Little Faith

I think you guys are a bit misinformed on Deathly Spears. Deathly Spears is a spell, not a weapon attack. It doesn't carry weapon procs and its damage is in no way based on your weapon. As far as I remember the only thing your weapon choice influences is the speed of the initial attack animation that doesn't really matter all that much on a spell like Deathly Spears as long as its not horrendously slow.

I have never seen a ring or amulet with plain elemental damage on it, only percentage bonuses. Plain physical damage can occur on both blue and yellow quality rings. (I don't know about amulets, perhaps there is an unique one that has it).

Bit of an update. I cleaned out my Graphics card as suggested and gave it a new coat of thermal paste and now it doesn't overheat quite as much, but it still gets sort of hot when playing Sacred 2. Were talking temps above 80, sometimes above 90. It seems mainly to be a problem when going underground for some reason.

Why do manufacturers insist on doing this? Couldn't they at least make it easy to pull off the outermost covering without having to disassemble everything?

So it's a bit of a miracle I haven't fried the poor thing yet?

Running Sacred 2 for short 5 minute Bargaining run brings my temperature up to 100 degrees as well.

Well, running the stress test at 1280x720 resolution with no anti-aliasing for 1 and a half minutes gets my GPU to 100 degrees Celsius. Is that normal/healthy? ..Granted it's an old'ish GTX 570

I'm somewhat convinced this might be a heat issue. What kind of temperatures should a GPU be at when running at a relatively light load (watching Youtube videos, playing mid 90's games)? My GPU is at 48 degrees c just when browsing the interwebs.

It's time for me to come seeking help for a technical problem. Recently Sacred 2 Gold (the GOG version) has been acting up. It runs flawlessly for the first few minutes but then it starts to really chug. Like massive constant framedrops to the point the game is barely playable if I run it for more than half an hour. (It doesn't crash, however). I have tried all the tricks mentioned in the Steamcommunity guide as well as running Memory Cleaner, and while I can detect a little improvement in the initial menu load screens it does nothing for the framedrop problem. Given that you cannot achieve a whole lot in Sacred 2 in a few minutes (with the travel distances and all that) this is seriously putting a damper on things.

Then replace the C:\Program Files(x86)\ part with whatever drive and directory you have Steam installed on.

SW's can wield the two-handed staff-shaped energy weapons but not the one-handed pistol-shaped ones. Why? I dunno.

Well, the unspent points didn't go away did they? It's ages since I've played unmodded Diablo 2 but as far as I remember If, say, you just reached level 30 as a Sorceress you cannot just dump all your points into Frozen Orb. You can put your first point in at level 30, the next one at 31 and so forth. Actually it's a bit like Sacred now you think about it.

Were you trying to put them in a skill that had too high level for you? You can only put points in the topmost row at first. The second row opens up at level 6, the third one at 12 and so forth until the last row at level 30. You quite often save up skill points if your initial skill choices are uninteresting for your build, only useful as pre-reqs or one point wonders.

That must be Diablo 3 you're talking about because I'm positively sure you don't lose unassigned points in the first two.

Yes, you can keep them for later, just like skill points and attribute points. You just have to live with the annoying flashing plus sign for a while.

If you look at the skills tab you'll notice that skills are divided into categories. Combat art skills (various colours), offensive skills (red), defensive skills (yellow) and general skills (green). Furthermore within these categories the skills are ordered into two columns (left and right). The leftmost columns are primary skill picks. You can always pick those (granted you have a new skill slot unlocked). The rightmost column are secondary skill picks and can only be picked once you five points invested into it's skill category. Example: The Dryad cannot pick Armor Lore right away and needs to put five points into either Shield Lore, Combat Reflexes or Spell Resistance (or a combination hereof). Or the High Elf cannot pick Damage Lore right away and needs to invest five points into either Tactics Lore, Sword Weapons or Magic Staffs if she wants access to Damage Lore. But if the skill simply isn't there on the skills tab chances are that the character doesn't have access to it at all. Not all characters have access to all skills. Some of it makes sense. You have no use for Warding Energy Lore if you don't have a Warding Energy combat art. Thus this skill is only available to the Temple Guardian and the Seraphim. Conversely the Temple Guardian can't use shields or two-handed weapon due to him only having one arm so he can't pick Pole Weapons or Shield Lore either. But sometimes a given character simply cannot learn a specific skill for no particular reason. Shadow Warriors can regretfully never become Bargainers. Dryads can never become smiths (as that would be a male-exclusive profession within their society). Temple Guardians cannot become Alchemists. Neither the Dryad nor the High Elf can learn the Toughness skills as they are supposed to be light offensive classes. Both the Ice and Blood expansion as well as the Community Patch gives access to a couple of skills for more characters. The skills in question is Magic Staffs and Ancient Magic. In the original game Both the Seraphim and the Temple Guardian lacked access to Ancient Magic despite both having caster focused trees, but the Shadow Warrior who is mainly a warrior has access. Ice and blood gives Ancient Magic to the Seraphim. The Community Patch gives it to the Temple Guardian. Originally Magic Staffs was only available for the High Elf and the Inquisitor, both characters who for different reasons were very unlikely to ever pick the skill. Ice and Blood changed the underused Magic staffs skills to make you fire staff bolts from your staff if you did a normal attack with them while having the Magic Staffs skill and gave the skill to all characters but the Shadow Warrior and the Temple Guardian.

