Tried a search but this didn't seem to pop up. Anywho: I'm playing the version of Arcanum available from GOG.com without any kind of further upgrades/mods or whatever, so this would just apply to the normal game (but with whatever patches GOG.com prepatched it with, I suppose). Anyway, when I go to the dwarven smith in the Wheel Clan cave, when he repairs my armor its integrity drops instead of going up. Is this a glitch, or is it part of the story (like does he do a shoddy job because the dwarves don't like me, or...?) I'm figuring it's just a glitch, just wondering if anyone else ran into it. I thought maybe it was because I had been blasted by a "molten arachnid" and the armor was now unfixable, but wouldn't you know the same thing happens to my gauntlets which weren't rackattacked by a lava spider, so that doesn't seem to be it. Any help is much appreciated.
If armour is repaired by experts in repair, the total possible health of the item goes down but its current health (as in the numerator of an item's health) goes up. Is this what you mean? If it is then yeah that's completely normal, get items repaired by Maxim in Caladon if you don't want this to happen.
Both the numerator and the denominator go down. It drops from something like 28/58 to 13/13 after I pay the guy several times (I can continuously click on it and it will be "derepaired" multiple times until it drops to 13/13). Like the first time I click on it, it drops to 23/48, then like 20/45, etc. until it finally stops at 13/13. It's kind of odd because the guy offers to repair it for only 7 gold, too, when it should probably cost more (oiled thieves' leathers). Good tip on Caladon, though, I'll have to check him out. But yeah I understand from what you're saying that the overall integrity is supposed to drop, but I don't think it's supposed to be able to drop multiple times like that (every other smith I only had to click once and it would repair it, at least the current integrity would go up instead of down like it does in the Wheel Clan) and never have the current integrity go up to meet the overall integrity. Instead they both drop until it bottoms out at 13/13. It's probably just a glitch where the armor just isn't repaired, it's damaged or something. Some glitch to do with this dwarven smith fellow in the Wheel Clan. I guess I'll just have to hike to Stillwater, since I'm at the point where I get attacked by the Molochean Hand every five seconds on the world map and don't feel like doing that the whole way to Caladon. Thanks for the help, though.
Yeah, the next time I play through the game I plan to use the Unofficial patch. Thanks for verifying it's a glitch. A dwarven smith who sucks at repairing IS pretty ironic, though...bet he gets a lot of flack at the family reunion.