Arcanum Most overpowered builds in Arcanum?

[Ol' Willy]

Yes, this is the problem I didn't think of - I get 0% against highly magic enemies like mummies or golems, regardless of my weapon skill.

It's not unsolvable as I can just buff my teammates and let them deal with the shit but this is not much fun.

I guess I would have to skew it up towards higher technological aptitude. Would have to drop magic equipment though

 

[Snufkin]

Yes, this is the problem I didn't think of - I get 0% against highly magic enemies like mummies or golems, regardless of my weapon skill.

It's not unsolvable as I can just buff my teammates and let them deal with the shit but this is not much fun.

I guess I would have to skew it up towards higher technological aptitude. Would have to drop magic equipment though

Try using fine revolver, IT Has lower power tech complexity.

 

[Cael]

Or just go high tech and just use spells that do not require magic power (e.g., buff spells).

 

[Darth Canoli]

Overpowered builds in Arcanum...

Every single build.

/Thread.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Try using fine revolver, IT Has lower power tech complexity.

It doesn't matter, still zero. The problem is, I guess, that all guns are technological items and as such, magic neuters them with low tech aptitude of the user.

To clarify a little. Specs:
PER - obviously, for shooting. Already almost maxed out, with higher aptitude I will get twenty.
WP - for spells and fatigue. I will need 18 to max out certain schools.
INT - for crafting and more slots for sustained buffs.

I don't invest in HP or defense at all - glass cannon build. With my speed I can outrun any enemy and even have enough AP for shooting. If need arises, companions will soak the damage for me.

I switched back to fine revolver for now - slightly less damage and accuracy than rifles and shotguns, but more dakka. Damage is low but because I can make a dozen of shots per turn, it's fine. Better gun is needed ASAP.

I already started rerouting the build towards more tech aptitude. Eye gear, two charged rings - and with buffs my speed is around 33-35 - not bad at all.

The build will really shine once I get decent gun, Tempus Fugit and three sustained slots. Hasten + Congeal Time + Tempus Fugit =

 

[Ol' Willy]

Overpowered builds in Arcanum...

Every single build.

/Thread.

Try dwarven mage without dog

 

[Cael]

Overpowered builds in Arcanum...

Every single build.

/Thread.

Try dwarven mage without dog

Any mage with dagger of speed and the +Str and +Dex buffs is overpowered as I mentioned earlier in the thread. Double mana cost means nothing when you don't need mana to wreck things. The -1 Dex will sting, but it is not fatal to the build.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Another idea for a fun build - someone can beat me to it - is magick build that uses mostly hexed equipment.
For example:
- certain weapons and clothes cast random damaging spells during combat. Combo of Hellfire Medallion (Casts random Fireflash) + Axe of Dark Lightning (Random Bolt of Lightning) + Dweomer Shiled cast on yourself and companions - everyone around gets nuked except for you.
- Baneful Gauntlets have very interesting specs. DR +100, ER +100, FR +100, FR +100, PR -100, Poison and fatigue damage over time. If you can get around poison and fatigue damage (doable) you get some nice set of resistances. Obviously use only in combat.
- Mace of the Damned can randomly spawn three zombies - which will ignore you if you cast Sanctuary on yourself.

 

[jackofshadows]

If you can get around poison and fatigue damage (doable)

The easiest way is to raise your con up to 20 which gives immunity to poison although that's downright abuse.

 

[Ol' Willy]

If you can get around poison and fatigue damage (doable)

The easiest way is to raise your con up to 20 which gives immunity to poison although that's downright abuse.

This will also help with fatigue damage; also, as a mage, you will want to have high WP - even more fatigue reserves.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Try using fine revolver, IT Has lower power tech complexity.

It doesn't matter, still zero. The problem is, I guess, that all guns are technological items and as such, magic neuters them with low tech aptitude of the user.

To clarify a little. Specs:
PER - obviously, for shooting. Already almost maxed out, with higher aptitude I will get twenty.
WP - for spells and fatigue. I will need 18 to max out certain schools.
INT - for crafting and more slots for sustained buffs.

I don't invest in HP or defense at all - glass cannon build. With my speed I can outrun any enemy and even have enough AP for shooting. If need arises, companions will soak the damage for me.