Is it near future like "spending Christmas and New Year's back with the old folks" or "I'm moving out and it might be a while before I get internet set up"?

Morbid curiostiy, but how do the Magic Staves shot and the Arm Cannon shot interact? Which takes precedence?

Daemons do not have a unique weapon type for themselves. They do, however, do exceptionally well with following weapon types when using normal attacks: Claw-like blades: She seems to do a very fast double-attack with them. Two-handed swords: Very fast attack animations with a weapon-type that is otherwise slow and clumsy. Crossbows: This might be a beneficial bug, but when in Soaring Daemon form she has an extremely fast fire rate with crossbows. She can still not learn the Ranged Weapons skill though.

And for the two non-technical questions: 2) No, The Sacred 2 BFG is a ranged weapon through an through. Weapon combat arts used with a BFG will behave as with any other ranged weapon. The BFG is governed by the Ranged Weapons sklill and comes with a bonus to said skill that scales with the BFG's level. Therefore, if you plan on using BFG's you should get a single point in Ranged Weapons. Anyway BFG's are very strong. 3) Combos serve a different purpose in Sacred 2 than they did back in Sacred 1. Where the Sacred 1 combos were meant as big ultimate attacks to be used somewhat sparingly Sacred 2 combos is simply a means to execute different combat arts in rapid succession. This is particularly useful for a character like the Inquisitor whose combat arts are designed to synergize with each other (Such as a Clustering Maelstrom immediately followed by either a Ruthless Mutilation or a Levin Array). Combos are governed by the skill Combat Discipline. If you have no points in Combat Discipline you can only put two Combat Arts into a combo. With points in Combat Discipline that number increased to three and if you take Combat Discipline to mastery level (75 points) you can put a whole four different combat arts into one combo (there is seldom any need for that though). Another thing to keep in mind. It is possible to make a combo with only one combat art in it. This doesn't seem all that useful at first, but it will still get bonuses from Combat Discipline.

Nah, just have the big boss meanie reside in the fortress of "Silverdeep".

I'll rephrase: This is suit logic at work. You are thinking as a gamer/fan/developer, not a marketroid/moneyman. Think of it from the suits at Deep Silver's viewpoint: 1. You just acquired the Sacred franchise. If you don't do something with it soonish chances are that people are going to forget/lose interest. I'm not talking about us who hang around on a Sacred fansite, I'm talking about the general gaming audience here. Sacred were never a huge "household brand". If they just sit on it for years chances are the brand recognition has all but disappeared (save for for a few fansites like this one), and then the franchise is not worth the acquisition, even if it was gotten cheap at a "fire sale". 2. Assembling an entirely new team to make a Sacred game costs money and represents a rather big risk. Again the Sacred brand might have some brand recognition and fan loyalty behind it, but it's not a clear winner. 3. It just happens they have a team already working on an ARPG. Given time and money have already been spent on that project you might as well rebrand it and have it be the new Sacred sequel. Clear balance-sheet thinking here. Also having two ARPG's out at the same time might mean your products are competing with each other. Not something you want to happen as a publisher.

I am convinced that Sacred 3's biggest problem is that it's called Sacred 3. I mean, what probably happened was that Keen Games was developing what is probably their most ambitious project to date, an entirely new ARPG with a heavy emphasis on the "A"-part as well as co-op multiplayer. Then Deep Silver acquires the Sacred franchise and goes: "Hey, one of our studios is already developing an ARPG. If we get them to shoehorn in a Seraphim somehow we have that franchise sorted." Then Keen Games new game get to have the Sacred brand hanging like a millstone around it's neck, while the Sacred fandom go "What the hell happened to our game?" Typical suit logic at work here. I actually feel more sorry for Keen Games than I do for us. Well, I'm still bummed that Ascaron wen't bust, but that's a slightly different issue.

Regarding Deathly Spears, you say you didn't change anything. While it's certainly a damn fine CA in the end-game as is, I think it could use some improvement. First and foremost: The gold modifier Jab is pretty much required. Without it the CA is merely a toy. If it is possible to bake the extra pulses into the CA by default, that's what I would do. This would also free up the gold mod choice making it an interesting decision. Another problem with the skill is that it is very weak at lower levels. Perhaps doing something about the scaling of the extra pulses per level could make this CA come into it's own sooner. It's endgame potential should probably remain mostly unchanged though. This, of course, all assumes the CA isn't hardcoded too badly in that regard.

You seem to have it out for teleport skills. Any reasons why? Also, good call on the Cabbalistic Voodoo aspect. Twisted Torment really needed a function beyond shrunken head farming. I assume it does meaningful damage now as well. And if you leave Ancient Bark as is, are you doing anything about it's gfx?