The GWJ CRPG Club - Game 6: Arcanum (In Progress)

Oh, man, this is so much better. I am ninja. Chop chop chop.

Level 5, ripping my way through the Shrouded Hills quests.

Glad to hear it has worked out so well!

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

Oh, man, this is so much better. I am ninja. Chop chop chop.

Level 5, ripping my way through the Shrouded Hills quests.

My walking tin can of melee doom is making a mockery of Tarant. It has become easy mode now... walk up, chop, chop, chop,.... several more times (so many attacks), loot.

tundra wrote:
Godzilla Blitz wrote:

Oh, man, this is so much better. I am ninja. Chop chop chop.

Level 5, ripping my way through the Shrouded Hills quests.

My walking tin can of melee doom is making a mockery of Tarant. It has become easy mode now... walk up, chop, chop, chop,.... several more times (so many attacks), loot.

I'm in Tarant now as well. Just hit Level 9. I can't believe how much easier melee is than what I was doing. And by siding with magic, Virgil can heal you with a renewable resource, so I don't need to walk around constantly looking for herbs and healing salves. And swords don't need bullets. Every aspect of play is easier.

I tore through one quest in a quarter of the time it took me before. It probably took me 20 hours to get to Level 22 in my first start, and I bet I'll be there in a third of the time this way.

I'm sure gunslinger can be a fun way to play, but as a first play through that was a bit ambitious.

I ended up playing another hour or so later last night, and reached Level 12. It's a lot more fun now that I'm not spending half my time looking for herbs and bullets.

I'm pretty much going straight melee at the moment, dropping points in Dexterity and Melee at first, now working on Strength since I'm wearing some super heavy armor that turned me into an Iron Man tank. And I want my hits to do more damage. And I want to equip Dianna's sword that I stole which has a strength requirement of 18.

I'm doing most of the damage in our party now, and many times I can just ask companions to stay out of the fight so I do all the damage. This means I'm getting even more XP and leveling faster, which means subsequent fights are easier. It's a glorious cycle of "wow, this game is kind of broken." But having spent 20 hours or so on the other side of this damage-xp cycle, it feels so good to be getting some payback.

So yeah, progress at the speed of light and having fun with this. I'm hoping to *fingers crossed* get to Level 20 this weekend.

Rolling rolling rolling...

Up to Level 15, heading for the Black Mountain Mines as soon as I finish up a couple of quests in Black Root.

Here's what Smoky Everbleed looks like at Level 15...

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/KzyU0gg.jpg)

Sorry for the post spam...

I cranked away on the game a bit tonight and got up to Level 26. It's insane how much damage melee does. I've maxed ST and DX. With a speed of 26, I'm getting about 6-8 attacks per turn. I was doing about 25 to 30 damage per hit, but now that I'm maxed at 20 ST, the damage bonus goes to 20, so if an attack hits it does about 45 damage (depending on armor). Attacks hit about 75% of the time or more, so it's about 250-300 damage per turn. It's nuts. In my previous game at roughly the same levels, I was lucky to get 30 damage per turn.

And because my companions rarely get to even swing, the XP just keeps rolling in to my character. I think I've played about 6-7 hours total and I'm already 4 levels past where I was in my previous game, which conservatively was a 20- to 25-hour effort.

Crazy game!

It is a lot of fun now, except that it's starting to get to the point where I can just run up to anything and kill it. I did a mission that was supposed to involve a lot of stealth, but I just ran through it mowing stuff down.

Fun times in Arcanum!

Here's a look at Smoky at Level 25
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/nGr08Mi.jpg)

Level 34 in the Wheel Clan area now.

Things are still going really well, but I don't have any more places to spend character points on that will increase damage.

I've started putting points in charisma and persuasion, but am wondering if I should pick up a bow, or maybe learn a few magic spells.

Seeing how much fighting there is in some of these dungeons now, I'm not sure how someone is supposed to make it through all this with a gun. It seems like there wouldn't be enough bullets in the world, even counting crafting, to kill all the things.

And I've learned that you don't want to have dwarfs repair magical items. Oops. Hope that doesn't come back to bite me.

