CM Patch 1.60 Highlights: Spell and Skill Fixes

[Flix 5,116]

CM 1.60 - Player Spell and Skill Fixes

This is the juicy stuff, the good stuff that players report and pray to get fixed.  So I'm giving this whole section of the CM 1.60 changelog a proper breakdown.

================================

Seraphim

Seraphim's Soul Hammer now hits twice while Dual Wielding (fixed incorrect weapon animations both on foot and while mounted on the Tiger).  The incorrect mounted animation was a vanilla game bug.  The incorrect animation on foot was a typo (?) introduced in a previous version of the CM Patch.  Both are now fixed.  A dual-wielding Seraphim hits with both weapons when using Soul Hammer, always.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Shadow Warrior

Shadow Warrior now uses correct animations when using Demonic Blow with ranged weapons while mounted on the Hellhound.  How was this never caught until now?  Maybe not a lot of mounted, ranged, Shadow Warriors out there.  The animations were scripted properly, but the animation files themselves were missing!  I had to rename some basic ranged attack animations to repurpose them for use with Demonic Blow.

<--- Bugged no more!

Shadow Warrior's Reflective Emanation has a "spikeshield" VFX it applies to minions when the gold mod "Idol" is taken -- this VFX no longer causes a drop in frame rate.  This adds a big improvement to performance when lots of minions are active.  This might have been my first bug report, many moons ago as a rookie adventurer in Ancaria.  Now I get the satisfaction of closing the ticket.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Inquisitor

Inquisitor's Callous Execution no longer uses slow and clunky 2h animations when mounted on the Spider (dual wielding animation is unchanged).  In a previous CM Patch, as a side-effect of making Callous Execution hit twice when dual-wielding on the Spider, the 2h animations became excrutiatingly slow.  So now I've reverted all animations to vanilla EXCEPT dual-wielding, which will keep its new double-hit animation.

Inexorable Subjugation now displays missing "Minion Lifetime" text in its tooltip.  And, even better...

Inexorable Subjugation no longer causes the Inquisitor to be petrified for the duration.  Users reported that before Ice and Blood, the Inquisitor could launch Inexorable Subjugation and then perform other actions while the spell continued. After Ice and Blood, the Inquisitor became paralyzed along with the enemy, making the spell useless in Combos, and indeed most other scenarios. This bug is now fixed.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Dragon Mage

The Dragon Mage can now remove combat arts from combos (only applies to new characters created after installing the patch).  For years this was wrongly thought to be a hard-coded problem. The fix was astonishingly simple.  The spells in the Dragon Mage's creatures.txt entry need to be reordered.  Voila.

Dragon Mage's Protector gets improved AI. Will now use the special moves Ascaron gave him: Slowing Hard Hit and Heal Self. Protector had AI that prevented him from using spells. That is now fixed.

Dragon Mage now has access to buff slots and potion slots while shape-shifted.  This gives a whole new tactical element to shapeshifting builds, with Alchemy Trophies and Minions now being part of the equation.  You may have read about the easy glitch you can use to retain your shape-shifted potion bar HERE, but now this change is baked right in.

Dragon Mage's Dragon Berserk form is rebalanced. Power now scales better into higher difficulties without being overpowered at low levels. Because he can now use buffs while shifted, a rebalance was in order. Berserk is no longer the boss-shredder of CM 1.40 right out of the box, but he can be built up to be very powerful and tough nonetheless.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Temple Guardian

Temple Guardian's Combat Alert no longer causes a drop in frame rate.  Formerly the buff most brutally punishing on FPS, Combat Alert is now adjusted so that performance no longer suffers.

---------------------------------------------------------------

General

Using weapon-based combat arts in melee should no longer make the character run around in circles trying to reach a target that's already in range.  This was done by increasing the "fight distance" so that the character just launches his/her attack instead of trying to needlessly reposition.

Characters can now use buffs while mounted on horseback.  Horses got a raw deal in Sacred 2.  Most people who wanted mounted combat ignored them in favor of the special mounts, naturally.  Now Horses will be a more viable choice. The player can use any of their buffs while mounted.

