belgarathmth

I'm a big fan of Destroyers, and it feels like A of E to me, as long as you get yourself surrounded by a lot of enemies before you cast. BOOM, down they go, the second you cast. And if the enemy is spread out, you get the advantage of the "seeker" aspect of the individual "bombs". I liked the Inquisitor's Clustering Maelstrom at first, but it is ineffective against pairs or small groups - you have to have a very large mob to crash together in the vortex before the spell really works. So I started to find my Clustering Maelstrom character to be ineffective against tough monsters that come in pairs and trios, and even against large mobs of ranged fighters who spread out too much for you to catch more than a fraction of them into the spell.

You totally should, Captain. The Ice and Blood expansion plus the CM patch increase the choices, treasures, and overall experience of the game exponentially. Plus, the base PC version of any game is much more detailed than the console version. I remember I once bought the first version of XBox just to see if maybe the controllers and graphics and stuff would be more convenient and/or fun on my TV than on my PC, (for which my other choice was to get a better graphics card and learn how to hook up my PC to my HDTV), and my then game-of-choice was Morrowind. I got to the very first scene where the guy asked me what skills I had (I.e. would choose), and saw about six choices, where I was used to seeing about three dozen choices on that screen! I played about ten more minutes, becoming increasingly more horrified at the diminutions with every click! "What, only three choices here? There used to be twelve! Where is the option to cast this spell? What do you mean there's no such spell!? Where is the book that used to be over here? Why can't I click on that box any more?" And on, and on. I took the XBox back to the store and got a refund the next day! I have never played a game on a console again!

That's exactly my strategy, Furian. My socketing strategy has been +x regen per hit and experience bonuses, plus some blacksmith arts to keep my attack and defense high. I'm also splitting attributes between strength (for attack) and dexterity (for defense and attack). My experience so far has been that high regen per hit (1.5 to 2 seconds) together with good attack speed and attack bonus makes recharge times almost irrelevant - two or three hits recharges almost any combo, even with very high spell levels. I learned how good recharge per hit can be for a caster from a guide - I think it was your guide, in fact, so thanks for the great tip. One mistake I may have made is that I have built Elemental Magic Lore, Dragon Magic Lore, Ancient Magic, and Staff Lore to be my first masteries at levels 75-80, going for high damage and lowering enemy resistance. That means I have only 5 hard points in Armor Lore and 1 hard point in Toughness, using +all skills to get those up to the 30-40 soft point range. I am depending on Runes of Protection and Familiar to make up for the lack of investment in my defensive skills. So far, that is working out just fine, but things may change soon. Nothing in Tyr Lysia, Artamark, or Nor Plat can even scratch me at this point. (Except for the spitting spiders - even the Artamark species is unusually dangerous )

@DaveO and Dragon Brother: I assume you guys are talking post level 75, and/or hardcore? I have a triple aspect DM up to level 62 in Gold level and he's still owning. I know that things can take a sudden turn for the worse starting with the swamp spiders and moving into the desert and jungle areas. My build, which I guess you are going to tell me will not work well at higher levels, is: Concentration Dragon Magic Lore Magic Staffs Enhanced Perception Armor Lore Toughness Elemental Magic Lore Mentalism Lore Ancient Magic Combat Discipline (at 65) Up to this point, the spells do so much damage that I don't have to worry about anything. Hit points, damage (intelligence), and spell resistance (willpower) are coming from maxed-out Familiar; Maxed out Runes of Protection have my armor through the roof, plus 20% stunning and 40% combat art blocking. It will be interesting to see exactly where and at what level this stops working. I'm on single player softcore, so I don't care if there are a certain number of deaths along the way; if the number of deaths exceeds 1 or 2 on Gold, and 4 or 5 on Platinum or higher, then I would define the build as "not working". No dying yet, though. SB is near 80%

Best wishes to you, Furian. Write only if it would be fun and interesting for you - you should feel no obligation. This is just a hobby, after all. If it's not fun, don't do it.

