Gothic 3 - CP 1.73 Released

The Community Patch Team released another not so small update. The change list is a nice read:

Framework
- Texture/Shadow/Light flickering eliminated (occured on ATI 4xxx serie cards).
- Bug corrected where audio system always cached out sound even if property said "no".
- Some minor bug fixes and improvements.
+ Added czech manual to installer.
- Modding manuals updated.

Graphics
+ HDR Rendering.
+ Soft particles.
+ Improved bloom effect.
+ Leaf subsurface scattering (only with activated Rim Lighting and Shader 3.0).
+ Heat haze. (At minimum Shader 2.0. Always on, exception: few fire places, because the world has not been recompiled).
- Terrain shadows on faraway trees corrected.
- Some texture/material changes.

Dialogs
- Saturas now also hands out his key when the hero talks to him the first time ever after exploring Al Shedim.
+ Some info file parameters added.
+ "Storyhelper" (sh) has more detailed dialog options to increase or decrease reputation.
- Some speech outputs in russian game version corrected.
- The hero now drinks the bottle of booze he gets from Flint.
- Tippler, Hjalte and Garik now drink booze at adequate points of the conversations, Hjalte also eats some meat.
- If Ugolf tells the hero about Tjalf's chest, there's an additional small piece of dialog available after looting the chest.
- Dialog with Masil after cancellation of the quest "Debt and debility" corrected.
+ Subtitles are available now when the hero reads out what he finds at bookstands and stone tablets.

Quests
+ Some quest file parameters added.

Ingame menus
- Icons of cudgel, heavy branch, Nordmarian sword, recipe for mana potion, recipe for Nordmarian sword, recipe for El Bastardo, Meteor and the perk "Take animal skins" corrected or improved, resp.

Items
- It's not possible anymore to get Lester's, Ilja's and Yussuf's temple key and Masil's promissory notes twice.

NPC behaviour
+ New "political" alignment PAL_Pirate. (Not actually in use yet.)
+ NPCs now can react aggressive on armor of other "political" fractions. (Not actually in use yet.)

Perks and magic
+ New scroll "Group Hypnosis".
+ New function "MagicSummonCompanion" for new kinds of summoned companions. (Not actually in use yet.)

Strings
- Some errors in German texts corrected.
- Some errors in Italian texts corrected.

Only with AI switch turned on:
- Whirlwind attacks with two-handed weapons can now be blocked completely.
- A strong hit with two swords will break through a block.

The following fixes will only become effective when a new game is started, but not in already existing save games:
- Sigmor's chest is no "weapon chest" anymore (error from CP 1.70).
- El Bastardo corrected.
- Krush Irmak afflicts damage again

Thanks, Sigmarsson!