Llama8

Poker, Partnership Whist?

You could cap LL so that Area of Effect attacks/spells don't leech off everything, or return it to being a % of damage done (which would also remove it as the best way of dealing with bosses, which would be a good thing IMO).

Which is expensive...

That's what passing a note to your neighbour in the meeting is for mate...

That's ISP mate.

They've not mentioned S3 specifically, but I'm not aware of anything that Keen is working on that could be concidered "Germany's most successful/popular IP" (especially since most of the other positions that article mentions are for S3). He's also part of their management team (ie, board) so from that respect he wouldn't be that close to development (certainly in a large company), but if he's leading on specific IP he would be fairly involved in setting the "tone" & style of the game (presumably S3).

Release dates always get pushed back.

Did you have any of the item mod that reduces the opponent's shield absorption (can't remember what it's called, it's either a reduction to the % absorption warding energy (ie, split between HP & shield energy, the Guardians have 100%, so everything goes to their shield) or the damage reduction of the shield)? Or some life leech (since life leech doesn't require you to do damage to leech, just hit the target)?

No, just the ratpocalypse...

Any in-game text is stored in the global.res file which is compressed/encrypted so you can't just go in with a text editor & change stuff. As far as inventory gfx goes, in the Skin.zip file there's an inventory folder (Skin.zip\datazicons\inventory), though I think those are the backgrounds for the inventory slots. So no, I'm not sure where the item inventory gfx are stored.

I'm sure we will, but which year? I also wouldn't expect much info to be released on Facebook that's not released elsewhere at a similar time. But it is at least one way of getting in touch with them...

There are some lines in the balance.txt that you could tweak to provide the added XP & monster stats (HP, armour, attack & defence I think, not sure about damage) that additional players in MP bring. You could check the Balance.txt thread in the modding forum, I think that lists the lines.

No, that's the ending vid from S1. I think S3 is (still) at a fairly early stage, hence no info.

Personally I would have preferred to be able to have more slots for CAs than weapons if I wanted to, or more for weapons & fewer for buffs, etc. I like the flexibility that the console version offers in that respect, but it wouldn't have been as "neat" on the PC UI (with the weapon/CA slots either side of the compass).

That's a lovely view point, I assume that you've never been made redundant & had to go through the process of finding a new job? It's not fun & I hope that you don't go through it when you do eventually get a job.

Probably not, since it would involve mapping keys as well & there isn't an option in the options/controls for more than 5 CA keys (though you might be able to fudge that in the options file). There are some xml files that control the UI that you might want to poke about with. The expansion allows 5 CAs to be hotkeyed.

