Arx Fatalis

Do I need Arx Libertatis to play this? How high of a chance is there that I will get fucked with some gamebreaking bug several hours in if I don't use Libertatis?

When I try playing with Arx Libertatis, my mouse will randomly teleport around the screen, and the only fix I've read about that I haven't tried yet involves editing something in registry I'd rather not edit if I don't have to.

You could ask in their forum/mailinglist if they can provide a .reg file for that, then you just run it and it'll correct the registry entry. Reg files are text, so you can open it in notepad and see if it looks like the right registry entry before running.

I actually managed to fix it like 5 seconds after I made this thread, so now for a general Arx Fatalis thread. Anything I should know about this game? Does this game have an equivalent to Deus Ex's swimming skill that I should dump all my points into?

Magic is objectively the best, but other than that just don't do a full sneak/thief build and you should be just fine.

You ever played Dark Messiah? It's a more simplistic form of melee combat from that but it compensates this with a more engaging magic system however it is very sensitive and Arx Libertatis makes it easier to use. Outside the secret spells/cheats you need to find the runes first before you can actually cast any magic which is pretty cheap. The summon spell will summon anything but if it's not the weakest possible summon they'll immediately turn on you and attack so be sure to setup a barrer they can't enter so you can snipe at them from a distance safely should you ever want to see what the summons are.


Two secret spells changes the graphics:
S, D, S, D Makes NPC's heads huge
U, U, W Makes the graphics look like Ultima Underworld

Should I bother installing Arx Libertatis? Cause I did before but it didn't show the hours up on steam. Is the base game that bad without it?

nigger
I don't know, I used it and it worked fine. Like Morrowind, why wouldn't you want to get a bug fix mod?

This is one of those games where I want to get into it but the controls are such shit and it starts out so bad that it's rough. Is this one of those games where it doesn't get good until like halfway in? I hate that shit

Play it blind. There are a ton of secrets and non-linear ways of advancing.

Good question, I'm kinda fucked up at the moment, I just want to game man.

No, if you don't conquer the controls the later half of the game will destroy you. The guys who destroy a fort are hyped up to be hardasses that can take out a whole swathe of men easily and they actually live up to the buildup instead of just having a health increase and more aggressive tactics.

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I bet you don't know how to pirate.

Yeah, that's what I was going to do mostly. I just know games like this had a tendency to not let you figure out the build you did is completely unviable and will make the game next to impossible to finish until you're already several hours in. Apparently playing a thief in this leads to exactly that situation with forced fights against strong enemies later on.

Actually there is a strong enemy you can face fairly early depending on how much you're willing to explore I won't say much past that but they're nothing like those end game dudes but at your level they can kill you in about 1-3 hits.

How the hell do you do the R? The movement was waaaay too slow for me, so I was seeing if there was any way to go faster and someone mentioned a speed cheat code spell, R A F, but I can't get the R to register.

The R has to be completely straight lines so the circular part looks like a triangle, however R is not the issue A has to be a full triangle and F is just missing the second stroke so it's just a right angled triangle.

And you have to start from bottom to top with each letter.

*
And F is not literally a right angled triangle it just looks like that because you can't put in the second stroke.

1- You should plan your skills before playing.
Check the walkthrough in gamefaqs, it's ok for this.
2- Supposedly you can go full stealth. I've only played warrior. I've seen some impressive mage runs.
3- Some optional stuff is really well hidden, like the bank robbery. Problem is some events can only be triggered at some points in the game. Example: you'll find the gem dealer in his house the first time in the city, next time he'll be in his shop. If you didn't explore his house the first time, then your chance is lost because his house is closed forever. (Perhaps you can steal the keys?)
Steam- couldn't play until I moved a DLL. GOG doesn't have this problem.
Libertatis- more resolutions, better effects, some bugs fixed. However, game IS NOT more stable, had to reload an old save. Autosave works but keep saving every 30 mins.

There is a day/night cycle in the game. Pretty sure you can just wait.

Why don't other games get how to make fun crafting?

you can make apple pie if you add an apple

You can also combine an apple with your pie to make an apple pie and then use a wine bottle to change the color a bit and make it even better.
Also, you need food for another reason: the hunger meter.
It's not visible anywhere but it's a thing. If you are well fed, you regenerate life. It's a very slow rate that it really doesn't help you at all in battle, but while you're exploring, it's going to kick in a lot.

The best part about the crafting system has got to be the damn bottles. Drink a potion? Empty bottle for you. Used a water or wine bottle for cooking? Here's your bottle back. It makes it so that they act as a soft limit to how many potions you can craft for instance, and finding empty bottles might not be that useless as you'd think.

There's other stuff like lockpicking or repairing items being just "double click item in inventory then double click target" and the fact that you can do this for in-world targets without having to have a huge HUD all over the screen is amazing.
It's also one of the few games that I know of where you can just look at a piece of food and press a key to eat it instead of having to put the damn thing in the inventory first before you can use it.

Yes there is, however OP is not using Arx Libertatis so if he finds one of the stones required to beat the game and picks it up he can't drop it or else he might glitch his way to an impossible to win scenario.

This sort of thing is why I love the interface (or rather lack thereof) in Arx Fatalis. You just double-click a thing to use it and then click on the thing to use it on. But it's not just that, it's the fact that you can interact with things in the world itself. I remember how blow away I was that one time when I was brewing potions: I put all the flowers and empty bottles on the lab table (behind the library), then put the mortar on the table, and then I just double-clicked a flower, clicked on the mortar to get the powder, put the powder in a bottle, and repeated the process for all flowers. Then I double-clicked the bottles and used them on the distiller. I was not doing this in some sort of alchemy menu, I was actually brewing potions right there in the game world and my mouse cursor was my hands directly touching things in the game world. How cool is that?

