I'd actually tried to play this game before but didn't really get into it and stopped playing after just a few hours. I thought I'd give it another chance since it's supposed to be good, but so far in the first area it's just hilariously bad, me and my friend have spent the last hour laughing at how weird and screwed up it all seems.

I can never seem to hit anything, my ally rarely hits, the enemies usually miss but hit more often than we do, putting us at a disadvantage. I'd say in every 20 attacks, I hit once and critically miss about 5 times. I've spent most of the time on my back and my ally keeps dropping his weapon. What the hell is going on? It's funny as hell, but doesn't seem like a game you could really enjoy for too long. My stats are all at least 8, apart from Strength which is 6 or 7. I'm trying to make a more dialogue-oriented character but just the first area is kicking my ass so hard it doesn't seem worth it.

Do you really need to pour lots of skill points into the gun skill to be able to hit anything? I ran out of all my ammo on the first enemy without even hitting it (it was just a wolf) and am now stuck just kicking things with horrifying and funny results.

Well, I've only played the game once before, so I'm not an expert in advice. However, I do have some questions.

What kind of weapons are you using? What difficulty are you playing on (I'm not actually sure if this affects the frequency of critical misses)? Did you choose a background? If so, which one, and what are the effects it has?

I chose the Débutante background, as I want to be a more dialogue-oriented character, as I mentioned. It adds to Beauty and Charisma while lowering Strength. I'm playing on Normal. I have one point in firearms, two in lockpicking and my stats are generally 8s or 9s, with my Charisma and Beauty being 10 or 11. The lowest stat is Strength, which is only 6.

I tried using the pistol you can buy pre-game, but it never really hit anything and I ran out of ammo - and as I said, I'm now reduced to very inaccurate melee attacks. Since I wrote that last post, I critically missed so badly I actually destroyed my own armour and found myself in my underwear. It's making me laugh but I get the impression it's not meant to be this way.

As a side question, is there any way to craft your own ammo? I can see the menu for creating your own guns, but not ammo.

Unfortunately, playing a gunman is actually rather hard in Arcanum. The early guns are pretty weak, and you'll find yourself running out of bullets a lot. And yes, if you want to make a gunman character you will definitely want to put points into the gun skill. The critical misses are likely due to having low gun skill.

If you want to have an easier time for your first playthrough, you might try a magical-themed character or a straight melee fighter. Those are both easier to play. If you want to technological character, a grenadier is generally easier than a gunman (give him some throwing skill and get him a boomerang to back up those grenades and he'll do well).

A pure gunman is definitely possible, don't get me wrong, but it will be harder. And if you want a pure gunman you may wish to redesign your character at the outset. A couple points in the gun skill to start with is a good idea. A more technologically-aligned race, like a human or a dwarf, will work better. You can also take gunsmithing if you want (it will let you make your own guns) but remember that you can also find many of the guns, so it might be more useful to spend points elsewhere. The Perception stat is useful for hitting things that are far away, and Dexterity gives you more action points in combat. By the way, have you tried turn-based vs. real-time combat? I preferred turn-based pretty much all the time, as I had time to think of what to do and didn't have to worry about missing out on attacks because I wasn't fast enough, but I've heard that some gunman players like real-time against slower enemies so they can keep their distance better. You can toggle the two with the space bar and change which is default in the options.

No matter what kind of character you make, you'll get some critical misses in the beginning, until you gain some levels and increase your skills a bit. But you can lower the frequency with a well-designed character.

Another thing you could do if you are playing as a gunman is invest at least one point in melee. I found this helpful early on when ammo and money are scarce. It helps when fighting weaker enemies because you can use melee instead of wasting ammo that could be used for tougher enemies. But that's just my suggestion.

Hmm hearing that playing as a gunman is problematic is actually putting me off that idea. I chose it pretty arbitrarily so it's not like I'm particularly attached to the idea, my main goal is to be a dialogue character who can talk himself out of almost anything, with thief skills. Like a kind of gentleman thief, I suppose. The actual mode of fighting isn't that important to me as long as I don't end up shooting my own hat off.

Is there a good character editor out there that I could use to put my point in firearms into something else? I know it may sound petty, but if I switch to using magic and melee, that one point in firearms will just annoy me the whole time.

There might be, I don't know personally. But since you're at the beginning you could just make a new character and start over. If you want a diplomat / thief I would probably choose something other than guns. Melee, throwing, or bows would probably be better choices. Actually, even with bows you'll run out of arrows, so melee or a thrower who uses a boomerang might be the best choices for such a character. Then you'll need a good amount of charisma and persuasion skill for the diplomat part, and prowling for the thieving part. You'll probably also want lockpicking (a tech skill) or the magic spell that unlocks things, depending on whether you want to be more of a magical or technological character.

With high charisma you can also recruit more followers to help fight for you, in those instances where you have to fight (e.g. against wolves, or undead). This means you won't need to put too many points into fighting skills, maybe just one point to help in the beginning.

If you're going to be the stealthy type then go with a ranged weapon, so throwing or bows, so that you can prowl during combat and get critical hits by attacking from hidden.

Well I pushed on with the gunman character. I now have a base 45% chance of hitting - and it says a lot for this game that that feels generous at this stage. I have to say, this game is remarkably reminiscent of Fallout 2 in that it starts out in a crappy area (god damn Ant Temple in Fallout 2), steps up a few gears with the first town and the first place you get party members, but still feels sort of underwhelming (in Fallout 2, this would be the place where you get the tribesman guy from) but after that point, just gets better and better.

I'm already getting really immersed in the world and story, I can tell it'll be even better when my skills/attacks work the majority of the time rather than the minority - and again I guess this is like Fallout. Trying to hit anything early in that game was a chore, as exemplified by the first 10-15 minutes of trying to punch giant ants to death.

Glad you're enjoying the game! It is very similar to the Fallout series in many ways, as it is made by some of the same people (although I'm not sure if they actually worked on Fallout 2, I'm only sure about Fallout 1).

Yeah, I think the major connection was Tim Cain who did Fallout (not 2), Temple of Elemental Evil and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. It's just that I haven't actually played Fallout yet, only the 2nd one onwards. I should really get around to that, a lot of people say it's even better than the 2nd one.

Not to derail the thread too much: But yeah, Fallout 1 is really good. I enjoyed it a lot. I think I like Fallout 2 better, but for gameplay reasons not necessarily for story reasons.

And yes, Arcanum plays very similarly to Fallout, which made my getting into Fallout (through GOG) all the easier. I got Arcanum when it came out, 10 years ago or so and I was obsessed with it (as can probably be seen from my posts in the forum: I still know stuff about the game that I haven't seriously played in years).

http://www.cheathappens.com/show_download.asp?ID=3882

Thanks, but when I opened up my save with that, the character stats displayed were nothing like my actual stats. My strength was something like 20, for example. The "background" info was empty and uneditable and it was basically nothing like my actual character. I tried saving it as a new save, just to check if it somehow comes out differently in-game, but the game didn't even detect the save the editor made.

You can't "Save as" a new save within the editor and have it show up. There are multiple files involved with the save, make sure you're opening the proper file and make sure you enter you character name properly when prompted, it's case sensitive.