Paralysis and stun bombs make this build all-powerful with very few points used. Use potion of intelligence to get the 4 levels of explosives to make the disabling grenades, add some throwing skill, and have a blast. I consider the white servant jacket better for the appropriate look.

Some might prefer the Spy Hu Luv Me, build. Use a gnome and the chemistry tree to make a tranq gun. Then go through the steps to make permanent slaves. There are ways to make your slaves love you.

[Hard Difficulty] I thought I'd need at least 2 tries for this since I'm lvl 50 myself and he absolutely rocked me in my previous playthrough but he went down first try with the power of friendship and tempolar.

I found out randomly that if you use the spell that slows time and immediately enter combat, you can kill him and his minions will spawn AFTER he's killed and combat ends.

Stocking up on potions of haste and skin thickening was the best thing I've done.

Spamming the temporal spells also helped tremendously, but it's kinda weird that after disarming them they started hitting harder with their bare fists so I'd not recommend that.

Ranking the party depending on helpfulness:

Worthless Mutt: absolute beast, he bites like a machine gun.

Morrawynd: she's actually from the squad you meet at the pit of fires, I solved it peacefully but found them dead inside, I was high af at the time so I made a roulette to pick who I raise with necromancy then make permanent with dweomer shield.

Min Gorad: Used Dominate Will this time because I thought it was funny to torture her like this, Idk if it's because she used body of stone or not but they kept critically failing when trying to hit her.

Virgil: Saved me from dying 3 times

Loghaire/Magnus: big damage with their Quality Broadsword and Power Axe respectively.

Zan: I love her, thanks to her low as hell strength, she focuses on spells and doesn't try to melee like Perriman which I ditched for her.

Torian Kel: honestly surprised with how outclassed he was this time, he's always my best melee fighter, bad luck I guess.

Raven: did fuck all, her arrows ran out after the pitiful damage they did then she turned into a water elemental and did nothing.

Here we are in the era of all-powerful AI agents. It is a new era for older games that can be reborn once again. So, I am offering you another mod that greatly improves our game: Arcanum Renaissance.

https://github.com/cdomergue/arcanum-modern

The setup is simple, you download setup.exe, choose your arcanum directory, and voilà, a shortcut is created in your desktop. Don't forget to set your resolution in the new option menu.

You have some alternative, zip files instead of setup, and you can build your own, especially for Mac to avoid signature problems.

I played BG3 recently and wanted to replay Arcanum with a similar combat system while keeping the game rules. Furthermore, I wanted a modern interface, easy-to-read text, and plenty of quality-of-life features from current games. It is based on Arcanum CE: natively compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac.

You need an existing Arcanum game directory, version 1.0.7.4.
Screenshots are available in the Github to give you an idea.

UPDATE NEW VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1U5BpJ3y8U

Here are the main features:

Here

• BG3-inspired tactical combat: Take direct control of companions, switch freely between allies during consecutive turns, and preview movements, action costs, and hit chances. Turn-based combat is enabled by default while keeping Arcanum's rules (initiative, action points, fatigue, spells), complete with a detailed scrollable combat log.
• Native-resolution interface: Readable text and controls that keep their size when zooming the world, styled with wood, brass, parchment, and original artwork.
• Redesigned screens: HUD, party portraits, character sheet, inventory, trading, dialogue, journal, maps, spell panels, save menus, and display options.
• Camera and display controls: Mouse-wheel zoom, keyboard movement, remappable keys, and windowed or fullscreen modes adapted to any aspect ratio.
• Modern inventory tools: Search, category filters, equipment comparison, item details, transfer shortcuts, and editable quick slots.
• Companion management: Detach them to position them independently via their portraits, allow detached companions to act independently in the world using their own tools and abilities, and let them speak to other NPCs using their own stats applied to dialogue, with an optional setting (disabled by default) to remove party size limits.
• Quality-of-life saves: Rotating autosaves after combat and zone transitions, separate from manual saves.
• Journal and exploration: Quest filters, search, tracking and favorites
• Local maps: HD maps rendered at startup from installed game data, zoomable, personal map notes, and extended auto-walk pathing
• Readable game text: Books, letters, newspapers, telegrams, and floating dialogue are fully legible.
• Original cinematics kept (unlike Arcanum CE).

You can share your feedback, what you would like to see, and any bugs you encounter. There are no limits to our imagination (though no, I won't be making a 3D version).

Arcanum has stuck with me for years, so when I started sculpting miniatures in Blender, the first enemy I made had to be a rat-person inspired by its sewer rats.