Buff FX now apply themselves to allies and minions immediately after casting/summoning. This is not just a cosmetic improvement. This should also solve the following problem:

Buffs that boost party member stats (like Battle Stance) should no longer reapply their bonuses to allies over and over after teleporting or changing zones.  And related to that...

Summoned creatures no longer get extraneous buff VFX (orange lightning aura, shield aura). These buffs were meant to indicate run speed and attack value boosts, but since all minions already have these properties right from the start, these FX were just confusing players who had no clue why they would suddenly appear when changing zones.  They were visual clutter, not to mention causing a big hit to performance if several minions were active.  For these reasons, these FX are now removed.

All General Skills are now available to every character.  This is to promote these skills which are under-utilized in character builds.  The breakdown of the new skills is as follows:
Alchemy for Temple Guardian
Bargaining for Shadow Warrior
Enhanced Perception for Inquisitor
Blacksmith for Seraphim, High Elf, Dryad, Dragon Mage

[Saraphima 34]

I like this!! Any updates on the frame skip of inquisitor when you hold down shift? Any other cool things on the summoned creatures? I'm thinking like for dragon mage of making the little dragon being able to attack like the monkey demon does for the high elf. I think champ version can do more which would be really neat if it can be done.

[Dragon Brother 619]

Looking good Flix, plenty of new improvements it seems. 

[Flix 5,116]

9 hours ago, Saraphima said:

I like this!! Any updates on the frame skip of inquisitor when you hold down shift? Any other cool things on the summoned creatures? I'm thinking like for dragon mage of making the little dragon being able to attack like the monkey demon does for the high elf. I think champ version can do more which would be really neat if it can be done.

 

The Inquisitor animation isn't actually skipping, the way other animations have in the past.  I'll quote Dmitriy on this one:

"...animation blending time is set to 0. Unfixable by the way - the application method itself is faulty. They've totally dropped the ball with the Inquisitor robe implementation: first, they've tried them skinned, failed and then cooked up the half-assed solution of setting the blending time to 0 for the inquisitor - to avoid mesh clipping. Which still happens - the right elbow during running clips through at a certain frame."

 

I transformed the Dragon Familiar into a minion that can attack in the Enhanced Spells mod.  He will be revised in an update of that mod soon.

[gogoblender 3,068]

9 hours ago, Flix said:

CM 1.60 - Player Spell and Skill Fixes

This is the juicy stuff, the good stuff that players report and pray to get fixed.  So I'm giving this whole section of the CM 1.60 changelog a proper breakdown.

================================

Seraphim

Seraphim's Soul Hammer now hits twice while Dual Wielding (fixed incorrect weapon animations both on foot and while mounted on the Tiger).  The incorrect mounted animation was a vanilla game bug.  The incorrect animation on foot was a typo (?) introduced in a previous version of the CM Patch.  Both are now fixed.  A dual-wielding Seraphim hits with both weapons when using Soul Hammer, always.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Shadow Warrior

Shadow Warrior now uses correct animations when using Demonic Blow with ranged weapons while mounted on the Hellhound.  How was this never caught until now?  Maybe not a lot of mounted, ranged, Shadow Warriors out there.  The animations were scripted properly, but the animation files themselves were missing!  I had to rename some basic ranged attack animations to repurpose them for use with Demonic Blow.

<--- Bugged no more!

Shadow Warrior's Reflective Emanation no longer applies the "spikeshield" VFX on minions when the gold mod "Idol" is taken (big improvement to framerate).  This might have been my first bug report, many moons ago as a rookie adventurer in Ancaria.  Now I get the satisfaction of closing the ticket.  The FPS-pummeling spikeshield aura is removed on minions. They will still get the reflective benefits as usual.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Inquisitor

Inquisitor's Callous Execution no longer uses slow and clunky 2h animations when mounted on the Spider (dual wielding animation is unchanged).  In a previous CM Patch, as a side-effect of making Callous Execution hit twice when dual-wielding on the Spider, the 2h animations became excrutiatingly slow.  So now I've reverted all animations to vanilla EXCEPT dual-wielding, which will keep its new double-hit animation.

Inexorable Subjugation now displays missing "Minion Lifetime" text in its tooltip.  And, even better...

