belgarathmth

Thanks, Silver. Do you have to master the skill before you get a speed boost, or is it just that mastery increases it further?

Hello, I've just started playing around a bit with mounted combat, which I had never done before, on a Dragon Mage draconicon, which is basically a tricked-out horse. I love the speed of travel and the maneuverability. My question is, does riding skill do anything for the special mount, and what, exactly. All the info on the Wiki seems to apply only to regular horses. If I understand correctly, if you mount a regular horse, you only get horse combat arts and can't access your character Combat Arts. Thus, the reduction in penalty from Riding skill would only reduce the regen of horse combat arts. So if you're on a special mount, would the Riding skill reduce the regen penalty on your character Combat Arts, or what? Really, it doesn't seem like the skill does much. You get the most important benefits of mounted combat without the skill, for only a slight penalty to your main aspect, as long as you match your main aspect to the correct mount. What are your thoughts on this? (I realize this has probably been discussed before, but a few reiterations wouldn't hurt.) P.S. - I just did some online research on real-life mounted combat, which is still being practiced and reenacted by various organizations, and also read some history about it. It's fascinating reading, so if you like the mounted combat in Sacred 2, you should Google it. I was especially interested in how it's possible to control a horse while fighting with a weapon and a shield. It turns out you hold the reins in the left hand only, running to your hand behind the shield which is strapped to your left arm. Shield maneuverability is thus very restricted, so you need as large a shield as possible to protect your left flank without having to move the shield much. You also train the horse to accept commands from your knees and ankles.

I hope someone can help me with this: While walking around near Castle Kufferath, I had a chain quest forced on me called "Dark Cult". I followed the chain up until I got back to Kufferath, and the demon got summoned and killed the archmage. Now there's a guard NPC escort who is attached to me and wants to "tell the baron". The quest broke when the guard attached. There is no further unchecked entry in the log book, and no subquest arrow is available. This idiot guard is invulnerable, and I have no idea where to go to get rid of him. Please help! My game will be ruined if I can't get rid of this darned idiotic escort. EDIT: I finally found this on the Wiki, and the baron is located in Kufferath. I had to run around going into every building, but I found him at last! I couldn't originally find the quest on the Wiki because I was thinking "Dark Cult", but it's actually "Unholy Crusade". I found it through several Googles which eventually gave me a hit back to the Wiki. Also, I see now that I posted this in the wrong forum. Please move it. I guess I get to play the village fool today.

(Sorry for the double post.) Okay, based on Silver's additional research, I changed the caveat in the Wiki to read, "Overrides experience bonuses from blue potions! Blue potions and statues have no effect while this mod is active."

@Silver Fox, blue potions do NOT work with the familiar xp mod, at all. Your experience bonus will still be 10%, (or whatever it is adjusted for equipment), even after drinking a potion, when it should be 50%. You are playing Ice and Blood with the latest CM patch, right? The version makes a difference. This fact is a total deal breaker for me, and it's what people need to know before choosing that mod. There's no way I'm going to play a high-level character without the 50% bonus from blue potions! (This was tested by drinking a blue potion both with and without the Familiar buff turned on. The green numbers over kills are at 50% bonus WITHOUT the familiar and a blue potion. The green numbers fall to 10% WITH the familiar and a blue potion.)

Yes you can! As long as you use a weapon-based combat art and a right-click. Consolers just need to be careful that their CA is not "recharging" when they press the CA button (which initiates a "normal" attack). Ah, but then that means that a left-click attack will still turn off the Veil, right?

I didn't test jewelry, but blue potions are definitely overriden. A blue potion should give a 50% bonus to experience, yet the bonus remains at 10%. Did you try to wear jewelry that would make your experience bonus be higher than 10%? I suspect a botched if-then line in the programming. They wrote a line somewhere that says "if experience bonus < 10% then...", when it should have said "if experience bonus > 10% then...." Or, there could be some lines left out of their program flow chart logic that were supposed to cause the program to check for two lines of experience bonus and take the higher of the two; instead, it takes the first line and ignores any others. Based on your comment, I changed the Wiki line I added to read "overrides all greater experience bonuses" instead of "overrides all other experience bonuses".

