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I recently got bored with my first character (more on that later) and am going to be restarting as something else entirely in the hopes that I can extend the life of the game some, but I also learned a lot in the process. I figured I might share some of my more interesting or "OOOHHH, *that's* why" moments in case they're useful to someone else, either starting a new Seraphim or to help optimize one in progress. Some caveats to be taken into consideration: 1) I played with Nexus' Survival Mod installed, and had Mooney's Challenge Mod installed on top of it. I don't know for sure which of all the changes took precedence over which others, but the end result was madness (including one point where I was taking on FIVE Bloodclaw werewolf bosses at once and some places where stepping into a crypt meant getting mobbed by 70+ ghosts all at once, actually stacked on top of each other 3-4 deep with a Banshee boss wailing on me for 17k a swat). The end note to be taken from this is that the character will probably survive anything that gets thrown at it, and will *eventually* (read: at high enough level) basically be immortal, short of those enemies that have Leech Percent. 2) I assumed from playing Sacred 1 (and hearing that Sacred 2 had 600+ quests) that the game would be fairly long if I tried to do everything, and I refused to do it five times over just to get to the saucy bits in Niobium. I started in Niobium at level 80 with no idea what I was doing, and learned from there. When I made mistakes and learned from them, I fixed them with the character editor within the bounds of a legitimate character. Soooo, to start things off I made a level 1 Seraphim and jacked up my experience bonus to something like 50x and gave myself some gold just to buy some basic gear from vendors as I leveled. I picked skills that seemed like they would fit the character I wanted well as I leveled, and every couple levels I bought some new trash to wear just so I could keep power leveling on stuff around the lumberjack camp and pirate cave. Somewhere along the way I got lucky and found a level 50 Nosferatu Fang amulet and kept that for well over 100 levels (more on that later). Whenever I hit the point in a difficulty that enemies stopped scaling with me, I hopped up a difficulty (unlocked with aforementioned character editor) and kept on keepin' on. At around level 80 (still in trashy gear) I got to the point where I could handle a few level 111 Niobium inquisitors and bandits, and the adventure started. I set my experience bonus at a mild 150% (so I could just forget Mentor potions altogether). Some thoughts I had, and when applicable, why they were wrong: 1) I was using Warding Energy without Warding Energy Lore, and I had 31 Revered Technology Focus (not Lore, Focus is cooldowns and Lore is damage, I wasn't using spells) for the 6 points to modify my Ward and Divine Protection. I figured having some projectile reflection and spellblock would be great for most fights, but without Warding Lore your shield never gets higher than about 4,400. It also *never* regenerates in combat (only the Temple Guardian can do that) so once it's gone, it's gone. It's also gone in 2-3 successful hits, negating any reflect it had, so depending on the rest of your build it's mostly useless. Later on in the game when enemies start throwing spells or spiders start spitting at you (neither reflected by your Ward nor by your Battle Stance) your Ward gets blown off instantly at the start of every combat. It *may* be useful if you stack tons of points into the Warding Lore skill, but I didn't. Any survivability I thought I was getting from my Ward was *actually* from Battle Stance's Close Combat Reflect. Later on I found I only used Divine Protection a handful of times, and dropped both Arts entirely. Eventually, any protection granted by Divine Protection can be made up for in the same amount of time with other means of survivability like Damage Mitigation and Leech (and massive Vitality). So Wards and Protection were a total bust. Without my Ward, I had no need of the Concentration skill either (allows 2 buffs, 3 at mastery). 