belgarathmth

It's really too bad the latest versions of the community patch locked the Power of Nif lightsaber behind the Epic Office Quest (completed, not just started so you can go to Frank). That makes all lightsaber builds a lot less appealing. There's no way I'm ever going to do that Epic Office Quest to completion - too tedious. I'm not a fan of what they've done to Christmas Island, either, with the bosses there. Only a fully optimized and twinked character is going to be able to complete that now, even on silver level.

Hello, I just started replaying the great Sacred 2 during the holiday break. This question is for Community Patch 1.60. My Shadow Warrior's "Chance to Evade" from items is showing up in a different place from "Chance to Evade" from his Grim Resilience Reflex mod. That is, "Chance to Evade" shows up twice, once in purple for items worn with the affix, and a second time down at the bottom in white from the buff. The question is, do these two sources of "Chance to Evade" stack, or is one overriding the other? Is the game adding both of those numbers, or is it taking the higher of the two, or what? If one is overriding the other, then taking the mod on the buff is a waste, or possibly even a penalty. Thank you.

I watched a guy streaming this mod yesterday. He was playing a seraphim on silver level, and had developed her Rotating Blades of Light. He also had developed the spell that replaced Lightning Bolt. Rotating Blades of Light was doing well over 1,500 damage per tick. The Lightning Bolt was doing about 1,500 damage spread among *all four* damage types. But he never got to test the Lightning Bolt much, because all enemies were instantly dying to the Rotating Blades of Light. This was not good, and he was kind of in disbelief about how bad it was. It was very boring to just run around all over the game with enemies instantly dying, and insane amounts of high grade loot dropping. So, he went to several dragons. (Restarted new games importing his seraphim, traveled straight to each dragon.) Despite his Rotating Blades of Light and Lightning Bolts trivializing *every other enemy*, which enabled him to travel freely and unmolested straight to these dragons, the dragons were impossible. Their resistances were inflated so high, he could barely scratch them, while their damage was inflated so high, they could one-shot kill him with a single claw swipe. He tried the two blue dragons in the ice elf area, and the green dragon in the southeastern swamps. All were impossible. That means it would be impossible to ever finish silver level and move to gold, because the red dragon guarding the Element of Fire is a required fight. (I know the white dragon guarding the Element of Air can be skipped, as can the undead dragon in the desert by refusing to help the orcs.) I would be very interested in hearing other impressions of the balance of this mod. Has anyone beaten a dragon, and how did you do it? Has anyone moved on to higher than silver difficulty? Are other people or classes besides seraphim having the issue of becoming overpowered against every regular enemy in the game (they drop instantly)? I would not want to play a seraphim having the experience this guy was having, not if 99 percent of the game was boringly easy, and the dragon fights were unwinnable.

But don't the later versions of the CEP remove the level caps? I was thinking it does. If there's a level cap in Tyr Lysia in silver, it's way higher than 40-something. My character is level 46 and is fighting level 51 creatures in Tyr Lysia and Artamark.

@Flix , What is the silver level cap? I wasn't aware there was one. That does apply to CEP 1.60, right?

Hello, I think I made a topic about this long, long ago, but it's ancient history and forgotten. So, I'm now level 42 with my Shadow Warrior on silver level, no deaths, and I'm still adventuring in the high elf area and having a great time. I followed the main quest all the way up to the desert where you find Khorum, and I started consuming way too many health potions, so I went back to the first area to get stronger. A word about my play style - I am in no hurry to do anything in the game, and I couldn't care less about bragging rights of any kind. I like to gradually uncover the entire map. I've gotten the lesser cartographer achievement before, but never the greater cartographer achievement, which is a long term goal of mine. I am also an avid collector. I care more about collecting complete sets of things than just about anything else, and collecting light sabers. I figure that my obsession with uncovering map synergizes well with my collection obsession, since uncovering map gives a bonus to magic find. I'm also a "lazy" player. I don't seek nail-biting challenge. I seek quite the opposite, actually. I like to find a meditative, very relaxed state of mind while playing, where there is just enough challenge to keep me concentrating, but not so much as to trigger adrenaline release. At first, I was going to rush the main quest with this character in order to get to gold level and beyond, because that seems like what almost everybody in this community does. But then, I started becoming a health potion addict against the death fog monster in the swamp, and against even the trash mobs in the desert, which is my cue that I'm not having fun. I should also say that, although I'm not hard core, I *hate* dying with a passion. More than two or three deaths will make me give up on my character. And I came far too close on several occasions in the swamp and the desert at silver level 38ish. TLDR: What are the benefits exactly of rushing through the game levels to niobium? Are there sets that won't drop until that level? (On CP 1.60 I'm already getting set pieces I've never seen before, much less collected the whole sets, and there are no zone level caps.) I think monsters on progressively higher levels get base stat bonus increases. Is that all there is to it? Do some of you only enjoy the game if you're constantly in danger? Is it about adrenaline rush to you? Is it about bragging rights - "I beat the game on Niobium with my build and made level 200 with no sweat, so you should admire me and listen to me," and that sort of thing?

