Here’s quite a lot of text, but since you asked for tips and I like this game a lot. . .
Arcanum is essentially based on a D&D-like system (like Fallout was), so the most difficult part of the game is the very beginning when your skills, hit points, and attributes are low. It’s not quite as bad as Fallout 2 where hitting an enemy can be nearly impossible, but it’s close. The early game in general is rough, especially since it does the Fallout / Baldur’s Gate thing where you can get party-wiped from random encounters while fast traveling. Acanum takes a few hours for its story to get going and for you to get to a high enough level where you can explore without getting party-wiped by every encounter. Most important advice: Quick save frequently.
The combat gets easier as the game progresses to that point that most any build is viable. In terms of general builds, the difficulty curve is probably something like melee (easiest) > magic user > tech user (hardest, but my favorite because of how unique it is). Of course, each of those three broad categories has a great deal of variance and customization options and you can complete the game with most anything. The first proper dungeon is the most frustrating part of the game since you encounter these rock golems that damage your weapons when you hit them (and they in turn damage your armor) and can take forever to kill unless you have some magic spells. I didn’t, and settled on using hand-to-hand combat to kill them, but that requires a lot of healing potions / spells.
In Arcanum, a high charisma score is a worthwhile investment. It is one of the RPGs where I felt I could have the most effect on its world and story through my dialogue choices. Not only does it open lots of dialogue options which can alter the game in significant ways (e.g., avoiding and even befriending enemies), but your charisma determines how many companions you can have in your party. With a high enough charisma, your main character is barely needed in combat (except for boss encounters) since you will have enough party members to slaughter most level-appropriate enemies.
There are tons of recruitable characters in the game of varying quality, but Virgil and Magnus (the dwarf you meet in Tarant, the main city) are early recruits that are good enough to be in your final party. I would recommend sticking with whichever ones you find most interesting because the game is not difficult enough (unless you make it so) that it matters too much. That said, I think the more powerful characters are generally the ones with the more fleshed-out backstories (and thus the ones I used), so I could be off base here. Worth noting is that many of the characters you can recruit are determined by either your alignment (standard good/evil binary) or by your aptitude for magic and technology. Basically, when you take a magic skill (whose effectiveness is based on Wisdom), your aptitude moves toward magic. The same is true of technology skills (which are tied to your Intelligence). So, a magic-user character won’t join you if you have too much of an aptitude in technology (or not enough aptitude in magic), and a tech-based character won’t join you in the inverse case. I think some characters will refuse to join you if your character’s intelligence or charisma are too low as well. One weird thing about the companions in Arcanum is that they only level up when your main does and they do not initially scale to your level. So, if you recruit a level 10 character while you are at level 30, that character’s max level will be 30 since the level cap is set at 50 (i.e., you character levels up 20 times to 50, and they level up 20 times to 30). There’s a mod that removes the level cap, which is worth seeking out just in case.
Speaking of mods, you will definitely want the unofficial fan patch which improves the game in several ways without changing the core experience.
My general advice would be—after finishing up the stuff in the game’s first town Shrouded Hills—to go to Tarant as soon as is reasonable since that’s when the game starts getting good. I would recommend going to Dernholm (a town to southeast of Shrouded Hills) first—I believe an optional Shrouded Hills quest requires you go—and you can recruit a tech-healer character there if your character is tech inclined. From there, you can make your way to Black Root (another smaller town) at the mouth of the river on the world map where you can buy a train ticket to Tarant. However, if you find you are not much enjoying the game, I recommend skipping Dernholm and heading straight for Black Root to catch the train to Tarant. Note that if your magic aptitude gets too high, you will be barred from using trains, but that’s probably not possible in the early game. It can be easy to get lost in this game, as it’s basically an open world and it is not always obvious what you are supposed to be doing, but GameBanshee and Mike’s RPG Center can make life easier and make sure you don’t miss anything interesting. At the very least, their maps are handy.
One last thing: be sure to set the combat to turn-based. The default is this awful real-time system that is chaotic and barely functional. The real-time system can work when dealing with trash mobs below your level later in the game though.