I switched back to fine revolver for now - slightly less damage and accuracy than rifles and shotguns, but more dakka. Damage is low but because I can make a dozen of shots per turn, it's fine. Better gun is needed ASAP.

I already started rerouting the build towards more tech aptitude. Eye gear, two charged rings - and with buffs my speed is around 33-35 - not bad at all.

The build will really shine once I get decent gun, Tempus Fugit and three sustained slots. Hasten + Congeal Time + Tempus Fugit =

That stupid cartwheel man.... your center of mass is still in the same place! Love that movie but that's just silly.

 

[Absinthe]

Troll Offspring Halfling with Stun and Backstab can easily kill almost any creature in the game at level 1 using nothing but a dagger. After murdering Virgil and slaughtering all the wolves outside the crash site I usually make a beeline for the Ancient Maze to look for an Arcane Dagger.

With this build there is no need to manage Stamina or anything else, and no need for any extra party members. It's just murder, murder, murder.

The only thing that poses the slightest difficulty is stun-immune monsters, but there are very, very few of those. Even undead can be stunned in Arcanum.

Actually the biggest threat here is accidentally one-shotting yourself with a critical miss, at least until you become immune to critical misses.

Overpowered builds in Arcanum...

Every single build.

/Thread.

Try dwarven mage without dog

People act like dwarven mage is particularly weaker at magic or something. He's not. He can get 100 magic affinity just fine. He just suffers from doubled costs and takes slightly longer to work his way up to 100 MA, but any mage will get there just from the amount of spells he learns. The only thing that impedes are builds with heavy sustain costs, and even then there are ways to raise your mana regeneration (10 con base + Amulet of N'Tala = capped fatigue recovery rate of 6 / 10), halve the cost of a single magic school, and reduce costs further (Fatigue Slowers). Many buffs and summons do not give a fuck about magic affinity either and are stupidly powerful. At most you just get Purity of Water and 12 int and a bit of Haggle so you can shop with 20 beauty and equip a suit for a reaction bonus for massive potion discounts and cheaper staves. Mage's/Mystic/Arcane Staff all do good, and you can just swap between multiple of them during combat to give yourself access to massive mana amounts. You can also cast spells off of scrolls without any fatigue cost.

Assuming we're not doing a melee mage build (which is trivially easy) and doing it solo (since any build can succeed with the right followers), just get Harm and Summon Orcish Champion and you can handle most combats early on, and later on you'll have solved your mana issues, have a higher MA, and can afford the bigger sustain costs. You're behind a bit on MA (but you can still sell your soul if you want) and the costs are higher, but it's still an effective source of damage.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Got myself Repeater Rifle. At 36 speed I can make 17 shots per turn.
While it is indeed nice the ammo consumption is immense.

Reminds me of non-crit AR builds in Underrail

 

[Cael]

Got myself Repeater Rifle. At 36 speed I can make 17 shots per turn.
While it is indeed nice the ammo consumption is immense.

Reminds me of non-crit AR builds in Underrail

Try getting the upgraded machine gun.

 

[Nikanuur]

I've allways ended up playing throwing with Chakrams. I don't know why exactly, or if it's OP, but throwing a Chakram costed very little AP, and I usually killed everything pretty soon. Somehow it always felt the only good way. It also has this strange, addictive sound when it lands...

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I've allways ended up playing throwing with Chakrams. I don't know why exactly, or if it's OP, but throwing a Chakram costed very little AP, and I usually killed everything pretty soon. Somehow it always felt the only good way. It also has this strange, addictive sound when it lands...

could it be because of...

 

[kyosuke]

When I did throwing build, I only used Aerial Capacitor just for the lulz. (Other when getting Azram's Star for the Throwing Master)

 

[Modron]

Yeah it's nice to use a fate point to immediately steal the Azram's Star back after getting the mastery training just because it has double the range and more speed than the Aerial Decapitator.

 

[jungl]

spell using gunslinger is pointless. Late game when you have 18 dex the buff spells become redundant.

 

[Mauman]

spell using gunslinger is pointless. Late game when you have 18 dex the buff spells become redundant.

