[Damage Lore - and underutilized skills in general]

8 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

So it basically depends on the player if he wants to engage with these buggy behaviors.

True that. I guess that with projectiles being locked behind Staff Lore mastery these kind of situations were so damn specific that you just couldn't get to the core of its implications, whereas when the behaviour change in staves was made to have them shoot projectiles without the Lore skill mastery, that became all too evident. I understand why it was done, and I know that at the time both Flix and Dimitry had to compromise to it in order to solve the "shoot everything on and off screen" exploit. And trust me when I say that they tried their best to have it be as balanced as they could, namely testing different attack ranges, type of projectiles, animations, etc. I know that because I was testing CM 1.60 implementations as they were making them, and that patch was anything but consensual. I don't think that anyone feels like Viperish Disease and Eternal Fire weren't heavily nerfed, to the point of kind of loosing their own appeal, but there were things that just couldn't be made to work in any other way. Staves were just another victim of the source code's limitations, and with having to choose between a game breaking exploit and a class specific exploit, I can understand the choice that was made. Lesser of two evils if you will. 

I'm very partial to enjoying "mega-projectile" staves though, but I guess that it's due to testing it so much that I started enjoying that machine gun-like behaviour. It's just fun stuff, which wouldn't be as fun if the game had an active build meta, because that'd become the standard for fast grinding. But considering how the game has just a few hardcore longtime players, who have hundreds or thousands of hours spent in the game, I guess that choosing to be OP in some particular cases isn't that big of a deal. Like you say, it goes down to each of us to choose what and how we do with it. Much like using Char Editor for respecing, or to create blank templates to avoid climbing up to mastery level (guilty!), or using non-vanilla XP gains, etc. It's all cool because there's no meta, just hardcore players having fun. 

[Damage Lore - and underutilized skills in general]

1 hour ago, idbeholdME said:

You can use CAs. It will produce a more powerful instance of the DoT (at least in the PFP) corresponding to the element of your main hand weapon as CAs do more damage than normal attacks. Just make sure to mix in normal attacks occasionally to also proc the off-hand DoT on tougher enemies, where having multiple DoTs running is worth it.

Another option would be to have 2 pairs of weapons, one for applying burn, the other poison and use only CAs. You can then have the 2 weapons in the set both focused on maximizing the respective DoT. But it requires a lot of APM and maintaining 2 sets of main weapons, which can get bothersome. 

 

As for staves, I will sadly not touch them with dual wield again since the Ice&Blood change already broke a lot of things back then and the subsequent community fix of always making them ranged without the skill to fix one of the most egregious bugs didn't really help other than that. Not to mention it made the Staff weapon lore utterly irrelevant again.

Good advice, considering that I'm running PFP myself. I remember that trying to micromanage two different sets of weapons while dual-wielding, with each set pairing different elemental damage types, was very hard due to not being able to have similar stats on different weapons. The easiest way to do so was with a build that had Bargaining and that could fish for specific modifiers on rare weapons on vendors, and considering that you can fish for weapons with forging slots like that, and more importantly for Deathblow bonuses, it can work. It's still a lot of work, and I'm not sure if the gains are that visible. However, with melee builds not having a way to reduce armour resistances like casters have with Ancient Magic, using a set of weapons with a single element against a single element heavy armour boss in higher difficulties can be an issue.

I actually use the Staff weapon lore on my Magic Coup High Elf for the attack value bonus alone, but that's mostly because I had a spare skill to burn. I know that staves being ranged, even with a short range, isn't vanilla behaviour per se, but the way it was implemented made way for a completely different way of playing the game when using them. My MC build for instance, it focuses on Crystal Skin and Shield Lore for durability, Shadow Step for evasion/stun/damage, and then uses a one-handed staff to be able to hit mobs without having to be head to head with them. And since HE are squishy as melee it actually brings in an interesting dynamic, as opposed to the the more typical Incandescent Skin/Pole Arms template. I agree that a Malevolent Champion SW with dual-wield staves can be a bit OP, especially with an off-hand weapon with %LL and stacking RpH, but that's an archetype that didn't exist and that wasn't exactly balanced, so I'll give you that. I guess that a good middle ground is running an Inquisitor with a Ruthless Mutilation/Callous Execution combo, which despite still throwing more than a few projectiles is much more controlled, I.e. fair/balanced. Frenzied Rampage with the two double hit mods and dual-wield staves is OP, I have to agree, and even if the lower base damage of staves tends to balance it somewhat, the amount of stacking modifiers and huge amount of projectiles thrown at a single time just ramp it out of control. It's fun though, if you want a fast boss melting build that isn't a Glacial Thorns build. 

