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  1. Back when original Sacred 2 Fallen Angel was released, a set of high-resolution textures was separately sold, dubbed "Elite Textures". It added extra detail to many items, NPCs, monsters, landscapes, architecture and misc. objects in the game. It also added, sometimes unbearable, lags in crowded places, like cities. The mechanics of said lags is as follows: when "Default" texture option is on, the RAM cache assigned to the game is 210MB by default, when "Elite" texture option is on the RAM cache assigned is 420MB maximum. Yet every large town contains enough units, using hi-res textures from the package, that actual RAM usage shoot up to 465MB. The game's memory manager start returning it to the limit value, it overflows again, the memory manager optimizes it again, ad infinitum. All this causes constant heavy HDD I/O load, causing incessant lags. An attempt has been made to remedy that situation - hi-res normal maps(the true reason behind the problem) have been selectively cut out. Judging by the feedback, the outcome was positive. Therefore: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rbxeeelYDIWefBXqVRe4sKT50pnLpNtd/view?usp=sharing Back up original graphics20 - graphics24.zip, then paste zips from the archive to the pak folder of the game(alternatively, use Generic Mod Enabler).
    17 points
  2. Sacred 2 Purist Fixpack DOWNLOAD 1.4 RELEASE: Sacred 2 Nexus Google Drive Here is the change log as of March 3, 2023: VIEW CHANGELOG FAQ What is the Purist Fixpack? The Purist Fixpack (PFP) is designed to be the most comprehensive bugfix patch for Sacred 2, as well as being the most strict project in terms of not making subjective changes or adding any fan-made content. What about restored content? There is a lot of unused and deactivated content in Sacred 2. The PFP only activates content that was disabled due to bugs or oversights. Content that was truly unfinished (requiring fan invention to complete it) remains disabled in PFP. What about other bug-fixing mods? The PFP contains all bugfixes from the Community Patch 1.60 + Enhanced Edition 3.0, plus many more fixes that are only available in this mod. The PFP is not an alteration or addition to any other mod. It was built from the ground up using the files from the last official release of the game. Unlike the Community Patch, which added lots of subjective changes and fan-made content, the PFP is as strict as possible with only adding fixes. In PFP, there is no interface overhaul, no extra fan-made items, quests, monsters, or mounts. I have massive respect for the original Community Patch developers, and am proud of working on the 1.50 and 1.60 releases. However a large amount of fan-created content was added over the years. The PFP is meant to be a close as possible to a developer patch geared towards fixing bugs, with no added content. What about balance? Balance is not affected in PFP, except as a side-effect of fixing a bug, for example, enemy spells that were not functioning correctly, or missing modifiers on equipment. Sacred 2 is a game sorely in need of rebalance, and I still believe that the Community Patch + Enhanced Edition is still the best way to experience the game. However, I also believe that people deserve to be able to play the game that the developers intended, as bug-free as possible. That way the player can decide if they want to then try a more streamlined and robust mod like Enhanced Edition. What are the requirements? PFP only requires the base game + Ice & Blood with the latest official patch 2.65.2 (or, in other words, Sacred 2 Gold from GOG or Steam). Is PFP compatible with other mods and my old saves? By design, PFP is meant to be installed and played by itself. Adding a mod with fan-made content sort of defeats the point. That being said, any mods that don't touch scripts should be compatible. PFP works fine with the official Elite Textures pack or the (highly recommended) Elite Textures Trimmed mod. You should make new characters when playing PFP, to avoid bugged quests and items, corrupted saves, and even crashes.
    12 points
  3. Hello! Finally, Sacred 1 HD is real. After posting a first topic (SACRED UNDERWORLD 16:9. THOUGHTS.), 10 days have passed and I found the right values for the correct rendering of the picture, lol. More than one year was spent for searching I decide do it in 1366x768 because it is nearby resolution to 1024x768, and it not require changes for height. On 1920x1080 monitor while FULLSCREEN: 1 the picture is stretched proportionally, but there is a slight loss of quality and appears a little black stripes vertically. Now it is demo only, there is a lot of work ahead.
    11 points
  4. Creature Restoration Project Loads of creatures were designed by the Ascaron developers and shipped with the game, but were never activated. Almost of all these have already been restored in Diablo 2 Fallen. Now they are available to players who want to play the original Sacred 2. What follows are all 100% Ascaron-created designs, not fan inventions. ======================================== The following enemies have new skins: Elite Albino Rats Elite Flying Eyes Elite Flying Demons Elite Felon Elite Ursaron Elite Lupan Elite Spiders & Spitting Spiders Wolf Rider Hunters Wolf Rider Scouts Swamp Rats Mudsuckers Mud Snappers Weaving Spiders Small Snappers Shifting Stones ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following quest enemies now have new skins: Magmadur now uses his inactive "fire dragon" creature entry instead of being a duplicate of the Grunwald Dragon. Walther (Christmas Yeti boss) no longer identical to The Guardian boss. Now uses an inactive Christmas Troll design. The Ice Hydra is now a more powerful boss-level opponent. It only appears in the Christmas Quest now (no longer part of the Northland Expedition - replaced with Fury Broodmother). Fury Broodmother activated, uses Harpy mini-boss design, replaces the Ice Hydra as a boss in the Northland Expedition. Mesmerized/Savage Werewolves (from the quest "The Werewolf Hunt") now use the unique appearance that Ascaron designed for them, and are now consistently called "Wild Werewolves" in keeping with the quest dialogue and journal. Lord of the Castle NPC ("By Order of the Crown" chain quest) now uses the unique appearance that Ascaron designed. Dr. Faust now uses an inactive human mage design with runic robes. Generic Zombies from the Shadow Warrior's class quest ("Past Mistakes" phase) are replaced with previously inactive Undead Elves and Undead Orcs. The Undead Ogres from this same quest are upgraded to elite status. The two "Master of the Hunt" orcs (Ogan Kandimiro and Lupus Coldhand) are now the unique boss creatures that Ascaron designed instead of generic orc hunters. Updated Nor Plat chain quests "Hired Assassins (Light)" and "Hired Assassins (Shadow)". Corrected some text and also activated the unique NPC appearances that were designed for the characters involved. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following enemies are creatures that were not present in the game at all, but are now reactivated: Gargantura spider creature is activated and added to Cursed Forest. Nur-Trak (yellow) Goblins and Ogres activated and assigned as the elites of each of their respective types. Ogre clan Champion designs: Grurag (blue) and Ore-Thag (red) are activated and added to Nor Plat. Black Panthers are now in Jungle region and red-striped Panthers are now activated and added to Cursed Forest. Armored Red Demon Lord is activated and added to Wasteland. Green Swamp Demon is activated and added to the Swamp. Red Draconic Dragonfly activated and added to the Cursed Forest. Arctic Wolves are activated and added to the Northland. Frost Imp is activated and added to Crystal Plane. Yeti Hunter is activated and added to Crystal Plane. Green elite Forest Spirit is activated and added to Dyr Lain. Giant Scarab (non-mutated) is activated and added to the Bengaresh Desert and Wastelands. T-Energy Dragon boss and Small Mutated Dragons activated and added to the the T-Energy Field. Mutated Skeletons activated and added to the T-Energy Field and western Swamp. Activated 3 unused Zombie skins.
    10 points
  5. Sacred 2 Enhanced Edition by Flix Sacred 2 Enhanced Edition (S2EE) is the continuation of my work on older mods such as Enhanced Spells and the Community Patch, of which S2EE is meant to be the successor. S2EE contains hundreds of bugfixes, as well as numerous gameplay enhancements such as redesigned balance, quality-of-life improvements, and cosmetic changes. Enemies are more challenging, quests are more rewarding, and items are more varied, unique, and useful. This mod also features AI-Upscaled Textures that will work if the Elite Textures are installed. These all-new HD textures will be used for the DLC and expansion content which never received any official elite textures. S2EE is designed for the player to install a single CORE module that contains the bulk of the changes. The player can then install some optional add-on modules: Alternate Spells - Swap out several vanilla combat arts with new custom ones. Challenge Mode - Significantly increased enemydifficulty. SuperSpawn - Increases enemy spawn count by 2-3x. Enhanced Music - A game-wide expansion pack for all regional background music. Portrait Overhaul - Revamps all the NPC and enemy icons with new artistic portraits with more character and personality. Free-For-All Quests - Makes all quests available in all game modes, and allows all bosses to respawn each game session. Classic Icons - Restores the aspect background and combat art icons to vanilla. Classic Icons for Alt. Spells - Change the aspect background and combat art icons to the "classic" style. Download the Mod: Sacred 2 Enhanced Edition. Mirror: Sacred 2 Nexus Total Changes and Fixes: Download Enhanced Edition Manual This mod is built from and requires the Community Patch 1.60 Currently supported languages: CORE Module: English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Hungarian. Alternate Spells: English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish.
    9 points
  6. Using Deep AI to Retexture Sacred 2 Skip to the bottom if you don't care about the how or why and just want to see cool pictures. Introduction: Traditionally, modders who wanted to improve texture quality in games had to resort to: 1) upscaling the old textures using basic resizing functions in image editors, or else 2) completely retexturing from scratch using new source images. The former option is easy. The modder would resize the texture in Paint or Photoshop, maybe apply a sharpening filter, and then present their grainy product, generally to a chorus of boos about how the textures had no more detail than before. Oftentimes they looked even worse. The second option can have varying results depending on the skill of the modder, but is generally an extremely demanding project, requiring many hours of toil to retexture a whole game. And so for years, players could only but pray that the developers saw fit to release high-res or elite texture packs. Then Artificial Intelligence changed everything. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN's) allow for the upscaling of images using artificial intelligence. The AI has been trained by feeding it millions of pre-downscaled images until it learns to faithfully reproduce the original high quality image. This upscaling process is typically followed by a noise removal function that can be calibrated as needed to preserve details while eliminating unnecessary artifacts. The resulting image is a true high resolution version of the source texture, with none of the blur, graininess, jagged stair-stepping, or other visual noise that traditional resizing produces. ============================ Application: Like most aspects of Sacred 2, this rough-cut gem of a game has textures of varying quality. By default the game has two texture options, "Minimal" and "Default." A third option, "Elite" is added if the elite textures are present. Ascaron's official Elite Texture pack did indeed provide high quality textures for about 80% of the game, and I recommend everyone download the optimized elite texture pack, right now, available HERE. However, all the textures from the Ice and Blood expansion, as well as many creatures and items released in various content patches, were not covered by the Elite Textures. There were also a number of textures that were already so small to begin with, that even the "elite" variants were quite low in detail. Let's take typical Sacred 2 weapon texture dimensions: Minimal - 128x128 Default - 256x256 Elite - 512x512 Items added in Ice and Blood would be stuck at the Default setting even with "Elite" selected. There are also vanilla items that started out much smaller, such as 32x32, therefore reaching only 128x128 even at "elite" quality. The most unfortunate items suffer from BOTH a very small starting texture AND a lack of an elite texture. So some legendary weapons that otherwise have very cool and unique designs are almost painful to look because of their grainy 64x64 textures. This is the actual full-size texture for the Signet of Thunder legendary. This is where CNN's save the day. ============================ Examples: Textures in Sacred 2 generally respond well to AI upscaling. By selecting an appropriate target size (typically 512x512 for smaller items, up to 2048x2048 for very large creatures), and then applying varying degrees of noise removal, textures can be upscaled to a satisfying effect. Click and scroll to compare. Vanilla Max Quality on Left <--------> New AI Upscaled on Right <---Generated Normal Map / Original Normal Map---> It's not always perfect; some of the really bad cases will require correctional painting by hand, like the grid on Arnum's Prevalence. ========================== These are just the highlights from the first round of upscaling. I have some more textures in mind for a second round, including some Ice & Blood creatures and mini-bosses. I'll post more results as I produce them. If you've seen any other noticeably low-resolution textures in the game, let me know and I should be able to upscale them!
    9 points
  7. Here is a very strong Ice Elf Build that should easily play through the Niobium level. I advise you to play with Expert Touch enabled to draw from the other CAs that are not being used, as this is a Single Aspect focused build. Please check below so that you will know what to do with attribute points.* At Level 2 select Armor Lore. You should invest your skill points here and keep them at character level. Master Armor Lore First. Upon reaching Level 3 select Mystic Stormite Lore. It will serve as the main aspect and you will need to master it second, after Armor Lore. So invest skills points here until it is mastered. When you reach level 5 select Concentration and keep it with only one point for now. It may be mastered later on after skills that are more important now. Upon reaching level 8, you will need to select Mystic Stormite Focus. I prefer to keep this skill at the same level as is my character and too, the same as for Mystic Stormite Lore. After you put the points into Armour Lore to keep it at character level. Master Mystic Stormite Lore second and master Mystic Stormite Focus third. At level 12 select Delphic Arcania Focus. At this point stop putting points into Mystic Stormite Focus for now. You now need 31 points in Delphic Arcania Focus to modify Grand Invigoration and Expulse Magic. Grand Invigoration will help with regeneration time and Expulse Magic will protect your toon from deadly magic attacks as well as those annoying ones like rooting effects. When you reach level 18 select Constitution. You can get by with only one point for now. At this point add skill points to Armor Lore first, Mystic Stormite Lore second and Mystic Stormite Focus third. You will want to master Constitution fourth, so start pumping points into it after you get Delphic Arcania Focus to 31 points and have satisfied Armor Lore, Mystic Stormite Lore, and Mystic Stormite Focus to character level. The reason that Constitution should be mastered fourth is for the defense it offers in high hit-points and faster hit point regeneration. At level 25 select Ancient Magic because there are certain enemies that are difficult to impossible to kill without it, as they are so resistant to your ice damage. You will want to master Ancient magic fourth so by the time you get to Platinum and Niobium levels no foe can withstand your brutal icy attacks! Upon reaching level 35 you should choose Shield Lore. Shields may contain sockets for modifiers, are a boon to defense, and Shield Lore helps also because it grants the ability to bear higher level shields. Some shields even offer a sweet block chance and, with eventual mastery, there's the relief of having a "block chance close combat" upon mastering this skill. Now that you have reached level 50, select Spell Resistance. You will find that it's not always so convenient to use Expulse magic and magic attacks can be brutal and even devastating. Therefore, let's protect our lady further with this important skill. At level 65 you can now finally select Combat Discipline and benefit from a boost in damage and a slightly speedier regeneration time. Adding Ice Damage Modifiers to your sockets may boost the damage to quite punishing levels. Even using a single Combat art alone, unaccompanied in a "combo," will add more speed and more damage. At level 75 Armor Lore, Mystic Stormite Lore, and then Mystic Stormite Focus are mastered. Mystic Stormite Lore mastery allows for an increase in inflicted damage, critical hit chance, and the execution speed of the Mystic Stormite Aspect of the High Elf. It also enables the use of modifications for the aspect. Mystic Stormite Focus mastery grants a further decreased regeneration time and spell levels are raised even higher without any penalty. *It's very important to properly assign attribute points. So, it's recommended to put all of the points into Vitality until you select Constitution and are putting more points into it. Afterward, I like to put 75% of my points into Intelligence and 25% into Willpower until I master Spell Resistance. Then, I assign all Attribute points to Intelligence for the huge boost to the High Elf's icy Spell Intensity. Now for Combat Arts, the what and the why: Crystal Skin is the Mystic Stormite's primary Buff. It boosts the physical armor, increases the regeneration speed and, when modified, has the chance to reflect spells. Glacial Mirror - This will increase the chance to reflect incoming detrimental magical effects Feel Cold - This will reduces an opponent's resistance against ice damage Frosty Breeze - More damage is good and this will additionally increase ice damage. I select this also because I forge in "chance to halve regeneration time" to 100%. So I do not need the even faster regeneration time offered by "Mystic Stormite Expertise." I have found that "memorizing" as many runes as I can, I still have the fastest regeneration time attainable with this build, but more power devastates bosses unimaginably fast. Here, I find it very important to remind you that in the beginning we "eat" as few runes as possible to keep our Combat arts regenerating in 1.5 to 2 seconds (Raging Nimbus up to 3). This should then be halved by Chance to Halve Regeneration Time 100%. This is how we can get away with eating more runes and get the raw power we desire and the fast regen time! Frost Flare: Freeze - Reduces our target's movement and the slower they move, the less damage they impart. Frost - This increases the ice damage over time almost 40% and who doesn't want more damage done to their opponent? Icy Circle - This freezes our opponents inside a much larger area surrounding the target. (Great for small close-knit mobs.) Glacial Thorns (This is our merciless Boss Slayer) Frost - Our advantage is that it increases the damage inflicted by each frozen thorn. (We will add Fusillade a bit later.) Devastation - Can you say "critical hits"!? (Just in case you cannot, "Devastation" says basically the same thing). Fusillade - This will Increase the number of frozen thorns and the more thorns there are the more chance to hit the opponent and the more thorns there will be contacting the target and doing damage. Raging Nimbus (This will be modified to defeat large mobs, frozen to their demise quickly and perhaps without too much suffering): Wrath - The ice damage of the lightning is vastly increased. Roar - This offers a reduction in the attack value of all affected opponents Cyclone - A significant increase in the duration of the blizzard is offered here and it just stacks up! Note: Before eating any more runes (more is never less with the exception of Grand Invigoration) check that your regeneration time is so low that each Combat Art is fully spammable. I cannot stress the importance of this in a stronger way! Grand Invigoration is our lady's secondary buff. It grants a major boost to health regeneration and speeds regeneration time of her Combat Arts to include even Expulse Magic. Mystic Stormite Expertise - This will grant a much faster regeneration time for the aspect Mystic Stormite. Life Energy - The High Elf is a bit frail (yet spirited) so an additional amount of increased hit-point regeneration rate is a boon. Resilience - A decrease in the severity of the impact and the duration of incoming detrimental effects is a plus. No? Runes: Eat as many as you can find. Buy and eat them as you can afford as long as the diminishing returns aren't significantly affecting the levels increase at the time. Expulse Magic is important to insulate our character form magical attacks, magical effects, and life leech spells like those cast by those infernal Demonic Eyes (Don't you dislike them? I know, right?). Strength - Let us increase its banishing potential while we maintain its identical, yet effective radius. Pentagram - Lessening the duration and impact of weakening spells is a very good thing as it helps us fight back sooner. Protection - The potential to fully block an incoming magical attack is sweet. I like to eat fewer E.M. runes and benefit from faster regeneration time. Keep that at about the same frequency interval as is Raging Nimbus or a bit faster. But, what do we wear to the ball? Well, the choices are many, yet I like to use Glimborin's Garments of Mutation , as there are more sockets. However, the pieces aren't just found lying around everywhere so wear what best compliments your Mystic Stormite build and remember to forge into her armor the following: All Skills + rings with added ice damage (and physical damage for Glacial Thorns), rings with reduced casting speed, pendants that reduce damage over time, amulets that increase Combat Arts and those which increase the Mystic Stormite Aspect. If you can find Artamark's Star it will provide the much needed base damage that the High Elf will need against all damage types. If you find items or jewelry that grants Damage Mitigation use them. I mentioned it before, but it bears repeating, Forge in Chance To Halve Regeneration Time to a level of 100% or don't get stuck in a Boss Battle with any less, you may live to regret it yet your toon may not. Just remember, when things in Ancaria seem to be going mad, you will be keeping it frosty, my friends. In closing, I'd like to express my gratitude to Locologarto. His Pyromante (Arrant Pyromancer) build is, more or less, what I based this build on. Although I have created many different Mystic Stormite builds of my own design, my first was based on this one here and it's a very good start to a fully successful (survivable and powerful) "Ice Elf" build.
