Duck and Cover

Jon, don't forget to live out your dream as a beautiful character.

When I played my character's beauty went down after an enemy's hit and was red from then on. Can that be cured/the beauty be restored and if so by what means?

use the heal skill, have virgil heal you (with first aid kits) or pay a doc to heal you.

Were there no uncurable scars/deformations?

Urizen wrote:use the heal skill, have virgil heal you (with first aid kits) or pay a doc to heal you.

I did, I even tried that healer in the first city, but it stayed red nonetheless

I quit at the 2nd city anyway, one seems to need incredible memory or whatever to know where what is, still most of the city is useless utter ugly shit.

Also my characters kind of stayed low lvl since there were no quests or nothing that I could kill, instead lvl20+ enemies and so on

St. Toxic wrote:uncurable scars/deformations?

I recall once running a character of an excessively unappealing countenance, only to suffer removal of face by shotgun, something like that, may have been extensive burns. The odds ! Had not spent, would not spend points upon heal, had gleefully bludgeoned Virgil (and many others, of course) for the crime of being intolerable, and with my now augmented looks, I found myself the proud recipient of a complimentary upgrade from universal loathing to a wonderful shun/murder policy, enacted by the entirety of Arcanum. Hyperbolic superficiality.

Despite the lack of plot progression, for a while it was rather fun.

Thor Kaufman wrote:stayed red

May be wrong, however I recall that certain NPC healers command different levels of ability. Might have been a bug.

Thor Kaufman wrote:incredible memory

Tag signs and addresses, names and numbers. Then, the map will mimic memory. The map, and journal especially, a rather clumsy system. Yes.

Thor Kaufman wrote:no quests

There are no words. No words.

Blargh is wise. Read what he says.

As for mods, there's an utility 'patch' that I find quite interesting, but that I have never actually used yet. Something about editing your character and followers, here. Troika actually made some custom mods worth trying, I think. If you speak French, you can find quite a few mods in that language. Never tried them though.

Go for a tech guy. Magic's boring and ungratifying. Thieving-techky type of character. I'd have no followers, they're shvartze and useless.

As a side note, you might be interested by this. It's well written and it'll take all you desires to play the game again away. It's soo true.

Hm. I remember I had a Powered Armor patch - because in normal game it simply doesn't work. IIRC I upped STR bonus it gives from 4 to 8 - because it's heavy as shit and 4 is not even enough to offset it's weight. Power armor as an exoskeleton shouldn't really "weight" anything.

Do you guys think its worth it to play a dumb and ugly character? Is it still fun or do people just not talk to you and attack u? I'm trying to think of a character I haven't done before. I think I played a mage type guy and then a gnome persuasion guy. I've never played a thief in an rpg cause they don't sound very fun, but I dunno.

Magic is overpowered but boring. Tech is underpowered, but sorta fun since you get to run around collecting stuff. However, I think it's just to play a straight-up talking/thief type without bothering with any of the tech schools. I beat arcanum all the way through without worrying about armor (my character just wore a smoking jacket all the time) and a featherweight axe; beng a thief pretty much eliminates the need for hack'n'slash tools. If you're a backstab master and a prowling master, you can pretty much kill anything in one blow in combat. If you're fighting multiple enemies you can then prowl in the middle of combat and they'll lose sight of you, so you can repeat this handy process. It was pretty darn fun.

That sounds like the best route for me as well... so for that type of character (that atoga talks about), I guess I want to raise persuade, charisma, intelligence and dexterity? and the thieving skills? what is the max int or cha i should have to get all the dialogue options? any particular priorities I should put on these, since I only get one point per level and dont like missing out on dialogue options/solutions...

atoga wrote:Magic is overpowered but boring. Tech is underpowered

wrong. as a magic user, you can summon elementals and stuff, but they disappear after a while, and constantly drain your mana. with tech, you can make automatons that stay with you constantly. i'm at level 30 right now, and i have 7 followers, robots included.
EDIT: make that 8 followers. forgot about the dog

Hm, to prowl away from combat, didn't you need to be a Master?

Urizen - You're doing it wrong. Disintegration = Instant death to *anything* in the game. Not to mention other kickass spells.

