offshore33

It still seems like I'd see something in the halve regen time. With Acute Mind I have Cooldown 34.8 and Regen 6.8. You'd think that halving 6.8 would show SOMETHING. I guess there's a chance that in EVERY attack during that 6.8 second window the 14% chance NEVER came up. But it still seems odd. Also, with a Darting Assault with a specific Regen Time of 5ish seconds. And an ability that hits EVERYTHING on the screen. You'd think that if a CA could trigger the halve regen time or reduce regen time on hit, it would happen. But it definitely hasn't for me. So the regen on hit might be a decent choice against a boss where I'll be hitting Acute Mind and then spamming auto-attacks. But, for this build, it would seem that it's worthless elsewhere. And, for the most part, any halve to regen time is garbage for me in general. Edit: Halve definitely doesn't work on Combat Arts. But it looks like Regen on Hit DOES work. It only works for the currently selected CA. So I can regen DA with this if I have enough monsters on screen and some Regen on Hit Sockets/Rings.

I've never seen the chance to halve regeneration time work for my character. I have about +14% on a staff dryad and did a quickie test. I used Acute Mind and then just did normal attacks with AM on cooldown. The regen time never changed. I then equipped a couple rings with .3 regen per hit and I could actually see changes in the cooldown (although they were small and only occurred when I was using basic attacks.) Also, I greatly increased the time on Darting Assault and used the Staff trick so it hits everything on the screen. With that same +14% to halve regen as well as the .6 regen per hit, it NEVER affected the cooldown of DA. In my limited (AKA 2 minutes) of testing, on hit regen works only on normal weapon attacks, and chance to halve regen does nothing at all. I'm wondering if these are things everyone already knows who's been playing Sacred 2 for awhile, and I'm just being a noob.

I'm interested in this build as well. I'd like to know about eating runes. Which CAs do you leave at 1 and which do you pump? Anything need to be kept at focus limit or can you just go hog wild on some of the buffs? Thanks for the detailed guide, as well.

I'm still fairly new to Sacred 2, and am currently playing a 30ish level Dryad in multiplayer with a few friends. I have been (ab)using the combination of the Magic Staff skill and Darting Assault to kill everything on the screen. Looking at the build I have kind of come to realize I don't really know how effective, long-term, the various Aspect Lores/Focuses are (I.e. Capricious Hunter Focus, Cabalistic Voodoo Lore/Focus [not really important in my build, but still interested in general,] and Nature Weaver Lore/Focus.) In Hunter Focus, I don't seem to get much out it. I don't feed runes to any of the skills really, except Dust Devil which I haven't actually needed to use yet on this character. If I pump up the damage arts like DA, the regeneration time gets out of hand and doesn't really seem to scale well (I can spam 2 DAs now and do more damage than if I pumped it up to level 15 and could only do it once in the same time.) Sinister Predator bonuses don't seem to scale all that well compared to the hit in regens either. For Nature Lore I see a big difference in the effectiveness of my Ancient Bark and Goldenglade Touch spells. Nature Focus allows a much higher level and more effective Acute Mind as well as a better Ancient Bark and Goldenglade Touch. I don't feed runes into any of the other abilities since they seem to, again, not scale well. I'm wondering, however, if these impressions are due to not having higher level gear as well as not having an abundance of actual skill points. Somewhat related to these skills, I also wonder about eating runes for the various combat arts. Some seem to benefit from not using any (attacking ones like DA,) others seem to be fine well beyond the focus limit (I have eaten over 50 runes for Acute Mind and get over 1000 extra Int, and the difference in regen time is only a few seconds compared to if I kept it the focus limit where I'd be getting half the Int.) Any opinions, experiences, or analyses?

It seems that at some point several mini-bosses, dragons, etc. became tied to quests in order to spawn them. This occurs for many even in Free Play Mode using LAN settings or multiplayer. It would be nice if the the Wiki entries for bosses, mini-bosses, dragons, etc. would have updated links to information about how to spawn those quests. There are a few that seem to be related to quest chains, or worse, are only spawned by the main quest. It would be nice to know if we can or can't farm them in Free Play Mode. This would also be useful to people who are playing the game for the first time now in multiplayer but use 2nd monitors to check for special items or monsters.

Yes.

Possibly odd question but what is the real benefit of Hunter Focus here? I don't really put any runes into anything other than Dust Devil for this aspect in order to keep Darting Assault spammable. Sinister Pred buff gains minuscule bonuses in melee per level and only due to the mods. I don't really use anything else in the tree. Should I be eating more runes in this aspect? I don't like seeing my regen times get so high and the reduction via the SP mod and the points in Hunter focus don't scale with eating runes. Also, I've read that the rings and effects that cause regeneration on hit should work with the massive DA attack. However, I have .6 (which is tiny I know,) and have never seen any effect at all. I don't seem to even see it when I'm actually just ranged staff attacking (which generally only happens when I'm lazy or if there's a flying dragon.) If I was getting any regen off of DA I think I'd see it (since I've rounded up several dozen mobs and one hit them with an Acute Mind fueled DA.) Does it only affect the currently active combat art?

I had previously gotten out of sync with the other characters and been able to start my own multiplayer game to catch up but I think I played with the other players. They joined my session and I caught up, then we closed that game and the original host player started a new one and we continued. Maybe I can catch up the next time we play by starting the multiplayer session and having them join me. Edited for Update: When the rest of the group came back and I started a game, I still had no quest update indicator or yellow arrow. So we went back to the last few places we'd completed main quests at. I found an NPC that had no yellow question mark, but who was part of the quest. I clicked on him anyway and I got the update. I slingshot to the same spot as the rest of the group. So I guess it worked out in the end, even if it was frustrating.

During a multiplayer session, my game client froze just as the rest of the group completed a main quest. I actually had the white radius update effect frozen on my screen. I had to ctrl+alt+del my program and rejoin, but I got the message that I was out of synch with the server's progress and my campaign wouldn't update. I started my own, separate game, went to the portal on the starter isle, teleported back to the nearest portal in the area we were questing in but I don't have any yellow arrow or quest marker for the main quest now. In my quest log I can click on Multiplayer Campaign and it says to go to the starter city. But there's no arrow or quest circle and regardless of where I teleport or ride to, I don't get any updates. Am I completely boned?

Noob question: What is MF? And what does it have to do with map revealed? I see this acronym thrown around a lot, but have no clue what people are talking about. Also, how does map revealed affect your game? Thanks in advance.

