[Sudden lag]

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.

[Sacred Wiki - Latest Updates]

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.

[Buff suits and - regen buffs items]

 

By the way, this might be a bug with regen penalty modifier working with tooltips...

 

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 -%.

[Buff suits and - regen buffs items]

... 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.

[New Uniques and Legendaries - Brainstorming]

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.

[Children of Asha - New High Elf Set]

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.

[P-N-Gs, I love you so, but you're too big, so you must go!]

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.

[New Uniques and Legendaries - Brainstorming]

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.

[Buff suits and - regen buffs items]

Regen penalty from active buff can't change after you cast it - it's fixed at the time of casting.

 

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:

 

However, the Buffs are a permanent spell. They stay up until they are deactivated. Removing the + Combat Art boosters does not lower the level the buff was cast at. So..........

By removing the Boosters from the buff it does, however, remove the Regen Penalty. This effectively gives back the Regens to be used by Attack Combat arts

 

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.

[Sacred 2 Damage formulas]

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.

[Sacred 2 Damage formulas]

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?

[Sacred 2 Damage formulas]

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.

[Children of Asha - New High Elf Set]

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?

[Sacred Gold is on sale today]

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.

[Sacred 2 Damage formulas]

One of the notes that Mibbs sent me was about penalties for eating too many runes. It didn't seem to belong to the main guide, so I added this info to the Highest Combat Art Level Without Penalty. It's only the last point, about slowing down the CA execution. I didn't edit the rest of the page, though it looks like it can use some more editing.

[Children of Asha - New High Elf Set]

Good ideas about the bonuses. Having Regen time on chestplate would make it attractive item for a mage to wear. As for the arms - having block chance is doubtfully weaker than detrimental effects (as there is extreme ammount of enemies that try to attack you in close combat), and with two silver sockets it would still be powerful. Don't think you should lower mitigation though - its values are on par with other set items of the same level, besides HE can't have toughness, so for her mitigation is less overpowered than for others (she is never completely invulnerable). Maybe giving the arms block chance instead of detrimental effect and leaving one gold socket would suffice (though I know that much lamented gloves from the Virtues of the Seraphim set have mitigation + two sockets + two yellow modifiers, but there was always talk that this item is a bit OP).

 

As for design, I didn't know how much experimentation you did on it, and I understand that you don't want to alter the design. And at first, I failed to realize that last pictures were of a different edit than the first one and thought that with in-game lighting it just looks different than at the starting screen. So I perfectly understand why you don't want to change it and again apologize for my critique. And by the way, it's not three, but five sets merged together - there are solid parts of Iron Set on chest, arms and legs, and decorative bits from Special on gloves - so yes, it's busy.

[Children of Asha - New High Elf Set]

Congratulations on getting another part of your mode done, Flix!

 

However, I have a bit mixed feelings about this set:

On one hand, my first thought was - "Yay! Finally a set of High elf armor that looks like armor and doesn't make you think that some of her eqipment was stolen!" (that's what her Iron Set makes me think, as it's a heavy knight's armor + panties). Don't get me wrong, I don't mind sexy elves, just like variety. And the fact that you based it on HoMM Dragons is another thing I like a lot, because it's some pretty nice lore and matches well with number of set items (and because Sacred, HoMM and Dragons all hold very high places on my personal list of interesting things). Putting it simple - I really like the idea behind this set.

 

On other hand, sometimes less is really more. And I don't mean the amount of armor. It's just that this design has so many things going on at the same time, it makes me think that it would be better if textures looked a bit simpler. How about trying it without the black stripe on the inside of the legguards (leaving just the iron main part and black plate on the outer side)? And maybe knee-caps would look a bit better if they matched overall "glossy black + gold trim" theme instead of current "matte black + white trim"? Sorry for nitpicking...

 

Also, is it just me, or bonuses on legguards and armguards look very powerful? Three very good modifiers + two high-quality sockets... Might not be overpowered by themselves, but I can't help thinking that equipping the legs, arms and belt and swapping chestplate for Velaria's would give you an over-protected elf. Maybe you should try moving some bonus to chestplate instead - won't make it overpowered, as now it looks weaker than aforementioned Velaria's Garment, but can make wearing full set and not just arms and legs more attractive idea.

 

And again, I'm sorry for nitpicking, as you're doing really great job making amazing new item mod for community to discover.

[Best Battle mage spell for Dragons and Anducar?]

For a fire mage, there is not. Other than that, it depends on how you play. I was plowing through all bosses by moving fast, always keeping behind their backs at quite close range and spamming Gust of Wind at these very backs. They always need to turn to face you in order to perform their attacks and CAs and with enough movement speed I was able to relocate my character while dragons were performing their attack animations. Then hitting them with GoW again. While bosses can not be knocked back, they can sometimes be stunned. And generally GoW does wonders when used from close range against such larger than life opponents. But that's entirely different playstyle as it requires you to keep close to your opponent, not exactly at melee range, but closer than fire mages ever need to get. And to be effective with GoW you need to build and gear up for it from the start. It's not a spell that is strong and effective from the very beginning. Plus, without Air Magic it can be hard to keep it both strong and spammable.

 

I also know people who really liked Meteor Storm and had it hitting very hard, as with big opponents there is a great chance to hit with many rocks. However, I never was able to get a hold of its randomness.

[Sacred 2 Damage formulas]

That's exactly what I can't decide about this article. Its main value is in having all important things you need to know to be effective with your spells wrapped neatly and stored in one place. Some bits of this information are not new, they can be found on the wiki, but it is all spread so thin over so many pages you need to read the entirety of the site to learn it. Most readers can wander around the wiki for hours without running into details on how DoT works or what Spell Intensity really is. They can also easily ignore some pages just because they don't know where to look for useful information or which articles can be relevant for them (like many people tend to overlook the DoT page because the base concept is well known and seen in many other games so they feel they already know it). With such guide they can read it, click on context links for details, and feel quite competent.

 

On other hand, it doesn't feel right to have a Player contributed guide talking of essential mechanics, with some details that are lacking from the wiki proper. So I just don't know how to treat it.

[Sacred 2 Damage formulas]

I translated this guide from an original russian version that Mibbs had sent me. Preliminary wiki page for it can be seen here:

http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/User:Silver_fox

Meanwhile, Mibbs sent me some more facts he would like to see added to the guide. I'm planning to translate these bits toworrow.

 

I wonder if you can take a look at the page and determine where exactly on the wiki it belongs. It is a useful collection of many facts related to damage dealing, so I guess we are bringing it to the wiki, question is - to which section of the wiki?

[Sacred 2 Damage formulas]

Don't worry, Flix, I would have never called you sloppy - you are doing as much as you can, and that's a great lot. Besides, I know how you feel, as I was (and still am) feeling the same - trying to cover as many of the wiki's weak points as possible, doing a bit of everything everywhere and having so many ongoing projects it's impossible to pay equal attention to them all at the same time.

 

It's just that there was talk about ignoring the armor, and I remembered this modifier and started to wonder if it works as intended or should be added to the game's many glitches. If you don't know for sure - neither do I, nor the others, probably (it's not the easiest modifier to get so I don't know how many players have great experience of playtesting it). Looking it up in the scripts is a good idea, but doesn't completely eliminate the necessity of testing in-game ('Faster increase of Survival Bonus' looked OK in the scripts, but never worked properly).

[Sacred 2 Damage formulas]

Yes, that's right about armor and mitigation. Maybe that's why they added lfe-leeching opponents in Ice&Blood, because lifeleech is the only damage type that ignores both Armor and Mitigation. By the way, how much have you tested how the 'Direct Damage %' modifier works? I saw you made a page for it, but the description does not match what czevak said when he put it on Power of NIF (and by the way, it's just % not +%). This modifier was supposed to indicate a percentage of weapon damage that ignores target's Armor (just like DoT ignores it, only for regular damage). What you wrote in the description makes it a weaker version of 'Damage +%' (works the same but not applying to spells), while originally it was supposed to increase the damage outcome not through increase of damage dealt but through the fact that part of damage dealt comes 'directly', ignoring the armor. When I was playing I had a feeling that it works as supposed but I might be wrong . There are quite a few things in the game that don't work as originally intended, especially among the less common modifiers. I won't be really surprised if Direct Damage is one of them. Just wonder how much testing you had with this one.

 

Also, I'm putting a translation for Mibbs' guide together on my personal wiki page. It's not yet ready for publication, as I haven't finished translating everything yet, but if you're interested please take a look (might be useful if you're testing these things now).

[New Uniques and Legendaries - Brainstorming]

Found it. Model and textures are present in the game files, and it's even implemented in itemtype.txt (icons are there too), but there's no blueprint for it so it's never been seen in-game. It's not sold by merchants and will not drop from enemies or chests...until now. This is the first time that this shield has been displayed in-game AFAIK:

Amazing find, Flix. I thought it might be present because all other items from the artbook were found in game files (at various degrees of completion, but still there). However, I haven't expected it to be so nice-looking. It can be implemented right away without any tweaking and still look better than most shield in game. Though I wonder if you can try some advanced shaders on those green gems in the middle. Maybe slightly glowing or swirly effect would make them stand out and have more volume (right now they look a bit flat, on par with equally green inlays). Besides, a model itself looks promising - one of those things that give completely different impression depending on how they are skinned. Most shield models in game are either overly simple or, in case of Impenetrable Protector, overly fancy and don't change too much with re-skinning. Dragon shield is really cool, but how many versions of it we can have. Now we can keep one more good model in mind in case we want more shield variety.

Would you like to come up with a name or bonuses for this shield?

I have nothing concrete in mind, but this shield looks for me like something noble, elaborate and generally gives elven vibes. At least the look fits with elven art and design of their buildings better than with other races in game (humans use simpler and sturdier things, seras are all blue and t-energy, dryads aren't the ones for shields, orcs and lizards are just too tribal). So maybe some name with elven theme, not necessary from Sacred.

 

As for bonuses, I think it fits the 'Damaging shields' idea, as it looks like a classical shield with something like short blades attached. Other than that, I wanted to request some CA modifier on it (+regen, chance to halve, + CA skills - you name it). Something that would benefit casters but won't hurt to have either way. I just always felt that mages end up using shields more oftenly than others, and wanted to have some shield designed for them. Maybe generally make it something for more offensive approach, with less armor and defensive bonuses but some benefit to CA usage/attack.

[Sacred 2 Damage formulas]

By the way, I checked the wiki page for Damage Mitigation and it specifically insists that mitigation has no effect on real DoT (DoT -% modifier applies insted). However, from what Mibbs tested it appears to actually affect DoT and layer with DoT -% modifier. I wonder if it has to do with the version of the game. That wiki page was made back in the time of original Fallen Angel and as I remember they changed a bit of mechanics with Ice&Blood. At least some builds that were effectively invincible in FA needed additional tweaking with the release of I&B. I guess, we need to look into it and make appropriate changes to the mitigation page.

[New Uniques and Legendaries - Brainstorming]

As there was some talk about shields in the first post, I decided to ask a question that interested me ever since I saw Sacred 2 artbook. Has anybody ever seen this one?

This bit of concept art looks interesting, but it wasn't actually implemented into the game. I wonder if it can be like The Redeemer, which actually was in game files, but without a skin or assigned blueprint. Ascaron devs left a whole lot of unfinished concepts behind. Maybe there is something useful there.