Help with my character and understanding Aptitude

(This is hastily written 'cause I had to do it all over again - we had a power outage; I got pissed and rewrote as fast as I could. Sorry)

Hey guys,

I'm new here and very much in love with Arcanum. Ok, so I made a meele character as suggested by the manual; he's now a level 23 human male with full ranks in both meele and dodge (but still an Apprentice), a couple of ranks in persuasion and one in Haggle (Apprentice as well) and neutral Aptitude (that's a zero).

He started out as a regular meele fighter, I did the first few quests starting with the crash site and then Shrouded Hills before I finally ran for Tarant; when I got to Tarant, he was level 10. I found the way into the gigantic old network of sewer tunnels infested with monsters and made it to level 23 in one game day.

Now, to the point: he's level 23 with zero Apt. Virgil is useful most of the time with his healing magic and cure poison, etc. Magnus is kind of useless for combat, but I can use his Smithing skills. Right now, I have a lot of points invested in my dexterity, strength and a little bit in beauty and charisma. The max a stat will raise to is 22, right?

Questions:

1) I own the Arcane Platemail. Is it the best platemail there is? Also, I read somewhere that using magic armor/weapons with a positive Magick aptitude will make it stronger.. how does it work??

2) How can I raise my Magick aptitude real quick? Or should I just invest in learning spells?

3) Currently, I own a Sword of Air (it's pretty quick and hits for at least as much damage as the usual Magic Sword. What's the best sword/weapon for a meele basher?

4) I don't fully understand the description of items. For instance, I know AC is armor class and the higher it is, the better. Same for Speed. FT I think means Fatigue. The rest is a mystery. Also, some items say stuff like AC: 10 (+20)... does it mean I get 30 AC or do I need full Magick aptitude to get the whole +20 bonus?

5) I think I screwed up and "accidently" killed the weird collector guy in Tarant. I ended up killing his orc, too. Am I in trouble?

 

Ok. Since nobody read this yet, I'll go ahead and add one more question:

6) I'm going to raise my magickal aptitude by learning some rather useful spells, so hopefully I can get full advantage of my arcane armor soon. For magick inclined characters, is Arcane Gear the best there is? Or Mystical?

7) If I make a technophobic character and I can't pick up tech items (not even directly from my followers' inventory screen), how do I sell the stuff they're carrying with them? Or should I just keep checking whether they're carrying unecessary crap and literally leave a trail of rubbish wherever I go?

"Where did he go? Quick, follow the trash piles!" "Somebody should fine the litterer!"

 

1. Arcane Platemail is indeed the best platemail out there - provided you have magickal aptitude and don't mind the large weight of 1000 stones. Magickal items do indeed scale with your aptitude. Do you notice that (Magick power available: XX%)? That shows you how much of a true potential the items you use has for you. 0% power means just base stats apply. So for an Arcane Platemail, at 0% power you'd have only base damage resistance and AC applicable. At 100% power, you get that AND all the elemental resistance bonuses. At 50% power, only half of those bonuses applies, i.e. +40% fire resistance is only +20% at 50% power. Also, the way these items scale depends on their magickal complexity. Muro knows more about this, but as I understand it, the general gist is, the more magickally complex an item is, the wider the aptitude range it varies in. For example, an item with 20 magickal complexity (I belive, Charmed items are that), will have 0% at 20 tech aptitude and below, and 100% at 20 magickal aptitude and above. Arcane items have 100 complexity, which means they scale linearly from 100 tech to 100 magick apt. (God, this was a long essay).

2. There is the Dark Helmet, which gives +20% aptitude while giving you some negative alignment penalties. Elves and Half-Elves get a bonus of 10% and 5% to aptitude naturally. A few backgrounds give a bonus to magickal apt. Otherwise, it's 5% per spell, I believe. Maxing out Conveyance provides 25%, and is a necessary school for mages. The rest is up to you.

3. Not sure. Contact Muro's weapon database, which is in a thread on this subforum.

4. The number in parenthesis is dependent on your aptitude, yes. To get the full bonus of the parenthesis numbers, your "Power Available" for that item must be 100%. As for abbreviations, post which ones you don't understand. Generally, *D means some sort of damage (PD, FD, ED), and *R means a resistance (PR, FR, ER, MR, DR). FT is fatigue damage (which can wear your opponent out and knock him unconcious. High FT dealing weapons are very effective versus mages, draining their fatigue pool quickly. Some creatures cannot be damaged for FT). I am not sure how the Armor Class works, sorry. It's not the same as DR, which is physical damage resistance.

