No, you don't have to talk to anyone else, and the Persuasion check for Lukan is 4 ranks (1 character point). Perhaps you picked the wrong dialogue options somewhere? You don't technically know anything about the Thieves Underground at this point, so the trick is to pick the generic lines that won't raise any suspicion - with as less detail about them as possible. Also, is your game patched/modded with anything?

I installed the unofficial patch and the high resolution patch. Does arcanum downloaded from gog needs the patch???

That sounds like a mix-up. Do you perhaps have Charisma at 9?

To bluff your way past Lukan, you need (as YnK says) to invest one point in Persuasion, which you can do at any time.*

If you've done that, then as soon as you first talk with Lukan, there will be an option that says, "Perhaps I can persuade you otherwise." If you see that, then it's just a matter of making the right dialog choices. Again, as YnK says, in general go with the least specific option and let Lukan draw his own (wrong) conclusions.

If you don't see that dialog option, then check again to make sure that you actually did put that point in Persuasion.

And if by chance you've run out of CPs (character points) and you've already done the quests in town, you can exit Shrouded Hills to the west and wander or sleep in the wilderness until you've had enough random encounters to bump you up another level.

That covers everything I can think of. Good luck, and let us know how it turns out.


*Unless your CH (charisma) is below 6, which is possible with certain backgrounds such as Beat With an Ugly Stick. If that's the case, you'll have to also invest enough points into CH to bring it up to 6.

I do have persuation at 9 and charisma at 9
I also added the half orc from the inn to my party

...Wait a sec. Are you sure you aren't confusing Persuasion (the 4th skill in the Social Skills category) with Perception (PE, one of the 8 main stats)?

My guess is you tried to give too much detail about The Underground rather than just being vague. You have to get him thinking you're from The Underground but don't pretend you know too much.

I think thats the mistake sorry for my newb problem

Happens to everyone. :) (I could never tell whether Arcanum's usage of CP as both Attribute points and Skill points made the character generation less confusing or more...)

One important thing to learn is the relationship between stats and skills - you can't put a point in a skill if its base stat is too low. E.g. if you have 8 Charisma, you can put a point into Persuasion - but adding a second point requires increasing Charisma to 9, etc. This way you can plan your CP distribution many levels ahead, depending on which skills you've decided to learn.

Oh yes, and the reason I didn't notice your mistake right away is because the game actually sees the skills on a 0-20 scale instead of 0-5, with each CP put into a skill equated to 4 skill "ranks". This is easy to see if you equip something with a small skill bonus, like the Ring of Influence (1-3 ranks of Persuasion depending on the magick/tech meter). I seriously need to stop getting into game mechanics for "debugging" purposes... :/