Silver_fox

Flix, how did you get there at all? I was just looking at this long forgotten topic to make a reference on the Redeemer's wiki page, and a moment later it comes in new content... I almost thought it to be a forum bug. The book is a long-winded CM project, which is still open on Mantis (HERE, if you wonder about the progress). The book is in game, all scripts are intact, but it is excluded from drop lists until all translations are finished - and I wonder if they ever would as some translators are completely inactive nowadays. They wanted to get it out in v140, but got troubles with Polish language, and as I understand put it on hold again. As for the quest, the development was delayed as me and Munera wanted to see a bit different stories... and then it turned out that there are few empty quest IDs left and other ideas for new quests might have priority. Anyway, considering the slowing down of CM development, I don't think anybody on CM team would now spend time scripting a new quest from scratch. I have a story for this quest sketched and almost fleshed out, but as I never seriously worked with quest scrtipting before, I don't think I'd be working on finishing it on my very own.

Of course, seeing is believing. Not that I disbelieved before, the main reason for testing these items was to try to understand what causes them to drop one way or another. I wanted to see if the difficulty or character's level makes them switch their rarity, and I still have no answer. Maybe being boss drops matters? Or the area where they drop? Now that it's clear that they drop in different quality even within one difficulty level, I can't help but wonder: Why they do it? What other items are capable of it? And, finally, how should they be classified on the wiki? Actually, the question of what these items are is academic, since the bonuses are not affected by quality change and the items are equally useful regardless of whether they are unique or legendary. But what to do with wiki database? Link them to both Unique and Legendary?

File Name: Bugslayer and Hammer of the Righteous File Submitter: Silver_fox File Submitted: 19 Feb 2014 File Category: Community Patch Mixed Items This chest contains two hafted weapons that were added to drops with CM patch v90. Though all items in this chest were present in game before the Community Patch, so the chest should work fine even if you do not have CM patch installed. The chest contains: Bugslayer and Hammer of the Righteous. The information below applies to both weapons. Item levels: Bronze difficulty: Levels 16 and 44 Silver difficulty: Levels 44 and 80 Gold difficulty: Levels 80 and 140 Platinum difficulty: Levels 140 and 162 Niob difficulty: Levels 162 and 200 as an added bonus the chest contains Gruma's Talisman - a legendary ammulet that was either added to drops in CM v90. Instructions: The chest file should be extracted from this archive and copied to the savegame folder. The location of this folder is given below. For Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<userID>\My Documents\Saved Games\Ascaron Entertainment\Sacred 2 For Windows Vista and Windows 7: C:\Users\<userID>\Saved Games\Ascaron Entertainment\Sacred 2 Be sure to back up your existing chest.sacred2chest file before doing anything! Installing this file will overwrite your Shared tab in your player chest. Click here to download this file

As of now, the list of announced characters for Sacred 3 includes the Seraphim (who looks more like High Elf in the beginning of that trailer, but that's my opinion), Ancarian Ranger and Shaman from citadel, and somebody called Malakhim. Though I'm not sure how close the gameplay would be to what we are used to see in Sacred. In some interview Deep Silver people gave recently (sorry, I can't give you a link as I myself only read the russian translation of this text) they said that each character has a weapon type assigned to him/her, so I guess we won't be seeing kung fu Dryads and pistol-wielding mages here. And it does not look like they did some essential changes to gameplay since they last showed it - it's still party-oriented and big open world does not seem to be planned.

Outstanding. No other words for it. An extremely interesting set - both its looks and its stats are good-looking, unusual and would be very interesting to try out in game. The very existance of this set can make a prospect of building a firearm-wielding Elf so much more attractive. I saw you also posting about this set on Mantis. Are you going to integrate it with CM as well as with Flix's mod?

I did some additional testing of these two items - got them to drop on all possible difficulties at different item levels (2 versions for each difficulty - 10 versions of each item, collected by 6 different characters). I see them as uniques all way long, though the stats are exactly like they are on the wiki. I packaged the chest and uploaded to DarkMatters downloads section, as we didn't have a download for either of these items before. Though I got them not from bosses, but mostly as quest rewards, it should not matter. For a comparison I did the same with legendary Gruma's talisman (wanted to see if czevak actually nerfed it as he was going to do, and the answer is "no"). This one is legendary all along.