2) The tooltips for Combat Arts and their modifications are woefully vague, misdirect you, or flatout lie. I mentioned Battle Stance in the above section, and it's here again. It's here because Battle Stance is a goddamn champion skill and you might not ever know it just from the tooltips. Eventually I started having very high survivability against certain types of enemies, and it took a LONG time and a visit to the Wiki to figure out why: Battle Stance's "small chance of Close Combat Reflection" is *not* a small chance. The chance to Reflect is actually 20% at Art level 1, 55% at level 50, and I assume it's at least 66% at level 100 (even with diminishing returns). That means with a few pieces of gear that also have reflect (or a triple-set of Gemmae, as it may be, the Community Patch sigil stone thingies that go in your relic holder) you can reach nearly 100% close combat reflect with your buff. The Drill modification only reduces cooldowns by 9% at level 50, but at level 100 the Flexibility mod will give you 20% (base) +20% evasion which will work with your reflect to reduce damage and the Aggression mod will give you a 100% damage boost, and it's eventually 300 to even 500% attack AND defense. Cooldowns be damned, the single biggest buff my character got was reading as many Battle Stance runes as I possibly could. 3) Dashing Alacrity is incredibly useless, or ridiculously amazing, depending on whether you mod your game. What the game doesn't tell you is that there is a cap on maximum speed increases, and it is very low: 50%. You spend the skillpoints mastering a weapon skill like Swords, and you've already hit the attack speed cap. All that speed on your weapon and bracers and buffs is garbage doing nothing. However, there's a simple line in your balance.txt, "Speedmax=1500", that you can change to fix the problem if you so desire. Some mods set it to 2500 (250% speed), but you can pick your own or stay vanilla. Just be aware of the limit if you don't change it to something reasonable... why would they allow a character to get hundreds of percent attack speed and then limit it to 50? Also keep in mind that regardless of Attack Speed %, weapons have different innate speed bases. Some one handers are faster than others, and two handers are slower than both of them. The faster 1h weapons are generally boosted by Dexterity while the slightly slower ones are boosted by Strength. If you have the CM patch installed, Lightsabers are the only weapons boosted by Willpower. If you use a Dexterity 1h and mod your max speed to 250%, with Dashing Alacrity at level 100+ (a lot of runes read, I know) with the Delay and Impatience mods both taken, your Alacrity will grant nearly 100% speed and have a duration longer than its own cooldown so it's perpetually active, and you will swing that sword like a blender on steroids. If you have even a small percent life leech, 1h+shield will even outdamage 2h weapons, or at least mine did... plus you get to use a shield, important for the next bit. 4) Unlike most other mods stacking against the player's favor (reflect being multiplicative, deathblow having diminishing returns, %damage being additive, etc) Damage Mitigation is additive and that is seriously OP on a Seraphim. I mentioned at one point a banshee boss (and even the Bloodclaw werewolves did it) hitting me for 17-20k a swat, and those were the first times I simply turned and RAN from something, not willing to lose my survival bonus "just to find out if I could do it". If you see a bonus that says "Damage Mitigation: Physical" and under it there are four other "Mitigation"s in different colors, that's "All-Channel" mitigation, or rather "reduces all incoming damage no matter where it's from, except enemies with leech". It's a mod that usually only shows up on torso and shoulder armor, and most sets have that bonus on both. It also shows up on the Glacial Defender shield at about 2/3 strength, and shows up on 3-4 different amulets at different strengths. It's also the main draw of the "Toughness" skill, which grants about 13% damage reduction at mastery and 27% when totally maxed out at level 200. All of these are important if you're playing a heavily-difficulty-modded game, with the Community Patch, especially as a Seraphim, because Seraphim have two extra items with Damage Mitigation that other classes don't get (I don't believe, anyway). On top of shoulder and torso items, Seraphim also have Endijian's Wings and Protective Hands as options, and Hands even come with extra Reflection stats. I didn't know for a long time you could socket those Damage Mitigation amulets into Gold sockets on gear either, further increasing their numbers. With Wings, Hands, Shoulders, Torso, and a Glacial shield, it's very easy to get 60-80% damage mitigation. Now that 150,000 damage