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Ah yes, dual wield does have some associated shenanigans, as both of you explained so well. There's another interesting mechanic that happens post CM 1.60, and by extension on PFP as well, and it has to do with the new behaviour of mage staves. If you dual wield a staff with any other melee weapon, and you use the staff as your main weapon, the attack will actually be... ranged! Since staves were changed to shoot projectiles even without its relevant weapon mastery, but still count as melee weapons, you can dual wield one with any other melee weapon. This can result in some really wild results if you run with a Malevolent Champion SW and modify Frenzied Rampage twice for double hits. Want to see something fun? Try it, it's a blast. One-handed staves don't have %LL, but if your secondary weapon does, you can then throw a barrage of projectiles and each will proc it. RpH gets pretty crazy as well, so you can get your CA's cooldown really high and it'll reset very easily. As for DoT builds, they do seem to be more effective with LMB attacks if even multi-element CAs can only proc one effect per hit. It's probably possible to theorycraft a build that relies more on CAs as support instead of using them as a constant means to attack, in order to maximise DoTs. I remember that there was this crazy Spectral Hand build back then with Damage Lore maxed out, and the guy who ran it used to farm the Guardians with it. It looked like it was a lot of fun, there's probably still its forum post around here somewhere.

Halloween -> friday the 13th gogo

Then the behavior has been changed in CM Patch, as the amount of elemental damage does matter for the power of the DoT in PFP. And yes, your observations regarding CAs are correct. When dual-wielding, it only ever uses the main weapon. The off-hand is purely a stat stick for everything other than left click normal attacks. This is the reason why I ran an Inquisitor build focused on just left clicks with Damage Lore, so that both hands can apply DoTs (burn and poison). In the PFP, the off-hand weapon is considered individually for left click attacks and inflicts a DoT based on the actual damage you deal with it, not the total of both. And another yes, Damage Lore will help counteract the DoT duration reduction the enemies get from Willpower at higher levels. Very noticeable on bosses, who without Damage Lore, by late Niobium usually only take one tick of DoT damage before it expiring, due to their excessive Willpower.

Horror Movies -> Halloween

Okay, I conducted a few tests with a dual-wielding Seraphim. Applying DoTs while dual-wielding works differently when using a standard left click attack and when using a CA. When using standard (default) attacks, both weapons can apply a secondary damage effect and will consequently inflict DoTs. It is possible to inflict a poison-DoT with one weapon and a fire-DoT with the other weapon in a single attack. Interestingly, it does not seem to matter how much damage the off-hand weapon deals. The amount of both DoT-types (main and off-hand) seems to be based on the total damage inflicted and not on the actual damage of the specific weapon hit. This behaviour is in line with the mechanic described in the wiki: For all damage calculation only the main hand weapon damage seems to used. When calculating the %-chances to inflict the secondary damage effects (which is done based on the amount of damage inflicted per element) the damage differences between main-hand and off-hand weapons are considered. Example: When using a main-hand weapon with 1000 poison-dmg and an off-hand 'stat-stick' with only 200 fire-dmg, the chance to inflict a fire-DoT is much smaller than inflicting a poison-DoT. However once the DoT is triggered, both DoTs inflict the same amount of damage per tick. Sadly, this is not the case when using CAs. When using Soul Hammer only the effect of the main hand weapon is used, even if two hits are applied to the target. If using CAs (which will be the case most of the time) it is not necessary to use two weapons with different elements, instead it would be better to use one weapon that can inflict two elements (fire/poison). This way it is possible to inflict both types of DoT without switching weapons, even though it's not possible to inflict both DoT-effects in one single CA-attack. When using multi-hit attacks (I just tested Pelting Strikes) the same behaviour is observable. Even though the animation suggests, that you hit multiple times with both weapons, this is not the case. You just use the main hand weapon and can only inflict DoTs of this weapon. I haven't tested the behaviour of other CAs.

Thrilling -> horror movies well ...some kinds gogo

Suspense -> Thrilling

Happy seeing you back Hordolur, may Ancaria's evil worst melt under yer blade or spell! gogo

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand...seems like everythings still working! we just got back, and hitting work , but finishing tonight at 4 pm we can then look at what you'd like to do re your idea of

Alfred Hitchcock -> suspense gogo

notorious -> Alfred Hitchcock

Looking forward to your results, and thanks a lot for the explanation!

As a long, long, long time player of Sacred 2, and also as a recently returned one to the game, this thing right here is pretty much amazing! It's a visual mod that just makes the game a lot fresher and more eye friendly than it ever was.

Caligula -> Notorious

Sacred 2 Gold together with the CM-patch is perfectly playable. You don't need any other mods or patches. I am playing Sacred 2 Gold with the CM-patch for months now, and am still perfectly happy with it. That said, there are some very interesting mods, that offer a different gameplay and quite a lot of changes. But there is no need to get them right at the start. There is one thing, that I do recommend though - IF you don't mind a form of cheating: The character editor, that you can download here from Darkmatters.org. Sacred 2s mechanics are a bit intransparent from time to time, and if you aren't familiar with them you can easily ruin your character build. Being able to undo some of the mistakes (or just being able to experiment a bit) might spare you a lot of frustration.

Hello, It has been some time since I last played.... I installed Sacred 2 Gold from Steam, and installed the 1.60 Community Patch what other mods or patches do I need or can I just play with that?

