Do I need to be a walking genocide or what?

Played the game through already and decided to experiment a bit. I'd like to get that graveyard wizard dude to come along, but MAN getting bad alignment is TOUGH!

I just finished a stolen painting quest, did it as a total mercenary, "just give me the cash please".
That still gave me +3 alignment.

Tried to balance out by murdering the lady and her butler.... and for what, a measly -1 leaving me two in the positive.

I haven't been an exact saint so far, sabotaged the steam engine and killed the engineer, murdered the hermit monk guy who had done the curse on the robbers. I'm still netting positive points all the time, at 16 now.

I rather wouldn't wipe out whole villages, doesn't fit my mental image of "slightly evil" that I'm aiming for..


So... easy way out?
Should I just look for a character editor?

1) Pick pockets. Sneak past guards. Break and enter into shopkeeper's homes.

Minor early-game spoilers follow:

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2) At the crash site, help the ghost in the cave. (Or even help the priest first, then betray him and tell the ghost what you've done.)

3) Help the thieves in Shrouded Hills blow up the replacement bridge. Help the local wizard by accepting his quest to blow up the town's steam engine. Take the quest to rob the bank (from the guy at the inn) instead of the one to protect it (from Doc Roberts).

4) Get back the king of Dernholm's taxes by crook, rather than by hook: work with the Black Root thieves, or bully the town's mayor.

5) In Tarant, help Cassandra Pettibone (the lady by the train station, just over the bridge) in her quest to one-up her neighbors by stealing an elven tombstone.

6) From any of the above, use your newfound knowledge of the Thieves Guild to wrangle an invitation (look for men in alleys, just off of side roads) and then do any and every thieving quest you like.

7) Help Cedric Appleby. Break into Bates' mansion from underneath, rather than earning a proper invitation through the front door.

Need I go on?

.. maybe.

I'm going good looks elven pure mage (with a bit of throwing skills) but no thieving skills at all.
I can definitely do 5 and 7, probably a bunch of stuff from 6.

Maybe I'll have to learn that open lock spell, hope using it counts as a robbery.

Thanks for suggestions.

you have to do evil deeds, not pick locks, noone cares about that.
There's a number of quests in which you can do it the evil way. Killing certain important characters is also helpful, after they give or tell you the means to continue your quest ofcourse, there's usually a dialogue option about that.

That's your choice. But the surest way to build evil alignment is to become a thief; IIRC you lose one point of alignment every time you successfully pick a pocket, and of course there's all the Thieves Guild quests.

I don't recall whether prowling or lockpicking specifically cost you alignment the way pickpocketing does; but I know for sure that the Unlocking Cantrip does not. In part because it's loud, and therefore cannot be considered in any way an attempt at stealth.

One last protip, while we're on the subject: you can find, or possibly buy, a Dark Helm; wearing it reduces your alignment by 20 points, exactly as if you'd started with the Sold Your Soul background. (The loss is permanent if you're running the vanilla game, and temporary if you've installed the unofficial patch. Which I highly recommend, btw: there are a couple of game breakers that could potentially trip you up otherwise.)

Guess I can spare a point into pickpocket, with the dexterity spell I might even succeed at it with enough reloads..
Dark helm would be neat to find, a little expensive at this early stage of the came though.

FYI, as strange as it may seem, raising your DX does nothing to affect your pickpocketing chances. It's all in how many levels you choose to invest in the skill; all a higher DX does is allow you to put more points in that skill, should you so choose. One point in Pick Pockets works about as well as one point in Melee does. As for the Dark Helm, there's at least one place in the game where you're guaranteed to find one; spoiler available if you really want to know.

Go ahead, I already played the game through once and found the helmet (and bought another for Magnus, hoping the boost towards magic would make him less resistant to healing spells). Can't even begin to remember where I found it from thoguh.

And oh... so DEX doesn't help melee skills either, beside giving some extra speed?
I'm pretty much assuming stuff and not looking whether I'm right or not...

BTW, does Harm spell get better with more willpower or levels?
It's been awesome in the beginning, but is it pure crap in late game?