5. Not unless you see guards attacking you and generally hating you. I do think you will suffer some sort of disposition penalty from the Tarant citizens. Also, Gar is a pretty nice character, and you get a fate point for buying him out and then releasing him.

6. Mystical vs Arcane depends on how high your end aptitude will be. Mystical provides fewer bonuses, but maxes out earlier, which means it's probably the better gear until you can get your magickal apt high enough for the arcane items to become better. Consult the numbers in your "Attack" and "Defense" windows as to which armor is better at any current time. I am not sure, but I think Mystical equipment maxes out at 60% or 75% aptitude, again, need Muro to make sure of this.

7. Not sure. I think you just have to make your followers avoid picking up technological trash.

 

AC makes you harder to hit.

 

Really? Does it work with enemy AC? Because I don't recall my chance to hit change much from creature to creature, considering equal melee skill level in every case.

 

I always assumed it was just a damage reduction stat. I'm curious as to whether or not an object like the balanced sword would be a technological item. If so would that effect a technophobe. As for platemail, are you sure around definitely want to go arcane? There are some nice tech pieces although as far as I know you would need to become a techie to make.

Which spells are you going to grab? I am going to recommend stun and disarm. If you have maxed lit your strength and agility I don't think you would bother with the fire and earth spells.

 

Some attack spells would definitely make fabittar's fighter more versatile, but I don't know if things like Fire Flash or Harm would "break" the character by making the game too boring (you don't need to rely so much on your Melee skills when you can kill Ailing Wolves just by looking at them funny).

 

_____________________________
DIVINE WARRIOR for Arcanum: Of Steampower and Magicka Obscura
Race/Sex: Elf/Male
Background: Bookworm

Primary Statistics
Strength: 16 Intelligence: 12
Constitution: 12 Willpower: 18
Dexterity: 18 Perception: 7
Beauty: 10 Charisma: 8

Skills
Bow: 0 Dodge: 5
Melee: 5 Throwing: 0

Spells/Schematics
Harm
Conjure Spirit
Disarm
Unlocking Cantrip
Unseen Force
Spatial Distortion
Teleport
Shield of Protection
Jolt
Wall of Force
Lightning Bolt
Disintegrate
Minor Healing
Halt Poison
Major Healing
Santuary
Resurrection

______________________________

DESCRIPTION: I used the planner to make this; it's the Divine Hero kind of character, capable of powerful magicks AND an awesome swordsman to boot. He gets -exactly- 100 magick apt and the 16 strength allows him to wield the Arcane Great Sword. Throw in the rest of the Arcane gear and he's ready to rule the world, no matter if enemies are techies or not.

What do you think?

______________________________

THANK YOU FOR THE FEEDBACK! I have a bunch of new questions; hopefully I won't bore you much with these

1) If my character is biased towards Magick, is it worth having Techie followers or vice versa? Will a techie character 'function well' when sided with an arcane one?

2) The reason why I'm afraid of playing a Techie character is because everywhere I search and every guide I read tells me that guns are a major weakness in the game. Guns are said to be underpowered damage/speed wise in comparison to meele/magick and also there's the problem of carrying lots of heavy ammunition. Also, I -tried- hard to investigate what would make a good techie character, but all the guides I've found so far concentrate more on either meele, magic or thief characters. For instance, I know a good mage needs high Willpower and somewhat good Intelligence, all characters need good Dexterity for speed/number of attacks/fighting skills and pretty good Constitution to have a good number of points in Fatigue. A regular warrior with neutral aptitude need only good Dexterity and Strength, top ranks in his chosen fighting skills. Thieves need good Perception, Intelligence, Dexterity.

So... (this question turned out to be longer than necessary) ..to the point: what makes a good technological character? High Dexterity, Perception and Intelligence will suffice? Should I invest in Strength to wear heavier armor or technological characters shouldn't depend on armor as much? What about guns and ammo - will I be underpowered?

I do like the idea of walking around in a smoking suit, top hat, etc, carrying guns and loads of ammo, maybe a rapier (the rapier is pretty weak and I haven't seen a more powerful variant) as a side arm. I guess learning how to make explosives and throwing is a given, but I have no idea what a technological character should wear for the end-game.

EDIT: Btw, I have the Unofficial Patch installed. Level cap's still 50.

 

Get Temporal College to 5 (a great help to any character), these spells aren't really necessary:

Sanctuary
Resurrection
Conjure Spirit

Max out Dexterity for a nice 5 speed bonus.

1. Techie followers are okay as long as you can give them the items they can use effectively. Technophobic characters will likely struggle a great deal when trying to hand Magnus components to make a Balanced Sword or a Feather-Weight/Pyrotechnic Axe.

