Arcanum First time Arcanum player, need some general guidance

[Bester]

Molotov cocktails work for one round before the rest of my party engages. In fact, that's a fundamental problem with the game. Every enemy I've ever encountered reaches melee range within one round, so there's little reason to use explosives and none to use ranged weapons.

Fucking what? Molotovs, grenades, etc don't damage yourself or your allies. Have you even played the game?

My current build I'm playing with relies on building a shit ton of molotovs and then just nuking shit with it. I don't even use other weapons.

 

[Dzupakazul]

I am amazed at the number of Arcanum players who only stick to melee, firearms, or magic.

I'd chalk the firearm hype to firearms being the most flashy and obvious tech choice and "common sense" (or a typical gamer's interpretation of it) dictates that they should be superior to bows, while thrown weapons may still carry a certain stigma from Arcanum's spiritual precedessor, Fallout, where they suck arse. Most people's idea of a power fantasy doesn't involve being an archer in a post-gunpowder world or being this guy:

Spoiler

 

[Average Manatee]

The biggest problem with the golem in the BMC mines is that it takes roughly 30 minutes real time to run out, go to Tarant, find something new, then get back to the golem to see if it works. The perceived difficulty/impossibility of any encounter is directly tied to how easy and quickly it is to challenge the encounter under new circumstances.

 

[Absinthe]

Real talk: Constitution is the true dump stat of Arcanum. Investing in Fatigue gives 4 fatigue per point, in Constitution 2 fatigue per point + very minor regen. 8->20 in constitution adds 24 fatigue and .3 fatigue gain per second vs. 48 fatigue from direct investment in fatigue, or 160 seconds of waiting around in combat for Constitution to be better than pure fatigue investment. And does anyone think pure fatigue investment is a good idea? I thought so.

If you like sustaining spells high fatigue regen is pretty valuable. 17 Constitution gives you 6 fatigue regen every 10 seconds, allowing you to sustain all kinds of shit without worrying about running out of mana, especially if you pile on modifiers. But there's no real reason to get more than 17 con, unless you really want poison immunity. 1 Constitution also means you have a heal rate of zero, so if you fall unconscious, you're not getting up again. If you rest, you recover no health. Also poisons are more potent against you.

Beauty is pretty shit but I'd take 1 Constitution any day without blinking while 1 Beauty kind of sucks unless you spend your whole time in towns with multiple Purity of Waters running (which is 100% viable even for tech characters, so do as you please).

Not only multiple Purity of Waters (which actually work really well for tech characters because high int lets you sustain more spells - if you have 20 int you can put 5 Purity of Waters on yourself and if you have 17 con you can sustain all 5 without caring about fatigue consumption). You can also equip Smoking Jacket or Elegant Dress (female characters can even buy the dress off of the starting merchant), do the quest for the priest at the start and get another +5 to reaction as a blessing, and equip a medallion of beauty later on. Honestly the smoking jacket or elegant dress is all you really need in order to be able to talk to people.

Doing a Half-Ogre techie gunslinger w/ Miracle Operation and its pretty dang good. Basically only need to raise Dex, since Int and Per can be buffed to the needed values just by consumables. Net useful points from background is +8, which is fucking ridiculous. Of course you need to know where to snatch the Looking Glass Rifle or beeline to Elephant gun in order to actually fight.

It means you can't get the +5 speed bonus at 20 dex though.

Question for those knowledgeable: Do guns work like magic spells where the damage isn't truly random but depends on your tech affinity? e.g. raising your magic affinity makes harm more powerful, does tech affinity make your guns similarly more powerful, or is it just avoiding critical failures by being non-magic?

Depends on the item. Some items have reduced effect at low tech affinity. For the most part TA gives you magic resistance and lowers the critical failures you can get from high magic affinity.