oneshot is a very survivable 30K, and with as much reflect and evasion as you'll have, it won't be landing very often. With stacked Vitality and a couple percent leech, you'll likely outregen/leech any damage you do take. Also note that if you have terrible luck with getting set items to drop, Mitigation shows up on rare items as well, and the stat can even roll twice for double the effect. Watch for them! 5) Big muscles make for big damage! Except if you're already Whetting all your gear at the blacksmith, you're going to be doing so much damage that your strength really won't matter. You're already hitting for 8k anyway, with a onehander. If you need to hit something, a weapon or ring with -Opponent Chance to Evade has a much greater effect than any amount of +Attack anyway, so go with those (I was particularly fond of Sneaking Demon, das a sexy pigsticker). Eventually I needed survivability instead, and dropped all my points into Vitality, which paid off with a 50K lifespan in the end. Being able to take big hits and shrug them off with regen and leech is much more useful than a bunch more damage that ends up being mostly overkill. As a Seraphim, there's only so many things you can hit at once and only so fast you can hit, overkill damage wasn't helping clear speed nearly as much as not having to worry about dying and being able to slog through the pigpiles and hordes. Anyway, see a few posts down for my testing on strength and exactly how much damage you can get out of it, maybe useful for somebody. 6) Also, critical hits are garbage. Crits in basically every game ever are 150% or 200% damage, but in this one they're only 120%. You don't need to avoid them, and you don't particularly care about dealing them either. Double-Hits are boss though. See the following post as to why this was wrong. 7) Life Leech per Hit, and Leech Life from Opponents are two totally different stats, and neither works like one might expect (having played Diablo 2 and whatnot). The former deals a certain amount of damage per strike as unresistable damage and heals the player for said amount, say a flat +200 damage and +200 healing. It's a decent stat if you attack very quickly and have high defenses, it helps regenerate some of the incidental damage you take when there's no emergencies going on. The latter deals the same unresistable damage, yet the damage dealt is based on the target's *maximum life*, so the bigger the bad, the badder the blow (and the bigger the healing received). Late-game it's not uncommon to see 600-1000 leeched from weenies, 6-10K leeched from champions, and 50-100K life stolen from a Big Bad Boss, in a *single* hit. The mod usually appears only on 2h weapons (up to about 4%), but it also appears as a full-set bonus in some sets. Remember that crappy level 50 Nosferatu Fang I mentioned forever ago that I kept for a hundred levels? The set bonus for having both the amulet and the ring is 1.7% Leech Life, and that carried me through the darkest of times. At the very end I gave up some Mitigation for another set bonus with Leech % (Genesis Siderea), the Fang/Claw set, and a store-bought two-hander with 4% leech and deathblow (with stacked deathblow jewelry in it). It even procs twice on double-swings, just for extra insult to the injury! Killing bosses in a couple seconds is a bit overkill though, and gets boring, so maybe don't do this to the extent I did. 8) Build your character right, and because of how weak enemies tend to be and the like, the regeneration times on active Combat Arts don't even matter. I tried and tried to keep Art levels and regen times and such balanced, but even in doing so I never *used* them. I ended up not using Warding or Divine Protection (former stopped being useful, latter was never really useful), I never used my Kybele god button for heals, Somersault is junk, Pelting Strikes was so slow and ungainly that I kept trying to use it but found it outclassed by autoattacks... The only useful Arts I had were Soul Hammer, and only when using a 2h against huge enemies, and Dashing Alacrity after I modded files to increase max attack speed (it would have otherwise been as useless as the rest). Because Dashing Alacrity's biggest "can't use this yet" problem is a *cooldown* and not *regeneration time*, even massive regeneration penalties don't make any difference to my character, so having a totally maxed out overburdening Battle Stance didn't matter. Once I got things figured out, my most effective combat strategy went