Just got Arcanum and i have a bit of trouble deciding what character to use. Is it just me or is melee the most effective way of doing damage? People are on top of you so fast that you don't really get to shoot much before they're hacking at you and the guns don't do much more damage than the melee weapons I've found so far. Does it pick up later on or am i right? Is magic a viable way of killing your enemies?
Yup, this is pretty much why I chose the melee path, I had a gun at the start and noticed that instead of standing back and firing at monsters, my character would walk right up to enemy and fire at it point blank. There is a way of standing back and firing involing holding down the shift key or something like that, but then it's difficult to tell if the enemy is within the weapon's range, either way, I found old fashioned hack n slash with swords and axes to be more practical and effective, so I'm training my character in melee and dodge.
I agree that melee is more effective than ranged weapons, but magic, in my opinion, is better than either. I played once as a fighter-mage character & got a lot of use out of the summoning spells &, at the end of the game, the disintegrate spell. The Hellgate/Guardian Ogre spells are great since in addition to being great melee fighters, they will draw the attention of your enemies who will hack away at them & ignore you & your party. Add some healing spells, the unlock spell, & lots of fatigue restoring potions & you're set.
melee does alotta dmg wth 21 STR, that's why it is good, and with 20 DEX you hit FAST, so if you use hasten and have 20 dex and something with speed of at least 17, that hurts alot. i beat the game with a melee half orc and started a tech gun fodder dwarf, using turn-based...pretty much 1 shot kills most of the enemies, and then after that the rest of them get scared and run around, and i just shoot them off it doesnt matter what u go for if ur using it right
Melee is far, far better than Bow or Firearms because it DOESN'T WASTE AMMO, and the only reason I can think of for a mage character to use a bow is because they aren't using far better damaging spells. As for Firearms, they're all well and good, but not until Very Late in the Game, when the GOod Weapons *finally* Become Available.
Firearms rule. Melee is just the easiest way to get through this game. I started the game 3 times before I finally got it right how I need to distribute my pts. In my opinion playing a tech character is just lots of fun though I agree it is pretty hard to develop properly and efficiently. I disagree. Developing your character properly you can get Looking Glass Rifle already in Tarant being around level 18-19 before you go on the Black Mountain Clan search. And it's with Firearms at expert level, 11 speed, 4 followers and quite a few learned schematics.
i got a question about bow chars...the way they shoot you waste 100 arrows in no time, especially while you still miss alot. i had raven and i could never find her enough arrows. any suggestions? cuz i wanna try bow wizard later. and firearms dont waste that much ammo cuz they slow...:razz:
The main reason ranged sucks is because you need to develop three attributes instead of two, which is all you need for melee. They really need to lower the MSR for ranged weapons so you don't have to concentrate on ST, DX, and PE just to use ranged.
What's the highest ST requirement for a firearm in Arcanum? The highest one I found so far is 15 for flame thrower.
