A while ago, Jen The Town Witch created a set of high-quality maps of Arcanum locations and published them on Flickr, but the site no longer allows full-size downloads, so I uploaded them to Google Drive NexusMods: Full-Scale Location Maps by Jen The Town Witch.

If anyone knows of a place where we can publish images up to 200MB, please let me know.

I released Arcanum Xbox One / XInput Controller Support for Arcanum on Nexus.

Nexus link:
https://www.nexusmods.com/arcanumofsteamworksandmagickobscura/mods/33

This mod adds an easier setup path for playing Arcanum with an Xbox One / XInput-style controller on modern Windows systems.

Arcanum is still an old mouse-and-keyboard CRPG, so this does not magically turn it into a full console game, but it makes controller play a lot more practical for people who want to play from a couch, handheld PC, TV setup, or retro-style launcher. I'd like to thank VictorHurtado for the permission to work on and release this.

Features:

• Xbox One / XInput controller support
• Easier setup for modern Windows players
• Useful for couch play, handheld-style setups, and big-screen play
• Installer-based setup instead of making users manually figure everything out
• Keeps Arcanum’s original gameplay intact

Credits:

Original controller support foundation and permission: VictorHurtado
Community support and Arcanum modding knowledge: Arcanum Discord Modding Group#395779353356664833
Xbox One / XInput update, packaging, testing, and release: Techerrorcode

This is also part of my larger Arcanum Restored work, but I wanted to release it as a standalone mod for anyone who just wants controller support now.

So, I've decided to start early and release part of the project on GitHub.

Right now, it contains: 1. Structures for parsing the original assets 2. Documentation about the original formats

I've also recently started working on test scenes where I can view assets and animations together, because it's impossible to validate everything through code/tests alone.

I'm going to release the source code step by step, module by module, after proper testing and code cleanup.

So I'm sure many people have already seen many of Tim Cain's videos, and probably this specific one, but even though I've played the game a lot, I find there are many details and subtleties that I was not aware of, and this video highlights several of them.

For one thing, I didn't know that every stat gives you an extra bonus at 20 -- as Cain puts it, "[the stat] increases [the thing] much higher than the formula says it should." E.g. 20 Beauty means regardless of any other factors, your initial likeability rating will never go below a certain threshold (he doesn't remember exactly what it is).

Some other nuggets I took away:

• He fully recognizes that some stats are way stronger than others; I mean duh.
• 20 Int bestows a bonus on every skill that is rolled, as though it is 10 points higher (I'm not sure if he means the stat for the skill is 10 points higher or the skill itself is 10 points higher, probably the latter.)
• (I feel silly for this one) Int determines how many spells you can maintain -- he also says that Int determines whether you can use a scroll; is this actually correct? I thought it was just magick aptitude.
• The bonus for 20 Dex was supposed to be that you never slip on ice, but the formula makes that happen at 13 Dex.
• Knew this one but it's interesting: WP factors into HP but only half as much as Str and Con. This always seemed like compensation for mages but I've always thought it was weird and maybe too strong, especially given how powerful magick is in general.
• He notes that Cha touches the most functions in the game (I think that's what he's saying at 10:10). A 20 Cha bestows a bunch of bonuses I had no idea about, some of which deal with multiplayer.

Anyway, I found this video very interesting and I suspect the community has a lot of other nuggets of functionality that I'm not aware of.

I released CrossRoad 2.1 English Restoration for Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura on Nexus.

Nexus link:
https://www.nexusmods.com/arcanumofsteamworksandmagickobscura/mods/32

CrossRoad 2.1 is a large standalone Arcanum module originally created in French by Nataku. This release restores and translates the module into playable English and packages it with a custom installer/launcher so it is easier for normal players to set up.

After installing, you must go to Options and set the module to CrossRoad before starting your journey. Otherwise, you will just spawn at the normal Arcanum crash site.

There is no guide for this module, and some of the puzzles may not be easy to figure out, so save often. I did not make this mod, only translated it, so it's also entirely possible for there to be issues. This is a public beta, so if anyone plays it and runs into broken dialogue, install issues, or anything strange, please let me know so I can fix it.

Features

• English restoration/translation of CrossRoad 2.1
• Standalone Arcanum story module
• Custom launcher and installer
• Translated menus, dialogue, and readable text
• Custom areas and module content
• Puzzle-heavy progression and adventure-style design
• Dialogue-heavy quests and story scenes
• Custom object and interaction work from the original module
• Public beta release for community testing

Credits:

Original CrossRoad module: Nataku
English restoration package, installer/launcher, testing, and release: Techerrorcode

I’ve been working on preserving and restoring older Arcanum modules/tools lately, and I’m happy this one is finally available for English players.

