Arcanum Arcanum's difficulty

[Falksi]

Play something good instead

 

[Egosphere]

You can start rampaging through the game by level 14 if your build is strength+melee oriented

 

[Cael]

You want broken, play a melee magic-user with the speed warboots and the dagger of speed. At full affinity for the thing, the dagger has a attack cost of 1 AP. Couple that with the Dex and Str boosting buffs, and you basically have a character that can attack 25 times a round with +20 damage per attack. Then, you add in backstab for another +20 (IIRC), and Haste abuse. By the time you get to Black Root (you'll be around level 5-6?)for the Missing Inventor quest, you should be able to machine stab your way through the level 30 mobs until they stop coming, by which time you should be around level 30 yourself. Outright cakewalk after that.

 

[Berekän]

Combat in Arcanum is just a middling annoyance in the way of the quests and atmosphere. Just grab whatever OP thing you can and/or an army of followers to punch things and just breeze through the combat in real time.

 

[Dramart]

Melee, strength, dexterity when it's necessary. Preferably a handsome dwarf. Choose the background "ran away with the circus" or something like that. Kill everything and enjoy the unique setting

 

[oscar]

It's hard not to break Arcanum's combat no matter what kind of build you take.

Makes me wonder whether I need to play Fallout again to check if the combat was any better there.

Fallout 1 and 2 are much tougher and the combat is in general far more satisfying. I think there's literally a single challenging fight in Arcanum (Stringey Pete) and it's entirely optional. Taking on Lucan at Shrouded Hill (again optional) might also take a bit of finesse if you don't have a combat-spec'd character.

I still like Arcanum though and it was the game that got me into RPGs at a young age (the easy difficulty probably helped on that front, that even my 9 year old self could beat it).

 

[Cael]

Combat in Arcanum is just a middling annoyance in the way of the quests and atmosphere. Just grab whatever OP thing you can and/or an army of followers to punch things and just breeze through the combat in real time.

The followers can actually be a pain in the ass as they can and will wade into combat with weapon and armour destroying mobs without a care in the world. Or they get in your way when you are the melee monster and they are the healer support (Jenna, I am looking at you), and promptly get their head punched in.

In this, they are no different to Fallout 1/2.

 

[ValeVelKal]

people out there will die constantly to the wolfs in the first area

who the fuck can't get past the crashed zeppelin part??

It is not as much the wolf in the crashed zeppelin part but the wolf when you leave the zeppelin area but don't understand that there is a fast travel option. There is a group of wolves on your way that are going to thrash low level characters, Virgil or not, though of course I remember they won't beat Harm.

 

[ItsChon]

The combat in Arcanum is absolutely terrible, enough so that I had to just stop playing. People constantly cite PS:T as having terrible combat, but it's not even close to as bad as some of the games people absolutely faun over on the Codex.

 

[Kz3r0]

Maybe my sign can interest some of you.

 

[Tigranes]

The combat in Arcanum is absolutely terrible, enough so that I had to just stop playing. People constantly cite PS:T as having terrible combat, but it's not even close to as bad as some of the games people absolutely faun over on the Codex.

PST combat probably counts as "just fine" for casual RPG players, because all the core systems interact in a nonoffensively smooth way. Arcanum in particular requires you to fight the game and learn a specific way of playing to enjoy it, which many people simply aren't willing to do. (I don't necessarily blame them.)

I've had more fun with Arcanum combat than I ever did with PST, though. Arcanum might be flecks of delicious sugar someone blended with candy wrapper, but PST combat is warm beer in a tankard.

 

[ItsChon]

PST combat probably counts as "just fine" for casual RPG players

Arcanum in particular requires you to fight the game and learn a specific way of playing to enjoy it, which many people simply aren't willing to do. (I don't necessarily blame them.)

I've had more fun with Arcanum combat than I ever did with PST, though. Arcanum might be flecks of delicious sugar someone blended with candy wrapper, but PST combat is warm beer in a tankard.

Fair enough. Maybe I'll eventually give it another go, but I don't see myself dredging up enough willpower to do so in the near future.

 

[Egosphere]

It's hard not to break Arcanum's combat no matter what kind of build you take.

I think there's literally a single challenging fight in Arcanum (Stringey Pete) and it's entirely optional. Taking on Lucan at Shrouded Hill (again optional) might also take a bit of finesse if you don't have a combat-spec'd character.

Lord of the Damned in the haunted castle is tough if you go to ashbury early
Bangellian Deeps
That room with Kerghan's journal in one of the dwarf mines

But yeah, that's still 3-4 fights scattered across a game that can easily chew up 40+ hours of your time.

 

[jackofshadows]

Arcanum is a difficult game only if you are using meta-knowledge to avoid broken things like that pyro-axe, the Dog, harm spell, abuse some of the cursed items etc. Not to mention to ignore ways to get infinite money or that infamous Black Root portal that getting you ~25lvls basically for free. Or don't max your charisma and turn subj into party-oriented game that also quickly turns into a cakewalk. But personally I was having tons of fun in process of squashing the game's systems.

My favorite build is this: you pick raised by monks backstory, max out melee first, then get stealth expert just to get through black mountain clan mines, then raise backstab and stick to fast-turn-based combat from that point (build absolutely not viable in rt) , and after all of that max out stealth>getting master perk of it. That's it. Now you can one shot almost anything while mobs cant see you and even if they spot you, just stay away a bit and re-stealth (if you goin solo). It's stupid but gave me a lot of fun.

