Landeril: P.S. Anyone know anything about this game to help a newbie? LMAO
Yes!
My first time playing, I wanted to be a spell-casting, charismatic guy who could talk others into doing most of his physical fighting for him. I had a (figurative) army of followers by the end of the game...a familiar, allies, and I was a master summoner of monsters. Now, that's just one "career path" you could take. It was what I wanted to be, and Arcanum is SO customizable that I was able to do it. There are several magic colleges you can study (summoning, electrical, healing), or you can go the tech route and build bigger & better weapons & traps (good for the thieving kind), or you could just go full-on martial & "hit baddies with big objects." The customization is just amazing, and that was a huge selling point for me. That, and you can choose real-time, pseudo-real-time, or (my favorite) turn-based combat.
Virgil is a great healer, and he's like your conscience. If you're not sure what the "right" thing to do is or even just what you should do next, talk to him. He's almost like having a tutorial to go along for the entire ride...well, there are ways to get rid of him & he *can* die, but I'm sure you see what I mean.
I used a premade character for the first 3 or 4 Levels, just to get used to the game, then I decided I was ready to start over with my own character once I saw all the potential ways I could build him. There was a lot of trial & error during those first 3 or 4 levels, learning buttons & keyboard shortcuts.
One thing to keep an eye on is your "Level Up" button. Can't tell you how many times I missed that in the beginning, not realizing I had enough XP to go up. Also took me a while to realize the occasional "GONG" I heard was the game's way of telling me I had just reached enough XP to level up. :-p
Killing the wild wolves right near the start of the game is a good way to gain XP & get used to the combat. If I remember right, they attack on sight, so if you're going for a good (or at least somewhat neutral) character, Virgil won't disapprove.
Arcanum is so much fun, and also so time consuming...the environment is so engrossing, its easy to kill 3 or 4 hours & not even realize it. :-)