Androdion

I assume he already has +19 All Skills given the numerical difference between the skill level and character level. It's better to run shopping for +Bargaining amulets and socket them into a proper suit, and as you get more bonus points into it better stuff will appear. Less than 200-250 skill level at 99 character level probably won't show excellent stuff though. Odd that Constitution isn't mastered and that at halfway through only two skills are mastered. You could have four to five mastered skills at level 99 and that would make a lot of difference I believe. You should definitely master Constitution and the Pyro skills as soon as possible, Ancient Magic though tempting can be left for later on. One interesting thing is that you can run a shield build with a single point in SL and you'll still have around 50% block chance from melee attacks, which combined with Incandescent Skin's Revenge mod should get your defense covered. I did so with a Magic Coup HE and it works well enough and you need not stray your skill points too far. Enhanced Perception... Either char level or leave it in my opinion. Also, if you already have Concentration that high you might as well master it and use all three buffs, modifying the imp for better regen times, which will result in better DPS. Other than that just eat 200 runes into GI since it's basically a "negative penalty" (a boni). The more the skill climbs the more benefits you get so get it to 200 and raise it as far as possible. It's just about the only buff where that's true. Cool to see a full Armaments of Hell set!

Actually it works both ways. Flix's Superspawn module on Enhanced Edition Mod works with those numbers to make Ancaria very populated.

I thought that could be the case, but after a reload it's still not there which is odd. Anyway, why Bronze?! I'm pursuing a theory that Roderick put out on a Steam discussion we were having about power levelling, in that he said he rushed through Bronze with EE+Superspawn in order to be geared up for Silver at around level 40, keeping it easy because of the Bronze level cap and then rinse and repeat for Silver because now you're fully geared. And since I've had a few mishaps starting in Silver with EE+Superspawn I decided to give it a go and went back to basics. I had never played Bronze more than doing Ancaria Airlines and Feed the Poor to be honest! But ok the theory is sound and although the modifiers are what one would expect from the lowest difficulty level gearing up from scratch is more comfortable, with the added nuances that EE brings. Early 20-25 levels even in Bronze can be tricky if you get surrounded by several champions. So that's that. No idea about the Forest Guardian and I'm playing the game again because it's fun again. I hope it lasts for a while.

Went in after the Forest Guardian in Bronze (yes I'm playing in Bronze, sue me! ) and it wasn't there. I went around the whole area and it just wasn't there to be found. Does it even spawn in Bronze, I mean it should right?

Oh the Spider Queen. I reckon you didn't read my comment on Steam about the Ice Hydra yet... I can definitely relate. The interesting thing in this game is that at higher levels resistances and damage types are much more important than they are made to be at the starting point. You should catch a video of user Hooyaah going against the Ice Lord with an Ice HE and you'll notice that even with hundreds of points in the skills it's hard to cause it damage because it's ice vs ice. And a Pyro HE is kind of limited to fire+physical so when a tough opponent is resistant to those you're in for trouble, and you either have a huge amount of DPS or you're screwed. Try killing the Forest Guardian on Dryad Island, it keeps casting full heal over and over again, and unless you can get its HP down fast enough you really can't kill it. That boss has been my go-to test for checking if my DPS is good or bad, if you can kill it it's good. But I agree that many mini-bosses are actually harder than the campaign bosses. Narnuil, Abishai, Ice Hydra, Forest Guardian, Spider Queen, and probably more that I don't have at the tip of my tongue are all very hard. Get frozen by Narnuil once and say good night. Drop the ball and let yourself be caught by the Abishai's traps and bye bye. Face any of the remaining three with a lower than godly DPS and it's sayonara baby. But then again, that's more to do with the actual game design that with CM Patch. Opinions may differ but I for one don't think the CM Patch is to blame for your death. PS: Do you happen to have Ancient Magic? Having it mastered should really help you cause more damage, even taking resistances into account. That skill breaks resistances on top of boosting spell damage.

That's it! Thanks a lot for the reply.

Hey Flix, what are the differences between the standard spawn.txt and the one in Superspawn, other than the different values in spawn numbers? I assume you made changes because of the different types of creatures present in EE? If you'd be so kind as to give me some insight on that it'd be great. Thanks.

My family is quite small, but my lady's is big enough to compensate. They tend to get together on every possible occasion and we live very close to each other so it's easy to have 15 to 20 people together for lunch or dinner. For Christmas Eve I made a killer cod with corn bread crust and a more traditional seasoning, with bird's eye cayenne for added bite, for the typical cod with potatoes and cabbages. For New Year's day it was filet steak with pineapple, roast piglet (a classic) with oranges from the backyard, a couple of traditional soups (chicken soup, green soup) and lots and lots of drinks. White wine, red wine, green (!) wine (it's a more gassy variant of white wine), beer, muscat, old scotch... Damn, no wonder I went to bed early! There were a lot of sweets too for both weeks. Traditional king cake, chocolate king cake, queen cake, egg candy pavlova, wafer cake, sweet rice, and many others. There was also sea food and many other things that I can't remember already. I don't think I've got to taste everything, it was really too much. I guess that working twice as much made me eat twice as much too, ha ha... And the red wine from my father in law's storage is always divine!

Yeah, it was lunch-to-dinner, 7 to 8 straight hours at the table... I think I only got up to cook some clams and for restroom services. And my father-in-law let me open a Dimple 15 bottle that was pre-EURO. I almost shed a tear, so so great! Schot would be proud!

Happy new year everyone. I know I'm late but the party yesterday was a bit intense, too much eating I drinking...

Wut?! That is total news to me, it made me chuckle. Though I get the impression that I'd be the single one understanding the joke if was handing out some of those to the people around me. Just today a fellow store manager mentioned that I could use his warehouse if I needed to take a break from the zombies. It really isn't fun when you see people repeating the same pattern year after year. Oh man, Grinch mode is active again... Sorry guys!

The T-Energy Dragon has always been a bit moody, don't know why but sometimes it just seems to "stall" (at least without EE, haven't met him yet with EE turned on). Anyway when it bites it bites, you can rest assured. I can appreciate all your hard work Flix, you've done so much for this game already.

Santa Claus arrived at the shopping mall where I work on the 10th of November, and he's been on his throne kissing children ever since. Just for you to know just how commerce influences things, it's tradition for Santa to arrive on this same town (city hall and that jive) on the 1st of December. So yeah, big retail spaces make me feel a bit anti-Christmas with all their rush. Oh, and we only have a couple of days on the entire year where retail closes. You guessed it, 25th of December and January 1st. As far as I can remember the costumes here say that we need to have the tree up and running on early December. When I was in my preteen years my mom used to grab me, my sister and a couple of small axes and we'd go to the forest to grab a real tree. Some moss too to build the Nativity scene. But that was almost 25 years ago so something got lost along the highway. Nowadays having a plastic tree decorated is usually the norm.

Like Gogo said, I'm all about the details. That's probably why the decorations are all symmetrical and well aligned... Anyway, most of the decorations are chocolate figures so come the 26th and I'll start "disassembling" the tree, ha ha. My better half is mighty cool though, she doesn't even care that I play Sacred 2 with voluptuous characters that wear revealing armour! She's definitely a keeper.

I'm also used to it, but you never get used to it per se. All the added rush, noise, work volume... "It's like father, always in a rush, never have any time..." Oh and the week after Christmas is when season sales begin, so it doesn't really stop until mid-January or so. But I guess that my girlfriend has enough Christmas love to compensate for the Grinch in me, ha ha. Case in point, she made me decorate the tree!

Sure, I guess it's a matter of expectations. I "expected" it to be an added challenge all the way from 1-200, but given your point of view I can say that maybe it's not at all like that. I'd very much enjoy something like a "very hard mode" that would allow for the usual gameplay but with enough balancing that would make you still be able to progress and try to get ahead of the curve of the mobs' power, and I thought that Challenge Mode would be something like that. I've seen that it isn't and your point is so right on the money that maybe I should just let it go and see it for what it is. The drawback of the slightly added difficulty on EE is that I can still just storm the main quest with a decent build, even with Supperspawn active. The difficulty curve is not that more pronounced (at least so far).

That's actually an excellent point you made right there.

Ah, Christmas. The time of the year where I work twice as much and gain very much the same. Love it! Working in retail during "retail attack week" has taken a toll on my sanity over the years, but new year new house and some added calm may make for a smoother Christmas this time. We'll see. For the rest of you folks, happy holidays.

I played for a few hours last night, standard EE with Superspawn, and I made the same exact build with the same exact progression. Ice elf with the focus on both Ice skills and everything else down to one point, apart from Delphic Focus at 9 for GI gold mod. I went up to level 19 and I can say that both Bronze and Silver aren't that much harder than the regular game. Sure an elite can take a better dent at your HP, but after a few levels I could get ganged up by Bronze mobs without fearing for my death, whereas with Challenge Mode even that was a nightmare. By Silver, which I started around level 10, I couldn't really care if enemies would hit me or not since the time between two or three hits and Glacial Thorns/Raging Nimbus killing them wasn't really enough to be hit for more than 15-25% of my total HP. Apart from elite skellies and the occasional elite boar nothing made my blood rush. Over the course of 19 levels I was readlined maybe twice, and if you want to put health potion numbers to the equation then I can say that its quantity never went down, and I actually went over 100 early on in Silver, all from loot. You see, I don't really have an issue with Challenge Mode being insane. The problem I see in it is that its only purpose is to do trial runs on "can I kill these fast enough?", because it rejects any kind of character progression. It just punishes you no matter what. So grab your best ultimate toon, activate Challenge Mode and see how well it goes basically equates to having enough firepower or not. Defensive skills don't count for squat, character build doesn't either since all you need is firepower, and actual gaming skill is nowhere to be found since all you'll do is mash your ultimate CAs in order to kill everything on screen before they can hit you. Because if you're hit you're dead. So yeah, insane is quite adequate. I just thought that Challenge Mode would be more of a "challenge mode" to veteran players who know their way around the game. Because if you've played this game for long enough you'll know how to build a toon, and that is enough to stay alive in Standard EE right now. I mean, I run an Ice elf and I have 3 points in Armor Lore and 1 point in Constitution plus all attribute points in Intelligence, and mobs just don't hit that hard. With Challenge Mode on I was running that build backwards with several skill points in Armor Lore/Constitution/Toughness and still I'd be constantly readlining. What's the point of Challenge Mode then if you can't play it from level 1, other than (like I said above) test your ultimate firepower?

Thanks for replying, I know I can be a bit of a nag sometimes. Blame Christmas music everyday at work for the last 35 days (and counting!). Yeah, Challenge Mode is anything but easy. But the thing that I've noticed is that you always get kicked hard regardless of your choices, and therein lies the problem. I can live with the expectancy of elites and bosses being much harder and super tough, but when regular Kobolds in Bronze can actually kill you... The one time I was actually killed by a Kobold was when I was trying one of my level 75 blank toons in Niob, so they were almost 40 levels above. But being killed in Bronze, and in Silver in the same way since I progressed a few toons there from scratch, is too much. Oh another thing I noticed is that Kobold mages also hit way too hard, as well as any DOT for that matter. A regular Kobold mage also hits nearly as hard an Elite one in terms of HP, and getting hit by toxic elementals or rats outside Thylisium makes you redline very very easily due to poison DOT. Just an added thought.

So I've been going at EE with Original Spells, Challenge Mode and Superspawn together for a few days. While I enjoy the added challenge, the added blood rush that I feel from the always present danger and the possibility of impending death, I can't seem but feel like something is off with the balancing. Yes it has been explained that Challenge Mode is a though one in terms of added difficulty and that softer toons will be mowed down, and yes Superspawn will only make things worse since more enemies will spawn with added capabilities. So in short I should be getting my toon's tush handed out to me in a Bronze or Silver platter any way you look at it. So here's what I don't get. Gahanka can't kill me in seconds but a single non-elite Kobold can? That boss causes little more damage than a non-elite Kobold from the last opponent's window, but it's the little one that kills me? I mean, Gahanka being a boss (even though an easy one) should be a bit harder than a regular Kobold no?! And yet if I stop for a second I get two criticals from a tiny Kobold and bye bye, whereas I can stand in front of Gahanka and be hit without half the hassle and without spamming my space bar constantly. I'm not even going to say how ridiculously tough the Elite mobs are because they always hit for 50% or more of my HP. Have you ever ran out of healing potions in early game when you're carrying like 30 or so? I have, I actually needed to buy more because with each critical from mobs I needed to gobble one down because the next hit would be lethal. But that doesn't happen with a boss, strangely enough. I've tried several variations of the same build, starting out with a few defensive skills to keep myself alive and then start working around my Ice magic. I could stay alive for a while, but as soon as I thought I had the necessary survival skills a simple Kobold goes bam bam, bye bye. OK let's try it the other way around and start off with pumping Ice magic for extra killing power and then start improving the defensive capabilities. And yet again as soon as I get towards higher density bam bam, bye bye. The hilarious thing about it is that I can get redlined by a single Kobold at the doorstep of Sloeford, in seconds. Yet a boss doesn't do it. So imagine the route from Sloeford to Gahanka! It's like I'm walking in the Swamp getting aggroed from all directions! And more often than not it feels like regular mobs hit almost as badly as Elite units. And the problem with that is that no matter how you play a build and how you act towards mobs they'll still mow you down in the same inconspicuous way, like you loose one second of attention and bam bam, bye bye. I get it, it's supposed to be hard. But isn't it also supposed to be playable from level 1? Because Challenge Mode feels more and more like a creepfest made for full-blown toons with mastered skills and top gear. It really doesn't feel like a "challenge" for starting at level 1 and going from there, it feels more like you're constantly pulling mobs and trying to pick them apart piece by piece because they're always incredibly strong. And that's because they are, always incredibly strong, no matter how your skills are and at what level of difficulty you are and what gear you're carrying and what level your toon is. I mean come on, this isn't feasible when you need to be constantly pulling mobs and getting to choke points just to stay alive... If Kobolds are this deadly everything else in the game should be pretty much as lethal as a Swamp Demon. Oh wait, Swamp Demons should be as though as Nameless Guardians. Oh wait, Nameless Guardians... This is my oficial feedback, I want to like it but at the end of the day it's just incredibly frustrating to see no evolution in the gameplay regardless of build, skill choice, toon level and difficulty level. You're always outnumbered and outgunned no matter what you do.

OK so now that I'm able to play it I can say, holy smokes Challenge Mode is punishing as hell on early game! I mean, I died to Kobolds. In Bronze. Kobolds! Sure, I was asking for it running around with a fragile High Elf getting criticals from Kobold elites but still, wow. I guess that Flix made this optional module with heavy questing in mind instead of just jumping the gun on power grinding the Kobold Chieftan. But then again I can feel my blood rushing because I can't just smash everything without consequences, which is cool. But then again I died to freakin Kobolds in Bronze, and who dies in Bronze to begin with?! Any advice on early game big chief? Keep it safe, quest a lot, stay away from bad companies until you're geared up and skilled up? I dread the thought of Niobium with this mode... It's kill (quickly) or be killed I guess.

I ran a full system scan with both Avast and Malwarebytes, nothing out of the ordinary to be found, so I just added the whole Steam directory as an exception and it loads without an issue. Still, it's bloody weird! Even more so because I checked the Mods' folders and none of them has a different sacred2.exe file, they just change s2gs.exe and s2logic.dll. So yeah, it's super weird!

Hey guys. So I finally got some spare time on my hands and as such I decided to download this mod. Thing is after activating Original Spells/Challenge Mode/Superspawn once I start the game I get the game back to Windows and sacred2.exe moved to quaratine due to IDP.ALEXA.51, as so Avast likes to say. I move it back to where it belongs, but then if I want to start the game again Steam will auto-update it and I then need to reinstall CM Patch 1.60 because otherwise it'll start with the vanilla 2.65 version. So what gives? Is the download infected/corrupted, is my AV software tripping, what?! PS: Yeah, I can't even get the game to start with just Original Spells active via JSGME. The file sacred2.exe goes to quarantine each and every time I try to run the game.