@Dragon Brother, you're right, the class was designed as a pure caster, unlike the other casters who have at least one melee aspect, so trying to make a melee-caster hybrid out of him goes against type and doesn't work as well. My melee build can survive, but it takes him a lot longer to kill stuff, which gets tedious when the pure caster build can take out everything in sight with one gesture. How about the question of why there isn't more written about this class - is it purely because it was added later than the others and most players had already moved on? Or was it because they already had a lot of time invested in their favorites and didn't want to spend much time fiddling with a new class? Or do people actually not like the class for some reason?

Already done before I posted. The Caster still outdoes the Magic Knight.

There are some important differences between staves and energizers, both stylisticaly and practically. 1) stylistic - energizers are technology weapons and have the cool factor of the "tschew-tschew" sound effect, if you want more of a Space Opera tone to your Sacred 2. 2)practical - energizers work with combat arts for hybrid Magic Knights (Inquisitor, Shadow Warrior, Seraphim, High Elf) 3)stylistic - staves have a sound effect while firing that is more "poof"(magic) and less techno sounding. Also, the images of the mage and the staff/wand are inseparable. 4)practical - staves are much more likely than energizers to have modifiers which improve your spellcasting ability. 5)practical - all energizers are two-handed, ruling out shield use. Some of the best uniques in the game are one-handed staves and shields. Before Ice and Blood, I used to build energizer characters to make up for the lack of appropriate staves and wands. With Ice and Blood, I no longer need to make such compromizes.

Hello, I've been playing two of my Dragon Mages this week, and I have a few thoughts I want to share. First of all, I am seeing a dearth of builds, discussion and other kinds of posts for this character class as opposed to other character classes. Why is that, exactly? And now: I made another thread below outlining my lightsaber Dragon Mage. I love lightsabers, and I thought it would be a good "Magic Knight". (see tvtropes.org- I've gotten hooked on it!) After having defeated the Nameless Guardians on Silver (only by kiting like crazy, spamming Destroyers, and leading the middle two Guardians out into the corridor so I could separate them), and playing for a while in Gold, I find that lightsabers in the hands of this character just plain don't do enough damage. Once you take into account that use of lightsabers takes an extra skill slot (you have to put 5 points into Tactics Lore to open Sword Weapons), it just doesn't pass muster against the caster Dragon Mage, and here's why: I have a triple-aspect caster at almost the same level. He got his last aspect, Mentalism Lore, at 35 instead of 50. He got Ancient Magic at 50, which my lightsaber fighter did not have before facing the Guardians. He will take Combat Discipline at 65, which the lightsaber fighter will never get (if he chooses Ancient Magic for the last skill.) Meanwhile, the caster has pumped up spell levels, which don't bother him a bit because he has Regeneration per Hit up to +2.1 seconds. For some reason, his staff hits more often and strikes much faster than the lightsaber at Staff Weapons=40, where the lightsaber skill was even higher. The staff does a bit less damage than the lightsaber, but who cares, when the spells do "Oh, Crap" damage for the caster and "Meh" damage for the lightsaber fighter. So I am leaning toward the triple-aspect Dragon Mage as the way to go for us caster types, over the "Magic Knight" Dragon Mage. My triple-aspect caster still hasn't done the Guardians yet (I'll be doing them tomorrow), so I'll let you know how that goes compared to the "Jedi" Dragon Mage. Please share your thoughts (and/or warnings)!

Wow, Steerpike, Wolfie, what a fascinating discussion between you two! Your responses have so much food for thought. I'm delighted to have answers to my questions in dialogue form from two experts on Sacred lore. Thank you.

Try looking here: link to tech forum Downloading and running the 4GB patch utility on the Sacred 2 .exe solved the problems for me.

So the seraphim character from Sacred 1 could theoretically be the same individual as we have in Sacred 2? Interesting.

Yes, that was my intention when I first started to build it. But I thought my only choices for attack while veiled were spectral hands and skeletal fortifications. Finding out that I could use frenzied rampage and a melee weapon made it way more powerful than I realized, not only for defense, but also for offense. I can stick to my plan of only using it, say, against the Nameless Guardians or in unfamiliar situations (I still haven't played the new Ice and Blood areas.) But I'm still trying to decide if the game is as much fun when I know I don't have to be afraid of anything. A little bit of fear is probably a very good thing in a game.