This change makes me really sad. I always used to follow the Epic Office Quest *only* to the point of going to Frank in the orc territory and getting the Power of Nif lightsaber. I have no interest in finding 89 employees scattered all over the world to get my Power of Nif, even with the blue markers. That would be pure tedium for me, and absolutely no fun. Now I'll have to make do with only the lightsabers I can get from Y'oldah, Benny's Corn Circles, and the Twitty Tister, which aren't as good as the Power of Nif, unless I get the extremely rare lucky drops or build a Bargainer. I used to have a full collection of Power of Nif lighsabers, but that computer, those files, and therefore that collection are long gone. Bargaining has to be maxed to collect lightsabers from traders, and can still be very tedious, constantly going around portals trying to find one - they're very rare even with maxed Bargaining. Does anyone know how any changes to Bargaining in CEP 1.60 affect the possibility of finding lightsabers for sale at the traders? How do the loot drop tables work? Will maxed Enhanced Perception increase the chances any of finding a lightsaber?

@gogoblender , @Flix , and whoever else is involved, I just wanted to say, thank you very much for this new forum design and reboot, and for your prompt and friendly moderation. The color scheme and design look very nice, and I've always appreciated how friendly and cheerful you guys are, even when people are complaining or having problems. If I recall correctly, the old site had some problems with attacks on security, and I see the efforts being made to keep this new site safe. So thank you all very much for your hard work and time, and for your continued efforts through all these years to keep a great old game like Sacred 2 alive and well.

I'm also what you'd call a "lazy" player. I like to have pretty much one combo to spam over and over to handle the whole game. My go-to build is a Shadow Warrior with Malevolent Champion Focus. My combo is fully modded Belligerent Vault followed by fully modded Frenzied Rampage. Every once in a while I drop one of those banners that increases attack and defense - I can't remember what it's called right now. I keep Grim Determination and Reflective Emanation up at all times. My usually chosen skills are Malevolent Champion Focus, Concentration, Tactics Lore, Armor Lore, Evasion (can't remember the real name), Constitution, one Weapon Focus depending on what I want to use, and the rest are optional. I like to pump Stamina as my main stat because it gives percentage improvements to recharge times instead of merely adding fixed small amounts like Strength and Vitality, plus the Shadow Warrior gets a lot of points in Strength and Vitality just for leveling. I tried the infamous invisible Shadow Warrior Astral Lord build once, and I didn't find it fun, at all. It felt like I was just standing there watching my skeletons and Skeletal Fortification play the game for me. I thought it was really boring, and never did that again.

Shopping will never lead to uniques or set items. The best you can hope for is +all skills jewelry, +experience jewelry, other good jewelry, and a large assortment of gold-label items with good affixes. @Llama created a table showing the various merchant tiers that can be unlocked. The highest tier (tier 12) allows you to purchase light sabers at merchants, but only has a chance to unlock with hard points in bargaining equal to character level up to mastery (soft points from relics and +all skills won't do it). @Llama's basic information has been placed into the wiki, about halfway down the page, here: EDIT: I was going to link it for you, but the site is refusing to do the link, either with a copy/paste or with the Sacred 2 tag button.

Hi, @Flix, thanks, man, I tried that. I guess I won't know if it worked until or unless I see one of the new dragon mage items drop. I followed the instructions the best I could - I installed the General Mod Enabler, then extracted the Items Mod into the new Mods folder. I then used the General Mod Enabler to activate it. The only thing I don't understand is that the instructions say to start the game through the GME. But, there are no controls that I can see in the GME to do that. I have the Steam version of the game, if that makes any difference, so the GME and the Items Mod were installed into Steam/SteamApps/common/Sacred2Gold . The other thing I'm not sure about is that I also tried to install and activate the hotfix file. Is that a mistake? Will the two things together on a CM 1.4hf install without CM 1.5 cause problems? It would be easy enough to deactivate the hotfix if I shouldn't have it, but I would hate to corrupt my save file or something awful like that. But regardless, whether it works or not, thank you for taking your time to help me. EDIT: I have to stop playing for tonight, but I think it worked! I've got your new graphic on my startup screen, the one with the dragon, and the "Item Mod" graphic at the top of it, and the graphic "CM Patch 1.4" at the bottom. Wow, thanks again! I'm so glad that you and Gogoblender and others are watching these forums and working to keep our community alive!

