Q#1 Ok so magical weapons have a damage rating of like 1-8 (+15) . Armor would have similar (+X) if magical.

How exactly does that work wtih the tech thing. Or nuetral, or magic inclined characters?

Do they get a percentage of that '(+) number or does teh weapon always get that plus... I just don't get it. I guess I was bad at reading the manual.

Q#2 weapon speed. I got this sword of darren ka, that is jsut like a plain sword, it would seem, but i noticed NPCs liked it. and when I equipped i got way more attacks. ITs speed is 20.
How much better is speed than raw damage.
like if its 1-8 damage at speed 20 versus.
1-8 (+15) speed 8.... which is better?

Q#3 When it says DX-4 is that damage it does to my enemy or do I lose 4 dex for weilding? Some of the stuff written on weapons is hard for me to understand and I just didn'T find manual (which has no friggin TOC) easy to find answers.

q#4 I figured out the abbreviations by now mostly but these were also a mystery to me.


I am starting to like the game but some things which suck is how things that should be clearly explained should be.

oh and another question- what containers get auto-emptied/replaced of contents etc. and what containers could I put something in and it will retain what I put there? It seems the trashbins atleast are not static, stuff seems to keep beign added over time and I assume taken away/reset contents in that process.

Yep, what you said first is correct. If you have 100% magical aptitude you get the full bonus, if you have 50% you get half, and so on. If you have high tech aptitude you have chances for critical failures with the weapon/armor/item because it doesn't work correctly with such a techy person. That depends. If you have high dexterity you already get a lot of hits in per turn (assuming you are playing turn based; and if real time you swing the weapon faster), so a high weapon speed will increase that even more, allowing for more swings.

In that particular case, if I was getting the full +15 bonus (from a high magical aptitude) then I would go with the slower sword, because of the significantly higher damage. It can depend a lot on your play style though. I believe that means you lose 4 dexterity; I can't think of a weapon that does dexterity damage on hit, so it is probably a cursed weapon. Trashbins are the main thing that gets refilled. Storekeeper's inventories also reset. Most containers around the world though are static, if I recall correctly.

I'm glad you are enjoying the game, even though you are running into some snags! Keep at it, Arcanum is a fantastic game, though I think having been playing it on and off for almost the past 10 years (since whenever it came out) has made me forget how hard/unintuitive some of it is.

Thanks,
I found a place in one of the manuals (the guide or the manual or maybe it was a walkthrough) that it said you get like 1/2 if you have tech aptitude or something, but if I understand you if I am even a point in the tech side of the scale then I will get no magic benefit from a magic item?

I haven't looked too close at the tech items. It seems like a lot of calculating to do. like if it says +15 and I was at 50% magic aptitude... 7.4... and as I find and swap weapons around I kinda gotta figure what each NPCs aptitudes are...seems a bit cumbersome to calculate it all up.

It also has a figure XX% or soemthing like taht on the magic items. I didn't understand what that meant. If the item has mana, that means the magic type characters etc. can use that mana to cast their own spells right? I still don7t get the mana system, re-reading the manual again to day.

Oh and are any of the potions/solves permanent? They say like 'increases speed' 'increases damage resistance' but it DOESNT say how long...making it sound permanent. In other CRPGs I've played there are temporary and permanent potions. The permanent kind obviously being very veyr valuable. So this I am confused by as well.

Actually, I don't think this is quite correct. The percentage of the enchantment you get varies with each magical item... i.e. a very weak magical item might let you get to 100% of its enchantment with only a moderate magical aptitude, whereas the really powerful ones will let you get to 100% only if you have full magical aptitude.

To check how much of a percentage you're getting from a particular magical item, simply mouse over it so its info is displayed in the box at the bottom of the screen. The percentage will be clearly shown there.

This also allows people with small tech aptitude to sometimes be able to get a small percentage of the enchantment of a magical item to work for them.

For tech items, the way it works is that if you have magical aptitude you will have a larger chance for critical failures with those items. Again, this varies by item but you can mouse over the item so the info is displayed in the box in the bottom of the screen, and it will display your chance of critical failure.

NOTE: If the cahnce of critical failure says 0%, this doesn't mean that you can't get a critical failure when using that item. It just means that you don't have any EXTRA chance of a critical failure due to magical aptitude. If you are trying to use a gun with no firearms skill you'll still get plenty of critical failures, even if you have high tech aptitude and the "chance of critical failure" thing says 0%.

I am 95% sure this is how things work, but SheBear knows a lot about Arcanum so maybe I am wrong. If so, please correct me!

XX% is the benefit you get from a magic item. Neutral characters get around 30% I think, points in tech reduce this gradually to 0. Spells cost stamina. If the item has mana and it's equipped, mana is expended before stamina. It is slowly restored with time (no matter if the item is equipped or not). No, with the notable exception of the vivifier (the schematic for which is found very late in game).

Interesting note: This means there can be a point to having a small collection of mana-bearing magical weapons. When raising a huge number of dead dwarves, which served no purpose but to assuage my sense of horror at finding them, I cycled between an axe, a sword and a staff which each contained and regenerated their mana separately as I resurrected them. Problem with the Vivifier. It seems its bonuses can be overridden and accidentally destroyed by the use of other potions and such. As such, my character no longer has the Vivifier's bonuses to Strength and Dexterity.
Thought you might like the warning about that bug.

You're totally right. It skipped my mind entirely that different levels of magical items have different thresholds of magical 'strength'. Thanks for correcting me! :)