    9 points
  8. Another chunk of the CM 1.60 Changelog. Text and UI Fixes The GUI background is now less transparent so that text is easier to read. Grunwald, Swamp, Desert, and Girvym Dragons now display correct names in the "Last Opponent" window. Destructible "enemies" like Crystal Traps and Cursed Banners now have names in the "Last Opponent" window. Scaron boss now has a portrait in the "Last Opponent" window. Enemy names now fit better in the "Last Opponent" window without being cut off. Improved and clarified tooltip text for attributes. Damage modifier now appears in the Willpower tooltip if applicable (for lightsabers). Percents, not flat numbers, are now correctly shown in tooltips for Combat Discipline and Speed Lore. Corrected all instances where "Urtamark" is mispelled as "Urthamark." Corrected all instances where "Lakeview Tavern" is called "Ocean View Tavern." Corrected loading screen tips where "Cooldown" is used instead of "Regeneration Time" Corrected loading screen tips where "Frost" is used instead of "Ice." Corrected loading screen tip where CTRL+Click is said to be the command for directing minions, when in fact it is SHIFT+Click. Tornado and Gust of Wind are no longer called "Whirlwind" and "Flurry" in the rune exchange window. Master of the Hunt quest: Corrected mention of the city "Grurag-Orc" to the actual name of the city, Entruag. Sar'Thaz and Bengaresh Threshold now display their proper names onscreen when the player arrives, instead of "Arena of the Winged Ones" and "Red River," respectively. Corrected several lines in the various localizations that had incorrect or awkward translations (thanks to all the translators and bug reporters!). Using SHIFT+Click for minions was a big revelation for me. I thought directing minions was broken, when it turns out simply the game tip was wrong. See this post for more pics of the new, easy-to-read User Interface. Most of the missing enemy names were previously added in Diablo 2 Fallen. However, the names for the traps in the Crystal Plane and Cursed Forest are brand new. Poor Scaron never even had a portrait assigned to him. I had to make one from scratch. Big thanks to dimitrius154 for doing the necessary coding to get tooltips corrected for Willpower, Speed Lore, and Combat Discipline. He also figured the scripting necessary to get Bengaresh Threshold and Sar'Thaz names displaying properly. We erroneously thought it was a hard-coded issue for years. Read about the long and winding road leading to solving that bug here. MUCH appreciation to all translators who pitched in to get the CM Patch ready for all 10 localizatons. Caledor, Czevak, desm, thareross, dimitrius154, thank you! ==================================================== Quest Fixes Arena fighting rescripted (LUA code review: onRespawn). Quest targets in the Thylysium quest "The Usurer" will now appear and be attackable. There are no longer duplicate "Sister of the Archaeologist" NPC's standing in the same spot in Orcish Byway. Dragon Mage now makes comments when approaching quest bosses, like the other characters. All characters now have voiced comments when accepting new quests. The first three changes listed above are the work of quest script guru Marcuswob before he retired from the CM Patch. I carried them over from the previous test release. I believe the "Arena Fighting" refers to those quests with waves of enemies in arena locations. If you die during the quests, they should now resolve properly instead of glitching. I had Dmitriy pursue the issue of the missing "Quest Acceptance" voices mainly due to the persistence of one user, TonyG, who has been checking his topic for years, and also PM'd me about it. Tony, if you're out there, quest accept voices are finally restored! In the process, we also noticed the Dragon Mage was not making comments about the main quest bosses when he approached them. That's been fixed as well.
    9 points
  9. DIMITRIUS'S CM PATCH ADDENDUM - 2023 View File Fellow players, I'd like to present the CM Patch 1.60 + S2EE 3.2a Addendum Beta. The Addendum Beta contains game changes, fixes and extra graphics content. Gameplay stability in Multiplayer is not guaranteed. Playing wih legacy characters is highly inadvisable. The Addendum Beta is is not compatible with either D2F, or Enhanced Edition variations out of the box. It also requires the Elite Textures to be switched on(the Trimmed Elite Textures are highly recommended). The available localizations are English and Russian. Take note: Unlike the CM Patch 1.60, the Addendum has not been extensively tested by a dedicated team. Quirks and CTD's are technically possible. Please, report any such incidents. Game Mode changes: "Player vs. Player" mode is replaced with "Pandemonium" mode. "Pandemonium" mode description: With the all the disruptions and anomalies, caused by the Great Machine instability and overcharge, trans-dimensional rifts start to manifest. A massive invasion by a malevolent force, describing itself as "The Burning Hells" soon begins, followed by a self-proclaimed benevolent force, "The High Heavens". It's time to take out all this trash. Meet new enemies and a lot of new bosses. Those, who manage to kill all bosses and minibosees in one run receive singnificant attribute and skill point rewards. Gameplay Changes: 1. One of the primary calculation functions, used in attack vs. defense, spell intensity vs. spell resistance, damage vs. armor calculations has been fixed. 2. Occurrences, where, upon changing locations via doors, or secondary teleports, various objects and NPC states at the new location were not updated in a timely manner, should no longer manifest. 3. It is now possible to traverse dungeons levels and enter-exit dungeons without dismounting. Previous technical limit have been successfully alleviated. 4. Ingame price inflation is decreased by a factor of 10. Minimum item full price is 4 gold now. 5. Appropriate equipment and character bonus-granted modifiers now have a chance(35% for single target attacks, 15% for Area of Effect attacks, 0% for temporary and permanent buffs) to apply to spell-based attacks. 6. A certain rare day-night transition CTD is fixed. 7. One bonus type(BONUS_REDUCE_ENEMYS_SPELL_REFLECTION) has been restored. 8. Two bonus types(BONUS_ALLSTATS, BONUS_ALLSTATS_REL) have been introduced. 9. The functionality of bonus type BONUS_NOFLEE has been expanded. If applied as a debuff, it compels an opponent to attack in melee. 10. The BONUS_LIFELEECH_REL bonus type now properly causes percentage-based leeching from the creature's current health. 11. Damage mitigation is now capped at 85%. 12. 'Combat Art Skills +' modifier behaves correctly now, improving 'Ancient Magic'(now called 'Spellcraft Lore'), 'Combat Discipline' and 'Concentration' skill instead of 'Shield Lore' and 'Warding Energy Lore'. 13. The BONUS_HURL_ENEMY bonus type mechanics has been reworked. The damage is no longer indiscriminately applied to non-hostile NPCs and mounts. 14. Drop tables have been revised. Potion drop rate has been severely reduced. Missing set items should now drop. 15. PhysX object behavior in the game world has been optimized. 16. Both ambient and combat music selection have been significantly expanded. 17. Some projectiles used to demonstrate strange physics quirks(ricochet off some surfaces, "falling leaf" behavior). Should no longer happen. 18. CA tokens "et_debuff_EAW", "et_debuff_EVW", "et_debuff_armor_phy" from the same source CA no longer stack on affected targets, and are longer attached to affected targets as offensive properties(CA's affected are marked with '*' in the description below). 19. The merchant stock replenishment formula has been altered, the growing character level now makes it somewhat easier to encounter better items in shops. 20. Bonus BONUS_INVISIBLE now works like a reasonable random chance of remaining undetected. 21. Occurrences of playable characters becoming perma-paralyzed upon being knocked back is resolved by making "host"(on local server) player immune to knockback. 22. Ambient sound volume has been adjusted for several temporary buffs. 23. Root effects are now both bonus type driven and are actually chance-based. BONUS_CHANCE_ROOT and BONUS_CHANCE_BREAK_ROOT bonus types can now be used both as spell and item properties. 24. BONUS_UNSTUN_CHANCE bonus type has been introduced. Represents the chance-based ability to break stun effect on self. 25. Healing potion anti-spamming feature now actually works. 26. Energy shields now regenerate in combat, but, just like health, the in-combat regeneration rate is 0.02 of out-of-combat regeneration rate. 27. BONUS_DISMOUNT bonus has been removed, due to it's fundamental application flaws vs. NPCs. 28. BONUS_HRM_FIGHT bonus type has been introduced. Represents a percentage-based multiplier to in-combat heath regeneration rate. 29. BONUS_SRM_FIGHT bonus type has been introduced. Represents a percentage-based multiplier to in-combat energy shield regeneration rate. 30. Stun duration has been set to 6 seconds. 31. BONUS_BLIND_RAGE has been actualized in blueprint.txt. Represents the chance for a creature to become universally hostile for a time. 32. Mount maximum achievable level is set to 250(used to be 201 upon game reload). 33. Several extra CA tokens have been introduced. General Playable Character Changes: 1. Characters can now have up to 13 skills and up to 6 combat art modifications per each combat art. 2. Characters can now possess a single mount, either a horse, or a special mount(now called 'class mount') at a givent time time. Any type of mount can be sold to any mount vendor. Buying special mounts requires visiting class mount vendors. 3. New characters now have the lore-appropriate deity preselected by default. 4. Various fixes to character animations have been introduced. Unused animations have been restored. 5. Character models have been reworked, fixing seams and improper weighting. 5. An extra slot has been introduced - the 'Mount Ward'. Necklace-like items can be bought from Blackmiths, their properties become active, if the character is utilizing a mount. 6. Characters now auto-ride their currently active mounts upon game loading. 7. Character animation blending speed has been adjusted. 8. Transformed characters can now open doors and chests. 9. Singleplayer characters can now longer start multiplayer campaigns. 10. Multiplayer characters can now longer start singleplayer campaigns. Skill Changes: 1. 'Bargaining' skill mechanics has been modified: the skill is now a viable investment at higher levels, due to increasing chance to encounter Sets, Uniques and Legendaries in shop inventory selection. 2. 'Blacksmith'(now called 'Smithing') skill mechanics has been changed. Safe forging removal chance progression is much better now. The 'Blacksmith Arts' are now runic forge tokens carrying one(two at skill mastery level) random modifier. 3. Aspect lore skills now affect more combat art properties. 4. 'Fist Weapon Lore' has been restored as a Dragon Mage exclusive skill. It affects fist weapons and bare-handed combat, allows to dual-wield fist weapons. 5. Constution Mastery now makes in-combat health regeneration 8 times faster, instead of making it equal to out-of-combat regeneration. 6. Energy Shield Mastery now makes in-combat shield regeneration 4 times faster. 7. Riding now directly affects the active mount's ability to gain higher levels. Riding Mastery now adds a substantial flat bonus to all armor types. Lore Changes: 1. Ker's lore has been rewritten. Her statues have been reworked. Divine Gift changes: 1. Ker's Gift has been reworked. 2. Lumen's Gift has been reworked. 3. Kuan's Gift's effect now follows the caster, the radius of the effect has been reduced. 3. Other Gifts have had their property values rebalanced. Quest Changes: 1. A lot of quest texts have been modified, or rewritten. 2. Shirka Alana becomes a permanent companion on the current difficulty upon 'In the Badlands' quest completion. 3. In order to receive a privilege of buying elite mounts, a series of quests has to be completed. 4. Waton now gets killed during the Shadow-side Dragon Cult chain-quest. 5. Attribute and/or skill bonus rewards have been introduced for many quests. 6. Multiplayer Freeplay and Deathmatch modes are now devoid of quests. 7. Demons in the "Wild Twine" and "Debts" quests have been replaced with demonesses. 8. "Weakening the Abishai" quest now has the "Lost Crypt" chain-quest completion as a prerequisite. 9. Questscripts.txt has been altered to, hopefully, avoid any instances of erroneous quest companions upon save game loading. 10. Up to 256 individual taskcreatures can be added as kill targets in an appropriate quest. NPC Changes: 1. Boss and miniboss AI discrepancies and faulty CAs have been corrected. Occurrences of bosses stopping in their tracks, or wandering aimlessly during combat should no longer happen. 2. Bosses are now subject to additional mitigation of all damage types and have an increased health pool. 3. Elite mounts have received improved models, textures and special effects. 4. The Garganthropod's shield visual has been replaced. 5. The elite mount trader now resides on the Island of Mounts(now called 'Isla Ancar'). 6. Character-specific and Alignment-specific taunts from hostile NPCs have been restored. 7. A lot of unused town NPC dialogue has been restored. 8. Town activity AI has been modified. 9. NPCs can now be assigned hair via hair1Itemtype in creatureinfo.txt. 10. Carnach and Sakkara Demon models have been reworked. 11. Hellhound animations have been reworked. 12. Baron De Mordrey is now a Boss-level enemy. 13. Cobold Chieftain model has been replaced, his creature entry - reworked. 14. Haenir model has been replaced with the one used in S2DF. 15. Non-suicide attack flying eyes now have death animations and leave corpses. 16. The Evocator(now called "Evoker Malignus the Unhinged") model has been replaced, his creature entry - reworked. 17. The Sheik Yerbouti model has been replaced. 18. The Sorcerer Mankaul from the "Ancestral Chambers" quest is now a Boss-level enemy. His model has been replaced, the creature entry - reworked. 19. Desert Stone Warriors are now complemented by Cursed Priests. 20. King El Leigh is now a Boss-level enemy. His model has been replaced, the creature entry - reworked. 21. Flaming Horse enemies have been replaced with a new female demon type. 22. The Dream Vampire is now a Boss-level enemy. His model has been replaced, the creature entry - reworked. 23. Zihul the Lich from the Missing General quest is now a Boss-level enemy. His model has been replaced, the creature entry - reworked. 24. The "Lost Crypt" final enemy is now Boss-level. Her model has been replaced, the creature entry - reworked. 25. The Guardian(now called "Capsa the Procurer") model has been replaced, the creature entry - reworked. 26. The Du'rach Commander Harrad'smit(now called "Du'rach Witch-King Harrad'smit") model has been replaced, the creature entry - reworked. 27. Mazzagon's Bodyguard is now an Elite-level enemy, the second bodyguard is still Boss-level, with model replaced and creature entry reworked. 28. Forest Guardian(now called "Fangorn the Wild") boss no longer respawns. 29. The "Dark Rituals" demon has been renamed to Nagaya. 30. Eagles, Snakes and Parrots have been added as neutral animals. 31. Narmul's "boss_phoenix_eisbombe" CA has been improved. 32. Dragon bosses should now perform aerial attacks more often. 33. Extra Dragon bosses have been introduced, all unique Dragons now have names. 34. Mer-Kil is now a Gold Dragon with a visual effect. 35. Orphas and Loromir have changed roles in the respective quests. Loromir is now a Gold Dragon, Orphas is a Green Dragon. 36. The last numeric parameter of 'spawn.txt' entries now controls the game mode of the spawn entry. 0 - any mode, 1 - multiplayer campaign, 2 - free play, 3 - pandemonuim. 37. Elite Blade Spiders Elite Spitting Spiders and Elite Hunting Spiders now have a battle jump CA. 38. The Lightning Lord now has it's own sound profile. 39. The Carrier Imp now has extra idle animations. 40. Multiple NPCs will now display extra voiced "emotion"(fear, mostly)animations, while in combat. 41. Elite Goblin Officers can now utilize their hard-hit weapon-based CA. 42. Multiple armed NPCs' secondary idle animations now have sound effects. 43. Skeletal and mummified undead enemies now consistently have extra lives and explode on final death. 44. "Charging forward" npc CA's should now actually work. 45. "enemy_blind" CA spellclass replaced, since "cSpellBlind" does not apply the effects properly. 46. High Elf Inquisitor model has been altered, so as to keep with the "dark tech-priesthood" theme. Human and ghost variants keep the old model. 47. Orpheus' model has been replaced, the creature entry - reworked. 48. Scaron boss no longer respawns. 49. Leaping Plants are now mobile and should demonstrate an improved AI. 50. Enemies now use alignment and character class based taunts. Equipment Changes: 1. Item classification boni now spawn on Set, Unique and Legendary items. 2. All character armor sets have been reworked, multiple clipping issues have been resolved. 3. All unique and set weapons have unique models. 4. Due to 'Chance for Melee Double Hit' modifier not being checked for ranged and spell-based attacks, it has been replaced with 'Opponent's Health Threshold for Deathblow' on items 'Essence of Dark Matters' and 'Aarnum's Pathfinder'. 