[Damage Lore - and underutilized skills in general]

Ah yes, dual wield does have some associated shenanigans, as both of you explained so well. There's another interesting mechanic that happens post CM 1.60, and by extension on PFP as well, and it has to do with the new behaviour of mage staves. If you dual wield a staff with any other melee weapon, and you use the staff as your main weapon, the attack will actually be... ranged! Since staves were changed to shoot projectiles even without its relevant weapon mastery, but still count as melee weapons, you can dual wield one with any other melee weapon. This can result in some really wild results if you run with a Malevolent Champion SW and modify Frenzied Rampage twice for double hits. Want to see something fun? Try it, it's a blast. One-handed staves don't have %LL, but if your secondary weapon does, you can then throw a barrage of projectiles and each will proc it. RpH gets pretty crazy as well, so you can get your CA's cooldown really high and it'll reset very easily.

As for DoT builds, they do seem to be more effective with LMB attacks if even multi-element CAs can only proc one effect per hit. It's probably possible to theorycraft a build that relies more on CAs as support instead of using them as a constant means to attack, in order to maximise DoTs. I remember that there was this crazy Spectral Hand build back then with Damage Lore maxed out, and the guy who ran it used to farm the Guardians with it. It looked like it was a lot of fun, there's probably still its forum post around here somewhere.

[Damage Lore - and underutilized skills in general]

Looking forward to your results, and thanks a lot for the explanation! 

[Been Awhile and wanna play again]

4 hours ago, hordolur said:

Hello, It has been some time since I last played....

I installed Sacred 2 Gold from Steam, and installed the 1.60 Community Patch

what other mods or patches do I need or can I just play with that?

As a long, long, long time player of Sacred 2, and also as a recently returned one to the game, this thing right here is pretty much amazing! It's a visual mod that just makes the game a lot fresher and more eye friendly than it ever was.

[Damage Lore - and underutilized skills in general]

So in short, if you're playing with a DoT build, let's say a dual-wielder with Fire/Poison weapons and maxed out Damage Lore, is it better to maximise damage conversion on each weapon or is it irrelevant damage wise for applying DoTs? Sorry for the inane question, but my brain isn't collaborating today. 

[Is level 200 even attainable?]

It's good to know that my memory isn't hopelessly lost. Thanks for the tips! 

[Is level 200 even attainable?]

17 hours ago, Hooyaah said:

Good sir, I would take a serious look at the quoted post below and the other relevant posts in its associated thread. You will, doubtlessly, find them instructive and enlightening. I might suggest that adjusting the first line like this to start: "MP_experience = {2000,1150,1325,1550,1825}" Dive in!

Yeah, that was what I was talking before. Editing the SP value gets freaky very fast if you level up from level 1 onwards, because you start getting a lot of XP early on and you climb more than one level at a time, so a few years back I tried several times to find a playable value there but I just gave up with trying to balance it properly. Considering that I'm starting at level 75 though, that may be the easiest way to avoid having to grind too hard from then on, since getting from level 75 to 76 already requires nearly 2,5 million XP, and the most that veterans give at that point is around 10K. I may need to test this on my next build, with and without the XP penalty, to see just how much it ramps up and how much faster levelling gets. Since each save game has an internal clock on how many hours you play, it should be very easy to compare build level vs time played. Thanks! 

 

16 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

As Hooyah said, adjusting the first number in MP_experience should be safe. The numbers say how much XP you get from kills, depending on the number of players in the game. 1000 is 100% for 1 player, 1150 is 115% for 2 players and so on. So by increasing the first number, you can easily tweak how much of an XP multiplier you want from kills. The XP penalty above level 100 will still apply though, so in later stages, even if you put like 4000 there, you will only be getting 40% of the kill XP at level 175.

As for ExpLS, I can't confirm that increasing them above 1000 is safe. It can very likely break some internal math as those are exponential multipliers and I honestly have not tested how numbers higher than 1000 behave. If you do try it, be absolutely sure to backup your save first as it might cause an overflow or something like that and cap your level instantly.

Indeed, changing the SP value on the "MP_experience" line is something easy to do and that doesn't break anything, assuming that you don't ramp it up way too much. Like I mentioned above, it's very hard to properly make it work from level 1 onwards without overlevelling in early Acts, but it should be fine for post-mastery levels, or post-100 levels. It doesn't change XP from quests does it? You mention that it dictates mob kill XP, and from what I recall that is exactly that. If memory serves there's another line in balance.txt that rules the amount of quest XP, with one value per difficulty level to a total of five, am I right?