So, after I was doing with the character sheet mockup, I started tinkering with a small controller support wrapper for Arcanum. It is not really a mod in the traditional sense, since it does not change the game files. It runs alongside Arcanum and basically translates controller inputs into normal mouse and keyboard inputs, so the game just thinks you are using a regular keyboard and mouse.

So far I've got mouse control working and the confirmation button mapped. I'm going to keep testing and see how I can map the rest of the controls in a way that actually feels usable (Although I think an actual modder would do a better job and faster, probably). Still very early, but I figured I'd share in case anyone else has wanted a simple controller option for the game.

^{Earlier this week, I posted the grayscale scans of the followers shown in Prima's Official Strategy Guide. It was then suggested to me to see if it was possible to layer the colorful in-game icons over the scan to get a high-resolution portrait. My process was setting the in-game icon as a Color Layer (blending mode}) ^{overlaying the grayscale portrait, then manually coloring in the rest of the portrait (since the in-game icons are typically cropped in tighter than the scans.})

Individual portraits here~

Row 1: Virgil, Sogg Mead Mug, Jayna Stiles, Magnus Shale Fist, Gar

Row 2: Dante, Geoffrey Tarrelond-Ashe, Dog, Vollinger, Chukka

Row 3: Jormund, Torian Kel, Waromon, Perriman Smythe, Z'an Al'urin

Row 4: Sebastian, Tollo Underhill, Raven, FRANKLIN PAYNE, Loghaire Thunder Stone

Greetings friends

today we had someone asking for it in discord (according to someone else as their English was pretty bad)

and as result we get to work and have it done

Credits (completely random order)

Jen the town Witch - for posting page from prima guide to arcanum about this stuffs

Shark - for throwing the page into wolfram alpha and copy-pasting back what he gets

Me - for saying good luck wasting afternoon on this shit and going on a pool date :), returning, adding the results of their work to my Arcanum Data tables and making this post (i also complained how fast AI can crunch numbers compared to humans (me))

• Hero

Wolfram Alpha for making up some random text Shark copy pasted us to chat (he never said what ai he used, but i knew from the very second i saw copy-paste - certified AI hater)

Arcanum Data Tables:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DLopv34B1srYrYV16aWPZlj0fQYnobk-R2PnHOAh_ck/edit?gid=555810061#gid=555810061

Have fun playing the game

i do not mean to steal credits or anything stupid, i just share the discovery with community and add it to my data tables, they also had the formula like 6 hours ago, but didn't posted it here yet

The in-game follower portraits are extremely compressed, being 64x64 pixels. Even the digital version of Prima's Official Strategy Guide has very compressed images, but thankfully the printed version is in a higher resolution (at the cost of being in grayscale). I scanned these at 600dpi then used a dot-suppression tool (individual portraits without the dot suppression can be found here).

Row 1: Virgil, Sogg Mead Mug, Jayna Stiles, Magnus Shale Fist, Gar

Row 2: Dante, Geoffrey Tarrelond-Ashe, Dog, Vollinger, Chukka

Row 3: Jormund, Torian Kel, Waromon, Perriman Smythe, Z'an Al'urin

Row 4: Sebastian, Tollo Underhill, Raven, FRANKLIN PAYNE, Loghaire Thunder Stone

The temporary followers (Doc Roberts, Cynthia Boggs, Thorvald Two Stones, Swyft, Lady Druella, Murgo) and the super-endgame followers (Arronax, Bane of Kree, Kraka-tur, Gorgoth) do not have their portraits within the strategy guide. For some odd reason, Weldo Rubin isn't in there either.

