Playing through the game again and as a mage.

I'm using Agility of Fire and have a decent magical aptitude (~50 I believe). I'm still fairly early in the game (Tarant).

Charged Rings give me no Dexterity. Agility of Fire gives me 4.
Now, I am convinced that last game I could benefit from both even though I was a full mage (100 aptitude), or am I recalling this incorrectly?
Would it help if I put two points into tech so that I could make them myself?

Cheers.

Ah, yes, you are right indeed. I managed to locate my old saves on my laptop and indeed I was using two magical rings and not Charged Rings. Oh well.
My aptitude was 45 when I tried them, so obviously that is too much already. Shame, but understandable.
That makes me think - go mid-road with a melee char or something and use 2x Charge Ring + Agility of Fire. +8 AGI just like that? Surely that couldn't work.

In theory, being mid-road would mean that both the charged ring and the Agility of Fire spell would not be fully effective on you. So it might still add up to a total bonus of 4. In practice, I don't know how it would work.

According to this post

Magic stat boosts are flat rate, its always +4 no matter your magic aptitude. Have you confirmed this? I have a suspicion its true because my middle road thief mage was deadly and he was all about stat boosts because you could raise skills and get training while under their influence. Min maxers dream.

Hmm. Currently both Sogg and Virgil get +4 AGI from AoF, even though they are neutral and slightly magical respectively. I'll try casting it on Magnus tonight and see how he responds.


However, my game is fucked :(
I'm level 37 and in Ashbury. My game crashes on any loading screen or when I open a container. Simple loading, like scrolling, also has a slight delay too often (the clock appears in the top right corner). Anyone had this happen to them? Gives the usual "arcanum.exe has stopped working."

Yikes. No, I've not encountered so consistent a crash.

I had a perma-freeze problem in the Wheel Clan on trying to switch areas. Reinstalling helped.

have you tried defragging the game install directory and your home folder? (I use the free version of gamebooster for this).

Could you have a problem child inventory item?, if its happening on area load perhaps an equipped item or something a team mate is trying to/has equipped? Try making a test save and just drop everything including worn items from everyone, save again, quit/restart and see if you can open a container.

I just want to re-emphasize 'test save.' Don't do this with your (admittedly broken) main save game.

Thanks for the help guys, but it doesn't seem to work :(
Whenever I open any container, or even inventory, the game crashes. Tried opening barrels, my own inventory, inventory of followers and pickpocket window. Leads to an immediate crash every single time.
Now, I do remember that I bought that strange statue from the vendor in the docks, the one required for the altars quest. Maybe that's screwed up the game? In any case, I use a rotation of three save games for all RPGs. I tried loading the earliest one, which was in the Ancient Temple right after I had given the Dragon Blood to that skeleton npc, and I think this was before I got the statute from the vendor. Ditto.

I have yet to try defragmenting, but I also had a random save game of a lvl 4 char in the list. I loaded her game up and everything worked without an issue.

I believe that I switched around save games some times ago, perhaps I messed something up in that folder. I'll try changing between different sets of saves again.



TL;DR NOW FOR THE RELEVANT BIT
I can still access NPC character menus so I cast Agility of Fire on Magnus. I'm pretty sure that he's at base 9 DEX and wearing 2xCharged Ring. His DEX is 13 (indicated in green, meaning that a stat boost is active) and AoF took it to 17, even though he has 71 mechanical aptitude.
However, I'd believe that this would perhaps be limited to followers only? I can't imagine being able to cast a +4 DEX spell on myself if I had that much mechanical aptitude and already using Charged Rings.

In fact, I was getting a little bored of my game anyway since my previous two chars had been mages. I'm thinking about starting a new game as a technologist and trying this out - using 2xCharged Ring with high mech aptitude and only taking AoF from spells. If I go ahead, I'll let you guys know.
Anyone know a good 'guide' to read up on making a techie? My previous attempts have been rather poor, but those were before I really understood the game. I'm definitely going into guns and not melee.

edit: oh and can someone fill me in on how the tech manuals at Tarant University work?

