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podgie_bear

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Posts posted by podgie_bear

  1. I just came back to Sacred 2 after a long absence and downloaded the latest CM Patch 160, however I can't install it. It keeps coming up with error can't delete AdhocAPI.dll file. I tried moving the offending file to another folder to see if that will allow it to finish installing but it does no good. It seems to have an issue with every .dll file in the game's System folder. I am trying to install it to the latest version of Sacred 2 from GoG, the "Win10 compatible" version.

    Can anyone help me here please?

  2. On 4/28/2006 at 5:36 PM, Arianna said:

    1. What color pants are you wearing?

    2. What are you listening to right now?

    3. What was the last thing you ate?

    4. Do you wish on stars?

    5. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

    6. What is the weather right now?

    7. Favorite drink?

    8. Favorite sport?

    9. Hair color?

    10. Do you wear contacts?

    11. Siblings?

    12. Favorite month?

    13. Favorite food?

    14. What was the last movie you saw at the theater?

    15. Favorite day of the year?

    16. How do you vent your anger?

    17. What was your favorite toy as a child?

    18. Summer or winter?

    19. Hugs or kisses?

    20. Chocolate or vanilla?

    21. When was the last time you cried?

    22. What is under your bed?

    23. What did you do last night?

    24. What are you afraid of?

    25. Plain, buttered or salted popcorn?

    26. Favorite car?

    27. Favorite flower?

    28. Number of keys on your key ring?

    29. How many years at your current job?

    30. Favorite day of the week?

    31. What did you do on your last birthday?

    32. How many states have you lived in?

    33. How many cities/towns have you lived in?

    34. What is your favourite scent?

    35. What is your favorite candy?

    36. Married or single?

    37. Happy or Sad about the direction your life is taking right now?

    38. What do you miss the most right now?

    39. Any regrets?

    40. Sunshine or a Rainy day?

    41. Are you in love?

    1. Red, white and blue underpants, black jogging bottoms.

    2. The rain hitting my window.

    3. A chocolate cookie.

    4. No.

    5. Black.

    6. Raining hard, a real downpour.

    7. Earl Grey Tea.

    8. NFL.

    9. Mousey brown fighting to see if it will go grey or bald first.

    10. No, eyes are too sensitive, so wear bi-focals.

    11. Two neither of which bother to keep in touch, not even so much as a Christmas Card.

    12. October, when all the children are back in school and we can go on a peaceful holiday with all the other tourists around.

    13. Cornish Pasty.

    14. The Rocky Horror picture show, anniversary showing.

    15. Christmas Eve.

    16. By killing things in computer games.

    17. Mechano.

    18. Winter.

    19. Hugs, although I am not a tactile sort of person.

    20. Vanilla.

    21. Last night listening to music.

    22. Loads of storage boxes.

    23. Played yahtzee with my wife, then listened to music.

    24. My wife's health deteriorating.

    25. I hate popcorn!

    26. Bently special 3/8 racer ( Wish I could afford one!)

    27. Fuschia.

    28. Three.

    29. Retired due to ill health.

    30. Sunday.

    31. Can't remember, I don't treat birthdays as different to any other day.

    32. One.

    33. Three.

    34. Coffee.

    35. Rhubarb and Custard boiled hard candy.

    36. Married.

    37. Neither, life is life. You just have to make the most of it regardless, because you are not going to get another one.

    38. Freedom, since I am classed as clinically extremely vulnerable, I have been in covid lockdown since last March.

    39. Lots, the biggest being that it took me nearly 60 years to realise that life is to be appreciated rather than endured.

    40. Sunshine.

    41. After being married for 25 years I had better be or my wife will be very disappointed, lol. (yes I am)

  3. Hi all. I'm hoping for a Happy New Year for us all.

    It has been a miserable Christmas for us again, it's like Christmas is cursed for me as everything bad seems to happen at Christmas. When my father died a few years ago it was on 23 December. My first marriage ended in a really bad breakup when my first wife told me she had found someone else and she wanted me to move out, that was the morning of Christmas Day. Two years ago my father-in-law died the week before Christmas. Last Year I was rushed to hospital with a series of heart attacks three weeks before Christmas. This year our little dog was taken ill on Christmas Eve and was put down on 27 December.

