Arcanum - worth a punt?

[Black]

Beat with an ugly stick is also a good background for pretty much any character that deals in combat, the Beauty penalty isn't even that harmful.

Spoiler

 

[Piotrovitz]

Went with the beat with an ugly stick background, since I read somewhere that beauty doesn't affect that many quests/conversations as charisma, plus it will go nicely with the melee build.

Just started the game, and holy fuck, I wasn't this excited since I bought HoMM3 on cd-r back in '99 after playing the crap out of 2 on hot seat with my friends.
Hi-res patch makes it look charming and the combat isn't as clunky as I remembered it.

Just killed few wolves on the first screen and am already lvl 2. No wonder you hit the 50 cap mid game.

 

[Black]

Just killed few wolves on the first screen

Already doing better than Chris Avellone.

 

[Citizen]

Now that's some quality responses, thank you sirs.

Think I will settle for techie focused on combat/smithy/explosives/throwing with dabbling in social skills and electric/chemistry.
Will dump firearms and gunsmithy completely, maybe try them on second run.

Couple of more questions:

1. What starting stat allocation and background for this build would be reasonable? No min-maxing if possible, but I don't want to screw myself over neither.
2. Can detect/disarm traps be dumped and handled by equipment and NPCs?
3. Is mechanical discipline and setting traps in general worth it? How does trap mechanics work, i.e do you have to have high stealth in order to set them up efficiently before the combat starts?
4. Can you raise the level cap by few levels, or only disable it completely? Is this even worth it, or will just leave you OPd long before the game is finished?

Chemistry is pretty useless. As I remember it's only required for envenomed swords/bows and tranquilizer gun. Making fuel/batteries is not necessary, all the tech vendors sell it for dirt cheap in massive amounts. If you are not going to use tranquilizer or hallucinogen grenades, don't waste charpoints.

2. If you go electric you can just use flow sensor, if you have enough batteries. It's really useful for a techie, there's a lot of traps in arcanum. Some dungeons are really just loooooong corridors with endless amounts of traps. As for disarming, I can't understand how it works, but most of the traps are lying on the floor and can be just avoided if you can see them. There's not a lot of trapped loot containers, so you can just drink a poison immunity potion once in a while and hope for the best.

3. Who needs traps when you can attack people with an army of robots?

I don't think Throwing affects grenades. They're sorta ease of use.

It does. Sometimes they land not where you was hoping them to land, but it's not a problem since they're cheap and do not harm your party.

 

[SCO]

"combat isn't as clunky as I remembered it"

just wait until mid-game dungeons and remember the pain of long mummy animations and large action points amount.

Anyway, i replay arcanum some times, and as is my approach after some times, i cheated. The mastery quests of Arcanum are *mostly* some of the more interesting sidequests actually, and a run where i did them all was quite interesting because some have some 'scheduling' to work (reused npcs). Dodge and Melee had a trick to be possible iirc.

Companion interaction in Arcanum is actually pretty good if too little ... but it depends too much in 'have npc, in some place for the first time'. You'll never see all of it without a major guide, and it will feel quite dry, comparatively to, say, Torment, where you could initiate the major dialogs as soon as you had the stats or information. The game needed more time as usual.

 

[Anomander Rake]

One thing that pisses me off is that tech doesn't seem to pay off at least until midlate-to-late game, while if you get Magic, you will get everything you need by midgame and not only that, willpower 20 is way more useful than intelligence 20. Willpower also gives you the chance to improve haggle to buy everything you need and never have any issue.

 

[Sigourn]

4) You will reach lvl50 in mid-game, and generally it's more than enough to make you powerful, unless you somehow manage to fuck up the character progression horribly.
Removing the level cap will remove any trace of challenge from the game.

I personally didn't reach level 50 until the very last tenth of the game (or even closer to the end), so "mid-game" was definitely not my experience. And that's taking into account I power-leveled like crazy to get past the annoying enemies in a certain place (I leveled to about level 21).