A gunman can be tricky... you need firearms skill of course as well as perception so you won't miss all the time, plus dexterity will let you shoot more per turn. Running out of bullets can be a problem so you might want a point in melee so you can use a backup weapon.

You can take gunsmithing if you want to make your own guns, but it's not necessary as you can find / buy them also. Generally guns will be more useful later on when you find or build really good ones, the early ones aren't so great, so don't be too disappointed. A single point in the Explosives discipline is a good idea as it will let you make your own bullets.

General tech advice: you need high Intelligence in order to get higher tech abilities, so be sure to boost that too. Gunsmithing is a decent choice, you might also consider smithing so you can make armor and melee weapons for yourself and allies, or mechanical which will let you make robots to help you out in battle.

An alternative to a gunman that might be a little easier is a grenadier... just swap throwing for firearms above, and then take the explosives discipline. Grenades are quite powerful and for some reason do not harm you or your allies, and you can make them out of garbage, which is cool.

Somewhere on this forum I gave a detailed explanation, but I can't remember where. Anyway, you can only use tech manuals on FOUND schematics, not on the ones you learn by spending character points on a tech discipline. For a found schematic, there will be a "skill level" needed in one or more tech disciplines in order to make that item... this number is listed by the pictures of the ingredients. For each level you have in the discipline, you add 10 to your skill level, but you can bump that up further with tech manuals. Each tech manual will add your Intelligence value to your skill level. So if something requires 30 mechanical skill to build, and you don't have any points in mechanical, but your intelligence is 15, you can build it by buying two tech manuals from the mechanical discipline. You can carry as many manuals as you want to keep bumping your skill higher, but they're heavy, so you'll want somewhere to store them when you're done.

Usually, you use the manuals to help make items that require two disciplines when you only know one discipline. For example, if you only know smithing, but you want to build a cool new weapon that also requires some knowledge in explosives, you can use an explosives tech manual.

Excellent explanation, thanks!

I might go with grenades indeed, if they can be made from trash.
I've made a couple of gunners before and remembered everything before the Looking Glass Rifle being a waste of time, so I might just beeline to that very quickly. The Elephant Gun obviously adds a lot of damage, but the 2 bullets per shot really goes through your reserves fast. I think I stopped playing my last techie because every single vendor refused to stock the Bullets schematic so I simply got stuck.

If you're just a nut like me, though, you'll have your intelligent and persuasive mage buy tech manuals to put together unique weapons and equipment from found schematics for, essentially, no good reason, doubly unhelpful for the fact that one of them requires Fuel for ammunition...

Grenadiers are so, so overpowered. The humble Molotov cocktail, made out of rags and fuel, is fairly damaging + has knockback effect (always, if throwing skill is good) + no friendly fire, so critical failure is moot + 1 AP to throw = bestest weapon ever. Then there's stun grenade that you can make fairly early and that can save your arse if you run into overleveled mobs. Then there's an explosive grenade that damages armor, fun fact: you need three of them to destroy Kree bandit's barbarian armor completely. Then there's paralysis grenade (bought schematics) and unconsciousness grenade. Both cannot be dodged. Both have area effects. And all grenades are more fun to play than, say, effective but boring Harm-spam mage. Since my grenadier has 20 Dex, sometimes I like to play bowling with mobs - first, try to gather most of them into one heap with Molotovs, second, lob a paralysis grenade there, third, let companions to play. And that's not all - they don't take the hand slot, so you are still free to use boomerang (v. good weapon, by the way, also goes with the throwing character)+ shield.

The schools to go would be, well, explosives and chemistry, which, while being nothing too useful by itself, makes components for a lot of schematics, especially bought explosive ones. I'd put two points into electricity for the charged ring all the same, that thing's too good. Perception, naturally, has to be decent, but you don't need it to be very high really + Magnus makes eyegear + Jaina makes boosts. Dexterity is more important, because action points! Oh, and throwing expertise/mastery won't harm you either.