Androdion

Yeah, his builds are varied and awesome. He introduced me to the melee High Elf, but he has others like the Kung-fu Dryad which are completely out of the norm.

That's pretty basic stuff. Defence value and attack value are values that get checked against a mob's to calculate your chance to hit and your chance to be hit with melee and ranged attacks. The higher the better since you hit more often and get hit less often. The same is valid for spell resistance (defence) and spell intensity (attack) when the hit is a spell-based CA.

Yes, in the case of the modifier being present in gear it won't affect spell-based CAs. But if you have it as an enhancement on the CA itself it does work. Otherwise you'd have a dedicated blacksmith and splash lv.200 Enhance arts on lv.2 gear for an up and running caster and you'd be a demigod! It's a matter of balance, like RPH not working with spell-based CAs.

They aren't fixed drops, so you need to grind for them. Or use this:

Pros and cons, there's your answer: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Shadow_Veil It's a very specific build that may or may not turn into a borefest. If you prefer a more dynamic playing style then a fully invisible SW won't be much fun. The most varied build is a hard thing to say, but any build that requires you to use all three aspects on a single class will always provide a challenge. More micromanagement and all that.

It was on the Steam Daily Deal with 75% off, so it was below 7€ yes. But both expansions were around 30€ together so I'll keep waiting. I have limited time to play and as such I don't need many games to immerse myself in at the same time. I'll wait for a better overall deal with the full Grim Dawn package.

That's a damned good question for our in-house master modder to answer, since I for one have no idea how the code works in that respect.

You should still invest in Willpower as an attribute, it counts towards your base spell resistance stat and improves base damage on lightsabers. One more point for Elite mount in that case since it also boosts WIL. Spell Resistance, the skill not the stat, is something like a reverse Ancient Magic. When you get targeted by a spell-based CA it makes a check against the skill and the higher you have it the better the chance it'll fizzle, the same way that in reverse AM will make you hit home more often when you're the caster. But the thing is that SR won't be any earlier than your fourth or fifth mastery, so until then attribute points into WIL and the remaining bonuses from gear should help you cover the gap. I'd say that you could invest +1VIT until level 49 and then +1VIT/+1WIL from then on. Raising VIT on the earlier levels will make much more of an impact than raising WIL. Plus you can grab lighstabers with +%WIL, like Power of NIF from the Epic Office quest, so that helps. If you're going for Lightsabers aim for Power of NIF+Disturbance in the Force, killer duo and they're both fixed drops with 1.60.

My two cents, for free. Bargaining is a high maintenance skill as you need to have it much higher than your character's level for it to be effective, thus the more you advance with your toon the harder it becomes to have a proper level on the skill. I've played extensively with Bargaining in CM 1.60 and I can say that even if you don't go overboard with it it's still an incredible skill to have since you can buy dedicated jewellery. Having a decent Bargaining level will allow you to visit shoppers and purchase gear with the specific modifiers you require, whereas by not having it a trip to a shopper is essentially useless. If you intend on playing with Bargaining you should keep it at char level until either lv.75 or lv.100, depending on if you intend on getting a proper bargaining suit for when you go out shopping (just keep an eye out for armour with +Bargaining and you'll have three to five pieces that boost it significantly, put those on your stash and equip when needed). By my experience Bargaining's breaking point is around the early 100s, so in my opinion more than 100 hard points in the skill is just a waste. Oh, it's a gold sink by the way so be aware of that. EP is a skill that will essentially make all your RNG drops be yellow, simple as that. By my experience it doesn't dramatically increase the drop rate of high tier gear (sets, uniques and legendaries) so if your idea is to get it because of those I'd say it isn't worth it. Hooyaah got it right though, you'll have better drops that rend more gold which you can sink into Bargaining sprees. Keep it at char level until mastery and then leave it be. Having it around without being properly levelled makes it worthless. The Blacksmith skill allows you to bypass the NPC Blacksmith, and with the added advantages of forging things by yourself costing less gold, as well as being able to "underforge" slots. Like Hooyaah mentioned you can forge one tier below in slots with the skill, so you can put rings into bronze slots and amulets into silver slots. That's something to consider because you can go above the curve, but again you need to have the skill properly levelled because it has a property where you can only forge items of a certain level accordingly to the skill level. So if your skill level is too low in comparison with the item you're trying to forge you won't be able to do so. There's another property of the Blacksmith skill that's important. When you go to the NPC you get the chance to use Enhance/Anneal/Wet enhancements, and those have fixed values that increase with each difficulty level. But when you have the skill on your toon those three enhancements level up with the skill, so eventually you're able to overcome the highest value on the Niobium NPCs. So when your skill is around 125 or so you'll be able to provide better bonuses than the best NPC smith in each town. Neat isn't it?! The thing is that again it requires a heavy investment, even more than the prior two since you can, and should, keep it at char level up to lv.200. Now try forging lv.200 enhancements on lv.2 armour for your newly created toon and see how much of a kickstart that is. Energy weapons are nice and fast, they provide good damage and usually have a different approach from other ranged weapons. They can provide several types of damage at once and usually have cool modifiers, so if you're willing to invest in that go for it. Combine them with Frenzied Rampage for instance for several rapid-fire hits, it'll look like you're firing a seraphim's BFG. It's more like each specific guide has a bit of different knowledge, so in short no. There's no such guide like that. But it's very important to focus on rapidly mastering the most important and relevant skills on your build. Endgame is level 200 and with over 900 skill points by then you can have all ten skills mastered way before since 10*75=750. And you'll find out that most of the time you don't even need to master all ten of them. Master the most important ones, keep just a few at char level if needed and then start mastering the other relevant ones. It does, it reduces the regen penalty on the special mount (and any mount for that matter) to the point where it negates it. But yeah, it's as much waste of a skill as Divine Devotion. Don't waste your time with it unless you're after a very very specific scenario like using a modifier it unlocks. Can't think of any useful one though. You should walk most of the time, but if you're planning on using Elite Mounts then it's worth using the Inquisitor's due to its Willpower bonus. Plus I love the attack animation of Ruthless Mutilation while mounted on the spider! Just awesome. It just depends on your playing style, but you can always equip +%run speed gear. Speed Lore is also a choice, but its run speed bonus is really small. Still regarding your second question, and taking into account that scenario with the Inquisitor, it will depend immensely on how you're planning on playing that toon. The Inquisitor is extremely versatile and allows for many many variations depending on what buffs you use, what modifiers you choose and how much aggro you're planning on drawing unto yourself. For instance, Purifying Chastisement's gold mod Inure gives you what is essentially the Toughness skill, so you can play it from there if you don't mind dropping Hallow for it. Hallow gives an immense damage boost though so it's a choice to be pondered. I wouldn't drop Spell Resistance on the Inquisitor since it has a very low Willpower value, and if you don't mind my recommendation I'd rather drop Combat Reflexes in favour of it. If you're willing to sacrifice some of your damage output then I'd say that you can use Inure and just swap SR with CR and you're done. He's too squishy indeed, but it depends on which buffs you'll be playing with. Reverse Polarity can act like the Shadow Warrior's Reflective Emanation buff so it'll help a lot, and Soul Reaver can pretty much negate any kind of incoming melee hits, assuming you can charge it up. So it all falls down to playing style and what your choices are.

