Playing Arcanum without a violent approach (when possible)

Hello to everyone.

First at all, sorry for any possible grammar error. English is not my native language.

I really love Arcanum, and in these last days I've re-installed again the game, and playing with a generic half-orc warrior, without any magical or technological attitude. As you can imagine, I'm actually playing the game with lots of fightings and various massacres.

But I guess there is a more discrete way to beat the major of the quests of Arcanum, not only the main ones. On past, i used characters with good persuasion skill, and notice that I can go further on the game avoiding some fights, pretty useful if your character is poor on close combat skills.

Well, my purpose is to go through the game with the less fights or number of kills possible. I know some fights are not avoidable, like the assassin gnome that waiting for you after the bridge of Shrouded Hiils or the Black Mountain Clan quest, but I guess I could still avoid the majority of fights.

Sure, becoming a master of persuaion seems a huge requirement for my task, but I'm also interested to avoiding to kill any other hostile creature/Npc that i could find during my travel on the world of Arcanum. I guess if Magical speels are the best for this: at the beginning of the game (crash site) I could use the Charm Beast spell to avoiding to being attacked by the wolves and other animals. Sure, avoiding to kill anyone would make gaining experience to my character very difficult, so i guess would be also difficult to gain an high level character at the end of the main quest.

Should I take this challenge, or it would be just a lose of time? Is possible beat the game playing in this way, and also model a decent high-level hero-heroine, or it would be a less gratificating playthrough? And what races, or magical/technological skills would be useful for this purpose? And what background I should use when i creating my character at the beginning of the game, for gain the ideal skills I need for this purpose?

Any suggestion will be appreciate. Please discuss.

 

I think it sounds reasonable. You can always escape from already started fights if your character is fast enough, or with the help of stun spells/items. Also: prowling. The xp output of such a playtrough would likely be excruciating, but I seen no obvious reason it can't be done.

 

It's possible to finish the whole game with zero kills registered in your logbook. The fun value of such a playthrough is questionable, of course. But I suppose the challenge may appeal to some.

 

If you wanna try this, and by all means you should give it a go, there are certain things you'll need.

* Max Charisma, Max Persuasion
* Either Max Prowling or Invisibility
* Charm, Stun and Charm Animal
* High Beauty (Optional but really good for bonuses to reactions)
* At least one ally who can heal you
* Balls of pure steel

 

BTW, even if you don't have Teleportation, you can still avoid random encounters. Just enter prowling mode before going to the world map, once an encounter starts you'll still be prowling and if your Prowling skill is decent enough, the monsters won't see you and you'll be able to prowl away and continue your journey. This won't work with assassins and bandits, however, since they initiate a dialog with you straight away.

 

Get the Tranquilizer.

 

Or go even further and construct the tranquilizer gun.

 

Thanks for the replies.
I'm sorry for the delay on reply by myself, i was busy today.

Btw, I didn't started yet this challenge, but I've still the desire of try it.
Reading your posts, i discovered some tricks that I didn't know until now like the use of prowling for avoiding combats against hostile creatures during the World Map's travel (thanks to Drog Black Tooth): For the encounter with the Molochean's Hand assassins, I rememebr that a good persuasion skill can let you fool they during the dialogues and avoid the fight, but i know this don't works with Horchs bandits.

Also:

I agree in most of these suggestions.
Maybe I could use a backgrounds that gives me bonus on Charisma or Perception before i create my hero. Also, I could be interested to spare more money possible, so I could spend some point on the Contractions skill.

And I think I'll use magic for my goal, at least for the first time: I'm planning to use the Nature and Mental disciplines, that could let me control an enemy creature/Npc at my adavantage, and also would garantee me a way to neutralize the enemy without kill him. Any other Magical discipline would be useful for my purpose?

Also, There is a way to complete most quests possible of the whole game without fighting? And if I let my party fight the enemies for me, would the Enemies killed by the members of my party count as killed by me? This is very important to know, before planning what quest I can accept during the game and still trying to keep my numbers of kills to zero.

I think i should try to experiment something with a new game in these days: I hope to get my desired result at soon possible, and also garantee a good playthrough at well.
If you have other suggestions, please share.

 

Temporal with Stasis may be useful. For melee oponents Entangle from the Nature college will be enough for the "paralise and escape" strategy, but for archers and such it won't be. Than again, how often will you encounter those ones.

Most, possibly yes, but not all of them, mind you. Some quests are just fully based on combat (not to mention all those dungeons/ancient mazes/etc).

Enemies killed by followers count towards your own kill meter. Exception: any kill (be it commited by you or your followers) made with Harrow, since damage done by that weapon comes from the script attached to it, not the weapon itself, therefore the game identifies it as comming out of nowhere and enemies killed with it don't count towards the kill meter. This may be useful, but it would be cheating, since you would kill, simple without it being noted.