2. Guns are indeed somewhat underpowered in vanilla. I am used to playing with Krupp's Gun Fix mod which balances them pretty nicely, though. Also, techies aren't limited to guns. You can play as a grenade-chucking dynamite-wielding explosives expert, or have a horde of mechanical arachnids/automatons, or maybe even specialize in smithy and make yourself some of the more overpowered melee gear.

 

Tastes vary, but I take Jayna with every character that has followers, techie or otherwise. Virgil thinks he's a warrior and doesn't act like a dedicated healer until combat is over, if Jayna has sufficient healing salves and your guys are really getting beat down, she'll literally run from one person to the next healing everyone she can. Her downside is that her melee skill develops slowly so before level 20something, she'll be as dangerous to herself as the enemies are.

For characters with really crappy offensive ability (jayna, virgil, vollinger), I tend to concentrate on AC just to keep them from getting killed so easily.

I personally like guns. I feel like other offensive abilities are overpowered. Once you have 4 ranks in firearms and your %to hit is over 100, you'll score a lot more criticals which sort of makes their damage scale with the enemies. Also, when enemies do the run-away-run back maneuver, you get 2 turns of free attacks. If you master chemical and get the tranquilizer gun, vollinger actually becomes useful. There's few better feelings than having a random encounter where combat mode activates with an unconscious wererat at your feet and your party standing there waiting for you to decide its fate.

Being able to make molotovs is like having insurance. Early on, running into a big enemy (like a wererat) or a pack of enemies (like wolves or putrid rodents) can easily result in your party dying. A molotov will knock enemies back, making them waste time running back to your guys, plus it'll damage every enemy in range.

 

Guys,

I just checked Muro's xls as instructed and WOW I'm baffled! First off, Muro is awesome! That must've taken a lot of his time, so thank you so much for it.

A simple rapier deals more Dmg/AP than an arcane sword! Granted this is ignoring the many bonuses, etc that make up for it but still... omg, the minimum strength required to wield the great swords in one hand is 20! I'd never have imagined and, honestly, figured it should take a lot less.

Pistols, all of them, suck. They deal A LOT less damage than pretty much everything else. As for rifles, they too suck with the notable exception of The Levered Machined Gun and the Mechanized Gun. Unfortunately, they're both 2-handed only weapons and eat through ammo like there's no tomorrow! Honestly, how should I handle a major disadvantage like that??

Suppose I bought/stole/built (not sure where to find either) a Mechanized Gun. It deals 15,000 Dmg/AP and I reckon this is a pretty decent bang for the buck. The arcane sword (not counting the benefits of boosts) deals 8,000 Dmg/AP, a regular Magic Sword deals about the same damage, some swords deal as much as 10-12,000 (not counting the ubber swords). BUT (big but) a Mechanized Gun eats 6 bullets per attack! That means I'd have to carry a truck load of bullets! Aaah.

Plus, there's still the problem with not knowning whether there's any decent Tech armor to be had.

As for Tech meele weapons, I'm surprised to see (with the exception of Torian Kel's) most Tech swords and one axe are superior to all other Magick counterparts. A Rapier, a Balanced Sword or a Charged Sword (plus the Katana if we consider Neutral apt) will deal a lot more damage than any other Magick sword and both Rapier and Balanced Sword are very easy to come by. Neither have good bonuses, boosts.

 

You're right. The big weapon/small weapon balance sucks in Arcanum. I've always believed the small weapon damage bonus should come from dex instead of str and be very limited. It's just so wrong that your paragon of physical perfection (maxed physical stats) can do more damage with a little fast weapon than with a big axe.

As far as the numbers go, it's not BAD to know how numbers match up, but it's not necessary either. I've finished the game easily with a pistol bought from the gun shop in Tarant (I've also finished with a barehanded melee fighter). Since the crappiest weapons are sufficient, there's no point in spending time trying to squeeze out every last damage point and playing the game for the sole purpose of getting a certain weapon/armor.

Roleplay your character and decide what he'll use, except for maybe the weapons you can find in garbage cans, anything you choose will be sufficient.

My point is that with maxed dex and dodge plus the appropriate offensive skill, it doesn't matter what weapon you choose.

If your character is a Tony Montana clone with a machine gun, you'll finish the game. If he's an ex-soldier who only uses a rusty rifle, you can still finish the game.

Obviously, some choices make life easier, but the fun of the game isn't to see how easy you can make it, it's to create and play interesting characters.

If you're looking for the absolutely easiest game, go with either a backstabber who can cast stun or a throwing master who spams molotovs.

