This is not a walkthrough, and it's not a detailed guide of item and creature stats. What this IS, is a collection of general hints and tips about the Venetica that I didn't find readily available anywhere else. For specific details about the game, I found the wiki at http://venetica.wikia.com/wiki/Venetica_Wiki to be quite helpful. Google also yeilded several walkthroughs, but I found the game quests are pretty straightforward, so I didn't make much use of them. As you might expect, this guide contains some spoilers.

At the time of writing, I've only gotten about 80% through the game, so this guide isn't complete. Since it's a "tips" guide, however, that probably doesn't matter too much.

In terms of my own experience with this game, I would say it had a decent fun factor, though not quite at the level of a AAA game. It's simple to learn, and rather easy to play on normal difficulty. The ability to heal instantly using food and potions, and being able to use twilight energy to come back from the dead makes true death a very rare thing. That said, this "temporary death" still adds a degree of tension while avoiding a reload, which is a pleasant compromise.

Locked chests and doors doors come in two types. When trying open it, if the game says "you need a special key", then a specific quest key is required to unlock it. For all other locked doors, any hammer weapon is required to smash them down. The first hammer can be found in the sewers. For all other locked chests, the lockpicking skill is required. This skill is gained during the main quest: go to the old temple in Venice, located near the Water Gateway. This is worth doing soon after entering the city, so as to open up other options and avoid return trips due to locked chests and doors.

The sewers are pretty dark, and the lamp isn't very bright. I turned up my gamma settings whenever it was dark.

Oddly, otherworldly sight can also be used as a light source in some situations.

Some locations (notably, rooftops) can only be reached by entering a home and exiting by an upper floor window.

Usable windows are slightly ajar, but may not be obvious from all angles. Similarly, homes may sometimes be entered from upper story windows.

Lockpicking, smashing jars outdoors and taking their contents, tresspassing, and sleeping in someone else's bed are all legal. Entering a home when the occupants are home will result in a warning - if anything is stolen on that trip, your reputation will go down, regardless of if a witness saw the actual theft. This is true even if you sleep in a bed until all the witnesses are gone. On the other hand, if you sleep until daytime, leave, and come right back, you can take anything you like with impunity. The rules appear to work differently in public areas where you are not tresspassing: taking objects there is only a crime if you are spotted. Presumably when one is tresspassing and things go missing, one is "placed at the scene of the crime, and assumed to be guilty".

Sleeping in random beds you pass by is one of the best forms of healing, nobody ever objects.

Some bosses will take damage, do an animation, then jump back to full health. Don't worry, your efforts are not in vain - each time they drop to zero, they have taken some form of permanent damage. (If you look carefully, there are sometimes visual cues showing this.) In general, each boss has a special trick required to defeat them. Bosses are often immune to special skills, so these fights tend to be an extended sequence of attacks and dodges.

Carrying a bit of food or potions will tide you over during this period of being unable to use the blood tool and blood vortex skills.

________ Skills (General) __________

Venetica has two skill trees: physical skills (mostly weapons) and mental (necromantic) skills. Physical trainers vary in what skills they teach. Mental skills however can only be trained when the top skill in each column is unlocked by a quest event at an angel statue. This makes it difficult to build a primarily "mage" character, and mental energy costs further limit this option. Conversely, while a trainer by the cathedral teaches most physical skills reasonably early on, there are diminishing returns from being a master of all weapon types, since one can only use one at once. As such, players are likely to create characters than mix skills from both groups, though they may certainly favor one over the other. In terms of difficulty, the choices are not overly important - I spent half the game hoarding skill points while waiting for a necromancy trainer to unlock additional columns (not realizing they were quest locked), and didn't have much difficulty, even with only a half dozen points invested total.

Venemous eclipse's tooltip says it does "30 damage, and an additional 30 damage over 10 seconds." This is incorrect - it appears to do "...an additional 30 damage PER SECOND over 10 seconds" - a MUCH stronger effect than advertised, making it the strongest single-target damage spell in the game.

For someone wishing to try a mage build, the angel statues can be found in:
- the copper mine
- old temple
- old cathedral (reach via catacombs)
- chapel (must first visit both the cathedral and the Claw to gain access)

The game has theoretically unlimited XP, as night bandits respawn, but internet sources claim that there is a level cap of 31. This isn't enough to max out all skills, but it's probably enough to max out all skills you'll be able to practically use. (Ie., there is limited value in maxing out four different weapon trees.)


_______ Physical Skills __________

Swords are the most commonly available weapon, and two enchanted blades are for sale early on in the cathedral district. (Assuming one unlocks the inner city first.) Hammers are next most common, and I found a golden hammer (again, in the cathedral district) to be my weapon of choice for most of the game. I was unable to find ANY spears until reaching the Arsenal district mid-game. (They were available, but not in an obvious place.) The moon scythe is always available and the only weapon available for some fights, but it otherwise does less damage than other weapons available at the same time. Note that lectors can be harmed by other means, but the finishing blow must be from the scythe, or they will come back to life.

