~~~ Arcanum: Enhanced ~~~

I have been working on an unofficial Arcanum expansion pack for a while now. Code-named "Arcanum: Enhanced", this expansion seeks to add a plethora of new content to the game without harming the lore, story, or plot of Arcanum.

My goals with this expansion pack are the following:

1) Adding new backgrounds, portraits, and loading screens to the game.
- New backgrounds will aspire to be as balanced as possible. New backgrounds that are seen to be over/under-powered will be tweaked until deemed balanced.
- New portraits added to the game will not stray too far from the style of the original portraits.
- New loading screens will also try be as close to the original work as possible.

2) Adding locations and quests to the Isle of Cattan.
- This will include cities, towns, and random areas of interest.
- Quests will range from short, two-track side-quests to long quest-chains with multiple solutions and endings.
- New locations will feature custom-made scenery not seen in vanilla Arcanum.

3) Balancing certain builds as well as combat encounters
- The ability to repeatedly use 'Harm' removes all challenge from the game if you are playing a Dark Necromantic mage.
- Many people complain about the BMC mines being too difficult for the character level that it is designed for.
- The problems mentioned above are but a fraction of the balancing problems in Arcanum. This expansion hopes to at least weaken what needs weakening, and buff what needs buffing.

Over time, more goals may be added to the project. For the time being, these are it.

Some smaller, miscellaneous changes/additions will also be made. These will be noted in the read-me files for each respective release.

Help is, of course, always appreciated. Anyone willing to help me with this project is more than welcome to PM me. I do, however, want to work on this alone for the most part. Any help will be limited to me sending you a background/loading screen/portrait and asking your opinion of it, or asking for some help with the writing, as you can tell, English is not my native tongue.

Obviously, this is compatible with the unofficial patch+extra pack.

RPGCodex thread: http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=33429

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Screen shot gallery ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Click on thumbnail for larger version of picture.
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New backgrounds and portraits:









New items available at the starting barter:



Pictures of new/edited loading screens:





Center Point, a city suffering from years of civil war:







~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Downloads ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Arcanum: Enhanced - Alpha RC 2

3 New Portraits, 3 New Loading Screens, 4 New Backgrounds
Balance changes to follower "Worthless Mutt" and "Ore Golem".
Two forms of Harm available, preferable one will be selected in later release.
New items added to starting barter.

Leveling speed highly increased, most locations closed off.

More information available in Read Me file.

Looks nice, as soon as I saw the woman I instantly knew she was half-orc even without seeing the race.

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Installed it to give it a quick go.
The readme states that the character starts with lvl 25, while it actually is lvl 9.
Would it be possible to put a chest next to the character start position filled with Morgana Tears and, lets say, arcane leather armour in 3 sizes? With what he was given Churchill, my 9 lvl gnome supremacist necromancer, was killed by a bear when he was on his way to the Black Mountain Clan, seing how his half-power harm with MA 50 eated half of the bears health and all of Churchill's fatigue.

As for the screenshots, the mass grave looks somewhat impressive.

On a side note. Will replacing the Arcanum.PATCH9 and Arcanum8.dat back with the original files make my Arcanum normal again?

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Nothing can stop the Smooze.

Simply deleting the files will return the game to normal.

Also, yea, I'll put up a revised version of the Read Me on the download. I changed it from 25 to 9 because if the character started at a higher level than worthless mutt it would cause a weird bug that would not allow him to level.

And btw, the xp to level has been decreased, so simply killing a few zombies in ashbury will bring you up to about level 30.

An unexpected modder, who's actually accomplished something?! I wasn't aware that was allowed. Anyway, this seems to be a functioning one, so I'll commend you on your good work, and try this out once I'm bit by the Arcanum bug again.

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Done.

And thank you, DarkFool.

I must be unlucky with gnomes, since my human was doing fine.
Harm Lite seems to be OK. Toxic Harm is underpowered when compared with Harm Lite. When used on a ore golem it took the same damage as Harm Lite for my MA 100 character (9% of his health) while costing twice as much and having an over time effect. For the moment I can't say if the overall damage feels balanced, that would require a little more playing with various situations.

Arcanum.PATCH9 replaced a file which was 136 MB with a 6,71 kB one. Surely that can be nothing for the game?
Yet I understand that returning the files will do.

BTW, the leather gloves is an item I would buy with my every character at the beginning.

_________________
Nothing can stop the Smooze.

Did you have any other mods installed before this? If so, then yea, returning it to the previous one will restore it to the same mod you had before.



Which is why I added it, as a cheap alternative to gauntlets which I found I could barely ever buy with my characters. I also added the large armor as there were no clothes for large characters available in the starting barter.

Moved to Module Discussion.

All I have was Drog family pack: the latest UAP with it's full content, high quality townmaps and high quality wav tracks. I believe the second was the big file, but nonetheless, replacing them back seems indeed to make everything work.


