Phlaago

I never bothered with online play for sacred 2 but I'm running ice&blood + CM patch on win7 and I think it was worth it for me, I'm getting the occasional lockup though maybe once every hour but it really only frustrating if I forgot to save for a long time.. (like 30 minutes during which my inquisitor had found 3 uniques, 1 was an officers saber) What I can tell you is that you need to turn off compatibility mode for securom to properly verify the key, also I dont run the game in compatibility mode at all with ice & blood.. (2.43 I had to run in XP sp3 mode while s2gs.exe was left running as usual)

Remember that the last guardian does mostly poison damage so make sure you have 3 good relics of the antidote active. If you were a bit lazy on the defensive skills like my version 2.43 templeguardian its better to wait until you have mastered constitution at least. (He was getting hit for 3.7k crits, sometimes 2 crits after eachother and he had 3 relics + only around 1k phys armor.. not good with only 3.8k hp and same e-shield.. also level 65 at the time) After this experience I made a rule for myself for the future: gold engame (including the wasteland), I will make sure to have 1 defensive skill at character level and 1 more a bit on the way.

That german guide has some cool video links, I never realised the CA range would be so huge on ruthless mutilation from the spider.. when you use it on foot you have to be close enough to poke the enemy in the eye with your elbow.. even with a polearm. Also I wish I could replace the voicefiles of my inquisitor to the german ones.. he sounds positively evil and just as full of fanatic zeal as you would expect from an inquisitor. By comparison the english voice just sounds tired and full of contempt. Oh and for the OP: killing garColossus is much easier with a weapon socketed to do a type of damage he has no armor against. (or the obvious lifeleech polearm)

Well thats my point with the mods for purifying chastisement... their damagebonus is a regular 18+2%/CA level regardless of your hitpoint %.. their damage bonus is separate from the 'damage of enraged player' bonus provided by the PC buff also. you wouldnt need to take damage at all to have those mods kick in. its easiest to see the effect of this on a low level toon with mystic bronzemod and hallow gold mod.. ca level 1 will give +20% magic and +20% all damage at 100% hp. even easier if you dont have lore for AS yet as you can plainly see levin array damage jump up 40%.

Oh I agree wholeheartedly that Astute Supremacy is what truly sets the inquisitor apart from all others but I'm wondering if clustering maelstrom might actually be powerful enough even without AS Lore.. especially with a goldmodded PC buff running which will buff fully even at full hp. (as will either of the bronze mods to their specific damagetype).. if the comparison is made without gear then damage boost from just the hallow mod would equal or even surpass that of a high lore skill.. but it would lack execution speed bonus and probably have less crit bonus... if your gear already have +200% or more damage bonus then a pc buff running will probably be a pale comparison to a mastered lore skill, regardless of CA level and modding of PC. I can live with leveling a bit slower if it turns out the character becomes more in line with what I want (I dont think it will be slow anyway).. and since I play through the campaign each difficulty instead of mob hunting I'm looking for ways to improve where the caster inquisitor is weak even if it means lowering his peak performance. The changes I suggested would mean he would use nefarious netherworld as his main aspect for actually getting through the campaign with support from his lightly modded GI aspect (but no weapon skill unless dualwield is chosen) and Astute supremacy for fire support, and his playstyle would change completely when doing mob hunting for xp. It becomes more of a roleplaying build instead of a power build, I even plan to have Ker as his deity.

Great guide! I've been wanting to play a caster inquisitor for quite a while... my first toon was an inquisitor that I messed up horribly by eating tons of runes and pumping varios skills aimlessly. However I have a few ideas and some questions about some modifications to this build.. mainly to roleplay him as a cruel necromancer. (Not trying to hijack your thread Dobri =) exploit mod for reverse polarity: Does it work exactly as damage mitigation? (To clarify, has anyone tried to use it to mitigate life leech attacks... I know they "cant" be mitigated but there is always a first for everything) Also.. I would like to squeeze in GI Focus and concentration somehow. Because I really cant see myself playing an inquisitor without a mystic-eradicate-hallow modded purifying chastisement. (Unless I was playing a melee build in which case I would have purge as the bronzemod to help the lavastone socketed weapons out, or to kick up the damage from smolder mod on RM) The obvious choice would be to leave out toughness even though that can really come back to bite me in the hindquarter (I play softcore singleplayer btw). To stay in theme I was thinking I would also replace ethier dual wield or AS Lore (yes, it sounds crazy.) Since I have no kaldur's in my stash I might as well go for cool looks with a nasty looking spear.. (I do have a few gronkor's downfall with those nice big att/def bonuses and huge RPH in case I get the chance to throw a ruthless mutilation in the mix after the foes are nearly dead) So in conclusion what I would play would probably look like this: 1 NN Lore (Master 1st) 2 Armor lore (Master 4th) 3 AS Focus (Master 3rd, but 9 points first for fully modded CM) 4 Concentration 5 NN Focus 6 Constitution (Master 2nd) 7 GI Focus (9 points mod PC, then leave it for 5th mastery and mod FF and possibly MP or RM) 8 Combat Discipline 9 Ancient Magic (6th mastery) 10 Either AS Lore or Dual Wield (If AS Lore is taken, I leave AS Focus behind and pump lore for more damage instead) The fairly early mastery of the defensive skills is due to only having 2 of them. I left out when I plan to master concentration because I'm not sure if I do.. I plan on running PC+RP buffs but may tack on SR later if needed. Main reason for running purifying chastisement is to see how strong I can make inexorable subjugations magic damage.. since ca level 91 pc will give +400% magic damage and 200% to everything else (this will of course appear a lot less if I already have a lot of niobsmithed damagemods) This focus on magic damage will probably make me pick as lore instead of dualwield so I can make nice use of levin array too.