Well, taking the report from Event Viewer into account it does seem like a permissions error and not an issue with the game itself. Maybe you can do a full re-installation of the game and see if you can avert the firewall issues?! Other than that I'm not sure what it could be. Keep an eye on EV and see if it points to a specific file being the cause of the error.

I admit that all the talk about Grim Dawn being the new gen Titan Quest, and then having it suddenly drop to a single figure price, caught my attention. This because I've been attacked by a sudden case of TQ:AE fever recently. Gotta love that Dream mastery! So I guess I'll wait for the Grim Dawn package to have a more attractive price altogether.

Doesn't it have an option like "never notify"? That's what you select to turn it off.

Yeah, that's a tendency with Steam. Better wait then I guess.

This was released today and Steam now has the main game with 75% off, meaning that it costs 6,25€ as opposed to the usual 25€. Sounds like a nice deal but the remaining content for the game is actually expensive right now. The Crucible DLC and the first expansion are only 30% off and the second expansion is full price since it came out today. The whole pack is above 40€. And it seems that the expansions are cumulative so I'd assume that it's like playing an entirely new version of the game with them. So what do you think, is the main game alone a good buy right now or maybe I can get a better deal in the future?

Yeah, the cursor goes wild with that specific NPC. I had a lot of trouble getting to him the first time doing that quest after a long time, and even after that I was like "where is he?!" to myself when I had to do it again! It's a though one to find indeed.

Does Win10 have that annoying UAC thingy as well? Try turning it off and reassign firewall permissions. It's worth a shot.

Yeah, that one is a pain to find. But to put it quite simply you're looking for it in the wrong place since he's located in a cave in the Jungle region. From the first portal/monolith in the Jungle region follow the main trail and head West when it divides. You should find a cave entrance at the end of that road that's located in the mountains, South of the area where you're looking for it. That one also cracked my brain a couple of times.

Ha, poor Temple Guardian... no one ever remembers of him!

To be honest the portal design does have a bit of a Stargate flavour to it, though it's too stylised to show a proper resemblance. However, the three "teeth" above (that lock the symbols on SG lore) and the symbols on each side are totally there. I'm with DB as it seems to drink from several aspects of popular lore. Funny enough I don't think I've ever found anything else slightly resembling SG lore. It makes me wonder if such things exist though.

Essentially stubbornness, ha ha ha... Glad we finally found out what it was! Be sure to install CM Patch 1.60 if you haven't yet. It prevents CTD so your gaming experience is much smoother.

Check if Event Viewer has any error log with anything related to Sacred 2 (I assume Win10 still has EV).

As much as it pains me to say, but I don't think you are. And worse than that, I don't think that any of us have a proper idea on why it won't run.

Yeah, the portals show images of other towns all the time. Had no idea about that Star Trek episode though.

Give it time, someone else should pitch in. Hang on there, we have some Win10 users here.

Ha ha, ok. Let's see if I can be of any help then. Have you tried cleaning up temp files with CCleaner? If not do so. Try temporarily deactivating your AV software or any third-party software that does active monitoring. If possible do a clean re-installation of the game, but do delete all folders including the one with options.txt which usually isn't automatically deleted (C:\Users\"user name"\AppData\Local\Ascaron Entertainment\Sacred 2), and start the game without any patches or alterations. Then if it doesn't start run both sacred2.exe and s2gs.exe in compatibility mode for XP SP3 and as administrator. Having the -skipopenal - nocpubinding line on steam startup doesn't do any harm. Try running sacred2.exe directly from the folder as opposed to starting it on Steam. Do a clean reinstall of video drivers and let it install the latest version of Physx. If still it doesn't run try installing the legacy Dx9 (if possible, I'm no Win10 savant) and/or legacy Physx drivers. Do a prayer at a crossroad at midnight. Other than that I'm out of ideas, but I'm sure someone else is bound to pitch in.