    Now that Christmas is behind us it would be nice to hear happy things for the New Year, so do any of you have some good things to share for the New Year?

    • Appreciation 1
  4. I would say do what your insurance wants. The Covid app is only as useful as the number of people voluntarily using it. The take up for using a similar app in this country has been abysmal with more people not using it than those that do. Since you may com into contact with far more people not using it that using it then how useful is it really? Whereas the smartphone that your insurance wants you to use is going to be useful to you for more than a single reason and does not depend on other people using it to do what it is designed to do to make it useful.

  5. Yes I saw this video, but he was concentrating on what went wrong and what might have contributed to its demise. He didn't spend a lot of time showing what was good, how it was ahead of its time and why players are willing to devote their spare time and effort into reviving the game. I know this is only my opinion and may raise a few hackles, but if we were to compare Vanguard against WoW, Vanguard would be the MMO aimed at serious game playing adults, while WoW would look like it was programmed for pre-teen children. Even just the mini-games show the difference between the games. Diplomacy takes patience to learn and skill and tactics to win, it also affects all aspects of the game, faction reputation, merchant responses, guards responses, even how the farmers and peasants view you. Crafting is a fiendishly complicated procedure that rewards you for how well you cope with the complications and problems that arise during the crafting process. If you want to make equipment for your character, you can't just throw materials at a crafting bench and get the item you want, you have to work and struggle to produce it and even then the quality of the item can vary enormously depending on how much effort you put into it and how skilfully you cope with the problems arising.

    When you add in the 15 classes, 20 (including 6 nationalities of human) races and backgrounds and the dozen or more starting areas and separate main quest lines, there is enough variety and challenge here to satisfy anyone.

    • Like! 1
  6. I don't know if any of you remember Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, which was a game that Sony Online Entertainment decided to close down a few yeras ago. It was a brilliant game that pulled no punches and didn't hold your hand (unless it was to distract you while it plunged a dagger into your back!). A lot of players were very upset when Sony decided it wasn't profitable enough and closed down the servers, because the game was unique for its time and not only was it a very good hardcore MMORPG with 15 different classes, 14 different races (and 6 types of human) most of which had their own distinct starting areas and questlines, but also featued a complicated, indepth crafting system (a bloody frustrating one!) and a very interesting card based, diplomacy minigame.

    I was one of the players who really missed it and lamented its loss, well great news, it's back! The VGOEmulater is a fan run project which has got hold of the source code for the game and has got a server up and running and the game is playable again. It's currently in a (sort of) pre-alpha stage in that they are still working on it  and not got everything working properly again yet, but it is playable and some of us are playing it and bug reporting as we find stuff. The new devs are all fans who are devoting their spare time to bringing this game back to life and although they do accept donations, they are purely used to pay for the server.

    If you would like to try the game and maybe do a bit of play testing and you don't mind that some small parts may still be broken, then you can find their forum here https://www.vgoemulator.net/phpBB3/index.php

    You can check out the wiki here https://vanguard.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page

     

     

    • Like! 1
  7. Thanks all.

    Dax, My wife has a home gym that I am using (carefully) but exercise and fasting will not help my diabetes while the other drugs I have to take every morning and evening are raising my blood sugar level. My diabetes specialist is considering adding further drugs to the metformin I am taking, but is unhappy about doing so as they could cause further complications, especially with my heart meds.

  8. I haven't been around much the last couple of years, which have not been very good ones for me. Apart from the car accident I have already said about on this forum, I have had some quite bad health issues these last couple of years. I developed Ulcerative Colitis (very messy and unpleasant) but for weeks while I waited for the test results, the doctors told me that it could be bowel cancer. As you can imagine, it was not a good time for my family. When they finally confirmed that it was not cancer the relief was immense. So they started treating the colitis with high doses of steroids to which my body had an extreem reaction, I gained about 40 pounds and my blood sugar level jumped from a fairly mormal 6.4 to a dangerous 37.2 and I developed type 2 diabetes and went blind. It took months to recover my sight and to get my blood sugar down to a reasonable level. Apparently I am one of the minority of people who can't tolerate steroids and develope steroid induced diabetes, lucky me! Things finally started looking up, the colitis was under control, the diabetes was in remission and all seemed right with the world. Then our National Health Service decided on a cost cutting exercise and changed the drugs I was being treated with for the colitis (non-steroid now) for cheaper drugs which nobody noticed included a side effect of raising blood sugar levels. Bingo, back comes the diabetes!