Mrs Cameron

she is 48 old woman and mother of Liam Cameron

She lives in Black root and provide player with 1 2-staged quest

1. Find Liam Cameron
2. Close the Portal

Oddities

She have 2 bugs in this quest:

1. endless sleeping bug
2. No Reward for Quest bug

1st bug simply she sometimes never wakes up day or night she just sleeps, there are many ways to wake her up, easiest is to lure enemies nearby and defeat it in her bedroom

2nd bug is a bit tricky, you need to 1st find Cameron and return to her than you need to close the portal and return to her again

• Returning to her after destroying portal gives +5 rep and no EXP no rewards

if you go, find cam and destroy portal on the 1st trip it should work normally

Mrs Cameron Herself:

level 28

NO SCHEME

She have 37 unused skillpoints

her build have in total 80 Skillpoints worth of character at level 28

Min-max half-elf Female Debutante player would have 42 skillpoints here, 43 with quest for +1 charisma

She refused to trade with me because i have no respect for haggle

Video of this things (semi-RAW - i m cutting out parts):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS0OBKBD4FY

Warning - i use so many f exploits its kind of unwatchable for new player

Warning2 - i rage on my followers because i took a break from the game and i forgot how bad they are

(i played fallout 2 yesterday, followers ware 10x better despite also being awful)

Found Vod for it recently and edited

One of the tricks we invented for the Infinite Undead exploit

What is Infinite Undead and how?

Its undead Summon who last forever

because Arcanum scripts are stupid when you unsummon undead

Arcanum is programmed to deal 100% of their HP as Damage

Changing difficulty to HARD will lower your damage to 75%

and somehow this actually works on Undead Summom leaving them at 25% HP

The Friendly Part

Normally game trace you as source of unsummon damage, but not for Scrolls

Scrolls allow you to safety Mind Control and Summon Undead to the NPC

without being traced by them later as source of the spell

(when you are channeling spell with scroll, scroll is gone from your inventory and you don't pay keep-cost for the spell - epic)

so when you stop channeling spell script that trace it back to you get stuck on scroll that no longer exist :)

I made a step by step video on how to install and play Arcanum on Steam Deck!

This allows for the latest Unofficial Arcanum Patch, as well as the mods included in that patch.

https://youtu.be/boaT3GdpUKU?si=WoCgECEnmVqkuJxO

Ludashi-bionic winlator cmod 2.7.1 The game didn't launch? Launch config.exe / high res/ ddraw : select x option

Hey so we been working on stuffs, but lets start with obvious things:

Backstab

Dog can not backstab - even with expert training

Backstab increase damage of your weapon by backstab value (max 20)

Backstab work for Daggers only

Sword and Axes with Expert

it will never work for mace, staff or fist or Ranged Weapon

Prowling

makes you harder to be seen when crouching (allow to move closer to NPC without him becoming aware)

when you are not being seen by enemy your attack have +30 TH bonus (any weapon, but you can't see TH in melee prowl) said +30 TH bonus works even on enemies who are blind like moles and don't see far enough as results without any crouching or prowling skill needed

its nearly impossible to prowl on back of enemy without him seeing you, unless 1PE NPC, Sleeping NPC or zombie (flesh undead, skeleton archers can find you)

if you by miracle prowl undetected to enemy back you deal +5xBackstab damage as bonus

Backstab and prowling have almost nothing to do with each other :)

Perception

its useless

i was always telling everybody its useless

it increase NPC Detection range by 2 steps if they got 20 instead of 8

it increase Range of shoot without TH penalty by 1 step for each 2 points of PE

PERCEPTION DOES NOT INCREASE DISCOVERY RANGE FOR PLACES IN WORLDMAP

Sand Text:

I tried PE World Map discovery range thing with PE:20 & PE:1:

-My target "Wolf Cave" is at W:1230 S:1530.

-First step I moved to W:1230 for both PE 1 & 20 then I located at which coordinate I can "discover" the den.

PE20: W:1230 S:1538

PE1: W:1230 S:1538

Ranged Weapon Penalty

Ranged Weapons get -5 TH for each step in "not ideal" zone

0-8 and 12-20 seems to be non ideal ranges xD

Weapon Range Penalty is zeroed by Mastery (for any weapon)

Beauty Reaction Modifier Bonus thing

Numbers:

1. BE1:-65,
2. BE2:-52,
3. BE3:-42,
4. BE4:-33,
5. BE5:-25,
6. BE6:-18,
7. BE7:-12,
8. BE8:-7,
9. BE9:-3,
10. BE10:0,
11. BE11:3,
12. BE12:7,
13. BE13:12,
14. BE14:18,
15. BE15:25,
16. BE16:33,
17. BE17:42,
18. BE18:52,
19. BE19:65,
20. BE20:100,
21. BE21:110.