Mid-game, a life stealing sword is available in a shop. It heals the weilder upon delivering a killing blow; if swords are not your main weapon skill, you can still switch to the blade for the final hit. The amount of healing is quite decent, it was over half my health bar. (According to the wiki, it heals an amount equal to the maximum health of the creature killed.)

Damage isn't everything. For example, the persian axe does less damage than the golden hammer (both are in the hammers catagory), but it swings in a wider arc, so it does better against groups. Similarly, there is a rock-paper-scissors effect between weapon types, and some enemies are most vulnerable to specific weapon types. Carrying a selection of weapons allows you to keep your options open.

I didn't find the beast knowledge skill to be helpful. It yeilds some money, but it's not a lot, and money is reasonably common anyways. It also yeilds lamp oil from grippers, but I found more than I needed as loot without buying any.

__________ Nexus Portals __________

During the main quest, one will encounter multiple Nexus portals. There are also a few portals hidden here and there that merely contain loot. I didn't do a good job of recording the ones I found, but in general, look for them anywhere that has unusual scenery, ie., walls of skulls. The locations that I found were:

- by the nightwatch guild entrance
- two in the sewers (sorry, can't recall which ones)


___________ Skeletons _____________

Keep a record of where you find skeletons; you will eventually get a skill that allows you to speak to the souls of these dead, and eventually another skill that allows you to aquire items from some as well. A partial list of locations with skeletons, and what they yeild:

forest hut - quest item
path to forest hut - treasure map to fitted plate mail in mine
abandoned mine entry (by smithy) - nothing
beach below windmill - quest item
harbor warehouse, under stairs - un-named treasure map
harbor, behind crates - nothing
arsenal catacombs (table with gameboard) - necromancy trainer - he hints at there being a group of his students in the catacomb, but there is only one other skeleton that I could find
arsenal catacombs (coffin) - required for main quest

Venetica has theoretically unlimited money available, as plants, copper ore, and bandits all appear to respawn.

Some merchants in venice will pay double for items of a specific type. In particular, it it worth selling jewelery of any type (your primary source of ducats) to the appropriate merchant in the marketplace.

Minor loot is semi-random. A jar that yields ducats will vary in the number, but seems to always drop ducats. Any jar has a random chance of not dropping anything, but may yeild a reward on reload. This is not recommended - firstly, because the NPC save bug, and secondly, because jars mostly have trivial loot anyways. In any case, money is plentiful in Venetica, and there's no need for exploits to get more of it. Tests with a random chest yeilded either a gold plate or candlestick, and a varying number of coins.

The display of what loot is found doesn't always correctly display quantities. For example, one particular treasure map yeilds 10+10 potions, which the game displays as 1+1 potions. This is most evident with imperial coins; they show up as a single coin, but typically are found in groups.

Later in the game a treasure map merchant appears. Finding a treasure does not require possessing the map, so it is possible to save, buy all the maps, memorize or record their locations, reload, and get the information for free. As always, be careful where you save. This isn't at all necessary - I found I had more than enough money to buy all the maps eventually - but doing so may save you a return trip to a map you've already cleared. Oddly, treasure maps have a resale value even after being used. Be aware that the merchant respawns duplicate copies of his maps, so don't re-purchase maps you already own!

Venetica suffers from occasional bugs. The most infamous is that if saving in a zone with NPC's, some NPC's can vanish when reloading. I didn't encounter that one personally, but I encountered some others.


_______ Map & Quest Logs __________

The on-screen mini-map has a green dot for the current quest that looks similar to the one on the full-size map. The two act differently: the full map shows the actual destination (although it is sometimes wrong); the mini-map dot is actually a pointer arrow, and only points the direction to off-screen destinations. Once you are close enough to see the destination, the mini-map dot will vanish. The map marker can be misleading, when in the city, the marker will typically point at a map exit when the destination is outside of the local map, although when in san paulo, we see the reverse behavior.

Some notable cases of misleading information:
- Victor's house for the net of the mask quest; it's next to the nightwatch guild.
- The map marker for "the mining effort" quest is completely incorrect. The workers can be found in the Arsenal district, a mid-game area.
- The quest log for the Medicine quest is incorrect - the item is not in the ampitheatre, but accessed from a tower nearby. The map pointer is correct.


_________ Miscellaneous ___________

I had random visual glitches after loading a save a couple of times. First a black screen, then garbage visuals including the name of the current map, which went away after rebooting the game a couple times.

Alt-tabbing is a risky proposition; usually it goes without a hitch, but occasionally it will freeze the game, especially if you're away from the game for several minutes, or alt-tabbing during a cut scene.

If lamp is out of oil, it will (confusingly) still light up for a second then go off again.

Talking to Leon in your guild at venetica may cause a crash; if so, this will consistently be the case.

Video settings are saved, but sounds settings are not. This is a pity, because I thought the combat sounds were a bit too loud.

On one occasion I encountered an invisible NPC; reloading from a previous save fixed the problem.