You've never felt the high of shooting 30-40 times per turn

 

[Ol' Willy]

I decided to stop jerking around and went to Vendigroth to get myself a Warbringer. At level 26 my build is competent enough to clear the donjon without any exploits; with a little help from my friends, but my char deals enough damage on his own.
Here, I learn Stasis which is obscenely OP. Not only it completely disables any enemy - it also drastically increase to hit chances, going to 150-170% at max firearms - so I can deliver headshots exclusively.
After a while, I obtain Warbringer, learn Tempus Fugit and get that +1 to every skill potion. It looks like this with full buffs:

56 speed, ~100% hit chance against non-magic enemies and 20-40 damage per shot. At this point, combat becomes trivial.

The only problem is fatigue; the sound move would be to get Temporal mastery from Tulla, but I can't get the quest with my tech aptitude.

Build could be optimized further, but for Arcanum difficulty, it will suffice

 

[1ttffsse]

I play it through with Equilibrium Mod for the balancing (and making harm+disintegrate combo less cheesy). I have tried it with both Arcanum MvE and AUP. It forks seamlessly with Unofficial patch and not MvE (MvE is unfortunately too cooked to apply the Equilibrium mod cleanly)-though there are some nice improvement in MvE compared to AuP- mainly it seams enemies drop clothing items from corpses that they should.

Anyways, since it is a rarity and actually quite well designed I prefer to play tech rather than magic in Arcanum - it's way more fun and varied imo than just blasting with spells or swinging a big weapon which you can do in other rpgs.

But for most streamlined approach - especially with the combat rebalance mod, I tend to start a character with throwing (boomerang), molotovs, flashbang grenades and then work my way up to being proficient with guns.

I get Jeyna and have her level up therapeutics so she can craft all the stat boosters and I can effectively min-max myself and anyone in the party.

Later game MC levels ups more explosives, electricity and either chemistry or mechanics - and very late goes for temporal school (the only magic we use). Also get mage lock for utility but that's it. I love chemistry more than mechanics personally because hallucinogen+immonosupresent = big damage and cc in the equilibrium mod where magic was really downscaled in power.

Also then I can do sadistic things like sneak, bomb enemies with napalm and fire obsctruction in a room and (mage)lock the door to the rooms and have them burn inside.

 

[Nikanuur]

I play it through with Equilibrium Mod for the balancing (and making harm+disintegrate combo less cheesy). I have tried it with both Arcanum MvE and AUP. It forks seamlessly with Unofficial patch and not MvE (MvE is unfortunately too cooked to apply the Equilibrium mod cleanly)-though there are some nice improvement in MvE compared to AuP- mainly it seams enemies drop clothing items from corpses that they should.

Anyways, since it is a rarity and actually quite well designed I prefer to play tech rather than magic in Arcanum - it's way more fun and varied imo than just blasting with spells or swinging a big weapon which you can do in other rpgs.

But for most streamlined approach - especially with the combat rebalance mod, I tend to start a character with throwing (boomerang), molotovs, flashbang grenades and then work my way up to being proficient with guns.

I get Jeyna and have her level up therapeutics so she can craft all the stat boosters and I can effectively min-max myself and anyone in the party.

Later game MC levels ups more explosives, electricity and either chemistry or mechanics - and very late goes for temporal school (the only magic we use). Also get mage lock for utility but that's it. I love chemistry more than mechanics personally because hallucinogen+immonosupresent = big damage and cc in the equilibrium mod where magic was really downscaled in power.

Also then I can do sadistic things like sneak, bomb enemies with napalm and fire obsctruction in a room and (mage)lock the door to the rooms and have them burn inside.

Someone please contain him before he's set loose upon OUR world!

 

[Jvegi]

Was 'harm' mentioned?

 

[Ol' Willy]

I tested Baneful Gauntlets through cheatmode and another char.

20 CON indeed gives you full immunity against poison. Applicable to any hexed weapons I guess
Fatigue damage is around 40 and couldn't be mitigated.

DR bonus seems to be broken but these gauntlets indeed improve it. I tested it against Tarant guards. They were dealing just 1-2 HP per attack.

I switched it to real time - my char went unconscious due to fatigue damage, then guards killed themselves with critical misses. Lol

Then I went to Kree. Lvl 30 Barbarians dealt 3-4 dmg on average - I can just stand in the middle and bask in the swords. Although Fatigue damage from hits is not mitigated. Dodge advised.

Could be useful for tight encounters: Kree, Pete, etc