I've been meaning to smack the crap out of this game for a good long while. I'm looking forward to using your mod. Thank you for making it.

Awww, thanks you guys.

Shucks.

This is going to sound like a stupid question, but I thought you could play as dwarves in Arcanum. (I'm playing it for the first time.)

I just downloaded the mod, so I'll install it when I get home from work.

Okay so I've played this mod (up to Tulla so I've seen a lot of what the mod has to offer) and its good. Not perfect but a hell of a lot better vanilla if you've beaten the game for the nth time. See as fun as Arcanum is its always be plague by balance issues strictly in combat. In Arcanum you have health and fatigue (your mana). When you run out of fatigue you pass out and people beat you in your sleep. Spells cost fatigue, running/chasing enemies uses small amounts of fatigue and getting hit drains fatigue. So imagine you casters using up all their magic and then passing out and being useless for the rest of the battle. It was a cool idea but it was probably not thought out very well. This is just one of the many issue that I believe Leonidus corrected.

Since Arcanum was released this is the third mod that aimed to fix the games difficulty because frankly its very easy. Early game before level 20 there are some challenging encounters but after level 30 you'll notice enemies haven't really scaled to match your more powerful characters and you continue to level at a fairly fast pace which is fun (leveling is fun) but easy enemies are not at least in my imo. I mean the final boss is a joke and so are most enemies that npcs just told you were vicious as hell. So this mod fixes that too. I must say I'm sad I wasn't strong enough to kill the Stillwater Giant. If I knew how beastly it would be I would have prepared better. Oh and your buddies will die; its okay. Resurrection items are cheaper and you should stock up because theres some pretty intense boss-type fights that will steamroll your team if your not careful. Thats another thing; difficulty wasn't amp-ted up by just giving enemies a boatload of health. Enemies hit hard now too and that was the main problem with animal/monster type enemies. They sucked compared to your sword wielding followers.

Lets just say melee combat was overpowered before and everything else kinda sucked. Any character with 20+ strength could possibly do 10-20 more damage per swing that a character using a different method or maybe didn't have 20 strength. This is what made ogres so scary because they max out strength around 24-26. Well thats changed in this mod. Strength bonuses are the same but weapons were adjusted in damage and speed to compensate it. Now guns rock early game and even out later.

So like I said earlier there was two other mods before this that tried to address the difficulty problems in the game. The first was Car Arcanum which was fun but when I played it there was a bug in combat that prevents enemies/followers from taking damage when i was standing more than 5 feet away from a fight (like let say I was using a gun or a bow. I played that mod a lot by the way too. Got near the end I think and never found that damn car. Maybe it was in vendigroth. I'll say that that mod added some difficulty fights to the game but its used some of the cheap tricks that I complained about to make some of those fights more interesting. Honestly though the combat bug really took a lot out of it.

The other mod was called A: WIP or arcanum work in progress. I enjoyed this mod probably more than car arcanum but mod focused more on adding new content and stuff to kill over adding a challenge to the game. The best way to describe it is like when you get dlc that adds a bunch of new areas to your game for more gameplay hours. Other than that is doesn't really address the difficulty issues. Arcanum had a multiplayer module with its own town and dungeon to explore. A:WIP was able to incorporate that (vormantown) into the single player game which was pretty cool but in a way just allowed my character to be stronger when I progressed through an already easy game. Some of the new towns were cool like a hobbit shire type town but it didn't really feel like Arcanum anymore if that makes any sense. Both these mods are no longer worked on so if you ever played them you would feel they are incomplete.

So if I haven't made it clear by now This newest Arcanum Mod Rebalance actually does what it says and I feel blows the other two out of the water. There are currently a few items the author could not modify so these are considered op items. Sad cause I was liking some of those items tool; was wondering why they felt so strong lol. I've talked to the author and he thinks he might be able to modify the items he couldn't before so I got my fingers crossed cause that could be an updated version or a more complete version of the mod. Hes still around to work on the mod which the author of the other mods are not so thats a plus in my book.

