Duck and Cover

I bought Arcanum a few months ago along with Temple of Elemental Evil. Played Arcanum briefly, but because of my initial reaction to the combat system [where I had a gun that fired like a cap gun, and missed frequently at point blank range] I gave it up to play ToEE. It's been a few months and since I hear Acranum's pretty good and I have the free time, I figured I'd take another crack at it.

I'm sure a portion of my initial disillusionment is due to the fact that I created a poor character. So I've been wondering what's the ideal starting character? I'm more interested in a tech-based character than I am a magic one, and if you guys can provide specific numbers for what I should set my stats to and what to specialize my character in, it would be much appreciated.

Agreed ?

It's probably not your fault, tech just sucks in Arcanum. I tried to play a tech dwarf first too, but then gave up because he was so shitty and all my money went to bullets. My magic whore on the other hand was filthy rich buying mansions and shit. Can't give you any advice on creating a good character as it's been ages since I played it, sorry. Try www.terra-arcanum.com , there's a character creation guide and all kinds of nifty stuff.

The Ozrat has spoken

On my first play through I tried to be a scientist type of dude, but I kept dying at the first ore golem at the black mountain clan bit.

I then started again with a half-ogre and chose the 'Ran away with the circus' background. If you just buy the iron dagger or something at the start, you can easily get through the first bit. I killed everything, opened the magic chest and got a few cool items (a magic sword and some small armour). If you go into the cave at the top corner you can do a quest so before you come to the first town you're at level 3?

Another nice thing about choosing a melee guy is that you advance levels by killing stuff. With a melee guy you'll be killing stuff pretty quickly, so you advance pretty fast. I was level 50 3/4 into the game. Before that I was getting critical hits almost every time and combat was over in a few rounds.

Tech is probably the toughest/weakest path to follow as you have to carry round a lot of trinkets and most of the time the items you build are shitty. I managed to do pretty well with a smart, charismatic guy who fired a gun but there's a few dungeons in the game you have to do so it gets pretty trixy.

All I can say is... Sexy siggie Gimp.

Why does your avatar have a cock on it's head?

I think its a ass crack?

Play a circus escapee half-ogre who doesn't care about magic or tech. That way you can't go wrong, and you don't waste your points on boring spells or crappy schematics.

I'm sick of people bitching about tech. Its not tech that sucks, its guns. If you want to good tech try smithy, mechanical, and therapeutics for a strong melee/tech build. Brain Builder and Mind Marvel can be especially helpfull if you have a little more brawn than brain.

A pure melee character will have a few (about 15) char. points to spend by the end of the game if you don't increase throwing (just str, dex, agi, melee, dodge)

I'd tag some tech skills, just not any you need to tag other skills with mebbe

Megatron wrote:Why does your avatar have a cock on it's head?

Fallout Junkie wrote:I think its a ass crack?

Achtung, SS Totenkopf!

You're kidding.

The reason I wanted to buy the game was the cool tech.
Bummer.

From my experiance the best type of charater I played was half or full elf, point mostly to agility and strength and throwing skill. Use boomerangs things like that. The range is nice, the speed is nice, and the accuracy is nice as well. Works well only in turnbased though.

Gimp Mask wrote:The Ozrat has spoken

No no no nonono.

It's:

The Ozrat Approves!


...

Although that doesn't really fit into this context because nothing is really being approved here...

So how about:

Said The Ozrat!


________________________________________

So is Arcanum a good game? I've always been tempted to buy it since it looked like it would be somewhat like Fallout. I saw the PC Gamer demo a few years back, but it was buggy as hell so I never really got into it.

Should I buy it? If so, are there any brainiac rodent characters I could make?

i'm givin you the best of both worlds, the ozrat AND killa-killa in the same sentence!

yes, Arcanum is a good game and worth buying.

Y'know, now that I reflect upon it all, your way of saying it is better...

Perhaps:

The Ozrat has spoken!


The Ozrat has spoken!


The Ozrat has spoken!


Or just:

The Ozrat has spoken!


Discuss.

Oh, and if I see Arcanum any time soon I'll be sure to pick it up since I'm so intrigued now.

Hu-ah, after reading this thread I want to try Arcanum again. I got like 10 minutes into it before.

it's all good rat boy.
oh and I can understand SuperH as the beginning was pretty shitty, but once you get to the first city it gets better.

I did not like the crash site, but the game picked up from Shrouded Hills. I wished more cities were in the game, but I suppose I can't complain. It was a good game.

My first character was a simple one. A pure melee-dodge Ogre, with high strength and dexterity. I also raised his charisma, because I wanted to have more party members.

CloudNineGT wrote:I'm sick of people bitching about tech. Its not tech that sucks, its guns. If you want to good tech try smithy, mechanical, and therapeutics for a strong melee/tech build. Brain Builder and Mind Marvel can be especially helpfull if you have a little more brawn than brain.

That worked for me! Leave the whole guns/firearms thing behing and go melee/smith/mech so you can build a nice fireaxe (IIRC) which will deal with most enemies PDQ.

Too bad the lever-action Clarington was too sexy to be ignored. I just HAD to get it, even though I had no gunslingers in my party