As I understand it, two things are needed for delivering high damage-over-time: 1. Consistently applying fire / poison DoTs. A high conversion rate will help with this. 2. Delivering heavy hits - as much damage as possible with the DoT-proccing hit. The skill 'Damage Lore' will also greatly increase the chance of inflicting fire/poison-DoTs. (It will also increase the chance to apply magic & ice secondary effects, but these do not deal any damage.) The mastery bonus of the Damage Lore-Skill will NOT increase the duration of poison and burn DoTs over the hard-cap of 5 seconds. My observations indicate, that the bonus might counteract enemy resistances, which may reduce the duration of DoTs below 5 seconds. The last thing is a kind of speculation on my side. I cannot say this for sure. About your question: I am sorry to say that I did not test dual wielding weapons of different elements yet. I just testet multi-hit attacks. If both hits of a dual-wield attack are capable of applying DoTs, then it would be better to use weapons with different elements and a high conversion rate on each one. This would result in consistently applying two different DoTs simultaneously, which could be really powerful. Very interesting. I will test dual wielding and report my findings.

So in short, if you're playing with a DoT build, let's say a dual-wielder with Fire/Poison weapons and maxed out Damage Lore, is it better to maximise damage conversion on each weapon or is it irrelevant damage wise for applying DoTs? Sorry for the inane question, but my brain isn't collaborating today.

Here are the results of my tests: I duplicated two weapons of roughly the same damage: 1st weapon - pure physical damage a) with low-level converter (29,2% converted to poison-damage) b) with higher-level converter (65,5% converted to poison-damage) 2nd weapon - with two damage types (70% physical - 30% fire damage) a) without damage-converter b) with higher-level converter (68,2% converted to fire-damage) All four weapons consistently delivered the same results when used on exactly the same enemy (Black Wolf, Lvl 111, Niob, The enemy had no visible resistances (yellow bar) against any elemental damage.): Any hit with ca. 1750 dmg inflicted resulted in a DoT of ca. 275 dmg per tick Any hit with ca. 2000 dmg inflicted resulted in a DoT of ca. 320 dmg per tick Any hit with ca. 2250 dmg inflicted resulted in a DoT of ca. 345 dmg per tick All critical hits inflicted more damage with the initial hit and consequently resulted in higher DoT-ticks. Conclusion: The amount of elemental damage inflicted does not correspond with the amount of damage over time the enemy takes, only the total damage inflicted on the hit, that procs the DoT is taken into account, when calculating the DoT.

very good to know, I had no idea spells and combos showed that casting speed info. ill be looking at that from now on. thx

It's good to know that my memory isn't hopelessly lost. Thanks for the tips!

Yes, QuestExplow = {20,25,30,40,50}, and QuestExpmax = {4020,5025,6030,8040,10050}, Can be adjusted to whatever you like. Basically, the low number is the reward for 1 star quests and the max numbers are for 5 star quests. It's base values, which then get multiplied, depending on character level in some unknown formula. Just make sure you never make the low number higher than the max number. If you do, it will cause an overflow and give you like 2 billion XP the moment you turn in a quest.

Yeah, that was what I was talking before. Editing the SP value gets freaky very fast if you level up from level 1 onwards, because you start getting a lot of XP early on and you climb more than one level at a time, so a few years back I tried several times to find a playable value there but I just gave up with trying to balance it properly. Considering that I'm starting at level 75 though, that may be the easiest way to avoid having to grind too hard from then on, since getting from level 75 to 76 already requires nearly 2,5 million XP, and the most that veterans give at that point is around 10K. I may need to test this on my next build, with and without the XP penalty, to see just how much it ramps up and how much faster levelling gets. Since each save game has an internal clock on how many hours you play, it should be very easy to compare build level vs time played. Thanks! Indeed, changing the SP value on the "MP_experience" line is something easy to do and that doesn't break anything, assuming that you don't ramp it up way too much. Like I mentioned above, it's very hard to properly make it work from level 1 onwards without overlevelling in early Acts, but it should be fine for post-mastery levels, or post-100 levels. It doesn't change XP from quests does it? You mention that it dictates mob kill XP, and from what I recall that is exactly that. If memory serves there's another line in balance.txt that rules the amount of quest XP, with one value per difficulty level to a total of five, am I right? Regarding ExpLS, I never did try to put a value above 1000 (100%), and I understand what you're saying about causing an overflow. It's possible that it may happen, and I too have no idea how the game will interpret a value above 1000 there. In theory, going from the formula in the Wiki, and with my limited math knowledge, adding a 0,1% each 25 levels would probably be reasonable (1001, 1002, 1003, 1004). I've tried calculating the inverted values from 98,5% into 101,5% and so on, but the end result at near level cap was more than 19 times as much XP! That is, assuming I calculated it correctly. You're probably right when you say that turning that penalty into a bonification may do more harm than good. I don't really want to be playing the same build for 8 years, ha ha. But I get what you meant. It must've been fun back then to play in teams online and levelling up next to your buddies. I agree that solo levelling in SP can become tedious, as the motivation to keep it going depends solely on your own perseverance to keep grinding. I guess that that's why I'm trying to find a way to try to get to level cap without breaking both my mind and the game's XP balance.

Really interesting. I will conduct further experiments with higher leveled characters. I will report the findings here shortly.

Can't comment on CM Patch, but in the PFP, the DoT absolutely does correspond to the amount of damage inflicted. Just did a quick test where I simply tried two differently powerful Lava Chunks. This attack results in a 21152 fire damage per tick from burn: And this attack results in a 16570 fire damage per tick from burn: Both attacks performed on the same enemy. Regarding multi-elemental weapons, yes, they can inflict all the secondary effects as long as you don't use a converter. If you use a converter, it changes the damage type of all other elements to that of the converter along with the stated % of the Physical damage. And about the visual effects, I am 99% sure that was one of the community fixes, so that you are able to see multiple effects on the same enemy.