5. Damage converters now only convert Physical damage. 6. Various CA and skill bonus modifiers should no longer spawn on inappropriate class-specific equipment. 7. Item classification character-specific modifiers should now spawn correctly. 8. Horse saddle variety has been improved. 9. Metal shader brightness has been adjusted. 10. Forged set jewelry is now accounted for worn set pieces. 11. Fist weapons are now Dragon Mage class weapons. 12. Lightsaber beams are switched off while not in combat. 13. Throwing dagger animations have been reworked. 14. Lightsabers and fist weapons' positioning while riding has been adjusted. 15. Several glove, boot and arm models had no "laying-on-the-ground" animations. Corrected. 16. All relic slots are now active at all times. 17. Throwing stones can no longer be bought from merchants. 18. Throwing axe models have been replaced. 19. Item rarity tiers have been compacted to: 0 - junk, 1 - normal, 5 - magic, 9 - rare, 13 - unique, 14 - set, 15 - legendary. Balance.txt rarity values have been adjusted. 20. Some weapon specular textures lacked the alpha channel, resulting in maximum glow effect. Those have been fixed. 21. Potions and Trophies now have the following base durations on all difficulties: Light Potions - 30 seconds, Potions/Alchemy Trophies - 45 seconds, Strong Potions - 60 seconds. 22. Potions and Trophies now have extra properties unlocked by either Alchemy, or Warding Energy Lore, or their respective Masteries. 23. The Divine Spark special trophy has been recreated. Can be dropped by Energy-type creatures. 24. The 'Selling Price' bonus no longer displays in item UI. 25. Item stack limit set to 250. 26. The 'below value' selling procedure's gold refund part used to ignore the amount of units in a stack.Fixed. 27. Non-stackable items can now be transferred between the player inventory and the currently active stash via Shift + Left Click. 28. Items can now be quickly sold from stashes via Ctrl + Left Click. Stackable items, Rares, Uniques and Legendaries require an extra confimation to avoid misclicks. 29. Item skill-dependent boni no longer show up in the standart item interface window, or the character bonus list, unless the character has the appropriate skill/mastery. 30. The expanded item interface window is accessed by pressing Left ALT key, while hovering the cursor over an item. 31. Items posessing CA FX-based visual effect should no longer produce annoying loud sounds upon being equipped, save game loading, or upon current location change via teleportation. 32. Undead Centurion and Undead Mage capes are now part of the respective creature model. 33. Instances of "O_stone" material use have been relaced with "W_stone", "O_stone" has been renamed to "W_spectral". 34. If a weapon with the "SUBFAM_PRI_WHIP" subfamily is equipped the correct set of animations is applied. 35. Item property tiers have been homogenized to 1 - normal, 5 - magic, 9 - rare, 13 - unique/set/legendary. Horses: 1. 'Rear Up' is now a weapon-based Area of Effect CA. 2. 'Charge' properties have been revised. 3. 'Leap' properties have been revised. 4. All previously Riding-dependent boni are now initially active. Seraphim Changes: 1. Hair animations have been disabled. 2. Belt skirts are now skeleton-animated. 3. 'BeeEffGee' weapon model has been replaced. 4. 'Flaring Nova' wave spread speed has been fixed. Initial nova damage is being dealt in sinchronicity with the spread, not with a 2.5 seconds delay. 6. 'Flaring Nova' 'Perplex' mod should now work correctly(*). 7. 'Divine Protection' no longer deactivates the 'Warding Energy' upon expiring. 8 'Divine Protection' properties have been rebalanced. 9. 'Pelting Strikes' opponent search radius has been reduced. 10. 'Pelting Strikes' 'Enfeeble' and 'Indentation' mods now work correctly(*). 11. 'Soul Hammer' 'Battering' mod should now work correctly(*). 12. 'Hallowed Restoration' duration is now fixed at 10 seconds, the cooldown is set to 10 seconds. 13. 'Baneful Smite' 'Confuse' mod should now work correctly(*). 14. 'Radiant Pillar' 'Delude' mod should now work correctly(*). 15. 'Instill Belief' conversion chance has been reworked, the misleading conversion chance description - removed. 16. 'Cleansing Brilliance' is now able to make use of the boosting properties, including hitpoint regeneration. 17. 'Cleansing Brilliance' now also damages regular enemies, it's radius of effect is reduced. Dryad Changes: 1. Character model now has a mild visual effect. 2. 'Ancient Bark' visual effect has been fixed. 3. 'Ancient Bark' property values have been rebalanced. 4. 'Dust Devil' 'Obscure' and 'Spell Shield' mods now work correctly(used to stop working, if a Dryad ally exited the Dust Devil and entered back again). 5. 'Dust Devil' effect range has been increased. 6. 'Viperish Disease' now affects all creature types, it's damage mechanics has been rebalanced. 7. 'Black Curse' 'Porous' mod should now work correctly(*). 8. 'Goldenglade Touch' property values have been rebalanced. 9. 'Acute Mind' property values have been rebalanced. Shadow Warrior Changes: 1. Character model now has a visual effect. 2. Character can no longer use bows, one-handed magic staves, energy weapons. 3. 'Scything Sweep' now releases six projectiles in ranged weapon mode. 4. 'Frenzied Rampage' opponent search radius has been reduced. 5. 'Ruinous Onslaught' has been reworked. 6. 'Belligerent Vault' has been reworked. 7. 'Belligerent Vault' 'Unaware' mod should now work correctly(*). 8. 'Spectral Hand' visual effect has been replaced. The fifth modification has been replaced. 9. 'Grim Resilience' visual effect has been replaced. Willpower bonus progression has been reduced. 10. 'Reflective Emanation'(now called 'Deflecting Efflux') visual effect has been replaced. 11. 'Skeletal Fortification'(now called 'Bleak Sentinel') textures have been reworked. 12. 'Bleak Sentinel' 'Perforate' mod(piercing projectiles) changed to 'Blast' mod(chance to deal area damage). 13. 'Shadow Veil' improves much slower and cannot be turned into a Buff. 14. 'Shadow Veil' detection conditions now include normal attacks. 15. 'Fear' modification of the 'Augmenting Guidon' has been replaced. 16. An extra class mount called 'Cerberides' has been introduced. 17. 'Nether Allegiance'(now called 'Wraith Guard') spectral soldiers now spawn with cuirasses instead of capes. 18. Instances of "FX_SPEECH" in CA sound profiles have been disabled. Inquisitor Changes: 1. Character model now has a visual effect. 2. Character can no longer use bows, one-handed magic staves, energy weapons. 3. 'Scything Sweep' now releases six projectiles in ranged weapon mode. 4. 'Frenzied Rampage' opponent search radius has been reduced. 5. 'Ruinous Onslaught' has been reworked. 6. 'Belligerent Vault' has been reworked. 7. 'Belligerent Vault' 'Unaware' mod should now work correctly(*). 8. 'Spectral Hand' visual effect has been replaced. The fifth modification has been replaced. 9. 'Grim Resilience' visual effect has been replaced. Willpower bonus progression has been reduced. 10. 'Reflective Emanation'(now called 'Deflecting Efflux') visual effect has been replaced. 11. 'Skeletal Fortification'(now called 'Bleak Sentinel') textures have been reworked. 12. 'Bleak Sentinel' 'Perforate' mod(piercing projectiles) changed to 'Blast' mod(chance to deal area damage). 13. 'Shadow Veil' improves much slower and cannot be turned into a Buff. 14. 'Shadow Veil' detection conditions now include normal attacks. 15. 'Fear' modification of the 'Augmenting Guidon' has been replaced. 16. An extra class mount called 'Cerberides' has been introduced. 17. 'Nether Allegiance'(now called 'Wraith Guard') spectral soldiers now spawn with cuirasses instead of capes. 18. Instances of "FX_SPEECH" in CA sound profiles have been disabled. 19. 'Rallied Souls' raised NPC's now have an improved AI. High Elf Changes: 1. Character model now has a visual effect. 2. Hair animations have been disabled. 3. Character can now dual-wield one-handed weapons and has access to 'Dual Wield' skill. 4. 'Combat Reflexes' and 'Toughness' skills are now available as secondary. "Damnification Lore" moved to primary. 5. 'Scorching Wave' is now 20% faster, the DOT damage is increased by 20%. 6. 'Frost Flare' 'Constraint' mod should now work correctly(*). 7. 'Raging Nimbus' 'Roar' mod should now work correctly(*). 8. 'Expulse Magic' now follows the High Elf around. 9. 'Expulse Magic' properties have been revised. 10. Dragon class mount model has been fixed. Temple Guardian Changes: 1. Character model now has a visual effect. 2. Left arm models have been reworked. 3. Equipped batteries are now visible on the character model. 4. Some CA's have been renamed to keep in theme with sci-fi and steam-punk motifs. 6. 'Combat Alert' properties have been revised, its base attack bonus now affects ranged weaponry. 7. 'Icy Evanescence'(now called 'Cryonic Terraforming') effect now follows the Temple Guardian. 8. 'Fiery Ember'(now called 'Magmatic Terraforming') effect now follows the Temple Guardian. 9. 'Amplifying Discharge'(now called 'Cryonic Discharge') has been reworked, it's visual effect - replaced. 10. 'Furious Emblazer'(now called 'Pyroclastic Emission') has been improved. 11. 'Archimedes Beam' has been reworked. 12. 'Primal Mutation'(now called 'T-Energy Exposure') has been improved. And no more chicken droppings. 13. An extra set called 'Terminator Honours' has been introduced. A weapon of unique design is part of the set. Dragon Mage Changes: 1. Character model now has a visual effect. 2. Character weapon selection is now restricted to fist weapons and two-handed staves. 3. 'Dragon Berserk'(now called 'Balor Form') has been reworked, the transformed creature model - replaced. 4. 'Dragon Form'(now called 'Afrit Form') has been reworked, the transformed creature model - replaced. 5. 'Afrit Form' 'Hardened Scales' mod has been nerfed. 6. The Dragon Mage maintains his skills and equipment boni while transformed. 7. The Dragon Mage makes use of fist weapons while transformed. 8. The Dragon Mage does no longer lose his active buffs during Balor, or Afrit Form transformations. However, he can not manage his buffs(switch them on/off) while transformed. 9. 'Eternal Fire' properties have been revised. 10. 'Dragon Strike'(now called 'Scorching Wrath') has been improved, the attack decrease property and the 'Blind' mod should now work correctly(*). 11. 'Energy Blaze' wave spread speed has been fixed. Initial nova damage is being dealt in sinchronicity with the spread, not with a 2.5 seconds delay. 12. 'Energy Blaze' 'Blind' mod should now work correctly(*). 13. 'Dragon Familiar'(now called 'Elfin Adjuvant') summon model and visual effect have been replaced. Intelligence and Willpower bonus progression has been reduced. 14. 'Elfin Adjuvant' property values have been rebalanced. 15. 'Whirlwind'(now called 'Guided Tornado') AI has been fixed. 16. 'Psychic Maelstrom' properties have been revised, the missile slowdown effect has been halved. The visual effect's playback speed is toned down. 17. 'Protector'(now called ''Earthen Guard') property values have been rebalanced. 18. 'Runes of Protection'(now called 'Warding Runes') properties have been revised. 19. 'Magic Barrier'(now called 'Petrous Tusks') has been heavily reworked. 20. An extra set called 'Mark of the Dragon' has been introduced. 21. The Dragon Mage can wear up to 2 amulets and 4 rings. Visual Changes: 1. Metal shader brightness level has been adjusted. 2. Ice weapon enchantment shader has been deactivated, due to inerference with various extra special effects. 3. Certain weapon and spell projectiles were missing their on-hit visual effects. The issue has been addressed. 4. The Elite Textures Trimmed archive now includes higher-quality post-Ice&Blood textures. 5. Several CMP set textures have been improved. 6. Restored 4 improper FX(fx_enemy_heal,fx_enemy_heal_c, fx_enemy_heilschub, fx_enemy_heilschub_c) and added two extra FX(fx_gen_blutigeaura,fx_gen_blutigeaura_c). 7. Fire enchanted weapon FX has been corrected. 8. Vishanka's Ancaria Beautification Mod has been integrated. GUI Changes: 1. Combat Values / Inventory Screen has received additional reworking. It's context tooltip windows no longer contain erroneous, or confusing info. The 'Mounts' tab has been removed due to complete lack of function. 2. The GUI readings, stating battery-slotted damage converters having effect on the damage output of spell-based attacks have been corrected. 3. All font and background colors have been changed to conform to the 'black-glass' interface style. 4. Multiple changes in skill, aspect, combat art and bonus modifier names and descriptions. 5. The catalogue of books read has been reorganized. Some book texts have been changed, or corrected. Two missing books have been restored, one extra book has been added. 6. Some gameworld locations have been renamed. Nameless gameworld locations have received names. 7. Activated portals and miniportals do no longer have their names constantly displayed on the worldmap. 8. Attribute and skill poins rewards, if present, are now displayed along with the the gold reward in both the quest giver text and the quest journal. 9. Quest difficulty level is now displayed for main and class-specific quests. 10. Game loading background images have been replaced. 11. Background images for Inquisitor and Shadow Warrior aspects have been replaced. 12. A vast amount of quest items have been improperly displayed as book pages in the quest journal. That has been addressed. 13. The Seraphim and the Temple Guardian character info windows no longer display Energy Shield related info, unless the shield is active and the energy amount is greater, then zero. 14. Once a character reaches Level 200, the "required for next level"(now called "XP to Gain Next Level") is no longer displayed in character info windows. Installation: Either through GME, or directly on top of the stock CM Patch 1.60. Links: Trimmed Elite Textures (Size: 3,29 GB): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rbxeeelYDIWefBXqVRe4sKT50pnLpNtd/view?usp=sharing CM Patch 1.60 Addendum: Main part (Size: 3,51 GB, password: 12345) primary link : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1igcBObSjNf5ZLB-YSIQOrv0QcxRE3CXH/view?usp=drive_link secondary link: https://mega.nz/file/Xj5HVSZJ#mcXlIbUSUNjAy36bpvvW2Z2pJq5jSalFvgwegRCwNNQ Russian localization (Size: 1,92 GB, password: 12345) primary link : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XE3ERumV5qhBWXwnMaPRhUJvabdefYlX/view?usp=drive_link secondary link: https://mega.nz/file/26oRgbYI#LRfJ6UP4AJQOPmjf79cH76YU3tOwol67FkGb4V_ywZY Fixes (Size: 1,6 MB, password: 12345) primary link : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a4ow67bgbofvZL2XVUwtZnPvdrrPr3Wy/view?usp=drive_link secondary link: https://mega.nz/file/nyJgjZwJ#l99KqwO5j4Uw-Pr9ESqHOWKp0PrdEl3Lld-6DGC_Fjs Credits: Flix - his work on the S2EE and D2F has served as a foundation of this mod. Pesmontis - creator of the essential tools for Sacred 2 modding and some of the models, reworked for use in the Addendum. Norbyte - creator of an essential GR2Converter tool. Vishanka - creator of the Ancaria Beautification Mod. Charon117 for his very useful script parsing utilities. Lindor for his very useful quest scripting fixes. Multiple folks at Sketchfab.com, DieviantArt.com and Cadnav.com whose models and textures have been used as templates. Authors of the respective musical tracks reworked for use in the Addendum. Submitter dimitrius154 Submitted 05/14/2023 Category Community Patch  
    8 points
  10. Hey guys, after our last Kickstarter failed, we accepted that small games like that are not interesting enough for you. So now we put everything in that we have and have started a new big project. I don't want to tell you just now what the game is exactly about, but I am pretty sure quite some people on Darkmatters could be interested. We will tell you everything about the game as soon as we have a prototype ready, which will take a few month. Currently the concept is in the works and programing of the prototype has started. We are no longer working with the coder, we did our small games with. We parted ways, but staying friends. I do the coding of the prototype. Aarne Jungerberg (Sacred lead game designer) is creating the concept and will do level design. Cords-Illustration is doing the graphics for the prototype and we have a new team member, which is a book author. She will write the story, don't want to drop her name just yet, because it's all very fresh and not all details of our cooperation are worked out. But she did gave me a yes. Follow us on Twitter. We will regularly tweet how the project is progressing and will drop hints about the genre, world and story. If you want to chat with us directly, join our Discord. We are also looking for people who want to join our team and would want to work on a long term game project with us. If you are interested join the Discord and get in touch with us. We would gladly accept people from the Sacred modding scene and old SacredVault members into our team! You can also follow my personal Twitter, if you want. But all project relevant news will be on our official team Twitter. Would love to see some of you guys following us. This will either be our biggest hit or the hardest fail we ever had.
