Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Complete Monster:
    • You, on an evil playthrough. To complete the evil story path one has to murder absolutely everyone in a small village at one point.
    • The Bane of Kree slaughtered an entire city for nothing and will repeat it over and over if given an opportunity. Numerous innocents were burned alive in the flames his sword was forged in... just to make it more evil.
    • Garrick Stout, a knight whose reprehensible acts make anything you do to him in return completely justified.
  • Demonic Spiders:
    • Fire Elementals, and to a lesser extent their smaller cousins. They're insanely tough (because they're made of fire), damage both your armor and weapons (again, fire), and have a nasty habit of appearing in packs. One quest actually forces you to trek through a cave full of these things.
    • Golems are this to a lesser extent, especially since you're forced to fight them a lot earlier than you'd normally be ready unless you abuse the mechanics to jump ahead 30 levels. Like Fire Elementals, attacking them damages your weapons since they're made of rock. Some of them also come superheated for fire damage, making them almost as bad as Fire Elementals.
    • Finally, at the bottom of the barrel but still no less annoying, are the blue zombies. Not only are they at least twice as tough as any other zombie, they cause fire damage when they strike. Sensing a pattern here?
    • In an example that surprisingly doesn't involve fire, the barbarians at Kree are some of the toughest human enemies in the game, easily equal to a late-game melee character. To make it worse, it's extremely difficult to attack them without getting mobbed by several at once. A resurrect spell or tech-based alternative is highly recommended, and they are prime zombification targets for the same reason.
  • Designated Hero: The mages of Tulla, while canonically good guys, are massive Jerkasses sometimes. Their crowning moment is when they ask you to help them get a water purifying gem from someone who left Tulla to get it for them...but the thing is, he's become a technologist now, so he can't be allowed back into Tulla. They're perfectly okay with it if you just murder him and take the gem.
  • Game Breaker:
    • A minor one for technologists is the electric ring in the second level of the electric tech tree. It gives a +2 to Dexterity when worn. You can wear two. In a game with only 60ish character points to give your character, four extra is a huge bonus, not counting the two you spend to get there.
    • It is possible to create a character who creates explosives, scours the streets of Tarant, and crafts random and very, VERY profitable parts from them, trading up as their skills progress. Repeat ad nauseum, and you'll have a character who levels a warehouse at the slightest bump.
    • Balanced swords can be created in the first town or have Magnus make them for you by the second, they have one of the the fastest attack rates in the game, but still have good damage. Note, however, that they are tech items and good mages (single-college mages like Virgil will manage just fine) will probably kill themselves trying to use them.
    • Similarly, if you go the magic route and specialize in Force magic, you will eventually be able to cast the Disintegrate spell at half endurance cost. It will completely and instantly vaporize whatever it hits, essentially letting you run all over the place destroying anything that stands in your way, be it monster, NPC, or a door. Only really worthwhile on monsters, as using it on humans destroys their loot.
      • You can instantly annihilate anything that stands against you with the merest gesture, and you're worrying about loot?
        • Well, not quite anything: the Big Bad is immune to Disintegrate. Also, loot can be sold to finance the acquisition of additional mage staves, increasing both your MP pool and your effective MP regeneration rate, both of which are good if you're going to throw around Disintegrate a lot.
    • The fifth-level time magic spell tempus fugit speeds your party by a factor of two, and slows everything not in your party by the same factor (no saving throw, no immunity, magic resistance does not apply). It has a large up-front cost, but the cost to sustain it is trivial. It's every bit as broken as you would expect for something that increases the number of actions your party gets per enemy action by a factor of 4.
    • Fatigue slowers halve the fatigue cost of all spells while they're active. Combine that with fatigue-restoring potions, and you can throw around several hundred fatigue points worth of spells without rest. And yes, that can be combined with Force mastery, which allows you to Disintegrate the entire population of The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
    • The dog. Really high damage, fast attacks, and usually hits. For added cheapness, he even automatically gets the mastery bonuses that you have to either pay or work your ass off for. Makes combat a bit too easy, and kill-steals like you wouldn't believe. He can even bite open doors and chests inflicting only minor damage to himself. You do not need keys or unlocking skills/magic anymore.
    • Every combat skill has a matching uber-weapon, almost all of which become available at an appropriate stage of the game. However, Throwing specialists can obtain the Aerial Decapitator around halfway. Finding it may be a Guide Dang It, but after that you have a one-hit killer that requires no ammo and doesn't break. It's also one of the fastest weapons, so even if the first hit isn't lethal, your opponent probably won't be able to retaliate before the next one does the job.
    • Even though it's somewhat late-game, the healing mechanical spider gifted to the PC by returning the camera from the crash site counts. As soon as you have it, forget any possible need for any type of healing. One spider, so long as you can keep your party alive, will heal anything short of a maxed-out mage.
  • Genius Bonus:
    • You shouldn't be surprised that the Zephyr is doomed once you see its interior: the staircase and lounge look just like those on board the Titanic.
