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Another chunk of the CM 1.60 Changelog. Text and UI Fixes The GUI background is now less transparent so that text is easier to read. Grunwald, Swamp, Desert, and Girvym Dragons now display correct names in the "Last Opponent" window. Destructible "enemies" like Crystal Traps and Cursed Banners now have names in the "Last Opponent" window. Scaron boss now has a portrait in the "Last Opponent" window. Enemy names now fit better in the "Last Opponent" window without being cut off. Improved and clarified tooltip text for attributes. Damage modifier now appears in the Willpower tooltip if applicable (for lightsabers). Percents, not flat numbers, are now correctly shown in tooltips for Combat Discipline and Speed Lore. Corrected all instances where "Urtamark" is mispelled as "Urthamark." Corrected all instances where "Lakeview Tavern" is called "Ocean View Tavern." Corrected loading screen tips where "Cooldown" is used instead of "Regeneration Time" Corrected loading screen tips where "Frost" is used instead of "Ice." Corrected loading screen tip where CTRL+Click is said to be the command for directing minions, when in fact it is SHIFT+Click. Tornado and Gust of Wind are no longer called "Whirlwind" and "Flurry" in the rune exchange window. Master of the Hunt quest: Corrected mention of the city "Grurag-Orc" to the actual name of the city, Entruag. Sar'Thaz and Bengaresh Threshold now display their proper names onscreen when the player arrives, instead of "Arena of the Winged Ones" and "Red River," respectively. Corrected several lines in the various localizations that had incorrect or awkward translations (thanks to all the translators and bug reporters!). Using SHIFT+Click for minions was a big revelation for me. I thought directing minions was broken, when it turns out simply the game tip was wrong. See this post for more pics of the new, easy-to-read User Interface. Most of the missing enemy names were previously added in Diablo 2 Fallen. However, the names for the traps in the Crystal Plane and Cursed Forest are brand new. Poor Scaron never even had a portrait assigned to him. I had to make one from scratch. Big thanks to dimitrius154 for doing the necessary coding to get tooltips corrected for Willpower, Speed Lore, and Combat Discipline. He also figured the scripting necessary to get Bengaresh Threshold and Sar'Thaz names displaying properly. We erroneously thought it was a hard-coded issue for years. Read about the long and winding road leading to solving that bug here. MUCH appreciation to all translators who pitched in to get the CM Patch ready for all 10 localizatons. Caledor, Czevak, desm, thareross, dimitrius154, thank you! ==================================================== Quest Fixes Arena fighting rescripted (LUA code review: onRespawn). Quest targets in the Thylysium quest "The Usurer" will now appear and be attackable. There are no longer duplicate "Sister of the Archaeologist" NPC's standing in the same spot in Orcish Byway. Dragon Mage now makes comments when approaching quest bosses, like the other characters. All characters now have voiced comments when accepting new quests. The first three changes listed above are the work of quest script guru Marcuswob before he retired from the CM Patch. I carried them over from the previous test release. I believe the "Arena Fighting" refers to those quests with waves of enemies in arena locations. If you die during the quests, they should now resolve properly instead of glitching. I had Dmitriy pursue the issue of the missing "Quest Acceptance" voices mainly due to the persistence of one user, TonyG, who has been checking his topic for years, and also PM'd me about it. Tony, if you're out there, quest accept voices are finally restored! In the process, we also noticed the Dragon Mage was not making comments about the main quest bosses when he approached them. That's been fixed as well.