Thanks, Wolfie, that's a good answer. So is there nothing in the temple guardian's quest in Sacred 2 that would clarify more about the guardians and their role in the Creator's original, apparently space-faring civilization? (There seems to be some influence here from the Might and Magic series, which also has Anubis-inspired temple guardians, perhaps inspired by the Stargate series.) Also, I am still curious about seraphim reproduction. They're known to stay around in Ancaria for at least 2,000 plus years, so where do new seraphim come from? They're not immortal, I don't think, that is, they do grow old and die naturally, don't they? When you raise the question of where is the seraphim cloning facility, are you saying that there should be one still in existence somewhere on Ancaria? The game doesn't really tell us, does it, other than the Book of the Seraphim that you quote from Sacred 1? So we have only speculation. I do notice that there do not seem to be any seraphim children. Maybe the seraphim keep their cloned origins a secret because they want to use religion and superstition to keep their status in the society. That would be a very common theme in both fantasy/sci-fi and real life. The seraphim character's opening movie in the game shows her waking up on a table. Maybe she is supposed to be a freshly cloned seraphim; perhaps they are grown to full adulthood in some kind of incubator and have their educations programmed into their brains (you mentioned a Borg parallel). Does the seraphim's character quest involve some kind of existential "who am I and what am I doing here" sort of thing? I haven't played a seraphim to find out. And I would ask the same question about the temple guardian character quest.

Hello, I was just thinking about the temple guardians and the seraphim. There should be some relationship there, shouldn't there? They are both in charge of protecting and managing the Great Machine. Maybe I don't know the answer to this because I've never played a temple guardian to see his personal quest, and I haven't played a seraphim either. Is there any answer or implication about this in the story lore? I would think that the temple guardians must work for the seraphim or something like that - yet there are no temple guardians to be seen on Seraphim Island. We don't see them in the game until the abandoned temple in the jungle (in hologram form) and then finally in the Great Machine chambers and just outside of it. I know that if you play a temple guardian you get dug up by archaeologists near Sloeford, right? So maybe the guardians are sentient artificial life forms (like Data from Star Trek: NG) that the seraphim used to control but then forgot about them? What do you think? P.S. - I'll attach one more question to this - how do the seraphim reproduce themselves over the centuries when there are no male seraphim? Do they use human males for studs, like Mr. Giles? (If so, lucky Mr. Giles. )

Thanks, essjay, that's very nice of you. No more questions right at the moment, though.

I think they did the right thing taking that out in Sacred 2, even though it makes pure casters very challenging to play. My Sacred 1 battle mages got way, way too strong, way too fast. With every individual ice shard or every individual gust of wind within a single cast all doing life leech, the game was too easy by late silver, and never challenging again. I used to walk around killing everything in sight on the map with one right click, and a couple of dozen orange streaks of light from all directions every second would heal all damage. It was fun at first, but soon rather boring.

Yeah, but the thing is, I know those circumstances and how to avoid them. After sleeping on it, I think maybe I'll just play one of my other characters; I have a magic staff dragon mage, a light saber dragon mage, and a hammer shadow warrior who hasn't taken astral lore or built shadow veil. I also have an inquisitor, but he started dying on me in gold level - too squishy! I've learned my lesson about shadow veil, though. People don't complain about it for no reason. If you want to have fun, you don't build it. Some vulnerability and needing to focus to stay alive is what gets your brain chemicals to percolate. Sorry for the whine, though. I was just really surprised and disappointed to discover that I could use melee weapons with shadow veil.

What a pity! Once I find a way to achieve invulnerability in an action RPG, it's pretty much game over! And I was getting such a nice collection of set items, too! Oh well, I guess it's back to Titan Quest or Dungeon Siege. Or maybe I'll do a story-based RPG next. I still haven't even bought Dragon Age 2.

Thanks, lujate, that one's pretty good, although there's too much "follow the quest marker", and now I don't have any quest markers. At least, I know that the orc I need to find is "backwards from the human outpost portal". I wish he had said "north, south, east or west of", though. How do I know which way is "backwards"? Anyway, it's better than nothing, so again, thank you.