like this: Log in, turn on Battle Stance, recast Dashing Alacrity as necessary (about once every 45 seconds), autoattack the whole game to death. So before the end, I'll share how my Seraphim ended up (for a look at the end result of what I learned). Stats: All points in Vitality, every last one of them. End result is some pretty beastly regen and 52k HP. Skills: Tactics Lore 75 for damage, Exalted Warrior Focus 75 (you won't need the mod points, but it raises the level without penalty for better Alacrity and Battle Stance), Swords 75 for attack speed and unlocking Double Hits Armor Lore 75, Shield Lore 75 (unlocks 20%-someodd chance to block, and Shield Lore adds to ALL of your defense while wielding a shield, not just the shield's defense, it's a lot better than the game makes it sound), Constitution 75 (for in-combat life regen), Combat Reflexes 75 (the evade vs critical really helps if your game's modded for 200% crit damage), Spell Resistance 75 (again, mostly for a modded game where crits are actually dangerous, but spells will still be your weakest defense by far so you might as well shore it up some), Toughness 75 (for the almighty Damage Mitigation). I dumped all remaining points into Toughness and Swords (more Mitigation, more Double Hits). Of course you can always swap Swords for Poles, Dual Wield, whatever. Can always drop Shields, but with my setup I was always using one anyway so I added it. That leaves 1-2 skills of your choice. If you're actually using combat arts or Warding, Concentration will help (or be necessary)... I used Bargaining myself, a lot of the gear I wore for a long time came from shophopping for jewelry and swords. Eeeeveeenntualllyyyy after a lot of farming ghosts for jewelry (they only seem to drop jewelry and gemmae, making finding extra Clepidide's and such easier) and the like trying to make myself immortal just to see if it could be done (and you can definitely come close with just a few pieces of gear) I did a little testing with aggroing triple-size screens of enemies (which is dozens and dozens of them) and just standing there, and looking at some numbers and such. I had 90% damage mitigation, over 90% reflect close, over 60% reflect projectile, 40% someodd reflect spells, and 52k HP (could have gotten more life and more regen by dumping into Constitution, but I wanted Swords instead for the damage). I had enough defense and extra evasion and block and such that even if things didn't reflect, they didn't hit me anyway. It was basically only spells that even made numbers show up. This is about the point I got really, really bored with my Seraphim. Pros, Cons, Quality of Life, random musings... 1) Character is very strong, even with simple autoattacks, and very durable with halfway decent gear. This allows you to dick around in combat as much as you want and simply enjoy the quests without too much worry about watching colored bars or accidentally dying to something random. If something has a chance at all of killing you, you'll know before you even see it (because of the huge BOSS health bar that shows up when they approach). 2) If you want to play around with utility spells and combat arts, the character's strong enough that being very inefficient with your arts won't cause the character to fail. If you feel like using Warding for lore reasons or spamming Flaring Nova on big groups of enemies (with no skills to support it, making it a terrible choice), you still can. Being a little overpowered makes for flexibility, and flexibility helps cure boredom. Maybe you actually LIKE Pelting Strikes (where I found it totally useless) and you want to spam it... go ahead! 3) Recreating my old seraphim and the first thing that came to mind once I got geared again (took until level 104 to get everything to drop, and the Lycan ring was the last piece, bleh) was HOLY CRAP I HATE Chance to Fear Opponent Away. It's a stat that rolls randomly on most pieces of gear and comes on set items as well, particularly the Lycan ring of the leech set I use. It's counterproductive at best and infuriating at worst, so here's how you deal with that crap: Open up your Blueprints.txt with a fancier-than-Notepad text editor like Notepad++ (Notepad won't work, trying to use Notepad will only break your game) and find the line "bonusgroup1 = {883,1250,1,9,0}," under item blueprint ID 4027, item "set_ring_nail" (this is the Lycan ring). Change this bonus to "{871,500,1,9,0}". This will change the obnoxious-as-all-hell Fear property