 

[CappenVarra]

Makes me wonder whether I need to play Fallout again to check if the combat was any better there.

is your avatar from FO3 or what? if you need to replay FO1 to remember the game, remove the T-51b helmet from your avatar or face many "not sure if serious" ratings, "pal"

on topic, Arcanum achieves a proper RPG score on this (as it does on many other subjects) since the difficulty is fully under control of the player: it can be a cakewalk - if that's how you create/build your character, or a nightmare - if that's how you create/build your character. some call that "larping", i call that "a proper RPG where how you create/build your character has a huge impact"

yes, it's not optimal that many character builds/items make the game a cakewalk, but it does a great job of frustrating obsessive-compulsive min-maxers with tedium (a plus in my book)

always remember: Tim Cain used to have a magic touch before he fell in love with a (gay) triangle, and Arcanum can be the hardest game ever if you play it like MCA

 

[CappenVarra]

snip

you find Arcanum fun and have a Roger Zelazny title as your username? double whammy, sir; double whammy

 

[jackofshadows]

snip

you find Arcanum fun and have a Roger Zelazny title as your username? double whammy, sir; double whammy

Well, Arcanum was one of my the very first RPG and I've played it a lot. Piece by piece, I was exploring it, learning, and could not stop but awe about depth of the game, variaty and overall freedom (silly me, I was took for granted many aspects of it back there).

So later, when I've realized how many people think not quite highly about Arcanum's combat system, as well as UI and some other stuff I was confused. I can easily agree today that UI indeed may be confusing af w/o reading the manual but combat system? Obviously they shouldn't implement 3 combat modes, and each of them exploitable/has many flaws but is it not fun to play at all?

 

[Egosphere]

Arcanum is my absolute favourite RPG of all time, but let me be straight: what difficulty? The game is laughably easy if you play anyone else than a pure tech build.

Even with the tech build things get considerably easier when you acquire the hand-cannon in Tarant. You can also craft grenades, molotovs etc. and they rip through most enemies.

 

[Immortal]

In Arcanum you make your own fun. The entire game can be steam rolled by a single level one spell.
If you want a challenge it has to be self-inflicted.

 

[nyjsu]

Disintegrate is one of the most satisfying spells in any video game even if it makes most encounters completely pointless. I also have no idea what kind of skills any of the bosses had since they just died as soon as I saw them. I don't think I used any other spells besides Disintegrate and Harm for 75% of the game.

 

[Kalin]

Arcanum ROCKS!

 

[Poseidon00]

I only just started playing Arcanum recently. Some power sets are definitely more useful than others but all of them look worth a try. After getting stomped on by a high charisma character with no real focus I switched to a summoner and now things are laughably easy.

I really like the entire idea of this world. Great setting.

 

[Average Manatee]

Arcanum has a very, very wide set of choices to invest in. Even other RPGs with lots of build complexity tend to narrow down and categorize choices (e.g. in Fallout stats, skills, and feats are mostly independent of each other and only need to be balanced within their group). Arcanum is the exact opposite. Every time you get a point you have, like, 40 different places you could put it. Balancing 40 distinct choices every level over 50 levels is absolutely impossible. Frankly the game is actually pretty well balanced in that every combat build breaks the game pretty easily, its just that the design of Arcanum means that some builds break the game by picking a certain spell in character creation while other builds need to hunt down schematics and shop around and get a few NPCs, but they still cruise through effortlessly once they've got their stuff. The only builds that truly suck are ones that are geared towards non-combat situations that never really appear (e.g. being a beautiful character).

That said being able to attack 75 times in a single turn is a bit much.

 

[ItsChon]

Frankly the game is actually pretty well balanced in that every combat build breaks the game pretty easily, its just that the design of Arcanum means that some builds break the game by picking a certain spell in character creation while other builds need to hunt down schematics and shop around and get a few NPCs, but they still cruise through effortlessly once they've got their stuff.

Every type of combat build being viable doesn't mean the game is balanced, it means literally the opposite. A character should not be viable in combat if it spreads its points around willy nilly, only needing a specific ability or weapon or w/e to beat every enemy in the game.

Underrail is one of the best examples of a balanced game in terms of combat and what each character can do. Many different combat builds are reliable, but it requires careful planning and stat distribution. The game has a constant difficulty curve throughout right up until the very end of the game, and it manages this with a ton of different options.

People like to give Arcanum a pass for all the ways it fails as an actual game because of how engrossing it is in regards to its writing, world building, C&C, etc. Give the game props for what it's good at, but acknowledge its weaknesses where they exist. There is a reason why Troika is known for having broken games; for everything that they did right, there was another thing that they completely fucked up.

 

[Average Manatee]

Frankly the game is actually pretty well balanced in that every combat build breaks the game pretty easily, its just that the design of Arcanum means that some builds break the game by picking a certain spell in character creation while other builds need to hunt down schematics and shop around and get a few NPCs, but they still cruise through effortlessly once they've got their stuff.

Every type of combat build being viable doesn't mean the game is balanced, it means literally the opposite. A character should not be viable in combat if it spreads its points around willy nilly, only needing a specific ability or weapon or w/e to beat every enemy in the game.

Underrail is one of the best examples of a balanced game in terms of combat and what each character can do. Many different combat builds are reliable, but it requires careful planning and stat distribution. The game has a constant difficulty curve throughout right up until the very end of the game, and it manages this with a ton of different options.

People like to give Arcanum a pass for all the ways it fails as an actual game because of how engrossing it is in regards to its writing, world building, C&C, etc. Give the game props for what it's good at, but acknowledge its weaknesses where they exist. There is a reason why Troika is known for having broken games; for everything that they did right, there was another thing that they completely fucked up.

Arcanum isn't a combatfag game, it's not intended to be measured as such.

But in any case spreading points around willy nilly certainly isn't really viable in Arcanum. You have to focus on something break the game.