    Stress levels go up as the new National Health Service systems means that instead of my consultant prescribing drugs for me directly, she now notifies a clerical department that I need them, the celerical department notifies an outside contractor that I need them, I have to phone the contractor to arrange delivery to my door. Great if the system worked but it doesn't and I end up ringing the contractor who says they haven't been notified by the clerical department who I can't contact so I then ring the consultant's secretary to ask that the consultant chases up the issue from her end and get the clerical deaprtment to get off its butt and does the jobit's supposed to do. This happenes every bloody month, meanwhile I am without the drugs I need and my health is deteriorating. Finally it all gets too much and I collapsed this December 2nd with a heart attack. After being rushed to hospital I had 3 more heart attacks within 36 hours. Three weeks later, after 2 Angio procedures on 2 of the 3 major arteries to the heart, a stent, a ballon treatment to force an artery open and a 'burning wire' to clear a blockage in another artery, I get out of hospital just in time for Christmas, with a large bag full of drugs to keep me going, taking 11 different drugs multiple times a day for my Colitis, Diabetes and heart!

    My wife decided that I should get away for Christmas, different surroundings, relaxation and a stress free holiday, so we hired a small caravan on the coast for Christmas week. Arriving there on Christmas Eve we decided to just get a takeaway and relax so we did from a local takeaway we always use when we are in that area and were surprised to find it under new ownership. We then spent Christmas Day thowing up and Boxing Day with diarrhea! The weather was abysmal with gale force winds and driving rain all through the Christmas and as we packed the car to drive home on the Friday, the sun finally deigned to appear!!!

    All in all, I look forward to the New Year in hope, despite the fact that I have miutiple appointments with multiple doctors and nurses for weekly blood tests, diabetic reviews, dieticians, stress counseling, heart monitoring, pokings and proddings for the foreseeable future. Because optimistically things can only get better ...... can't they?

     

    I wish you all a Happy New Year and hope the coming year is a good one for all of us!

    • Appreciation 1
  9. I'm not sure I agree with you completely. They can be a real nuisance, but they can also be very useful. I think it is more a case of the idiot using it than the smartphone itself.

     

    My big problem is with BMW cars, they are lovely vehicles, but it seems that 99% or the people that own them are unfit to be driving them! It appears that as soon as they put the car in gear, they put their brains in neutral. They nearly all seem to think that rules don't apply to them and that they own the road and everyone else has a duty to make way for them.

    • Thanks! 1
  10. 5 hours ago, LEXX said:

    @Mare, so the side quests are somewhat necessary? I was afraid of that. 

     

    I agree with that, I just haven't found anything in Sacred that is worth putting hundreds of hours into the game. We have different tastes and that's fine, I respect your opinion and I'm grateful for it.

     

    To be honest, Titan Quest gets me bored too, but only if I put too much time into it. For me it is the perfect title to go back to every now and then. It's just such a beautiful game, the environments are gorgeous, the loot system and character customization are fantastic. 

     

    Morrowind is one of my favorite games of all time, but that's a story driven RPG, I mean, the difference between that and Sacred is like night and day. I can play Morrowind and the Gothic games (which are my all time favorite) for hundreds of hours, making different choices, joining different factions and even reading the books... but when I play a hack and slash D2 clone, I want crazy action, I want to build powerful characters, I want kill epic monsters and hunt for loot. I want to play Sacred for 200 hours too, but for that to happen, I need the side quests to be more enjoyable, I need more diverse monster encounters, two way teleportation from any location and less backtracking... and no enemy re-spawns unless I save/quit the game. 

