The Arx Fatalis Thread

[Mayday]

Well, as much as it wasn't an RPG game- I found DM pretty entertaining... the gameplay, not the story. I was puzzled though, as the crypts in DM weren't even half as good as in Arx

 

[Claw]

Okay, okay!

I'm installing already. Happy?

Jeez..

 

[jefklak]

( I suspect they used a modified Dark Engine, but can't find any reference about that).

No.
http://www.gamershell.com/articles/517.html

What engine did you use for the game? Or did you create one from scratch?

We wrote it from scratch. Cyril Meynier (our lead programmer) started from day One at Arkane Studios, with no libraries, no preliminary work, straight from Direct X and Msdev. Then, one year later, we integrated 3 other programmers (Sebastien Scieux, Didier Pedreno, Nicolas Schaller).

 

[denizsi]

Thanks for that.

I'd love to see more spells, it seems a bit limited to me. Also, "Yok" (second part fireball) is very hard to do and it's only down, straight, up - you have to do the down and up parts very carefully, otherwise it'll recognize those gestures as diagonal lines.

You don't have to draw the runes all the way across the screen. You can move the mouse just by a few milimeters and the game will recognize the pattern and no, you don't really have to perfect straight lines for runes with straight horizontal and vertical lines.

And I feel the three slots are more than enough, since three fireballs are already overpowered and there is no slowdown whatshowever (if you cast it, you have to go into magic mode and draw stuff. precasted spells are activated immediately)

The game already encourages the retarded notion of keeping your melee weapon charged, ready to strike the moment you release the button, and takes no time to swing it again. And being a fighter, you're more likely to have sufficient HP to endure damage. Playing a spell caster, you already have to deal with drawing 2 to 4 runes for spells but it isn't the easiest thing to do so when you're facing opposition, especially drawing runes and running around or backing off. Add the little HP you have and the amounts of damage you may have to endure. It's horribly unbalanced. Even with all the magical equipment, it doesn't help because almost all enchanted items are aimed for non-magic or low-magic characters.

Why are 60% of all doors locked? Why is there only one place to buy armor and weapons? (Or am I not far enough into the game yet?)

Just know that every door has a key somewhere, either in a place, or carried by somebody, and likewise, every one of them (the doors) can be picked. And yes, you apparently aren't far enough into the game yet.

 

[Jasede]

Arx Fatalis is awesome.
Sadly, it's also too easy and too short.

Still awesome.
And short.

But awesome.

 

[DMKW]

I love this game! Brought back good memories of Ultima Underworld for me. Still hoping Arcane Studios will do a sequel.

edit: Haha i remember murdering all the goblins in their little castle and piling their bodies up in the main hall then using it as my own little place to store my goods.

As small as it was ...lighting and extinguishing torches with a wave of the hand is still one of my favorite features from the game

 

[dagorkan]

I had this game and played quite a way through but I didn't finish it. I think denizsi covered everything and I agree with him, it's more an adventure/action game and you have to think that way to progress. But it's an original setting and I had some fun with the runes and 'crafting'...

Good alternative to Morrowind.

 

[Hazelnut]

I loved the Ultima Underworlds so I bought this purely on the strength of it being the 'new UU'.

I played 5-10 hours before giving up because I was bored and tired of all the linearity and cliché's. The gameworld & story just never grabbed me and immersed me, unlike the Ultima gameworld (and many others) had.

It did have nice graphics for the time, but that simply wasn't enough. I do sometimes wonder if I should give it a second chance, then I remember that I have many games I've not given a first chance to yet...

 

[Krafter]

As small as it was ...lighting and extinguishing torches with a wave of the hand is still one of my favorite features from the game

That never got old for me, either. Every single time I passed a torch or an old campfire, I just had to light it up. :D

 

[denizsi]

edit: Haha i remember murdering all the goblins in their little castle and piling their bodies up in the main hall then using it as my own little place to store my goods.

What? You can't carry corpses in Arx, as there wasn't a reason to do so since NPCs never reacted to seeing their brethren dead, unlike Thief.

 

[jefklak]

He probably meant he killed them there - their bodies remain there, and can be used as containers

 

[DMKW]

edit: Haha i remember murdering all the goblins in their little castle and piling their bodies up in the main hall then using it as my own little place to store my goods.

What? You can't carry corpses in Arx, as there wasn't a reason to do so since NPCs never reacted to seeing their brethren dead, unlike Thief.

You're right i had to stand in the center of the hall and murder them one by one, carefully until they formed a nice pile. Fun times!

edit: except for the king of goblins. his corpse can be found sitting on the can

 

[jefklak]

Just for you, some stupid vids. Yeah it's pretty disturbing


Arx Fatalis gameplay vids (2)

(Xvid, MP3, ~35MB/each)
youtube mirror bleh

 

[Quigs]

It takes playing oblivion to realize how cool Arx was.

You had all sorts of unique bad guys, a non orthodox racial mindset (trolls aint bad. go figure. I ended up killing the first one I saw and had to kill the entire camp afterwards because I mucked up a quest) interactive world, etc.

I liked it. Wish I could still play it.

 

[Limorkil]

Arx is very good. I am playing it again myself at the moment.

There are not too many real character development choices in Arx. My take on your options is:

Fighter
I think pure fighters are sort of boring in Arx because it is a magic-oriented game.
Get your Strength to 14 as soon as you can to use the best weapons/armor.
Dexterity and Constitution of 10 are desireable, increasing Con more with level-ups if you need it.
If you do not want to use magic, ignore Intelligence and raise Object Knowledge by putting skill points into it directly. If you want to use some limited magic, getting Intelligence to 8-10 will help. If you lack points, consider having less Dex (first) and Con (second).

