darrellp

I'm definitely in the jungle, but these things aren't humanoid at all. I didn't even notice them attacking me when I was staring right at them. For a long time I was wondering why my health was dropping and what that weird noise was. Eventually I noticed this weird little hard to see glow and realized that something was after me. Sadly, I've relied on my pelting strikes for "area attacks" to this point, and it usually takes out enough of a swath that I have no problem making it through mobs, but it won't touch these things. I've built up my Nova Flare a bit and I think it's had a slight effect on them, but the regen time is too long. If they don't heal, maybe I'll get up there and eliminate everything else and then hit them with the nova and run away until it's regenned and repeat. Also, might be a good time for some runes. This seems to always happen in these character building games with me - I build up my character without realizing that I'm building in some sort of deficiency which totally stops the game at some point down the line. Well, I'll give all sorts of stuff a shot and see if anything works. Thanks for the advice! Thanks! I'll see if any of this works. The things still look like fen fires to me - at least comparing them to what I see in the Wiki. I have no idea how to identify them other than comparing pictures. Is there any way to identify the monster you're dealing with? Sorry to be so dense, but it's not really been an issue until now. Thanks to you all. It wasn't as much of a train wreck as I had feared. Every time I had gone in I had seen at least two of these things at the start and I assumed that I'd be seeing lots more as I progressed, but this last time only one appeared. I used my divine gift and Flaring nova and just ran away until the nova regenerated and killed him. Hooray! There was only a couple more I encountered all the way through the jungle so now I'm on the Dryad Island and progressed another couple of levels so I'm back on track. Thanks again!

I'm definitely in the jungle, but these things aren't humanoid at all. I didn't even notice them attacking me when I was staring right at them. For a long time I was wondering why my health was dropping and what that weird noise was. Eventually I noticed this weird little hard to see glow and realized that something was after me. Sadly, I've relied on my pelting strikes for "area attacks" to this point, and it usually takes out enough of a swath that I have no problem making it through mobs, but it won't touch these things. I've built up my Nova Flare a bit and I think it's had a slight effect on them, but the regen time is too long. If they don't heal, maybe I'll get up there and eliminate everything else and then hit them with the nova and run away until it's regenned and repeat. Also, might be a good time for some runes. This seems to always happen in these character building games with me - I build up my character without realizing that I'm building in some sort of deficiency which totally stops the game at some point down the line. Well, I'll give all sorts of stuff a shot and see if anything works. Thanks for the advice! Thanks! I'll see if any of this works. The things still look like fen fires to me - at least comparing them to what I see in the Wiki. I have no idea how to identify them other than comparing pictures. Is there any way to identify the monster you're dealing with? Sorry to be so dense, but it's not really been an issue until now.

ha ha ha! Me to! I just assumed bats (and fen fires) were immune to ranged. Good to hear that they are not. Those fen fires sure do hit hard though. Cheaty Barstewards. Well, they don't seem to be "evading" my attacks since they seem to have nothing to evade - I'm just not attacking them in the first place. I never get the yellow "target" circle around them. I've had other monsters (bats with ranged weapons are a good examples) where I'd target them but not much of my attacks would land. They'd still have the yellow "target" circle on them though, showing that I was at least making an effort. Also, my companions would still attack the bats. This is a totally different matter. There is no target circle on the fen fires at all and my companions totally ignore them as they're pounding away at me.

My seraphim was doing great until I hit the archaeologist's camp. Just after there are fen fires which she refuses to even target. They pound on her without being pounded back and I either have to retreat or die eventually. I've read somewhere else about bugs when hitting fen fires. I'm not sure whether this is what's happening or what. My sidekicks don't try to attack the fen fires either. It's as though they don't exist, except they keep hitting me for damage. I'm stopped dead in my tracks at this point. I've tried different weapons with no success. Like I said, it's not that they're too strong - my seraphim never even targets them or makes any attempt to hit them. If this is a bug, it's a bad one. Like I said, unless somebody has some good advice, the game is essentially over for me at this point since I can't advance. Sigh.

