Lets face it, playing as an evil character in Arcanum doesn't work as well as playing as a good one. Sure, being evil is easy, you can demand more money for quest or refuse to give the NPC the object you were to fetch, evil... Or you can skip the 'fetch something for me to get the key' quests and kill/pickpocket the NPC for the key instead, naughty you... But doing these thing will stop your character from getting very much exp, you get none (oh perhaps one or two) exps for pickpocketing an individual for the key so you can solve another quest. I don't want to be level 25 or so when I face the big bad guy (no spoiler :smile next time, certainly not as a thief. Face it, it's no good being bad! Regards, Johan Tibell
I'm trying, some quests can be solved without any exp loss but most can't. That's it. And if you're playing evil you might miss some nice curses and even catch some bad ones (spoiler) like Stringy Pete's. Regards, Johan Tibell
Try using "sold your soul" background. Your alignment will never go higher than -20 no matter how good your actaion are thus you don't miss EXP. I'm playing an evil mage right now and even though I'm rather good my alignment is around -44 on average.
I played evil and stayed evil easily by using black magic spells, as well as doing some, but not all, of the possible evil things. Picked up all the evil characters, which made for an interesting end fight. - Edythe _________________ Shared pain is lessened Shared joy is increased Thus do we refute entropy - SR <font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Edythe on 2001-12-28 07:53 ]</font>
What I mean is that it's hard to get exp by solving quests in an evil way. Getting low alignment is easy. Just insult a beggar 100 times and your alignment will drop by 100 points.
Actually, I didn't find it that hard to play as an evil character. I think Troika assumed that firt-time players would go for the main plot early and stay with it instead of doing a lot of the sidequests - and it's actually harder to find the evil main plot than it is to find the good one. Put it this way - if you're going to try out being evil, then don't do it halfheartedly (ie, insulting beggars). Play your character accurately and you'll get rewards - there are more than enough evil quests out there, and a lot of the side quests result in negative alignment and experience both. Basically, don't go trying to be evil while doing the good main plot and quests. Just play your character the way you think s/he'd actually react, and you'll get more than enough evil experience. Oh, yeah... *bump* :grin:
Hmm, perhaps it just in the beginning (read Shrouded Hills/Dernholm) it's hard to be evil (in most cases anyway). I've never played much further than that because I got frusturated after trying to solve different quests in an evil way and ending up with a lowered alignment but lost the xp. Regards, Johan Tibell
Being evil is so hard...I've been evil once. A half-ogre fighter champion alone massacred the towns of Shrouded Hills, Dernholm, Blackroot and Tarant.(Thats the first character I played! I've always taken a liking to evil, but after I knew this game so was hard for evil, I became good.) Hey, it wasnt fair cause I missed out on alot of quests and such. I ended that game in Tarant when I became Enemy of Tarant. Lol it was so fun in the good old days. I massacred the towns once I got there. Tarant was the most fun! I killed town guards, gnome nobles, human nobles, and paper boys and also gentlemen and ladies in the buildings and also Madam Lil's. Lol what fun.
Man....... Being evil is boring, unless you want to be a mercenary and complete killer. Then you can be the most evil good guy ever. Kill the good guys. Kill the bad guys. Kill everyone. Kill kill.
Now THAT is completely wrong. It's really easy to be evil without killing any more than the good characters. Just do the evil quests (things like retrieving that gem for Geoffrey Tarraland-Ash [I think that's his name...]), or steal a lot, or sell other people's valuables which you're supposed to be transporting (the first option for this is selling Gilbert Bates' ring to Ristezze). So don't make blanket statements about a game if you haven't tried *every possible combination* - and in Arcanum, I sincerely doubt that that is even possible.
For a real challenge, travel with Good and Evil Characters. Use the Dark Helm to keep things in balance.
