Silver_fox

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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).

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).

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. 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.

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.

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.

Wow! You definitely have a great bunch of high-quality additions in the works. That leather set for High Elf is already enough to make me want to try your mod when it is finished. That's not to mention that getting new sets for poor DM is a very attractive prospect (is was always quite sad that getting good armor for him was harder than for the others simply because he had less such armor made for him). And item stats look good either (many user-made items tend to be overpowered game-breakers, but your versions don't seem over-the-top). My personal request would be for more unique lightsabers, CM-patch style (I mean, willpower based, as lightsabers are in CM). There was such request already, but I wanted to say that I'm seconding it. I know, many people don't welcome tech stuff in game, but lightsabers are already present and quite noticeable, so adding a bit more should not hurt. Besides, Star Wars is not hardcore sci-fi, but science fantasy that fits OK with both genres (after all, Sacred 1 had lightsaber-wielding Ice Elves who didn't seem out of place). After CM changed these swords to willpower, it opened more possibilities for builds. For example, I ran a Jedi seraphim built aroung NIFs and Warding Energy buff. She was fun to play, but undertaking a certain quest and bothering Frank each time I wanted to upgrade my weapons... *facepalm* With more lightsabers worthy of wielding, experimentiong with willpower-based characters would be more interesting. One more question (not request) - have you thought about merging your mod into next CM when it will be released? It's really cool that now you are independent and have something to offer and try out already, but what would happen when next CM happens? Granted, CM devs are not very active, but they work on several things, so sooner or later v150 would be released. Then you would have to re-do quite some work updating itemlists, droplists and global.res again. Speaking of global.res, are you working only with the english one? How would your mod behave on other locales (english item names or blank/tagged strings)?

It's a very interesting and in-depth research that might be useful for people playing mage characters, especially as they progress through the game and decide how to apply points at current level and which equipment to choose. For me it looks like a solid way to compare items with different bonuses (answering questions like 'would I get a bigger boost if I equip an item with +Lore Skill or the one with +Intelligence?' or 'Can I recompense for taking off +Skill items by sinking points into certain stats?') and to choose which stats to modify at levelup ('Would I notice the benefit of additional Intelligence or it is better to invest in Stamina at this point?'). That is, of course, if you are willing to do math. The big downside of this writeup is the translation. It is extremely word-to-word and oftenly wrong meanings of the words were used (constant usage of 'meaning' instead of 'value' - these words are homonymous in russian). I wonder if it would be better if your acquaintance sends you the russian original and I translate it into english.

I changed JPGs for GIFs on a couple of set pages and everything looks fine. It appears that GIFs are free to go. The ones I changed were Equilibrium and http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Megalcarwen%27s_Garments_of_Mutation Please check if everything looks OK for you.

I saw this topic, but could not find a single glitch on the wiki itself, which is why I proposed to try using GIFs again. I guess, we can just try it out - I'll do the GIF stats for Megalcarwen's set and we'll see how they would look. Also, I remember saving stat GIF with transparency and interlacing turned off - removing transparency makes them a bit smaller and removing interlacing does not really increase filesize for something of 8KB. If you think that interlacing is to blame, turning it off for such images would change filesize only a fraction of KB so it should not really matter. You know, Schot, I played a bit with GIF saving - and for simple images interlace only increases the filesize. That set bonus image I showed you before is 10.13 KB with interlace and 10.01 without. So, I guess, removing interlace might be a way to eliminate the problem. (I'm saving for web in Photoshop, by the way.)

Here is the link to localized texts if you need them: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_TBVBAeWVRnSlZWNUFJNDRxSXc/edit?usp=sharing They are not THE very last version, as I collected all localizations for previous versions of CM patch, but not for the current one. So these files are patched to v120 or v130 (can't recall which one exactly). On other hand, all vanilla texts are there, and CM texts are still work in progress and subject to change anyway.

An old thread, by I still decided to add my two cents worth. Chattius is completely right about the Elf - she does have a phrase along the lines of "More enemies! Bring me more of them! I have five-year-old plan to fulfill!" in all languages I know of (much to my surprise) and it is a reference to Soviet economy (at least everybody who knows some details about the Union takes it as such). Geez, these plans managed to become a sort of trademark feature of communist economy - I remember several other games that referenced them. Actually, the only reason I never brought this one before, is exactly how much on spot this reference is. You know, I'm russian, so of course I first heard this phrase in the russian version of the game - and the text sounded so obvoiusly Soviet-specific that it never crossed my mind that those were the German developers who brought it to the game. I always thought it was something that russian localizers inserted, probably to replace some other joke russian people would have failed to get. But as it is present in other locales, this phrase is an Easter Egg to be filed alongside the one about Berlin Wall. And to think that it was said by an Elf... we now know which of Tyr Lysia and Artamark is meant to represent which part of Germany.