Hi, is there any chance of a fix upcoming to make CM 1.50 install over CM 1.40hf? I get the message when I try to install it that "You already have the latest version installed." So far, the only advice I've seen is that you have to uninstall Sacred 2 and do a clean reinstall, then install CM 1.50. I want it, but I don't want it that bad. I'm hoping somebody might be able eventually to make it install correctly over an existing 1.40hf install. Thanks.

@DaveO, the original build was a failure. The one I just beat Octo with is new. It is: 1) Bargaining 2) Mentalism Lore (for Runes of Protection and Maelstrom/Mind Blast debuffs) 4) Concentration 6) Elemental Lore 6) Constitution 7) Elemental Focus 8) Armor Lore 9) Combat Reflexes 10) Shield Lore Masteries in progress are Constitution, Elemental Lore, and Concentration, others to be decided. I know the Concentration may be a sub-optimal choice, but I am wanting to try three buffs to see how it works out. The bargaining has been really good for finding good jewelry at merchants. It's mostly got soft points in it from relics and +all skills bonuses, and I'm still finding a lot of good +all skills jewelry. I'd probably find even better if I can get around to investing more hard points in it, but it isn't a priority yet. The toon is mostly shopping for himself - he isn't intended to support any other toons. So far on platinum level, this character is so well-defended that most enemies can barely scratch him, if they can touch him at all. Survival bonus has enemies spawning at about 15 levels over mine - I'm seeing a lot of reds and a few purples mixed in with some deep yellows and oranges. He's having more of a challenge getting his damage up higher than with defense. I attribute the good defense to maxed out constitution and a good shield with 50% to block close combat, as well as 50% chance to evade from Combat Reflexes. The damage is getting better as I get Elemental Lore and Focus up enough to finally start reading a few runes. (Not too many, though!) We'll see how he does in niobium level. You said something about dragon mage armor with %life leech. That doesn't make any sense to me. How can you have that affix on an armor? Which armor did you mean specifically? I always thought that %life leech only appeared on shurikens, two-handed hammers, two-handed swords, and pole arms. EDIT: I think I found what you meant. Were you referring to Flix's new dragon mage sets mod? There's a two piece jewelry set listed there that gives the %life leech affix as a bonus for wearing both of them. I'm not sure how he has that implemented - does it give the bonus to any equipped weapon? If so, that's an interesting novelty that would really help a dragon mage to have. I'll see if I can install the items mod. CM patch 1.5 won't install for me in its present state without my completely reinstalling my game, so I'm not willing to do that to get the items, but I may be able to install the Items Mod as a standalone. EDIT #2: No luck. The Items Mod is now only available through CM patch 1.5. I don't want it bad enough to go through a complete reinstall of my game. Maybe they'll fix it later so it will install over 1.4hf. Right now, it just thinks it's already installed if you try to do that, and the only workaround I've seen suggested is a complete reinstall of the game.

Okay, so I just beat platinum Octogolamus as a level 69 dragon mage against its level 82. Yay, it was very satisfying! My current elementalist dragon mage build is doing quite well. Notice that at level 69, I don't even have any masteries yet. One of the keys to defeating Octo with this build was to have a %life leech shuriken, combined with sockets filled with attack bonuses, critical hit bonuses, and attack speed bonuses. Although, Octo had some kind of slow enemies combat art, so the shuriken alone could not prevail against its insane CP health regeneration. But, I had also built Elemental Lore, Elemental Focus, Concentration, and Ancient Magic, and had avoided reading runes except up to the point where I could cast my combo Destoyers and Gust of Wind as close as possible to the "sweet spot" of a spammable or near-spammable 2.5 seconds. I also have a very strong Tornado, and a very strong Maelstrom and Mind Blast combo, but my attempts to keep both a Tornado active and to keep Octo debuffed with the Mentalism combo wound up getting in the way of spamming my Elemental combo, for a net loss of damage that had no hope of getting past Octo's CP health regeneration. The key to my eventual victory was to cast my Elemental combo, then throw however many %life leech shurikens I could during the one second or so periodic cooldown. Anything else I"ve ever tried against platinum Octo with a dragon mage has wound up being a stalemate. Btw, I had my defense so well-built that Octo couldn't scratch me. So, this wasn't win or lose, it was win or stalemate. I've had so much success with my new dragon mage build, I am thinking of playing him until beating niobium, and then perhaps posting some kind of build guide, although not many people would ever see it, since most people have left Sacred 2 behind. (Not I, I'll likely still be playing a few times a year for life.) Thank you if you've read this post.