Regarding ExpLS, I never did try to put a value above 1000 (100%), and I understand what you're saying about causing an overflow. It's possible that it may happen, and I too have no idea how the game will interpret a value above 1000 there. In theory, going from the formula in the Wiki, and with my limited math knowledge, adding a 0,1% each 25 levels would probably be reasonable (1001, 1002, 1003, 1004). I've tried calculating the inverted values from 98,5% into 101,5% and so on, but the end result at near level cap was more than 19 times as much XP! That is, assuming I calculated it correctly.  You're probably right when you say that turning that penalty into a bonification may do more harm than good.

 

9 hours ago, chattius said:

Level 200 is possible. Our family smith reached it after only playing for 8 years. Lots of blood forest quest runs. So yes, quests aer the way to go.

I don't really want to be playing the same build for 8 years, ha ha. But I get what you meant. 

 

5 hours ago, lujate said:

Earlier in the game's life cycle, with thriving online play, I'm sure it was easier (although by no means easy).  You could grind away while chatting with your friends.  Solo it's much harder to keep motivated.

It must've been fun back then to play in teams online and levelling up next to your buddies. I agree that solo levelling in SP can become tedious, as the motivation to keep it going depends solely on your own perseverance to keep grinding. I guess that that's why I'm trying to find a way to try to get to level cap without breaking both my mind and the game's XP balance. 

[Is level 200 even attainable?]

27 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

It is possible, but if you are going for it with the vanilla experience penalties past level 100? Oh, are you in for a grind. Past level 150, killing enemies basically becomes pointless and you have to constantly spam-farm high star quests to even meaningfully move the experience. The only reason that works is because the experience penalty does not work on quest rewards. And we are talking hundreds, probably thousands, of purely running the same quests over and over. Due to how quests have been lazily designed in the expansion in the Blood Forest, every little minute movement forward through the quest chain gives a 4 star reward of XP. So that was what everyone was running back then if you wanted to reach 200 "legit". Although you were exploiting the lazy quest design of whoever did the Blood Forest quests. 4 and 5 star quests are pretty rare in the game overall and someone just willy-nilly slapped that on everything in the Blood Forest area.

At level 150, you will only be gaining 28% of the experience for killing stuff. This goes down to 10% at level 175 and ultimately, at level 199, you will only be gaining less than 5% XP per kill. However, killing stuff maintains somewhat of a relevance until the 150 breakpoint. When the XP from kills starts losing relevancy is purely bound to your level, not to difficulty or anything else.

Also keep in mind, that by level 167, you will have gathered only half of the total XP (946,471,400) required for level 200 (1,889,443,000).

 

Even with the experience penalty removed, I pretty much never play characters past level 175 and have only ever brought one character to the 200 cap. The XP requirements for levelups go up by several hundred thousand for every level near the end. With the penalty, the highest I ever got was in the 125+ range, before I usually got bored. I think the penalty was one of those "Diablo 2 did it, so we are going to do it too" things, that got put in purely to slow down peoples' progress in multiplayer.

 

Lastly, some enemies have experience bonuses attached in the PFP, that were not present in the vanilla. Refer to the last post in this thread:

https://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/72563-how-to-adjust-the-experience-a-specific-monster-gives-when-killed/

You can either remove that bonus to have vanilla conditions, or farm those specifically as they give egregiously high XP in PFP compared to anything else. IIRC, Flix said it was a leftover from some other mod that made its way into PFP.

Thanks a lot for the lengthy post, I appreciate it!

So it seems that some mobs retained some non-vanilla bonuses, but I really don't want to go nitpicking through the game files just because of a few occurrences. Regarding the XP penalty past level 100, that does seem to be the main issue with levelling to 200. I think that the highest I ever went was somewhere between 110 and 120, but it was a few years ago so I can't really remember the exact figure. I do remember that it was really slow to level up, and like you say, even with the penalty removed it's not that fast. I'm not sure if I want to dabble into "vanilla turtle grind to 200", probably not to be honest, but I think I'll try a full clear in Niob with my current build and see how far it goes like that. If I feel like it gets me nowhere fast I may remove the penalty on subsequent runs, or even turn that negative penalty into a positive one as to increase XP gain past 100 instead of diminishing it. Time will tell.

