Are initial bonus ranks bugged?

When i play a dwarf, it says two ranks bonus, but it's more like 0.2 bonus. Same goes for every other race's rank bonus.

Am patched with 1.7 and the other unofficial patch (forgot name) and the level 50 cap remover.

 

These ranks are kinda misleading, what a player would think is 1 rank, is actually 4 ranks. Items with modifiers work similarly, you gain or lose only 1 rank, not 4. There are 20 ranks similarly to stats, but you gain 4 ranks for each invested character point.

 

I remember having this same problem when I first started Arcanum.

 

I believe at one time in the development of arcanum you had to invest a certain number of points into a stat to get it to raise up by one at higher levels (for example it took 4 points to get STR from 19->20, but from 8->9 was only 1 point) and this system extended to the skill ranks too. When they simplified the stat system and changed the amount of points you got from each level up, they made each point in a skill give 4 ranks instead of 1.

 

How do you know much about the development progress of Arcanum?

 

There was a lot more information available when the game was first released. I owned this game at release, and was fairly active on the popular boards at the time.

 

You were fairly active on the official forum?

 

On this subject and just to quote:

and this:

 

What baffles me is they never put any actual markers on the vials, which would have been both useful in judging effective skill level, and visually aesthetical (the vials would look like thermometers or other kinds of measuring devices). Every 4th mark would be extra thick, to denote milestones.

 

If you mean the Sierra boards, yes. I don't remember which boards I frequented, its been almost a decade. I still pick the game up every once in a while. I saw a reference to a hi-res patch and decided to reinstall.

Thank you for all that information. It seems some of that information is still kicking around. This should also sate DarkFool's curiosity about how I know some details of Arcanum's development!

 

Hey, good idea for a mod.