POOPERSCOOPER wrote:Do you guys think its worth it to play a dumb and ugly character?

Unintelligent characters tend to miss out on quests. Most quests. The advantage is (shockingly ?) similar to Fallout - sometimes amusing dialogue. The journal entries also tend toward the daft. Ugly characters will also suffer on quests, unless they have sufficient intelligence/charisma to compensate for the ignorant and the intolerant. Again, the potential for vaguely witty banter abounds. The physically repugnant also receive the shaft economically, even with haggling. Then again, rampant theft is ever a simple, common alternative. The world of Arcanum is a cruel place. Cruel, naturally, being synonymous with hilarious.

A GOAT wrote:tech is underpowered

Comparatively and emphasised by the almost compulsory nature of combat. Hardly meaningful. Knock out gas, hallucination and paralysis grenades, tranquiliser rifle/looking glass rifle/pyrotechnic bow (because poison is awful) or balanced sword/fine steel dagger (with suitable levels of prowl and backstab) ? A Nasty, Nasty halfling/whomever. The lethal grenades would also be both inexpensive and functionally fantastic if they weren't quite so crippling of character.

Also, 'running around collecting stuff' is, understandably, precariously walking upon the coin of fun/tedium.

That written, a slight variation, the dual phobic gentleman thief was a concept I derived much laughter from. Quite refreshing.

Mr. Teatime wrote:priorities

If you intend to collect and keep liabilities, emphasise intelligence and charisma first. They'll handle the violence well enough. If solo, a less specialised approach will probably be necessary. Could also employ a background like charlatan's protégé, sickly, miracle operation or, if human, escaped lunatic. Sadly no dialogue quirks to that one. Alas, aside from governing persuasion limitations, charisma is a fairly unimpressive statistic.

Urizen wrote:disappear after a while

The reflection shield exploit works upon any non-self magic effect. Suffice it to say, permanent follower buffs, summoned fodder and dominated NPCs/monsters (which technologists can replicate with a certain schematic, not that such redeems therapeutics AT ALL). Mana maintenance a non issue. Arguably another reason to avoid magic.

Personally, I found automatons awful. Too slow, too cumbersome. Combat too easy to warrant the cost.

Blargh wrote:The reflection shield exploit works upon any non-self magic effect. Suffice it to say, permanent follower buffs, summoned fodder and dominated NPCs/monsters (which technologists can replicate with a certain schematic, not that such redeems therapeutics AT ALL). Mana maintenance a non issue. Arguably another reason to avoid magic.

sure, if you want to cheat\exploit bugs. if not, tech is not underpowered.

Koki wrote: Urizen - You're doing it wrong. Disintegration = Instant death to *anything* in the game. Not to mention other kickass spells.

sure, if you don't care about loot.

I am playing arcanum right now and after you reach lvl 40+ Virgil gets two lights that resemble will-of-the-wisps (sort of) that follow him. I have looked at his stats - thinking it was some sort of spell - but there is no explanation anywhere.


See those? Behind Virgil. Anyone know what that is?



Some of the dialog is quite funny.

Oops, forgot to turn of save as b/w-option...

Was anybody able to become both a dodge master AND a melee master? I got the quest from Adkin Chambers, went to the melee master guy and did his quest, and then killed him. Returned to Adkin to tell him his wench was back, but there was no dialogue option for dodge mastery training.

I don't know about dodge mastery and melee mastery, but there's an interesting bug at the wizard city that allows you to become a master of every single school, if you really want to.

atoga wrote:Was anybody able to become both a dodge master AND a melee master? I got the quest from Adkin Chambers, went to the melee master guy and did his quest, and then killed him. Returned to Adkin to tell him his wench was back, but there was no dialogue option for dodge mastery training.

That's odd. I just beat the game with a half ogre, master of melee, dodge, and persuasion. Don't know what you did wrong... Did you talk to the wench about killing Garrick when you were in the woods saving her? And gave Adkin the magic potion so he could see again?

ach so. after reading the intresting points of arcanum. finally, torrent & install.
now. suggest single attributes (race,yadaya,bengobeno, etcetc) ill give to the char. random DaC vomitmaster building up momentum. danke.