lujate

Our predicted snow pretty much fizzled, and right now it is sunny with a wind chill of -8 (I think that is about -22 for those of you in the rest of the world).

Like Elwin said, just start a new game at the next difficulty.

Mystix123, you may be right. It was in the south-west corner of either the human or orc territories.

I am playing the North American version. I think the worst time, I lost about 1 hour. With the Orc Cave, I was not doing anything other than Pelting Strikes. It was just frequent enough to be infuriating. I have not had a problem there in a while, but I have only been 30 minute runs. There is one portion of the map I had to give up exploring because it would lock up consistently (3-4 times In a row before I gave up). I also normally skip the Forrest Guardian due to the game locking up

I am back. It seemed to lock up more frequently in the Orc Cave than any other place. As soon as you lose a few hours of leveling, you start looking for other options. It has not done it during my testing, but they have all been short durations.

I am on ps3. On gold, I used the Orc Cave exclusively until it locked up on me a number of times and I lost a lot of xp. I think it locked up during combat. More to follow...

See this thread: http://forum.sacred2.com/showthread.php?t=69833

Looking at the Enemy Levels table, the max level should be 197, so I am not sure if that explains the xp drop for my 136 level character. I was experimenting with equipment trying to get my damage output up. I will need to check to make sure my +xp% is still at 79. For short duration leveling, the Swamp and Jungle seem close, but for long duration leveling (without Kral & his 103k xp) it seems to me that the Swamp will probably win. essjayehm, You are correct that there are factors other than the raw numbers. It does not matter how good the xp/drops are if you cannot stand to make a given run. Also, if the game crashes regularly (e.g. Orc Cave), any small advantages will quickly disappear.

Mystic123, Back when I used the AW/SH combo frequently, its purpose was as a one-two punch to take down champions. Unfortunately, it no longer has that kind of power. I pumped about 20 runes into it, but it still could only do about 50% damage to the orc champions. For that reason, I will be changing my tactics slightly. I will continue to use this combo as an opening move on mobs, but with champions I will hit them with Pelting Strikes first and use the combo as a finisher. That will bring the deathblow bonus of Soul Hammer into play. Using this method, I can take down all four orcs with 3 PS and 1 combo. My only statistics class was years ago, but I believe that you are saying that my results are not statistically significant. If so, I am not surprised considering I only have three complete rows of data. I still have 64 levels and two set pieces to go, so I have lots of more leveling to do. I will keep doing these runs and post the data periodically. Just to add a wrinkle to all of this, when I was testing my combo in the Orc Cave, I was getting 1k less XP than before (what is the max enemy level in Nor Plat?). I agree this would make a great wiki page, "if" we can come up with definitive results. I am just afraid that there are too many variables to come up with anything better than suggested spots with a YMMV disclaimer.

I have Divine Protection and Dashing Alacrity chain-castable and keep them up constantly. As soon as I see the orcs, I fire my Archangel's Wrath/Soul Hammer combo. This causes her to shoot the AR and run forward to deliver the SH. This is a relatively new addition, but seemed to improve my clear time. After closing with the orcs, it is straight Pelting Strikes until they are dead. XP: Jungle 4110944 4118208 4350112 4183568 Orc Cave 4204896 4152896 4200256 4179776 Swamp 4296480 * 4301280 4203360 *-I botched this test but did not realize it until it was too late to re-do, so I just averaged the remaining tests.

My best time for the Orc Cave was 16 seconds, but I was averaging about 20 (longer if one of the spiders caught my initial AW/SH combo or if I had to chase down the last orc). Well, like most things Sacred, it comes down to the build. Here are the results for my current build: Experience: SE Swamp 4,267,040 -0% Jungle* 4,190,708 -2% Orc Cave 4,184,456 -2% Jungle@ 4,087,708 -4% *-with Kral @-without Kral Drops: Orc Cave 77 stars -00% Swamp 62 stars -19% Jungle 32 stars -59% Next week I am going to check out those other places people suggested. Edit: On a personal note, I completed Endijian's set during my last session in the Orc Cave.

I just checked, and Ancient Magic is not an option. I think I will go with Damage Lore and EP. I just started a DW shopper, so items should not be a problem. I will just advance them in tandem.

Combat Discipline is bugged on the consoles. Any suggestions for an alternative (Damage Lore perhaps)? I looked but could not find any obvious choice. Also, I seem to recall there was some issue with Ancient Magic on the consoles but cannot find anything. Did I just hallucinate that?

If it is just Blacksmith Arts, why would you need a shopper to do it?

The Orc Cave in 15 seconds? I can say with near absolute certainty that I cannot do that. This is still my first character, and I picked most of my skill using nothing more than the in-game descriptions, so the build is less than ideal (mostly my damage output). Also, I have none of the flashy gear that comes from shopping. I will check my time when I am in the Orc Cave next (right now, I am heading back to the swamp). Here are the averages so far: Jungle* 4.19 million XP 32 stars Orc Cave 4.18 million XP 76 stars Swamp 4.17 million XP 57 stars * - Includes Kral

Mystix123, you bring up a couple of good points. Since Kral can only be killed once, that puts the Jungle run at a disadvantage. As for the Swamp, do you think you can actually depopulate it? The Orc Cave, of course, will last until the player botches it up. All of the items that are dropped in the Orc Cave are also a problem. I have had to stop the clock at least twice every time to scrap the junk that was filling my inventory. Maybe I should leave the clock running to give a more accurate test. That would slow down leveling, but I for one would hate to loose that highly coveted set piece because my inventory was full of worthless garbage.

FWIW, I am testing leveling up spots right now. It is still early, but so far the Swamp is ahead of the Orc Cave by 2.1%XP. When it comes to drops, the Orc Cave is ahead by 7.8%, but I am not overly fond of my method for measuring drops. If anyone is interested, here is the thead: Best place to level? (Console)

And, are you talking a character blacksmith or NPC?

The Forrest Guardian is supposed have one of the highest drop "potentials" in the game. That probably explains his enormous healing ability. Note that this is only the potential for good drops. He is not near a portal or monolith, so that limits his farming value. People say that you can run into the nearby cave and he will respawn. I have tried several times, but it has never worked for me.

I have spent a good amount of time in the orc cave (until the shear monotony of it got too great). After one session, I walked away with 5 set pieces, although I think they were all duplicates. That was by far the exception. Normally I ended up with an enormous amount of junk to sell. The xp seems about equal with other spots that are less painfully boring.

Good luck, just be careful. I consider Kral a push-over but not everyone would agree (and dying is just too costly). Is that north or south of the river?

I have a lot of leveling to do, and so I have been reading about the best places to do it. Unfortunately, I imagine that most of those discussions are talking about the PC version, and we all know that the console version has its own quirks. For this reason, I decided to test various leveling places and see which gives the most XP. I just started this, but I want to share it in case I have some grave errors in my plan. All tests are conducted in Free World/Niob/Offline with a level 131-132 DW Seraphim. Each run was done on a separate game. I set a timer for 30 minutes and killed as many monsters as possible before the buzzer. The biggest flaw I see is that I had no way to control for enemy resistances/weaknesses. I was using my XP suit, and changing out pieces would affect the XP bonus (probably more so than the resistances/weaknesses). I know the drops will be varying degrees on pathetic, but I decided that I should at least track them. The best way I could come up with to do that, is to simply add up the number of stars for all the items collected. Here are the runs I am testing: Jungle Trail (from Archaeologists camp to Kral's pyramid and then circle back) Orc Cave SE Swamp I have only had a chance to run each set once, but here is what I have so far: 4,110,944XP & 21 stars 4,204,896XP & 69 stars 4,296,480XP & 64 stars

Good question Steve!

lelopexs, you are too high of level for the area you are in. When I first heard of the orc cave, I was excited to try it, because people were talking about getting 10-20k XP per orc. I only got 150. I finished the difficulty I was on and immediately tried the orc cave again in free world. Then I got 8k per orc.

My guess is that you were too high of level compared to the dragon's level. Sacred bases XP on comparing character level and monster level.