I'm going to breakdown the various changes of the upcoming CM 1.60 into manageable topics, because the full change log is HUGE! This post: Creature Fixes These are fixes to bugs with creatures' stats and spells. The Swirling Mist of Miasma now uses its special "Weakness" buffs that were designed for it (causes ice damage, lowers player stats and speed). The Swirling Mist of Miasma no longer regenerates health faster than it summons undead (reduced cooldown on summoning spell). Kufferath Castle is now defended by knights of its own realm (wearing Urtamark green) instead of DeMordrey soldiers. Guide Jaftar (human enemy, Light path main quest) is now a boss-level opponent who uses a weapon and a Hard Hit attack. Some elite Thraconians on Christmas Island who weren't properly flagged as elites now have the proper rank. Some normal ranged Slave Outcasts who were wrongly flagged as elites now have the proper rank. Reduced Poison DOT of Spiders' Venom Spit. Reduced the damage and healing of the Spider Queen Asmarael's life leech aura. Elite Yeti and Gahanka (Troll boss) now use the "Stomp" CA. All Trolls and Yeti who use the "Stomp" CA now use the correct animation. The Toughness skill now works properly for elite Blade Spiders. Elven Apparitions now have ice resistance like other ghosts. Ghost Wolves now inflict some physical damage like other ghost animals. Elite Ancestral Spirits now have their missing armor and damage mitigation values, as well as physical-to-ice damage conversion. Elite Scarabs are no longer missing damage and armor values. Bears, Boars, Spiders, Snow Leopards, and Yeti now have fur. Yellow shimmer on elite enemies removed - no longer overrides special texture effects like fur. Enemies will no longer spawn inside the town limits of Tharum, Na Fian, Dar Al Badja, the village by Eloeth-Sun, Badawi and the Badawi portal, or the exterior Scorpion Temple soulstone. All human-race NPC's in the game were scaled up in size so they're not so short and dwarfish compared to the player and other races. Female Orc Merchants now use the proper "Greetings" and "Farewell" voice files. Removed Knockback effect from enemy attacks because of a serious bug where the player could become perma-stunned until reload. Only Crystal Traps and a few bosses caused this effect. Most of these changes were introduced in Diablo 2 Fallen, so if you're familiar with that mod, you've already seen the breakdown of most of these fixes in the D2F Creatures Thread. Here's a couple changes that are new: Stomping Trolls. Trolls have a Stomp CA but had the wrong animation assigned. Now they do a big jump, sending out shockwave when they land. I also gave Stomp to Gahanka and elite Yeti. The Swirling Mist of Miasma was taking too long to summon fresh undead, meaning it would regenerate its health too much in-between summonings. Now it summons undead more frequently. This is a semi-reversal of a previous CM Patch change where the cooldown was made really long (too long). Yellow shimmer on elite enemies removed - no longer overrides special texture effects like fur. The thing is, there already 4 major indicators that an enemy is elite: different circle at the feet, different icon on the minimap, different health bar with gold nameplate, and different skin (sometimes). The yellow shimmer on the enemy model was overriding shaders and special fx, like fur. Now for the first time, all the fur on elite enemies will be seen. Humans too short. This isn't new, but worth talking about again. For some reason, Humans in Artamark and Bengaresh are astonishingly short, like little dwarf people compared to the playable characters. Strangely, children are of "normal" height compared to the player, which means the kids are almost the same height as the adults, which makes them look really creepy and disproportionate by comparison. This is fixed now. Before anyone complains about "a major gameplay element being removed" with the removal of knockback, let me clarify: in the vanilla game, only Gar'Colossus, Octagolamus, and Carnach could use knockback. Each of them were notorious for causing the "perma-stun" glitch. It's awful to experience. CM Patch then gave knockback to Asmarael and all the Crystal Traps in the Crystal Plane (huge mistake). Perma-stun bug reports skyrocketed after that. Knockback is now removed from those enemies. The player can still cause knockback, so the effect isn't removed from the game, just from a couple enemies, because the bug was just that problematic.

Great list of triumps, Flix Thank you for putting the work into these going-to-be-very-much-loved-updates! gogo

Nice work. There is life in the old dog yet!

Sounds better and better with each bit further unveiled!

Guess Hurricane...err...Tropical Storm Jose (by the time it gets to me) will be an uninvited guest for a couple days next week. Some forecasts even have it looping back to potentially hit us a 2nd time. While by no means am I comparing it to Harvey or Irma (Texas and Florida/Lesser Antilles got pummeled), it's something I really don't need right now. More than likely my basement will get flooded as I live very close to the beach and have wetlands/marsh surrounding the backisde of my house. In many ways it will be like a nasty Nor'easter and we're used to them. Still trying to get an accurate forecast on storm surge but have heard anything from 1-3 feet to 5-8 feet. 5-8 feet would be really really bad. 1-3 feet I can handle...my sump pump should handle that. Anything more and my basement will flood. That and I'm sure the winds will knock several antennas down....and I am just too busy now to deal with that. And since most of my customers are Police, Fire, Ambulance/Emergency Orgs and big utilities, everyone will want theirs fixed 1st. So no matter what I do I will have some very unhappy customers. I foresee 20 hour work days for at least a couple weeks and that's if I can get all the replacements ordered and delivered overnight. And with Harvey and Irma recently I don't have high hopes of that. Many antennas are custom built and the manufacturers don't have the man power to deal with a high demand all at once. We do have several sub-contractors we can call but they will be getting calls from all their other contacts too. Should be a lot of fun......NOT! But if my new pc I ordered gets delayed then I will really be mad....supposed to get here on the 20th...the day after Jose...and I'm sure something will happen...something bad . Kidding of course....just as long as no one dies everything else can be replaced.