 

[Anomander Rake]

Yeah, I reached level 50 when I was going to enter the Void.
Issue is that levelling is related to:

> how you behave (for example, roleplaying a good guy means that you skip some quests and its rewards: eg, in the first village there is a guy inside the inn proposing you to steal the salary for the soldiers currently being held inside the bank. Getting the money won't give you the xp, unless you give the guy its part. Okay, let's say you are a good person or you wish to doublecross the guy who gave you the quest, by retaining the money for yourself and telling to the sheriff what the guy proposed you. You can, but even if you stole the money, you won't get any xp)
> difficulty - easy, moderate, hard (xp penalty or not)
> followers and who does the most dps
> who kills the mob\critters, etc.

 

[Piotrovitz]

One thing that pisses me off is that tech doesn't seem to pay off at least until midlate-to-late game, while if you get Magic, you will get everything you need by midgame and not only that, willpower 20 is way more useful than intelligence 20. Willpower also gives you the chance to improve haggle to buy everything you need and never have any issue.

Hard to say as a newb, but this whole 'magic OPd, tech UPd, sucks' thing may in fact be seen as a positive - the imbalance between the two imposes entirely different approaches to the game and may encourage to have actually fun and fresh replays, instead of doing BG2-style laundry list. Also, playing as a tech/gunslinger may be considered as an original and clever higher difficulty mode, where instead of usual dealing with hp-bloated, x2 dmg dealing mobs, you just have to play in a different manner.

 

[Black]

One thing that pisses me off is that tech doesn't seem to pay off at least until midlate-to-late game

Please, sword and charged rings are available pretty much from the start.

 

[Anomander Rake]

Piotrovitz Very much true. Issue is that it scares me because it makes me feel like I've got to do a game of searching instead of enjoying the game to find the right components for the stuff. Or at least take notes and actually check merchants and others for stuff, while 99% of best stuff for magic can be bought and as such haggle is great friend.


Black okay I get the swords and the charged rings.
Starting from the fact that they express their best with High technology, you start to weaken yourself because Vergil won't heal you, why would I use a sword and not my fists, especially knowing that I will be going inside the black mountain clan, where melee weapons get trashed?

Also, don't charged ring need a high aptitude to "really" benefit from them?

 

[Modron]

Please, sword and charged rings are available pretty much from the start.

I never got the hype around the charged rings don't you need like 50+ tech aptitude to get the full +2 benefit of them?

One thing that pisses me off is that tech doesn't seem to pay off at least until midlate-to-late game, while if you get Magic, you will get everything you need by midgame and not only that, willpower 20 is way more useful than intelligence 20. Willpower also gives you the chance to improve haggle to buy everything you need and never have any issue.

Technologists can print unlimited money if they spend 4 points in explosives and unlock the ability to craft explosive grenades, each one of them sells for near a thousand gold and you produce 2 (maybe 3 been a while I forget) from ingredients that probably run you a 100 gold and are very plentiful in tech/gun shops. All the grenades sell for a decent amount as well even if you just spend 1 point to gain access to smoke grenades it's a nice money maker.

 

[Sigourn]

Yeah, I reached level 50 when I was going to enter the Void.
Issue is that levelling is related to:

> how you behave (for example, roleplaying a good guy means that you skip some quests and its rewards: eg, in the first village there is a guy inside the inn proposing you to steal the salary for the soldiers currently being held inside the bank. Getting the money won't give you the xp, unless you give the guy its part. Okay, let's say you are a good person or you wish to doublecross the guy who gave you the quest, by retaining the money for yourself and telling to the sheriff what the guy proposed you. You can, but even if you stole the money, you won't get any xp)
> difficulty - easy, moderate, hard (xp penalty or not)
> followers and who does the most dps
> who kills the mob\critters, etc.

Ahh, very good points. I was hanging around with a three-man and dog party: the doggo, Virgil, and Magnus. And the dog is IMO overpowered and thus took care of a lot of enemies for me.

 

[Black]

Please, sword and charged rings are available pretty much from the start.

I never got the hype around the charged rings don't you need like 50+ tech aptitude to get the full +2 benefit of them?

No, you don't need a lot of tech apt to get the full bonus.

 

[Anomander Rake]

Modron Thanks for that trick.

By the way, what's the best race for Tech? Can I use an half-orc for that?

