Arcanum Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Define "bounce off" and maybe we can answer your question. (I mean, I can see you hitting a brick wall in the form of the bridge bandits, but unless you really screwed up character creation nothing else by that point should be a major challenge.)

I don't find it difficult— or not unexpectedly so, I usually play characters weighted toward conversation skills— I've just had trouble finding a hook in the generic fantasy of the first town. Should I just be blowing past that?

Maybe I'm answering my own question and I just need to get to this game's equivalent of Junktown or the Den.

edited 6th Jan '18 2:52:15 PM by Unsung

The game is unbalanced as fuck so it's not really your fault and there's plenty of flaws in it too that makes it harder to play than Fallout.

It's really more a game which works well with its ideas versus its combat.

I always make myself a Wizard, get Disintegrate, and go nuts. It's the Uberbuild.

When I played this, I went the tech route. Balanced Sword just kills things so fast. You'll also want high Charisma if you want a big party. The game balance is crap but the game should be played for that one sidequest alone.

Yeah you pretty much came up with the answer by yourself. The game really opens up once you get to the first large city and the quality of distractions rises as well. So if the mechanics aren't what's holding you back, you just probably need to push a bit further to the big hub where the fun side missions are.

@Unsung: Also, you can't play a pure talker in this game. At the very least, you're going to want to be able to contribute in combat somehow in the first couple of areas. Charisma is an adjunct to your build rather than a build in itself. Persuasion is vital for one major ending and is useful in (and for bypassing) several quests, and charisma is useful for getting an oversized party. But it's better to interleave it with some kind of combat skill or magic.

For your first game, I advise going melee/diplomacy, and leave magic or tech until you've maxed dex, str and cha. This isn't "the optimal build", but it's a strong one and an excellent way to learn the game.

And yeah, Tarant is where you have access to the plot and the game starts getting its wings. It's still a messy, unbalanced trainwreck of a game, but who cares - it's a hell of a lot of fun.

@Charles Phipps: Disintegrate alone is an energy hog, and it's not a good idea to rush the tree for it (it'll make your early game hell). If you're a wizard, there's good reasons to get a varied power mix, even if Disintegrate and a fifteen minute workday take care of the heavy, lootless enemies like ore golems.

I admit, my greatest regret is the game's darkest and most interesting plotline of the fact the gnomes were behind a horrific mass kidnapping/breeding experiment got utterly dropped.

That either needed to be:

• Resolved with fire
• The revelation it was all a "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" plot to frame gnomes.

edited 8th Jan '18 7:15:28 AM by CharlesPhipps

I agree - the indirect resolution that's possible (Donn Throgg) isn't satisfying. If I can massacre Tarant, I should certainly be able to massacre the Industrial Council.

Well, I can say that after many years of unsuccessful attempts, I have finally managed to beat Arcanum - but only because I chose to stick strictly to the main quest and use a fanmade cheat to give myself unlimited character points, just so I could at least know what the hell the story of the game is.

I'm going to be honest. I was never fond of Arcanum, at least in its execution. I loved the concept of having a game with both magic and guns coexisting together, and I found it interesting that in this universe they are mutually exclusive. However, I found that the game has one very specific problem that always resulted in me giving up shortly after trying to get into it: the game seems to be actively discouraging exploration. For several reasons.

Problem number one: I don't know exactly what it is, but the game fails to interest me in speaking to all NPCs I meet, which I think might be caused by two things: firstly, I don't know the names of NPCs until I speak to them and specifically ask for their name. While it makes sense, it also means that I am unable to tell actually interesting NPCs apart from just NPCs with generic dialogue at first glance, and since all of them open a dialogue tree when spoken to (unlike Fallout, where most generic NPCs just show a single comment without opening a dialogue tree), this doesn't exactly make me willing to go through the effort of checking each and every one of them. Secondly, most NPCs have just generic things to say that they seem to draw from the same pool, which further discourages me from trying to speak to them.

Problem number two: the ridiculously low level cap. I mean, in my playthrough where I did NOTHING ELSE but go straight after the main quest, I still managed to achieve level 40+. Out of 50. And maybe that's just me, but when a game stops rewarding me with XP for doing quests and killing monsters, then I lose any interest in doing anything other than just making a beeline straight for the game's ending.

Some other problems include confusing skill trees, not knowing what to invest in and how to make an efficient build, and the fact that the technologist path sucks unless you know exactly what you're doing. It also doesn't help that the game has this ridiculously melancholic soundtrack, which doesn't exactly produce happy thoughts while playing the game. Or the fact that the game has a really generic look to it.

I will say that the story of the game is interesting once you get to know it to full extent, and I really like the reveal of the Big Bad, so I can at least say that me powerhousing through the main quest was worth it at least for that.

Also, one of the biggest highlights of my playthrough was that my female elf character managed to get away scot-free from revealing themselves to the leader of the dark elves via lesbian sex.

edited 8th Feb '18 8:33:32 AM by ZuTheSkunk

Yeah, Arcanum is one of those games where it's not really that shameful to outright activate godmode due to how bullshit the mechanics get after a while.