    8 points
  11. With no real aim in mind other than just wanting to record my playing, I decided to try making and uploading some videos of me on guitar. This is the test run, and it didn't turn out too bad for having a totally amateur setup. I hope to improve my recording and publishing skills. If anyone has any recommendations for the best software for editing and publishing audio/video (free or not) I'd be happy to hear them. Sí Bheag, Sí Mhór is Irish Gaelic for "Big Fairy Mound, Little Fairy Mound," this is one of the oldest and best known Celtic tunes by the blind bard Turlough O'Carolan.
    7 points
  12. I'm very happy to present version 3.1 of Enhanced Edition: The main features of this release are the Italian translation and a massive review of item drops, many of which were woefully bugged until now. Expect to be able to actually find that coveted Legendary item with enough grinding now. There's also a modest amount of quest-related fixes and improvements that came about while I was developing the Purist Fixpack. Many thanks to @Loromir for the Italian translation, covering both the CORE module and Alternate Spells. Sorry I took so long to include it! Total Change Log: Added Italian translation by Loromir for CORE and Alternate Spells modules. Made some minor corrections to spelling and capitalization in the English texts. Minor tweaks to quest hireling AI. "Days Gone By": Ambul no longer becomes immortal once he transforms into spirit form. "Hunting Fever": The third phase now triggers properly and the player is able to report in to Seraphim Diana at the starting location. "Hired Assassins": Rewrote and expanded the dialogue and journal entries. "The Lost Letter": Emald and Bertha are now humans instead of elves. "The Usurer": Hartruin has a new design. A few quest Orcs/Goblins/Ogres now use Grurag or Ore-Thag designs where appropriate, instead of generic designs. Friendly werewolves in Lizurath now all use a different design from the generic werewolves. Weakened the stats of the Ice Hydra somewhat and increased its vulnerability to fire. Fixed non-hostile ghosts spawning from graves. Fixed non-hostile Goblin Boar Riders in the cave east of Ruka. Divine Gift - Inspiration: Reflect values increased. Added Dragon Mage's missing animations when executing Divine Gifts. Enabled various battle cries, taunts, and other missing voiced lines for NPCs during combat. This also affects missing ambient wildlife sounds. Corrected hundreds of instances in drop lists where items were missing or duplicated. Leather Hat Trophy icon is now easier to see. Fixed missing icon for a random magic 1h sword.
    7 points
  13. Good news, we did it! Sacred ReBorn Multi Resolution is in pre-alpha stage now! There is some screenshots in 1920x1080
    7 points
  14. 3 Year Anniversary + 10th Release of Diablo 2 Fallen!!! v10 of the mod is now ready and released. Change Log: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nza8oCFT6_nnlrqkC7hHpA3bUH8XwyGp/view?usp=sharing Some other notes: Elite Textures support is now built in. There is no longer any need to do any special tricks to make the mod work with the Elite Textures. I also advise players use the Elite Textures Trimmed mod and just skip the official version altogether. I removed the old warning about Party Buffs, since CM 1.60 addressed these problems and it's no longer an issue.
    7 points
  15. Player Equipment Fixes Kickin' it into overdrive now. Loot, loot, loot. Sacred 2 players want their sweet drops, their killer stats, and their cool-looking gear. CM 1.60 delivers. ====================================================== Item Drops: Added several missing Legendaries (Tier 15 items) to the proper drop lists. After studying the drop lists for a long time, I was able to identify that some Legendaries are just flat out missing. Triple-checking them against other Legendaries which actually drop properly, I saw that some corrections need to be made. This includes nearly all of the vanilla all-class mini-sets. Battery from Kendric's Archon set (Kendric's Core) now drops. Afirdnasy's Shuriken will now properly drop. Magic-tier Throwing Potions should drop more often now (corrected typo in drop lists). --------------------------------------------------- Item Appearance and SFX: Lightsaber ambient hum is now a more appropriate (quieter) volume. Improved visible seams on High Elf's base model. This was a side effect of bringing in new High Elf sets in CM 1.50. Pesmontis kindly updated the Elf's model to remove the seams on her torso and legs. Leg from the High Elf's Frozen Gems set (Blue Carbuncle) no longer flashes and glows. Boots and torso armor from High Elf's Children of Asha set receive improved models from dimitrius154. She had a double cape mesh on the torso, and the boot spikes would stretch when moving. Both now fixed. Inquisitor's Judicator set now has upgraded models and textures from dimitrius154. A big overhaul, now skeletal and spiky in design. Shadow Warrior's sets Scourge of Lordaeron and the Doom Guard Armor now have improved models and textures from dimitrius154. Wings from Seraphim's Genesis Siderea set (Star Meadows) no longer have bugged textures with black spots. 3 very small 1-handed longsword models are rescaled to be larger. 4 of the smaller 2-handed swords are rescaled to be larger and more appropriately proportioned. All bows in the game now have bowstrings. Thanks Pesmontis! 2 new clubs and 2 new shields added in CM 1.50 now have the metal shader. These items were extremely dull and dingy before, not befitting their unique status. Energy Weapons and Pistols now get damage type VFX applied. Yep, poison, fire, ice, and magic FX now all apply to energy weapons. Restored 8 item designs that were present in the CM Items Mod 1.2 but were removed for possible copyright issues (which are now resolved) when the mod was integrated into CM Patch 1.50. These are the Titan Quest and Torchlight Easter Egg weapons made by Silver Fox. --------------------------------------------------- Item Stats: Denderan's Reserve (Shadow Warrior set armor) now has its missing Malevolent Champion Focus bonus. Formerly it had Exalted Warrior Focus assigned, which usually wouldn't even appear. Ilgard's Visions (Inquisitor set armor) now has its missing Aspect: Gruesome Inquisition bonus. Formerly it had Aspect: Arrant Pyromancer assigned, which usually wouldn't even appear. Heart of the Hunter amulet (quest reward for Hunting Fever 2) now has its missing second bonus (Regeneration Time -X%). This bonus was already scripted but it will only appear on unique items, while the amulet was flagged as a rare item. So I simply increased the item tier to allow the bonus to spawn. The axes in the set Flesh Eaters' Implements now have improved base damage. Recurve Bows now have higher base damage than Long Bows. From Wikipedia: "A recurve bow stores more energy and delivers energy more efficiently than the equivalent straight-limbed bow, giving a greater amount of energy and speed to the arrow." They used to be in-between short bows and long bows. Now they're the premium damage-dealers. Ettolrahc Notwen's Recurve Bow is now classified as a Recurve Bow. "Opponent's Chance to Reflect: Close Combat -X%" modifier no longer appears on ranged weapons. Removed Block Chance: Knockback modifier from equipment because enemies no longer cause this effect. Replaced with Block Chance: Stun on uniques. Dragon Mage's combat arts, aspect regeneration, and aspect skills are now possible bonuses on most random items. This was a pretty egregious vanilla bug. Big thanks to jordan0422 who helped me list all the missing bonuses. Random Magic Staffs now have skill-unlockable bonuses based on the Magic Staff skill, just like other weapon classes. The skill "Magic Staffs" will now unlock: Normal: Casting Speed, Spell Intensity Magic: Block Chance: Combat Arts, Block Chance: Close Combat Rare: Chance to Halve Regeneration Time, Combat Art Range Magic Staffs now shoot ranged projectiles right from the start, even without the Magic Staffs skill. This fixes a serious exploit where a multi-hit weapon CA with staves could hit everything on screen (Darting Assault users, you know you're guilty).
    7 points
  16. Good day everybody, I am happy to present you a very special video today: The Magic of Sacred - A documentary about the ARPG classics "Immerse yourself in the fascinating world of Sacred and the game company Ascaron! This documentary takes you on a journey from the beginnings of this epic action role-playing game to the present day. See how the developers transformed their vision and made Sacred a timeless classic. We take an exclusive look behind the scenes, revealing the challenges of development and showing how Sacred's fascination continues to this day. Join us on this unique journey through code, creativity and the magic of a role-playing phenomenon. Don't miss the chance to rediscover the legend of Sacred and become part of this epic gaming story." YouTube Video Have fun watching
    6 points
  17. With the newer games and the negative aspects of DRM they have introduced, when combined with the fact that so few new games have such a grand replay value, Sacred 2 is the game that just keeps on giving; for these two reasons among many others, I believe it is easy to understand why there are so many gamers still attracted to it. Not to diminish other games Sacred in name, I will attempt to comprise here a comprehensive list of rationalizations as to what so many find attractive in this "golden," yet ever relevant game, Sacred 2 Fallen Angel: 1) The graphics are quite detailed, even when measured against truly 4K games it is still very competitive and complex with detailed textures, especially when "Trimmed Elite Textures" are employed. 2) The game is veritably a wondrous open map where one may progress throughout the map and revisit areas endlessly for additional exploration and to battle foes again. 3) Aside from the main quest, the side and chain quests may be played at ones leisure and in any order. One may complete the main quest and then return to play any or all of the other yet uncompleted quests. 4) There are so many special unique and legendary weapons, armor, and items. The high quality "yellow" items are virtually endless and may be discovered at any number of levels with an assortment of slots for forging. Some games are preset as to what one may use to upgrade a specific weapon or piece of armor, but with Sacred 2 the user can make their own choices in this regard. Freedom rules! 5) There are so many play styles and ways to build ones character and a sufficient number of characters from which to select. One may choose the Light or Dark path, and afterward experiment with the different skills and modifications, making each character different each time one begins anew. 6) There is so much detailed information on the Wiki with links to downloadable weapons, armor and items. Unlike some games where one may never find all of the armor, jewelry or weapons, here one may treat themselves to practically anything they wish, aside from the "yellow" items as their combinations seem nearly infinite. 7) Here at Dark Matters there is such a vast array of helpful topics, build guides, troubleshooting tips, download links, interesting topics, videos, screenshots, indy art, word and forum games, downloads, and so much more! The site here is family friendly and a handy haven for players of the game and a repository of information for any, especially the aspiring player of Sacred 2. 8) Also here at this site we have a marvelous resource, its members. There are so many helpful and genuinely friendly members willing to help anyone whether they are a "noob" or veteran player. When a new or long time member asks a question, someone knowledgeable always steps in and assists. 9) Mods, and so many of them, are here in their splendor and wondrous glory, ready to download and use. The Diablo II Mod, truly does wonders to the game and as do the other modifications, further expands its enjoyment. 10) The Community Patch has been recently updated and has fixed a virtually endless array of bugs and made fixes to some serious issues to include game crashing. In my opinion the game is now closer to the way it was originally envisioned by its developers at Ascaron. The textures are being employed so well and the monsters, bosses, and quests now fill the world of Ancaria, now an immense, immersive, and immeasurable expanse of wonder, ready to explore in a way that does not confining the player with overly-scripted directed paths. 11) Finally, If one requires but one more reason why Sacred 2 is such a wonderful game: Forsooth (what was first foreshadowed in my initial statement) Sacred 2 Fallen Angel has tremendous replay value. When the End Bosses are defeated the credits may roll, yet the game is not truly over. The player may simply return and finish any uncompleted side quests and visit any part of Ancaria yet again, the friendly denizens of towns and hamlets wave and greet them. One may store their character's save file and chests at any point and load them yet again in order to play from that point forward. That is another precious thing unto itself, indeed. I doubtlessly must have excluded some other noteworthy reasons, as there are so many great rationalizations which prove the worth of this outstanding game. I have no doubt that there will be players of the game far into the future, both newcomers and old-timers. Note: This article is a reprint of my original reply to the post here.
    6 points
  18. Enhanced Edition 3.0 is released! Change Log: There are two files now when you click "Download." I split the music mod into its own download because of file size. Use the versions of Music Mod and Portrait Overhaul included with this download if you're using EE. I'll see about updating the standalone versions soon enough. Also on the Nexus as always: https://www.nexusmods.com/sacred2/mods/1 I'm in the process of updating the info in the lead post of this thread.