 

[Black]

I found dorfs best for tech, grab Marcus' gloves, charged rings, pyro axe and power armor and go to town.

 

[Citizen]

One thing that pisses me off is that tech doesn't seem to pay off at least until midlate-to-late game, while if you get Magic, you will get everything you need by midgame and not only that, willpower 20 is way more useful than intelligence 20. Willpower also gives you the chance to improve haggle to buy everything you need and never have any issue.

Hard to say as a newb, but this whole 'magic OPd, tech UPd, sucks' thing may in fact be seen as a positive - the imbalance between the two imposes entirely different approaches to the game and may encourage to have actually fun and fresh replays, instead of doing BG2-style laundry list. Also, playing as a tech/gunslinger may be considered as an original and clever higher difficulty mode, where instead of usual dealing with hp-bloated, x2 dmg dealing mobs, you just have to play in a different manner.

There's no hardmode in arcanum. Just buy all the haste potions you can from wise women in major cities. The give you LOTS of action points (they even work for 100% techies) - character with 20 dex will get 40 speed with a haste potion, thats enough AP to murder half a Tarant in few rounds with a rusty revolver. Plus, if you use a dog all the challenge just dissapears from the game.

The manner of playing a techie on hard difficulty is: spot some enemies in the nearest room -> press F2 for dog to attack -> wait until the dog kills them (heal him if needed) -> (optional step) drink a haste potion and use tesla gun to kill the ones with high resistance to physical damage

Haste potions and exit scrolls are a must for a tech guy.

 

[Master]

Keep your inventory nice and clean like in the above screenshot, don't fill it with all kind of useless junk you don't need.

 

[Citizen]

Keep your inventory nice and clean like in the above screenshot, don't fill it with all kind of useless junk you don't need.

It's only clean because I dumped all the useless trash loot on poor old Raven.

 

[Black]

Keep your inventory nice and clean like in the above screenshot, don't fill it with all kind of useless junk you don't need.

It's only clean because I dumped all the useless trash loot on poor old Raven.

That's what elves and other degenerate races are for.

 

[Piotrovitz]

Without meta-gaming knowledge it's hard to say what shit is useless, so right now I'm hoarding everything hobo-style.

Beside using NPCs as mules, can you dump stuff in some chest and be sure that it won't dissapear?

 

[Black]

Rubbish bins recycle, don't use those but any standards container that doesn't belong to any should be fine. There's a warehouse in Tarant that's good for storing all your junk.

 

[Master]

Keep your inventory nice and clean like in the above screenshot, don't fill it with all kind of useless junk you don't need.

It's only clean because I dumped all the useless trash loot on poor old Raven.

That's what elves and other degenerate races are for.

I know its very codexian to have a woman be a pack mule, but remember in Arcanum Strength determines carry weight, and (cant remember exact numbers) at 1/3 you start getting speed(AP) and damage penalties. This applies to followers too. So dont get surprised if Revan cant do shit in combat. Generally in Arcanum you dont want to clog anyones inventory but if you must, a pack mule should be a half-ogre or half-orc or just someone really strong.

 

[Citizen]

Keep your inventory nice and clean like in the above screenshot, don't fill it with all kind of useless junk you don't need.

It's only clean because I dumped all the useless trash loot on poor old Raven.

That's what elves and other degenerate races are for.

I know its very codexian to have a woman be a pack mule, but remember in Arcanum Strength determines carry weight, and (cant remember exact numbers) at 1/3 you start getting speed(AP) and damage penalties. This applies to followers too. So dont get surprised if Revan cant do shit in combat. Generally in Arcanum you dont want to clog anyones inventory but if you must, a pack mule should be a half-ogre or half-orc or just someone really strong.

She was the only one that joined me on that playthrough, even Virgil forsaken me (dog's company was "too many people" for him). So I just gave Raven a set of arkane armor so she wouldn't get herself killed, took away her bow so she wouldn't kill me accidentally and most of the time she was simply healing the dog in combat, just what i wanted her to do.

These two didn't need me, I think. They were so overleveled they could kill anything and save Arcanum without me, using that simple tank+healer strategy.

 

[Master]

That damn dog ruins the whole game(well not just him). Next time just let him die.