Arcanum Arcanum Unofficial patch 2.0 released! (UPDATE)

[Ismaul]

Arcanum is great lore + shitty gameplay, similar to Witcher 1. Always will be a flawed gem that could've been, never will be truly great.

Arcanum and The Witcher 1 are great. Way better than anything Bioware has farted.

 

[Darth Canoli]

The easier solution is probably to just have a combat pausing feature and "make it RTwP", standardize movement speeds and put a cap on how quickly certain actions (firing a bow) can be repeated in real-time. While a pure turn-based game with better combat and systems would obviously be preferable I think a polished RTwP game out of Arcanum is probably easier to achieve. Right now neither turn-based or real-time modes in Arcanum provide any satisfying or enjoyable gameplay, it's better to just stick it on easy mode and blitz through it in real-time because the combat is such a chore that it may as well be over quicker.

The Turn-based mode isn't that bad, you can cheese it if you want or you can just have fun trying to use non OP different weapons when you replay it and giving different weapons to each followers.
I'm taking the actual system over any RT or RTwP "enhanced remaster overhaul edition".
Everyone but you knows it'd just be a pile of shit.

Arcanum is great lore + shitty gameplay, similar to Witcher 1. Always will be a flawed gem that could've been, never will be truly great.

Where did your tags go?
Comparing witcher to Arcanum, you just deserve them all with just one sentence.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Combat's biggest issue is that skills are based on stats. Nothing more, nothing less. Because of that, you have enemies which are melee masters with a SHIT TON of action points, because DX is the melee skill and ALSO the action point controller.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Besides combat, traps + pathfinding is one of the worst combo evr made and worse, they used it against the player in the mines.
When there isn't any alternate path, for example and you you click on a usable object like a chest, your character is getting there no matter what so if he doesn't have any trap free pathway, he's getting there anyway triggering traps he discovered.

And dungeon design goes from mediocre to bad.

Also, past the mountains, the game feels like a cheap mod/DLC.

Still, Tarant is one of the best cities ever made, content and atmosphere wise.
And a lot of cities/ villages are quite well made too, starting with the first one (content wise because aside from that, it's nothing special)

Combat's biggest issue is that skills are based on stats. Nothing more, nothing less. Because of that, you have enemies which are melee masters with a SHIT TON of action points, because DX is the melee skill and ALSO the action point controller.

Sure, this and probably a too high AP limit.

 

[Brancaleone]

Combat's biggest issue is that skills are based on stats. Nothing more, nothing less. Because of that, you have enemies which are melee masters with a SHIT TON of action points, because DX is the melee skill and ALSO the action point controller.

DX influences action points, AC and the possibility to raise melee, bow, throwing, dodge, and all of the thieving skills, so it's even worse than that.

Still, combat could be fun if extremely unbalanced if there was some kind of AI. Otherwise, even if every stat / item / etc. is balanced to perfection, enemies would still be hp bags with auto-attack. No spells (apart from a few random occurrences typically in the dumbest possible fashion), none of the truckload of items (potions, scrolls, grenades, whatever) which the games provides actually being used, no skills, nothing.
For example, you'd confront the Schuylers (apparently very powerful necromancers, judging from the army of zombies and undead dwarves they have around) and still have them ganging up on you in order to punch your lights out (but in a very balanced way).

So, does anybody have some dirty stuff on David Wallace so we can blackmail him into making Steamworks and Magic Obscura Stratagems?

 

[lukaszek]

it doesnt work like that. I never made fresh post with such content

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Arcanum is love.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Is Arcanum engine this hard to fix? There should be at least more variety in enemy attacks and inventory, and combat already would be more interesting. I don't believe that you can't change that; I saw way more radical things done to Fallout engine, and I reckon these two engines are similar in the ease of modding

 

[Acrux]

Drog was supposedly ready to release the newest update that had enemies using more spells and special attacks a year ago. But apparently due to his surgery/illness/Droginess (upset with someone on Discord) he hasn't released it.

 

[lukaszek]

upset with someone on Discord

wasnt it about someone calling him cummer or something like that?

 

[Jvegi]

The last time I was playing Arcanum I had no issue with the combat.

Spam harm and focus on the good stuff. It's a shame, but it works.

 

[agris]

I hope that drog is dead.

you still aren't excidium

 

[Acrux]

I'm excidium.
Proof:
felicia day have ratface

Hey, buddy, cool it with the anti-semitism

 

[Acrux]

Enemy XP was lowered by about 20%. If you typically use a party, you end up being about the same or slightly higher than you would have with xp per hit.

 

[Slimu]

What is the best way to play Arcanum right now, Drog's mod or Arcanum Multiverse Edition? I want an experience as bug-free as possible, but without any new content which wasn't there in the first place, and also without heavy changes to mechanics.

 

[Black]

Always bet on Drog.

 

[Slimu]

Always bet on Drog.

This is the closest that I can get to an experience similar to ToEE with Temple+ ?

 

[GloomFrost]

Always bet on Drog.

This is the closest that I can get to an experience similar to ToEE with Temple+ ?

Yes. Unofficial Arcanum Patch is the closest thing you can get to vanilla Arcanum bug free experience. Don't hesitate.

 

[Thor Kaufman]

Is there a way to use Virgil Debug's teleportation spell without having 18WP yourself, like in the original?

 

[Acrux]

If you install the debug component, then wearing Gilbert Bates's ring and talking to Virgil brings up the debug commands (plus some new ones like an item spawner).

 

[Thor Kaufman]

If you install the debug component, then wearing Gilbert Bates's ring and talking to Virgil brings up the debug commands (plus some new ones like an item spawner).

Thanks. I know. My problem is that I get the "you ran out of concentration" thing if I don't have 18 WP that is usually required for a lvl5 spell.
In the original virgil debug you didn't need to have 18 wp yourself iirc.

edit: nevermind it's working now, I guess it was because when I first tried it I didn't finish the shrouded hills bandits, yet?

 

[Black]

 

[fantadomat]

The worst part of the game is the low amount of endings,and that the game doesn't display all of them but just a few.

 

[fantadomat]

Which part is the fake news ? The game have a lot less ending than quests and actions that matter. For example there is no ending slider for convincing the orks to riot in tarant,no end slides if you just everyone,no slides about the fall tarant if they go to two wars and lose,no slide for doing the treaty with cambria or what its name was,with all the lobbiest groups,there is plenty other actions that you could take but are missing from the ending. Also there should have been one where you kill all the jews gnomes.

 

[RIT_SKUA]

The worst part of the game is the low amount of endings,and that the game doesn't display all of them but just a few.

Yeah, I can kinda agree with that.

there is no ending slider for convincing the orks to riot in tarant

I was especially disappointed by that. Would have been cool to go full Worker's Revolution.

Also there should have been one where you kill all the jews gnomes.

I would argue that this made sense, since killing them all wouldn't have solved much, if anything, not even something as confined as the half-ogre conspiracy. It's like how even if one was to go and kill every piece of shit parasite on the Wall St. trading floor there would still be billions of people suffering for the evils they have helped wrought throughout the world; killing a bunch of plutocrats does very little to destroy the system they created, because the system isn't a closed one - it's self-sustaining and self-perpetuating, and can only be defeated with a complete and total systematic counteraction, of which guns and bullets only play a small part.