Thanks, everybody. I restarted today and got up to level 19 in one session. I gifted the new guy all the blue potions saved from all my other characters so I could keep a blue potion active pretty much all the time, so that's helping. Unfortunately, with the other character, I had meticulously uncovered every inch of the elf region. Now I'm just beelining through the main quest and the personal quest to get to the good grinding areas. The OCD player in me wants that map uncovered, though, so maybe I'll feel better and go back to that during Gold. I've got my Junior Cartographer, but have never achieved my Master Cartographer.

@Wolfie, thanks for the further info. It sounds like Enhanced Perception suffers from the same diminishing-returns-to-the-point-of-uselessness as Bargaining. I like to spend one point in Enhanced Perception in order to unlock "+% to find valuables" on items. Other than that and the extra points from relics, to get a slightly better probability of blue potions and yellow-green-orange-gold items dropping, I doubt that it's worth it to ever spend more than one point. Bargaining used to be worth it for the +all skills jewelry, but now that +all skills is nerfed, that doesn't seem to be worth it either. You're eventually going to get anything you could get through maxed out Bargaining or Enhanced Perception through regular drops. Based on your data, my conclusion would be that one point in Bargaining in order to open up a chance for yellows at merchants, and/or one point in Enhanced Perception in order to unlock "+% to find valuables" on items, would be the way to go. Your last post implies this conclusion, that giving priority to maxing either of these skills is costing you way too much in offensive and defensive ability, the net effect being to make the game less fun.

Well, I just built my dragon mage to level 32 and figured out that the character is ruined because of the Familiar experience mod bug! I took the mod thinking that the game would default to the 10% bonus in the absence of other bonuses. Boy, was I wrong! The familiar's 10% experience bonus overrides ALL other xp bonuses, INCLUDING BLUE POTIONS! After drinking a blue potion, the summary window will have two lines that say "bonus to experience:". The first line will say "bonus to experience: 10%", from the familiar. The second line will say "bonus to experience: 50%", from the blue potion. What SHOULD happen is that the second line overrides the first. What DOES happen is that the first line overrides the second. Thus, your xp bonus as reflected by the green numbers over your kills remains at 10%, even after drinking a blue potion! Now I have to decide whether to rebuild or just accept a permanent 10% bonus for the character. I don't think I can live with it, especially not on higher levels. I sure do wish this information had been available! I am playing fully patched Ice and Blood with CM. I will attempt to put a line in the Wiki that states this clearly.

I have a question - can you fire a ranged weapon without deactivating Shadow Veil? I guess you can since your build seems to assume so. That's something I didn't know. Also, doesn't that loud, white noise sound effect get on your nerves if you leave Shadow Veil on all the time? I'm not terribly fond of seeing the world in black, blue and white all the time, either. I usually develop Shadow Veil for bosses and for when I want to move around the map without being harrassed, but I turn it off for regular play. Also, I know this has been said before, but SV is so strong, I think it makes the game boring. Being omnipotent and invulnerable gets old after awhile.

If the character is already built the way you list the skills, I'd go with the Astral Lord Lore, since that's your main damage. You have a character here with nearly impregnable defensive skill at the cost of relatively weak offense. So you defininitley need an offensive skill in that last slot.

Very interesting testing and results, Wolfie. Thanks for the hard work. (And hopefully you're having some fun with it, too. ) For me, I don't think it would be worth it to build Bargaining this high unless set items, uniques, and legendaries would start showing up in shops. I already know from my own experimenting that lightsabers get next to impossible to find in shops starting at about level 70 - With character at 65-70 and Bargaining at 190, I found one green in about 100 shop visits. I suspect the odds are significantly less than 100:1, but I didn't feel like continuing to visit shops over and over. You know the famous definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. I think visiting shops and raising Bargaining skill can also assume some of the same symptoms as a gambling addiction. Anyway, thanks again for the new data. I wonder what kind of drops would happen with a character who got Enhanced Perception up this high?

What sorts of items do the merchants sell for a level 971 Bargainer? Also, is this Ice and Blood with CM?

I was playing with my camera zoom tonight and discovered that the camera now flattens its pitch when zoomed in, simulating something close to first person perspective, looking ahead instead of down at the ground. Holy crap! It's all of a sudden a totally new game for me! The detail is amazing. Waist-high grass, some grass over my head, wading in streams and through sea shoals out to islands I never saw before, flowers of every color, bushes and trees, pebbles, sand, vines hanging down, suspended torches waving in the breeze, up and down hills and ridges and almost feeling the gravity, not being able to see around the corner yet able to see to the horizon in front of me. Dang, I could go on and on! And the people and monsters! Rats the size of German Shepherds, turtles as big as lions, male thieves near my height and females shorter than I am, kobolds with big noses and pointy hats, archers running up hills and into shrubbery for cover, me able to take cover myself if I want to fight at range, actually seeing the wolves snap their jaws at me! Once again, I could go on and on. The new angles have increased my sense of immersion tenfold! It's like being there in person. Yet again, Sacred 2 holds new surprises for me after more than a year of playing! A question - are the new angles coming from the Ice and Blood expansion or from the Community Patch?

@Furian, thanks for all the great advice. I will study it and reflect on it carefully. Don't do any extra work just for me though; what you have in the post already gives me the summary I need. Yes, I'm on the CM Patch. Since I definitely want Mentalism Focus and Lore, and I am trying to make a toon that can melee as well as cast, I only have that last slot left to make a decision on. Which means, I have to decide between Ancient Magic for more damage, or a defense. Between Constitution and Toughness, which do you like better? I think maybe Toughness, since we already get a big hit point boost from the Familar. BTW, I am playing softcore - if I die, I will mourn the loss of Survival Bonus and the slow process of having to build it back, but I won't give up on the character. I'm in it for fun and relaxation after work, in single player, not for keeping up with everybody on a server or getting the adrenaline rush from fear of permanent death. It seems like the Dragon Mage has become one of the least popular characters, perhaps because of his late arrival to the game. But he's already become my favorite, because I've always missed my beloved Battle Mage characters from Sacred 1, and I think the Dragon Mage was designed for Battle Mage fans, right down to the ever-popular Gust of Wind build. Playing the Dragon Mage has made me nostalgic for Sacred 1. When I finally get ready for a break from Sacred 2, I'll probably go build a new Battle Mage for old time's sake.

@Wolfie, thanks for that info! Now I can stop going into every cave I see if I don't feel like going in there. I'm not going enter and exit a cave 100 times to light up a little circle in my logbook. Even I'm not that OCD!

I'm also having hours and hours of fun thanks to the hard work and support of the community. Add my voice to the chorus of gratitude herein.

Not exactly on-topic, but, I've been working on some acheivements like Polytheist, Cartographer, and the one for going to 100 dungeons, just because I'm OCD about my games. But my question is, what do you get for all those points? I've currently got over 600 acheivement points, and I can't tell that it's worth anything other than personal satisfaction. Does it have any practical effect on the game?

