so ironmanning arcanum seems to be quite a challenge because of random encounters at the beginning. my two attemps have both failed at the early game because of encounter that cannot be won. first time i died at random encounter even before i got to shrouded hills because some molochean hand thug attacked my lvl 2 char. second time 4 timber wolves attacked me just little before dernholm. although i was actually able to win this match thanks to potion of haste abuse, virgil died still and that was as good as a restart for me.(because the ass doesn't want to run even when i tell him to) so apart from charm animal spell(which seems a waste considering i would only use it for first 10 levels) is there anyway to survive the random encounters in early game other than hope for damn good luck? this is specifically for melee and tech characters since magic seems to have plenty of options.
If you dig around, there was an iron-man styled competition quite some time back. I believe it centered around a certain "character' you had to play, but I can't recall. I'll try and dig it up, but no promises of success.
This was alluring so I tried my first iron-man Arcanum play. I chose the easy way - half-ogre with Runaway with circus background (ST 18, IN 2). Shrouded Hills and Tarant (no sewers, no Boil) were piece of cake and soon my character was at lvl 17 or so (ST 20, DX 17). Then I entered Black Mountain Clan mines where I jumped into bunch of Kites and one Sheeting Mass. I survived twice close-to-death experience (health 1 and 2) but then one bowman stunned me and moreover Virgil's Staff of Hypocrisy put Shield of protection on everyone. And that was my sad end.
indeed, my tests have shown me that ironman gets easier depending on your race,background and the build your going for. any melee builds with half-ogres have it insanely easy because they do so much damage no creature can take it. elf mages can just spam harm on their paved way to victory. or use charm animal or summoners/charismatic characters with their army of helpers. and so on i mostly made this topic to get tips for characters that don't have such an advantage at the beginning. like for example melee fighter that isn't half-ogre,half-orc or doesn't have the ran away with circus background. what do characters like those do in early encounters. or a tech human who uses either melee or guns. dwarf mage that you guys mentioned would definetly be included in this too haha
Some very cheesy builds: - Summons (Guardian Ogre is probably the best overall summon). Just use the F1/F2 keys to control your summon from afar. - Stun + Backstab + Dagger of Speed + Haste.
http://terra-arcanum.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=15118&highlight=ironman This was the ironman contest mentioned before and it inspired me to try it that way. So I made my dwarf wizard with "Only child" background. High WP (14) from the beggining, but very low CH (4) might be a problem with just one follower available. No combat skills for now, orc champion summon, agility of fire and charm beast as LVL 1 spells. Using the staff to finish unconciousness enemies. Just made the character and killed few wolves at crash site, will continue later. Edit: The conditions are not exactly the same as before (1.0.7.4 or UAP), I have A:WIP patch. But I don't plan to visit additional locations, just the old ones and will follow the regular time line (no dog before Isle of Despair ).
indeed, the dwarfs in that topic were a real challenge indeed haha. which is why it's no surprise how many attempts ended in death too. my third ironman attempt is actually going much better this time. i decided to switch to the "ran away with the circus" background so that my half-elf melee fighter would be able to kill stuff much faster. and it worked. admittedly i had to use potion of haste in some quests and encounters but now ive finally done all the quests in shrouded hills,dernholm and black root and started with tarant. i don't expect to run into too many problems anymore now that i have levels and good armor. during this third attempt i was able to kill putrid rodents and orc thief ambush along with some lizards and wolves during random encounters. so im quite satisfied in this build i made in third attempt. virgil was still a burden though, had to save him atleast 3 times with healing potions and minor healing spell. feels like ironman would be much easier if you would do it without any NPC helpers.
I was thinking the same. If you are alone you don't need to take care of others and run away when it's needed to. On the other side, my ST 9 dwarf can't carry much and I need someone to heal me so I can invest my points on other spells than on white necromancy.
Now first off, i apologize for necroing my old thread but since it was on the first page and i feel like i can update new info in it and begin some new conversation aswell, i felt it was smarter to just bring this back up. Anyways, ive come to the conclusion that the only way all the builds except pure mage builds can ironman arcanum is through pure luck. My last 3 attempts all ended up in death because of one reason. getting stunned because of critical failure. my latest death was to 3 zombies in tarant because the stun i got from critical failure never ended and i even had virgil next to me healing. after it happened, i felt like writing long post about how BS system arcanum's critical failure is but decided not to since this topic is about ironman anyway Now im not saying it is impossible to ironman this game because i know you can ironman it. after all, most of my ironman attempts have been melee characters with mix of either tech or magic. pure mage builds, especially summoners could easily do it. and probably melee could do it too if one has patience to try long enough to get far enough to get melee mastery. And i plan to keep trying too, except with one added rule. it will be just like normal ironman otherwise except that if i die to critical failure stun during combat, i get one retry in that battle by loading game. if the second try also ends in death, then i have to restart. that way it's still pretty much ironman but i won't lose my nerves by constantly having bad luck. my latest attempt with this rule already is at Ashbury(i even cleared black mountain mines without deaths), and ive only had to resort to my special rule once.(against the bandit group at tarant sewers) Of course if someone wants to argue that there is 100% sure way for melee character to ironman this game without doing stuff like getting mutt right off the bat and without relying on luck, please enlighten me and maybe ill give one more spin then without my special rule. Now to the actually useful stuff, good tips ive figured out. last time i complained that ironman games keep getting screwed because of NPCs like Virgil getting themselves killed. i found one nice way to get around that, especially after leaving shrouded hills. Leave Virgil behind that way you can complete all the quests in dernholm and black root and you won't have to worry about random encounters because you can just run away from them now that Virgil isn't there to initiate battle all the time. Virgil will get left behind in levels, about 5 levels to my experience but it's small price to pay IMO. infact this will work in many other battles than just random encounters. good example being the brute fangs at black mountain mines. leave Virgil behind and kill them yourself. Or you can also do the exact opposite and get as many companions as you can right off the bat. having like virgil+sogg+magnus+that guy from black root will give such amount of meat shields that usually they survive because of that. not to mention big group of enemies can't really focus either in that case.(and if they do, just heal and let others kill meanwhile) Another thing especially melee fighters should do is get minimum of 13 dex as early as possible. because you need that much minimum to be able to run from some of the enemies in random encounters, wolves in particular. I guess that is all i can think up to say haha.