I was thinking the other day about making a Temple Guardian focusing most of his defense on the energy shield.. (just for fun.. and a 'my shield is bigger' idea =) but the stumbling block would be those pesky critters that have the ability to turn off our buffs. (The white griffin for example, or the furies in the quest series 'northern expedition' or whatever its called) So here is the question: Would a high spell resistance skill along with maybe an increased willpower be effective at stopping these enemies from removing your t-energy shield? Edit: To answer my own question: NO, I did some testing with my level 38 DG Temple Guardian character edited to replace tactics lore with spell resistance and sword weapons with warding energy lore.. also jacked up his willpower to twice the original value.. this had no effect at all, fury champions still remove t-energy shield 100% of the time they shoot off their ranged attack. im unsure if a character with niobium equipment could turn the tables on this.. would be fun to have a non removable t-energy shield.

Great guide.. I'm playing singleplayer softcore and its probably my 5th inquisitor that is going for the same skill setup you have. I have been busy with dow2 so I only recently started playing Sacred 2. I've still not finished a campaign because whenever I get to where my character build has its defining traits lined out already I start thinking about trying something different. A few things I wish to add about some of the Combat Arts *Purifying chastisement: I would switch out the silver and gold mods. Thus the mods become mystic, merciless, hallow.. This is because I have not noticed the increased crit % working on spells... I tried with inexorable subjugation on my melee Inquisitor but after about 80-100 hits with all the normal amount of damage and no crits I concluded it wasnt working. (Edit: disregard this... I was expecting something like melee style crits that do a real damage increase, not the 22-25% damage increase that seems to constitute a spell critical in Sacred 2) Also the Hallow mod adds to all damage the same way mystic adds to magic damage... so its double the fun =) (im still low level though... so that choice might bite me in the rear if I get to niob) *Dislodged spirit: Ill definately go for wildfire goldmod after hearing about it here, and the dot on torture seems decent.. but bronze mod will be spite for longer duration. (edit 2: tested this today.. damage from wildfire has a very low Area of Effect and is not improved by purifying chastisement.. also, gelidity and torture are quite weak mods.. torture adding just above 74% ice dot from the basic damage amount spread out across 5 hits and is independent on the duration of the soul being held.. at comparable ca levels and regen times you will be doing 7x-10x more damage with inexorable subjugation.. so you might as well combo them together if you want to spark the wildfire. also: the ca regen gold mod does sortof work in a halfassed way... it knocks off maybe 0.5s-1s of the regen of dislodged spirit once it hits.. this was tested at ca level 21 though.. and having it that high is not a good thing early on, at character level 28 to be specific.) *Soul reaver: this is the 3rd buff.. early game will be all PC and adding in RP in tougher situations. Silver mod I would pick source if its working properly.. (since its singleplayer I can always back up my savegame before picking the mod so I will know for sure by then =) *Zealous doppleganger: I'd mod it for attack/defense, gruesome inquisition (because someone mentioned it made them more aggressive, dont know if its true), +30% lifespan hp regen seems a bit of a waste to me since it will die on its own when the timer runs out. I started this in silver mode.. who cares about bronze anyway. I think I started with armor lore and then NN lore, AS focus, NN focus, concentration and GI focus at low levels (by level 18 or so).. early game you wont even need AS lore for leveling with CM+LA combo. If you have some runes socketed in your gear you can even turn off PC if you are only facing kobolds to speed up the CA regen. NN lore was picked fairly early because its the bosskiller tree and thats where I want to gain modpoints faster. as for stats I'm slapping some in vitality too just so I dont lose my survival bonus (again) too easy to unexpected things =) (happened to me at level 10 in the cave with the pirates and a cannon.. got a nice doublehit against me for 2x207) CA regen times will be very high at first (1 rune Combat Arts at ca level 5-6 with dual buffs land me in the 14-20s range at level 18.. hence only 1 buff used or none at all) should be noted that I have not smithed any regen improvement gear. Which means you will run around to gather a big horde and then pop a mentorpot and unload your combo and move on =) until level 30 or so you will be able to use melee Combat Arts as well to finish off targets without worrying about incoming damage too much.