Arx takes the interface pioneered in Ultima Underworld and perfects it with modern technology. Only the clunky combat drags Arx Fatalis down. I would love to have a game like Arx/UUW with the gameplay of Dark Messiah, that would be so sweet.


What was really fun is that you can learn that recipe from a goblin, and instead of unlocking an option in a crafting menu you just go ahead and actually do it.

Some guy I barely know on Steam gifted me this on christmas. It was fun, did a warrior playthrough.
The combat is imbalanced. As a warrior, you can't really fight Ylsides or Liches or the last boss very effectively. As a mage however you 2 shot them. Every other enemy is weak as fuck no matter what you are.
The spell drawing screen is very finicky and picky about the shapes you draw, also the shape of the runes does not really correspond to the shape the game expects you to draw.
The game is not linear and you can happily kill most npcs and still be able to complete the "story", if you want.
It's very dated and I had more fun with Dark Messiah tbh.

this was with libertatis btw, game wouldn't run for me otherwise.

A certain spider type can fuck your shit up pretty good early game too, even though it's slow unless you use the speed cheat you have to risk getting into it's attack radius when going for a swing. That's what my experience with those fuckers was like.

Arx Liberatis though is a sort of like zDoom, GZDoom, and the like so if you wanted to make your own Mod or even game with it you can I don't know how easy or hard it would be though.

Arx Libertatis improves a lot the rune drawing. As far as I heard, it's because of high resolution screens being used today, something that wasn't taken into account back then.
From personal experience, it's far easier to cast with Libertatis.

I haven't tried a full thief playthrough and I do know that magic is the bees knees in both coolness factor and utility for this game.
However a straight up warrior build is indeed possible, you're just gonna have to complement it well enough with potions and scrolls too, but you'll have a lot of magic resistance with some of the armor you get later on and you'll decapitate people left and right with the weapons you get.

Anyone meet the dragon before? I was dicking around with levitate on the 2nd level, and I found an ice cave with a dragon and a bunch of other cool shit. I don't remember it being part of the main quest last time I played, but it gave me some advice relevant to where I am in the story, so I assume it's there in case you kill important quest characters.

No actually it's there for a hidden side quest the game doesn't tell you any of this at all. Nor why the Dragon is even relevant but just meeting him is a reward on it's own.

You have to go to the dragon to get to the end iirc. It took me fucking 5ever to get around to that side of the art orc's ravine. Again, magic to arx is the key to arx.

You need a dragon's egg to make your Meteor sword to take on the last boss. You can buy it off the dragon or kill the dragon and take it.

Huh, I don't remember that. Then again, it's probably been like 10 years since I last played this game.

Oh right the egg,

So did you get to the Dwarf mines yet?

This thread made me decide to finally finish this game. It has been years since I played it last and now I need a dragon egg. When I talk to the dragon it just asks me whether I'm cold, he doesn't offer me an egg. I had already made it to the dragon before, does this mean I had already bought one? I guess I must have misplaced it somewhere then. Do I have any other choice than to kill the dragon and get another egg? Is there a cheat console I can use in Arx Libertatis?

I had trouble there too. You have to go talk to the snake lady queen first.

Ah, the old "you first have to talk to person X" trick. Thank you, but for fuck's sake, now the dragon wants me to know how many scales it has. As if levitating up there to its cave the first time around was not tedious enough, now I have to do it yet again.

Yeah, normally that's not required in Arx Fatalis, but you can't even get the eggs by killing it until then.

You have to read a book to find out how many scale it has. I guess I had already read it by then since my character knew.

You can actually. Walk up to the stalagmite as close as you can, that should give you the height to pick up an egg that's hanging off the ceiling. The dragon will turn hostile and attack you though.

I'm pretty sure I read that book (my character said something along the lines "I think I read in a tome about it"), but I still can't give an answer, so I guess I have to read the book after the dragon asks me.

Nah, you just have to double click your money pouch to give it to him.

I had the same problem. Lower the response rate or polling rate of your mouse. If it's set to 1ms or 2ms it will be too fast for some older games and will skip around the screen. 3ms of 4ms should work better.

There is a trick where you can cast the right spell on him and he won't turn hostile if you take the egg. You have to cast it on him before though. For the most part you only need 2 and that's only if you want the most powerful sword without cheesing the summons.

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You can use the goblin gate to trap the summons on the other side, then keep summoning creatures until you get the Golden Ylside. If you don't she'll murder you even with OP stats. Once you kill her she drops the most powerful sword in the game and a piece of golden armor. The other way to obtain this sword is an obscure and hidden unmarked fetch quest, the reward is either a kickass bow or the same sword. Normally I'd refrain from divulging these sorts of secrets but you'd never be able to guess how to complete such a task without a guide or someone else telling you the hints let alone figuring out how to complete it.

The summon is easier.

I didn't know you could get stuff from summons. I summoned a demon and killed it, but it didn't even give me exp.

Only the Golden Ylside drops items.

I dropped this game because, despite hours and hours of practice, spell casting seemed completely unreliable. Casting would sometimes work out of nowhere despite the previous cast attempt being perceptually identical.

I can only assume/hope that there was some kind of technical reason like my framerate being too high or some shit.

Screen size, there was a feature where you could store up to 3 spells at a time so if you planned a had and pre-casted the spells you'd use then you'd cut the frustration down significantly. The final boss is when you'd need more then 3 spells anyways.

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