    6 points
  19. While working on the portrait project, I noticed a several neutral "atmospheric" animals that were designed by Ascaron yet not present in the game. I've been adding them to the game world. I think this gives the various regions more life and vibrancy. To start with there are some various snakes. Green are in swampy marshy areas, red are in the jungle, and brown are in the desert. Next there are two variants of hawks. These appear throughout Artamark, Nor Plat, and the Dragonsea Islands. In addition to the red snakes, the Jungle region also has colorful red parrots now as well. The Dryad Island of Dyr-Lain also has its own green parrots, as well as capuchin monkeys. These monkeys were discovered and transformed into green eyed Monkey Demon in D2F a while back, but here they are simply little monkeys that scamper around. In fact, only Tyr Lysia has any "background" creatures. I believe the developers did Tyr Lysia and then just ran out of time to do the other regions. The following animals were already present, but only in the start region. Now they will appear in other places as well. For example, you will see stags and crows in the forests of Artamark, hares in the meadows, and frogs around lakes and ponds. I had to place many of these by hand, but this the kind of touch the developers put into so much else of the world, it seemed appropriate to take some care with the wildlife as well. Frogs also fill up the Hissil'Ta Swamps and Nagash's Nest along with the snakes. You will now see Snow Hares flitting about the Northland, trying to avoid become the lunch of the Arctic Wolves. You will see more farm animals around agrarian communities, like sheep and sheep dogs around Orcish Byway. There are also crows in Skook's Corner now, a nod to DeMordrey's seat of power from Sacred 1 which was full of crows, Crow's Rock Castle. Last but not least, I noticed that man's best friends are completely lacking in the realm of men. Now almost all cities and towns in Artamark will have some cats and dogs roaming about.
    6 points
  20. I recently got bored with my first character (more on that later) and am going to be restarting as something else entirely in the hopes that I can extend the life of the game some, but I also learned a lot in the process. I figured I might share some of my more interesting or "OOOHHH, *that's* why" moments in case they're useful to someone else, either starting a new Seraphim or to help optimize one in progress. Some caveats to be taken into consideration: 1) I played with Nexus' Survival Mod installed, and had Mooney's Challenge Mod installed on top of it. I don't know for sure which of all the changes took precedence over which others, but the end result was madness (including one point where I was taking on FIVE Bloodclaw werewolf bosses at once and some places where stepping into a crypt meant getting mobbed by 70+ ghosts all at once, actually stacked on top of each other 3-4 deep with a Banshee boss wailing on me for 17k a swat). The end note to be taken from this is that the character will probably survive anything that gets thrown at it, and will *eventually* (read: at high enough level) basically be immortal, short of those enemies that have Leech Percent. 2) I assumed from playing Sacred 1 (and hearing that Sacred 2 had 600+ quests) that the game would be fairly long if I tried to do everything, and I refused to do it five times over just to get to the saucy bits in Niobium. I started in Niobium at level 80 with no idea what I was doing, and learned from there. When I made mistakes and learned from them, I fixed them with the character editor within the bounds of a legitimate character. Soooo, to start things off I made a level 1 Seraphim and jacked up my experience bonus to something like 50x and gave myself some gold just to buy some basic gear from vendors as I leveled. I picked skills that seemed like they would fit the character I wanted well as I leveled, and every couple levels I bought some new trash to wear just so I could keep power leveling on stuff around the lumberjack camp and pirate cave. Somewhere along the way I got lucky and found a level 50 Nosferatu Fang amulet and kept that for well over 100 levels (more on that later). Whenever I hit the point in a difficulty that enemies stopped scaling with me, I hopped up a difficulty (unlocked with aforementioned character editor) and kept on keepin' on. At around level 80 (still in trashy gear) I got to the point where I could handle a few level 111 Niobium inquisitors and bandits, and the adventure started. I set my experience bonus at a mild 150% (so I could just forget Mentor potions altogether). Some thoughts I had, and when applicable, why they were wrong: 1) I was using Warding Energy without Warding Energy Lore, and I had 31 Revered Technology Focus (not Lore, Focus is cooldowns and Lore is damage, I wasn't using spells) for the 6 points to modify my Ward and Divine Protection. I figured having some projectile reflection and spellblock would be great for most fights, but without Warding Lore your shield never gets higher than about 4,400. It also *never* regenerates in combat (only the Temple Guardian can do that) so once it's gone, it's gone. It's also gone in 2-3 successful hits, negating any reflect it had, so depending on the rest of your build it's mostly useless. Later on in the game when enemies start throwing spells or spiders start spitting at you (neither reflected by your Ward nor by your Battle Stance) your Ward gets blown off instantly at the start of every combat. It *may* be useful if you stack tons of points into the Warding Lore skill, but I didn't. Any survivability I thought I was getting from my Ward was *actually* from Battle Stance's Close Combat Reflect. Later on I found I only used Divine Protection a handful of times, and dropped both Arts entirely. Eventually, any protection granted by Divine Protection can be made up for in the same amount of time with other means of survivability like Damage Mitigation and Leech (and massive Vitality). So Wards and Protection were a total bust. Without my Ward, I had no need of the Concentration skill either (allows 2 buffs, 3 at mastery). 2) The tooltips for Combat Arts and their modifications are woefully vague, misdirect you, or flatout lie. I mentioned Battle Stance in the above section, and it's here again. It's here because Battle Stance is a goddamn champion skill and you might not ever know it just from the tooltips. Eventually I started having very high survivability against certain types of enemies, and it took a LONG time and a visit to the Wiki to figure out why: Battle Stance's "small chance of Close Combat Reflection" is *not* a small chance. The chance to Reflect is actually 20% at Art level 1, 55% at level 50, and I assume it's at least 66% at level 100 (even with diminishing returns). That means with a few pieces of gear that also have reflect (or a triple-set of Gemmae, as it may be, the Community Patch sigil stone thingies that go in your relic holder) you can reach nearly 100% close combat reflect with your buff. The Drill modification only reduces cooldowns by 9% at level 50, but at level 100 the Flexibility mod will give you 20% (base) +20% evasion which will work with your reflect to reduce damage and the Aggression mod will give you a 100% damage boost, and it's eventually 300 to even 500% attack AND defense. Cooldowns be damned, the single biggest buff my character got was reading as many Battle Stance runes as I possibly could. 3) Dashing Alacrity is incredibly useless, or ridiculously amazing, depending on whether you mod your game. What the game doesn't tell you is that there is a cap on maximum speed increases, and it is very low: 50%. You spend the skillpoints mastering a weapon skill like Swords, and you've already hit the attack speed cap. All that speed on your weapon and bracers and buffs is garbage doing nothing. However, there's a simple line in your balance.txt, "Speedmax=1500", that you can change to fix the problem if you so desire. Some mods set it to 2500 (250% speed), but you can pick your own or stay vanilla. Just be aware of the limit if you don't change it to something reasonable... why would they allow a character to get hundreds of percent attack speed and then limit it to 50? Also keep in mind that regardless of Attack Speed %, weapons have different innate speed bases. Some one handers are faster than others, and two handers are slower than both of them. The faster 1h weapons are generally boosted by Dexterity while the slightly slower ones are boosted by Strength. If you have the CM patch installed, Lightsabers are the only weapons boosted by Willpower. If you use a Dexterity 1h and mod your max speed to 250%, with Dashing Alacrity at level 100+ (a lot of runes read, I know) with the Delay and Impatience mods both taken, your Alacrity will grant nearly 100% speed and have a duration longer than its own cooldown so it's perpetually active, and you will swing that sword like a blender on steroids. If you have even a small percent life leech, 1h+shield will even outdamage 2h weapons, or at least mine did... plus you get to use a shield, important for the next bit. 4) Unlike most other mods stacking against the player's favor (reflect being multiplicative, deathblow having diminishing returns, %damage being additive, etc) Damage Mitigation is additive and that is seriously OP on a Seraphim. I mentioned at one point a banshee boss (and even the Bloodclaw werewolves did it) hitting me for 17-20k a swat, and those were the first times I simply turned and RAN from something, not willing to lose my survival bonus "just to find out if I could do it". If you see a bonus that says "Damage Mitigation: Physical" and under it there are four other "Mitigation"s in different colors, that's "All-Channel" mitigation, or rather "reduces all incoming damage no matter where it's from, except enemies with leech". It's a mod that usually only shows up on torso and shoulder armor, and most sets have that bonus on both. It also shows up on the Glacial Defender shield at about 2/3 strength, and shows up on 3-4 different amulets at different strengths. It's also the main draw of the "Toughness" skill, which grants about 13% damage reduction at mastery and 27% when totally maxed out at level 200. All of these are important if you're playing a heavily-difficulty-modded game, with the Community Patch, especially as a Seraphim, because Seraphim have two extra items with Damage Mitigation that other classes don't get (I don't believe, anyway). On top of shoulder and torso items, Seraphim also have Endijian's Wings and Protective Hands as options, and Hands even come with extra Reflection stats. I didn't know for a long time you could socket those Damage Mitigation amulets into Gold sockets on gear either, further increasing their numbers. With Wings, Hands, Shoulders, Torso, and a Glacial shield, it's very easy to get 60-80% damage mitigation. Now that 150,000 damage oneshot is a very survivable 30K, and with as much reflect and evasion as you'll have, it won't be landing very often. With stacked Vitality and a couple percent leech, you'll likely outregen/leech any damage you do take. Also note that if you have terrible luck with getting set items to drop, Mitigation shows up on rare items as well, and the stat can even roll twice for double the effect. Watch for them! 5) Big muscles make for big damage! Except if you're already Whetting all your gear at the blacksmith, you're going to be doing so much damage that your strength really won't matter. You're already hitting for 8k anyway, with a onehander. If you need to hit something, a weapon or ring with -Opponent Chance to Evade has a much greater effect than any amount of +Attack anyway, so go with those (I was particularly fond of Sneaking Demon, das a sexy pigsticker). Eventually I needed survivability instead, and dropped all my points into Vitality, which paid off with a 50K lifespan in the end. Being able to take big hits and shrug them off with regen and leech is much more useful than a bunch more damage that ends up being mostly overkill. As a Seraphim, there's only so many things you can hit at once and only so fast you can hit, overkill damage wasn't helping clear speed nearly as much as not having to worry about dying and being able to slog through the pigpiles and hordes. Anyway, see a few posts down for my testing on strength and exactly how much damage you can get out of it, maybe useful for somebody. 6) Also, critical hits are garbage. Crits in basically every game ever are 150% or 200% damage, but in this one they're only 120%. You don't need to avoid them, and you don't particularly care about dealing them either. Double-Hits are boss though. See the following post as to why this was wrong. 7) Life Leech per Hit, and Leech Life from Opponents are two totally different stats, and neither works like one might expect (having played Diablo 2 and whatnot). The former deals a certain amount of damage per strike as unresistable damage and heals the player for said amount, say a flat +200 damage and +200 healing. It's a decent stat if you attack very quickly and have high defenses, it helps regenerate some of the incidental damage you take when there's no emergencies going on. The latter deals the same unresistable damage, yet the damage dealt is based on the target's *maximum life*, so the bigger the bad, the badder the blow (and the bigger the healing received). Late-game it's not uncommon to see 600-1000 leeched from weenies, 6-10K leeched from champions, and 50-100K life stolen from a Big Bad Boss, in a *single* hit. The mod usually appears only on 2h weapons (up to about 4%), but it also appears as a full-set bonus in some sets. Remember that crappy level 50 Nosferatu Fang I mentioned forever ago that I kept for a hundred levels? The set bonus for having both the amulet and the ring is 1.7% Leech Life, and that carried me through the darkest of times. At the very end I gave up some Mitigation for another set bonus with Leech % (Genesis Siderea), the Fang/Claw set, and a store-bought two-hander with 4% leech and deathblow (with stacked deathblow jewelry in it). It even procs twice on double-swings, just for extra insult to the injury! Killing bosses in a couple seconds is a bit overkill though, and gets boring, so maybe don't do this to the extent I did. 8) Build your character right, and because of how weak enemies tend to be and the like, the regeneration times on active Combat Arts don't even matter. I tried and tried to keep Art levels and regen times and such balanced, but even in doing so I never *used* them. I ended up not using Warding or Divine Protection (former stopped being useful, latter was never really useful), I never used my Kybele god button for heals, Somersault is junk, Pelting Strikes was so slow and ungainly that I kept trying to use it but found it outclassed by autoattacks... The only useful Arts I had were Soul Hammer, and only when using a 2h against huge enemies, and Dashing Alacrity after I modded files to increase max attack speed (it would have otherwise been as useless as the rest). Because Dashing Alacrity's biggest "can't use this yet" problem is a *cooldown* and not *regeneration time*, even massive regeneration penalties don't make any difference to my character, so having a totally maxed out overburdening Battle Stance didn't matter. Once I got things figured out, my most effective combat strategy went like this: Log in, turn on Battle Stance, recast Dashing Alacrity as necessary (about once every 45 seconds), autoattack the whole game to death. So before the end, I'll share how my Seraphim ended up (for a look at the end result of what I learned). Stats: All points in Vitality, every last one of them. End result is some pretty beastly regen and 52k HP. Skills: Tactics Lore 75 for damage, Exalted Warrior Focus 75 (you won't need the mod points, but it raises the level without penalty for better Alacrity and Battle Stance), Swords 75 for attack speed and unlocking Double Hits Armor Lore 75, Shield Lore 75 (unlocks 20%-someodd chance to block, and Shield Lore adds to ALL of your defense while wielding a shield, not just the shield's defense, it's a lot better than the game makes it sound), Constitution 75 (for in-combat life regen), Combat Reflexes 75 (the evade vs critical really helps if your game's modded for 200% crit damage), Spell Resistance 75 (again, mostly for a modded game where crits are actually dangerous, but spells will still be your weakest defense by far so you might as well shore it up some), Toughness 75 (for the almighty Damage Mitigation). I dumped all remaining points into Toughness and Swords (more Mitigation, more Double Hits). Of course you can always swap Swords for Poles, Dual Wield, whatever. Can always drop Shields, but with my setup I was always using one anyway so I added it. That leaves 1-2 skills of your choice. If you're actually using combat arts or Warding, Concentration will help (or be necessary)... I used Bargaining myself, a lot of the gear I wore for a long time came from shophopping for jewelry and swords. Eeeeveeenntualllyyyy after a lot of farming ghosts for jewelry (they only seem to drop jewelry and gemmae, making finding extra Clepidide's and such easier) and the like trying to make myself immortal just to see if it could be done (and you can definitely come close with just a few pieces of gear) I did a little testing with aggroing triple-size screens of enemies (which is dozens and dozens of them) and just standing there, and looking at some numbers and such. I had 90% damage mitigation, over 90% reflect close, over 60% reflect projectile, 40% someodd reflect spells, and 52k HP (could have gotten more life and more regen by dumping into Constitution, but I wanted Swords instead for the damage). I had enough defense and extra evasion and block and such that even if things didn't reflect, they didn't hit me anyway. It was basically only spells that even made numbers show up. This is about the point I got really, really bored with my Seraphim. Pros, Cons, Quality of Life, random musings... 