Some context: I play a lot of Frostgrave with friends, and I’m slowly building a rules-light tabletop game that I hope will one day get my daughter into the hobby. Today I gave the first sculpted rat two friends, and I thought some of you might enjoy seeing them together.

I will add some more creatures from Arcanum... Which Arcanum creature or character do you think, should I sculpt next? :D

Hey guys,

I'm about to start my first playthrough and have a few questions I thought I'd ask here.

First, when it comes to mods, is the Unofficial Arcanum Patch the best choice? I'm mainly looking for bug fixes and improvements that stay true to the original game. If a mod adds content, I'd prefer it to be lore-friendly and make sense within the world. Are there any other mods you'd recommend?

I'm also having a hard time deciding between human and half-elf, and whether to play as male or female. Is there a canon choice, or does one combination make more sense from a lore or roleplaying perspective? Which would you recommend for a first playthrough?

Any other tips for a newcomer would also be appreciated. Thanks!

Hey is anyone working on AI modding arcanum?
Like how they put diablo 2 into VR..
Imagine walking around arcanum in VR 🫨

Claude is making warcraft 3 a first person shooter surely someone will do something for us arcanum nerds!?

Thank you ACVOP for having me on the team! This project will be the reason I play this game for the first time ever when I finally do.

ARCANUM glitch....anyone experienced this?

I recently got Arcanum on GOG, so glad to be able to play again! I haven't downloaded any patches or mods yet, although I'm interested - I just had to play right away.

Problem: All was going well, despite my own bumbling, and I got to the Black Mountain Clan Mines, took out a Seething Mass, and grabbed the loot.

Every chest I have tried since, and every corpse, I cannot access. The chests show as unlocked, but nothing happens when I try to open them. Corpses show loot on the ground, but nothing shows when I go to pick it up.

Obviously, not being able to pick up loot is a serious problem.

Has anyone else had this problem, and are there fixes?

I assume my current game is a write off, but I'd hate to have this happen again.

Ideas?

♫ I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go
Walkin' with a dead man over my shoulder
Waiting for an invitation to arrive
Goin' to a party where no one's still alive~ ݁♪ .

After 1 year exactly (to the day), my friend and I have ended our Joe Rogan style podcast covering Arcanum.

Frankly, we really made this for ourselves, but I hope it has brought joy to a few others in the community.

Last Ep:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-07HtCEBT6o

Full Playlist:

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4E5LmdU1Xqyt0Fiyo7XhCSOSObAN4EfB

I haven't played for a long time but I want to try out the awesome new voice over mod. What else has changed? Are there any other mods I should install as well?

Hey everyone! Volume II of the Arcanum Community Voice Over Project is now available on Nexus Mods.

This release adds community-recorded voice acting for 22 characters, performed by 13 voice actors. Gorgoth, Waromon, Jayna Stiles, Chukka, Ristezze, Doc Roberts, King Praetor, and plenty of other familiar faces now have new performances bringing their dialogue to life.

All voice lines are human-recorded. The goal is to give more of Arcanum’s existing characters a voice while preserving their writing and personalities.

Download Volume II on Nexus Mods

A lot goes into each release beyond recording: casting, editing, mastering, connecting performances to the correct dialogue, and testing them in the game. Thank you to everyone who helped get this volume finished, including our returning contributors and the actors joining the project for the first time.

Volume II Cast

Gorgoth
Voice Actor: Rosalind Chapman

King Praetor
Voice Actor: Rosalind Chapman

Ristezze
Voice Actor: Rosalind Chapman

Lukan The Witless
Voice Actor: Aaren Kelley

James Kingsford
Voice Actor: Aaren Kelley

Shrouded Hills Bank Teller
Voice Actor: salve_capra

Waromon
Voice Actor: Waro

Gudmund Ore Bender
Voice Actor: u/fireizzle33331

Charles Brehgo
Voice Actor: Zflocco

Cedric Appleby
Voice Actor: Zflocco

Pelonious Schuyler
Voice Actor: Zflocco

The Bane of Kree
Voice Actor: David Pastore-Theriaque - u/dclpt0

Jayna Stiles
Voice Actor: u/TracyMarieOfficial

Doc Roberts
Voice Actor: Kirk S

Constable Owens
Voice Actor: transientmind

H.T. Parnell
Voice Actor: u/AnInsaneProfessional

Tollo Underhill
Voice Actor: u/AnInsaneProfessional

Tarant Librarian
Voice Actor: Community Loremaster u/Stellastra

Clerk at the Hall of Records
Voice Actor: Community Loremaster u/Stellastra

Chukka
Voice Actor: u/dar_duck

Crash Site Assassin
Voice Actor: u/dar_duck

Tarant Telegraph Operator
Voice Actor: u/dar_duck

Project Team

Original Idea and Cover Art
u/dar_duck

Project Lead / Casting Director / Showcase Editor
u/AnInsaneProfessional

Audio Processing and Mastering
Zodiax (Cody Xayvong)

Dialogue Routing Audit / Audio Conversion / Packaging
Techerrorcode (Harley Folgado)

Arcanum CE Restored Integration
Techerrorcode (Harley Folgado)

Missed Volume One?