I just nudged things along a bit today. I wrapped up the Wheel Clan area, adjusted inventory, sold stuff off, and now am ready to start moving along again with the main story. I did go up one level with all that, to Level 35.

Judging by a quick glance at an area reference in a Walkthrough, story-wise I appear to be a bit shy of halfway done, maybe 40% if I'm conservative with things.

I think I'll head to Stillwater next.

Right, time to get things started here. First step, finding the game and installing it. It was GOG that had that sale, right?

Liking the sound of easy combat, so I’ll probably shamelessly steal your melee character GB

Edit: this post made me a “junior executive” .. another 15 years or so and I might even get a tag.

Steal away, Redherring!

I poked about some in Stillwater last night, and picked up some quests and nudged the main story along. No real experience gained, but it's another small step in the game.

I've also figured out what I want to do with my character development going forward. I'm going to work on Temporal spells, to increase my speed and decrease enemy speed. I think that'll help a lot in combat. I might also work on some fire spells, which look to be fairly powerful too.

I'm hoping to get to Level 40 this weekend and move the story more.

I had technically started a game a couple of weeks ago (picked a premade char, watched the intro movie & conversation, saved, quit), but I just rerolled with a similar character to GBlitz: Murderdude McKillsalot. Level 3, still poking around in Shrouded Hills; the bridge crew handed my ass to me, so I may need to adjust my tactics.

merphle wrote:

I had technically started a game a couple of weeks ago (picked a premade char, watched the intro movie & conversation, saved, quit), but I just rerolled with a similar character to GBlitz: Murderdude McKillsalot. Level 3, still poking around in Shrouded Hills; the bridge crew handed my ass to me, so I may need to adjust my tactics.

Bridge crew is real.

I found the grenade and stun grenades really helpful with bridge team.

Those things I sold before meeting the bridge crew? Yeah...

merphle wrote:

Those things I sold before meeting the bridge crew? Yeah...

Ha! Whoopsie!

I’m at the same point, I think that’s the game’s “subtle” way of telling you to explore and level up some more. I’m having a bit of trouble navigating Shrouded Hills and finding people. The map screen is not very helpful, it’s zoomed in too close and there doesn’t seem to be a way to change that. And no one has a giant yellow exclamation mark over their head either.

Redherring wrote:

I’m at the same point, I think that’s the game’s “subtle” way of telling you to explore and level up some more. I’m having a bit of trouble navigating Shrouded Hills and finding people. The map screen is not very helpful, it’s zoomed in too close and there doesn’t seem to be a way to change that. And no one has a giant yellow exclamation mark over their head either.

Yeah, I can't tell you the number of times I've tried to zoom out on my mouse wheel only to realize, "Oh, wait, can't do that..."

And while the in-game note system is partially helpful, I've found it even more helpful to jot things down on ... *get ready for it* ... paper. *Gasp!*

Redherring wrote:

I’m at the same point, I think that’s the game’s “subtle” way of telling you to explore and level up some more. I’m having a bit of trouble navigating Shrouded Hills and finding people. The map screen is not very helpful, it’s zoomed in too close and there doesn’t seem to be a way to change that. And no one has a giant yellow exclamation mark over their head either.

There is one of the mods that allows you to change your screen size. If you set it to 1920 x1080 it makes things so much easier to navigate.

Edit: Here is an informational link. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...

Redherring wrote:

I’m at the same point, I think that’s the game’s “subtle” way of telling you to explore and level up some more.

I did a few more things in Shrouded Hills (notably, cleared the mine), and then just paid the bridge toll and headed on to Tarant. I've done a whole bunch of things there, and in the process levelled myself up to 11. I've been going mostly Dex, and have been using a short sword & shield for a long time; it's starting to feel pretty bland. I need a weapon upgrade. I'm carrying a beefy magical sword, but I think my stats are insufficient to wield it properly... which leads me to probably the only complaint I have about this game so far:

The UI f*cking sucks.

I've installed the fixes and hi-res patches, but OMG, it's still really difficult to understand some really basic things, like "what are the minimum stats needed to wield this beefy magical sword without penalties?"

