/vr/ - Retro Games

There are a lot of viable choices. For a 1st playthrough I suggest you play a mage/fighter hybrid with maxed str, dex and all temporal spells. Don't take teleportation theres a lot to explore. You could also skill persuasion altough it makes the game easier and you could miss out some cool quests. Your followers should be at least virgil and magnus because they are the most interesting ones.

>>4410085
A couple cheesy characters you could make are either a mage or a magical warrior. For mage you'll want that 1st(2nd?) level necromancy spell that just eats health, for warrior pick the barbarian background for that pretty sweet starting armour. For either character you'll want loads of dex and con. I won't give exact stat details because frankly it's been years and I can't remember. You're a smart guy, you'll figure shit out.
This might get a little spoilery so
First bit is a mite obvious; you'll wanna go full murderhobo mode from the first step you take off the blimp. Search each and every corner of the map for wolves and those horrible little gremlins and all the shit you might be able to sell. You might have to make two trips later on, or just prioritize inventory based on value, depending on your strength. The little daggers the blue gremlin guys drop will be your bread and butter until the first proper town and for a while in there as well. Maybe you don't need me to tell you this, but basically keep this attitude going for at least a while.
Once you're in the first town you can start doing some cheesy shit. You should have an OK dex by now, maybe a little lockpicking. The chest in the general goods shop of the foppish merchant dude is fairly easy to pick open. I think you can also just try and pilfer the key off him while he sleeps as well. You can steal his shit, sell it back to him, steal it again and wait for a while for his gold to regenerate. You may want to spend even a couple weeks doing this.
In town there's a gypsy who sells magic items and potions. If mage you'll wanna use the money you made to stock up on pots here. She also sometimes sells a "cursed" helmet. It looks a bit like the barbarian horned helm and it's pretty good headgear. It increases your magical affinity and lowers your alignment permanently. It does this every time you put it on, so buy it when you can and just keep putting it on your head repeatedlycont

>>4410914
-inued
until you reach max magicality. Having max magic is kind of a big boost in power early on. You'll also go full evil. Like over the -100 on the meter. I don't give a shit, but if you do just do good deeds and think of this as the redemption story of fantasy Adolf Wayne Gacy. You're not gonna be able to take the train now, but who gives a shit.
Now as you're playing you bump into a workshop. This is another rich source of cheese. If you don't find it, just hoof it to Blackroot and find a Mrs. Cameron. She should live somewhere south of town. She'll give you a quest and directions. On the same map as the workshop there's a magic portal that constantly poops out hell monsters. Now a word of warning: the monsters can be pretty tough and it's not hard to get overwhelmed. This is the place you've been preparing for with your OCD wolf holocaust. You can keep killing the monsters for exp for ages and ages. I can't remember if they run out ever. Once you feel done, shut the portal up. There should be a scroll & ghostbusters trap in the workshop to do that.
You'll likely run out of kit before you run out of monsters. As a mage stock the fuck up on potions. As a warrior stock up on durable gear. Like really just leave all your good shit in a safe place somewhere else and go in with one of those janky magic armours you get from evil orcs and more than one spare weapon. There's a couple magic axes that are really good for this.
Now feel free to continue your game as a god made flesh.
If you still feel like you need to overlevel there's a place called the Forbidden Pit that spawns more enemies if you just wait a day or so there.

I hope that helps. It's a bummer being a tech dude is comparatively underpowered. There's loads of really fun & funny tech weapons you can make and the idea of conquering a fantasy world of elves, orcs and fairies with rifle, grenade and power armour really appeals to me. Think of it as hardmode.

I could never get into it, the combat was terrible because I was hoping it'd be like Fallout 1 or 2 but the devs were forced to add awful real time crap and fucked it up.

Plus...bridge thieves, wtf.

>>4411959
Seriously? You're ten minutes in game and you're already criticizing it?

>>4410085
Magic is imba. Tech is just for roleplaying and finding koolaid schematics. Best minmax is probably an Elf fighter with some magic, or full mage and mostly casting harm once you've maxed out your magic affinity.

>>4411959

From what I read ,realtime combat is only good for gunslingers or ranged combat because some enemies are so slow in realtime, you can keep using hit and run tactics on them. But for turnbased, you're better off with melee weapons or like I said, max magic and spam harm.

http://www.terra-arcanum.com/forums/index.php?threads/whats-all-this-hype-with-harm.15143/

>>4410914
>>4410942
You just described the exact way I played this the first 2 times. After Liam's Workshop I was essentially playing as Neo

>>4411959
>not knowing what the options menu is
>where you can change the combat timing

How did you even get past installing the game?

Yeah op here, I went for the elf fighter-mage, doing much better thanks.

if you're new and dont know what build you want to try, try playing as pre-made characters, as they're quite balanced to be capable of finishing story in different styles. Horace (half elf) is magic thief-warrior type, Halfling guy is tech thief, while solomon doone is full mage, while gnome guy is tech gunslinger with full persuation. Dren (elf guy) uses bow and masters 4 magic disciplines (necromancy white, nature, air, water). Dwarf guy is tech gunslinger who maxes strength, and gunsmithing, electrical and mechanical disciplines. half orc is classical warrior with archery. like i said, pre characters get lot of bad rep, but they're kinda balanced.

The easiest build in Arcanum is the level 1 necromancer spell Harm and as much stamina as you can get, then just spam it.

Arcanum isn't a game you need to min-max all that much so feel free to experiment. Guns are horribly weak so I'd stay away from that.

You could try a Throwing based build and use boomerangs and various molotovs and bombs.

For easy mode go magic beacuse it craps on tech. Seriously, it's not even close to a contest. Also, in first village take the half ogre drunk guy. He seems like an added fixture in the game, but aside for the dog, he's pretty much your strongest front line fighter in the game.

I'm really fond of Arcanum. It continues the Fallout tradition of changing all dialogue if you make your intelligence low enough. I love doing tard runs

>>4415152
>Guns are horribly weak so I'd stay away from that.
Maybe the starting guns, but once I crafted myself the Elephant Gun and later the Harpoon gun I was almost unstoppable. I played a gun using techno dwarf, I really find technology cooler than magic in Arcanum.

>>4415762
Vergil's lines in those playthroughs are the absolute best.

>>4416559
iirc there was actually a character generation option to make yourself autistic, so you could enjoy the mechanical perks of a high INT character while still speaking in tardese

>>4415694
>>4410914
>>4410942
I find tech playthrough to be more interesting.

And balanced (0+-5 affinity) is a hard but fun challenge as well since during it, magical/tech affinity of the areas actually makes difference in how things work. If you go full-on with certain affinity you are unlikely to notice this which removes this aspect from the game.

>>4415808
The main issue with techno dwarf is that your early game needs some balance in form of melee or some alternative form of fighting, unless I'm a shitter because I remember dying to the bandits in Shrouded Hills with just my regular ass gun.

Tech is actually superstrong in the right hands, but
1) requires more rummaging
2) it's better to segway into it from a Fighter or Diplomat build template, early pure tech is kinda weak