Now, for legit levelling I assume that it's better to leave the I&B regions for last then? Clear every region from 1 to 10, follow the main campaign and do all the quests in the middle, and then go for the Crystal Planes and Blood Forest? Eh, I always leave those for last anyway.

And assuming I want to turn the negative penalty past level 100 into a positive one, does anyone know which values would be reasonable enough as to not increment it way too much? I've tried several times to adjust the XP gain in single player by editing the first value on the "MP_experience = {1000,1150,1325,1550,1825}" line, but the multiplier ramps up exponentially and it gets freaky very fast, so I gave up on trying to balance that for 1-200. If I could however balance an increase in XP gain from level 100 onwards, turning the "ExpLS100, ExpLS125, ExpLS150, ExpLS175" values from "985, 980, 975, 970" into something slightly above 1000, but in a way that it wouldn't ramp up too heavily, it'd be an interesting way to play a build up to 200. It certainly would be much more fun than running around killing stuff for an hour in order to climb one level. Any ideas on this?

[Is level 200 even attainable?]

Always an uphill battle! Yeah, I figured that it'd probably be possible, yet a royal pain to do it. Guess I was right. 

[Is level 200 even attainable?]

Hello folks!

Not that I'm not into lengthy posts, but basically, title?! I've recently gone back to slaying Kobolds here Kobolds there (Kobolds are everywhere!), and since I'm playing with PFP I'm with vanilla XP gain. And even though I've started at level 75 (thank you Char Editor), with all difficulties unlocked, I began at Gold because I actually went in "undressed". So basically I ran the entirety of the MC for gearing up, and without side-questing I defeated the Guardians and started Platinum at a measly level 82. That means that running MC alone in Gold netted me just 7 levels post-mastery, which seems really low. I know that XP gain from Platinum up starts getting better with questing, and not as good with mob killing, but since I intend to leave questing mainly for Niobium, where I plan to do all quests and exploration, is it really possible to reach max level? I know that there's a lot of quests, but that's also a lot of levelling up! Even if I end Platinum at level 100, given the XP penalty from then on, just how far should I be able to get?

Asking it in a different way, is reaching level 200 only possible if you go heavy on questing on both Platinum and Niob? If not, just how much XP can Niob quests alone net a player?

[Blazing tempest question - How does size or direction of wave affect damage or chance to burn?]

11 hours ago, Hooyaah said:

It is helpful to mention, that the combat art modifier, Combat art range +X%, works great with Blazing Tempest. However, with Incendiary Shower the boulders are spread out and the effectiveness is reduced. When killing bosses, it is always best to focus the boulders into a small area, thereby eliminating the target quickly.

Conversely, Blazing Tempest works very well with an increase of range. It makes it a trifle problematic, the conflict between these two Combat Arts.

The optimal way would probably be to use the weapon slots for this, so gear with CAR+X% (vrum vrum, muhaha) on a slot for general use with BT, and then another slot with a different itemisation for using IS for bosses. Sounds about right. 

I do remember old discussions about this issue with IS, and Hooyaah is right on the money, you do want to focalize your meteors into a small radius for boss killing. The Wiki entry for the CA has a few tips.

[Sacred 2, The Ancaria Beautification Project]

Nah bro, Delphic melee High Elf. I haven't played that one in a hot minute! 

[Sacred 2, The Ancaria Beautification Project]

It's good to be back! My health is finally allowing me to focus on and do things that I haven't been able to do for a while, including coming back to the world of Ancaria again. Three tries as to what archetype I'm currently playing (yet again!)... 

[Sacred 2, The Ancaria Beautification Project]

Hello there! Long time since I've posted here, but I had to come and pay my respects to this awesome endeavour. I've only ran the game for a few hours so far, but it's clear to me that the work Vishanka did with this mod is incredible. The game looks fresher than ever, less cartoonish in a way, and definitely easier on the eyes. Looking at the sands of the Bengaresh desert and not being blinded by the constant flare is refreshing.

I think that I'm going to have fun rediscovering the game's areas, and with it all the little details that have eluded me for years. Thank you so much for this Vishanka, you have my respect! 

[NEW Project: Sacred 2 Purist Fixpack]

16 hours ago, Flix said:

I finally figured this out.

Vanilla behavior: Gar throws a stone, it sits on the ground until you kill it. The stone does nothing.

CM Patch behavior: Gar throws a stone, it sits on the ground until you kill it. The stone activates a buff that does healing bursts to Gar, in accordance with the quest log text about how destroying the stones is the key to defeating him.