Hello, I always thought that any melee weapon attack would deactivate Shadow Veil. Unfortunately, I just discovered by accident that you can use combat arts like Frenzied Rampage without deactivating it. Are you kidding? This discovery may very well ruin the game for me. I just blew away the Guardians on Silver and they didn't attempt a single blow. Now I'm on Gold, and I can walk around demolishing every monster and they can't even fight back. I always had thought that the melee weapon restriction provided some limitation to the power - killing things by Spectral Hand and Skeletal Fortification is very, very slow and hardly worth it against trash mobs. But Frenzied Rampage without becoming visible? Come on! Has it always been like this, or has this SV-with-any-combat-art been added in Ice and Blood or in the CM? I remember that what made me lose interest in Sacred 1 was that well-built characters always became omnipotent by gold level. I used to rush through gold and platinum to niobium hoping for a challenge - and nope, all I had to do was right-click Ice Shards or Gust of Wind, or Stomping Jump, or whatever my built combat art was, and every enemy would fall instantly, right up to the Sakkara demon (and he'd be down in 10 or so right-clicks.) Are most people just pretending like Shadow Veil doesn't exist so that it won't ruin the game for them? One of things I liked about Sacred 2 was that none of the classes could become completely invulnerable - there was always some danger, especially against bosses, no matter how strong you got. Now, I don't know. Since I know how to be invulnerable by Gold level, how will I avoid the temptation? I wish there were a mod or something that would gimp Shadow Veil, big time. Such as completely unable to attack while it's active, the way D&D does, or at least being unable to reach 100% undetectability while casting or in close proximity. The fear of suddenly becoming visible would at least add some risk to it. As it is, there is only the chance of accidentally left-clicking an enemy while moving around. I am interested in people's thoughts on this. I know it has been discussed to death, and I apologize for that, so links to other threads if people don't feel like typing fresh thoughts would be okay.

@lujate, it would, except that the page for the quest right after my logbook crashed is not written yet!

Hello, it turns out that the CM patch causes the logbook and the compass guides to crash at several critical points in each character's character quest. It did it several times with the dragon mage I was playing, and now it's doing with my current shadow warrior. Because there are so many benefits that outweigh this problem, I am willing to work around it by printing out step-by-step walkthroughs of the character quests and keeping the hardcopy guides handy while I play. But surprisingly, I can't find any. The wiki isn't helpful, because it mixes every character's quests together and alphabetizes them by name. I have no idea what the name of each quest is or which character they go with. My current shadow warrior's quest crashed both at Winderlich and again after teleporting out of the seraphim arena. I managed to find the Winderlich quest in the wiki so I could get a location, and then the compass and logbook started working again until the seraphim arena with the undead dragon. After the second logbook crash, I gave up. I think the next step was some orc that I should have met underground in the dragon caves, but I never ran into him, and I wasn't about to wander around down there for hours looking for him. I would like to follow the character quest again when I take this character to gold level, thus I need a step-by-step hardcopy of it. Does anyone know where to find one? A link would be greatly appreciated.

I believe that the term "fallen angel" ("fallen angels" would be better) refers to some things stated in the intro movie by the blind seer and also by Sophia on Seraphim Island. It was the seraphim who made the decision to share the secrets of T-energy with the world, and thus are at least indirectly responsible for the T-energy created monsters that are overrunning Ancaria in Sacred 2. Also, "fallen" probably refers to the abandonment of Ancaria by the Creator, which causes a lot of tension, soul-searching, and a crisis of faith in the seraphim religion. They saw themselves as the favored servants of the Creator, yet why has he abandoned them? Surely they have failed in some way, they are "fallen" and must redeem themselves to the Creator, or so the reasoning seems to go.

Yes, it does look kind of like that. That's why I compared it to King Kong in my OP. An ape doesn't leap up and down like that, though. Someone above compared it to a rodeo's bucking bronco riding. After reading that, I noticed that the shadow warrior moves his right arm and hand in circles above his head for balance while riding, exactly like a rodeo cowboy - not so cool, not for a swords and sorcery game. I am still using my hellhound, though, because now that I'm used to riding, going on foot seems so darn slow, even with high run speed bonus, and also my Frenzied Rampages are more effective and more concentrated while on the hound. The extra hitpoints and defense aren't bad, either. With the camera zoomed out, part of where my knee sticks out past the hellhound's head kind of makes it look like it has a snout, so I'm just squinting my eyes a little and using my imagination and pretending it looks more like a werewolf.