Gauntlets aren't that expensive (not too attractive, too) but just the fact that leather gloves are neutral (therefore good for any character) makes them a better item for the starting barter. When talking about expensive, there's always the rifle. I believe that starting with the Inheritance background is the only way to actually buy the damn thing. But not necessarily the bullets, no, for that you would no an additional boost in beauty and/or barter.
Yup, saw the armor. A little addition yet how good. After all, not every big guy wan't to start in a suit.

_________________
Nothing can stop the Smooze.

By way of suggestion with your added character backgrounds, make sure you are specific with what is being done with the character. I don't remember if the regular Arcanum backgrounds are pretty uniform in their descriptions, but I think it's handy to know these specifics: If you lose PE, you lose -1 PE. If you gain bow skill, you gain +2 bow skill.

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There are things in this world that I dislike. One of the things I dislike the most is a serious argument, well constructed, delivered by someone who makes themselves difficult to respect.

Ohhh, that must be it, then. OK, I'll rename it to Arcanum.PATCH10 then.

Was Arcanum8.dat also being used? Should I make that one higher as well?

I can see your point, the Drunkard background for instance.

OK, it will be done.

Indeed.

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Nothing can stop the Smooze.

OK, just put in new download that has renamed files, and clarified Drunkard background. The Drunkard background screenshot has been updated as well.

I'm gonna reinstall Arcanum and give this a go, I think. Looks pretty cool.

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"Writer's block: it affects the best of us, and doesn't affect the worst of us enough."
~ Kitty, ImpishIdea

Currently surviving on caffiene, microwave dinners and requests for porn from certain fandoms. Guess the fandoms, win some porn!

Nice Girls Don't Scream Orcish Battlecries. (Thank God I'm Not A Nice Girl.)

I cannot believe you all let Cloaked Figure's triple post go unrepented.

EDIT: grammar

Haha I believe he was posting different sections up. What I can't believe is going unrepented is Xiao and her installing of Arcanum. Why was it not already installed in the first place?! Choose your explanation carefully...

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I was only kidding, Cloaked Figure. You didn't have to edit your posts on my account!

Merged it into a single post.

CF, please use common sense.

Whenever I can find the time, I'll do some playtesting on those versions of Harm.

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Lacy: How did I fall in love with such a jerk like him? Why can't I ever meet a nice man?
Tom: You've met lots of nice men, Lacy. I'm a nice man. The biggest lie all of you women tell yourselves is that you like nice men, when, in fact, we bore you silly.
The trouble is, you tell this lie out loud and so damned often that some of us more gullible types hear it growing up and work hard to become nice men.
Well, from all the nice men in the world, Lacy, fuck you very much.

Note that I said REinstall. It was already installed, but it also had Rroyo's kick-arse AWIP on it, and there was no way I was getting rid of the. Cue much backing up...

On the subject of this demo, I get everything that's in the ReadMe, gameplay-wise, but I start in Shrouded Hills and the plot goes the same as an unpatched game. I definately followed the ReadMe, too. Erm, wtf?

_________________
"Writer's block: it affects the best of us, and doesn't affect the worst of us enough."
~ Kitty, ImpishIdea

Currently surviving on caffiene, microwave dinners and requests for porn from certain fandoms. Guess the fandoms, win some porn!

Nice Girls Don't Scream Orcish Battlecries. (Thank God I'm Not A Nice Girl.)

It's the patch file that alters the starting location. Are you sure you put Arcanum.PATCH10 in your modules folder?

In any case, if the problem persists then don't bother, I'm making some changes to the direction of the mod and my next downloads will be a lot more clear and will come with an installer.

What do you guys think of this portrait:



He's too old to use for humans, since the starting age is 20. But he doesn't quite fit any other race. Or does he?

The quality of the picture is not too good either. Should I just discard it?

Also, here's a new portrait that I'm going to add for half elf males:



I've also been wondering whether or not I should edit the new portraits' backgrounds to make them light blue like the original Arcanum portraits. It might hurt the quality of the portrait, or clip off parts of the face, which I don't wanna do.

Edit: I'm also considering pulling Churchill's portrait out of the mod, since it breaks immersion to have a famous person as a selectable portrait.

I don't really like the old man one, it doesn't really fit any of the human races because of the age. It's also sorta washed out as well.

I like the second one though, it's important to keep the oil-painting style of pictures for PC avatars I think.

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There are things in this world that I dislike. One of the things I dislike the most is a serious argument, well constructed, delivered by someone who makes themselves difficult to respect.

?

_________________
Lacy: How did I fall in love with such a jerk like him? Why can't I ever meet a nice man?
Tom: You've met lots of nice men, Lacy. I'm a nice man. The biggest lie all of you women tell yourselves is that you like nice men, when, in fact, we bore you silly.
The trouble is, you tell this lie out loud and so damned often that some of us more gullible types hear it growing up and work hard to become nice men.
Well, from all the nice men in the world, Lacy, fuck you very much.