack

This is a memory hack that addresses issues arising from 32 bit programs which can address only 2GB of memory (download here). It is highly recommended to use this when running the renderer. Note that several mods already account for this so it is not always necessary to go through the process yourself. When in doubt, it’s probably better to run it, just to make sure.

Instructions:

  1. Unpack archive
  2. Run executable
  3. Click on the ... button and select path to system folder in Gothic installation (Gothic: Gothic/system, Gothic II: Gothic2/system)
  4. Select Gothic.exe/Gothic2.exe and tick the checkbox in the same line.
  5. Exit

Texture Packs

There are probably more texture packs in circulation than I can count so I will list a few popular ones.

Gothic I

More can be found, e.g., here. You can also consult the Steam Workshop page (if you use Steam for playing) or Nexusmods.

Gothic II

More can be found, e.g., here. You can also consult the Steam Workshop page (if you use Steam for playing) or Nexusmods.

Unreal Remaster

Both games have been remastered in the Unreal engine by the community. As I understand, they reimplement the vanilla game in another game engine but do not make changes to the world or story otherwise so I’ve listed them as graphical mods. Bothr remasters are accessible on Steam:

  1. Install game
  2. Open Properties
  3. Select Game Versions & Betas tab
  4. (Only Gothic II) Paste the following code into the Private Versions field: “WajocIlipa185” (without the quotes)
  5. Select unrealbeta from the list of Versions
  6. Wait for the download to finish
  7. Start game

Gothic I is playable without further steps or issues as far as I am aware and seems to be stable.

At the time of this writing the Gothic II remaster has just been released and has alpha status. The cutscenes do not work yet on Linux but the game seems to be playable at least.