I didn't have much problems being evil. I found it ridiculous however. I got to the point where I HAD to be nice to people, otherwise the whole cities attacked me. Seriously, I start conversation with some NPC who insults me on the spot. I respond with an insult too. Then, the totally armless NPC decides he can take me and my heavily armed team on. And so everyone who can see us turns against me and attacks me. Having massive negative alignment wasn't given much of thought here. Still, great game.

Ah, my enchantress had a bit of good and a bit of bad fortune in being evil.

Doing a favor for Mr. Wellington and then deciding to murder him (through dialogue) netted zero points of evilness, but at least I can get into the club now.

Delivering a note from club to a particular address (being a mailgirl) netted one evil point.

But ho luck! met with a beggar and insulted him 12 times in a row, netting 12 evil points.
By the next beggar, I'll learn the charm spell so I can insult him 20 times before he attacks.
Nice thinking by the bloody peasant as well BTW, thinking he can barehanded take me, Virgil and Sogg at the same time...

Epilogue.

-1 alignment was enough to recruit Geoffrey Tarellond-Ashe,
who has excellent spell selection, including the likes of Harm and Fireflash.


Turns out he's pretty well worthless as a henchman though.

His favorite trick is to run to the enemy, pommel the said enemy with his bare fists and then run away.
He does occasionally create undead, which is nice. He also likes to cast status buffs on himself and then stand around.

Oh well. Sogg and Virgil make for excellent backup by themselves.

1) It's on the corpse of the final boss in the basement of Ashbury castle.

2) For each skill, its corresponding stat allows you to add another rank according to the following schedule: 6, 9, 12, 15, 18. (This even applies to WP and spells, with the additional restriction of needing to be a certain minimum level as well.)

So, yes: DX boosts speed (and AC, though by a small amount compared to actual armor) but its primary use is to allow you to add more ranks in Melee, Dodge, Throwing, Backstab, etc. (Though if you do get it to 20, you get a +5 speed boost; which stacks with other speed modifiers, such as Enchanted War Boots and spells from the Temporal college.)

Also, while ST boosts carrying capacity and melee weapon damage, it confers NO bonus to any other type of weapon (bow, thrown, spell-based, or firearm). Just so you know.

3) Harm is one of the best-known gamebreaking exploits. Its strength is entirely dependent on your MA, so you'll max it out with a MA of 100.

And then for icing on the cake, if you decide to master the college of Dark Necro (which involves learning all five of its spells, and a visit to Tulla) you'll be able to cast that body-breaker at at half cost, rounded down: in other words, for a mere 2 FT points per throw!


If you're looking for roleplay value, dump Sogg as soon as it's convenient. Geoffrey has some, but there are evil followers who offer a bit more (including Vollinger, Z'an Al'urin and Torian Kel). Remember that you can have up to six followers (not counting magic familiars, or Dog) if you choose to max out CH and take at least expertise in Persuasion.

That's the beauty of this game: there are so many ways to play.

Doing the Caladon King Assassination quest is a pretty surefire way to make you evil. There are certain other quest completion methods which are pretty heavily weighted on the evil side. Wielding the Bangelian Scourge sword drops alignment by 20 or 30.

According to the faq at http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/914155-arcanum-of-steamworks-and-magick-obscura/faqs/16191
you only need -10 alignment to go down the evil main plot quest line also.

In the end (just finished this run with Vollinger, Torian Kel, that dark elf sweetie, Virgil, Worthless Mutt and Sogg) it wasn't hard to rack up evil points, but those were all over the place.

Saying something nasty or just doing something that's scripted as evil could do easy 10 bad points (and I was at -40 much of the time, even when doing a fair share of "good" quests), but it was hard to know what does what. It's as evil to pickpocket someone as it is to murder him and then loot his corpse, for example.

Also, it's possible to do the "good" plot even with -40 evil alignment (which makes sense, considering what the plot is).
And good is what I did, was fun being the beautiful charismatic master persuader psychotic "dont f&€k with me or I'll throw Azuras star in your eyes and let Mutt eat your entrails" kind of savior and general do-gooder of the Arcanum. :)