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Well, having played through Morrowind, NWN and Warcraft 3, I have a month and a half to kill before IWD2. Figured I'd fire up Arcanum again

It's been nearly a year since I played it the first time and quite a lot of stuff has been added, seemingly. Many mods have been released, including several by Troika. Anyone have any experience with any of these? Any I should definitely install or avoid?

Someone finally figured out how to set up custom portraits, something that stymied a bunch of us for months at the time

I'm going to go magic for this run-through.... previously I'd done tech and thievery. I dimly remember there was a rumour about being able to complete a secret master kind of quest involving the magic masteries in Tulla; that it was possible to get a special status if you had maxed out several magical disciplines (rather then just getting mastery of one sphere). Did anything ever come of that?

Good call on the replaying of Arcanum, CJ

I also have dusted-off my Arcanum CD (after tearing the hated "Sierra" logo into tiny bits...) right before I finally bought NWN. It's sadly been shelved again for the time being, but in retrospect it's probably one of the best RPGs to have been released in the past couple of years.

I've been playing some WC3, but I haven't really liked a Blizzard RTS game since SC...including this one. Morrowind's still got some potential in a few months and NWN will hold my attention for a couple of weeks. Arcanum was the last non-DnD RPG I enjoyed (sorry...played through as a Dwarf Tech and an Ogre combat monkey, so I can't give you the skinny on the magic stuff) and I expect I'll make room for it on the HD soon enough *sigh*.

I haven't been keeping-up with the mods for Arcanum and I'm glad to hear that there are some out. It's a good, solid system (I just hope guns are a bit more powerful now).

Within the last year I had been looking forward to a lot of the RPGs and the list looked promising: Dungeon Siege, Pool of Radiance II, Freedom Force, Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights seemed like winners, but all have their shortcomings. The only other RPG-like game I was looking forward to (as well as my wife) was Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth...and it's been delayed at least until the 1st quarter of next year .

So I think that Arcanum will just have to tide me over after the NWN 'newness' wears off...

...Hell, I might even play through Planescape:Torment, the BG series & IWD, Fallout and Fallout II again just to remind me why I like this particular genre .

BTW: If you come across any good Arcanum mods, share the wealth...I'd like to know if any of 'em are any good

S_S

Hey Sam. Well, I downloaded the six mods that Troika themselves made, but there's almost no documentation on them. Three appear to be multiplayer only; the other three are presumedly in game somewhere, but I haven't managed to find them. Grr. A little more documentation would have been a good thing.

I actually finished the game with a mage yesterday -- took a whopping two days. Mages are -so- much easier then tech characters, as well as boring. Get your magic aptitude to 100 and you'll never need anything but harm and disintegrate. Teleportation spell also cuts literally hours out of gameplay time, allowing you to move from one area to the next without travelling the world map. Becoming a magic master in Tulla was also less interesting then I thought it might be. Did finally do the entirety of the gods quests, though - hadn't bothered with my old tech character because I was told a 100 tech character likely would not be resurrected at the final altar.

I think I'm going to hack myself a custom background that gives -lots- of stat and skill points so I can make a tech character that is able to learn every tech discipline.... see all the neat items I missed the first time around, without having to go through two or three characters to do it.

If you need information about mods, check out Terra Arcanum, at http://www.terra-arcanum.com/council/FAQ.shtml

I think a mod call Hellgate starts with a talk with Bessie Toone in the haunted Shrouded Hills Mine to open up a portal or something...

Hope that helps...

While we are in the topic of magic, I was wandering what spell can I open a magically-held chest? Cause unlock cantip doesn't open those chest and neither do disperse magic...
(My magic apt is 100 so I am pretty sure I am high enough if that was one of the criterias)