I Know the Most About Arcanum: Ask Me Anything

Here's an easy one: What was the name of Virgil's mother?

 

You have not answered the question of Zerobot (Crypton) and Muro, yet. Just answer these questions first. After that, answer this question (dodging the question, counts as wrong answer.)

Which things (name them all) do you have to do and change to make new items, and weapons for Arcanum? It needs to be a step by step explanation.

 

Zanza? :lol: Gotcha!

 

What? Spend time in the editor? Look at your nick. Look at your first post. You should know these thing.

Same as above.

So you're curious for the answers, eh?

Question one:

• Rys'Ard, master of Force
• Nasrudin
• K'an Hua
• Wrath from Qintarra
• Elf Bandit in the locked part of the Tarant sewers
• Dark Elf Wizard, murdered of Elmer Burbottom

Question two:
Yes, the AI allows an NPC to cast Desintegrate.

You really needed me to get to know this, Mr "I know more about Arcanum than anyone"? What a disappointment.

 

Hey once Elder Joahim disintegrated me, on the evil questline, but he doesn't have the spell when you meet him in the good questline. Yay, I knew something too.

 

It's almost as if he was preparing to confront the evil Living One by mastering a new destructive magic college, isn't it?

 

Where are all the dwarven women?

 

Touche.

 

Dwarven women are indistinguishable from men unless you do some serious searching around some thick pubic hair.

 

I still hold that all dwarves are actually hermaphrodites.

 

Ok, I hope the starter of this topic still checks this thread, as I do need a bit of help.

Normally, I play technologists, but now I'm giving the mage a try. Which means that I have now not just acces to magical weaponry, but on top of that, I can actually use them. But that's exactly where the problem starts.

So, Doc has given me a nice little magical sword. Especially the Th(+5) puzzles me - no clue what it's supposed to mean- and then there's also the little magic symbol which appears on your bottom bar. If clicked, it opens up some slots, as tough one would be able to store spells in, though drag and drop does not seem to help. If you would be so friendly to enlighten me, you would have my grattitude.

 

Welcome, Crawling Chaos. Hope you don't mind if I will be the one answering your questions.

That TH stands for "To Hit" and is an attack accuracy bonus.

In that particular case, it means your attack accuracy is increased by 5% when you fight with the Sword. The fact that the bonus' value is in parentheses means that its effect depends on the weapon's Magickal Power Available (if MPA = 100%, TH bonus = 5%. If MPA is between 80% and 99%, TH bonus = 4%, etc).

That button opens the weapon's spell management panel. The player cannot add nor remove spells from a weapon, but he can cast the build-in spell(s) as long as the weapon doesn't run out of uses.

That button was supposed to be active exclusively in spell-containing weapons. The fact that some weapons without spells (for example, that unique Enchanted Sword from Doc Roberts you mentioned) have that button activated is a bug, as all it does is lead to a panel without any spells in it. The bug has been fixed in most such cases in the official and unofficial patches, though.

 

thanks

 

ok here is a real question I wondered about the answer in my previous games, but always forgot it as seemed insignificant;

the bandit hideout in the tarant sewers; is this place somehow connected to ANY quest, and is there ANY way of interacting them other than simply killing them all and looting stuff (no dominate is excluded, only methods like "if you go there after you have talked to ***" sort is looked for).

they are all named as "*** bandit" with *** as their races. But well before you have the names of any NPC they also look that way. This made me paranoid about killing them. If I kill them will I ruin a possible quest/dialog? They are Red Circled so aggresive on nature..still

(my paranoia began with Morrowind, when I found out that a Quest NPC(a mage guild quest as I recall) I am supposed to talk was already killed by ME! I thought no quest NPC would be aggresive on sight..well apperantly some are)

 

Quest NPC can be aggressive on sight in Arcanum, but that should happen only if you have a background, reputation or item directly lowering your reaction modifier.

The bandit pack at the restricted Tarantian sewers - as well as the two bandits at the open sewers - serve no other in-game purpose than to be fought with.

Perhaps there were plans for creating dialogue lines and/or quests connected with them, but what's important at the moment is that no such thing was included in the final product.

 

Here's a question: Any justification on why a lot of the found schematic guns seem to actually be weaker than what you can just make by taking Gunsmithy? For example, I just wasted the hand cannon I swiped from Sammie White to make Vollinger that multi-barreled pistol, and ended up regretting it. Bronwyck's Gun is pretty underwhelming too, considering the rarity of its components (compared to other stuff).

 

There was a huge debate on that topic, check here: http://www.terra-arcanum.com/phpBB/view ... sc&start=0

 

Drog is the one who came up with the Schreck's Pistol's stats. Troika is to be blamed for the rest.

If you'd ask me, the problem here is that the creators didn't bother to calculate the Average Damage per Action Point nor Average Damage per Ammo Unit for the weapons build from schematics. If they did, they would quickly realise that in quite a lot of cases the end products are visibly weaker than the components.

 

Hey, hey. I just made it in line with the rest of the guns. Since basically all the guns in the game are weak, why this one should be an exception? It's about on par with Hand Cannon and Mechanized Gun, IIRC. Needs a lot of bullets though, but that should be obvious from its impractical design.

 

It's not just weak, it's weak for an Arcanum firearm, and that's saying something.

Its Average Damage per Action Point is indeed on par with the Hand Cannon, yet it uses up over eleven times more ammo to deal that damage (in fact, it has the lowest Average Damage per Ammo Unit in the game, each of it bullets dealing about half the damage of a shot made with an Old Flintlock Pistol). It has no practical advantages over the Hand Cannon from which it is made, no strong points, but a lot of weak ones. Personally, I think the weapon deserves better.

It's nice that it was restored, yet it's sad that there is absolutely no point to ever use it. You restored the Levered Machine Gun in an usable form (it being practically a more deadly yet more demanding Mechanised Gun) which was a good idea. I think something similar could have been done with Schreck's Pistol.

An exemplary solution:

• keep its high speed and ammo consumption of 6 per shot
• MSR of 10 or so (noticeably more than that of any other pistol, seeing how that thing would surely have quite a recoil)
• Min Damage = 6 * Min Damage of the Hand Crafted Flintlock
• Max Damage = 6 * Max Damage of the Hand Crafted Flintlock

Its AvD/AmU would be too weak to use it as a main weapon, but its AvD/AP would be good enough to make it a good weapon for those few special occasions when you need that extra kick. Sound fair to me.

I am, of course, fully aware that the UAP is no longer in production. I'm just saying how I would have probably done it.