Hello, I've got a new Dragon Mage build going and up to about level 30 so far. The basic idea is to make a Jedi Knight/fighter-mage who is very good in melee and also wields powerful spells. For role-playing, I can pretend the Familiar is an Artoo unit, since Artoo is basically Anakin's and then Luke's familiar in the movies. As a tongue-in-cheek joke, I call the Protector "Threepio", although he's more like that NPC droid in the KOTOR games. This build is meant for lightsabers. It is very helpful that I have a chest full of them at all levels from 1-60 from my old shopper Inquisitor. If anyone wants to try this, and you don't already have a lightsaber collection, you should make a beeline to Benny's Corn Circles to get one ASAP. I am splitting attribute points between Dexterity (for defense), and Vitality. You don't need Strength, because lightsabers are governed by Willpower, and your Familiar is going to make Willpower skyrocket. I throw all my unwanted runes, which is most of them, into reading Familar runes, and let those absorb the malus, thus I don't really need Dragon Magic Focus. The build so far is: -Concentration, 1 point; for two buffs; will probably eventually master it for three -Tactics Lore, 5 points; to open sword lore -Sword Lore, maxed; for lightsaber attack bonus and better lightsabers -Dragon Lore, 9 points; to mod the Familiar to gold - Insight, Prot from Fire, Life -Armor Lore, 1 point; obvious -Elemental Lore; maxed; for mods on Gust of Wind and Destroyers -Elemental Focus; as many points as can be spared, at least 5; for mods, regen and spell levels Planned: -Mentalist Lore; for mods -Mentalist Focus; for mods, regen, and spell levels -either Ancient Magic, Dragon Magic Focus,Constitution, Shield Lore, Toughness, or even Enhanced Perception, depending on where I feel weak in Gold It is very important that "Expert Touch" be turned OFF at character creation! The Dragon Mage can cast three very powerful combos in a row without any cooldown! This ability is his special power, and without that ability, he becomes a much weaker version of the Inquisitor. Tactics: -Mobs: Combo One, Destroyers, Gust of Wind; Combo Two, Mind Strike, Energy Storm (I forget the exact names); Combo Three, if outdoors and needed, Eternal Flame and Dragon Strike. Clean up anything left with the lightsaber, or start again with Combo One, which is usually recharged by the time you activate Two and Three. -Bosses: pretty much the same; the character can use two-handed swords with +*%LifeLeech if available and needed. I don't think this build can afford utility skills because of the three aspects. I equip as much +*%Find Valuables as possible to make up for no Enhanced Perception or Bargaining. I took Insight on the Familiar (10% to xp, not stackable), so that I wouldn't need to equip +*%xp items. Any feedback, especially about where you think I should take that last skill, would be appreciated.

Thanks, DB. Can you tell me what the experience bonus is for the mod? I assume it would go up as the Familiar combat art is increased. Is there a table somewhere?

Hello, I'm currently playing my first dragon mage. I need to know if the experience mod on the familiar has been fixed. I am playing on the latest version of Ice and Blood plus the March 2011 CM. Does someone know? Thanks.

I feel sorry for y'all up there, but I can't exactly comiserate. I live in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Yesterday our high was 80 degrees, low of 50. We had one six-inch snow this year, second week in January. The entire city shut down for the whole week, Monday through Friday. Nobody went to school and nobody worked. It finally went back up above freezing the third week in January, and it hasn't been below freezing during the day ever since. People from up where you guys live always marvel at our reaction to snow down here in the southern states when you move here! We had a lady from Connecticut write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper complaining almost hysterically, "How can you just shut down the whole city over six inches of snow! You people are crazy!"

Well, I was finally able to download everything, install it, and patch it up! It went surprisingly smoothly, all things considered. The process is not for the faint of heart - you definitely need to be a highly motivated die-hard lover of Sacred to go through it. There was a scary snag where my Ice and Blood didn't want to let me enter my activation code (it turned out that I needed to start the program, let it say "unable to access devices", ctrl-alt-del the task manager to get out of it, and then realize that the task manager screen was hiding a window that said "activation needed - enter code here", and that I had to move the task manager window out of the way to see the activation menu.) Schot's guide to installing Ice and Blood in the tech help section was invaluable! I don't know if I would have made it without that guide. All my save character files up-converted successfully, and I didn't lose any hours of play or collected equipment. Thank you all for your help, and I'm really glad that now I can play the same game everybody else on the forums is playing.

@Loco, ah, I see that the tables I wanted are already in the Wiki. My problem is that I couldn't find them. I tried typing "light sabers bargaining tiers" into the search function there, and it comes back with no matches, even though all four of those words are in Antitrust's article. Do you have any advice for how to do better searches at the Wiki?