Thank you for your suggestion, Flix, I'll keep it in mind. As of now, I'll start on my own (by editing my own past contributions) and see how it goes. Thing is, there are a lot of item pages that can use new stat pictures - most of Uniques, all Unlocks and some Legendaries - about 200 (yeah, two hundred, probably more) total. At the first glance it looks like enough work for everyone, especially considering that GIFs are only good looking when they are custom-tailored (if you simply save a screenshot as GIF without editing, its 256 color limitation would show its downside). On the other hand, once I make a couple os stat GIFs, I'll have a solid template for them and the rest would be fast to make (It was this way with set stats, that are heavily edited, but after the first few were very easy to do). So the best way seems to start and see how fast I'd be a getting them done and how fast they would be at getting on my nerves. If I find myself being too slow or get tired of looking at similar pictures for days on end, I'd let you know. Besides, you probably have other ongoing projects or just ideas you want to implement and they should have priority over re-doing something that already exists. That's an old question and I remember myself and Schot discussing it for quite some time... to little actual result. Sacred Wiki is very picture-heavy resource, which on one hand demands those picture to be smaller on order to make pages load faster, on the other hand - it is exactly graphic side of the wiki that first catches reader's eye and defines the first impression. And, sadly, if the quality of these pictures is lacking, the first impression is that the contributing team is lacking editing qualities and can't make these things better... which is as far from being true as it can get. What's worse, our subject does nothing to redeem the situation - I mean, Sacred is not WoW or Diablo or DOTA - so people sort of expect that a not-so-hyped-up title of dubious reputation would have nobody but a couple of crazy freaks caring about it. It would have been really cool if wiki was able to change this opinion, like people seeing very well-done site and thinking that a game that has such talented community must have something to it. Sorry, I digressed. I always wondered if it's worth trying to save space by reducing quantity, not quality. Mind you, I'm not proposing to reduce the amount of images, by maybe reducing the filesize by lowering picture's resolution instead of over-compressing it is a viable solution? I mean, some time ago Schot said that the wiki is meant to be viewed at 1280 width, so do we really need to have full HD pics stored? The quest template is meant to display camera images with no more than 400px width, so I guess that 640x480 or even less is enough for pictures uploaded for this purpose (nice to have it a bit bigger for those who couldn't quite puzzle the picture out on quest page and went to image page for details, but no use making it bigger than preview wiki generates here). What do you think? Can such approach be used for having crisp and clear images without demanding too much space?

That is exactly why I resurrected this thread. I'll do it for the sets and quest dialogs would take care of themselves as we apply the new Template. I know there were other contributors who won't do it as they are not currently around, but I can at least clean up after myself. Might as well replace JPGs to GIFs for item stat images - they are smaller and look the same if not better. The one that tipped me, personally, was this one: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/File:Megalcarwen_bonus.jpg Not a horrendous image, but quite messy and reported filesize is 89KB. The one I have on harddrive looks like this: The filesize is... 88KB! Means, no space saved. Not that I encourage you to run a restoration with any of my files, as I intend to replace them anyway (GIFs for such images weight about 8-9KB and that IS some improvement). The ones Flix listed were exceptionally hurt by the conversion - mostly because they were quite bad to begin with and the change made them illegible. In fact, I'm thinking about undertaking a project to make new images for Unique items - for some of those picture replacing them is the only way to make a difference. Not sure how good of idea it is though, but if you won't be able to do a thing about the current quality in may be necessary.

I can't come up with a better solution, because removing a part of neatly wrapped up template to make people manually insert an NPC link does not sound all that nice, especially considering how much work went into making this template as neat as in is. So maybe we should have something like those 'disambiguation pages' Wikipedia has (the ones that begin with 'the thing you looked for can also mean:'). The one big problem of such solution is that the main reason for linking NPC pages is so that the reader can learn where this NPC is and what he/she looks like. With a big page listing characters of the same name that differ only by location, the reader has to know where and what this NPC is to be able to choose the one he/she needs. So, if a person is able to choose the correct Hermit from the list of all Hermits in Ancaria, this person already knows so much he doesn't need to see this NPC page. To add insult to ingury, when we made the quest template, we decided not to insert pictures of NPC locations into the walkthrough as they are already present on NPC pages (which IS a good decision, for inserting them all into the quest page would be just too much with lengthy quests). So, good navigation to NPC pages becomes essential. You can argue that before the Dialogue Template appered readers could find the NPC pages through context links and this method still works just as fine. The trouble is that these big, good-looking clickable Dialogues are so much easier to notice than some link lost inside a wall of text - the reader's attention is effectively drawn there. Geez, I know what I'm saying as not so long ago I actually tired to click on one of these Hermits to look up the exact name of his page (I was quoting him for Star Wars Easter Eggs). And one would think I should have known better... Long story short - we would have more than a few readers ending up on these listing pages and unsure how to choose from the list. So if we don't want these readers to be lost, such a page should be not a simple list but a Comprehensive Guide to the Hermits of Ancaria. On a side note, I saw that Flix already uploaded english version of decoded global.res, so I don't have to do it. But is anyone interested in the other languages? Can be useful if you suddenly run into a page with Spanish screenshots (like I did with Finally Rich (Shadow) - by the way, am I the only one who thinks that this page doesn't match the naming standart?) or if you want to make translated version of the wiki. Not much chances for either situation though.

Sorry, gogo, but I would have to ask you to read the question again. I do understand that your character's phrases get 'The Player' as caption, but what can be done about NPCs whose names in game do not match the names of respective wiki pages (happens with generic, repetative NPC names)? The best illustration of what I ask about in this quest: Daemonic Rituals. It has three (!) different NPCs who are called 'Hermit' and that is how they are captioned in game. But they have three different NPC pages on the wiki. So the quest dialogues should be made to point to different pages while having the same caption. On a side note, I found one more Star Wars easter egg while looking at those hermits (the first of them obviously quotes Obi-Wan Kenobi).

Thank you, gogo (both for restoration of my editing superpowers and for the warm welcome)! Now I'll bring the topic back... well, to the topic. I decided to go through the quest pages I did before to apply this new template (and rid the wiki of some heavy PNG dialogues), and already ran into a small issue. The template leaves no opportunity to change the NPC name (it automatically assumes that the name in game matches the title of respective wiki page) which is a bit troublesome in case of side quest NPCs with generic names like Kobold or Soldier (and there are a whole lot of such guys). They all have their own NPC pages titled with location suffix (for example, right now I'm working with this one: Kobold Chieftain - Happy Cow Farm). So what should be put as the dialog caption? Writing it the way it is in game would result in either red or misleading link (with the example above it would link you to the random enemy). Writing it the way it is in the database is even worse... So can you please add the opportunity to use aliases for these NPC links, or suggest some workaround.

I checked those pages you listed and started to suspect something... So I went through some of Unique listings (such as All Classes Uniques and High Elf Uniques for comparison) and noticed two things that surprised me quite a lot: 1. I swear to the God above, these pictures didn't look that bad two years ago! Granted, they weren't perfect, but they were readable. This quality change is a strange thing to notice as the pictures are obviously the same. At first I thought I was mistaken and my memory fails me, but I checked CM patch Unique page - and the pictures there don't match the quality that was uploaded. What's worse, filesizes don't seem any smaller than they were, so quality change gives us nothing positive. 2. There are quite a few pictures that still look perfectly clear and a nice as you please - Slicing Scythe and Shugrok's Illusion for example. All of those pages have either PNG (as in the first case) or GIF (as in the second) for stat pictures. Summing up: What is wrong with JPGs nowadays? Does it mean that we should remake Unique, Legendary and Set item pages using GIF files in order for the stats to be clearly readable? After all those are the pages that get a lot of visitors (maybe the most visited on the wiki) so they should look good enough.

As far as batch-converting goes, it surely was not completed for PNGs (at least the ones I brought up are still there), but I wonder if something along those lines was applied to some JPGs. I was checking set pages for Mutation sets - main pictures are still the same large PNGs but JPGs that were used to display stats of Glimborin's Garments of Mutation: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Glimborin%27s_Garments_of_Mutation and some others look distorted. I'd like somebody else to check them, but in the images displayed for me the amount of JPG artifacts and color noise is so big the text is not entirely clear. Versions of these images that I have sitting on my hard drive don't look like that, so I guess it might be a result of some optimization done by the wiki. Pages that were done with GIF images for stats (like Arbereth's Garments of Mutation: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Arbereth%27s_Garments_of_Mutation) look perfectly fine, but JPG ones are a bit messy. This is another reason why I thought of re-uploading some images - as GIFs are both smaller and better-looking, I'd rather make all set pages have them. By the way, why is the forum refusing to link those pages when I try to insert the links using 'Sacred 2 Wiki' tag? I know that ' (%27) symbol is what breaks it, but I have a feeling it worked better before.

A bit of necromancy with an old thread... Now I have a zombie topic to ask one question: With that anti-PNG campaign that you a running, what should be done about existing files of that extention? In the days past I was as entusiastic about them as Schot was (if not more) so I'm guilty of bringing quite a few weighty PNGs to the wiki. I still have all the files I was working with, so I can resave those images into slim JPGs and reupload, if you'd like me to.