Inexorable Subjugation no longer causes the Inquisitor to be petrified for the duration.  Users reported that before Ice and Blood, the Inquisitor could launch Inexorable Subjugation and then perform other actions while the spell continued. After Ice and Blood, the Inquisitor became paralyzed along with the enemy, making the spell useless in Combos, and indeed most other scenarios. This bug is now fixed.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Dragon Mage

The Dragon Mage can now remove combat arts from combos (only applies to new characters created after installing the patch).  For years this was wrongly thought to be a hard-coded problem. The fix was astonishingly simple.  The spells in the Dragon Mage's creatures.txt entry need to be reordered.  Voila.

Dragon Mage's Protector gets improved AI. Will now use the special moves Ascaron gave him: Slowing Hard Hit and Heal Self. Protector had AI that prevented him from using spells. That is now fixed.

Dragon Mage now has access to buff slots and potion slots while shape-shifted.  This gives a whole new tactical element to shapeshifting builds, with Alchemy Trophies and Minions now being part of the equation.  You may have read about the easy glitch you can use to retain your shape-shifted potion bar HERE, but now this change is baked right in.

Dragon Mage's Dragon Berserk form is rebalanced. Power now scales better into higher difficulties without being overpowered at low levels. Because he can now use buffs while shifted, a rebalance was in order. Berserk is no longer the boss-shredder of CM 1.40 right out of the box, but he can be built up to be very powerful and tough nonetheless.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Temple Guardian

Temple Guardian's Combat Alert gets a new, less performance-intensive buff FX.  Formerly the buff most brutally punishing on FPS, Combat Alert now has its FX switched to a new performance-friendly design, that incidentally, also looks much more appropriate for the flavor of the spell itself.

---------------------------------------------------------------

General

Using weapon-based combat arts in melee should no longer make the character run around in circles trying to reach a target that's already in range.  This was done by increasing the "fight distance" so that the character just launches his/her attack instead of trying to needlessly reposition.

Weapon-based combat arts now apply their base attack value bonus and display it on the character sheet.  For years, players have wondered why the boosted attack value wasn't showing up on the character sheet.  Surprise!  This property wasn't even working at all.  Now it does.  Note that you will only see the boosted attack value on the character sheet at the moment the CA is executed.

Characters can now use buffs while mounted on horseback.  Horses got a raw deal in Sacred 2.  Most people who wanted mounted combat ignored them in favor of the special mounts, naturally.  Now Horses will be a more viable choice. The player can use any of their buffs while mounted.

Buff FX now apply themselves to allies and minions immediately after casting/summoning. This is not just a cosmetic improvement. This should also solve the following problem:

Buffs that boost party member stats (like Battle Stance) should no longer reapply their bonuses to allies over and over after teleporting or changing zones.  And related to that...

Summoned creatures no longer get extraneous buff VFX (orange lightning aura, shield aura). These buffs were meant to indicate run speed and attack value boosts, but since all minions already have these properties right from the start, these FX were just confusing players who had no clue why they would suddenly appear when changing zones.  They were visual clutter, not to mention causing a big hit to performance if several minions were active.  For these reasons, these FX are now removed.

All General Skills are now available to every character.  This is to promote these skills which are under-utilized in character builds.  The breakdown of the new skills is as follows:
Alchemy for Temple Guardian
Bargaining for Shadow Warrior
Enhanced Perception for Inquisitor
Blacksmith for Seraphim, High Elf, Dryad, Dragon Mage

A delicious read this morning on the way to work.  Love the fact we dont have to re apply buffs like battle stance over and over.  That was a pain when partying.  We needed those buffs against dragons when we were team raiding, and we've had malfortunes happen to members

 

gogo

[Saraphima 34]

On ‎9‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 7:36 AM, Flix said:

 

The Inquisitor animation isn't actually skipping, the way other animations have in the past.  I'll quote Dmitriy on this one:

"...animation blending time is set to 0. Unfixable by the way - the application method itself is faulty. They've totally dropped the ball with the Inquisitor robe implementation: first, they've tried them skinned, failed and then cooked up the half-assed solution of setting the blending time to 0 for the inquisitor - to avoid mesh clipping. Which still happens - the right elbow during running clips through at a certain frame."