     

    Tonight I'll do another session in Sacred 1, I just started a Gladiator a few days ago, but again I begun to get really bored with the game and that led to this topic. Last time I played I was in a cave and I triggered an escort quest, however the quest didn't appear in my logbook and there's no waypoint on the map for it, so I don't know where to go to complete it and because of that, now I have 3 characters following me everywhere and refuse to die because they don't engage in battle... it's the little things like this that makes it really for me to like the game, but I WILL try.

     

    Thanks for the replies guys. :) 

    I think one of the reasons Sacred is so good for me is the unique builds you can make, for example my magic user wood elf, using only Thorn Bush and Call of the Ancestors. as opposed to a bow build. It is the endless possibilities. I also loved my Wee Jock build, a grouchy little dwarf that beats mobs to death with his fists. Think outside the box. Think what is the most unlikely build to succeed then go build it and beat the game anyway!

    • Like! 1
  11. On 2/22/2019 at 11:51 PM, Timotheus said:

    @podgie_bear any news on the situation? How’s your wife doing? How are you?

    She is still having twinges in her back especially when she first gets out of bed and starts moving in the mornings, but overall she is so much better. She is off the painkillers and doesn't need the heatpacks anymore. The insurance seems to be finally sorted out and the other driver's insurance has admitted full liability. Our car was a complete write off due the chassis being distorted and we are waiting for a replacement, which we are told should be due on March 15 which just happens to be my birthday. Hopefully a nice birthday present and I can't wait as the rental car we have been given while we wait is very uncomfortable for me as it has forward leaning headrests that makes my neck ache and gives me headaches. Unfortunately they are not adjustable enough to make them more comfortable for me.

    Sadly, I am now suffering more because of the hire car than my wife did after the crash. Such is life.

  12. 5 hours ago, gogoblender said:

     

    A terrifying situation, Podgie, you must have both been scared out of your wits when the car hit and will probably on later be feeling the psyche impact of something like that.  I hope your wife is treated , and you're able to find best care for her.  More than anything be best supportive and do not feel guilty... you're there now to take care of her, and since you're a both a team, one of you being in good health makes you both stronger.  I was in a very bad car accident when I was 13 in Sri Lanka with my family, most of my family in the car was badly hurt but I had only some damage to teeth, lip and scraped knee... I can relate to the feeling that we all should have "shared" in all the pain, but thats now how things work, and because I missed more of the accidents damage, I was able to help others out of the car.

    You're healthy and strong, share that with your wife and your self, please tell us how this goes, will they completely replace your car now?

    :)

     

    gogo

     

    We don't know what is happening, this is a totally new experience for us.

    His insurance says that they are willing to sort it all out.

    Our dealer says that we should get our insurance to do the assessment so that his insurance don't try to repair a write off to save money.

    Our insurance says we have already claimed by having our car recovered by them (which recovery was a part of our insurance policy).

    We have something called GAP insurance to cover the difference in value when we would have traded in our car on a new model and now we have to tell everyone else about that and notify the GAP people of all the other "players in the game".

    We are tryin to find where our car is stored awaiting assessment to recover all our possessions from the car, we are told that we have to collect them before it is taken away to the assessment facility or we lose the chance to recover them.

    Meanwhile all parties involved are no longer being so helpful as they seemed at first and telling us that it will be a disaster for us if we don't let them be the ones to sort it all out.

    We are feeling pretty bloody helpless suddenly. Our poor car was our first ever brand new car and only delivered from the factory 4 months ago!

  13. We exchanged insurance details etc and our insurers are being very helpful. The hospital couldn't have been more apathetic though. The National Health Service is not what it once was. Once upon a time my wife would have been examined thoroughly, x-rayed and scanned before being released. Now they gave her 2 paracetamol and told her to rest with heat packs on her back, because they don't have a doctor on duty after 8pm, just a nurse. They suggested that she might want to get a taxi to the the only hospital with an emergency department covering the county (about 30 miles away) if she thought she might need treatment. Otherwise she could contact her local surgery in the morning.