1) Character is very strong, even with simple autoattacks, and very durable with halfway decent gear. This allows you to dick around in combat as much as you want and simply enjoy the quests without too much worry about watching colored bars or accidentally dying to something random. If something has a chance at all of killing you, you'll know before you even see it (because of the huge BOSS health bar that shows up when they approach). 2) If you want to play around with utility spells and combat arts, the character's strong enough that being very inefficient with your arts won't cause the character to fail. If you feel like using Warding for lore reasons or spamming Flaring Nova on big groups of enemies (with no skills to support it, making it a terrible choice), you still can. Being a little overpowered makes for flexibility, and flexibility helps cure boredom. Maybe you actually LIKE Pelting Strikes (where I found it totally useless) and you want to spam it... go ahead! 3) Recreating my old seraphim and the first thing that came to mind once I got geared again (took until level 104 to get everything to drop, and the Lycan ring was the last piece, bleh) was HOLY CRAP I HATE Chance to Fear Opponent Away. It's a stat that rolls randomly on most pieces of gear and comes on set items as well, particularly the Lycan ring of the leech set I use. It's counterproductive at best and infuriating at worst, so here's how you deal with that crap: Open up your Blueprints.txt with a fancier-than-Notepad text editor like Notepad++ (Notepad won't work, trying to use Notepad will only break your game) and find the line "bonusgroup1 = {883,1250,1,9,0}," under item blueprint ID 4027, item "set_ring_nail" (this is the Lycan ring). Change this bonus to "{871,500,1,9,0}". This will change the obnoxious-as-all-hell Fear property to a harmless little Survival bonus, and suddenly combat is roughly 12.92% less annoying as long as you avoid Fear on your other gear. 4) Gear gets kinda boring, and looting things can feel pointless. This wasn't nearly as much of an issue on my Glacial elf, whose gear varied quite a bit and constantly. I used the Armguards, Legguards, Shoulders from the Niokaste set, with their damages, skills, and attack speed bonuses (and 3-piece set bonus) they're good enough that no one or two pieces is worth replacing with rares. I used the entire Genesis Siderea set for the leech bonus, so none of those items change. I use the Tooth and Nail amulet and ring for more leech, leaving my only variable item as a *single* rare ring, usually with -Opponent Chance to Evade and Damage or Flat Physical Damage (shows up as a little yellow bar and amount, like 32-32). Basically, besides shopping for a new ring once in a while, my gear never changes once I fill a slot, and all I ever do is upgrade a level 90 item to a level 105 item, 105 to 120, etc, ad infinitum. This makes 99.99% of all items that drop totally useless, including tons of copies of the same gear I'm already wearing, at exactly the same level. If you're a loothound and play the game for that, you'll have to find a way to mix things up a bit. 5) Just as a point of interest because I learned it recently... I usually use a 1h and shield or a 2h with Leech % (and preferably Deathblow as a second stat, if I can get it), because 1h swords can't roll Leech %... but there *is* a single 1h sword with Leech %. It didn't show up on the wiki page for "sources of Leech %", so I missed its existence entirely. The problem is that it's only in the Community Patch and it's legendary, so good luck getting it to drop. I've not seen it yet, my elusive Sereish Steel of Thunder, my precious. I must have my precious... Anyway, figured I'd share and maybe some people could learn a few things from my mistakes and my journeys through the Wiki
    6 points
  21. Community Patch 1.60 is now released, no longer in beta status. Here's a compilation of all the development threads leading up the patch: General and Code Changes Restored Creatures Project Unlocked Items and Enemy Gear Fixes Player Equipment Fixes Spell and Skill Fixes Text, UI, and Quest Fixes Creature Fixes Adding New Portals to Community Patch Elite Mounts Project
    6 points
  22. Welcome to the CM 1.60 Beta pre-release party. Grab a drink, pull up a chair, and let me tell you about the final batch of changes that are coming to Ancaria before I release it into the wild later tonight. ========================================================== Starting Island Portal is enabled in singleplayer. Access it any time. Visit the merchants, start the CM quest "Bugs!", and make use of the the portal dungeon there to jump around the world. Ship Ports and Hot Air Balloons now work like Portals. After activation, they may be accessed from the world map at any time or place. New "Travel Agent" NPC's added in 20 locations. These NPC's use the ship captain icon and will unlock new "portals" through which to travel. You can read more about this new feature and check out their new locations in this thread: ADDING NEW PORTALS TO COMMUNITY PATCH. The player can now teleport to underground soulstones when above ground. This bug kept people from being able to get to places like the Great Machine soulstone. Mounts can now be called into dungeons and underground areas (player must still dismount when entering\leaving dungeons due to code limitatons). Run Speed (non-functioning bonus) on Horses is replaced with a Physical Armor bonus. There was just no way to get this bonus to work. The best alternative was to replace it with a different useful bonus. Don't forget the player can now use buffs on Horses! Player no longer gets stuck running around in circles when trying to mount Horses and Special Mounts. It's happened to all of us. The player only want to mount on one side. If you're on the wrong side, the toon runs around trying to get to the other side, and sometimes gets stuck running back and forth. This is now fixed, or at least mitigated. Player no longer loses control of the camera during boss battles (no more centering on the boss and extreme zoom out). This feature was very disorienting, and on rare occasions it would make the keyboard unresponsive, making boss battles about 20x more stressful than they needed to be. Also you could never get a good look at a lot of smaller bosses because the camera zoomed out so much. Stackable items have max stack size increased from 20 to 99. Runes are now stackable. Items already in inventory before patching must be dropped and picked up again to benefit from this change. Thanks to everyone who participated in the Rune Stacking poll and gave feedback! Autocollect pickup range increased. Basically the graphical circle and the actual pickup radius are separate. To make the graphic match the new coded pickup radius, change the line "autoCollectRadius" to a value of "230" in options.txt (not required, but recommended). The player can now use the "ESC" key as an additional quicksave hotkey (in addition to the player's usual quicksave key). Requires editing options.txt. If you're happy with the quicksave being bound to a single key, then no need to do anything. If you'd like some extra assurance that your progress is always saved, then open options.txt and edit the following two lines so that they read as follows: binding_shortcut0 = 1, cmd_shortcut0 = "sys savehero", Sources of "Experience per Kill" on items, potions, statues, and spells now stack instead of overriding one another. Yes the dreaded bug is finally squashed. How do all these various sources of XP per Kill now work together? Very simple: Hero statue bonus overrides potion bonus whatever the application sequence, potion duration overrides statue duration whatever the application sequence, experience bonuses from items and spells are added afterwards. All binaries patched to address the game's memory leak problem and improve PhysX performance. Crashing and freezing should be dramatically reduced. This is a big change. This includes a newer version of mss32.dll, as well as all the binaries patched to allow memory usage over 2GB. In addition to this, Dmitriy has made the game flush the system memory on changing zones and on game exiting/reloading. If you are using the new CM 1.60, please don't patch any of the files yourself or use any 3rd party utilities. The days of trying to flush the system memory yourself, either manually or with a program, are also over. Elite Mounts Project is now fully integrated. This will no longer be a separate mod going forward. Elite Mounts in its entirety is now included in CM Patch, playable in all 10 languages for the first time. This huge project was the child of many parents over many years, so I'm glad it will finally be a part of the CM Patch as it was always intended. Fixed an Inquisition temple model that had gaps where the mesh pieces didn't fit together right. This was just kind of a random last minute change. Any final thoughts before I roll it on out? My last task is to encode the raw texts of all the different languages, so barring any errors there, ETA in 5-6 hours.
    6 points
  23. I've uploaded the new patch with the change log above. It can be found on the Downloads page as well as on the Nexus. This will be, I think, the last release of Enhanced Edition. I've done everything I set out to do and am ready to move on to other projects.
    5 points
  24. PFP v1.4 is released! All links have been updated in the first post. Among the bug fixes, this release also adds support for several languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Polish, Hungarian. These translations contain all the text fixes (but none of the extra bits) from the Community Patch and Enhanced Edition provided by fans over the years. Thanks to @idbeholdME for rigorous testing and the relentless reporting.
    5 points
  25. Version 3.2 of Enhanced Edition is now released! Also available on the Sacred 2 Nexus. Aside from a huge amount of bug fixes, here are some other highlights: for 3.2: 5 quest monsters who were clones of regular enemies now have their own unique boss designs: Banshee, Evocator, Diaanja's Hellhound, the Dream Vampire, Pharaoh El-Leigh. The latter two are also elevated to boss rank with new powers. These designs come courtesy of Dmitriy and Pesmontis. More cut quests restored: Ghost Whisperings (Shadow Version) starts in the Artamark cemetery north of Fortress Reikenstein, like the Light version, but follows a totally different trajectory. Attack of the Undead begins near the southern edge of the lake above Clearview. Look for the family stranded with a crashed wagon. Thanks to Lindor's work with shaders, Ancient Bark FX no longer looks terrible and is used instead of the Scorpion Shield FX which was borrowed ever since CM Patch.
    5 points
  26. February 19-th is the current expected release date. In fact, everything is nearly ready, I'm fishing for some possible last minute bug input.
    5 points
  27. Its that time! Schots going to attempt getting firstly DarkMatters to an SSL Certificate, and if successful he'll then come up with a dev plan to get the Wiki to an SSL as well. We ask everyone here who has guides, uploads, images etc to please back up your work just.. incase. He's only going to get this in action tomorrow and we'll get up a warning about an hour before we do the change. Here's to hoping we keep our links preservered... To the future Sacred Fan Family!! gogo
    5 points
  28. OK I spent all day Saturday trying to make this work again, and I finally got it. I don't know why it broke, since nothing was changed with this quest. But after a lot of scripting I was able to make the quest function like it used to. The battle will start as soon as you set foot into town.
    5 points
  29. This thread is intended to assist anyone who would appreciate a quick guide on how to patch Sacred 2 Gold in order to get their best possible gaming experience from this vast, visually rich, immersive, and enthralling RPG. There are convenient clickable links throughout this post which are highlighted in bright silver for your convenience. If you still find yourself looking for answers to any question or questions not covered in this post, you are welcome to ask them below for assistance. First, be certain that if the game has been previously installed on your PC. Uninstall the game and remove any leftover files. I must stress that this must be a "clean installation." Also, remove any previous save files as you will want to start a new character. Otherwise, their will doubtlessly be some bugged quests and certain other annoying glitches. Only ones chest files should be fine to retain and use. Second, I highly recommend installing Sacred 2 Gold and then launching the game once to the start screen where you will the the Seraphim (default player character) appear unless you still have a previous saved character that you did not delete. Do not select a character yet. If the game launched, then go no further but to exit the game and proceed to the next step. Third, download the Community Patch 160 here. Open the cm-patch0160 zip folder and click on cm-enable.exe and wait until you see the Ready to Patch screen display. This may take several moments (that may seem to last a lifetime). Now, click the Start button and it will automatically locate the Sacred 2 root folder and the installer will complete the latest patch. Wait until it completes the patch and then click Next and then Finish. This patch was very important for you to have installed. It fixes the game so that it should not crash, which is just one blessing among a host of other bug fixes and enhancements most surely to be to any player's delight. If you want the game to remain as close as possible to the "vanilla version," like an improved and patched version of Ice & Blood or Sacred 2 Gold, you should stop here. However, if you do not want the Community Items (jewelry, armor, and weapons) to drop in the game, then you will need to skip to the Fifth step, where you may add any desired Mods; here you will want to add the "Vanilla Drops" for CM Patch 160. If you choose to stop there, after the Vanilla Drops installation, the Community Items may be downloaded and used in the game but they will not drop as quest rewards or as loot. Fourth, you may be adding, at your own discretion, either the Sacred 2 Enhanced Edition or the Community Patch Addendum, the two are mutually exclusive. We will be enabling either by using the Generic Mod Enabler in this step to add either one or the other. Flix's quote: "Sacred 2 Enhanced Edition - about 50% fixes, 40% quality of life changes, 10% "just cause I felt like it" changes (art, etc.)." (If you want the Sacred 2 Enhanced Edition which fixes some issues that could not be fully agreed to by the Mod Team) you will want to add the Sacred 2 Enhanced Edition. (Or, you may instead wish to add The Community Patch Optional Addendum, which also addresses some issues in a manner that was not fully agreed to by the Mod Team. If you prefer the Community Patch Optional Addendum, please skip to the Fifth step, below.) If you do not wish to add either the Sacred 2 Enhanced Edition or the Community Patch Optional Addendum you may skip to the Sixth Step to add some new cool music or Seventh step and add any other desired Mods. Continuing with this, the Forth step, proceed to install the Generic Mod Enabler available here. Follow the directions for adding Mods in the seventh step below, skipping step five. Congratulations, unless you want to add more mods or the optional music file, you are done here and you may go directly to the game and have fun. Fifth, if you wish to add the Community Patch Addendum instead of the Sacred 2 Enhanced Edition, this step is for you. If you want to find out more about it please visit the topic in the link. To proceed to install the Sacred 2 Enhanced Edition, Follow the directions for adding Mods in the seventh step located below. Congratulations, unless you want to add more mods or optional music files, you are done here and may go directly to the eighth step. Sixth, this step if for you if you wish to add the cool new music file. You may wish (I strongly advise) to retain a separate copy of the musichq2 folder located in the pak folder located inside the Sacred 2 root folder, in case you find later that you prefer the original music and wish to change back. Now, to add the new background music file just drop 139_bg_highelves_day5.ogg into the zip folder, musichq2, which is located in the pak folder. Unless you wish to add any additional Mods you may skip to the Eighth step. Seventh, to add any Mods, you are best advised to download and employ the GME. For adding any Mods, like the Community Patch Optional Addendum, you are strongly advised to use the GME. However, for the the Elite Trimmed Textures, you may, unless you have a low-end rig, want to unzip the file directly into the pak folder because it's highly unlikely that you would prefer to return to lower quality image resolutions. You may download the GME here. To install any Mods follow the procedure to follow. Place and then extract the Generic Mod Enabler (GME) jsgme_2.6.0 zip file inside the Sacred 2 root folder and run it by extracting it in the Sacred 2 root folder and then run the GME once by clicking on jsme_setup.exe. Please, direct it to install to the Sacred 2 root folder. When it is has completed its task you may then close it and look inside the Sacred 2 root folder for the MODS folder the GME made. Now, place any of the mods zip folders inside the MODS folder For the GME to work, you must "Extract here" inside the MODS folder, each of them one by one. You should now see a separate folder for each mod by name. Open the GME again and any mod that you wish to activate click on it to select it and then activate it by using the > and the mods description will move to the activated section. The reverse process of clicking/highlighting the Mod and using the < will disable the Mod in question. Eighth, so that the graphics circle for collection of loot matches the actual area of acquisition you will want to open the options.txt file and chance the values on this following line as indicated: Options.txt needs only this line changed: autoCollectRadius = 230 Congratulations to you are in order. I sincerely hope that you have found this guide useful and that you enjoy Sacred 2 Gold as close as possible to the way you prefer to play it.
