This is a little tip for new players of Arcanum which veteran players probably already know: in Arcanum, except for a few hard-to-find weapons, your fists might just be your best choice for hand-to-hand combat. There are several reasons for this:

With War Gauntlets or Machined Gauntlets, you deal out more damage with your fists than with the majority of weapons. This includes, e.g., the Balanced Sword (although possibly not the Pyro axe -- I don't have the game open atm) And you can buy War Gauntlets at a reasonable price every day in Tarant.

Fists are faster than any other weapon, and carry no to-hit penalty or MSR. This is pretty important. You or your party members will get in more attacks per round, and do good damage, especially with good gauntlets. Thus you not only do more damage than most weapons, you also get more attacks than with most weapons.

Fists don't break. Yep, you can duke it out with an Ore Golem, and your weapon will not break. YOU take the damage, not the gauntlets -- and your damage is easily healed.

You can't drop your fists: This is especially important for characters with little melee skill. You will still get critical failures, but you can't break or lose your weapon if you're using your fists. You can damage yourself, though. ("Ouch! I pulled a triceps!")

Fists are great for weakling characters like Jeyne. She'll get around three attacks, and with War Gautlets will deal out something like 3-14 points per hit. There's a *reason* why Dog is the best melee fighter in the game.

One caveat: the AI will make your party members use any weapon, even a pointed stick, in preference to their fists. If they have a weapon in inventory, they'll equip it, and you can't stop them except by pulling all weapons from inventory. So watch out they don't pick up any Number 2 pencils from dead enemies, or you'll see their damage drop to 2 points per hit instead of 12.

-- Mal

That is a good point about followers with little to no combat skills, like Jayna.

For everyone else, even when they might be better with fists I like using actual weapons; I don't find the game too difficult as it is, so the more damage isn't really all that necessary. But, different play styles are what Arcanum is all about.

I wonder, does the Unofficial Patch affect hand-to-hand damage and speed at all? I ask because I do not remember my fists being faster than attacking with a melee weapon. I would sometimes switch to fists if I was trying to break something so my weapon wouldn't get damaged, and I distinctly remember not being able to throw as many punches per combat round as I could swings of my weapon.

This may have been after doing some melee training, however. I think one of the melee training tiers makes your melee weapons faster? If you have that are they faster than fists?

Apprentice training will make your weapons faster (and not your fists IIRC) so your main character is probably better off using a weapon.

Another thing to remember is that most of the good gauntlets are technological, so they're not good weapons for magic-heavy characters (that includes Virgil after a while).

I found going bare-fisted useful against Ore Golems and for bashing chests (and in one case stripping your party down to their undies will avoid damage to armor), but otherwise I prefer weapons.

You should never strip your party of armor. Just buy some of the armor that has 10000 damage points -- it will never break in this lifetime.:) And it's available at Tarant. (Dread Armor, is it? My memory is shot...)

-- Mal

Yes, it's Dread Armor. Anyone know if you can get it in 1/2 Ogre size?

If I remember correctly you can't. It only comes in medium size I think.

Also, keep in mind Dread Armor is magic armor and so is quite good if your magic aptitude is high, but is pretty useless as armor if you aren't a the technical type.

When you find a magical item and mouse over it, you will see some information in the small window at the bottom of the screen. One of the numbers displayed will be some type of enchantment percentage. This percentage tells you how much of the magical effect your character will get. For example, if the magical item says it grants 50 Fire Resistance, but the percentage is only reading 10%, then you'll only get 5 Fire Resistance if you wear it. The percentage is affected by your character's magical / tech aptitude; higher magical aptitude will increase it, high tech aptitude will decrease it. Depending on how good of an item it is, you might be able to get 100% with just a little magical aptitude, or you might need a really high magical aptitude to get 100%.

Technological items will instead display a "percent chance of critical failure" or similar. This number goes up if you have high magical aptitude and causes your character to critically fail more often. You can reduce it to zero with a higher tech aptitude.

Awesome answer, thanks. I figured it was related to the character's tech/magick aptitude, but wasn't sure of the direct relationship. All makes sense now. Thanks very much for the info.

No problem, glad I could help.

Even for a techie character, though, Dread Armor has pretty good stats. And the point was to have armor that wouldn't fall off your character while running some of the trap gauntlets in the dungeons. The toughness of the item is uneffected by tech/magic rating.

-- Mal