In this guide I will walk you through all the steps required to get the optimal Gothic 2 experience on a Steam Deck.
This guide does not require any technical knowledge or experience, and is designed so that even complete newbies may follow.

• Steam Deck (optional)

Technically nothing is absolutely required, however a keyboard and mouse connected to your Deck speed up the process considerably and make troubleshooting much easier.

If you don't have a keyboard or mouse, it's not a major issue. You'll just have to be more patient.

• Make sure Steam is always running in the background. Without it, the trackpads and the on-screen keyboard won't work.
  
• The Steam Deck's right trackpad functions as a mouse. Right trigger press is left mouse button click, and the left trigger press is right mouse button click. Use them whenever a mouse is needed.
  
• The combination of 'Steam' + 'X' buttons brings up the on-screen keyboard. Use it whenever a keyboard is needed.

This guide can be helpful for desktop Linux as well, though some steps will differ.

First we need to set the appropriate Beta and install the game.

1. Highlight Gothic 2 and press the burger menu button (right between/above the right stick and face buttons).
2. Enter the 'Properties...' menu.
3. Scroll down to the 'Betas' tab.
4. For 'Beta Participation' choose 'workshop - Workshop Beta'.
5. Leave the menu and install the game.

Now we'll go to the Steam Workshop and subscribe to some mods.
While mods aren't required to play Gothic 2 on a Steam Deck, some of them greatly elevate the experience without making any real changes to the game. I won't be going too in-depth on their functionality. Refer to the mods' respective Workshop pages for more information.

In this section we'll install mods for general game improvements and/or bug fixes, and a mod adding controller support. To simplify the process, I prepared a Workshop collection of the most important mods that do not alter any of the game's core aspects.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3484450653
Follow this link and press 'Subscribe to all'.

We will be tweaking some of them at a later point. We'll also be making changes to the zGamePad mod through its in-game settings.

One thing we do need to do right now is change the controller layout. Without this step, zGamePad's controller support will not function as intended. You can just use my custom layout - look for "zGamePad with other mods" on the community layouts page.

Alternatively, here are the instructions.

1. Go to Gothic 2's page in your Library.
   
2. Press on the controller icon, next to the settings icon.
   
3. Set the layout to a regular Xbox controller layout.
   
4. Set either of the trackpads as mouse, with trackpad press as left mouse click.
   
5. Set any of the back grip buttons to the Escape key.
   
6. Apply and save the layout.

Now comes the most difficult part. We'll need to switch to the desktop mode for this.

1. Press and hold the Deck's power button.
   
2. In the Power menu, select 'Switch to Desktop'.

We'll need an app called ProtonUp-Qt.

1. Open the Discover store.
   
2. Search for 'ProtonUp-Qt'.
   
3. Install the app.

This app makes it very easy to install custom versions of Proton - Steam's compatibility layer for Linux.
They make some problematic titles - like Gothic - work out of the box.
(Your game might work fine using one of official Proton versions, but even then it requires a couple of manual tweaks. Using a custom version, like GE-proton, makes everything considerably simpler.)



Now we'll install a custom Proton version, and set it as default for Gothic 2.
(You can use any version you like, though I recommend using GE-proton9-27 for Gothic 2.
For more information: https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom)

1. Launch ProtonUp-Qt.
   
2. Click on 'Add version'.
   
3. In the 'Install Compatibility Tool' window:
   
   1. For 'Compatibility Tool' pick 'GE-Proton'.
      
   2. For 'Version' pick 'GE-Proton9-27'.
      
   3. Press 'Install'.
4. Once the installation is finished, close the app.
   
5. Right click on Steam's icon on the right side of the task bar.
   
6. Press 'Exit Steam'.
   
7. After a moment, launch Steam.
   
8. Right click on Gothic 2.
   
9. Go into 'Properties...'.
   
10. In the 'Compatibility' tab:
    
    1. Check the 'Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool' option.
       
    2. From the drop-down list, select 'GE-Proton9-27'.
       (It should be somewhere on the bottom of the list.)

Now we'll need to launch the game once in order to generate all the necessary configuration files. We'll adjust them in the following section.

1. Launch Gothic 2.
   
2. In the Workshop Launcher, select 'Gothic 2: Gold Edition' from the list.
   
3. Press 'Play' in the top right corner.
   
4. Once the game reaches the main menu, close it as well as the launcher.

My Workshop collection for Gothic 2 on Steam Deck includes the GD3D11 graphics mod. It impacts the battery life quite heavily. If you do not wish to use it:

1. Launch Gothic 2.
   
2. In the Workshop Launcher, select 'GD3D11 (legacy)' from the list.
   
3. Press 'Disable' in the top right corner.
   
4. Select 'Gothic 2: Gold Edition' from the list.
   
5. Press 'Play' in the top right corner.
   
6. Once the game reaches the main menu, close it as well as the launcher.

(You need to launch the game for the mod toggle changes to be saved.)

By default, the UI will be very small and difficult to read on the Deck. We'll adjust the scaling to help out with that.

1. In your Steam Library, right click on Gothic 2.
   
2. Under 'Manage', press 'Browse local files'.
   
3. Go into the 'system' folder.
   
4. Open the 'SystemPack.ini' file with any text editor (e.g. Kate).
   This is one of the two main files for configuring the game and mods.
   