    5 points
  30. Dual Wield Exalted Warrior/Revered Technology Seraphim Hello everyone! For those who still play this game nowadays, in the following lines I will share my personal Sacred 2 guide for one of my favorite characters, the Seraphim. As the title say, we will mainly be using combat arts from the Exalted Warrior aspect and a few from the Revered Technology aspect, mainly the energy shield. So, let's begin! 1. Skill build Level 2 - Tactics Lore (keep this close to your character level) - One of the most important skills for our Seraphim since it increases the damage dealt by weapons and the critical chance as well! (you should put at least 1 point in Tactics Lore per level up or if you want, 2 points every 2 level ups so you can master it at level 75). Level 3 - Exalted Warrior Focus (at least 75 points for mastery) - Probably our second most important skill after Tactics Lore due to the regeneration and penalty decrease for the Exalted Warrior combat arts. Master it at level 75. Level 5 - Armor Lore (keep it around half of your character's level) - Great skill due to the regeneration reduction of our combat arts as well as penalty diminish from the equipment. Try to have the penalty limit around 15-20 levels higher than your character level (for example, a level 60 Seraphim should have no penalty for gear level 75-80). This is because we will mainly be using set or unique items that mostly comes with a way higher level than our character, especially if they're dropped from bosses. Level 8 - Dual Wield (you can keep this at half of your character's level) - Good skill for a bit of attack and attack speed boost. The penalty limit threshold should be the same as Armor Lore's, you should be able to use weapons up to 15-20 levels more than yours without penalties. Level 12 - Revered Technology Focus (at least 75 points for mastery; you can keep it 1/2 of your character's level) - We'll learn the Focus skill first for the regeneration time decrease as well as penalty threshold. Very important skill in our build. Level 18 - Revered Technology Lore (you can keep this 1/3 of your character's level since we will be using Flaring Nova more for crowd control rather than damage and also the energy shield benefits more from Warding Energy Lore rather than from Revered Technology Lore) Level 25 - Constitution (keep it around 1/3 of your level until later levels, when it can be 1/2) - More health is always good to have. Level 35 - Concentration (don't put too many points in this since we are using it mostly for the second buff) - At this point of the game we should be able to have some regeneration reduction equipment (or at least some gear with regeneration reduction from buffs), so the regeneration increase from the second buff shouldn't be a major problem. Level 50 - Warding Energy Lore (put as many points as you need; you can keep the ratio from Constitution as well, 1/3 of your character's level on Silver difficulty and then at higher difficulties you can keep it 1/2 or even 2/3, if you like a more 'tanky' approach) - Improves your energy shield and indirectly, your health, since it strengthens your survivability in battle. Level 65 - Toughness (don't spend too much time on this, just keep it 1/3 of your character's level or even 1/4) - Just for a little more resistance against every damage type. 1.1 Skill mastery order (personal preference) 1st mastery - Tactics Lore (for more critical hit chance) 2nd mastery - Exalted Warrior Focus (for further regeneration and penalty decrease for Pelting Strikes, Dashing Alacrity and Battle Stance buff) 3rd mastery - Revered Technology Focus (for further regeneration and penalty decrease for Flaring Nova and Warding Energy buff) 4th mastery - Dual Wield (to grant the chance to inflict double hits with your weapons) 5th mastery - Armor Lore (for further regeneration penalty decrease) 6th mastery - Warding Energy Lore (for even more faster shield regeneration) 7th mastery - Revered Technology Lore (for more Flaring Nova damage; it improves the energy shield as well) 8th mastery - Constitution (to be able to regenerate health while in combat) 9th mastery - Toughness (for further increased resistance against all damage types) 10th mastery - Concentration (only for 3 active buffs at the same time; we kept Concentration at 10th mastery because we don't have a single point in Celestial Magic aspect Lore or Focus skills so we don't have a third fully modified buff to use) 2. Combat arts and buffs Exalted Warrior Aspect 1. Pelting Strikes - Our main combat art to use. The ideal regeneration time should be around 3 seconds (if you have gear with regeneration per hit bonuses of 1 or 1,5 seconds then you can have a regeneration of even 4,5 seconds). Keep it equal or lower level to the penalty threshold of Exalted Warrior Focus. 2. Dashing Alacrity - Very important combat art due to increased move speed and attack speed bonuses. Use it for long distance runs or before boss fights and watch them shred with Pelting Strikes. 3. Battle Stance (buff) - Our main buff that we'll be using. Provides a decent amount of damage, attack and defense boost. Revered Technology Aspect 1. Flaring Nova - Very good combat art when facing groups of enemies. Don't keep an eye out on the regeneration because we won't gonna be spamming this like Pelting Strikes. A regeneration of under 7-8 seconds should work. 2. Warding Energy (buff) - Our secondary buff after Battle Stance. Don't take it at early levels since it will increase the regeneration of Pelting Strikes and Flaring Nova too much and we won't gonna be using it against rats and brigands anyway. Level 30 should be enough to start read Warding Energy runes. *OPTIONAL* - 3. Divine Protection - You can use it during boss fights after your Warding Energy shield got depleted for some more protection. (be careful because it will deactivate your Warding Energy buff when the duration ends; I don't know if this is now patched or not) Celestial Magic Aspect (Optional) 1. Hallowed Restoration - Just a good healing effect after fights if you want to spare some health potions. 3. Combat arts and buffs modifications Pelting Strikes Succession - chance for double hits (20%) Focus - require less energy (20%) Precision - increases the chance to land critical hits (9.9% + 0,1% per level of Pelting Strikes) Dashing Alacrity Bloodlust - further increases attack speed (10% + 0,3% per level of Dashing Alacrity) Delay - increases the duration of Dashing Alacrity (with 50%) Impatience - reduces the cooldown of Dashing Alacrity (with 33,3%) Battle Stance (buff) Premonition - further increases attack value (12,5% + 2,5% per level of Battle Stance) Drill - reduces the energy cost to maintain Battle Stance (not sure how much to be honest but it's always good to have) Retaliation - small chance to reflect close combat damage (20% chance, increases slightly per level of Battle Stance) Flaring Nova Impulse - sends out 2 pulses, but reduces strength (around 30% damage reduction) Stun - chance to stun enemies within range (19,8% + 0,2% per level of Flaring Nova) Laggard - slows the targets down (25% + 0,5% per level of Flaring Nova) Warding Energy Field Force - strengthens the energy field and absorbs more damage until it is exhausted (50% increase from base value) Field Force - improves the energy field and absorbs more damage until it is exhausted (50% increase from base value) Resource - reduces the energy cost to maintain the shield (50% + 0,5% reduction per level of Warding Energy) Divine Protection Dampen - absorbs more damage (10% + 0,1% per level of Divine Protection) Uplifted Force - improves the energy shield (33,3% increase) Improved Reflection - chance to reflect projectile damage (50% + 1% per level of Divine Protection) 4. Weapons and equipment 4.1 Weapons by the level 50 mark you should have a different slot for each damage type (Physical, Magical, Fire, Ice and Poison) I personally use Poison damage weapons for the main slot (upgraded with Poison Fangs) due to Poison secondary effect (damage over type), which is a personal preference of mine - you can use any damage type as a main, it's pure preferential you can either use swords or hafted weapons, but don't combine them in the same weapon slot (like a dual wielding a sword and an axe) always keep the weapon with the higher damage on your right hand because it's the first hand we attack with and combat arts like Pelting Strikes or Soul Hammer will deal more damage this way best modifiers and effects to use on your weapons: +X% damage to the same damage your weapon has, Regeneration per hit (1-1,5 seconds should be more than enough), Lifeleech, Critical hit chance, Double hit chance, +X% Attack, +X to Attack or +X to Exalted Warrior aspect for greedier players, Experience per kill and Chance to find valuables are good too, but don't imprison yourself just in these or you'll suffer later in the game (tip available for both weapons and equipment) 4.2 Equipment I personally prefer Niokaste's Blade Dance set due to bonuses to Exalted Warrior aspect LATE EDIT: I also find Genesis Siderea set amazingly good due to the % Lifeleech bonus (if you can find both pieces of the Tooth and Nail set you'll have another % Lifeleech bonus) best modifiers and effects you can use on your equipment: +X% or +X Armor, +X% or +X to Defense, Regeneration per hit, Regeneration decrease to Combat Arts or to Exalted Warrior aspect, Lifeleech, +X% shield absorption, Spell resistance or +to all skills jewelry is pure preferential, I personally use +Damage, +Attack, Lifeleech or Regeneration per hit rings and +Armor, +Attack and Defense, +to all skills or Damage mitigation amulets (you can socket some of these modifiers in your weapons and equipment as well) 4.3 Relics use each set of relics for every resistance needed (I personally use the main set with mixed relics and the other ones with Poison resistance relics, Fire resistance relics and Ice resistance relics) unique or set relics (from the Community Patch) are the best ones, so keep every one of these you find until you find better ones 5. Attributes at early levels (1-25), you should put points into both Strength (for some melee damage and attack boost) and Stamina (for some regeneration decrease until we find proper equipment) in a 50-50 ratio (60-40 or 40-60 ratio can work too) after level 25 you can occasionally start putting points into Vitality (for more health) and Willpower (for a little bit more Warding Energy shield power) after level 50, when you will gain 2 attribute points to spend, ONE should always go into Strength and the other one either into Vitality, Willpower or Stamina (into Stamina only if you really need to); if you feel you don't need either Vitality, Willpower or Stamina then you can up both points into Strength after level 150, when you will gain 3 attribute points to spend, TWO should always go into Strength and the other one either into Vitality or Willpower, based on your personal preference; if you feel you don't need either Vitality or Willpower then you can up all three points into Strength 6. Play style Expert Touch option is pure preferential (I personally have it ON since I am using a lot of Regeneration per hit modifiers) control large groups of mobs via Flaring Nova (remember that we send 2 pulses from the modification, so, it's an increased chance to either stun or slow down the annoying enemies) slay champion type enemies with Pelting Strikes (3 or 4 hits should pretty much wipe them) use Dashing Alacrity to chase down fleeing enemies, ranged fighters or mages who tend to run away at distance in battles before entering boss battles, don't forget to switch to the relics set that offer the needed resistance (example, Fire relics against Carnach) cast Dashing Alacrity before boss battles as well and spam Pelting Strikes until they die (Pelting Strikes will hit faster due to increased attack speed from Dashing Alacrity modification) after your Warding Energy shield gets depleted during a boss fight (or you get debuffed by certain bosses like The Harpy Queen or The White Griffin) cast Divine Protection shield to protect yourself best unique mount you can use: Exalted Warrior Sabertooth Tiger (-33,3% regeneration decrease to Exalted Warrior aspect) collect every dropped items from mobs (even the common ones), you will need lots of gold for constantly upgrading our weapons and gear 7. Pros and cons Pros extremely powerful against both single targets and groups fast and easy boss killing huge amounts of damage dealt in small periods of time both offensive and defensive build extremely tanky type of Seraphim Cons some players may find it boring and repetitive low versatility since it requires a certain play style very dependent on Battle Stance and Warding Energy buffs pure melee style can be a bit weak and slow without Dashing Alacrity and Pelting Strikes combat arts As a final word, I really hope this guide will help you in developing a really strong and fun to play type of Seraphim. Good luck and have fun wiping the lands of Ancaria!
    5 points
  31. **This mod is now included in Sacred 2 Enhanced Edition, so be sure to use the version of Portrait Overhaul packaged with that mod, if you use EE.** DOWNLOAD THE STANDALONE PORTRAIT MOD: Introduction: Every creature in Sacred 2, whether friendly NPC or enemy, has an icon created for it, This icon is displayed in various places, such as dialogues, merchant interfaces, the quest log, and the "Last Opponent" window, which serves as a kind of recent Bestiary. In vanilla, these icons are made from 3D renders of the creature in question. This is a great idea in theory, however these renders are squashed down into tiny 96x96 icons, which means in many cases you can hardly tell what you are looking at. Even when you can, the models are usually very unappealing to look at in this format. Most either show the creature very far away or comically close up. Anyway, this project aims to revamp all the icons with new artistic ones that are true to the look of the actual models but which also provide the creatures with more character and personality. In-Game Examples: I started, as a proof of concept, with some High Elf portraits. Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/TOPvZs5
    5 points
  32. Some more odds and ends. I feel like I've been restoring missing NPC gear for at least 6 years now (what was anyone even wearing before)? The Broker Enadris (Orcish Byway, main quest) has his shoulder gear. His accomplice, Jaftar the human trafficker (Black Oaks, now a boss) will have a similar piece of armor. The Teacher Solael in Thylysium (Light Path, tells you to stick with Liosilath) has a pair of professorial glasses. There's a Shadow Path spy, Syrilar, in the main quest, with a similar pair of glasses now. While I was getting Solael sorted I noticed two of his fellow teachers obviously stumbled through a portal together and had a terrible accident which fused them together. Fortunately with a little High Elven magic, a newfangled sort called sector coordinates, the good gentleman were able to get sorted out, much to the relief of all. This next one is my favorite. It started when I found an unused Chef's hat. But who does this hat belong to? Surely the Chef Poul Brotheuse, a memorable quest NPC in Thylysium. But there was one problem: Chef Poul doesn't look like a Chef, like, at all. And yet I found an NPC scripted who must surely be him, name = "He_Story_Cook", Turns out this "cook" design is used for a random High Elf noble "Surgeon Lawaon" from a Shadow Path quest. Not to drag out the story any more, but I swapped Lawaon and Poul Brotheuse so that the former has the green-robed noble design and the latter is the Chef he was always meant to be. And now, for the first time, he also has his hat.
    5 points
  33. Hear Ye Hear Ye! - DarkMatters Forum Updates November 2020, we'll be using the default skin for a bit while Schot but hunts through the skin against our new upgrade in software we got for this year. yay IPB! Hillooooo community! IPB has just released their latest version of their software and we be gobbling it up and updating our awesome Community with its latest features! If we're down later tonight, Ne'er fear, we'll Be back@!
    5 points
  34. OK 2.4 is live! File Page: As always it's also available on the Sacred 2 Nexus: https://www.nexusmods.com/sacred2/mods/1?tab=description Bear with me as I take some time to update the first post in this thread, which a lot of people rely on for basic info about the mod. If you want the latest info, the change log as well as the Comprehensive Manual are also included in the download.
    5 points
  35. Hello there! I am glad to inform you that the new version of the mod is available for download! The interface is finalized and multires added! But on big resolutions may be a little problems with textures (more info in change logs!). You can download mod in our topic or group on vk.com!
    5 points
  36. Sometimes when developing this mod, I get fixated on a particular creature or character in Sacred 2. In this case, Blackhammer. For instance, why does he have neither black hair nor a hammer?! Caption from @Hooyaah: "I always thought that Blackhammer would be bigger than this." (Thanks for the one existing pic Steve). This character is most elusive of bosses. Not documented anywhere with a picture, barely mentioned in passing on the Wiki, and non-existent in any Google searches. I can remember when he was almost mythical: a secret, hidden boss that no one ever spoke about. See this topic from 2012: He appears in the Main Campaign, but only on the Light Path, and only as a friendly character. He appears again to Light Path characters who are trying to complete the Dragon Cult chain quest, again as a friend. It's only the Shadow Path characters who try to complete the Shadow version of the Dragon Cult quest, that would ever fight him. And they would be disappointed to find a regular human with slightly more hitpoints, nothing else. So... let's give Blackhammer his mojo back. First off, dude has a unique design, with the glasses and beard, and if you look close, he's got a hammer insignia on his shirt. That hammer pretty much exists in the game, so let's put one in his hands. Ah, that's better. Thanks to CM Patch 1.60, humans aren't so short and dwarfish. I gave Blackhammer just a little bit more of a height boost for good measure. While we're at it, let's remove that mismatching generic red NPC hair and replace it with the black hair that Ascaron actually designed for the guy (yes, they made his own hair but forgot to assign the right texture). Alright now that he looks like a boss, let's make him hit like a boss. Increasing hitpoints, chance to hit, damage resistance... ok now for some lively "Hard Hit" attacks... one will slow the player's speed, another causes bleeding wounds. Ow! Maybe try to dodge that one next time? For a little variety let's make his hammer choice slightly randomized. There we go. Now Blackhammer is ready to do some pounding. Coming in D2F v14. Light Path characters: he'll see you in the Hellfire Arena. Hope you're ready.
