Does this game have a party control?

Hello, im a total newcomer. Heard many things of Troika and Arcanum. couldnt find the answer in the forum search so

Is this game a partygame like BG2 with full control and everything. Or is it more like nwn1, with no control whatsoever, and party members make decisions based on their "advanced" "human-like" "intelligence". (and does it even matter)?

Thanks.

P.S. What is the best party for a first playthrough?

 

You can control your partymembers with simple commands like "attack", "back off" and/or "move", but that's as far as your "control" goes.

You should play a melee/dodge character on your first playthrough. Bring Virgil with you for a nice sidequest story. Another good follower is Sogg Mead Mug. He's a powerful fighter (duh, he's a half-ogre) and he won't get upset if you, say, kill some innocents and similar stuff.

 

Thanks for reply. Tech vs magic? Im reading magic is kinda underpowered; but technology rely on exploits, like grenades having no Friendly Fire, on using no action points, but much has been fixed in the latest, unofficial, patch?

Looking at what you said, it is not possible for example to play a mage, and get full technologist experience by having him/her in the party as an NPC? oh.. :-(

 

you can't create your own followers in the game. You create your own character and that it. Though I belive there's a 'hack' out there that lets you spend your followers character points yourself, I saw it in the download section a month ago or so but I havent seen it since :s And in my oppinion, tech is very underpowered vs magick.

 

one last question. Exp cap remover yes/no?

 

I never really liked that hack/mod. I do like the ultra light bread mod though And during your first run-through I wouldnt recommend any mods or so, except the patches

 

i couldnt find that ultra light bread mod. Unless thats another way of saying to play modless. And that xp remover is strange, the readme says the lvl100 version needs less experience to level. Im slightly confused.

So far i have
1.0.7.4
Unofficial Arcanum Patch v081004 +hotfix by Drog Black Tooth
High Quality Townmaps by the same author.

Reading through his posts it doesnt appear Drog Black Tooth tries to make a different game with his patches, so i guess its safe to regard them as patches.

 

You mean this?

I don't know why it says that, but I have alot less 'XP per level' than the .mes file says. I've checked And the ultra lite bread mod is a mod that reduces the weight of your inventory by 32.000 stone or so, so you don't have to be encumbered, Or however it's spelled.

 

No not entirely, he says that the lvl100 and lvl127 xp tables differ. Silly me. I thought that (downloads) section was a drop-out menu. While in fact the main buttons are clickable too, revealing even more content, including the lvl127 version of XP cap remover. The creator probably meant this, observe:

lvl100 version
{50}{1300000}
{75}{2926000}
{100}{5201000}

lvl127 version
{50}{1300000}
{75}{4050000}
{100}{8675000}
{127}{15776000}

It does seem that that lvl100 is kinda.. easy on exp.

P.S. Also, Educator vs Only Child (for a mage)?

edited: But then again the actual patch from lvl127 wont work with UAP, so the .exe file needs to be taken from lvl100, and the necessary data file has to be from that lvl127 archive. Hehe.

 

Doesnt only child reduce your strength by...ALOT? I never use it. I tend to use Bookworm when I go for a mage. Though if I were to choose between those two it would probably be educator

 

Only Child is a great background for a mage. You could also try Nietzsche Poster Child. A lot of kids in this game...

If this is your first time to play, you might want to reconsider playing with Drog's patch installed. You'd probably want to experience the stock unmodded game with, only, the 1074 patch. Then, you could, at least, be able to appreciate the things Drog fixed even more.

For the first play, I'd recommend playing an elf mage. Background Sold Your Soul. Put a point into Black Necromancy and two into Fire. You'll kick ass even if you play on hard difficulty. And, no, Magick is not underpowered.

P.S. Please note that this is a game where your choices matter. For example, some people will like you less if you're a technologist or simply a half orc. And vice versa.

 

Dirtman
Im not sure i understand. Please explain. Nietzsche Poster Child seems to be the worst pick, in a game with a reachable exp cap. And Sold Your Soul makes one irreversibly more evil with worse reactions. I have yet to see a game which favors evil and hostile ppl. Maybe nice for a change..

And why patch to 1074? I could play the basic version, and appreciate the joy of 1074 later. Or, in a more sane move, i can install both UAP and 1074 and get rid of all the bugs at once. Again im not sure i follow you.


Added: hmm bookworm is nice +1 wp, -1 pe, a net of +1 for a mage.
but what about debuntante, whats a whopping +3 cha, +3 be, -1 str, -1 dex. Which is +5 bonus for a party mage. Only surpassed by the Only Child, but running with low CHA is no fun, or is it?

 

Well, Nietzsche Poster Child, so that you'll level up quicker. Sold Your Soul is ideal for the evil mage. It boosts your magickal aptitude, thus giving your spells a bonus in effectiveness, AND it always keeps you evil, no matter what kind of good quests you do. If you're evil, that means that you'll have evil followers that will stop be your followers if you become good. It goes the other way too.

I think that for your first play-through, you should start with a clean official version of the game. That's only my opinion, feel free to act anyway you can.

As for the attributes... As an example, if you want to play as a mage, you will probably want to max Willpower, the primary spell requirement, and Intelligence, since it defines how many spells can you simultaneously maintain. Also, you could go for Charisma and the Persuasion skill, because of the dialogs. That's it. If you go for the Temporal college of Magick, then you won't need Dexterity, since Hasten will do the trick.

 

Just to be fair, a few things on the 'official' version.

The game had very poor testing and it shows. Even the official patch is quite messy from technical point of view. There are many fixes in it that are just thrown in without any testing at all, so they don't work, they're redundant. There are also changes that do work, but aren't really the best solutions to problems. And the funny thing is, I even discovered a few things that the official patch breaks.

But since the patch is 'official', it is, of course, immune to criticism.

 

Only Child, no question. I've found Educator to be pretty useless every time I've tried it.

 

Thanks. However the more i see the less i see benefit of Only Child other than for a party-less kill'em all char. It has +6 wp, but also -4 cha AND -2 persuasion. Thats -+0. And things like Charlatans Protege go overboard with charisma bonus. Maybe playing with bookworm isnt such a bad idea after all. I guess it depends of how high CHA/BE dialog reqs in the game are, which would boost Debutante/ChP since they would add points we needed(for dialogs) anyway.

 

Beauty isnt a very useful stat. The only thing you gain from it is a slight reduction in buying items from vendors, and peoples initial reaction to you. The initial reaction mean nothing really. If you want dialogues it's intellect and charisma.


EDIT: Hey Xiao?! Arent I suppose to me your apprentice? I mean I've been sleeping in your cold basement for a month now or so... Your suppose to teach me grammar.. I also got your goggles and put em on your desk, incase you havent noticed..

 

Alright. First lesson. In this context, it's BE, not ME. *snigger*

Thanks for the goggles. Now all we need is a way to make them do something.

Okay, real first lesson. Study the archives of Something Positive and learn the cruel abandon that PeeJee, Audrey and Davan are such masters of.