King Crimson => In The Court Of The Crimson King Avenged Sevenfold > Hail to the King Wow...that King Crimson song brings back some memories...yes, I'm dating myself....they were such a criminally underrated band

Joan Jett -> Crimson and Clover King Crimson => In The Court Of The Crimson King

while that is true Dimitrius, it isn't exactly useful for roughly 85-95% of all other players and merely clogs up the possible stats on Items. the majority of Sacred 2 players I know, play the Singleplayer, where Pacifism, due to its function, is absolutely useless. Edit: Flix, please correct me if I am wrong but that CA is defined as a "DoT" right? sooo "D"amage "o"ver "T"ime would mean the implementation of a duration parameter. It would not surprise me, if that was actually INTENDED to be done, but ultimately forgotten about before release.

The options text file was the right tip. Could change the height and width in there without any problem. Thanks!

Wow Flix, just... Wow! The waiting is the hardest part. You did not mention the new locations where the balloon captains can transport ones player around Ancaria. That's yet another thing to love about the upcoming CM Patch 160. I was wondering if some superfluous items modifiers in items could be omitted. Such as block chance knock back and pacifism. Right offhand I cannot conjure anything else in my mind that fills armor, etc. that could be replaced with a different and potentially useful item modifier.

Good, Gar'Colossus was always such a dirty cheater! I'd be whipping him in a fair fight and he'd go and pull that sneaky trick.

Mutter, moan, grumble! Always changing stuff, grumble! Just like them there newfangled ideas they have in shops. Walk in cheerful and knowing exactly what you want, then walk out grouchy because they moved everything around so you can't find the stuff anymore! Mutter! And keep off my lawn!!!! PS. Gogo, we really need an emoticon pf a grizzled old teddy bear angrily shaking a walking stick, lol

Well, hopefully the transparency issue will be a thing of the past now. I feel pretty confident in releasing the CM Patch with this new opaque interface. I'm attaching the base files if you'd like to just add it to your own personal install setup. The "data" folder in the archive should be extracted into the game's "pak" folder. S2 GUI Black Opaque Version.zip

As a side note the forum looks good with an opaque mod too

You mean that little imp who carries your stash? There is a hotkey that summons him. When you close the stash he supposed to vanish again but sometimes he doesn't. Just try the hotkey again.

Yes, it is possible to increase the screen resolution. I am currently playing the game on a 42" HDMI flat screen at 3840 X 2160 resolution. The graphics card is what enables the game to allow for the adjustment of the resolution in the game's settings. First, you need to adjust your native screen resolution accordingly in Windows Control Panel. Windows should have options to adjust the size of icons, etc., so that the appearance remains comfortable when viewing the screen when not playing the game.

Well, while I do love the CM Patch in its entirety the way it is, I can see and understand BrainMunchers POV as well. the CM Patch comes with an installer, would it not be possible to simply add categories to said installer where the user can decide wether to install the patch in full (ie everything the devs put in) or only the parts they want by categories like this: Bugfixes; (Un)Locked Content; User Interface; Extras just an idea I had when I read the discussion here, it would make for a good compromise. as for those BGs Flix, can those be made Class-specific? I mean Seraphim (Royal Blue), High Elf (Royal Purple), Dryad (Dark Green), Dragonmage (Dark Red), Shadow Warrior (Steel Grey), Temple Guardian (Stone Brown), Inquisitor (Raven Black) or perhaps Campaign specific: Light (Blue, Royal or Navy) and Dark (Black, Raven or Abyss)

Ok here's the CM interface with opaque black background. I think it's much easier to read the text now. Things look really crisp. Is it too black? Should I try another color? Did anyone actually like that hideous blue background from Fallen Angel? EDIT: Ok I'm sorry, but really? Someone's complaining about wanting the old interface back? It looks even worse! It's just as transparent, plus it's blue. It's nigh-impossible to read jack. I can't appease everyone, so I won't try. Play the patch or don't.

