... when you realize that the Master of Water Magick is called V'ed Eckes, and that he has sent his disciple out on a Fedex quest. I mean, the Fallout reference is obvious, but I hadn't thought about this before. ... the broken statue in Vendigroth looks just like Eothas from Pillars of Eternity. ... that, as a Master of Persuasion, it was fully possible to begin playing evil and then redeem oneself and become good, keeping all the evil party members by talking them into it. This game still delivers.
It is still a very, very good game, and these are some interesting finds. I've never noticed the V'ed Eckes thing before, Drog asked me to re-write the easter eggs list and include anything new I thought was relevant so that's definitely going on there as a potential easter egg. Quite possibly more of the Tulla masters have easter egg names, I'll take a closer look when I can squeeze in sometime to re-write it around my thesis writing up. And now that you mention it, the resemblance between Caed Nua statue is uncanny. I can't imagine it's just a coincidence with Tim Cain on the team.
Well, the Mistress of Fire is called Naph'Ta, so there's that. And no, I can't imagine that the Caed Nua statue is a coincidence. No chance.
I don't know, Naph'Ta feels a bit on the nose to be an easter egg. I feel like an easter egg is something that has more of a double meaning or some in-the-know knowledge to spot, I feel Naph'Ta basically equates to calling someone Fire Lady so it lacks that level. V'ed Eckes on the other hand seems to fit the bill much more, as it's a play on the fetch quest trope common to RPGs tied to a real world reference and a little bit of thought is required to recognise the tie, while forgoing an obvious water based name like the fire master got. I don't know, I was thinking there might be more slightly complex historical/cultural references hidden in the masters' names.
Be that as it may, I just edited the Wikipedia entry for the Ring of Brodgar. Apparently there is such a place.
I had a look and it was already covered in his easter eggs list, it was listed as, "The Ring of Brodgar is based on the real stone circle of the same name which is in Orkney, Scotland." Still that doesn't mean regular wikipedia shouldn't be updated with as many Arcanum references as possible so more people get to know its glory. My current understanding is that the only references missing from the list are that the ship King Praetor's daughter died on is also called the Elizabeth Dane which I spotted a few years ago, and also this V'ed Eckes one - though if people spot more I'll add it to the current list if you let me know. I guess one of the Troika team had a thing for Carpenter movies with the Elizabeth Dane references, and the vague They Live reference in VtMB of when you see in game Troika advertising ("Play. Obey.").
I was thinking Planet of the Apes when I saw that second image and then I looked up stills from Planet of the Apes and realized it was not a dead ringer and-- Dark Elf! I haven't encountered that ruined statue yet! Spoilers, please. Just kidding. If I haven't encountered that statue by now, I'm not going to. Kudos for breaking the game with your alignment and followers. I am not surprised in the least that Arcanum still delivers. Why isn't NAFTA worthy of Easter Egg status?
Now all that is left is to solo the game as a bare-fisted, half-elf. Vendigroth Device was a necessity.
Something I noticed recently is that even with backgrounds that lower a races normally high stat (i.e. Sickly Half Ogre concerning strength) you can still hit the normal race stat maximum with character points. For example, as sickly gives you -2 Strength, you can now invest 14 character points to hit the 24 Strength maximum. However, anything that doesn't deviate from the maximum of 20 for a race still gets capped to a lower value with a background that reduces it. Again with Sickly on a Half Ogre, as it's -4 Constitution, it's effectively capped at 16 - allowing you the normal 12 character point investment. I think the rule is you can invest 12 plus what's granted by race regardless of background (so with a Sickly Half Orc, you can invest 13, hitting a maximum of 20 instead of the normal 21). Why this is true, I have no idea, must be some quirk in the mechanics - but's it's pretty useful for Gnomes, Half-Ogres and Halflings who all have at least +2 racial boosts in stats and a bit of room to play on this quirk. Thought I'd pass on the geeky character building know-how, in any case.
How many times have you played through the game? What are some of your favorite builds? You bozos will never cease to amaze me. Who was the throwing expert that killed Magus with newspapers? Was that Rroyo?
Nope, that was me. The pics are gone though, lost to a image-sharing service that closed down. :-( My favorite build is a diplomatic mage, Charlatan's Protege. With followers able to fight for me, and spells and summons to aid me, who gives a shit about being physically weak? I will admit however that there are skills and builds I've yet to try. My current half-ogre, who risks becoming a wildly unfocused build, is the first character with whom I intend to master Spot Traps, Disarm Traps and Repair. Never done that before.
I know. Still, I've never done those Master quests. Well, of course I've given Maxim the camera, but not the others.