 

I transformed the Dragon Familiar into a minion that can attack in the Enhanced Spells mod.  He will be revised in an update of that mod soon.

Sweet! Please keep him the normal size but make him a champion. Fire balls and meteors please. If possible maybe the meteors comes and upgrade? Just spitting out some ideas.

[Flix 5,116]

I've edited the lead post above.  The FX of Combat Alert and Reflective Emanation (on minions) are now restored to their vanilla designs.  Dmitriy ran a fix on the game's renderer that allowed us to use these FX without having a drop in FPS.  Purists rejoice, the vanilla FX are back in use, and no longer cause performance to suffer!  In fact all buffs that were previously causing FPS drops should now play much smoother.

 

[Saraphima 34]

Not sure if this is in the same area or anything but do any of you stutter for a second when the harbinger of death  summon? Not sure if it's the effect or it loading the model, textures, and ai in the game. It would be great if you could clear it up.

[Saraphima 34]

little bump. Any luck?

[Flix 5,116]

It's the effect that causes (or caused) it.  Haven't tested to see if it's better now.

[Saraphima 34]

Oh sweet! I would be very happy if that's what it is and that it's fixed.

[Flix 5,116]

Yeah, just tested.  It's definitely the effect.  I'm not sure it's improved any with the beta patch.  It still drops me from 60 to 40 fps for that second that the effect is onscreen.  Without the effect, there's no framerate drop.  We could just replace the effect, if nothing else.

[Flix 5,116]

2 hours ago, Saraphima said:

Oh sweet! I would be very happy if that's what it is and that it's fixed.

Try going to the Cursed Forest under 1.60, and tell me if the FX causes the same stutter for you as before.

[Saraphima 34]

I like the effect a lot. I'm going to wait until the patch is finished. The last patch messed up my save and lost some set items for some reason  Still providing ideas and feedback though  

[Flix 5,116]

Just an update on a "fix" that we reversed during final testing:

Quote

Weapon-based combat arts now apply their base attack value bonus and display it on the character sheet.  For years, players have wondered why the boosted attack value wasn't showing up on the character sheet.  Surprise!  This property wasn't even working at all.  Now it does.  Note that you will only see the boosted attack value on the character sheet at the moment the CA is executed.

As it turns out, conventional wisdom was correct, and this attack bonus really was working all along.  Our "fix" did indeed cause the bonus to display on the character sheet, but caused all kinds of other problematic side-effects.  So, this change was reversed.  Rest assured all weapon based CA's really do give a nice hefty attack value bonus, even if the character sheet doesn't show it.  That being said, there are some interface changes that will make that part of the UI more understandable and less confusing.  I'm hoping dimitrius154 will be posting about it soon.

[dimitrius154 612]

                                                                                                  The Character Screen has been reorganized.

1) Four secondary combat values - "Attack", "Defence", "Spell Intensity" and "Spell Resistance" are displayed at all times.

2) "Combat Art" frame has been moved upwards and is displayed below "Weapons" frame.

3) For non-damaging CA's the "Combat Art" frame no longer displays the 0 - 0 value.

4) Misleading elements have been removed from "Combat Art" frame's tooltip window.

 

These changes provide a streamlined interface with accurate information. Below are the screenshots of the new interface outlook:

 

If a weapon-based CA is selected: 

 

If a spell-based CA is selected: 

 

 

If a non-damaging CA is selected: 

 

[Flix 5,116]

And also, the Weapons tooltip is unchanged. 

 

 

This new interface is more streamlined and intuitive, with less misleading stuff.  It may take a few sessions to get used to it, but I think players will appreciate it much more.

[siddham 19]

I decided to reinstall and start playing Sacred 2 again after a long break

I always play Dragon Mage for some reason and I am pleased to see that the Dragon Mage can now take Blacksmithing

I think I notice a different spell effect for Energy Blaze; not the casting effect, the after effect on NPCs affected by the spell

But not sure about that

Thank you to all who have participated in creating the Community Patch and the new 1.60 update

[Lony 1]

Thank you for hard work , a lot of improvement.

