Arcanum - Arcanum Installation Guide

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Null

Null

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kiwifarms.net
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Nov 14, 2012

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Just spam molotov cocktails, cheap and easy to make, and grenade mastery is easy to get iirc.
 
So, you can get the extended edition on steam I think, which includes the fan patches, but it runs like absolute shit on windows 10 for some reason.

I dunno. When I played it recently it was rather underwhelming. The locations are boring, the dialog is boring, some of the background stuff is kinda cool, but worst of all it's fucking buggy as all hell. Also the combat isn't great. So enjoy wondering "Do I need to do something else for this quest or did it just get bugged?".

You can craft a sword at the start of the game that you can use to beat the entire game. The way the game forces you to do either technology or magic is an unfortunate idea, and limits build diversity. So much shit is just useless and unneeded in the technology trees, all the complicated and expensive stuff you can do is outclassed by hitting dudes with the sword you made at the start of the game.
 
How to cheese arcanum: pure charisma build.

You won't need any combat skills at all. What combat you cant talk your way out of your army of followers can more than pick up the slack. Best combat follower? A dog. Seriously. Its teeth cant break like weapons can.

That and as charisma build you can quite literally tell the final boss to kill himself...and he does.
 
Corbin Dallas Multipass said:
So, you can get the extended edition on steam I think, which includes the fan patches, but it runs like absolute shit on windows 10 for some reason.

I dunno. When I played it recently it was rather underwhelming. The locations are boring, the dialog is boring, some of the background stuff is kinda cool, but worst of all it's fucking buggy as all hell. Also the combat isn't great. So enjoy wondering "Do I need to do something else for this quest or did it just get bugged?".

You can craft a sword at the start of the game that you can use to beat the entire game. The way the game forces you to do either technology or magic is an unfortunate idea, and limits build diversity. So much shit is just useless and unneeded in the technology trees, all the complicated and expensive stuff you can do is outclassed by hitting dudes with the sword you made at the start of the game.
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How far you got?
 
Glad to see there is a thread, sorry/not sorry to necro.
Replayed it last year and loved it.
Is a bit clunky if you aren't used to it, but it was an awesome experience. Clicking can be a bit tedious.
The mix of magic and tech, the choices of everything, the exploits, wererats...ahhh good times.

Went max companion route with tech.
 
Kwisatz00 said:
Is a bit clunky if you aren't used to it, but it was an awesome experience. Clicking can be a bit tedious.
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This game scratched my classic Fallout itch back when it came out.
It's also one of few twists that caught me by surprise. I really liked what they did with the chosen one trope.
 
since somebody else necro'd, i'll share my thoughts as well.
probably my favorite crpg. really enjoyed the amount of roleplaying it had. having appearance, gender, and race actually affect people's disposition toward you is something i haven't seen other games do successfully. i also really enjoyed the tension between technology and magic, not an often explored setting, but it's just funny to shoot a wizard in the head with a blunderbuss. combat is iffy, it can be frustrating switching between real time and turn-based all the time. with real-time you get slaughtered by the ai before you can even breathe, and the turn-based is agonizingly slow, especially if there's several enemies, which there usually are. i didn't have that much trouble as a solo gunslinger. building a character is pretty fun, there's a lot of different routes you can go, and you aren't stifled by any of them really, they usually open up just as many paths that they block. i think one of the best examples of this is that specing into being a necromancer can let you kill npcs, and then talk to their spirits, insted of trying to convince them or work around them. i really enjoyed the writing, there's a lot of worldbuilding there to chew on, and is probably one of the game's biggest strengths.
 
There are quite a few builds that make this a godlike experience, but what would be the worst but viable build.
I can obviously just play shit and lose, but what would be the hardest viable build to win with. Try to win with the rusty revolver? But get Master firearms.
Maybe one companion.
 
Troika died out way too quickly, shame we will probably never get a sequel.
Love the social dynamics the game has(if you're ugly or a certain race, you will get treated like a dumb nigger), genuine dumb dialogue runs ala Fallout, the whole duality of technology vs magic, and the game has some great quests/writing. Gnome Conspiracy is genuinely one of the best quests in the CRPG world and it would have NEVER been done today.
 
I played this a year or two ago. The world and story are the best parts. I love how the world feels like a typical fantasy world, but it is slowly losing its magic, both literally and figuratively. The way fantasy races slot into an early industrial society is cool too. Elves feeling their magical superiority fade, orcs being exploitable labor, humans being too lazy to learn magic, so they embrace tech, dwarves being much more mindful about technology because they live long enough to live with the consequences of pollution, etc. I like how in the story you meet what you think is the big bad, and he tells you he had a bit of a thunk and recognized he was a bit rash in his youth. Or how the 100000 durability pieces of armor actually link back to an ancient war and they're neigh indestructible for a reason.

The gameplay however, jesus christ:
1) real time is broken as hell, my modern PC actually slowed down because 2 skeleton archers would shoot so many arrows per second it formed a solid line of wood between me and them. Turn based however is slow and has its own problems.
2) magic feels far stronger than tech. I get the feeling magic should cost far more skill investment than tech, as tradeoff for not requiring resources. It also makes sense lore-wise. Magic takes a long time to master, while tech is a lot faster to use. Also the elephant gun should require special expensive ammo (or maybe craftable only) but in return should do massive damage. The RL rounds used nitroglycerine as propellant and could blow a hole in an elephant. The gun should blow an ogre into pieces
3) lockpicking and repairing pushing you towards tech. If you want to play a cat burglar thief that uses magic items to enhance his thievery, it sucks to see your magic gear lose potency when you put your points in lockpicking. Same with a magic knight wanting to keep his own armor healthy. How does magical weapon forging even work if repair pushes you towards tech?
4) tech/magic being a single bar that hurts hybrids. Spell strength should be dependent on how many points you put in the skill, not where you are on the scale.
5) stats are all over the place. Charisma is amazing, but beauty barely gives you anything. Only very low beauty can make some NPCs hate you too much to talk to you. But with acceptable beauty you can use charisma to get enough affection through talking.
6) fatigue can really suck. From dante knocking himself out because he heals you and gets hit once, to hits draining fatigue and causing a negative spiral as you can't fight leaving you open to more hits
7) the number of enemies that damage your weapons if you hit them, and weapons becoming irreparable if you dont switch them out fast enough.