@Flix, thank you, that was very helpful information. I didn't realize before that the Destroyers were often wasting explosions by ganging up on one weaker target in a mob and doing total damage to it far in excess of its hit points, while often the champions I wanted them to hit were taking no damage. I had noticed while I was playing with using the Destroyers without Gust of Wind, that sometimes they did not seem to be doing as much damage in mobs as they should. Now I know why. So, I'm back to using Destroyers and Gust of Wind in a combo, and I've also found that it helps with targeting and damage output if I move a little bit between casts.

@CapnTucker, ah, so he says it every time he kills that many enemies. So it's probably a coincidence that it's so close to being a Voyager reference. If they'd inverted those numbers without intending the reference, it would have been a great case of synchronicity, no?

LOL - uh, yeah, so this idea worked pretty well until I started to get into the swamp and desert on gold. The Destroyers couldn't do enough damage on their own, even when I was optimizing their targeting. It turns out that my elementalist dragon mage *needs* the extra damage from the Gusts of Wind. I am also finding that the knockback kind of helps to offset his general squshiness, and reduce his health potion consumption, and he was starting to drink a lot of them without using his Gusts. I've always thought that a very good indicator of how well your toon build is doing is its rate of health potion consumption. If you almost never need them, to the point where they are collecting by the hundreds in your inventory, you are doing great. If you start to deplete them about as fast as you're collecting them, then you have a yellow light on your build or equipment choice, and you should try to change course. If you are constantly clicking the drink health potion button, and, Maker forbid, actually needing to buy them from vendors, then that is a definite red light that should tell you to do something different, *immediately*. Anyway, I don't think it was a horrible idea, but upon testing and experimentation, I have to reject my original hypothesis. Awww. Sorry, I get excited about new ideas I want to try, and I want to share them with friends who play the same game. Sometimes I guess I'm a little premature in submitting my hypotheses for peer review. I have a feeling that if our forum traffic weren't so slow nowadays, there would have already been several master players in my thread here pointing out all the flaws in my hypothesis. Oh, well. Thanks for reading if you did.

@Gogoblender, thanks for the nice reply. About the equipment, what I was saying is that the synergy-based experience bonus, I.e. the number listed when I look at the set list, from wearing the complete Merry Christmas set is increasing with my character levels. I was asking whether this was normal behavior for a complete set. When I put it on after I got it on Christmas Island, the bonus was listed at 9.6%. Now it's showing up as 10.4% or thereabouts after only a couple of character level-ups. I have not changed out any pieces of it since I put it on, so the levels of the set pieces have not changed. I always thought that set synergy bonuses were based on equipment level, but it seems now to be based on character level. Or it could be a combination of equipment level and character level. Maybe it's a CP thing. I'm playing on 1.4hf. Since you can get a complete Merry Christmas set at will every time you play a game level, I'll take another look at it and test it when I get my gold level set. I'll keep watching it to see if it keeps going up. It always amazes me that the mathematics and formulae operating behind the scenes in Sacred 2 are so complicated. I don't think I'll ever figure it all out with any degree of expertise if I live to be 100.

Hmm, I haven't been to platinum Octgolamus yet with my new dragon mage build, but I just pwn'd it on gold, and I think I see several mistakes with this original build that I did. One is that I had built my CA's by reading runes, and hoped to use +regen per hit to compensate it. That was a huge, huge mistake, arguably for every class, but *especially* for a caster. Another is that physical damage is the supreme weakness of most bosses in the game. Every class should be trying to maximize physical damage output at all times and at almost all costs. One notable exception to this rule is The Ghost of Chistmas Future, against whom you must do fire damage or lose all hope. For those few bosses in the game who make physical damage ineffective, it *really* helps to have a %life leech item of some kind in your quick slots, even if your toon has no proficiency with it. That particular affix is so witheringly effective against bosses, it doesn't really matter if your toon has a lousy hit rate with it. Among the shurikens, two-handed swords, fist weapons, and halberds that qualify for this boss-beating affix, I think all of the classes can use at least one of them. The only thing non-melee or non-qualifying-weapons builds might need to do is temporarily to equip or socket some +attack of some kind to increase their hit rate. I'll probably keep playing my current less badly build dragon mage up to platinum level Octogolamus, and we'll see if I wind up coming back here to eat these words.

Hi, Sacred 2 never ceases to amaze me in how I keep learning new tricks in it, even after years of playing. So, I started realizing with my current caster elementalist dragon mage, that his two best spells, Destroyers and Gust of Wind, were interfering with and diminishing each other as a combo. The way Destroyers work, as a centralized Area of Effect damage effect that starts at your center and spirals outward, you need enemies in a big cluster for maximum damage. If the Destroyers don't immediately explode upon summoning and their initial spiral of movement, they spread out in random directions and diminish the total damage output of the spell. I began to realize on my current run that my Gust of Wind, which I had in a combo with my Destroyers, was winding up *reducing* my damage output in trash mobs. That's because of the undesireable knockback effect of the Gusts. Upon a single casting of the combo, the Destroyers would explode the mooks in the mob, and injure the champion(s), but then, the Gust would blow the champions (and any surviving mooks) out of range of the next Destroyers cast, for a net loss of effectiveness. This "insight" only applies to my latest character build strategy, by the way, which is to leave Destroyers and Gust of Wind as close to level one as possible, while building Elemental Lore, Elemental Focus, Ancient Lore, and Concentration to mastery. The goal is to spam Destroyers as the heart of the build. You want mob enemies right up in your face to do that effectively, not blown back. Meanwhile, a combo that includes Destroyers and Gusts of Wind, combined with a Tornado thrown in occasionally and some Mind Blast/Maelstrom combos for debuffing, works well against bosses. Also, I have always dreamed of having a Concentration master caster dragon mage, for the having of all three dragon mage buffs. As a side issue, and question, I am not using the Protector spell currently, because Runes of Protection and Familiar are just too good to not use, even for an Elemental dragon mage. But, I plan to include the Protector buff as soon as I master Concentration. For its final mod, should I choose to have two of them, (which follows the Rule of Cool), or should I get the one Protector to buff my defense (which follows the Rule of Practicality for a squishy toon)? And finally, is anyone else here also a fan of Titan Quest? Because the dragon mage build I just realized and described is analogous to the famous Titan Quest spirit mastery Ternion Attack build, which also requires a "squishy" caster who can and wants to go toe-to-toe with enemies in order to maximize its effectiveness.

I often wear sub-optimal gear just to avoid the effect in the OP. Being maxed out to fight evil as a superhero is great and all, but I want to look fabulous while doing it. I recently did Christmas Island with both a shadow warrior and a dragon mage in honor of the season (kind of a yearly tradition of mine), and the Merry Christmas set for the shadow warrior did indeed suck eggs. I took it off immediately. However, I'm finding that the set for my dragon mage is actually useable for an early level (56 on gold) dragon mage, and it has arguably better bonuses than my other, still incomplete sets. The set bonus is +9.6% to experience, and the individual pieces give significant reduction to regeneration times, as well as a few other good bonuses for a caster dragon mage, and each piece has two slots, enabling lots of nice mix-and-match jewelry and blacksmith arts possibilities. EDIT: I've been playing a bit this afternoon still wearing the Merry Christmas set, and that xp bonus has gone up to +10.5% after only a couple of level-ups. It appears to scale with character level. That makes it even more useful, imo. Do all sets scale their synergy bonuses with character level? I always thought that it was the aggregate equipment level of the pieces that determined the bottom line synergy bonuses. The main temptation for me to take it back off, is that if I combine three pieces of any two of the three common dragon mage sets, I get a total +8 to all skills, and as soon as I have two pieces of Mavv's, I can use those for the last two armor slots to get another +3 to all skills. Right now, I'm enjoying wearing the Merry Christmas set, and I'm roflstomping the gold level game, so I don't need the more optimal +all skills bonuses, and the experience bonus from the Christmas set is helping me level faster. I'll probably change into something more power-gamey whenever I start to feel the game getting harder, but for now, I'm having a blast running around looking like Santa Claus. (Or Father Christmas, if you're on the other side of the pond.) I've named my white steed Draconicon mount "Rudolph". It feels even more appropos because I've seen lots of images of Saint Nicholas wearing red, carrying a staff, and riding a white horse. Ah, good times. I think I'll always play Sacred 2 for at least a few months a year, for life.