I'm still basically new to this game (highest character is 25 in Silver ) so I don't have a real good handle on the way the game plays later on. I also don't have any hand-me-downs, so I wonder how important Armor Lore is? Wiki info doesn't give me the whole picture (or if it does, I'm still not really seeing it.) The regen reduction doesn't seem to be important with the other skills that will be reducing CA cooldowns. The access to higher level gear doesn't mean anything to me since I won't be getting gear more than a handful of levels higher than my current character level anyway. The increase to all Armor values looks nice since it's percentage based and would be able to scale with level a bit. But I have so many other skills to put points into, and if you have Nature Lore boosting your armor values that may be able to help you catchup (along with getting better regens and more poweful, if situational, Nature spells.) My take on the replace Nature Lore with Constitution build would be something like this (note: the values are the minimums to unlock skills, I actually have no idea which ones, other than nature focus, I'd want to keep as close to character level as possible while leveling up.) 1 (2) tactics 5 2 (3) staffs 1 3 (5) hunter focus 5 (with the 5 from Tactics you can mod Darting Assault to Rotate) 4 (8) nature focus keep at character level (You will be WAY behind in getting mods here. I'm unsure of priority here.) 5 (12) Shield Lore 5 6 (18) Armor Lore 1 7 (25) Concentration 1 8 (35) Alchemy 5 9 (50) Bargain 1 10 (65) Constitution 1 I'd take Shield Lore to Unlock Armor Lore kind of early to make up for your diminished Ancient Bark. You'll probably need to eat more AB runes than you'd normally like since it will be a lot weaker than one with Lore bonuses. From my early experiences with Focus at about half character level through the beginning of the game on Silver you never looked at your hitpoints except against mini-bosses or when I rounded up 7 or 8 champs. Without the more powerful Ancient Bark I noticed that even a swarm of normal mobs could actually make my hp bar go down and those 7 or 8 champs required timing on the use of Goldenglade Touch (which I almost never had to use before.) Now, granted, that's a fairly low level test with only a few set items and only a handful of +1 to all skills items/sockets, but I did feel the difference in survivability. Also note that this character didn't even have the Constitution bonuses yet, so it might feel quite difference when you unlock the mastery and get the combat hp regen bonus. Anyone else still tinkering around with this character concept in real games? Edit: Also curious what people are doing with their mod points. With a slow Nature progression, you won't be getting all the goodies for awhile. I focused on Acute Mind first with Proficiency (to use it more often,) Insight (for more Int,) and Easiness (to use it more often.) Next I put a point in Rugged for Ancient Bark to up the armor and a point in Goldenglade Touch in Bandage but I'm honestly not sure here. Mainly I went GGT to get to the Willpower boost in case I need it against a caster boss. In Hunter, I went with the standard opener of Darting Assault Edged, Wounding and Rotate. Then I'm building up Sinister Predator with Eagle Eye for crits, Marked Shot to lower evade chance, and Hunting Focus to reduce cooldowns. Other than that I'm not sure what to do with my future mod points. 2nd Edit: Playing this at 28ish, I'm having problems with to-hit and solo-killing some of the mini-bosses. I just hit the Werewolf mini-boss that's at the far east and I couldn't out-dps his regen. I could briefly catch-up when Acute Mind was up, but before that his health regen was higher than my DPS.

I just did a rough test of a 25 character with 25 Nature Lore vs the same character without it. You're right that Nature Lore doesn't increase Acute Mind's Int buff, however losing Lore really hurts both Ancient Bark and Goldenglade Touch. I had about 47% less hp regen, about 20% less Armor, and GGT's regen was almost cut in half. That's alot to lose and the gulf should only widen as the character progresses. On the other hand, it does open up an entirely new skill. What additional skill added to the build would compensate? Edit: also, from a playability standpoint, your development of mods in Nature Aspect will be greatly slowed. That means Ancient Bark will lag even further behind, as well as the enhancements of the other arts in that aspect.

For people without higher level characters, who are starting out on Sacred 2 from scratch, so they don't have lots of money/gear/runes/etc... what is the optimal skill/combat art progression here? For example, what skills should be taken at 2, 3, 5, 8, 12, etc. when you are actually leveling a character and have to kill stuff and complete quests to advance? And how many and which runes should be fed to increase Combat Arts (I'm assuming only Acute Mind, Ancient Bark, and Golden Touch here.) I just hit 12 with a fresh character and am unsure how exactly to progress. I've held back skill points and selections because I'm not sure how to proceed. I've got Tactics, Staff, Nature Lore, Hunter Focus, and Nature Focus so far as skills with an unselected skill yet to be determined. It seems like I need to get to the 360 Darting Dash ASAP, and then progress the mods in Ancient Bark, so I've been putting skills/points into the associated skills. But I don't see which other skills will be critical in leveling as well as keeping me alive. Has anyone played this from level 1 on without having been twinked? I'd like to proceed efficiently rather than get frustrated due to lack of gear and focus.

Yep, I got General Skills confused with All Skills. Just found first amulet with plus All Skills and saw the difference (yellow text, btw.) Thanks for the help.