The mod is designed for turn based combat and honestly I've always played this game in real time so it was an adjustment when I finally switched styles. Ranged weapons (or very fast weapons maybe) destroy in real time which will kill some of the challenge added to the game so I would recommend turn based. Real time also allow you to kite which will also make the game easier since enemies AI can still be pretty stupid. Also a number of items are changed. Light armor gives speed bonuses so imagine you gunslinging rogues kiting and out running enemies in real time. So I did find a bug with one of the new spell that was causing a crash to desktop. I believe it was the acid rain one. One vanilla bug in Arcanum is certain spell effect can be too much for any computer (freaking stupid really). I don't know if its a sound issue or the stupid rain animation that lags the game but its ends up crashing the game and some of your followers like to learn that spell. To avoid the crash hit spacebar a couple times to switch back and forth between realtime and turnbased and back again and this should cause your follower to deactivate the spell. Its kind of a weak spell anyway. I think casting it once in a battle is okay but the problem is you can cast it twice for a double stack effect that just sucks. Double the crashing fun.

So for anyone who is a fan of Arcanum and has been looking for a mod that addresses the lack of difficulty in the vanilla game I believe this is the mod for you. I was recently told there isn't much info on mod comparisons so I hope this helps. Thanks again for the mod.

2.0 for this mod is underway, so if any of you out there have a desire to replay Arcanum, I would ask you to use this easy to install mod.

Need as much feedback as possible before I start making some of the changes I have in mind for the second release.

If anyone has specific mod data questions while playing, please read the readme, check out the really extensive documentation, and then ask me on here.

If anyone wants a basic description of the mod, read these posts from the beginning of the thread:

http://www.gog.com/forum/arcanum_of_steamworks_and_magick_obscura/arcanum_mod_rebalances_the_whole_game_some_added_content/post6

http://www.gog.com/forum/arcanum_of_steamworks_and_magick_obscura/arcanum_mod_rebalances_the_whole_game_some_added_content/post1

I'll give it a shot. I've been on an Arcanum binge lately, and I'm enthusiastic about anyone trying to make more content for this game, because it's so killer. I'm going to be travelling in the near future, so my attention may be sporadic, but I'll check it out.

EDIT:

Here are my thoughts on this:

First, I applaud your efforts. I can tell you put a lot of thought and work into this, so good job.

There are things I like about it, and things I don't like. Overall I'd say that, although some people will surely like it, it's not my cup of tea. I think it boils down to a disagreement with your fundamental approach to changing the game. In the name of increasing difficulty, you've sacrificed logic. A weapon that's constructed using a gem or a wooden ring makes no sense; it's just a change that exists solely to limit the availability of the weapon. That lack of common sense bothers me more than the exploitable mechanics of vanilla, unfortunately. On the other hand, the functionality of firearms is greatly improved. They perform more like you would expect, and they feel more realistic.

I think you should consider removing the portraits, and making that a separate mod. Not that they're bad, mostly, but it would dramatically reduce the size of the download at the cost of something that doesn't have anything to do with functionality or balance. Personally, the first thing I did was replace the portraits with my own set that I always use, so that part of it was wasted on me. Interestingly, we both used some of the same paintings (the John Singer Sargent collection is particularly fruitful).

Machined Gauntlets are so heavy no one can pick them up, and the blacksmith in Ashbury has a pair, so he can't accept any money into his inventory. This includes his daily replenishment money, which simply piles up at his feet, meaning he can't pay anything for items he wants to buy from the player.

I think the UAP fixed the old crash-on-exit bug, but this mod brings it back for some reason. I have four copies of Arcanum on my HD (vanilla, UAP, AWIP, and Equilibrium), and Equilibrium is the only one that crashes on exit.

The huge number of bullets, charges, and fuel from crafting is vast overkill. Getting more bullets from crafting is a really good idea, but I'd go back to double or triple the number from vanilla instead of 5000.