I appreciate that and I am quickly coming to a similar conclusion. Don't get me wrong - I love the game and there is enough that is known to make it really interesting to make those choices. In particular, I have a pretty good idea of what the choices regarding the various combat arts and skills will do for me since the they are spelled out fairly well and I think you're absolutely correct - those are the most important decisions to make. Part of what makes the game fun for me is that I'm not making those important decisions in a vacuum. So yes, I can live without the battle details and I love the game anyway. For my tastes, it would be a bit more interesting if I had a little more information so I felt like I was doing something other than blindly guessing when choosing the attributes. In a lot of ways, since I don't know what the attributes do, it feels like they might as well be asking me to invest in attributes A, B, C or D without telling me what those letters stand for. Even if it doesn't make that much difference which of A, B, C or D I choose, I'd still rather have some idea of what differentiates them - otherwise, I might as well stop using my brain and flip a coin. For me, using my brain is a lot more fun than flipping coins . Anyway, I appreciate all the input and understand that other people out there may have different views/tastes than mine so here's to all of us enjoying the game in whatever way we can! Darrell

...Building from observed behavior, on the other hand, is its own kind of goodness. It creates models that work, can be enjoyed and most importantly can be shared with others. ...I can understand how wanting theory is something that is desired. It shortcuts the hard process of real experimenting and trying to understand what is happening in the game.. and is something that comes about at much expense and time, especially if a player is an HC player. Having formulas is something that many visiting players have, over the years here at Darkmatters, looked for, yearned for, perhaps even gotten frustrated over because, ultimately, as posted by this game's devs... sharing this game's "secrets" is not what they are trying to share with us or have us enjoy. I appreciate your view. Mine is somewhat different. Both views can be shared - the "observation" model isn't special in that way and certainly the theory view works as well or better than the observation model. In fact, the observation model is only a means to try to discover the theory in the first place and only "works" to the extent that it does that properly. Nor do I really see having the theory as a "shortcut" - it just moves you beyond the tedium of wild guessing to the exciting, meaty part part of the game that is informed decision making. There's just as much work involved - it's just profitable work that you know will advance your character rather than what, to me, is tedious work wandering around in the dark wondering what effects to attribute to what causes. Anyway, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree which is best and that's alright. There's room in the world for both views.

Thanks. That was actually the page I was looking at which prompted the question. I do think it's helpful in some ways, but like I said, knowing that strength gets added to attack strength doesn't really tell me too much if I don't know then how attack strength is being used which, in turn, makes it really difficult to assess how much good putting attribute points into strength does me. I really love these sorts of games, but I do think that character building is kind of a hit and miss affair and given the amount of time/effort you have to invest before you really have much of an idea of whether you've "hit" or "missed", it would be nice if you could make some sort of informed decision ahead of time rather than guiessing and then seeing whether you guessed right or wrong during the many hours of play. Not only do you have to guess, in the end it's difficult to impossible to tell what variables were guessed correctly and which weren't unless you spend 30 hours with a Seraphim who invests heavily in Strength and another 30 in one exactly alike who invests in Dexterity. Multiply that by each attribute and you're asking an awful lot to really understand what's good vs. what's bad. What's worse, if you guess wrong, there's no way to recitify the situation later. This is kind of a general gripe with character building games. Most of them have this problem, or at least what I see as a problem. Some of them do let you readjust such things during the course of the game (for a price) but even then, it's very difficult to figure out the best thing to adjust. I'm really not complaining too much - I do love the game and I guess I'll have to go on the collected wisdom of other players regarding how to build characters which seems pretty vast, though I don't really know how well informed. I only mention how well informed because as I mentioned above, to be really well informed seems to me to require either knowing the algorithms in detail or spending thousands and thousands of hours carefully calibrating nearly identical characters one against the other. Nonetheless, I'm not in any way knocking work people have done like the page you reference. Thanks very much for those effort! I know people have put a lot of effort into them and I really do appreciate them! Thanks for the input! I'm sure you're right and there really is no good way of knowing to the level of detail I'd like. Darrell

Is there a decent explanation of the mechanics of the battle algorithm? For instance, I know that strength increases your attack strength by a direct add, but without knowing how attack strength is used during battle, this really doesn't tell me much. I'm sure it's an advantage to have a higher attack strength, but how much and in what way? Does Sacred compare battle strengths between opponents to determine hits? Does it use some other method to determine hits and then attack strength is used to determine damage? Without this sort of information, it's really impossible to know whether you want to put your attribute points into strength or somewhere else. Thanks for any help anybody might have.