to a harmless little Survival bonus, and suddenly combat is roughly 12.92% less annoying as long as you avoid Fear on your other gear. 4) Gear gets kinda boring, and looting things can feel pointless. This wasn't nearly as much of an issue on my Glacial elf, whose gear varied quite a bit and constantly. I used the Armguards, Legguards, Shoulders from the Niokaste set, with their damages, skills, and attack speed bonuses (and 3-piece set bonus) they're good enough that no one or two pieces is worth replacing with rares. I used the entire Genesis Siderea set for the leech bonus, so none of those items change. I use the Tooth and Nail amulet and ring for more leech, leaving my only variable item as a *single* rare ring, usually with -Opponent Chance to Evade and Damage or Flat Physical Damage (shows up as a little yellow bar and amount, like 32-32). Basically, besides shopping for a new ring once in a while, my gear never changes once I fill a slot, and all I ever do is upgrade a level 90 item to a level 105 item, 105 to 120, etc, ad infinitum. This makes 99.99% of all items that drop totally useless, including tons of copies of the same gear I'm already wearing, at exactly the same level. If you're a loothound and play the game for that, you'll have to find a way to mix things up a bit. 5) Just as a point of interest because I learned it recently... I usually use a 1h and shield or a 2h with Leech % (and preferably Deathblow as a second stat, if I can get it), because 1h swords can't roll Leech %... but there *is* a single 1h sword with Leech %. It didn't show up on the wiki page for "sources of Leech %", so I missed its existence entirely. The problem is that it's only in the Community Patch and it's legendary, so good luck getting it to drop. I've not seen it yet, my elusive Sereish Steel of Thunder, my precious. I must have my precious... Anyway, figured I'd share and maybe some people could learn a few things from my mistakes and my journeys through the Wiki

Wow this guy I forgot how hard he can be. I restarted in D2 Fallen. So far I did not manage to create one character (of 3 so far) that was able to not be killed by him. I even prepared and farmed for set items and went only at level 25 to 30. Maybe I should focus more on damage than defense and don't give him a chance to hit me at all. Edit: Indeed a damage focused skill (socketed runes or blacksmith arts) + a mount to kite him helps alot.

Thanks guys,

Then it's pretty awesome, well apart from not being able to randomise a tier 15 item. Still I think it's a very interesting approach to rewards, and it would surely help rebalance the character's set drop rates. Like Hooyaah said and I agreed there's just a too big of a pool right now and a lot of mini-sets keep dropping instead of the more specific character sets. So removing them from drop.txt and assigning them to quest.txt would probably improve this. And it would in turn give players an added motivation for questing instead of just grinding, as well as making way for added character planning. Want to play with a specific item that never drops, base a build or a build's approach to it? Now you can, with a bit of work. What do you think, is it a worthy development? If you do I'd say that the higher the tier the farther down the Wastelands the quest should be, as to power balance things. Having a Kira's Wall at early stages of the main quest feels like a no no, but getting to it when nearing the endgame feels much more interesting. I guess that this could be a way around one of the game's biggest issues, the fact that you can spend years playing it and never have items from certain tiers drop. Randomising quest rewards would be incredible for legendary rewards, but alas if it's not possible then there's no point in keep thinking about it.

It is absolutely possible. Think of quest.txt and drop.txt as two different sources of getting drops. They both draw separately from entries in blueprint.txt. So it's entirely possible to remove the blueprints from drop.txt and add them as quest rewards in quest.txt. You could get a piece of a mini-set for each step along the way on a long chain quest, or get all pieces all at once at the end. The only thing you can't do wtih quest rewards is make them draw from a pool of possible rewards (and this kills me). So for example, I couldn't make a quest give a random set item as a reward (like maybe you'll get Kira's Wall, maybe you'll get Nitao's Black Death, etc.). The rewards have to be specific.