I disagree with a lot of the "convenience" changes you've made, as well, like magick item identification being a first-level spell, and resurrection and teleportation scrolls being cheap. Those are changes I might want if I'm doing dozens of speed runs, but personally I hate playing the game that way. I'd consider making them optional.

So, like I said, there are some good things, and some bad things. Overall I don't like it, based purely on your approach and my personal preference, but others will surely differ. Considering how messed up combat is in regular Arcanum, I think you've done a good job trying to make things better.

It just now updated me that this was a reply. First of all it's hilarious that we ended up using some of the same custom portraits. High five, my friend.

Secondly, I'm not getting the problem with the merchant in Ashbury, can you email me your save game? elijahmarch@gmail.com

I didn't change some of the tech recipe's to make the game harder but to balance the game. Changes to the monsters were what provide the real increase in difficulty. But to keep it so that it's too easy to get good guns means 1) they overpower damage from other styles and are imbalanced and 2) you ignore the rest of the gun options for a long time (like until Vendigroth) because you already have something equal or better. Pretty much all changes to items were entirely geared towards balance, as that's the whole purpose of the mod.

This was all done with changes only to the original game files too, so that's why there was no other way to balance that except by using rare items found in certain locations. The items that became the requirements in tech crafting for better weapons were chosen on an extremely deliberate basis.

Now that in 2.0 it's going to be a full module that is a copy of Arcanum and then edited, all that is of course free to be changed, because I can add in new components and control their placement, as well as remove availability of good guns early on by directly removing the hand cannon from Sammy White's inventory, for example.

Tons of other things I wanted to do originally but couldn't are of course planned (if not already done), and so with ammo for example I figured create an Ammunition Guild merchant in gun shops.

Crash on exit bug is recognized but harmless I assure you.

A lot of what can seem like convenience changes are actually necessary because of other changes, like ressurection items cheaper because some players will really need them to win fights. The biggest one that gets misunderstood is item durability, which is necessary because armor weight and encumbrance is really important now, so it would be just torturous to force players to carry spare armor into a dungeon (severe speed penalties). It's much better to have armor types and ST matter (so that weak wizards can't wear plate, but a strong wizard could if you want, etc) than to have the occasional nakedness caused by a fire elemental.

Really my greatest grievance is that guns outperform melee damage until melee ST gets high, which is just part of the game code and something I can never change (range damage being static). That, and backstab damage, are going to be the last real lingering imbalances even after the next version.

Thanks for your effort on this.

I havent played Arcanum for years and I dont think I REALLY got into it back then due to my issues with balance ect.

Ive loaded this mod and from an outsiders perspective I think its the way I would like to play the game. I do have some gripes however and it may be that im ignorant of mechanics:

Why so many critical hits? Honestly I am killing myself more than being killed and its no fun. Ive had to retire my morph mage right away due to the fact that sharpen seems to either 1 shot my enemy or me.

Why remove options for evil players? I mean not being able to specialise or craft if you play evil seems counter productive to enjoy the evil side - combat balance is one thing but gimping options because of overall gameplay choices seems meh.

EDIT: By critical hits I mean critical misses that cause my PC to die.

The sharpen spell from morph doesn't cause an increase in critical hits, the 1st level water spell buff does that. Haven't had reports of too many crits or experienced it in my playthroughs, although the water buff does increase it quite a lot when active. Bug feedback is important so if you do get more information on this please let me know, try to give me more details about what's going on in your game if you could.

I don't penalize evil players on purpose.

Mage specialization is gained at Sulla, which rejects evil players. That's part of the original game, just how it is, and so I put that info in the readme so that players have that important information before character creation. Someone on the terra-arcanum forum actually told me that there are ways to pretend to be good while being evil and get into Sulla for this purpose, which makes sense, because Arcanum is wonderful like that. It's not going to happen for your average evil playthrough though.

