Hi, me and my friend just picked this game up from the sale and I had a few questions I wanted to ask before I get started. The main one is simple: From what little I've read about this game, there seem to be certain requirements to get all the quests (or at least as many as you can based on alignment). I just wanted to know what these benchmarks are so I can be sure to hit them.

Question the second: I'm probably going to be building a magic character, because I come from D&D 3.5 and therefore magic is always the best thing ever. Are there any specific stat benchmarks I need to worry about here beyond the Will Requirements to get spells? Does the amount of spells known in a specific school have an influence on that school's spells, or can I just take, say, harm and heal without worrying about the rest of the school. Finally, is it a bad idea to go pure mage? I'm trying to get as little information on what stat build to go with as possible (I want to do it myself, for once) but I want to avoid making a gimped character and having to restart.

Finally: does the LAN based multiplayer still work for this game? My friend and I want to try playing together. How does that work? Will the fact that I'm planning on going mage and him going tech cause issues?

Thanks in advance!

Quest requirements: most of the time it's just a matter of not being an idiot, that is, having Intelligence of at least 5, which you will have as a spellcaster either way, and possibly being charming enough to offset a potentially negative initial reaction, meaning some Charisma and/or a smoking jacket. Quest solutions will depend on your build, there are options to choose from. There are only two quests with an Intelligence check (12+ and 10), and those can be bypassed with a certain potion. The only quests that will remain off-limits no matter what are the mastery quests for any skills you don't use.

Magick: pure mages actually have a high potential to get overpowered, depending on what spells you use. Generally, however, the more spells you learn = the higher your magickal aptitude gets = the more powerful your spells become. These can be any spells, but there is a catch: near the end of the game you can choose to become a master of a single spell college if you know all five spells from it (the mastery bonus is the ability to cast spells from that college at half Fatigue cost). But learning multiple low-level spells from different colleges instead is a perfectly valid strategy.

A cheap way to get an early powerhouse is to use the Sold Your Soul background, then buy a Dark Helm from a gypsy. You'll be permanently evil, and will probably be forced to wear a smoking jacket outside of combat to offset the reaction penalty, but your spells and equipment will be more powerful due to the magickal aptitude bonus.

Multiplayer: no idea, from what I've read it's broken to the point of inconvenience.

Welcome. To your first point, most quests don't have prerequisites beyond just showing up, but there are some that do. Being good or evil, for example, opens some options and closes others; getting involved with thievery (there are several entry points) is needed to be able to join the Thieves' Guild. Befriending X might mean killing Y, and with it any chance of doing Y's quests (and vice versa). Almost all masters of a skill have a quest for you as part of your mastery training.

Magic in Arcanum is awesome; some would say too much so. You can take spells from any college you want, as long as you have the necessary WP (and within a college, have already paid for any lower-level spells). The more spells you have, the higher your MA (magic aptitude) up to a max of 100%; the higher your MA, the more powerful/damaging/effective your spells will be — and so will the more magical weapons and armors you'll buy or find.

You can also boost your MA by choosing certain races and backgrounds, and/or wearing certain items, as YnK suggested. The only real reason to do so, beyond roleplaying value, is if you only have a limited number of spells you're interested in, but still want to get your MA up there.

Keep in mind that the game's basic premise is that magic and technology don't mix; so if you've gone magical, never EVER try to swing a power axe or shoot a rifle.

The best reason to max out a college of magic — beyond wanting the end-level spell, of course — is a late-game option to become a master of one magical college, which cuts casting costs for that school in half. Imagine slinging full-strength Harm spells on only two points of Fatigue per, and you can see what a boon that can be.

Besides willpower, your most important stat is probably DX. The faster you are, the more actions you can perform and spells you can cast during your turn; dexterity is also the prereq for about half of your skills, including all of the combat ones. For whichever skills you do acquire, be sure to seek out teachers and pay for apprenticeship, expertise, etc. They don't cost points, only money; and they add benefits you can't acquire simply by going up in rank.

Also keep in mind that IN is what allows you to maintain spells: two at the baseline 8 intelligence, three at 12, etc. And you can stack spells: you can cast Strength of Earth or Agility of Fire on yourself multiple times, for instance. Whether (and how) you make use of this is up to you.

As far as LAN goes, no clue. I'm a misanthrope who doesn't play well with others (;-p) so I've never tried to set one up.

Bottom line: it's really hard to gimp yourself to the point of screwing up, and this game rewards replayability. So there's no need to try and min-max your first playthrough; relax and have fun.

I haven't tried multiplayer either... I'd say just give it a shot and see how it goes, but don't get too hopeful as I've also heard it's a little wonky. Rest assured that you both have a great single-player game, though, and it can even be fun to play single-player together.

If you do get multiplayer working, it's not necessarily a problem to have one mage and one tech character, but it does mean that the mage's spells basically won't work on the tech character. So if you were planning on healing or buffing the tech character with spells, that won't work. Similarly, if the tech character tries to use tech items on the mage, they wont' work very well. A healing robot, for example, won't really heal a mage very much. But if each character is able to handle themselves, it can totally work, especially because they can split the magical and tech loot between them easily.

One thing to note: in multiplayer, I think you are required to use the real-time combat system, which is frankly pretty terrible. Turn-based is much better. But multiplayer might still be fun, especially since combat isn't really the main draw of this game; it's the character-building and roleplaying choices that set it apart.