    5 points
  37. Elite Seraphim Of The Devine Order During the Great Dragon War many fell and died in battle, some races however, were destroyed, wiped from the face of existence. The Seraphim were mighty, but they had an Elite few that were more than just merely War Angels, they had true balance in all things, armed combat, and magical powers. They had fire hair, unlike their holy sisters, the Elite had real hair of flaming fire, a golden fire that is; and they had eyes of sapphire that glowed a luminescent glow. They were slender, yet very strong and were not to be fooled by their beauty, for they were far greater and deadly than their holy sisters, armed with Ethereal Wings, wings made of the most holiest and pure crystal with a might, and power of their very own. The Path: Light: “I am one of the Elite Seraphim, we are few, but the most powerful and most holy supreme beings in all of Ancaria, though we are mere humble beings compared to our creator. I have a much higher calling than my fellow holy sisters and as such if needed, I can bend or change the rules in any way, if such is ever needed, in order to win the war against the Inquisitors.” (Sorry, no concept Image. I could not find one that came close to my description) Skills: Primary} Concentration. Battle Focus. Heavenly Assault Lore, Devine Technology Lore. Secondary} Combat Discipline. Heavenly Assault Focus. Devine Technology Focus. Ancient Magic. Offensive Skills: Primary} Ranged Weapons. Sword Weapons. Double Handed Hafted Weapons. Tactics Lore. Secondary: Dual Wield. Speed Lore. Damage Lore. Staff Weapons. Defensive Skills: Primary} Shield Lore. Armour Lore. Combat Reflexes. Secondary} Constitution. Spell Resistance. Toughness. General Skills: Primary} Riding. Enhanced Perception. Devine Devotion. Secondary} Alchemy. Bargaining. Blacksmith. Elite Seraphim Combat Arts: Aspect} Battle: Multiple Blow. Fury Attack. Domino Punch. Celestial Lightning. Blades Of Fury. (Buff) Aspect} Heavenly Assault: Heavenly Strike. Pillar Of Exalted Light. Stone Cast. Fire Storm. Heavenly Ring. (Buff) Aspect} Devine Technology: T-Energy Blaze. Nova Bomb. Devine Ray. Holy Arrow Missiles. Devine Energy Shroud. (Buff) What They All Do: Battle} Multiple Blow: A multi-target hitting combat art. A fast moving hitting attack with several slashes (if using single handed Swords & Daggers or Several Blows if using single hafted weapons.) Domino Punch: Using the hilt of her weapon, the Elite Seraphim will deal a devastating blow that will result in a Domino like effect. Meaning, once one target gets hit, he/she will fall, but any other nearby enemies will get hit one by one until they all go down.) Celestial Lightning: This combat art is unique, as you can use one of the given mod points to this combat art and they are. (Magic Damage or Fire Damage. Poison Damage or Ice Damage with a lightning like effect.) Blades Of Fury. (Buff): This buff will emit a red column of light surrounding the Elite Seraphim, also surrounding her will be two spinning magical blades that offer some protection should anyone try to get too close to her, as well as increase attack, defence and combat art damage, while this buff is active.) Heavenly Assault} Heavenly Strike: This combat art appears as a thick beam of light, as the Elite Seraphim puts her hands together as though in prayer. However, once this beam of light connects with one target, it will then split off hitting other nearby targets with a chain lightning like effect. Pillar Of Exalted Light: This combat art while although near similar to the Radiant Pillar combat art of the normal Seraphim, this one has greater and higher damage with a natural gravity well that it emits, sending out a pulse wave too, so that any enemies that are outside of the beams radius. Get strangely pulled toward the pillar of light. Stone Cast: This one is simple enough, any enemy that gets hit by this combat art, gets turned into stone in which then the Elite Seraphim can punch it hard, causing the stone statue to shatter into tiny pieces. Fire Storm: This combat art produces an odd cloud of flames above the heads of group enemies, from which then fire strikes down in lightning like fashion, frying the enemies on the spot. Heavenly Ring. (Buff): This buff is nearly almost similar to the Cleansing Brilliance Buff, useful for dealing with the undead and T-Energy Mutants. This can cause some mild damage to Spiders, all other animals, Orcs Humans, Elves, Goblins, etc. Devine Technology} T-Energy Blaze: This combat art produces T-Energy in a blaze like form and as it hits it’s targets, they are all turned into T-Energy Mutants, making them weak and easy to kill. Nova Bomb: This combat art is similar to the Nova Flare combat art. However, it deals a deadly wave of light as the Seraphim jumps up and lands on the ground causing a light wave to appear, with devastating results, destroying any nearby targets, but with a wide radius, this bad boy will move on hitting further more targets until it’s energy release, is fully depleted. Devine Ray: This combat art is a ray of light that will confuse one or more enemies, causing them to fight each other. Handy, when you want a rest from battling and casting other combat art spells. Holy Arrows Of Light: This combat art will allow the Elite Seraphim to use an ancient powerful bow for a brief moment of time, that will fire arrows of pure surging light that will hit many targets and keep on hitting any targets near or far until there are no targets left in the area. Devine Energy Shroud. (Buff): This buff is almost similar to the Temple Guardian’s T-Energy Shroud, however, Warding Energy Lore is not needed for this shield with its first mod being either A: Increase Shield Strength or B: The Shield Regenerates while in battle. This does not get in the way of the Blades Of Fury Buff, they can pass through this shield and still cause damage, if anything should be able to get past these blades, then this shield is the Elite Seraphim’s secondary line of defence. And no worries Ben, there is no rush to make this character, but only if you want and wish to make this one too By all means make her. That said, this character is just merely another idea, that I simply wanted to share with everyone here at Dark Matters. Amy AKA SheHawk
    5 points
  38. @gogoblender , @Flix , and whoever else is involved, I just wanted to say, thank you very much for this new forum design and reboot, and for your prompt and friendly moderation. The color scheme and design look very nice, and I've always appreciated how friendly and cheerful you guys are, even when people are complaining or having problems. If I recall correctly, the old site had some problems with attacks on security, and I see the efforts being made to keep this new site safe. So thank you all very much for your hard work and time, and for your continued efforts through all these years to keep a great old game like Sacred 2 alive and well.
    5 points
  39. "Dear Journal, today in a remote location near the foot of the mountains in Grunwald, I discovered a camping site where a cute little fox was soundly sleeping. The campfire was cold and because of the close proximity of the prolific mushrooms to its edge, I determined that it had been at least a couple of days since any soul had been there. Furthermore, I concluded that it had likely been a human who had camped here and had provided some portion of food to this adorable vulpine creature and that it has been patiently waiting in this area for yet another visit from its generous benefactor. I regressed from the area stealthily, so as not to disturb the inherently timid creature, hence frightening it not from another potential meal. I believe that I would like having such an animal for a pet one day, and by that I mean the darling and diminutive animal, as I generally find most humans to be wholly insufferable."
    5 points
  40. This CM update mostly concerns gear that wasn't being used, either by the player or by the enemies who were meant to have the equipment. There are also some issues with wrong enemy equip sets being assigned. Unlocked Items for the Player ====================================================== Throwing Stones as a weapon class are now usuable by the player. Throwing Stones were already a functional, fully scripted weapon class. But they were only used by enemies until now. Throwing Stones use a new special bonus group which has: Chance to Disregard Armor, Chance for Knockback, and Chance for Stun. Made 7 vanilla fist weapons usable by the player (formerly were unusable "prop" weapons). They can spawn with all the various elemental damage types in addition to physical. An unused wooden kite shield is now activated and added as a normal-tier random shield. 7 unused vanilla 1h sword designs are unlocked and available as random drops. Shortbows may now be found as magic and rare-tier weapons. NPC gear that is unlocked and available as random drops: 4 NPC bow models (kobold, 2x goblin, undead), Ogre Bomb (throwing potion), Orc Roundshield, Goblin Roundshield, Goblin Shaman Staff, Lizardman Staff, Lizardman Spear, 2h orc axe (Shadow Warrior only), 2h ogre hammer(Shadow Warrior only) Enemy Equipment Fixes ====================================================== Undead skeletons in the "Disturbance of the Peace" quest no longer use the wrong equipment sets. Before/After: High Elf Soldiers are no longer equipped with halberds since they lack the proper attack animations for them. Before/After: Various Enemy Equipment unlocked and assigned to enemies: Dragon Cult Leaders now wear the bracers that Ascaron designed for them. Death Cult Lizards and Jungle Lizards now use shields with their own faction's insignia that Ascaron designed for them instead of generic brown shields. Inquisition Officers now use the shields Ascaron designed for them with the Inqusition insignia. Urtamark Officers (Green Human Knights) now use the shields that Ascaron designed for them. Ogre Warriors now use the shields Ascaron designed for them. A smaller version of the shield is also available to the player as a random drop. Elite Ogre Shamans now use the 2h staves Ascaron designed for them. Swamp Olm now equipped with their headgear. Inquisitor Ortlewyn and Bodyguard Narmonn (quest enemies in Tyr Lysia) now wear the unused "Grand Inquisitor" robes that Ascaron designed instead of generic grey robes. Human Cultist Shamans are now equipped with magic staves. Normals get 1h staves, elites get 2h staves. Gambling Den Owner boss is now equipped with a weapon, and has a Hard Hit attack. Elite Garema now wear the full armor "set" for their subtype (vanilla game bug caused them to not wear any armor). Enemies now have better equipment variation (improved probability to use alternate weapons). Many enemies that used weapons were scripted to draw their weapon randomly from a small pool of possible choices. However, in almost every case, the chance was skewed far too much in favor of one weapon over the others. For example, an Ogre Warrior would have a 90% chance to use a plain sword, a 5% chance to use a spiky sword, and a 5% chance to use a big hammer. Due to the odds being vastly uneven, you almost always ever saw that one plain sword, rarely if ever seeing the others. And so it was with hundreds of enemies throughout the game. What I've done is made the chance to use the various weapons roughly equal, and the result is a much bigger variation in enemy weapon use. Foes don't always look so much like identical clones of one another, even if it is something as simple as one Dark Paladin wielding an axe and the other with a sword. Almost every weapon-using enemy type in the game is affect by this change.
    5 points
  41. I'm going to breakdown the various changes of the upcoming CM 1.60 into manageable topics, because the full change log is HUGE! This post: Creature Fixes These are fixes to bugs with creatures' stats and spells. The Swirling Mist of Miasma now uses its special "Weakness" buffs that were designed for it (causes ice damage, lowers player stats and speed). The Swirling Mist of Miasma no longer regenerates health faster than it summons undead (reduced cooldown on summoning spell). Kufferath Castle is now defended by knights of its own realm (wearing Urtamark green) instead of DeMordrey soldiers. Guide Jaftar (human enemy, Light path main quest) is now a boss-level opponent who uses a weapon and a Hard Hit attack. Some elite Thraconians on Christmas Island who weren't properly flagged as elites now have the proper rank. Some normal ranged Slave Outcasts who were wrongly flagged as elites now have the proper rank. Reduced Poison DOT of Spiders' Venom Spit. Reduced the damage and healing of the Spider Queen Asmarael's life leech aura. Elite Yeti and Gahanka (Troll boss) now use the "Stomp" CA. All Trolls and Yeti who use the "Stomp" CA now use the correct animation. The Toughness skill now works properly for elite Blade Spiders. Elven Apparitions now have ice resistance like other ghosts. Ghost Wolves now inflict some physical damage like other ghost animals. Elite Ancestral Spirits now have their missing armor and damage mitigation values, as well as physical-to-ice damage conversion. Elite Scarabs are no longer missing damage and armor values. Bears, Boars, Spiders, Snow Leopards, and Yeti now have fur. Yellow shimmer on elite enemies removed - no longer overrides special texture effects like fur. Enemies will no longer spawn inside the town limits of Tharum, Na Fian, Dar Al Badja, the village by Eloeth-Sun, Badawi and the Badawi portal, or the exterior Scorpion Temple soulstone. All human-race NPC's in the game were scaled up in size so they're not so short and dwarfish compared to the player and other races. Female Orc Merchants now use the proper "Greetings" and "Farewell" voice files. Removed Knockback effect from enemy attacks because of a serious bug where the player could become perma-stunned until reload. Only Crystal Traps and a few bosses caused this effect. Most of these changes were introduced in Diablo 2 Fallen, so if you're familiar with that mod, you've already seen the breakdown of most of these fixes in the D2F Creatures Thread. Here's a couple changes that are new: Stomping Trolls. Trolls have a Stomp CA but had the wrong animation assigned. Now they do a big jump, sending out shockwave when they land. I also gave Stomp to Gahanka and elite Yeti. The Swirling Mist of Miasma was taking too long to summon fresh undead, meaning it would regenerate its health too much in-between summonings. Now it summons undead more frequently. This is a semi-reversal of a previous CM Patch change where the cooldown was made really long (too long). Yellow shimmer on elite enemies removed - no longer overrides special texture effects like fur. The thing is, there already 4 major indicators that an enemy is elite: different circle at the feet, different icon on the minimap, different health bar with gold nameplate, and different skin (sometimes). The yellow shimmer on the enemy model was overriding shaders and special fx, like fur. Now for the first time, all the fur on elite enemies will be seen. Humans too short. This isn't new, but worth talking about again. For some reason, Humans in Artamark and Bengaresh are astonishingly short, like little dwarf people compared to the playable characters. Strangely, children are of "normal" height compared to the player, which means the kids are almost the same height as the adults, which makes them look really creepy and disproportionate by comparison. This is fixed now. Before anyone complains about "a major gameplay element being removed" with the removal of knockback, let me clarify: in the vanilla game, only Gar'Colossus, Octagolamus, and Carnach could use knockback. Each of them were notorious for causing the "perma-stun" glitch. It's awful to experience. CM Patch then gave knockback to Asmarael and all the Crystal Traps in the Crystal Plane (huge mistake). Perma-stun bug reports skyrocketed after that. Knockback is now removed from those enemies. The player can still cause knockback, so the effect isn't removed from the game, just from a couple enemies, because the bug was just that problematic.
    5 points
  42. Hi, I wanted to make a thread for my mods since I do that quite a lot. I don't think many will want them but perhaps someone would like one or the other. Most are simple or more complex recolors, some require changes in the itemtype and surface.txt, and I also changed some of the sounds. I do not use the mod enabler since I have no idea about it, so if someone wants to use something I just offer the file and the path it needs to be copied into. -- First thing will be the Seraphim Skin, I wanted it to look a bit more natural and toned down. I gave her eyebrows and tried to achieve a different eyeshape. There are helmets that also have a face texture on them, I've changed a few of them but not all so that is not part of this download. The item changes will be in the next one. If you equip Revelation helmet or Endijian type you will still see the old face. Download: https://hidrive.ionos.com/share/cpsvz81l97 needs to go into: pak/mq/maps/heroes/seraphim or with elite textures enabled: pak/hq/maps/heroes/seraphim
    4 points
  43. It's been more then a decade I've been playing this game on and off , more then a decade I've followed these forums, and I want with this occasion to thank you all that continue adding content to this old jewel of a game. Specialy you Flix , when you started this mod I've played it and it has become much more then just a mod , together with other of your creations. I wanna say here thank you for all the support over all these years for this game. Il install sacred 2 and have a blast again with this mod installed ofcourse. Thank you .
    4 points
  44. Had some problems balancing out Nor Plat and Human Region, they share grass. I think it's okayish now. There seem to be some spots that I cannot match up perfectly. orig new two more I liked and that's it for today. Ps: I really enjoy the looks of the grass now. especially when wind waves through it it looks... pleasent.
    4 points
  45. Sorry for the inconvenience steinerrr! Although I don't think the map has been down since June as the past posts might imply, I did notice a problem about 2 weeks ago. I just couldn't find the time to fix it while having a lot of clients waiting for me. Actually... I didn't even have time today but gogo locked me in the DarkMatters dungeon until I fixed it. Now can I come out? Wow, what timing! Heh. I juuuuust fixed it about an hour ago.
    4 points
  46. One thing I've been doing since the very beginning of my modding career is restoring items, monsters, and NPC's that the Ascaron developers created and shipped with the game, but which for some reason were never present in-game. Amazingly, even after 5 years, I'm still finding such things buried in the game files. In D2F v14, I will be bringing some more of them to you. First, I found two High Elf robbers that were not used anywhere. Fancier dressed than ordinary brigands, I believe these two were meant more like "city thieves" who do better for themselves. Accordingly, you will see them as Aaron, King of Thieves in the "Dispossessed" quest (formerly a generic thug), and Varnar, an underworld crime boss who appears in the High Elf's and Inquisitor's personal quests (formerly an out-of-place-in-the-sewers nobleman). Next I found some human knights that were unused anywhere. These knights have golden Griffon armor and are labeled as "Crusaders", perhaps some sort of antithesis of the Dark Army, that never found a place in the storyline. Given their heraldry, I found various places around Griffinborough to sprinkle these two knights (a solider and an officer). Each will appear 3-5 times in various quests, taking the place of some of the ubiquitous "blue" knights which appear so often. I also found a "Night Watchman" NPC. These may be placed somewhere around Artamark but I had a hard time finding any, and definitely none are used for quests. So now, Sentry Hicks ("Long Watch" quest) now uses this night watchman design. This NPC was formerly a DeMordrey soldier, completely out of place among all the royal soldiers. Now he wears the same heraldry as his peers but still stands out from the generic soldiers. Finally we have Informant Harol, a major character in the chain quest By Order of the Crown. This guy once used the same generic human NPC design that appeared about 30 times before v14. In addition to adding much more variety to these quest-givers, I also found a unique variant that is not used anywhere. He's labeled "Human_Story_Assistant" and I can't think of a better assistant than Harol who faithfully helps you solve the mystery of the black market arms dealers of Reikenstein.
    4 points
  47. Hey FaeRei, take a look at this topic I made a while ago. It has some interesting info on some specific quests.
    4 points
  48. ^ Indeed Gogo, the fox is always sleeping in the game. My determination is that it is alive, based on the fact that the tiny creature appears to be resting comfortably, there is no apparent damage to it, and there is no blood on or nearby the animal. Additionally, Aramelith informed me that she could see its chest moving as it respired and she witnessed a barely audible yet "cute little snoring sound." Dear Journal: "I discovered this day a very interesting and perplexing, peculiar piece of Polynesian primitive art within the lowest cave at Schlun Zum. It appears to be West Polynesian in origin and more specifically a tiki of the Maori people. I am quite puzzled as to how it came to be here and as to how I would happen to be aware of such specific information regarding this artifact."
    4 points
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