Note that with the game download I include and recommend the Virgil Debug Dialogue, which can be used to give yourself magic specialization.

Evil players also lose access to Qintarra if following the evil storyline. This is part of the original game again. I placed an important crafting component for certain weapons in Qintarra because it is the best option for balancing crafting of some guns. Most Arcanum shops are shared in general categories, which is why many rural shops behave exactly the same across towns, and same with most city shops. Qintarra has shops which are available only once you reach Qintarra, so it's the best place to limit access to some higher end weapons for balance reasons.

The whole Qintarra shop thing is going to change tho in 2.0, as I got my hands on an old XP machine so I can mod it more precisely now.

If you have any changes or suggestions you might like to see in the next version, email me at elijahmarch@gmail.com

Glad you like the game and thanks for the feedback.

Question:

Can you install your mod over top of a game patched with the unofficial bug fix community patch, and the higher resolution mod?

I'm def giving this a look once you finish version 2.0. Very excited to play Arcanum again but the combat was soooo faceroll once you figured out what was overpowered.

Thank you for creating this mod! I was so happy to find it :)

I am playing the game now. I am only a few hours in but I am enjoying it so far.
I do think the revolver you get from stopping the bank robbers in shrouded hills is too powerful that early. Creating this revolver by yourself would require rank two in gunsmith, right? So I think it is too powerful.

What makes me play this game is the great atmosphere it has, and I am sorry to say that changing the ingredients needed for creating guns really spoils the atmosphere for me. I liked the idea of being able to build your own guns from improvised materials. An alternative solution could be to place the schematics for these guns in places that are harder to get to, or how about making the original ingredients much more expensive?


Still, great work! Keep it up!


@Gaidren: yes, it is compatible with the unofficial patch and high-res mod. It says so in the install instructions.

Going from memory, but I'm pretty sure the stats for the revolver you get "for free" (at least in original game) are worse than the stats for the revolver you create at level 2 of firearms...and you can get all the parts to create the level 2 revolver by that point if you invest in it.

Gun damage doesn't increase with strength, so a lot of guns have to compete at the level of melee weapons on a strong hero to be competitive item choices. A lot of lesser guns of course have lower damages, and later ones have better damage. It couldn't really be fine tuned before editing just the game proto files, but will be in the next version where I have to change every little thing using World Ed.

Basically, many guns hit like ogres so that gun damage can compete with melee characters, and as I've said in some earlier posts the crafting and availability will be changed a lot more in 2.0 now that I can do it. It's just going to take forever.

Been playing a new playthrough of Arcanum after some years and picked up your mod (in addition to all of the other recommended mods)

Generally I've been quite happy and appreciative of all of your fixes! The game feels much more appropriately challenging now, and I don't feel like I or my team are overpowered. Thank you for making this mod and making it available to the community.

I do have a small constructive criticism which is that some very high level monsters seem to have an absurd number of hit points. So much so that at level 50 I can barely dent a mob such as a Death Lantern or the boss dragon in the Dungeon of the Dragon Pool. I have a party of 6 followers + dog, all level 50, and play turn based and still get unbelievably frustrated when trying to face even one level 50 mob. It can be done, but it takes several minutes, and in the case of Volgoth (in the Dungeon of the Dragon Pool) several Res scrolls. I am a Master in Throwing with the best weapon available to me (Aerial Decapitator) and my throws aren't even doing 1% damage to this mob. Is this working as intended?
I understand if there was intent to make these mobs into true "boss" mobs, but if it takes a group of 8 adventurers more than 4-6 rounds to kill the boss I would think there is an issue of the mob being overpowered.
Edit: In the interest of full disclosure I haven't been back to Volgoth since failing at level 40 with a group of 4 followers+dog. I fought at least 2 dozen rounds and rezzed Virgil 5 times and opted to quit out and reload out of frustration.

I hope you don't take offense to my feedback as I have enjoyed your mod very much and am very glad to be using it.