for some reason in my game, when you place dynamite, you dont have to be anywhere near where you are placing it. for instance, i can place dynamite on Gilbert Bates from a locked room across the hallway from his room and blow him up without anyone being alerted.

if anyone has line of sight on me when i plant it they are alerted, but since i can seemingly plant from anywhere it makes no difference. this cant be right, is there any way to fix this? i am currently using the arcanum patch linked at the top of this forum.


also, is there any way to add friendly fire for companions? i have noticed that they have friendly fire dialogue, but they never actually take damage from things like grenades thrown right beside them.

i am aware that i can attack my companions, but im talking about accidental friendly fire in combat, like from explosions.

1) That's the way dynamite works. It can't be thrown; it has to be planted. And when it goes off, if you're not right next to it no one's the wiser.

2) Friendly fire doesn't affect explosions, which I realize is a bit counter-intuitive. It's for when you miss with a firearm or thrown weapon, and accidentally hit one of your companions instead. In the meantime, Molotov cocktails magically* know which side of the battle everyone is on, and only do damage to opponents (and bystanders).

It's just one of those quirks of programming that makes the game what it is. As far as I know, nobody has modded anything to change this. If it really bothers you, try switching from explosives to firearms instead.

*Which is doubly ironic, as they're a tech item. Go figure.

i know dynamite has to be planted, but it should require you to actually be in the same room to plant it, you shouldnt be able to plant dynamite on a chest or even a person inside a locked room while you are outside and across a hallway from it, for instance.

is there no way to fix that?

oh and last of all, is there any way to extend the distance from which NPC's can hear gunshots?

I agree that you shouldn't be able to do that. If you can, that's a function (or a malfunction) of the game engine; it's probably been hard-coded into the system. If it's moddable, then someone like ewmarch would be able to change that. If it's hard-coded, then you may be out of luck.

where might i get in contact with ewmarch? ive never heard of him

He's been working on rebalancing some of the odd things about Arcanum.
This is his thread: Arcanum Rebalance Mod

You could post there or PM him.

I'm not certain, but I think that is actually a glitch... I'm pretty sure that when I used dynamite on something, my character had to run up to the object first. Can someone else confirm?

Also, I have to ask: are you using the unofficial patch? I've never played without it so it could be something that's fixed in the unofficial patch but not the base game. As far as I know, friendly fire does not apply to explosions or guns (guns don't actually generate projectiles, they just instantly damage things). However, it DOES apply for bows.

As well as to thrown weapons: boomerangs, etc.

for some reason now that i have done the Black Mountain clan mines, it does require me to place the dynamite normally

I can also place dynamite without being there. Might be a bug related to using the scrolldist:0 feature to increase the range of scrolling. Because this is arcanum, no one will ever know for sure.