Bought Arcanum, Need Help

W

wyatt

It Wandered In From the Wastes
Hey Guys,

After lurking, and searching all posts in the "general gaming forum" to read about other games you guys like besides Fallout, I saw enough good stuff said about Arcanum so I went ahead and got it, CD version with manual. I am going on a 5 week business trip and needed something to do!

However, I can't find a good fan site like NMA for Arcanum, I am needing to download all the patches, and I also want to DL any fan fixes or other stuff to make the game more enjoyable, I plan on playing a teck first time through.

Anyway, so if you guys have any links, thoughts on playing the game the first time through or other advice I would appreciate it!
 
Ah, Terra Arcanum, damn fine bunch of people. And yes: the last active site, although you will find pretty good walkthroughs on the internet here and there.

<sighs>

Congratulations, by the way, on buying what is - without a single doubt - the best RPG ever made: Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura. A gem. A true gem. And a gem that didn't get fucked up by a inferior sequel, which was the case with Fallout as we all know. Ah well, enjoy it, cherish it, not many people have the pleasure to taste genius in its purest form.
 
alec said:
Ah, Terra Arcanum, damn fine bunch of people. And yes: the last active site, although you will find pretty good walkthroughs on the internet here and there.
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None of which was nearly complete last time I checked. Why don't people write complete walkthroughs?

Arcanum is OK I suppose.
 
Ahh arcanum. In my opinion, slightly better than fallout. Enjoy your first play through, it is truelly a great game. You should check out the mod section of Terra Arcanum. I reccomend the cargo hold mod. Having your own space on a ship is always nice.
 
Thanks for the help guys, got it installed, wouldn't play, but after some patching it is now working, however, the interface, what I see when not on a screen seams messed up. It shows just to vertical bars to the right, not what it looks like in screenshots and the manual with the buttons to push for prowl and attack. Does anyone have any idea what I am talking about or have seen this problem, is there a hotkey I need to push, or is it a patch issue?

Thanks guys
 
Newb move, was playing in Fullscreen, and that takes away your interface, makes it smaller, gahhhh. Oh well, just started with my dwarve, teck, gun, throwing, should be fun.
 
throwing aint worth it imo. besides, grenades are VERY expensive & you're probably better off selling them.

the fast track to easy peasy combat with a technological character is:
1) go electro + basic smithing (the sword & the rings are pretty unbalanced, especially early in the game)
2) go smith + basic chem -or was it expl?- (gives you the pyro axe thingy (schematic avail at random in tarrant), the most imbalanced technological item ingame as far as i'm concerned)
3) go gunsmith + random

with a basic herb skill, you'll be able to make shitload of healing & fatigue potions too. the herbs are very common in arcanum, so you might want to get those as well.

for the magical side of things (if you replay it later), be sure to get teleport (the tree leading to it has unlocking cantrip & such, which is very useful indeed) and the electrical tree (shield, jolt,lb, and at the end, disintegrate, which does just what it says: *bam* *zap* enemy gone. the only problem with that is that everything is gone -> no loot of the NPC, but it's really the easiest way to kill something (except the endbosses)).
White necromancy can be quite useful as well, especially the resurrect spell. Dark necromancy (the harm spell does nice damage per mana once you get higher magical rating) has quite a nice evil touch to it , makes you able to talk with people that are dead (pulling their soul back into this world, which appearantly causes them a great deal of pain). Divine magic is also useful, saving you a great deal of gold when identifying stuff (and it allows to sense if a person is evil or not & what skills they have).

funny thing is that the easiest mage build ever, is a rare half ogre birth. immagine a 2 meter wall of meat wielding a big 2h sword casting magical spells. i assure you that that hurts.

if you make it later into the game with a mage character, do bring lots of mana potions, or your downtime will be quite high.

and as a last tip: do read the manual. there are a lot of things that are hard to figure out simply by playing. the benefits of the apprentise/expert/master skills for instance. or the benefits of hitting a stat up to 20. DX 20 = imba speed, ST 20 = damage x 2, WP 20 = resist all WP based spells and so on & so forth.
 
SimpleMinded said:
Throwing isn't too bad. Molotov Cocktails are pretty handy, cheap to make and you can throw about infinity in one turn.
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the electro sword thing + 2 rings also usually means infinite swings

or the axe, heh, maybe requires like 2-3 hits to pulverise pretty much anything.

and guns? well, it's true they're not that overpowered as some other weapons are.

magic chars that want an imba 2h sword just can fate+pickpocket the chicks sword from dernholm.
 
I tried it and was appalled by the graphics, F1 looked better! I normally don't care about graphics, but having something that looks worse than a game released 2 years ago is amazing..
 
nael said:
I tried it and was appalled by the graphics, F1 looked better!
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Not really, when Arcanum has plenty more objects, better resolution, and has more detail than Fallout. The limitation of Fallout's art becomes even more obvious with Fallout 2, where objects were often taken and placed without much sense, and probably resembled a Haris map the first time through before it hit a design revision.

I normally don't care about graphics, but having something that looks worse than a game released 2 years ago is amazing..
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Uh....Fallout was released in 1997, Arcanum in its Victorian theme (important to pay attention to this part) was released in 2001.

Fallout: POS was released about 2 years ago, and if THAT is what you meant by "Fallout", just leave and forget you ever found this site.
 
He probably means "2 years before Arcanum" (which is also incorrect).

As far as visuals go, I liked the new resolution in Arcanum (less annoying pixel hunt), even if detail on objects and characters wasn't higher than in Fallout. I found the interface atrocious compared to Fallout's, however.
 
Ratty said:
He probably means "2 years before Arcanum" (which is also incorrect).
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Probably not, given the "kewlzors particle effects" and the dreaded THONG!

As far as visuals go, I liked the new resolution in Arcanum (less annoying pixel hunt), even if detail on objects and characters wasn't higher than in Fallout.
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I disagree. Most places in Fallout are a few furniture items thrown around a room, whereas Arcanum has a higher number of objects to give the world more detail, as I've shown in these screens. In addition, the detail given to those objects is also much higher than those in Fallout.

I found the interface atrocious compared to Fallout's, owever.
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That I will definitely agree with.
 
Arcanum's graphics are a significant improvement when it comes to details & effects imo.

and yes, the UI is borked :)
 
the way i played it when i had was i never used guns but the swords get crazy strong when you make a good one or you can jack some lady's i don't her name.and getting drunk is always fun.just watch out because you'll find yourself bored in playing too much of it at once.it's best to play over a long peiod of time so you still like it.i sold mine because i played it for a short time and got bored with it.a big mistake.
 
capitals are overrated. however a space after a full stop is kinda nice, ya know...
 
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