hy, i started arcanum and i've got some questions i hope you guys can answer:
im playing a half-elf magician, as special background i chose sheltered childhood since i thought it gives useful bonus.
now, which stats should i raise?is intelligence or willpower more important and how many points should i put on these?also, my strentgh is just 4,is that enough for carryign stuff or will i be overpacked soon?
should i raise stats or rather buy spells on level-ups?so far i got harm and illuminate.should i concentrate on a few schools of magic or can i just buy spells from all schools?
how do i give items to virgil?i bought a sword for him but instead of giving it to him my guy just threw it.
last technical question, im playing on a laptop and there are black parts on the left and right side,can i switch to complete window to see a bigger part of the gameworld?
ok, many questions here, thanks from my side!

You'll be overpacked very, very soon, but if you're charismatic you'll have somebody else's carrying capacity to help you. If you're playing a character whose starting Strength is 4, run with that and don't raise it. Just work on your magic for now.
Intelligence is nice, but willpower has much, much more to do with spellcasting. For a mage, Intelligence will open dialogue options (which, without charisma and Persuasion to some small extent, you may fail to use correctly even when they're available) and every fourth point of it will give you one more slot for sustaining a spell, such as Invisibility, Summon Undead, or Purity of Water. To make the game easier on yourself, you may wish to try to get Quench Life early. Raising spells first and foremost will increase your Magickal aptitude, which will increase the power of your Harm spell and the success rate of your Quench Life spell. Branch out later, I'd say, and just go for excellence. The level and stat requirements for advanced spells will demand you put points elsewhere soon anyway. Option 1) Right-click his portrait in your party list on the left side of the screen, go to Inventory on the list that drops down. Drag and drop your shit to his shit, and if it immediately disappears from both, don't worry; just look for the button to see what he's got equipped, so you can see if it's there. Probably is.
Option 2) Talk to him. Look for the dialogue option about seeing his shit. Drag and drop your shit to his shit, and if it immediately disappears from both, don't worry; just look for the button to see what he's got equipped, so you can see if it's there. Probably is.
Read the manual. I know, I know, nobody likes to do that, but it's an oldskool RPG and you're asking basic questions. It means you need to read the manual. Besides, parts of that manual are fun. Can't help you there.

Which stats you raise will depend a little bit on which spells you're going to want eventually. Willpower is needed to learn the high-level spells in each school. Intelligence is needed if you want to be able to "maintain" several spells at once. So if you want to get a magical shield going, summon a creature, and buff your strength all at the same time, that's three spells running at once so you need a certain level of Intelligence to keep that many going. But if you focus on instantaneous spells like attack spells that don't need to be "maintained" then Intelligence is less important.

You should also pay attention to your stamina, which is what you use as you cast spells. If you run out, you fall unconscious, and then will probably be killed. So be careful not to use it all up.

Most people claim that Harm is the single most useful spell in the game. Since you already have that, you can probably just pick and choose some other spells based on what you think looks cool. But you should plan a little bit about which high-level spells you're going to want, because to get the high-level spells you have to focus on specific magic schools, since you need to get each spell in the school in order. If you spread yourself across too many magic schools, you won't have enough points to get to the really high-level spells.

Strength of 4 is a bit low but you can have your followers carry things for you too. You also won't need to carry that much heavy equipment (like armor) as a mage. You can raise it later if you get annoyed at your low carrying capacity.

To give items to Virgil I think you just talk to him, and then ask to see his equipment. He'll show an inventory just like yours. You can give him items but he will decide which ones to use. To force him to use the items you want him to use, sometimes you have to take his old equipment away from him.

The black bars on the side of the screen are there becuase the game is running in 800x600 resolution but your monitor is widescreen, so rather than stretch the game out, it letterboxes it. Winowed mode seems to give people trouble but you can try the High Res Patch (look at the sticky thread in this forum) which will let you set any resolution you want, as long as it's higher than 800x600, including widescreen resolutions. Since Arcanum is a 2D game, everything gets smaller at higher resolutions (it's like zooming out) so you might want to balance it and not set it ALL the way up. But play around with it.

Oh also, if you're just starting, I highly recommend the Unofficial Patch, which fixes tons of bugs. I'm not sure if it's compatible with savegames so you might want to start a new game with it, but if you're right at the beginning then that's not a big deal.

If your playing a mage having no strength is fine as long as you build up your magic skills fast. Focus on willpower because it will give you extra fatigue and let you cast high level spells, dex because high AP will let you get alot actions per turn, Intelligence allows you to maintain more spells at a time (up to five) don't put more points in intelligence than you need if you find that you would really like to be able to maintain more spells then boost it but unless you have a specific build in mind you really don't need to have five spells going at the same time i think being able to maintain three spells is just fine. Lastly constitution (when you have nothing better to spend points on) because of the boost to fatigue.

