Arcanum - Unofficial Patch Update

Gamebanshee has posted some info on an unofficial Arcanum patch in the works by Drog Black Tooth cited in a post at RPGCodex. This download link is given in the post.
The fix list is impressive:

The patch is designed to work with a vanilla English version of the game, patched to 1.0.7.4. NO MODS SHOULD BE INSTALLED. The patch most likely won't be compatible with them.

The CD check has been removed as well, no point in it after all these years.

Although it's not obligatory, it's advised that you start the new game. Some fixes (i.e. Kraka-Tur journal) won't work with old saves.

v080415 CHANGELOG:

-Added race icons for Dark Elves, Ogres and Orcs. Now you can distinguish them from their brotherly races. Note: icons were in the game, but due to laziness were unused. No idea why, they're actually quite beatiful.
-Fixed art for Elixir of Hypnotic Suggestion.
-Fixed typos in dialogue for Raven, Zan Alurin, Alice and Willow.
-Fixed Alexander's dialogue and dying script. This allows for properly getting his ending.
-Added a missing line to Nasrudin's dialogue.
-Fixed issues with Kraka-tur's journal and Kraka-tur's dialogue. Now you have an option to shame him if you read the journal, and he also properly recognizes both his journal and eye.
-Fixed mixed up responses for dummies in Pollock's dialogue.
-Fixed Surly Virgil's dialogue. Now he properly leaves the party and has a proper response when jilted.
-Fixed Virgil's dialogue so he now recognizes the crash site and tells PC about it when asked.
-Fixed wrong line number in generic npc class responses.(gd_cls_m2m.mes)
-Restored HEF2 (Half Elf Female 2) and NPCJay (Jayna Stiles) portraits from the beta version as the ones in the final are clearly inferior to them.
-Fixed palettes for Large Wool Jacket and Heavy Rags.
-Fixed Darm Helm. Its effects are no longer permanent. (Original script contained a typo, wrong line number)
-Fixed Black Stone Blade. Its effects are no longer permanent. (Original object had a wrong WIELD_OFF script attached)
-Fixed the exit of Stone Cutter Clan script. Now it teleports you to the proper location.
-Dark Elves, Ogres and Orcs stats are tweaked a bit to match their brotherly races.
-Ogres and Orcs are no longer considered monster (except for summoned ones).
-Kerghan's Dragon Form now has a monster flag, so he can do proper damage, 5-20 of normal, poison, fire and electrical, as it was meant by developers. Note: Critters in Arcanum can do custom unarmed damage only if they have one of the monster flags (monster, undead, animal, mechanical).
-Naked Halfling was missing an undead flag. Now he can do his proper damage, 15-40 of normal.
-Added large basic and bronze platemails, large and small dragon skin leathers, small dread armor, normal and small dark, bronze and red barbarian armor to shops. No way to get most of these types of armor otherwise.
-Fixed issues with Dweomer Shield and Reflection Shield spells. They no longer work on mind controlled creatures (this includes summoned ones), thus they won't allow for making anybody a permanent follower glitch anymore.
-Removed level scaling with random encounters (except Molochean Hand and orc bandits). Level scaling was unrealistic in the first place, you could meet certain creatures only on certain levels and no creatures except molochean hand and bandits on level 50, thus making the world feel more empty and making it more trivial to level up your followers.
-Drog Black Tooth now has a proper race.
-Ivory and Whysper in Qintarra now have proper races.
-Silver Lady is now leveled up, has no pickpocket, no disintegrate and no flee flags, and most of all has a missing floating animation restored.
-Race fixes for almost all guards in T'sen-Ang. (They were elves instead of dark elves and it's easy to see now with races icons fix)
-Void party: Gorgoth and Krakatur now have proper monster flags and proper custom damage. Bane of Kree is leveled up, Arronax now has a proper race (no longer human).
-Race fixes for 3 dwarves in Wheel Clan.
-Race fixes for Orc Bandit in the Boil, 2 Dark Elf Guards outside T'sen-Ang, Bunny at Madam Lil's, Halfling Villager in Shrouded Hills, Elf Thief, Half Ogre Bandit and Halfling Bandit on the Isle of Despair, Willoughsby

More information.

That's actually pretty nice. Thanks for the post magerette.
I liked Arcanum. Really. Just wish they wouldn't have phucked up the combat system so bad. Still, this might provide me the incentive I've been looking for to play it again. Those unofficial patches that do only fix - no mod are great. Really great.

I bought the game the day it hit the shelves and I still remember the fun I had with it. The first town.. the starting town, if you will, was really cool. I didn't want to leave the place.

WOW! Very tempting to fire this up again. I wonder how it works with DX10

I don't see any mention of a fix on the balance or removal of the level cap but then I just skimmed this list.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
I don't see any mention of a fix on the balance or removal of the level cap but then I just skimmed this list.

Then it would not be a fix pack or unofficial patch but a mod. You can easily find Arcanum Cap Remover on the net.

This is pretty much work in progress so I would definitely wait for a couple of weeks until Drog Black Tooth releases the final version.

Yeah hopefully he's gonna keep it all fix and no mod. I checked some things out and seems like that's what he's doing. Otherwise I wouldn't touch even with a 2012470 kilometre stick… or a vibrator… or a manure fork.

Umm, yea - a mod could unbalance the game

Troika were the masters of creating flawed diamonds - but this one is very flawed…

You can polish a piece of shit, but at the end of the day it still is a piece of shit.

Ah, everyone's an expert on something!!

I read some of the thread and he has no interest in rebalancing the game he said and in fact said his fixes will likely break most mods.

The level cap remover was too complicated to walk my buddy through and there was no balancing mod available at the time (I had already finished the game as a gunslinger).

As a couple of folk on that thread pointed out, the lack of good balance is still the major problem with the game.

That's not to dismiss his work, its incredible, especially with a game this old.

I have an idea to fix the problem with the disintegrate saves that's heavily talked about if the spell scripts work anything like NWN: basically temporarily changed Willpower to the Constitution, make the save against Willpower, then change it back after. I wonder if I can get ahold of him. I used to do stuff like this on my server - I'd cast a spelleffect at login, sleep etc. to reduce Pick Pocket by the amount it already was for example.

Thank you for letting me know about this!.
It is an awesome game, the game couldnt be any better, but now it just did.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
I read some of the thread and he has no interest in rebalancing the game he said and in fact said his fixes will likely break most mods.

There's a separate thread on the Codex wherein the same modder is collecting a list of balance issues with Arcanum, so I can him starting a separate effort to rebalance the game (to some degree). I think he wants to keep such changes out of a bug-fix patch, thus avoiding many of the criticisms of the Vampire patches which mix bug-fixes and content changes/additions together.

He found a way to restore 3 unused rotations for every creature - 40% more animations. Awesome.

v080604 is out. More than 450 fixes so far.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23720

New patch:

http://computergames.ro/ro/downloads…ial-patch.html

Originally Posted by mogwins
There's a separate thread on the Codex wherein the same modder is collecting a list of balance issues with Arcanum, so I can him starting a separate effort to rebalance the game (to some degree). I think he wants to keep such changes out of a bug-fix patch, thus avoiding many of the criticisms of the Vampire patches which mix bug-fixes and content changes/additions together.

if possible, can you link that thread?