 

There are a couple of decent tech armors out there, mainly the Machined Platemail.

 

Don't forget Electro Armor.

 

Never encountered that, is that vanilla?

 

Yes. Basic Platemail + Electric Harness. Huge electric resistance, +80%. It also has very nice DR.

 

Shame it is only resistance, was hoping it would have a jolt effect upon contact.

 

There are a few good pistols, but you're supposed to wait until fairly late in the game to even have a chance to make the best one (Droch's Warbringer). I have a soft spot for the Long-Range Pistol, but I would totally understand if you thought it wasn't worth the time and effort.

You're probably better off just using a Looking-Glass Rifle, which you need as a component for the Long-Range Pistol anyway. The damage may not seem that impressive, but you'll find yourself killing some enemies with one or two shots and you can't go wrong with that nice "to hit" bonus.

Or you could use the Charged Accelerator Rifle, which uses three bullets a shot but otherwise is a good weapon (better speed than the Looking-Glass Rifle and the added electrical damage is very effective on some enemies that are resistant to bullets).

Or Bronwyck's Gun, which lets you shoot globs of heated plasma at people. You have to wait a while to get the parts and schematic for that one, but it can be fun to use since the random damage sometimes lets you kill tough enemies with, like, two shots. It uses fuel instead of bullets, so some people don't like it because of that.

The trick there is to find something you like and try not to spend so much time thinking about how your Fine Revolver sucks compared to a Serrated Chakram or a Mystic Sword.

The other trick seems to be "Don't use the Mechanized Gun." It's awesome in theory and people have gotten good results with it, but yeah... Stockpiling ammo can be a drag, as we have discussed on other threads.

With my last gun smith character, even though I had stuff that was better in some ways, I tended to rely mostly on a Looking-Glass Rifle and a Tesla Rod (it fires spheres of energy that do electrical damage) because they provided a happy medium of fairly good damage and low ammo consumption.

Your character might do more damage per attack with the right sword than mine did with her Tesla Rod, but it's still satisfying when you zap some bozo and take half his health points with one shot.

With critical hit bonuses and everything, using guns is kind of like playing a slot machine and occasionally getting a small jackpot to keep you from moving to something else. Whereas, with the better swords you pretty much know you're going to do well except for the occasional critical failure. I personally find guns more interesting than pure Melee partly because of that random "hey, my weapon sucked less this time!" factor.

 

My two cents on firearms:

Main weapon: Fine Revolver < Quality Revolver < Repeater Rifle < Hand Cannon < Elephant Gun ≈ Tesla Rod < Droch's Warbringer

Support weapon #1: Long-Range Rifle/Long Range Pistol, for shooting distant enemies until they get in range of your main weapon

Support weapon #2: Mechanised Gun < Levered Machine Gun, for those special occasions when you need to deal as much damage as possible as quickly as possible, ammo consumption be damned.

Fun for followers: Tranquilizer Gun (hardly any damage, knocks enemies out), Acid Gun/Pyrotechnic Gun/Flamethrower/Bronwyck's Gun (low damage but destroys enemy armor, if that's your kind of thing)

Pretty much everything else can be ignored altogether. I, of course, fully encourage finding/constructing/trying out every weapon by yourself, but the ones above are the only ones that matter, performance-wise.

No, it's 20 by default. Racial bonuses change this, though - for example, half ogres start with a +4 strength bonus, therefore their max strength is 20 + 4 = 24.

Charmed gear has a complexity of 25.

It's the latter.

Should be: 15%.

Actually, it doesn't. I made some calculations once and they have proven that no matter the user's aptitude, the preferable choice is always arcane > mystic > magick > charmed.

One could argue that Magick Robes are an exception, but that is so because they aren't even "Magick" to begin with. The more common version of Magick Robes (blue/purple and gold) have a higher complexity and value than Mystic Robes and follow a completely different set of bonuses. The "proper" Magick Robes (white/grey and gold, with golden ornaments) follow the correct set, but are much less common than the first ones and in result hardly anyone is aware of their existence. The "blue/purple and gold" ones should have a different name to avoid confusion, I'd say. "Wizard's Robes" would do the trick.

Indeed, the Balanced Sword is tech.

Machined Platemail, the best tech armor, provides a boost to strength (if you have the Unofficial Arcanum Patch) so investing in strength shouldn't be necessary.

It's actually 65%.

There's a 5% chance of finding the schematic for it at the stock of smiths in Tarant, Ashbury and Caladon each day.

An excellent idea, I have to say. Not only would it be fitting, the armor would serve as a tech equivalent of the Shield of Force this way. Would make it much more worthwhile.