Any plan to add more combat art and modification for each aspect, like 1 or 2 more combat art and 2 more modification  for a total of 5 customization per rune ?

I feel like game is a little short of it and need more.

[Androdion 875]

I'm not sure that's even possible due to coding limitations.

[Flix 5,116]

On 11/10/2017 at 4:42 AM, siddham said:

I decided to reinstall and start playing Sacred 2 again after a long break

I always play Dragon Mage for some reason and I am pleased to see that the Dragon Mage can now take Blacksmithing

I think I notice a different spell effect for Energy Blaze; not the casting effect, the after effect on NPCs affected by the spell

But not sure about that

Thank you to all who have participated in creating the Community Patch and the new 1.60 update

Yes, Damage over Time was supposed to have its own VFX but it never triggered until now.  All kinds of missing FX have been restored.

[dimitrius154 612]

On ‎28‎.‎11‎.‎2017 at 5:08 AM, Lony said:

for a total of 5 customization per rune ?

Not possible. It's 3 as of now, or it could be 6, but no other options.

[Lony 1]

14 minutes ago, dimitrius154 said:

Not possible. It's 3 as of now, or it could be 6, but no other options.

Oooops my bad I mean 2 extra  modifier for skill for a total of 8 ( +1 in each line)  Also can we enjoy more rune skill 5 extra for  10 total different skill by aspect ?

I feel like sacred 1 had more skill in my memory

[dimitrius154 612]

Modifier Name IDs are directly defined in the code, and that definition piece is static. So no more modifers per CA.

And no, I can clearly state, that Sacred 1 CA system was more streamlined, there were no modifications. Some solutions were better, some - worse.

[Flix 5,116]

Here are some more updates in this area of the game, as well as some elucidation as to one of the changes previously mentioned.

Viperish Disease and Eternal Fire reworked and rebalanced to scale with skills and attributes and maintain killing power without being exploitable.  Ancient Magic, Intelligence, etc. will now have some useful effects on them.  I've also slightly increased the range, duration, and chance to spread from the huge nerf that previous CM Patches introduced.  I can't promise it's not 100% exploit-proof, but I think this is as balanced as I could make them.  You can also see below a fix to the Viperish Disease fx (compare to bugged vanilla appearance that looked like overlapping rectangles).

      

Fire Demon and Nether Allegiance have better banishment FX.  Instead of bloody gore and dry bones, respectively, they have fiery sparks and spectral clouds upon un-summoning.

   

Frenized Rampage has improved animations (and more projectiles) when using ranged weapons.  In vanilla, this CA uses the generic attack animation and adds 1 extra projectile.  Now, Frenzied Rampage uses unique animations with ranged weapons (bows, energy weapons, and throwing weapons), and produces 3-5 projectiles per cast.

Scything Sweep should no longer be able to kill allies when gold mod “Hurl” is taken.  In vanilla this mod could kill quest escorts and even special mounts.  Now it is (mostly) safe from causing friendly fire.

Destroyers have improved explosion accuracy (will no longer prematurely self-destruct).  Basically they would sometimes detect that they were "touching" an enemy before they were really within explosion range. That's now fixed.

 

Now to expand on a change I mentioned previously: "Buff FX now apply themselves to allies and minions immediately after casting/summoning."  This change had unexpected (and happy) side-effects that took a little while for me to notice and document:

DOT Damage FX Now Work.  You've seen fire and poison DOT, because they're used for Burn and Poison secondary damage effects.  However, Magic, Ice, and even Physical DOT were supposed to have their own FX that were bugged and invisible until now. 

      

Temporary bonuses now have FX.  These now display properly.  They are "generic" FX that aren't tied to the spell, but rather to the bonus.  Some examples would be: 

   Jolting Touch: Here you can see the FX from the mods "Payback" (spikes) and "Shelter" (shields).

   Augmenting Guidon.  Attack boost (crossed swords), defense boost (shields), and speed boost (orange lightning).

   Scything Sweep:  Note the energy "charge" built up on the SW's hand. This comes from the "Rage" mod.

These FX would not apply to temp and permanent buffs which have their own buff FX.  These would still appear as normal.