sammy22 on 26/3/2004 at 18:30

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I've reloaded the game, and indeed have played for many hours, i've completed at least 1/3rd of the game, beyond the point where you put the laxatives into the kings pies and sneak them under the door. How far into the game is that? I looked at a reveiw which spilit the game into 3 acts,and ive done all of the first act.

However having reinstalled the game it appears as if not all my saved games are there. Firstly it says i'm only on level 2, and also my journal ends with something about finding the idol, and having asked a troll to clear the rocks the way to the humans should now be clear.

I don't know whether i'm near the beginning again, or whether the journal deletes completed quests.

If i am near the beginning I might as well start again, seen as i don;t know where i am. The map shows places for levels 1 2 and 3, but I keep getting stick around the goblin place, going round in circles. The map i can toggle with f3 but i'm having trouble getting used to it again

Is there no way i can have the map on small in the corner to help me navigate. At the moment I'M feeling a bit frustrated, as i'm only on level 2(304 more exp to next level), yet I don't think it;s saved where i'm up to

Also i don't know where I am, as I haven;t played the game for well over a year. The map isn't helping there are no places marked on it( i know you can add messages) and it all looks the same to me. I don't know if i'll continue if i'm near the beginning, as having done most of the quests already it will be just like repeaing myself.

I vaguely remember having to balance on a roof or something near the kings room, and if you jump far enough you get some rune stones, is that from this game.

Any help on the previous mentioned points would be apprecitated

sammy22 on 26/3/2004 at 19:46

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Thanks Driver, ive downloaded the patch, although i've downloaded patch 1.17 which apparantly is an updated version.

As for levels, I realise that 1-10 are just areas in the game, and you will have to go to different areas at different stages.

However the level 2 I refered to is my actual game level, which is practically at the start.(ive only gone up 1 level). Therefore i presume that i'm not at the stage I was upto, my last saved game is only upto here. Still if the mini-map works it shouldn't take me to long to get back to where I should be..................

sammy22 on 27/3/2004 at 13:07

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Thanks Zach, it's strage I played that game over 1 year ago, maybe even longer, and the points I made were going of that memory.

When I reinstalled the game I began to remember what it was I disliked about the game, namelythat due to my inability to use the map I was basically wandering around backwards and forwards. I didn't understand the concepts of the game, and having played for many hours I had only been to the first 3 levels (upto the goblin mines).

It was only by downloading the mini-map that I began to understand the areas of the game, and therefore I no longer wandered around the first 3 levels, where obviously there was nothing left to do.

On these first 3 levels I only levelled up to level 2, simply because most of the first 3 levels as I'm sure you'll acknowledge is about adventure rather than roleplaying. All i found to kill and gain experience were a few rats and odd troll or goblin. This was getting boring, and meant that despite playing for many hours I had hardly progressed at all.

Using the mini-map I made my way onto level 4 (i only re-installed it yesterday), which was easy as it shows you exactly where you are going as you move around. For me this level is where the game really kicks in, and resembles an rpg, at one stage the atmosphere and combat techniques even reminded me of famous battling scenes in underworld 2.

I don't know what the creatures are, but there's loads of them on level 4, and they can disapear, then magically transport behind you and keeping attacking. ( poisonous ratman?). They also poison me alot, I need to build up my immunity to poison, but they are worth alot of experience, and there are some decent items to be found on this level.

So far I have practically cleared out this area of ratmen, and have advanced from level 2- to level 5. Therefore I can now appreciate and understand the sophistication of the skills, and stats system. However I would have thought you should get an extra stats skill, and perhaps less skill points, (as you get 1 stats point to spend and 15 skill points).

I've worked my way down a narrow coridoor, and come to some kind of large beatle, which is poisonous, and much tougher than the ratmen. So far it keeps killing me, but hopfully I will defeat it before to long. I've got in about 12 shots on it, some for double damage, but it always ends up killing me just when i'M thinking it must be nearly dead itself.

Therefore i'm enjoying the game more, as this is what I hoped and expected from the start of the game. The first 3 levels are like a different game compared to this, and i'm hoping that now i'm on my way the game will be more like this (e.g similar to underworld 2, rather than just some adventure game).

One final point I hope you can help/reasure me on. I'm a little worried by my magic abilites. So far I have only 4 runes, and know only 2 spells. Will I find more runes and spells to learn in other areas (e.g on levels 4-10), or have I missed some on levels 1-3. For this reason I have spent most of my skill points on attack, defence, object knowledge, and technical, as I figured there's no point spending points on casting etc until I know a few more spells, or have a few more runes to practice with.

I hope you've read up to this point, as the post is a little long, but I felt inclined to discuss my new experiences of Arx Fatalis. A similar thing happend to me some 5 years ago, when I first played might and magic 6. i played the game for 1 week, then thought it was stupid, to hard, and pointless and didn't play the game again for nearly 6 monts.

However I gave that game another chance, and it is probablty in the top 3 games I have ever played. Hopfully Arx Fatalis can leave a similar impression on me. Any advice on the game would be greatly appreciated..... thanks

zacharias on 27/3/2004 at 15:19

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For the runes, some are hidden away in various places of the levels/caverns, some you can buy, later on you can buy all of them i think(?) Walkthroughs might have the locations of some magic spell runes.
The spell system is the coolest part of the game i think, but as designed, you can only access the more interesting spells later on in the game. Just having fireball should get you past a lot of things though.
I've said this before, but IMO a game with Thief-like cityscape levels and gameplay and something like the Arx magic system would be close to my dream game.