5. Search for the 'Scale' line.
   
6. Change the 'Scale' value.
   
   • For Steam Deck, I recommend setting it to '1.4'.
     (This will turn the Statistics screen into a bit of a mess, but anything below makes the UI overall not readable enough for me personally. Feel free to play around with the Scale value if you wish.)
     
   • For Desktop Linux the default is fine.
     (Any adjustments here depend highly on your screen resolution and preference. Feel free to play around with the Scale value if you wish.)
7. Save the file.

By default, the XP Bar will be barely readable on the Steam Deck. We'll adjust it slightly.

1. In your Steam Library, right click on Gothic 2.
   
2. Under 'Manage', press 'Browse local files'.
   
3. Go into the 'system' folder.
   
4. Open the 'Gothic.ini' file with any text editor (e.g. Kate).
   This is the other one of the two main files for configuring the game and mods.
   
5. Search for the '[UNION_XP_BAR_NEW]' line.
   Here you can find all of the mod's settings.
   
6. Change the 'needTextInCenter' value to 0.
   
7. Change the 'possibleFontsMultiplierIdx' value to 5.

This should considerably increase the XP Bar's visibility and readability.

Additionally, you may change the text for the level (levelText) and learning points (levelPointsText) to match your language. Simply replace the values with whatever you want to be displayed.




The default Advanced Inventory settings will result in a lot of overlapping on the Deck. We'll have to make the inventory smaller for it to fit on the screen properly at all times.

1. In your Steam Library, right click on Gothic 2.
   
2. Under 'Manage', press 'Browse local files'.
   
3. Go into the 'system' folder.
   
4. Open the 'Gothic.ini' file with any text editor (e.g. Kate).
   (This is the other one of the two main files for configuring the game and mods.)
   
5. Search for the line:
   
   '[ADV_INVENTORY]'
   (Here you can find all of the mod's settings.)
   
6. Change the 'invAdvCntRows' value to 4.
   
7. Change the 'invAdvCntCol' value to 6.
   
8. Change the 'invSizeCell' value to 600.
   
9. Change the 'customTransparencyItemsIdx' value to 4.

This should make the inventory fit nicely on the screen, as well as prevent it from overlapping with any other UI elements. Unfortunately, it will still overlap with some controller button prompts, and there's little we can do about it. To make up for it, we're setting the inventory to be slightly transparent. This way, the prompts will still be readable.



While upgrading Gothic 2's graphics to incredible extent, it's also quite demanding on the hardware, and taxing on the Steam Deck's battery. We can reduce some of the settings to help with that.

1. Open Gothic 2 from your Steam Library.
   
2. In the launcher, select "L'Hiver by Masty".
   
3. Press 'Play' on the right.
   
4. After reaching the main menu, go to the 'Options'.
   
5. Navigate to 'Image' settings.
   
6. You should see the GD3D11's settings automatically open on top of the regular Image settings.
   You can also open these settings at any time by pressing the 'F11' key. However, if you don't have a keyboard connected to your Deck, this will be the only way to access them.
   
7. Set the 'Resolution' to 1280x800, if it's not already set.
   
8. Set the 'Texture Quality' to 'Low'.
   
9. Set the 'Shadows quality' to 1024.

You can leave everything else on default. This should save us some battery life. Not much, but every bit counts. For better battery life, feel free to disable the mod entirely in the Workshop Launcher.



Some of the mods offer useful quality of life functionality, but we won't be able to utilize it without settings a couple more custom controller keybinds. Once again, you can just use my custom layout - "zGamePad with other mods" on the community layouts page.

Alternatively, here are the instructions.

1. Go to Gothic 2's page in your Library.
   
2. Press on the controller icon, next to the settings icon.
   
3. Press on 'Edit Layout'.
   
4. In the 'Buttons' tab, scroll down to 'Back grips'.
   
5. Set any of the back grip buttons to the '=' key.
   (This is the Union Advanced Inventory's default keybind for setting items as favorites.)
   
6. Set the remaining two back grip buttons to the 'F10' and 'F12' keys respectively.
   (F10 is for quick saving, and F12 is for quick loading. Functionality provided by zUtilities.)
   
7. Apply and save the layout.

If you're using any other mods and came across any issues - this section might help you. Here are fixes to some issues I encountered.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973766210
For some reason L'Hiver seems to overwrite the global interface scaling by default. Luckily, we only need to delete one line from its config file.

1. Using any file manager (e.g. Dolphin), navigate to:
   
   • ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/workshop/content/39510/2973766210/system
     (if your game is installed on the internal SSD)
     
   • /run/media/mmcblk0p1/steamapps/workshop/content/39510/2973766210/system
     (if your game is installed on a memory card)
2. Open the .ini file matching your language (e.g. 'Lhiver_masty_pl.ini') with any text editor (e.g. Kate).
   
3. Search for the 'INTERFACE.Scale' line.
   
4. Delete the 'INTERFACE.Scale' line.

L'Hiver will now respect global interface scaling. Make sure to edit the appropriate file, e.g. 'Lhiver_masty_de.ini' if playing the German version.



If you're encountering any issues with the GD3D11 mod, make sure to use the specific version linked below. Other versions don't seem to work on Steam Deck/Linux.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3463896995

That's all. You've successfully installed, configured and modded Gothic 2 on the Steam Deck!
I hope you found this guide helpful and informative.
If I missed anything, or if you have any suggestions on what else should be included, don't hesitate to mention them in the comments.
Also keep in mind some of the mods may change over time, and may require slightly different configuration than what is written in the guide. I'll do my best to keep it up-to-date.

Have fun!