Take advantage of the possibility to change between real time combat and turn-based. Real time will be useful for running from slower oponents (example: the golems in the BMC), while turn-based will be good for calm and tactical planning (example: when you meet bandits in a random encounter you will have enough time to concetrate on entangling them all).

You may need to boost intelligence to have the possibility of maintaining more spells, since there will be encounters in which you will need to cast Entangle on as much enemies in the same time as possible.

 

interesting. Also, I could combine the Entagle spell with Disarm spell against archers and gunslingers.

Right.

This is bad. Because followers will still attack automatically every hostile npc, and I can't do nothing for avoid they to do this. Example. it seems that the gnome that waiting for me after the bridge of shoudred hills seems not avoidable at this point. :/

I still switch from real time to turn based combat every time I play. But i must say that my favourite is still the turn based, for the same reason you mean. Unfortunaly, about the enemies on random encounters, this technique seems still tricky to do, cause the followers automatically reaction.

Yes, intelligence is necessary, not only for spells, but also because persuasion skill is somehow incremented by high intelligence in some dialogues.


I'm trying to take this challenge now. It would be hard to realize my goal, and I guess I should experiment more ways and more combination for get what i want. I'll report any progress there.

 

Why have followers? Have Virgil scare off the assassin at the crash site, then ditch him.

 

That's a clever thing I didn't think about at the moment. I have an annoying tendency to always forget how useful disarm is.

F5 is your friend.

 

Too bad Virgil can't scare any assassin I'll encounter during my travel on Arcanum (plus, is not an excellent warrior, expecially at the first levels)

Plese tell me more.
I only use F10 for change to half to full screen when i need it

 

My advice - and it's a good advice - would be to check through all the possibilities that the function keys give you. F5 in particular orders all your followers to cease battle.

 

Thanks. I'll definetly give a try to all the Functions buttons.
And this trick with F5 sounds a great deal for what i have on mind.
You have my gratitude.

 

What does a follower do outside of combat, though? Wouldn't letting them die as mindless meatshields count as violence?

 

That violence comes straight from the enemies and has nothing to do with the PC. Statistically, that is.

 

Well guys, i've finally begin this challenge.
But this will not a serious playthrough for now: I'm just experimenting with the possible combinations for now, i'm still ready to restart everything if I notice something is not going as planned.

For now, my character is starting in this way:

• Race: Human -- Sex: Female
  Background used: Sheltered Childhood

Skill Acquired with the 5 starting CP:

• Nature Discipline: Charm Beast & Entangle
  Mental discipline: Charm
  1 Persuasion point
  1 Prowling point

Well, actually I'm reached to Dernohlm, and I have success to pass the Crash Site and Shrouded Hills with 0 kills actually reported in my logbook.
The Charm Beast spell is actually damn useful for my goal- Sometimes some beasts avoid it, but usually if I retry one second time it works at well. BTW, actually my MA is 15.

I'm actually Level 2, I get it on Shrouded Hills, after I tricked Ristezze with persuasion skill (this should get me experience for the quest, but also extra experience for the succes of the Persuasion during dialogue, if I'm not wrong). My experience gaining is really slow for now, and for this I'm trying to beat all the quests possible.
On Shrouded Hills, I left the Jacob Bens quest and the Bank Robbery quest (I think I'll definetly left this one, because require necessary a fight). BTW, I completed the 1st Junglee Doone quest (the engine's sabotation) with success and without kills (apparently, NPC killed by Dynamite explosion will not add to my kills records ).
For the rest, the bridge was freed of the Lukan's presence (using persuasion) and the fight with the Gnome was avoided by Entagle and run away from him.

Btw, I still have some doubt: especially, about prowling, because I don't think it will be useful for now. I'm considering to using the Conveyance disclipine, but I'm not sure for now. Like I've said at the beginning, I'm still ready to re-start and trying with other skills.
Also, what annoying me is the low experience gained by a similar Non-Violent Playthrough. Maybe joining with the Underground Thiefs will garantee me some other experience while completing the secondary missions, but I'm not sure if I'll get enough CP to gain the required skill for completing the Thief's missions decently (I mean, pickpocket and some ways to open doors and recipients undetected is essential for avoiding of messing with guards).

Suggestions?

 

Prowling, pickpocket and pick locks will all be useful for doing the Thieves Undergrounds quiests silently. A decent axe is enough to do them loudly, but since you want to have 0 kills, you might consider ending up as a charismatic thief.

Apart from those quests, prowling will be mostly useful if you're planning a solo game. On higher levels (most notably - with mastery) it allows you to fully hide during combat, therefore easily escape even if the place is crowling with enemies (you then need to simply get out of their sight) but that's useless when you have followers, since their prowling is always poor and they ruin the whole strategy.

Yes, XP progression is slow, but since you can get through the game with charisma and persuasion only, for a pure diplomat game you don't really need anything else, so it actually isn't that bad. For your game however, it will be a pain. But remember, per aspera ad astra.