I thought about the jewellery when I was doing the set pictures. It would be nice to picture the actual models, but the only way it can be possible in game is by somehow disabling the beams and sparks that fly around all drops (and around uniques they are excessive). If you know the way to turn off the all the special effects, it may be possible to make pictures of the jewels. Otherwise, the best I was able to get looked like this: Same with the Sigils. Each of them has a unique rune design, but how to showcase them besides showing their inventory icons, I don't know. Thank you for reminding me of the Item Modifier page. And really, the regen time page wins the prize for the least intuitive name in the wiki. I was thinking about it for quite some time... because when you write "Regeneration Time" and the link goes red, you start to suspect that something is wrong. Such a cornerstone of the game can't be without explanation. Of course I found the page, but finding it didn't help me to understand why this name was chosen. I understand that when the regen time -% spawns on item, it has a colon in the modifier text, but the page is rather about one of the principles of game mechanics than about a modifier that uses this principle. After all we don't have Aspects page spelled with the colon... I'm working with CM Legendaries right now, and can somebody please explain me one thing. Namely, this: Both items are listed on the wiki as legendaries, but when I actually see them in game for the first time, they spawn as uniques. And to think of it, czevak listed Hammer of the Righteous as "unique hammer" in change logs (that is why the red link for it was on the unique page). But there definitely were screenshots that pictured both items as legendaries, unless the red background of unusable items plays tricks with the text color. Or maybe they spawn as uniques at some difficulties and as legendaries at the others... I don't know what to think. In blueprint.txt both are labeled as uniques and I see nothing in the description that indicates otherwise, but I'm not the greatest expert in item scripting. Their blueprints are 2954 and 2955 in case anybody wants to take a look for themselves (and 2953 is Tiddlywink, all three of them seemingly being a part of a promotional giveaway).

Everybody looking for this mod can find a working link in This post.

Flix, here are the links for both LazyTomcat's personal mod for CM and for ciSacred (hosted on russian official Sacred fansite). LT's mod for CM v120: http://allsacred.ru/uploads/sacred2_ice/mods/LT-CM-Mod_0120.zip ciSacred as of 16.04.2010: For singleplayer: http://allsacred.ru/uploads/sacred2_ice/mods/[ru]ciSacred-Mod_for_Sacred_2_I&B_1.30.2_SP.rar For multiplayer: http://allsacred.ru/uploads/sacred2_ice/mods/[ru]ciSacred-Mod_for_Sacred_2_I&B_1.30.2_MP.rar They also host some other old mods, so ask if you need something else.

Some time ago, Flix reminded us all that many of the old pages for Unique and Legendary items look quite bad (if not to say worse). Most of old images are almost unreadable, many item pages look underdeveloped. Now that Flix sinks a lot of his time into improving the information on various item and item modifier pages, it's a pity that readers' impression of these pages is worsened by bad image quality and unfortunate formatting. So what I am doing: New pictures, of course. I'm changing old pictures that showcase item stats as well as the ones of item in use. Of course, I'm not going to change good-quality pictures, only the less fortunate ones. All pictures would be edited in a uniform way to make a page look more neat. And of course only small GIFs for stats, so maybe some server space would be saved too (though that's not my main goal). Adding standart information about spawn levels, appropriate skills and attributes next to all item stats. Formatting the individual item pages so that they had more finished look (or at least did not look neglected) - making sections for modifiers, notes, maybe see also. Modifying individual pages so that pictures and essential info from them could be included into the main database page instead of being copied over. This prevents information from doubling, so we won't have to wonder how many more pages we would have to go through to finally change a certain picture or bit of information. Besides, it currently works for set items - why not for uniques? Changing database pages to inclusion instead of copying. Other than that, I'm correcting red links, but only if I remember what a correct version is. I fill in only mundane information and the facts I can easily remember (ones that do not require additional research), so I don't think that my work would completely eliminate the need for Flix's crusade against red links. Basically, I'm more concerned with how the pages look and check that nothing essential is missing. As with all modification/overhauling work, I don't want to proceed without feedback. So, to start the project, I modified the Community Patch Unique Items page and all its subpages for individual items. These weren't the pages that needed it most (and were the ones that changed least), but they were the pages I initially made and I felt more free experimenting with them. So I want to hear what you think. If you approve of the look and feel the CM section of the database currently has, I'd move on and bring more sections to look like this. Suggestions and feedback are not only welcome but necessary. Once I'm done with defining a final look for the images and page formatting, I would of course post a description of what format and editing I'm using, so others could do that as well. On a side note - as all good images in the main database have blue background on stats, I'm going to make new stat images for original FA and I&B uniques blue as well. CM ones are made with black background to match the actual CM interface. Already finished sections: Community Patch Unique Items Community Patch Legendary Items Legendary Database (more or less - all stat images look good now; will probably revisit later to see what can be done with "in use" pictures and individual pages) High Elf Uniques Currently Working On: Unlock Items Seraphim Uniques