Uploaded v0.2 with some DM changes: Dragon Magic aspect. Dragon Form has different mods, the first mod of each tier now shifts the Dragon Mage into increasingly more powerful dragons mod 1a - Draconic channelling - Intent concentration allows the Dragon Mage to transform into a more powerful dragon mod 1b - Wyrm's Fury - Tear your enemy limb from limb with the true power of a dragon (0% + 4% per level damage bonus) mod 2a - Draconic channelling - Intent concentration allows the Dragon Mage to transform into a more powerful dragon mod 2b - Basilisk's Talon - Pierce even the toughest armour (5% + 0.5% chance to ignore armour) mod 3a - Draconic channelling - Intent concentration allows the Dragon Mage to transform into a more powerful dragon mod 3b - Dragon Soul'd - The Dragon Mage aligns his thought processes to the great drakes and is able to change his form more frequently (33% + 0.2% per level cooldown reduction) Dragon Berserk is now Dragon's Wrath. Dragon's Wrath allows you to focus the wrath of a dragon into your melee & ranged attacks, enhancing your damage and chance to hit. mod 1a - Basilisk's Talon - Pierce even the toughest armour ( mod 1b - White Dragon's Favour - Gaining the favour ofa White Dragon allows the Dragon mage to channel the fury of the North ( mod 2a - Vulnerability - Dragons often do more damage then their foes expect ( mod 2b - Vampire - A dragon's attack can drain the very life force from a foe ( mod 3a - Dragon's Fury - A dragon's fury is great indeed, so much so that they often smite opponents nearby their target ( mod 3b - Dragon Sight - A dragon's sight is keen & enemies cannot evade their wrath ( Eternal Flame has had fire damage added (7 + 7 per level) in addition to the normal damage over time Elemental Magic aspect. Whirlwind now does physical + ice damage (30 + 15 per level per element), previously it did pure physical (50 + 25 per level) mod 3a - Disorientate - The constant buffetting distracts opponents & makes it harder for them to hit the Dragon Mage (50 + 2 per level) Magic Barrier is now Armageddon. Armageddon rains down fiery death from the sky. This spell drops 255 meteors (the cap) over 17 seconds with a radius of ~5.7m, it is strongly advised to disable screen shake in the customoptions.txt file before using the spell. There is also a display bug where the damage on the tooltip is roughly 1/10 of the actual damage done per rock. mod 1a - Hellfire - Burn your enemies with the fires of creation (16.9 + 5.6 per level fire damage) mod 1b - Devastation - The fires of creation sometimes find a chink in your opponents armour & deal additional damage (9.9% + 0.1% per level chance to critical hit) mod 2a - Arcane Fire - Tear your opponents apart with eldritch energies (16.9 + 5.6 per level magic damage) mod 2b - Tempest - Increase the torrent of Death From Above (+10.5 hits per second, +70%, reduces the duration from 17 seconds to 10 seconds) mod 3a - Nickel-Iron Core - Crush your foes with really big rocks (16.9 + 5.6 per level physical damage) mod 3b - Explosive - Sometimes the rocks explode on impact (+50% chance for splash damage) Destroyer has the damage type changed to fire & a chance for knockback (50% + 1% per level) Protector has had it's AI changed such that it will now cast the CAs that Ascaron gave it, as well as a brand new root CA (dm_protector_root in spell.txt if you wish to look it up). The new root CA has the following tokens/stats: Duration of 10 seconds + 0.5 seconds per level Range of 50 (0.285m, this is the same as an unmodded Tangling Vines, so it will sometimes "miss" moving targets) 0.8 + 0.02 per level hits per second 30 + 15 per level physical damage 20% + 0.3% per level chance to stun Mentalism aspect: Combat Trance is now Psychic Hammer. Psychic Hammer damages and stuns enemies in a small area for a short duration. mod 1a - Reverberation - The blow from Psychic Hammer is so intense that it echos on for several seconds (1 hit per sec) mod 1b - Psychic Force - Intent concentration increases the force of the psychic blow (25 + 12.5 per level physical damage) mod 2a - Hammer Blow - Wounded opponents often don't survive even a single Psychic Hammer (25% + 0.5% per level Deathblow) mod 2b - Concussion - The blow can be so intense that it knocksback opponents (33% chance to knockback) mod 3a - Confuse - Those affected by Spychic Hammer can often find it hard to concentrate during battle (16.7 + 0.4 opponent CA regen) mod 3b - Debilitate - If Psychic Hammer hits the right areas of the brain an opponent can be left feeling nauseous and weak (10% + 0.2% per level opponent stat debuff)

Yes Gogo, it affects all classes. IIRC, in vanilla Sacred 2 it only affected weapon-based CAs (I think), but this was "fixed" in Ice and Blood & it now affects all elemental damage (as it should), regardless of how the player does the damage.

It can be done, yes, the only problems with making too radical changes to aspects are that the tooltips are largely hardcoded in terms of what information they display. For example, I changed Untouchable Force into a summon buff, but it's not possible to change the CA tooltip to display the minion level (since the Untouchable Force CA tooltip is hardcoded to display damage, chance to stun, etc).

I've already added some base fire damage to it (as it stands, it does a % damage that's not any specific/resistable element), what makes Eternal Fire special is that it can spread to other opponents & IIRC, the fire damage (et_spelldamage_fire) spreads with it. #1b & 3a wouldn't be possible as that's not how the CA works (as defined by whatever code they're using for the spellcontroll entry, interestingly, they've used the same one as for Viperish Disease). 2b should work I think & it should be applied on each damage pulse. 2a should only work if you've added some "proper" elemental damage (like I did & you've requested) & 1a & 3b are existing mods for that type of CA. As Stormwing says, it's best if these changes are kept separate from the CM patch, that way people can still play that with the original CAs that Ascaron made, or they can play with the ones I've modified if they want to.

Looks good.

You could get Damage Lore by taking Tactics Lore first, which would also make your Deathly Spears & T-energy Shroud more effective. The only downside I can think of is that you're not taking Concentration so you're limited to one buff (T-energy Shroud is probably best). Primal Mutation is fairly effective against bosses too, since it does fairly high damage & if you pick the fire mod you can take advantage of resist reduction from Fiery Ember. It's not quite as effective as DS though (since you can get DS to hit with most of it's spears if you get as close to the boss as possible). Edit: Apparently I can't count, Toughness would be good as it would increase your resists (& give you some damage mitigation). Also, Jolting Touch modded for damage mitigation is good for bosses.

And another one: The skilled Mentalist can focus his will into a single stunning psychic hammer blow.

I think they ran out of time/money while they were doing the expansion, hance the lack of Mutation set, and they'd removed the Xmas isle/quest prior to the release of the expansion... If Ascaron hadn't done bankrupt, I'm sure we would have seen more sets released. In any event, you've done a massive job Wolfie, you've uploaded an insane amount of gear!