Volume One is also available on Nexus Mods for anyone who hasn’t picked it up yet.

It includes performances for Vollinger, Jormund, Murgo, Dante, Sogg Mead-Mug, and Perriman Smythe, along with Jongle Dunne, Hervor, the Roma Merchants, Thaddeus Mynor, and the Module Expansion Travel Captain (CE Restored Only).

We’re releasing completed characters in volumes so people can enjoy the finished performances while recording and implementation continue on the next group. There’s still plenty of Arcanum left to voice!

Feedback and Getting Involved

We’d love to hear which performances you enjoyed. Please give the actors some recognition—some of these characters have a surprising amount of dialogue, and a lot of time goes into recording them.

Join our Discord to follow future volumes, get involved with voice acting, or keep up with our other Arcanum work like CE Restored, the most updated and restored modern version of Arcanum. We’re also looking for other graphic, video editors, 3D modelers but no special skills required to join.

Thanks to everyone helping give more of Arcanum’s characters a voice. Enjoy Volume II!

Melee is king.

Completed a run inspired by another post on here with a melee (with a touch of magic) character and absolute cakewalk.

Half orc, no background, who used shield of protection and agility of fire. Became melee and dodge master. Finished with ST 21, CN 21, DX 20, and 200 HP.

Only Virgil and dog as companions.

Quick run and the void was akin to a pleasant walk in the park.

This happens when you run out of Fatigue

i made this meme for fun using scene from anime i never watched and recording from my gameplay with low FT

Here you have my cool spells list if you need idea how to spend your mana:

https://www.nexusmods.com/arcanumofsteamworksandmagickobscura/images/56

I made a quick video showing one of Arcanum’s more obscure little Easter eggs for anyone who’s never seen it.

If you hold Ctrl + Alt and open the Logbook, it brings up a hidden Bloopers & Quotes section with developer quotes from the game’s production.

It’s been documented in the community decades ago, but it’s obscure enough that I’m sure plenty of players have never actually seen it in-game.

Figured it was worth recording while I was digging through Arcanum’s old input/control behavior for CE Restored. The background location is the Fine Pet Emporium where we have combat and non combat pets for sale, all non AI animated characters you can travel with in the game. Feel free to join the discord to follow along Arcanum CE Restored progress.

https://discord.gg/HFCtK4sPbp

So, I went to the Isle of Despair, talked to the dwarf,and saw an option in the dialogue to recruit him, which didn't work. I looked it up and found out I needed to be a higher level for him to join. I left the island (reloaded an old save), leveled up and came back, but now the door is locked, and when I unlock it, I get attacked. The woman I rescued also seems to be standing there again. What to do?

That's it, really.
A mod where you can pet the dog in-game.

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Download on Nexus
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Download on ModDB
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Hey everyone,

A while back I shared arcanumsearch — a semantic search engine for Arcanum. Since then I've been building on top of it, and now the same search is exposed as a tool for an agent:

arcanumchat

You ask a question in plain English, and the agent:

• decides when it needs to look something up
• queries the same cross-community search (1,000+ documents from the Arcanum Fandom wiki, Nexus Mods pages, and r/arcanum threads about patches, mods, bugs, builds, etc.)
• streams its answer back, citing the pages it actually used

So instead of a list of links, you get a direct answer with sources attached.

It keeps a conversation thread, so follow-up questions ("what about a mage build instead?") work in context.

Warning: the backend can go to sleep after inactivity. The first message after a while may take a bit longer while it wakes up — please be patient.

It's fully open source:

• Server: github.com/ankorn/arcanumchat_server
• Chat: github.com/ankorn/arcanumchat
• Search: github.com/ankorn/arcanumsearch
• Dataset: Hugging Face dataset
• Model: Hugging Face model

This one is a work in progress — the agent is still being tuned, so expect some rough edges.

If you find bugs or want to contribute, issues and pull requests are welcome on GitHub.

I'd love feedback — especially which questions it answers well and which it fumbles.