The high resolution patch didn’t work because I didn’t install the unofficial patch first. So I installed both and started a new game. It’s easier to get around but a couple of times everything has slowed to a crawl and I’ve had to reload the game.

Still, managed to take out the guys at the bridge, ready to move on from Shrouded Hills.

Redherring wrote:

The high resolution patch didn’t work because I didn’t install the unofficial patch first. So I installed both and started a new game. It’s easier to get around but a couple of times everything has slowed to a crawl and I’ve had to reload the game.

I had the same problem (along with some nasty graphical glitches). The solution for me was:

Perform step 3 of this to install the totally legit, not-sketchy-at-all DxWrapper DLL.

Then edit your SierraLauncher.ini as per here to add " -no3d -doublebuffer" to the Game1Cmd variable.

After I did these things, the game would crash when launching from Steam, but if I double-click the SierraLauncher.exe directly, the game launches fine and is perfectly smooth.

Murderdude McKillsalot just hit level 21. I'm about halfway through the Black Mountain Mines -- there are two more doors I can see that I haven't been through yet. It hasn't been overly difficult (aside from the big minibosses), more just tedious. And so much loot to haul back to town.

ST 20 with a big sword makes such a huge difference. I should have DX 20 in a few more levels; I'm giddy with excitement. This game definitely feels like the focused-training approach is much more effective than trying to train up a bunch of things at once.

merphle wrote:
Redherring wrote:

The high resolution patch didn’t work because I didn’t install the unofficial patch first. So I installed both and started a new game. It’s easier to get around but a couple of times everything has slowed to a crawl and I’ve had to reload the game.

I had the same problem (along with some nasty graphical glitches). The solution for me was:

Perform step 3 of this to install the totally legit, not-sketchy-at-all DxWrapper DLL.

Then edit your SierraLauncher.ini as per here to add " -no3d -doublebuffer" to the Game1Cmd variable.

After I did these things, the game would crash when launching from Steam, but if I double-click the SierraLauncher.exe directly, the game launches fine and is perfectly smooth.

Thanks - I think that worked - there isn’t a sierralauncher.ini in my install (from GOG) so I just put those commands into the shortcut instead. Still a bit choppy at the screen edges, probably because I’m only using intel graphics on my laptop. Will test properly tonight.

Explored Tarant and did some quests, now at level 14. Still a lot of rat fighting going on but at least there were some zombies to change things up a little. What’s up with the part of town where everyone attacks you on sight?

Also still seeing some slowdowns after 30-45 minutes. Restarting fixes it, which doesn’t take long, so I can live with that.

Finally made a start on this tonight, playing as a Half Elven mage type. I really don't know what I'm doing but I'm hitting things fine or zapping them with "Harm" and mostly they fall right over before they get anywhere near me. At least until I run out of Fatigue.

Those that are ahead of me - unless I'm playing as a tech character I take it there is little point hoarding stuff, and I should just sell all the random stuff I picked up at the crash site? I'm a little confused what it's all for if you aren't going down the tech route and won't be able to craft much?

As a melee dude, I’ve been selling pretty much everything that I can’t immediately use (or aren’t working towards using). That means all the crafting components and stuff get sold right off. I do keep most potions and scrolls that seem to be immediately useful, though I really only have used the healing pots so far.

This might be gimping my character in the long run, but inventory management in Arcanum is annoying.

Inventory Tetris for the win!

Yeah, all that mechanical stuff you can dump if you don't plan on crafting tech stuff. I haven't even bothered picking it up in this game.

There are some gems that are needed for the various altars in the game, if you plan to pursue the bonuses that you can get from them. You only need 1-3 of them, so I've been selling all the rest.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

Steal away, Redherring!

I poked about some in Stillwater last night, and picked up some quests and nudged the main story along. No real experience gained, but it's another small step in the game.

I've also figured out what I want to do with my character development going forward. I'm going to work on Temporal spells, to increase my speed and decrease enemy speed. I think that'll help a lot in combat. I might also work on some fire spells, which look to be fairly powerful too.

I'm hoping to get to Level 40 this weekend and move the story more.

I haven't been playing along the past few weeks (real life issues) but I'm curious how far along are you?

In hours I mean