The thing is, the mini-sets like Meho's or Glyphs of Torment are on different drop lists than the aspect sets (vanilla settings, unchanged). You're imagining that Wildcat pieces are dropping in place of those sets, but that's not the case. Primarily only bosses drop the mini-sets, that's just the way they made the game. If I deleted the Wildcat, you wouldn't be getting more pieces from Meho's or Glyphs of Torment. They would be just as rare for you. You'd probably be getting extra pieces from the Aspect sets, but then those already drop like candy anyways, which is why I added the Wildcat and other new sets to those drop lists. About half of that was bugfixes and unlocked items made by Ascaron. I don't mean to run down the original developers, but they dropped the ball multiple times. A gigantic amount of content that they designed and shipped with the game was never added, for no other reason than someone obviously wasn't doing their job. If you're looking at a new item, and you think "those stats are unbalanced, I don't want that item in the game" that I can understand, but if you would never know that something wasn't originally part of the game except for the fact that you read it somewhere, I don't know what to say to that. I meant, I've already decided to change it back. I'm with you on that. Just to reiterate, I am not responsible for any previous editions of the CM Patch, only the forthcoming one. I know how you feel. I see "Enhanced Edition" mods recommended to new players all the time, that radically change the face of the game, and I've always hated that. People need to know what the base game is like before they can decide that something should be changed. I can't justify every scrap of changed code in the CM Patch, and I can't say it's purist-proof. It's not. But ditching the CM Patch is like demolishing a house because there's a dead cockroach in the kitchen corner. There's just too much valuable fixes that would be lost.

I found it was only 1 day then I was used to the changes of "what's new" compared to the old DarkMatters

You can't do it that way anymore grandad. The world has changed.

Have a look at Gogo's instructions in this thread Podgie. If that doesn't help you then I can try write up something more detailed for you. http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/23040-welcome-to-the-new-darkmatters-2017/&page=6&tab=comments#comment-6992674

That's a tough situation... I'm glad you're finally getting some rain! Here's to hoping it STAYS raining for a long time so you have all the water you need. O'er here in ye old Pennsylvania, it just stopped raining. That's good news, since I have a picnic to go to... who's up for some soggy rain sandwiches?!

Was warmish weather in George where we are visiting my mother and oldest sister. But the last 5days has been cooler and then last night it started raining and is still raining. Thank goodness. South Africa has serious drought problems and it has not rained very much this winter. There are water restrictions across the country, and even then the government is saying we might not have enough water for summer.

A much better explanation than mine Essentially Kevin, if you enjoy sacred 2 then the CM patch plays just like the base game except better, no questions asked.

99% of the CM Patch is bug fixes and restored content. What I mean by "restored" is things that the game designers made and for some reason didn't finish. In many cases very little was required to "finish" the feature and add it to the game. In some cases, CM Patch developers had to invent, but great care was always taken to make things "fit" the existing game design of Sacred 2. The other 1% of changes are more like Easter Eggs. These are mostly items that make a reference to other franchises, like Star Wars. Sacred 2 was already full of these kinds of things, so adding a Darth Vader helmet or a Buffy the Vampire Slayer scythe isn't against the original game design. If a new item is powerful, it is made rare and difficult to get. Balance is always kept in mind. There are really no aesthetic changes to speak of, except for the interface. The interface in the CM Patch uses a modified Fallen Angel skin, instead of the Ice and Blood skin. The CM Patch developers were always willing to change it back if no one liked it, but no one ever complained, because it looks so much better.

Hi Kevinlocust. Answering your question, I would say yes, the CM Patch has remained faithful to the original design intent and aesthetics of the game. The content is in most cases unlocking items that were created by Ascaron, but were never implemented in the game, fixing bugs where it was possible and the addition of any new items has not resulted in too much new overpowered stuff - there are some exceptions to this from what I recall, but to be fair the game already allows for the creation of some very overpowered builds anyway and they did do pretty well in keeping things balanced... If you're interested you could read through the patch notes released by the team on the wiki to see what they've done: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Community_Patch_Changelog

Just a little thanks for you guys great help, Still experiencing some crash after lowering graphic settings and disable both Elite and Physx, so I'm gonna try that dll and the other few tips you guys mentionned in this thread, Actually I m running the game at : - Default textures - Shadow details : Middle - render details : High - ground details: Very High - effects details : High - Ground details : in the middle - Physx : Off - AA : x4 - Weather : on Those are the best settings I've found so far for longer gameplay ,yet it still crash after a while ( sometimes 30min, sometimes 1hour, I guess it depends on how much I'm spamming mini map, or caves in/out) My config is : Phenom 2 X4 965 @ 3.8Ghz GTX 770 2Go 8 Go Ram G.skill PC-12800 I prefer to stick with nvidia drivers 345.20 for now (because of another game better compatibility with this) Hope this can help on developping, thanks again for your work and your time Now gonna try that dll and try to report later on afternoon. Greetings Edit : found that I was already using mss32.dll ver 7.2g lol,