Mage
The easiest character to play because magic is very powerful. Also, raising Intelligence improves many skills, including the useful Object Knowledge.
I would put a few stat points into Con, making it 8-10, and the rest into Int. If you want to fight to any degree then Str 8 gives you access to more weapon choices.

Thief
Playing a thief is the most challenging because you have more skills to juggle. Both Stealth and Technical require a lot of points to be effective and you want to get them to 50+ early on. This means you lack combat and magic skills. The plus side is that you can go almost anywhere because you can open many locks without finding the key.
Dex is the obvious choice of stat for a thief, but I think it is overated. If you are going to use Bows then Dex is useful because it helps increase both Stealth and Ranged. But there are only 2 bows in the game and playing an archer (actually a poison-archer) gets hard later on.
If you go the melee route I would choose Str over Dex; however, if you want to use some magic as well I would choose Int because it influences the most skills. Be aware that casting a spell usually knocks you out of stealth, so a stealthy mage has its drawbacks.
My personal preference is to put Str and Con at 8, divide the remaining points between Dex and Int and then raise Int at level up. I spend a lot of skill points on Stealth and Technical early on and then raise Casting later. I tend to start combat with a backstab and then switch to magic.

Fighter-Mage
The best skills are Object Knowledge, Casting and Close Combat. If you start with 8-10 Str, 6 Dex, 8-10 Con and as much Int as possible then you cannot go too far wrong. At level-up, raise Int and spend skill points to keep the above three skills about even. Depending on your preference, you can spend more or less points on each skill. You need 70 in Object Knowledge, but Casting and Close Combat can be anywhere from 50 up, depending on taste. Since you are using both magic and melee, you will be able to handle any situation without much difficulty.
If you want to raise Technical skill to be able to open more locks, you can sacrifice some Casting and Close Combat to do that. Given that it is better to get high Technical early, you should probably focus on Object Knowledge, Technical and Close Combat and then raise Casting later on.

Of course, there are alternatives. In terms of what stat to focus on, the best idea is to figure out which skills you want to focus on and then look at the stat that influences them the most.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

The crypts were a gaming highlight, creepiest dungeon I ever visited. The final boss fight was a terrible low, tedious, tedious. I enjoyed Arx, but it didn't reach the level of the UU's it aspired to. The world didn't quite grab me. The "drawing" magic system, beyond the novelty, didn't really work well. And the divine messenger plot was meh. Still I would have loved to see a sequel instead of DM.

 

[Jora]

No publisher was interested in making a sequel so Arkane put it on ice and started developing action games instead.

 

[suibhne]

With both Dark Messiah and The Crossing under their belt, they may have a bit more clout to return to the world of Arx.

 

[jefklak]

Limorkil, I'm pretty much doing the battle mage thing right now, without even knowing it. I wasted too much points into mechanics for opening locks and every single lock now where I'm at in the game is too complex for me, stupid. And I never can break them. Question though, why do you need object knowledge of 70+ or so? Except for brewing potions?

 

[Krafter]

Object Knowledge is the only way that you can identify magic items, IIRC.

I finished my last Arx game at about 60 - 65 or so, it was all I needed.

 

[cutterjohn]

I've gotta stop doing this, but since it seems like this was a decent RPG and Valve is selling it via STEAM @ $7.95 through Tuesday, 20% off.

i.e. it'll be $9.95 after Tuesday until whenever, not a BIG HUGE discount, but still one none the less...

I missed it, so I might try it, but I certainly hope that it's quite a bite better than Dark Messiah is so far...

Oh, and checking the forums someone from Arkane has apparently been posting and states that the Steam version is a new version, v1.18 with a bunch of bug fixes, including some texture fixes that, apparently, only affected nVidia GPUs.

 

[Fez]

We just got rid of the spambots, thanks.

 

[denizsi]

but I certainly hope that it's quite a bite better than Dark Messiah is so far...

That depends on what you are looking for. Arx game world is very limited but apparently designers did a very good job of covering every hole as far as quests and NPCs go. Nothing you do seems to break the game. Just don't use quicksave and quickload, they completely screw the quest flags; you may find everything resetted back to start halfway through the game (this problem apparently persists in Steam version as well). On the other hand, both melee and magic combat is boring and uninspiring and at one point or another, combt is unavoidable. DM is at least entertaining to a degree in those areas.

 

[cutterjohn]

I ended up buying it so far, and have played far along enough to have met up with Kultar and then started up the next level, but those gobblers there are pretty tough. Even the wimpy ones, when armed with with a dagger I got from a locked door opened by a key I found on the level after being with Kultar the first time.

Hmmm... I was reading over at rpgwatch that the quests were a little brittle, as in if you didn't do things in just the right order you could easily break quests. Were they wrong?

It was a 660M download, and took me about half an hour or so to get. If you're a graphics whore, they ARE dated probably somewhere between Gothic 1 & 2.

Guess that I'll be skipping Stalker for a while now...

@Fez
As to implying that the post was spam of some sort, I for one appreciate it when people find a good price on something and post it in a relevant forum. If you don't get the rules changed or just don't read it as it was obviously a post referring to a price on something relevant.

 

[Fez]

I forgot that the internet was SERIOUS BUSINESS there. Pull that stick out of your ass, you humorless cunt. I even put in a little emoticon to make it obvious that it was a joke even to the retarded.