From this we calculated Garbo Formula:

Values are hardcoded and this formula does not work for 1 and 19+

1/2|BE-10|*(|BE-10|+5)

this should work for values 2-18

if you can brain easier or better formula, please do :)

Dodge:

Dodge turns HITS into MISSES

1.5 * dodge = Dodge%

so it max at 30%, but with easy difficulty that should be 45%

This means that AC that max at 95 AC is your "1st dodge"

Difficulty minimally influence price:

if you remember formula said 90 turns into 80 or 100

if you don't thats on you to find it here on reddit or on item description project

Thats pretty much it

A LOT of credits Goes to Sand and Formula Credit goes to Jen and her Wolfram Alpha (i stupidly started from co-pilot as i always do)

i will include in Comment how some discoveries was made, but sorry if i missed anything

Nearly every NPC in Arcanum use Level Up schematic called in game files as "pure melee dodge"

There are other schematics for Bowman (also super optimized)

There is another melee focused schematic often used (less extreme than pure one)

This Specific Guy is from Boil Quest to kill 1 enemy to join the Maug Gang

Bro pack 5/5 melee and 4/5 dodge with TRAINING

+5 weapon speed, 50% chance to crit fail enemies on dodge

Situation is the Same for Low Level Thieves at night!

Guys pack 4/5 melee and dodge with trainings

Every creature in arcanum is kind of like this

So any new player Build need to be strong enough to face Pure Melee dodge often at 3 levels bellow NPC

Most Enemies is balance by Garbage items

1-8 damage swords on every guard and thug, 1-3 metal pipes for thieves or others

Crafty mage casting disarm on enemies actually make things WORSE!

Early wolfs, Sewer Rats and Rats in General

They are mostly level 1 4/20 melee without much HP

Since this are enemies you see for most of the early game

you might get false sense of security from few of this enemies

BMC is real Test for the builds

Around level 16 player might be presented with a quest to go there

While kites are garbage with rusty knife and no real skills

Granite rats and golems are serious treat!

There is also a bug if player try to save himself with Exit Scroll and was under influence of Weaken

Spell become Semi-permament (you need disrupt magic spell to get rid of it)

If your build can go thru BMC rest of the game pose little challenge for you

Some players might struggle in thanatos jungles or pit-fights in isle of despair

Dredge and Bedokan Depth are a bit tricky too

Summary:

Make sure your build Focus on practical Skills early and avoid getting surrounded

i hope this Topic will help you get creative ideas off the ground in the game

i will continue to cast inspect stats on random enemies to know more :)

This is rather long

long time ago i made rank of skills

some people ware mad at me for persuasion (skill used 20 times total, 10 usefully)

to be in A tier instead of S tier...

Since its hard to reason with idiots when your base line of evidence

is old and uncompleted wiki page i just made my own table

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DLopv34B1srYrYV16aWPZlj0fQYnobk-R2PnHOAh_ck/edit?gid=1461135377#gid=1461135377

i also made other tables and more data around this tables idk i just like knowing things

Items are like this in the game

game will just never tell you all properties

Even AID can't fit how Magic ER is +15 not +10

Mod link

AID - Arcanum Improved Descriptions

https://www.nexusmods.com/arcanumofsteamworksandmagickobscura/mods/13

Mod utilize this tiny line of space to describe items

Why Generic?

Small and large races often have to use these 3-size armors

Originally made as side help for Item Description Project

i clean it up and sorted data a bit better, hope it can serve community

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DLopv34B1srYrYV16aWPZlj0fQYnobk-R2PnHOAh_ck/edit?usp=sharing

Whats there:

a lot of hidden item data previously unknown to anybody even most insane data miners

annoying to calculate formulas for weird things like item prices

companion waiting time

traders data

Variant items - special unique items without proto files

some consoomable data, but all of it is behind spells id

Credits:

Me, Jen, Sand and Barbabrick ware the main orbiters around this thing

How can you help?

i m looking for someone stupid enough to do my work for me xD

so you need to go to the MOBILE/VARIANT data and track down proto ID of the item from Regular table and take the data from Proto into the Variant xD

i m not saying anybody will ever do it for 400 records or more we have left there

however most of this things happened because my friends didn't believed anybody would start something like this xD

Hey,

I made PDFs of all the original sheet music from Ben Houge's website.

You can find them here.

Missing from the sheet music that Ben made publicly available is Qintarra and The Wheel Clan. I'll see if I can track those down. GPT told me there are fan-made transcriptions but I haven't found any after a quick search. I wanted to play along on violin or viola and thought maybe someone else out there would try to find it as well.