PFP 1.0 behavior: I copied over everything from CM Patch except for the healing buff.  The stone attempted to activate the non-existent buff, which crashed the game every time Gar threw a stone.

PFP 1.1+ behavior: To stop the crashing I turned the stone throw into a standard projectile attack. The stone inflicts damage on impact and is immediately destroyed. This is why you thought it looked odd.

PFP 1.3 (upcoming): I've restored the original behavior where the stone sits there until killed.  It will now heal Gar again.

Nice! 

[New Feature: The Hellfire Arena]

9 hours ago, Flix said:

Hnngghh, they just released a patch that made all WPS skills add piercing to ranged weapons.  I hear my Purifier calling...

It is after all the greatest game of its genre.  You know, I got Crucible for free by pre-ordering the game ages ago, and I too have never fired it up.  I never did much with Shattered Realm either.  Something to look forward to...

Yep, 1.1.9.6 it is. It removes passthrough on the remaining weapons that still had it and instead grants that option to WPS skills and specific weapon bonuses. I too have a Purifier, but it's actually a two-hander with Barthollem's Warmaul.

The greatest thing about GD is its replayability and continuous rebalancing, it breathes constant life into the game I guess. Crucible I dislike because it's just arena rush into the centre from everywhere, but I do find SR to be more interesting, especially for loot. I don't intend on pressing over shards 75-76 to be honest. But that climb and the loot runs are pretty cool, plus you get to learn a lot about your build and some enemies.

[[REL] Diablo 2 Fallen]

Just wanted to pitch in and extend my congratulations on yet another iteration of this enormous mod. My man! 

[New Feature: The Hellfire Arena]

On 6/23/2022 at 11:38 PM, Flix said:

I know you're not playing anymore but I went through the feedback to try to adjust the balance of the rounds.

I had to read the conversation again to notice where we were two years ago. Cool that my Arena runs at the time were in any way helpful.

Funny thing is, I still have the game installed, it's just that I only play Grim Dawn nowadays. And I don't even play Crucible!

[Diablo: Immortal (Mobile & PC)]

The cake is a lie! 

[Diablo IV Time to Play! Clan Name: DarkMattters -> Clan Tag: DarK]

You say Druid and I think of my Primal Strike Shaman/Arcanist (thus, Druid) in Grim Dawn... 

[Diablo: Immortal (Mobile & PC)]

Thanks for the info, I had no idea those laws actually existed, let alone that they were being enforced. But I'm glad they are, as kids today are mostly clueless as to what real life is.

[Diablo: Immortal (Mobile & PC)]

Thing is, we're all adults here and we should at least know how to act when faced against a casino roulette or a blackjack table, or in an extreme example, a game oriented towards micro-transactions. But not everybody playing the game is an adult, so what then?

I know a few kids, sons of friends, that regularly ask as for pre-paid money cards for their Playstations. And it's oh so cute to see them have to racionalize how they spend that money on skins and other cosmetic stuff (Fortnite in this case), but I honestly don't think they're learning anything from that. They understand that the money is finite, but since it's something that they have access to semi-regularly I don't really think that they understand how much real money one can spend on cosmetics. So I wouldn't compare micro-transactions directly to crack, but, comparing micro-transactions in video games to gambling is something that I feel comfortable with because otherwise there's no regulation whatsoever. And as has been said, all that these companies care about is profit, so the further down the rabbit hole the better.

I'm an old school guy. I pay for a game I want to use it to its full extent, that's it. So the idea of a "free" game that then keeps demanding your money at every turn is really shady to me, no matter the name of the franchise. And again, I get it, it's business. But honestly when games become like this I'm out.

[Diablo: Immortal (Mobile & PC)]

27 minutes ago, Flix said:

Most of the post-release reviews have said the same.  Remember all the pre-release reviews had micro-transactions disabled, that's why the game is so well-praised by early media.

Fan reviews say the game plays great, same old addictive APRG gameplay we all know.  That is, until level 35 or so when drops dry up and it starts to become impossibly hard. At this point you're hooked and you think, "I guess I'll drop a few bucks on some extra gear so I can beat this boss."

Someone calculated that to completely 100% max out a single character with all the best gear and gems you would have to spend upwards of $100,000.

Ha ha, what?! Man...

Worst thing is that many people will actually sink money into this. Oh well.

[NEW Project: Sacred 2 Purist Fixpack]

Sounds alright in terms of normalisation.