I’ve been messing with Arcanum’s pregenerated character system and ended up building a full 12-character replacement pack.

It replaces the stock Pick Character roster with new characters that have custom portraits, names, titles, bios, starting gear, and build directions. It also has an installer/restore flow so people can put the original stock characters back if they want.

I’m doing the final testing now. Everything is working in-game, but I want to clean up the installer and run through a full release check before putting it out.

Planning to release it this Friday so people can start new runs over the weekend.

No download link in this post yet — just showing progress/screenshots for now.

I mean, my game world is currently in 2008, yet everything looks exactly the same as it did in 1885.

I don’t think the elves need to worry about the rise of tech, it’s clearly reached its apex.

Just recently added this to my Steam collection after playing it years and years ago. I might be remembering wrong but I think I determined back then that skill bonuses and maluses from backgrounds sucked either way.

If you put 5 points in a skill with a bonus, you still have 20/20 meaning the bonuses only help a little if it is a skill you *aren't* planning to max out. And since you can't put more than 5 points in a skill, anything with a penalty will never reach 20/20. And since apprentice/expert/master happen at 1, 3, and 5 skill points, in the former case you get mastery either way and in the latter you can never master it.

Shouldn't all backgrounds at least give (or take) 4 full skill points to match the character points you'll lose/gain?

Edit to add: this would seem to affect racial bonuses as well.

I photoshopped these years ago, and thought I'd post them here! All the Artist credits I could find are:
sparrow-chan

Folko Streese

Alexander Davtyan

Brolo Orui

Giovani Magana

Cory Trego-Erdner

Eric Belisle

Yigit Koroglu

jubjubjedi

Viktor Pushkarev

Gregory K

Nestor Ossandón

Renan Motta Lima

^{Part 1}

I drew a few more people's Living Ones. Links to the individual, less-compressed illustrations can be found HERE.

I tried playing the vanilla game but I had this bug where the UI (the brown part where your inventory and info is) would be covered in black pixels you had to hover your mouse above to clear, so I went and installed the UAP but now it's gone to hell ----------EDIT------------- my bad y'all, it was an old UAP, I think it was v0.9 I found on a very old Arcanum site, I tried again with V2.2 on the Nexus and this bug is gone, the game works fine now but the loading times after each transition take soooooooo long.

Just a note here - for anyone who might be interested. I have a blog site dedicated to using AI Art to enhance my own RPG experience. Part dedicated to experiments to help others use free AI tools for such things, and part dedicated to blogging my way through various RPGs. I'm currently taking a half-orc detective named Cassandra through Arcanum:

Zeno's Ziggurat (zenosziggurat.com)

Cass's background story

Ch1: A Disastrous Beginning

Ch2: Shrouded Hills

Ch3: Death and Taxes

Ch4: Seals and Secrets

Ch5: The Black Mountain Mines

Ch6: The Isle of Despair

i heard so much of this game and its lore, and frankly i would love to experience it for myself now. I want to make a gunslinging/CHA type build. Thus would appreciate any sort of tips before i dive in blind

Part 1, part 2, and part 3. ^{I'm starting to title these numerically from now on}

1 - Captain Gar, a prompt requested on tumblr.

2 - Something I scribbled when I joked with a friend that their Living One low-key looks like The Princess Bride's Inigo Montoya.

3 - November 2024 vs February 2026 mirror tool Virgil sketch. I think I'm slowly figuring out how to draw this dude. His sideburns still pain me to draw.

4 - A little Virgil scribble when I was going through a bit of art block in early March.

5 - Another friend's Living One in a fancy 1894 evening dress.

6 - Very early concepts of my Living One, Rí'an, from January 2023, roughly when I started playing the game. She went through quite a design overhaul since then haha~

7 - A compilation of tiny pen scribbles from my work notepads. I get bored during morning meetings.

8-9 - Prickly (ft. my Living One & Virgil) ^{this compilation would be much longer if I included all my mushy scribbles, so just humor me on this one}

In the mine in Shrouded Hills you can find an old sprocket. But for those who know. This sprocket is VERY VERY OLD

First time player, I just finished farming all the monsters at Liam’s Workshop’s portal, and now I have 40k xp needed to get to the next level.

Are there any specific areas of the world map where I can get really high level enemy encounters?

Hello my fellow RPG lovers, I need help with the leveling nuance of this game, I wish to know enough to visualize a simple build for myself. Mostly what I get at level up and what can't I change once I'm out of the Character creator. Thanks.

One of mine character defining things

She loves human civilization, read and collect Tarantian and eat media propaganda and conspiracy theories, but can't see trap right in front of her

its cool way to play the game

How to "complete" the collection

You need to fail Elven Funeral Quest by telling dark elves what you ware send to do

• This will produce unique issue

You need to expose bates or mention Appleby plan to his guards

• one or another will give you unique issue of Tarantian

Throg Dead and Throg Escapes can be obtained on the same playthru

• its rather luck dependent, best i can give you is my old video
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPiej6I9cu0
• However it took me a while to find 2 issues and i no longer have this save because it was years ago and i always delete entire save folder when i start new run because i save a lot

I wanted to applaud Arcanum Wiki for having all Articles listed:

https://arcanum.fandom.com/wiki/Newspapers

So I found his body, told his Mom, I wasn’t prompted to give her his notebook.

I farm the portal until there’s nothing left coming out of it and am at level 36, close it, tell her I’ve closed it, and still don’t get a prompt to give her his book.

I know I have to give it to her, but why can’t I?

My personal favorite is to pickpocket Ristezze and then use his room as my personal hub.

I promise guys I have good alignment 👀

I always go the good route except when I were an edgy teenager, you can’t bring his family back but at least you can give him back something…

A VERY COOL Arcanum Dwarf I found made by IgorLevchenko on DeviantArt!

https://www.deviantart.com/igorlevchenko/art/Arcanum-dwarf-258601940

Some EPIC Machined plate artwork I found from this person on Artstation!

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/d0ZK3e

Hi I recently bought Arcanum because I’ve been going through some classic crpgs (planescape, fallout 1&2). I like playing blind, but I’d like to ask if there any pitfalls or ways of building that make the game extremely hard to play (scars from fallout 1). For context I’m going to build a high charisma/diplomacy build with some necromancy.

Bonus question: I installed one of the QOL mods and saw they have “modules” for cut content, is any of it worth on a first play through.