Like Dave said, try turning off PhysX. If it does not help, then the source of your problems is probably the SweetFX upgrade that comes with the latest Community Patch (with v140, not sure if they kept it in the hotfix). Many people with less powerful systems experienced framerate drop after they installed the last CM. There is a way to cut this graphics modification out of the game without uninstalling CM, so if turning the PhysX off won't help, you ought to try it.

I finally decided to list all the things I've been doing recently and going to do in the nearest future. Besides translations, I spent my time on the wiki going through the set pages, updating my old work and adding missing things where I could. Though there is nothing here to write home about, most changes being purely cosmetic rather than essential or providing new information. The only page that got a serious change is the one for the Dragon Mage's Christmas Set, which ended up overhauled. Initially I wanted only to add the item stat pictures, of which there was none, but ended up also applying all templates and design elements that became customary for the latest CM set pages. I really wanted to keep Flix's version of main screenshot, just clean it up a bit, but it turned out that Schot's batch convert was not kind to this image (it didn't go from 130KB to 29 without losses). So, it has a new main picture too. Other than that, I added missing set pictures to all class mini sets (all of them except Kayser's Luck, as I wasn't sure how to present two-ring set in the best way) and updated images for all Mutation Sets and Equilibrium. Now all stats are clear and small GIF files and main images are JPG instead of PNG. Not all that much server space saved (a couple MB, maybe), but now the pictures do not look shabby. Spent way too much time on those, as the stat images refused to be resaved from JPG into small GIF files and I had to clean them up again before saving (only a bit less work than with new screenshots). Drawing the Moral from this tale: If you want the image to be a good GIF, do not save it as lossy JPG first. Now, as I promised, I'll try to update the Unique and Legendary database. Will make new pictures instead of those that are almost unreadable, and will try to bring those pages to inclusion format to prevent information from doubling.

Might be? Sounds like most definitely a bug. I just read what I wrote again. Geez, sometimes my English is worse than I want it to be. I never doubted the fact that it is a bug (it is, and a big fat one like they have in the Desert). What I tried to say that this tooltip bug seems to be exclusively for Regeneration Penalty from Buffs modifier, as all others I could try updated the tooltips without having to use CAs first. I tried with +skills, +CA level, Regeneration TIme: Aspect, just regen time -%.

... And I was about to make it a picture-heavy thread by adding 10+ pictures of my experiments with my Elf and her favorite Unyielding Wall. Glad you found the answer by yourself, as I shudder to think how much all these pictures would have slowed the loading of this page. By the way, this might be a bug with regen penalty modifier working with tooltips. Removing (or adding) +all skills bonus usually takes effect on tooltip immediately (or at least tooltips update when you switch slots), but with Regeneration Penalty from Buffs it takes you to kill something to see the change. And what can I say, the thought of killing this game for its bugs crosses the mind of every Sacred player at least once. But we still continue playing.

This whole discussion of LifeLeech set for a Dryad reminds me of a discussion thread for the Memories of the Trees that took place three years ago. This one: http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/17716-cm-patch-new-weapon-set-for-dryad/page-3 Back then it got almost to a flame, all because of a question of whether or not a lifeleech miniset would be warranted. In the end the set got other bonuses, and personally I thought it a bit of a pity, because like Thorin I never was a fan of either Detheya's or shurikens (other popular option for a life-leeching Dryad). Flix, if you missed this discussion because you came to DarkMatters after it was finished, maybe you should take a look. And I agree that this bonus alone does not make a set overpowered, the overall game idea for balancing this modifier is to pervent you from stacking too much. It appears only on weapons (and mostly the ones that can't be dual-wielded at that) and for a completion of big sets. So I guess it's OK to use it for as long as we don't give it away at early completion stage. As a side note - this thread about the Memories set mentioned Shadow Warrior's set Kanka's Relics. This set was implemented in CM, but was made too overpowered and later taken away from drop lists for tweaking and balancing. Anybody knows what became of it? Can it drop now? Have the stats changed? I just thought that if czevak never got to editing this set and allowing the drops, maybe it should become a part of the new items project. The set has interesting visual design, would be a pity if it would never drop normally.

Flix, that's awesome! Really, seriously awesome! My own vote would be for the following: Whatever you choose as a final Asha skin, please include other color variations as random drops (like all other sets do in game - they have one skin for unique set and others drop on random items). If including these models into droplists for random things is too much trouble, then please, make them at least an optional additional download. These designs are too good to lose. When I asked you to tweak the textures, I have not thought you'd go for such complete overhaul, but maybe it's good that you deed - the results are interesting to look at. So yes, the 'Hand of Balance' design is what I had in mind while asking to make golds and blues match and make black more uniform. I understand why you think it a good bet for the official skin. On other hand (not of Balance), I thought about such design because, being a refinement of original, it requires the least amount of new ideas and severe tweaking. As you spent you time and creativity and came up with those other ideas anyway - they must be considered. Golden and silver designs are both very cool, I think them equal and like them a bit more than the balanced version. For whatever reason, my personal favorite is a green one, but I'd probably be alone here. And I really like how both green and gold versions look with that shield (it's not really visible, but what I can see looks good). I agree that the 'Rust' one is less fortunate than the others, but still not a bad design. Long story short - if you like Golden Girl, go for it and nobody would fault you, because it's a wonderful design. If you're afraid to alter the desing you were given and want to honor what Dmitrius made - Hand of Balance is good-looking too. But personally I would like to see green and silver designs also making appearance somewhere.

Well, I have one more question for you, Schot: What exactly is this switch you turned to restrict the upload of PNG images? I understood it as applying a file-extension and file-size filter on upload, which prohibits big PNG files from being loaded into the wiki. Is it so? Or is it more complex than that? Or you just personally advised us not to do it in the future but applied no technical restrictions? It's just that some time ago you thought about using PNG-8 instead of GIF, and I wonder just how much it is possible. Little PNG icons that are less than 10KB load fine (I already added a couple of Dialogue portraits that weren't in your gallery), but what about bigger things? What kind of restrictions do we have to comply with while uploading PNG images? On a side note - for item stats PNG-8 and GIF make for almost identical filesize (plus or minus half-KB is not a considerable difference), so I can just stick to GIFs. Still, sometimes (not always, for some reason) PNG-8 turn out slightly smaller, so it's useful to know how much welcome they are.

This is a very good idea for a set. I wonder if you plan it to be Dryad only or all-classes-can-wear-most-of-the-items kind of thing (like Memories of the Trees)? But I have to say - that's a very mighty set bonus you have here, basically everything a Dryad could wish for. Considering that the items themselves are not something to despair about, the set turns out to be quite powerful. Maybe you can consider rearranging set bonuses a bit, making a smaller ones appear first and stronger ones later? Considering that many players wear full Detheya's just for LifeLeech and call it a deal, this modifier would look better as full completion bonus or 5 pieces bonus (maybe 4 if you plan for the set to be available and fully useful for the other characters too). And Hitpoint regen is not all that rare, but still useful - so it makes for a good first bonus. I can understand why having another lifeleech set for the Dryad is a good idea - it's sad to see them all stuck with the same aspect set just because of this bonus. However, if you have it for two item completion - then you throw in a two-item set called 'Tooth and Nail' (ring and amulet) that Flix made before, then you add Detheya's to boot - and it's a game breaker. That is why I propose to make the LifeLeech bonus from your set mutually exclusive with 'Tooth and Nail' by requiring 5 or 6 jewellery slots filled to obtain it. About availability for the other chars: I noticed that you have bonuses to Dryad's CAs and skills, but they are not the only ones the items have. And considering that the game sometimes offers you rings with '+ all Arrant Pyromancer spells' and '+ Nefarious Netherworld Focus' at the same time... it's not impossible to imagine a character wearing a bonus to a foreign aspect. So I had to ask about your plans.

I'm afraid, you're wrong, Flix. The whole point of Buff-suits is that when you remove the suit with runes socketed, it also removes the penalty from havong a high-level buff. The benefits, however, are fixed at the time the buff is cast. I'll quote the guide you linked: If you choose the opposite way to build a buff-suit, eat 100+ runes and make a suit with +all skills, you'd have a high level benefits and low penalty at the moment of the cast and high level benefits and high level regen penalty when you remove the suit. So this method works only with one single buff - Elf's Grand Ingivoration that has no penalty whatsoever. For all buffs except the Ingivoration the best way to start is to eat 1 rune, socket the rest into buff-suit and wear it at the time of the cast. Then when you remove the buff-suit, you'd have the benefits from the level the buff was cast at and the regen penalty of your own level 1 buff. Once you have a high-level character with a lot of Focus skills, you can add to the buff level by eating more runes, but until then, keep it at one rune only. I tested it excessively, so I can vouch that after the buff is cast, removing +CA Level lowers regen penalty and removing +all skills increases it. As for the tooltips - the one on the buff itself does not reflect the stituation, but you can look at the other CAs. The lower the regen penalty is, the faster their regen would be.

According to what mibbs tested, respective lores, appropriate CA modifications and Intelligence (each 50 points in intelligence give you +1%) do affect Critical Hit chance for spells. It's just the equipment that seems lacking effect. And I'm not entirely sure it is not some kind of bug. In-game description of this modifier says nothing about spells. On other hand, it won't be the first modifier that works differently from what people expect.

Well, I finally finished this guide. It got even bigger than it was at the beginning, but the information is really interesting. It's now on the wiki, in the guide section: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Damage_Mechanics_for_Spell_Damage_Based_Combat_Arts Also, I decided to make use of language option and assembled the russian version of the page, with the original version of the text and notes that mibbs sent me. On a side note, there is one fact in this guide that surprised me - Chance for Critical Hits modifier found on equipment and blacksmith arts does not work with spells. It works with weapon CAs well enough, but not with spells. At least not with High Elf's spells. Mibbs said that he took HE's Mutation set, filled all sockets with appropriate blacksmith arts and saw no effect whatsoever (critical hits were just as rare as with naked character). I wonder if this is the same for other characters. Flix, as you seem to like Dragon Mages, maybe you have noticed something along these lines?

Added some information that did not fit into the main guide to the pages about High Elf Combat Arts: Frost Flare, Raging Nimbus and Expulse Magic. I added a 'Notes' section to these pages as the information was about the mechanics of the spells rather than about usage strategies. Feel free to correct me if you feel that the layout should be different.

Don't let the comments get you down, Flix. You're doing a good job here - this is a good defensive set that offers a choice of items with many useful defensive modifiers. As for mitigation, it's not hard to notice that Mibbs put a great value in this modifier, but it's by far not the only useful defensive modifier in game. There are many people in this community who ran the High Elves through Niobium Hardcore, and they weren't building their defenses around mitigation. So as long as this set has various defensive modifiers to offer, it would be useful without having extremely poweful pieces. Besides, it already seems a pretty good choice of fighting suit for a higher level character (aspect-oriented sets are good for buff suits, but their bonuses to CA levels start to loose their value later in game - a that's also the time when you would want more defense). Though if you haven't yet tired of tweaking the bonuses, how about swapping Defense Value (legs) and Detrimental Effects (arms). If I remember correctly, mitigation and DoT -% are considered yellow quality modifiers, so if you swap these two, you'd have 2 yellow+white on arms and yellow+2 blue on legs. Maybe it would be slightly better balancing. As for design, the thing that stands out most as far as glow is concerned, is a bright-turquoise collar that comes from the Pearl set. I don't know if you tweaked that yet, but maybe it's worth trying to make the glow a bit less intense/ less bright?

I just noticed that Sacred Gold is a part of big sale on Good Old Games (gog.com). If there is somebody around here who still does not have this classic game, it's a good chance to get a DRM-free version of the game with additional bonuses (like soundtrack) for $2. If interested, you can find it here: http://www.gog.com/game/sacred_gold Hope it won't count as advertisement. I just wanted to inform people about a good chance to try out the game if they still have not.