Hi all, First post so please be gentle!

Have only recently discovered GOG and have bought and am enjoying The Witcher. Thing is, I am a bit of a PC game novice with limited game time available and as a result, can only play games that progress without too much of a challenge <hangs head in shame> .

I prefer games where a story unfolds with minimal interruptions (such as multiple deaths and illogic puzzles) and cannot seem to establish from reviews and the community whether I'm likely to enjoy Arcanum...

As mentioned earlier, I'm loving the original Witcher and games like Oblivion IV and to a lesser extend Fallout 3.

Any thoughts, recommendations and advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Arcanum is as difficult as you choose to make it.

Basically, there are a lot of possible character builds, since you get a lot less points than stuff to put them in.
While this means you have high replayability, it also means that it's entirely possible to screw up your character and make it ineffective.

Also, if you don't put points into something, you'll bereally bad at it. Which is why there are people who whine that they're slaughtered by the wolves in the starting area: not having any skill as a fighter (or mage or any other combat option) means you'll be beaten up by everything.

If you want to have an easy time in the game, a fighter hybrid (maxing fighting ability doesn't take that many points)or full mage are probably easiest.

Since you enjoy story most, I'd advise you to do a mix of fighter and negociator (decent strength, high dex, high charisma, decent intelligence, high persuasion, high melee, high dodge).

Ill second that play either a fighter (points in str, dex, con, melee, dodge) or mage with points in (willpower, dex, int, con, conveyance, force, temporal and one point in black necromantic) and then with either build get up to 12 charisma and three persuasion.

Thats enough to make either a solid fighter or mage who can have 4 followers + dog and plenty of points left over to customize your character further. Play human, elf or half elf and don't pick any backround that lower the stats i mentioned or give skill boosts or items and if its your first play though don't give your fighter less than i think 5 intelligence.

This should make your first play through about as easy as its going to get without any knowledge of the game mechanics keep most of the dialog options and quests available and let you try out some of the npc followers.

I suggest keeping virgil when you start and getting your charisma up to 9 so you can pick up Sogg Meadmug in the hotel in Shrouded Hills (virgil will heal you and Sogg will beat things down). As you meet recruitable people you can let them in your group and drop them when you meet some one else later to get them a try. For your first play through I suggest keeping Chukka in tarant and Raven in Quintarra and as soon as you can (it will be later in the game for both). As soon as you get to ashbury go strait to the back of the town where a gnome is kicking a dog talk to him and tell him to stop and you will get dog who is an awesome melee fighter and doesn't count against your follower limit.

A party of Virgil, Raven, Sogg, Chukka and dog plus either a powerful figher or mage will make this game a cake walk. If you need quest advice just post here or go to www.terra-arcanum.com they have excellent walk throughs for the quests.

When you make your character spend your first 5 points on the following. As a fighter 2 melee, 2 dodge, 1 strength. As a mage 1 conveyance, 1 force, 1 necromatic black 2 willpower. This will let you get though the first area just fine (if you are a mage rest for an hour after every battle)

What mystral said.

First thing you should do, though, is set the game's difficulty to easy. It doesn't take away all of the game's challenge, but it definitely makes it more enjoyable to people like you and me.

Also, you could consider going for a charismatic and persuasive person. Charisma determines the number of followers you can have. The higher it is, the more people you can have in your party. Also, being persuasive can do two things: it can get you out of situations wherein you would otherwise have to fight (helpful at a certain point early in the game); and it can allow you to get more followers than your charisma allows (though your persuasion has to typically be fairly high for this to work, and even then it doesn't always).

Another thing I often recommend, no matter what you choose to be: invest at least one point in melee, even if you have no desire to be a melee fighter. While followers are helpful, you will no doubt find yourself in situations where you will have to fight. And, as mystral hinted at, having no points in melee will make you crappy at melee.

But as far as character builds go, no matter what difficult you choose to play on, do not play as a tech character your first time. They are a bit harder to play as and can be fairly expensive to maintain, especially early in the game when you have little money and little ability to create things by yourself.

The hardest thing about Arcanum probably is starting the game. There are a HUGE number of ways you can create a character... far more than in Oblivion. And unfortunately, there are ways to make a character who will have a very hard time, and ways to make one that won't be so hard. The cool thing, though, is that different characters in Arcanum will REALLY play differently. Rather than just picking different guilds like you would in Oblivion, in Arcanum your playstyle and even the game's plot will change significantly with different characters. There's also large differences depending on whether you play a nice person or not.

Others have already given great advice on character designs, and I would add that reading the manual helps a lot. There's a lot of info to absorb right off the bat, but once you're confident that you've got a character build you like, and you actually start the game, things should be a lot more straightforward.

Once you've started though, things progress as quickly as you want. Kind of like in Oblivion, you can follow the main quest or mess around doing sidequests and robbing people's houses or whatever you want. Sometimes delaying the main quest in order to do sidequests is advisable... the hardest section of the game actually comes pretty early in the main quest, so it's nice to have done a lot of side quests before that so you've gained some levels. Don't let this difficult leg dissuade you though! If you can get through it the game gets a lot better.

I guess the summary is that Arcanum is likely a little harder than you're used to, but if you spend some time learning the rules beforehand, and maybe try a couple different characters at the beginning to get a feel for it, you should be OK.

Actually, taking a look at the manual might help you decide if you want to purchase the game or not. You can read it on this wiki:

http://troika.wikia.com/wiki/Arcanum_Manual

Yet another opportunity to plug my storyline-optimized talky mage walkthrough. Basically, grab Harm (OP) for hitting and Conjure Spirit for plot reasons, the two talky (+Beauty and +Reaction) spells, aim for Persuasion Master and get Conveyance while you're at it, with Teleport coming online at low 20s and Persuasion Master at high 20s. If you switch to Melee and Dodge after Persuasion Master, you'll see most of the plot and get the best possible ending.

A note on talky spells: Purity of Water is targeted at you and thus always works (unless the npc is bugged, see below). Charm is targeted at the npc in question, who might save and get angry. Now,
1) some npcs react well to buffed characters (jacket/dress+pow+charm) and tell the unlikable ones to get lost. Obviously, you should arrive buffed.
2) initial conversations with others are lose-lose affairs no matter your hawtness, meaning that whatever you say the npc will just get more pissed. Charm lets you skip the "getting acquainted" stage (which is possibly a bug, since it tells you the name of the npc, too).
3) there are npcs that get to like you if you remind them of their manners, meaning the reaction, if initially low, is set to a reasonable number once you tell them to cool down in response to the initial rudeness. In this case you should look as offensive as possible during the initial encounter, be polite, have the reaction set to, say, 40, then you remove the minus-reaction gear, put on the suit, buff yourself and bam, Love.
4) and finally, there are npcs that are plain bugged, their Reaction continually set to some average number - therefore, if you talk to them while buffed and then cancel the shiny, they might attack. Madame Lil is an example. There are others, watch out.

While Starmaker makes some good points, I don't what the OP to feel like such tactics are required to play the game. They'll give you the best results, yes, but the game is not so hard that it can't be played without them. Again, I recommend taking a look at the manual to decide if you want to buy the game, and then while playing, simply build a character that sounds fun and go with it, rather than worrying too much about specifics.

Sorry to bump this to the top again. Just wanted to say thanks for all the advice and that I'll give it a punt.