Blast! That reminds me of a recent Easter. I awoke and went to the kitchen and rubbing my sleepy eyes I poured myself a glass of orange juice. I snaked my way back to the refrigerator through the small crowd preparing Easter eggs for the hunt later and went to put the carafe back in its place. I returned and grabbed my my juice and drank it down. Well, I thought that I had until I heard giggles and noticed that the "juice" wasn't sweet. The nieces said, "uncle Steve, you just drank the orange Easter egg dye!" Well, it was an honest mistake and I immediately called my doctor friend on the phone and he told me, "don't worry, you will be okay, you just dyed a little inside." Welcome, once again the the team, Theuns! Cheers! (Excuse me, this is my tequila sunrise, right?)

I just downloaded the visual guide too...this is awesome!! gogo

You and I are on the same page insofar as how important the small details in the game are in enhancing the experience and serve to make the world of Ancaria simply come to life. I believe that you would thoroughly enjoy and for the same reasons, this thread: Funny/Interesting Sacred 2 Screenshots. Here, especially in the most recent pages, my High Elf does restaurant, tavern, and pub reviews. There are many small details that I consider Easter eggs that I posted and so much more. Others have contributed special gems as well and I'm sure that you will have noticed many of them but many may seem new when seen from the eyes of other explores of this vast, elaborately embellished, and life-filled realm. One can easily determine that those charged with the development of the game loved what they were doing and poured out their hearts, forging the domain to become a sort of an amalgam, a veritable manifestation of their own marvelous and distinctly unique personalities. I daresay that I would give a sincere hug to any of these wonderful, endearing people, were I to meet any of them in person. They have touched my heart in a manner that is difficult to fully fathom and therefore, I have, and always shall keep, a special place in my heart for them just as much as I do for the game itself.

Indeed that was what I was asking. I did read the EE changelog like you posted above and the EE Quest Rewards after killing Holos and getting a Bergonix' Judge (the look on my face then!). I did so because I wanted to understand what and where those fixed drops are, and then I realised that the Crimson Vengeance sword I was wearing was just a random drop (yay for legendaries!). I've downloaded the Visual Guide and it's immense, but I think I'll have some fun browsing it. Totally forgot about it, you're absolutely correct. I even used to use it in order to farm the Egg at the Guardian's chamber before I started playing with EE. Yeah, I think that since you've restricted that modifier to uniques and above the idea of fixed drops for such game-changing items would be interesting in terms of progression in the long run, as well as character plan up. I stopped playing MC HE because it needed a bargainer to feed it those weapons, since Kaldur's Legacy barely ever drops anyway. So it would make sense to have different types of weapons with %LL as fixed drops in long chain quests. Another thing that would be interesting would be to have mini-set items drop as quest rewards, since some are legendary-like in their willingness to (not) drop. Now bear with me for a minute because now this gets technical and I may ramble a bit. Is it possible to make these specific items that are fixed drops as quest rewards absent from random drops? I have no idea if by removing an item from the drop lists it will affect its possibility for a fixed drop. Or in other terms, I have no idea if fixed drops and random drops share the same "base drop list", but if they don't it would be an interesting idea to have fixed drops absent from random drop lists as for the only way to obtain them would be making that particular quest. You want more interest in questing? Yes please. But alas I'm not sure if it's possible. Never had a Kira's Wall drop anywhere else, be it vanilla, CM 1.50, CM 1.60, EE 2.1, nothing. Yes it's overpowered as hell but it just won't drop. If it would be fixed though... One thing Hooyaah and myself were discussing the other week was that with the amount of set items that CM introduces it becomes harder to complete sets. So if it would be possible to make mini-sets fixed drops and remove them from the random pool it would also increase the possibilities of completing the character-specific sets. But it all depends on the technical aspects of the drop lists, which again I have no idea how they work. The idea seems interesting though.

Hey! If you're playing D2F I added tons of new quest rewards. You can check the list and see what quests might give you the kind of items you're looking for: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Diablo_2_Fallen_Quest_Rewards

Hi. Try this thread,it should provide at least some help: