Tallera257

I wondered about this, too....my main seraphim using WE as her buff, and it's annoying always having to stand around and wait for it to recharge just in case. From everything I can tell, a 100% full WE shield and a 10% full one look about the same. So I've found myself frequently charging into melee, only to have my shield drop almost instantly, because it was close to depleted right off the bat. I find myself VERY much hoping that they will fix/implement the shield "health" bar in an upcoming patch....aside from perhaps some coding issues, I see no reason why this should have been removed for the console version. It makes the shield buffs much harder to use, and slows down the pace of the game greatly if you're constantly waiting around before taking on a big mob on the off-chance your shield is a bit low.

Okay, I'm a bit confused. I'm working on a Dryad character who uses Ancient Bark as her main buff. I just unlocked my first upgrade for it, but the Bronze level upgrades for AB are confusing me! According to the wiki, the Bronze mods for Ancient Bark are as follows: * Rugged - Increases all armor values. (20% + 5% per CA level increase) * Slippery - Increases defense values. (20% + 5% per CA level increase) To me, this begs the question.....what's the difference:) So I checked the wiki some more. There is no explicit definition for the term "armor value" (probably because it seems self-explanatory), but "defense value" is defined in the glossary as "the additive value of a character's armor, shield and defense modifiers." That makes sense to me. So given that armor value is only ONE PART of the total defense value, why would anyone ever choose the Rugged upgrade? I understand that not all characters use shields (including my Dryad), but why not give the percent bonus to your total defense value (armor + random defensive modifiers) rather than just armor? My conclusion is that either this "choice" between Bronze mods is a no-brainer, or I'm fundamentally misunderstanding something about how armor value relates to defense value. Can anyone shed some light on this for me? Thanks in advance!!

ThunderChief, I've noticed the same thing with my seraphim, and I play the X360 version, too. She seems to be a bit under-leveled for the area of the game she's in (level 36-ish on the Dryad Island), despite using WE as her perma-buff, so I've started using DP as an emergency backup. It took me a while to figure out why her buff kept cancelling itself, but I think DP is the culprit. For a long time (since the Dragon Realms) I thought it was a glitch related to defeating a Boss, because every time she finished a boss fight I'd notice a minute later that WE was turned off......but since I used DP in nearly all of those Boss fights.....yeah. Here's hoping they fix it soon?

Hi, all! I've got a very young (level 15 or so) High Elf whom I'm "raising" as a shopper. She spent her first 15 levels or so in bronze, and has just moved to silver. I'm at work, so I can't quote you all of her skills and attributes, but her focus is on Mystic Stormite and Delphic Arcania. She's a dagger-wielder who has put all attribute points into Dex thus far. Before she's done I may take Sword Weapons, but that's a low priority. I use Cobalt Strike (modded for 2x chain lightning and higher crits) as my main attack, with Glacial Thorns (only partly modded for more thorns) as my secondary. My skills and CA levels are such that regen times are still on the cusp of being too long to be viable, but I'm working on that. I can usually kill most of the basic enemies at the beginning of Silver difficulty with one CS and one GT. My main buff at this point is Grand Invigoration, and that's the CA I'm wanting some advice on. As I said, I can't recall which skills she's taken off the top of my head, but my intent is to eventually take all 4 skills for Stormite and Arcania (both Lores, both Foci). I plan to neglect Pyromancer skills completely in favor of Bargaining and Enhanced Perception (both of which she's already taken). She has also already taken Concentration. So my question is this: the first level of upgrades for Grand Invigoration involves choosing to lower regen times for either Stormite OR Pyromancer aspect. What I'm debating is whether to select Stormite, thereby putting ALL of my eggs in one basket, so to speak, but hopefully making that aspect as effective as possible. This would neglect Pyromancer COMPLETELY, making that very definitely my weakest aspect, but one from which I might be able to fire off an underpowered CA or two if I get desperate. OR I could choose to decrease Pyro's regen via GA mod, thereby lending a bit of support to my weakest aspect, and allowing me (in combination with Concentration) to drop a few more runes into that aspect without making it unusable due to high regen. That would make Fire damage a SLIGHTLY more reliable fallback option if I run into an ice/magic resistant enemy. It's a trade-off, and I'm waffling on the decision. I'd love to hear some input from people who have a bit more experience playing High Elves than me. Thanks in advance!

Krieg, that 10-level gap doesn't seem to be universal. I can't explain it (perhaps someone here with more experience with the game can?), but my roommate and I have been playing together on a single console, both with the offline co-op and via online co-op. The other day his level 30-something Shadow Warrior found a really awesome item for one of my low-level Seras, and he wanted to trade it to me so I could store it until I was high enough level to use it. We started a game in online co-op campaign mode, and his level 30+ SW and my level 6 seraphim happily joined up together and traded items. We didn't even think about the level gap issue until we were ready to exit the game. I don't know if this was due to being on a single console, or due to being in campaign mode. We did START the game in online mode, but the fact that we're on a single console may override that in some way. All I know is, the level gap is apparently not as hard-and-fast a rule as I initially assumed. Hopefully someone can shed more light on how this works?

I've had a fair bit of success with deciding on a specific weapon type for a new character right off the bat, then usually the first two new skills I take are the appropriate weapon Lore skill, and Tactics Lore. I agree that Tactics is wicked-good, especially for a Shadow Warrior, who can max out the upgrades on TWO aspects' worth of Combat Arts with it. And despite logic to the contrary, each break point in TL that gives you an upgrade tick gives a tick for BOTH of those aspects, which can be spent independently (I.e., spending a tick on a CA in one aspect does NOT use up any of the accumulated ticks for the other aspect), essentially giving you double value for your money.....very nearly broken for that character class, IMHO. You should have seen the expression on my roommate's face when I explained the above to him.....he was planning to take Death Warrior Focus just to be able to upgrade Combat Arts!