  14. Last night we were on our way to a restaurant for a special meal, we rarely go out for such a thing. My wife was driving and I was in the passenger seat. We saw a long line of traffic ahead of us, all braking to a very slow speed and we slowed down and joined on the end of the line. The road behind us was empty of traffic. A few minutes later as we crept along in low gear, a BMW sports car came speeding up behind us and slammed into the back of our car and shunted us into the car ahead of us. The driver of the BMW was totally unhurt even though his car was a writeoff. The car in front of us had moderate damage to their rear end and was able to drive away safely after the police and given them clearance to go, both passenger and driver were unhurt. Our car was a total rightoff with moderate damage to the front, severe damage to the rear and the frame twisted out of true so badly that the doors had to be forced open to get us out of the car and couldn't be shut again. I walked away without a mark or any aches and pains. My wife however badly injured her back and is now laid up bedridden and screaming in pain every time her back spasms which seems to be everytime she tries to move or even reach for her cup of tea. I am waiting on her hand and foot, ready to do whatever she wants. Although I am glad that I am unhurt and happy that I am able to do everything for her, I feel so damned guilty that she is in such a state and I am completely unhurt.

  15. 15 hours ago, gogoblender said:

    Thanks Podgie! really appreciate the tips... I had some time this weekend and dug into the old sacred forums here on DarkMatters for guides and found some good ones too...kinda cool looking at those old guide posts, and hearing those players again in my mind, right from out of those servers... I had actually forgotten so much of how that game ran, and that phys regen seems to be pretty important?

    What do you think of this guide here:

     

     

    :)

    gogo

    Well Gogo I am sorry to say that I never even tried a Wood Elf with a bow, it just seemed as if the character was so designed to be an archer that I wanted to rebel and not use the bow at all, so I don't know how well that would work. I leave that to the wiser members of the forum and may have a try with that build in future.

    To follow on from my meager description of my "Witchiepoo" build, I found the rest of my notes on it (misfiled where I would never look for it. Of course!)

    All points to to Mental regen.

    Skills:-

    1) Meditation & Magic Lore to begin with (you do know how to change the starting skills of course, but new players may not realise that they can).

    3) Moon Magic.

    6) Trading. (used continuously to improve my weapons and armour, to find more items increasing poison damage)

    12) Constitution.

    20) Armour.

    30 & 50) Your choice.

    The basic premise of the build is that if they are pounding on your armour then you let them get too close! Thorn Bush is great against ranged mobs, because if they shoot the Thornbush it explodes poison in all directions and you should be able to 'throw' it close enough to them so that they get caught in the backlash. The best defence being a good offence, boost that offence!

    Don't forget Blacksmith runes, they can boost spells! Don't just cram skill runes into your equipment!!!!!

    I know most players seem to build a Dwarf Shopper to keep them supplied with nice stuff, but I always felt that a bit of a cheat and that characters should do their own shopping (no offense, just one of my many quirks).

  16. Hi Gogo, did a check on my basic notes from 'back in the day' and my Wood Elf Magic user "Witchiepoo" was basically;

    Primary attack - Thorn Bush (keep regen to under 2 seconds and spam it at anything that moves). Try and equip armour and items that boost poison damage. Don't try and eat too many runes, it is better to spam it every couple of seconds and let poison do the work than to 'boost' dps and have to wait while skills regen.

    Secondary attack - Call of the Ancestors (keep regen to about the same as duration). Used mainly for large groups of enemies and bosses. Let the Ancestors loose and kite while spamming Thorn Bush. Between the 2 skills your screen should be full of wonderful dps numbers scrolling up the screen.

    I only found one mob in the whole game that caused me problems and that was in Sacred Underworld, I never even saw it, it cast some sort of spell from off screen and I died with nothing visible anywhere around me. It happened to me 3 times while playing at various times and always in the same area. That is when I leaned how many swear words I actually knew, lol.

    • Like! 1
  17. 14 hours ago, gogoblender said:

     

    Hi Guys!

    Did the two of you put together any guide on a Wood Elf build anywhere? We're able to play online now with MP, felt AWESOME...but within a few minutes, already there was that awesome moment when you had to make a skill choice... :eek: ... 

    Just hunting out some good old Sacred Gold WE builds

    :D

     

    gogo

    It's been a while since I did that Wood Elf magic user build, but I think I have the basics written down in my old nostalgic files. I'm strapped for time today, but will dig out my "Witchiepoo" magic user build this evening or tomorrow for you if you think it will be any use to you.

    • Like! 1
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