Vatras, the water mage, prepares the ritual and represents Adanos. With former fire mage Xardas representing Beliar, Pyrokar, head of the fire mages, joins the ritual reluctantly to represent Innos. The mages manage to restore the power of the Eye of Innos and so the Hero can head back to the valley to destroy the four dragons that live there. After all of the dragons are killed, the Hero travels to Xardas' tower to report to him, but the mage is gone. The Hero is given a note from Xardas by Lester, telling him he was to find more information in the fire mages' monastery, in the book 'The Halls of Irdorath'. The book contains a sea map, showing the way to the isle Irdorath, one of the ancient temples of Beliar that once disappeared. The hero assembles a crew and gets a ship and a captain for that ship to sail to Irdorath and confront the leader of the dragons, and avatar of Beliar – the undead dragon. After the hero slays the dragon, Xardas teleports into the cave and absorbs its soul, making him an avatar of Beliar. After the hero returns to the ship, Xardas appears and tells him that they will see each other again. The game ends with the ship sailing into the distance toward Myrtana. Development The game engine is basically a modified version of the Gothic engine. The texture resolution has been improved by a factor 4 and the world is said to be three times as detailed as in the first game. While the graphics are less detailed than other engines of the time, there is almost no loading time. Marketing and release The German version of the game was published by JoWooD and released on 29 November 2002. On 1 May 2003, Infogrames announced they would market and distribute the title in all non-German territories. In the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, the game was released on 13 June 2003. The US release by Atari followed a few months later on 28 October. However, according to Piranha Bytes, Atari did not officially confirm the US release to them, so they did not spread the word about this release for months. On 17 October 2005 publisher JoWood announced that Aspyr Media was going to publish four of their titles in North America, one of them being Gothic II Gold, which includes Gothic II