Oh, I agree completely about the Mentor potions, I would hoard those like they're going out of style! But the yellow (concentration) potions are only useful if you're using CA combos heavily (which I typically don't), and the green (anti-poison) pots aren't needed in the same numbers as plain health pots unless you're facing lots of poison-based enemies, so I typically don't keep nearly as many of those around, either. I'm paranoid about undead, though, so I hoard Undead Death pots, too. I think that's a carryover from the Sacred 2 beta, when the undead in the eastern High Elf region were initially VERY overpowered and painful to encounter. Others with more experience with higher-level gameplay than me may be able to speak to this better, but I suspect that it's not "too late" for your character at all. You might need to neglect Bargaining for a few levels to boost your survivability with other skills, but I suspect you'll be fine in the long run if you can find that balance between utility, survivability and damage-dealing. Good luck!

Hit the town well in EVERY town. I haven't gotten very far through Silver yet (I keep deleting and making new characters!), but in my limited experience, if all you care about is potions, you'd probably be best off to just make sure you hit EVERY well, chest, barrel, flower pot, etc. that you run across. I believe that wells are guaranteed to always drop you one health pot, and in my experience the other containers often (though not always) contain at least one potion of SOME type. And if you end up overstocked on yellow or green pots that you don't often use, you can always sell them and use the proceeds to buy more red pots! Alternatively, you could spend some time levelling your toon in a place where she's not in too much danger from the enemies, but still getting decent experience. That should net you more levels, more pots, and lots more loot that you can sell for money for pots if necessary. Also, are you keeping your defensive skills and/or Combat Arts levelled? Armor Lore, Constitution, Toughness, Combat Reflexes, Spell Resistance (against casters), and especially Warding Energy/Divine Protection with Warding Energy Lore are god-sends (pun only slightly intended) for a seraphim who seems a bit on the fragile side. And don't neglect your Dexterity and Vitality attributes! As always, just my $.02. Good luck!

Oooh, I didn't realize those of us who missed out on the collector's edition could still get one! I can go home in about an hour and a half and find out for myself, but....does anyone know off the top of their heads how many points it costs to buy the imp from XBL?

After playing the game much more last night with the new patch, I'm both excited and relieved. The single-console co-op trading works beautifully (*does a happy-dance of joy!*), the only issue is that occasionally if you are standing right next to your playing partner and hit LB to pick up loot from the ground, it will now open a trade window. A very minor issue, and definitely worth it to be able to trade! Also, apparently the RB radial menu works a bit differently than I'd initially thought. From what I can tell, the menu is DESIGNED ("feature"...hee hee!) to work as follows: Hold RB to bring up the radial menu, then press the left stick in the direction of the menu you want, hold the stick in that position for a second or two, and....voila, menu screen. Prior to the patch, you could press the A button to skip the 1-2 second delay of holding the stick in the desired position, and open the selected menu screen instantly. After the patch, the A button no longer does this, so the ONLY option to open the screens is holding the stick for a second or two. To be honest, I didn't even realize that you COULD open the menus by just holding the left stick in position....I'd always pressed A and gone on with my gaming. So from the perspective of someone who hadn't used the A button "quick" option, there is no change in how the radial menu works. It's just us impatient A-button-pressing types who feel like things have gotten slower. Apologies if I mislead anyone, and apologies specifically to Unaki if I was a bit snappish in my response to him/her.

Oooh, checking out those offsite links to the other forum has really made me want to make a Bargain-Hunter character now. One question, though....I checked the Bargaining page on the wiki, and while it has lots of info on the numbers (and good advice for starting Bargainers), it doesn't really explain what the "special offers" are you that you have an increasing chance of receiving from vendors. Are the "special offers" the game's way of saying "yellow items"? Or does this mechanic work in some totally different way? Just wanting to know what to expect before I dive in, thanks in advance!

Thats just your game lagging. I beg your pardon, but you're mistaken. I've played a lot of this game in the past week, and up until I applied the patch, the response from the radial menu was as instantaneous as any dedicated gamer could wish. As soon as the patch was applied, the responsiveness of the RB radial menu immediately dropped noticeably. There was no lag in the game at the time. Please don't assume you know better than the person who has seen a particular aspect of the game in action. This delay in the menu has been reported and confirmed by a number of other Xbox 360 players on other forums, too.

I'm at work, so I can't confirm this in the game myself at the moment, but I read on another forum that BOTH profiles still have to be logged into XBL Gold memberships for the trading to work. Can anyone else confirm this? Edit: Also, I've read reports on the TeamXbox forum for Sacred 2 that the new patch causes the RB radial menu to be very unresponsive. As in, you press RB to bring up the menu, but then you have to press A several times before the menu registers that you've selected something. I definitely noticed this in the 10 minutes I played with the new patch installed this morning. Anyone else notice it?

My gamertag is PlumptiousCat, but I don't know when exactly I'll be back on a Gold membership so I can party up online. I was on the one month free trial of gold, but it ran out recently, and this is the month for car insurance and a lot of other big bills that need to be paid. So whenever I can spare the fee without putting myself in the poorhouse, I'll try to find some of you all on XBL. P.S. - It also doesn't help the finances when my 1st-generation Xbox 360 finally, officially died on THE VERY DAY I bought Sacred 2, which meant I had to run out later that day and buy a new console. I'm enjoying Sacred 2 a lot, but I'm not convinced yet that it was worth $260.

Here's the text from the patch info link: