Starting a new game - download suggestions?

Arcanum may not be nearly as heavily-modded as ToEE (Probably oweing to the huge scope of Arcanum), but before I get well and truely started, I was wondering if there were any particularly good mods I ought to download and use - expanded content and the like, etcetera. More stuff, more followers maybe.

Also, I remember using WorldEd a long while ago, but I didn't do much more than dabble, so I have to ask: How easy/hard is it to mod the original Arcanum singleplayer campaign, if only to add a house in the wilderness "near enough" to Tarant, a place for me to stay, stash my stuff, maybe stock with stuff I don't want at the very beginning of the game but will want later on, et cetera. (As an aside, would it be tremendously more difficult to expand it to a settlement of three or four houses, one of which is for the character, the others of which having shops?)

 

Welcome to the forum, ShadowDragon.

If you're looking for Arcanum mods, at the moment there really is only two: Car-Arcanum and Arcanum - WIP.

Car-Arcanum is a heavily modified revision of the game with tons of traps, poisonous critters, and arguably the most unique NPC ever created.
It's available in the download section.

Arcanum - WIP is an unplanned beta release I made back in June. It is a basic expansion pack with most of the bug, teleport, and dialog fixes in place as well as several new locations to explore.
The links for this as well as the bug fixes can be found in Module Discussion.

As for adding a new location, it's actually not too difficult, but I'd recommend getting AMTUT and refreshing your memory before you even start. Expanding that into a little village becomes even more complex as you'll want to find the merchant dialogs or need to create new ones to make the scene work.

At the risk of sounding like I'm blowing my own horn, Arcanum - WIP is already unpacked and would make a good study guide for setting up your customizing.

 

Nothing wrong with a little horn-blowing, rroyo.

Seems to me that I remember, awhile back, a mod for the teller in the Shrouded Hills bank, turning her into a lesbian werewolf. Has that been lost to the sands of time? (An elven technologist-gunner can really use all the muscle she can get, and a squeeze on the side is gravy.)

What's AMTUT?

 

I, personally, never heard of the lesbian werewolf hack. Sounds interesting though...

AMTUT stands for Arcanum Modding TUTorial. It was made by Dark Underlord a while back; unfinished, regrettably. It's in four parts and is a step-by-step guide for using WorldEd and creating scripts to bring your creation to life.
The four parts are in the download section under the Arcanum Modding Resources listing.

 

okay, I got AMTUT, but I'm kind of in a pickle now. I've been following the tutorial, but now it's giving me advice applicable only to WorldEd Version 1070, but I only have 1074, and the link in the tutorial is dead.

What do I do now? I can't really continue unless I can find these .mes files...

 

In the download section under Arcanum Modding Tools is undat utilities and WorldEd 1.0.7.0.

Rename the DATs in your game to xArcanum(something).dat. Create new folders with the appropriate file name - Arcanum1.dat, for example and unpack the renamed dats into the proper folders. Now you can use the WorldEd 1.0.7.0 and still be able to test the results as you go along.

BTW: Rename the Arcanum.patch1 file to xArcanumpatch1.dat and you will be able to unpack it as well to a folder called Arcanum.patch1. This is where the modified maps and several mes files go.

If you only add new stuff to the Arcanum4.dat and Arcanum.patch1 folders, when you're finished modifying your game, a simple renaming of the folders and DATs will leave you with only 2 folders to be compressed.

Edit: A thought occured to me after I posted this. Why not use the WIP mod for practice?
The Arcanum5.dat and Arcanum.patch1 folders are already unpacked and need WorldEd 1.0.7.0 to be modified. You'll also have a clear indicator of what goes where as well as access to most of the files you'll need. Just be sure to get the bug fixes needed for my hack.

When you're sure you're ready to do so, unpack your game, add the changes you want, and repack.