I'd say it could be done as long as you master melee fast enough, then all you have to worry about is dodge masters in terms of you critically failing. Go for a race that has an already higher than average DX (elf, half-elf or halfling), pick a background that ups DX, use items or spells to boost DX (charged rings, agility of fire, therapeutics, gloves of dexterity or maybe the mysterious dwarvern gauntlets if you felt like playing a dwarf) to get it to 18 ASAP and then max melee. The melee mastery quest isn't difficult, and from there you can master dodge, backstab, ST or whatever you feel like really. Obviously you can still fall prey to bad luck in the first few levels, but I'd say you should be able to obtain mastery by level 10 quite easily. As an example, pick a dwarf and take the Troll Offspring/Beaten with an Ugly Stick background. At character creation put one point into melee, one into the fire college (the spell works no matter what your aptitude, giving you a +4 DX boost), two into electricity and one into herbology (giving you an early healing capability). Build charged rings, steal Magnus's gauntlets (you can take them from him if he's a follower, he'll complain once and make you give them back but oddly he doesn't care if you do this a second time - or you could just kill him!) and use the spell to give you an overall dexterity of 18 or 19 depending on the background; allowing you to max melee by level 5. Another advantage is that the gauntlets in conjunction with the background give you a high-ish early strength score (12). Personally I never really saw picking up the dog early as cheating as long as you have access to Blackroot and get the train there. The way I saw it is my character was just curious seeing as they are an adventurer; and the fact that Geoffrey's starting level is 12 to me suggests that the developers expected most people to get to Ashbury sooner too, as I'd say most characters would be higher than this level after the BMC mines and you'd think they'd make followers at the level the expect the PC to be when they first meet them. Still a lot of people do think it's a bit of an exploit getting the dog early, so just do what you feel is right. As a minor point, I found if you stop and start your journey on the world map frequently that keeps your encounters down too. Hope this was some help.
well you are probably right about it being easy getting melee mastery early, although one has to specifically hunt it, not to mention that like you said, you pretty much have to use certain races and/or backgrounds aswell. i probably should have clarified that it would have been nicer to find solution where majority of the races and backgrounds could also work with it. and like you said, bad luck could still kill you at early levels. atleast one of my critical failure stun deaths was with character as low as lvl 8. but you are right, if one only wants to ironman in a powerbuild and nothing else, that would work, despite being much harder than the mage way. although we have to remember that melee mastery doesn't remove the fact that enemies might stun you aswell with critical hits, which would pretty much kill the player just as easily haha as for mutt, he's probably not an outright cheat, but pretty cheap way still considering he can kill most of the enemies you encounter, not to mention bringing him could save one from stun deaths too since mutt would kill anyone trying to kill you less exp overall though, especially for melee character. i guess i would say that using mutt can't be called cheat but people that use him have much much easier time so it wouldn't be as great of a feat with him. hmm i should try out that map tip.
Most races and backgrounds would work; with a +2 DX boosting background using the same methods (sans gauntlets obviously) as above you could still max melee by level 5 with any race, if you didn't have a DX boosting background then you could max melee by level 6 with any race (or I guess you might have to be slightly higher in aptitude to make both rings work - I'm not sure). I'd say that's a fairly general solution. If you're worried about getting hit then also max dodge quickly, use a fate point to steal Stout's armour letting you kill him easily. Also invest in spells like shield of force to bolster your defenses.
seems you are indeed right, the character ive been using is a half-elf with ran away with the circus background and even he was able to get melee mastery by level 7 without even needing the gauntlets. if i would get the gauntlets, he would obviously get it earlier. although he would need to leave the charged rings out of the equation because getting enough INT and WIL and both agility of fire and charged rings would raise the level requirement too high haha smarter to just put the points directly into DEX and use 2x agility of fire. gotta admit that this convo has sparked my interest in trying one more time in true ironman way by getting the melee mastery early. atleast then there will be way less of a chance to get killed by pure bad luck EDIT: well i tested it today and after today i feel embarassed about the stuff i said yesterday. although my first attempt ended up in death,(because i challenged garrick and wasn't properly prepared, not to mention he is pretty hard to beat as lvl 6 character so i just decided to beat him later when i have levels and im going for the dodge mastery) in my second attempt getting early melee mastery was infact the one way to get ironman with melee rolling and now my character is lvl 17 in tarant about to go into black mountain mines again. the beginning has been so much easier with melee mastery, as i haven't had critical failures bothering me ever since i hit lvl 6. not to mention using agility of fire to get 21 DEX which gives me insanely high AC and speed. i also pickpocketed garrick's armor which made beginning ever easier thanks to having all that AC and resistance, not to mention saving money because no need to buy armor. although there are still some stuff that could end up in my death(lucky enemy stunning me with critical hit or master dodgers among enemies) as long as i play smart, im confident i can pull this attempt all the way to end in true ironman way without any deaths or loading