As for spells I found that for a first play though one point in necromancy is just fine for harm which is a decent spell throughout the game and that Force, Temporal and Conveyance were the best three colleges to focus on as they are filled with plenty of offensive, defensive and utility spells that are very useful and you really don't need the other colleges if you have these.

Other colleges that I found to be good if you want to have a wider variety of spells were Mental, Fire, White Necromatic and Summoning.

The other colleges I don't recomend for you first play through they all have a spell or two that can be VERY good IF you know what your doing so none but maybe Meta (unless youre a dirty cheater) are bad.

Mages do well solo or with companions don't travle with mage compainions other than vigil because they tend to blow all their fatigue and become useless fast and tech companions are no good because you (or Virgil) will be unable to heal them with magic. The tech neutal fighers plus Virgil are best with a mage. And i recommend going on terra-arcanum.com and reading about how to do the arcanum gods quest since it adds 100 to your fatigue and gives some other minor boosts.

ok thanks so far!
another thing,i got some dynamite and i want to blow the gangsters that hold the bridge in shrudded hills. how do i use the dynamite?i managed to throw it but it's not burning or exploding.

Dynamite needs to be planted on objects, it can't be thrown like grenades can. If you have thieving skills, you might be able to sneak up on one of the thieves and pickpocket him so you can "plant" the dynamite in his inventory. But you probably need good thieving skills to pull that off, which you likely don't have yet at this early point in the game. You can also try planting the dynamite on a nearby container or barrel and hope the thieves get caught in the explosion. Save before trying that though because it might not work.

Oh, and to place dynamite, I forget exactly but I think the idea is to "use" it and then select a target, and you will go plant it. So the same way you would use a healing item, except you target the object you want to place the dynamite on. Then make sure you back away! You'll have a few seconds to move out of the way. Its traditional use is for blowing up doors and chests, although it's usually easier to just beat those down with weapons or fists.

If you want to directly blow up the thieves, grenades are better. I think there were a few explosive grenades you can find in the crash site, so if you still have those you can use them.

im still stuck with the thieves at the bridge and i just cant get over them.using the dynamite doesnt work because if i plant it,they start running after me and when the dynamite explodes nobodys near it.
also, i cant bribe them because they want 1000 coins and i got about 250.
and fighting them is pretty impossible, i manage to kill the leader quite fast with harm, but the big guys just punch us to death. i also cant get the half-ogre in the inn to fight with me, he says something like 'not yet'.
did i miss something crucial or is there another way out of shrudded hills?

Well, you can do their quest where you bust up the stuff for building the bridge in the southern part of town, but that is kind of evil and I don't know if you want to be a good-guy.

If you talk to them you can go through a dialogue tree that has you telling them that you are with the theives underground and that they should move on lest they incur the wrath of that group. I don't know if there are any stat requirements for that though.

Needs Persuasion, at the least, for your character to come up with the idea.

What kind of character do you have? What level are you and what do your skills look like? I remember the bridge battle being the first really difficult fight in the game (the first few times playing through the game), so don't be too discouraged.

You seem to be a mage with harm at least, correct? Do you have fatigue potions and health potions? I would suggest trying to 'kite' the ogres with harm/running away/fatigue or health potions as needed first, then attacking Lukan. The ogres deal the most damage, so if you can kill one of them early in the fight you really help the odds. Also, in Arcanum killing a strong member of a mob often causes the other enemies to flee, which is useful for a mage with harm because you don't need to be near them to hurt them.

yeeha! thanks for the tip with the grenades at the crashsite, no idea why i didnt pick them up when i was in the passage.i blew the first of the ogres up aand the rest was easy!
another thing, how does apprentice training work?do i need to pay money or what?and can i learn anything i want or are there limitations depending on your character?

a) Apprentice training costs money, yes. It can be worth it, and when it isn't, but you intend to bring that skill up to higher strength later, it can also be worth getting it just to open the door to Expert training.
b) You need a minimal amount of ability in that skill in order to get Apprentice training, and must later meet prerequisites for Expert and finally Master training. So your Apprentice training possibilities are limited to the prerequisites.

Hmm.
c) Also, some of those Master trainers are a little weird. Don't worry about that, though, they've just got personality is all.

thx stingray,
the more i play, the more questions appear.next round:
1- why cant i change the auto-level schemes for magus und virgil?i want them not to auto-level to have better control about them.
2- when i put a weapon in magus' inventory he automatically replaces it with the weapon he's holding in his hand, even if i dont want to.what up?

1. Unfortunately you cannot control how other characters level up, you can only level yourself up, so you're stuck with Virgil's own leveling scheme.
2. Companions chose the weapon(/other items too) that is 'best' that is in their inventory. They are not always very smart about this and so a lot of the time you don't want them using a certain weapon or object. To make sure companions don't use stuff you don't want them to you have to not give it to them.

These are two parts of the game which are quite annoying about playing it, especially compared to more modern games (or even something like BG).