    • The name of priest Arbalah, a central character one of the first side quests in the game, consists of two parts: arba (a Hebrew word for "four") and alah (an Arabic word for "god"). This makes a perfect name for a priest in the universe where are four Greater Gods.
  • Goddamn Bats: Orc bandits and the Molochean Hand can be a threat early in the game, but they're quickly reduced to an annoyance that pops up any time you're wandering the eastern half of the map. Their loot isn't even worth that much if you sell it. The only legitimately good loot from them are the rare giant sized plate mails, worn by Ogre Destroyers in high-level orc groups, but they're so rare that you can play through the game several times without even meeting them.
  • Good Bad Bugs: The Reflective Shield spell has a certain unorthodox application. Normally, it reflects any spell cast at the character with the shield on them back at the caster, this goes for both beneficial and damaging spells. However, the shield treats canceling sustained spells as a spell in and of itself. Meaning if you cast, for instance, Polymorph on someone, then cast Reflective Shield on them and then cancel the Polymorph, then the cancellation will be reflected back at you, the Polymorph effect will be removed from your sustained effects bar but will not be removed from the target, meaning they are now permanently a sheep. This works for any spell that needs to be sustained, including Mind Control and summoning creatures.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Gilbert Bates, the presumed inventor of the steam engine, who holds the monopoly on making steam engines, is a reference to Bill Gates of Microsoft. His competitor Cedric Appleby (probably an Expy of Steve Jobs) is a reference to the Apple corporation, who competes with Microsoft. Today, Apple has already surpassed Microsoft as the bigger tech company made famous by their I-Products such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad. With a market value of about $460 billion, Apple is worth more than Google, Goldman Sachs, General Motors, Ford, Starbucks and Boeing combined. Apple is now worth almost twice as much as Microsoft (about $258 billion) and more than twice as much as Google ($198 billion).
  • Moral Event Horizon: Stout became captain of the guard purely so he could stalk a noblewoman, and when he found out she was already engaged, he rendered the fiancee blind in what was promised to be a fair duel, then arranged for the fiancee to become trapped in a cave full of monsters solely so he could save her (or have the player save her on his behalf).
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • Auto-scheme (allowing the game to automatically spend skill points at level-up). While it grants some gameplay challenge, it wastes many skill-points on Dump Stats like Health and Fatigue boosts. Pre-made characters use this by default, but fortunately, you can turn this off anytime.
    • The way your followers may negatively react to whom you choose to attack. While it's not a bad idea in principle, this mechanic has a very nasty habit of firing off in the most bizarre of situations, like with the Stillwater Giant, or with a man who literally just asked you to assassinate the king of Caladon, or when you choose to attack an already hostile creature before they had a chance to see you.
  • That One Level:
    • The Black Mountain Clan Mines. It's the only part of the game you can't talk your way around. Moreover, it's filled with rock golems which break most weapons when you attack them and do insane damage compared to what you've been fighting thus far. Any combat-heavy area counts, really, but most of them are placed fairly. The Black Mountain Clan Mines are more notorious because they are a relatively early part of the main quest and because you can't get around doing them.
    • To a smaller extent, getting out of the first town can be this for the violence-inclined and/or those without the right build. In order to leave, you have to get past the guys guarding the bridge. Unfortunately, the leader has two half-ogres who will beat your party to death in short order. You get stun grenades early on, but without throwing skill you have to save scum for a solid hit. To get past charitably, you either need a ton of money (more than you're likely to have or want to spend), to sabotage the new bridge being built (which will make the town hate you), or a single skill point in persuasion. You can also cheese the encounter by dropping some railroad spikes next to the thugs. Because they're all using their fists (which do a crapload of damage), the game considers them to be unarmed. That means they will automatically pick up and equip any weapon on the ground nearby, even if that weapon does far less damage than they'd normally do unarmed. Railroad spikes have a maximum damage of 1. Your team should be able to beat them now. The point is still good, though: without knowing how to take advantage of the game mechanics like that, that's an early-level Beef Gate that has put a fair number of people off from playing the game any further.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Jayna Stiles, whose status as the sole tech-based healer makes her a very useful follower for tech-based PCs. Despite a sympathetic backstory that ties into the general state of affairs in Dernholm and Cumbria, she has no bearing on the actual quests centered on that kingdom, or the main plot. And to top it off, she doesn't even have voice acting.
  • Unfortunate Implications: If gnomes are meant to represent Jews, then what is represented by Half-Ogre Conspiracy?
    • To be fair, not everyone in the conspiracy is a gnome, and not every gnome in the gameworld is in the conspiracy. Vollinger, a gnome NPC that joins your party, is pretty repulsed by the conspiracy.
      • To be unfair, Vollinger is also the traitor in your midst, though he can be convinced (through his boss) to join your cause proper).
    • The schemes of the Industrial Council, especially considering their race, are just a bit too similar to "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" for comfort. This might actually be intentional, seeing as it was written to be somewhat like a Victorian novel, and that would be perfectly acceptable and believable back then.
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