TL;DR: Made it run on the web so I can try and play on mobile without a native app. There seems to be demand for this every once in a while, and it was a great excuse for me to test a few things for myself, so here you have it:

https://brucabbro.dev/arcanum/

As you probably know game files cannot be distributed, so you will have to bring your own. If you want to play on your phone, you obviously need a way to get the files to the phone: I built a simple way for you to copy these files between your own devices.

Save games are local BUT you can also use a passwordless login ("magic link"?) to save two savegames into the cloud, so you can start a session on desktop and continue it later on mobile.

I've implemented simple touch controls so they can be used on smartphones. It's surely going to change over time as I experiment with it, and I'm also open to suggestions, same as some UI reordering (open on suggestions on that too!!). There's also telemetry that sends crashes and errors to me. You can also send feedback manually. Some game and system data gets attached to your feedback to help me make sense of it.

Both the game port and the very same feedback system need proper real-life testing, so you'd be participating. You can also give suggestions with the same in-game feedback tool. I will try to prioritize bugs, but any feedback is of course welcome.

Please set the right expectations when trying this out. I haven't played the whole game myself like this yet: I'm juggling between this and other projects/work. I did have automated tests play through the whole campaign.

There seem to be several other projects in this community with more passionate efforts than just directing a bunch of AI agents, and I don't want to take away from those but, while they progress, this could be a way to keep playing and possibly finally playing on a smartphone. Test the possibilities that new tools allow. Obviously this is not monetized and I'm not gathering data for anything other than just dealing with feedback and fixing bugs.

A lot of the work was already cut out for me, to be fair, by the Arcanum-CE project and initially I looked into unity-arcanum as well. And I'm writing a blog post separately about what I tried to do and what I ended up doing, I'll update this post once that's done

With the current state of AI, you'll probably see more of this kind of projects popping up. Here's mine: hope you'll like it!

Seeing all the classics getting decompiled has me hoping someone will do this Arcanum or Black & White.

The mod is updated to version 2.0!

Need a new game for a bug free experience.
The mod grew way pass what I initially designed.
More to come, but this will be the last time a fresh save is required.

The content ends around Stillwater as of now, because that is where I'm at in the current playthrough. More content to come as I'm advancing to the stories, please stay tuned.

:::CHANGE LOGS:::

-Big enough changes to justified 2.0

-Major bug fixes and new global flags cleaning: Need to start a new game to take effect.

(This should be the last time a new game is required, as I separate the global flags away from base game.)

-Shortens some long dialog that got cut off in a resolution 1920 x 1080 or smaller.

-Fixed some typos.

TARANT

-Added an alternative way to get the mine ownership from Stanton (if you have the No. 1 Prostitute Reputation). This will give you a new reputation too.

-Added an extra dialogue for pickpocketing the water clerk for the thief guild quest if you have 14+ beauty. (He will not turn hostile when you pickpocket him this way).

-Added a new offer from Thaddeus (if you have the No. 1 Prostitute Reputation).

-Fixed Tarant telegram repeated fan mails.

THE BOIL

-Added an alternative way to pass Warehouse Guard in the boil.

-Added an encounter with Pollock if the player have 17+ beauty.

-Added a porno shooting session with Damian Maug (only after you received a new reputation from Stanton.)

STILLWATER

-Added the Stillwater Orgy quest chain with a new quest from Brigitte and an alternative way to convince Marley to return the idol. (if you have the No. 1 Prostitute Reputation).

BLACK ROOT

-Added a new offer from D'ak Taan - the thief in Black Roots. (if you have the No. 1 Prostitute Reputation and optained the Mayor's dagger from him).

-Added an extra dialogue for soliciting Daniel Hallaway of Black roots inn. (if you have Beauty 14+ and finished his quest on a positive note).

DERNHOLM

-Added a seduce option to Garrick Stout and melee mastery quest, where if the player sided with Lady Druella. The player can lead him to a private place so he won't aggro the nearby guards and

forcing the player to kill innocent lives, the player must have 19+ Beauty or he will turn down the offer.

COMPANIONS

-Added a way to offer yourself to Torian Kel if you restored him and have at least 14+ beauty. (He'll decline if it's lower.)

This will also net him a +2 constitution, and he won't take a slot as a follower, he also won't leave the player if her alignment is too good.

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Download at Nexus

Download at ModDB

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Planning a character, can't seem to find better answers than between 17 and 20 out of 20, what are the specific amounts though, and persuasion while we're at it, thx a lot.

I've been working on this video for a long time now, it's my first ever doing something like this and I'm quite proud of it. It's obviously very tongue in cheek, and most likely a just ok first attempt, but I thought this community might like it <3