There are some really cool features though. I love how becoming an expert in a skill sets you on some quest to learn from a master. I like how skills give you extra bonuses at certain thresholds. I love how flexible quests can be. Some of the companions have amazing moments taking the dark elf companion to the dwarven king has some amazing dialogue. It is one of those games that could really do with a remaster. Make it easy to run on modern systems, rebalance skills, fix the combat, maybe be cheeky and fill out the top part of the map with some scrapped content.

One thing that really confuses me is why the dark elf companion requires you to be evil. She wants to join because she questions the dark elf plan. Her whole arc is her realizing being a dark elf doesnt mean she has to be evil. When she talks to arronax he tells her "it's not the blood in your veins that makes you who you are, it is your heart".
 
Waffle Iron said:
The gameplay however, jesus christ:
1) real time is broken as hell, my modern PC actually slowed down because 2 skeleton archers would shoot so many arrows per second it formed a solid line of wood between me and them. Turn based however is slow and has its own problems.
2) magic feels far stronger than tech. I get the feeling magic should cost far more skill investment than tech, as tradeoff for not requiring resources. It also makes sense lore-wise. Magic takes a long time to master, while tech is a lot faster to use. Also the elephant gun should require special expensive ammo (or maybe craftable only) but in return should do massive damage. The RL rounds used nitroglycerine as propellant and could blow a hole in an elephant. The gun should blow an ogre into pieces
3) lockpicking and repairing pushing you towards tech. If you want to play a cat burglar thief that uses magic items to enhance his thievery, it sucks to see your magic gear lose potency when you put your points in lockpicking. Same with a magic knight wanting to keep his own armor healthy. How does magical weapon forging even work if repair pushes you towards tech?
4) tech/magic being a single bar that hurts hybrids. Spell strength should be dependent on how many points you put in the skill, not where you are on the scale.
5) stats are all over the place. Charisma is amazing, but beauty barely gives you anything. Only very low beauty can make some NPCs hate you too much to talk to you. But with acceptable beauty you can use charisma to get enough affection through talking.
6) fatigue can really suck. From dante knocking himself out because he heals you and gets hit once, to hits draining fatigue and causing a negative spiral as you can't fight leaving you open to more hits
7) the number of enemies that damage your weapons if you hit them, and weapons becoming irreparable if you dont switch them out fast enough
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The game rather infamously never had a second balance pass and was shipped with really wonky, barely tested mechanics. This is why I want a sequel, or dare I say even a remaster(even if these tend to break more things than they fix), so we can see how a well balanced system like this would look. I'm not in love with the gameplay itself either, I think it's a necessary evil and a hybrid of the past/present(as of 2001) mechanics CRPGs like this tended to have. Arcanum tries to have it's cake and eat it too, trying to be a real time RPG but also a turn based one, Fallout Tactics did that much better and it came out the same year. With today's technology, we could see something much better.
 
30+GameOvers said:
The game rather infamously never had a second balance pass and was shipped with really wonky, barely tested mechanics. This is why I want a sequel, or dare I say even a remaster(even if these tend to break more things than they fix), so we can see how a well balanced system like this would look. I'm not in love with the gameplay itself either, I think it's a necessary evil and a hybrid of the past/present(as of 2001) mechanics CRPGs like this tended to have. Arcanum tries to have it's cake and eat it too, trying to be a real time RPG but also a turn based one, Fallout Tactics did that much better and it came out the same year. With today's technology, we could see something much better.
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Yes, I listened to some of the tim cain videos about it. But it doesn't address my core issue, namely that spellpower is dependent on your magical aptitude. This kills hybrid builds, since you can never cast powerful spells no matter how much you invest. I think a hybrid should be limited by being able to pick fewer specializations (which already happens because you spread points) not making the skills you pick weaker.
Tim also said the real time combat is only in because sierra demanded multiplayer, and they didnt want turnbased in a multiplayer game. Culling MP and RT would be the obvious solution. Still I like RT since it lets you finish fights quickly, just don't use it to break the game in half with Harm or a bow.
The "balance pass" Tim was most concerned about was making later skills in a tree more expensive. So the first is 1, then 2, then 3, etc. I don't think that's a good idea since it makes builds really tight. I guess if you are going to play over and over, having to pick 2 or 3 skills and go with them would be cool? But for most it would feel too limiting, and niche skills like repair would never get picked. I think the best strategy then would be to just pick a bunch of 1 point skills from different trees, maybe invest a little extra for second or third tier skills that are really strong. I would think that it takes a bit more to make it really deliver on its promise.

I don't think a remake would be too bad if they can convince the original 3 from troika to get together. They really love the game and don't seem to be infected by the george lucas disease. They're all still alive and active, the only problem would be the suits being willing to give them the time and space to go back to arcanum. Considering how poorly the game did, I have little hope.
 
It's clunky but I love the gameplay. Tech all the way. Me and my army of spiders gonna rip every gnome a new one.
 
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