Tallera257

I wondered about this, too....my main seraphim using WE as her buff, and it's annoying always having to stand around and wait for it to recharge just in case. From everything I can tell, a 100% full WE shield and a 10% full one look about the same. So I've found myself frequently charging into melee, only to have my shield drop almost instantly, because it was close to depleted right off the bat. I find myself VERY much hoping that they will fix/implement the shield "health" bar in an upcoming patch....aside from perhaps some coding issues, I see no reason why this should have been removed for the console version. It makes the shield buffs much harder to use, and slows down the pace of the game greatly if you're constantly waiting around before taking on a big mob on the off-chance your shield is a bit low.

Okay, I'm a bit confused. I'm working on a Dryad character who uses Ancient Bark as her main buff. I just unlocked my first upgrade for it, but the Bronze level upgrades for AB are confusing me! According to the wiki, the Bronze mods for Ancient Bark are as follows: * Rugged - Increases all armor values. (20% + 5% per CA level increase) * Slippery - Increases defense values. (20% + 5% per CA level increase) To me, this begs the question.....what's the difference:) So I checked the wiki some more. There is no explicit definition for the term "armor value" (probably because it seems self-explanatory), but "defense value" is defined in the glossary as "the additive value of a character's armor, shield and defense modifiers." That makes sense to me. So given that armor value is only ONE PART of the total defense value, why would anyone ever choose the Rugged upgrade? I understand that not all characters use shields (including my Dryad), but why not give the percent bonus to your total defense value (armor + random defensive modifiers) rather than just armor? My conclusion is that either this "choice" between Bronze mods is a no-brainer, or I'm fundamentally misunderstanding something about how armor value relates to defense value. Can anyone shed some light on this for me? Thanks in advance!!

ThunderChief, I've noticed the same thing with my seraphim, and I play the X360 version, too. She seems to be a bit under-leveled for the area of the game she's in (level 36-ish on the Dryad Island), despite using WE as her perma-buff, so I've started using DP as an emergency backup. It took me a while to figure out why her buff kept cancelling itself, but I think DP is the culprit. For a long time (since the Dragon Realms) I thought it was a glitch related to defeating a Boss, because every time she finished a boss fight I'd notice a minute later that WE was turned off......but since I used DP in nearly all of those Boss fights.....yeah. Here's hoping they fix it soon?

Hi, all! I've got a very young (level 15 or so) High Elf whom I'm "raising" as a shopper. She spent her first 15 levels or so in bronze, and has just moved to silver. I'm at work, so I can't quote you all of her skills and attributes, but her focus is on Mystic Stormite and Delphic Arcania. She's a dagger-wielder who has put all attribute points into Dex thus far. Before she's done I may take Sword Weapons, but that's a low priority. I use Cobalt Strike (modded for 2x chain lightning and higher crits) as my main attack, with Glacial Thorns (only partly modded for more thorns) as my secondary. My skills and CA levels are such that regen times are still on the cusp of being too long to be viable, but I'm working on that. I can usually kill most of the basic enemies at the beginning of Silver difficulty with one CS and one GT. My main buff at this point is Grand Invigoration, and that's the CA I'm wanting some advice on. As I said, I can't recall which skills she's taken off the top of my head, but my intent is to eventually take all 4 skills for Stormite and Arcania (both Lores, both Foci). I plan to neglect Pyromancer skills completely in favor of Bargaining and Enhanced Perception (both of which she's already taken). She has also already taken Concentration. So my question is this: the first level of upgrades for Grand Invigoration involves choosing to lower regen times for either Stormite OR Pyromancer aspect. What I'm debating is whether to select Stormite, thereby putting ALL of my eggs in one basket, so to speak, but hopefully making that aspect as effective as possible. This would neglect Pyromancer COMPLETELY, making that very definitely my weakest aspect, but one from which I might be able to fire off an underpowered CA or two if I get desperate. OR I could choose to decrease Pyro's regen via GA mod, thereby lending a bit of support to my weakest aspect, and allowing me (in combination with Concentration) to drop a few more runes into that aspect without making it unusable due to high regen. That would make Fire damage a SLIGHTLY more reliable fallback option if I run into an ice/magic resistant enemy. It's a trade-off, and I'm waffling on the decision. I'd love to hear some input from people who have a bit more experience playing High Elves than me. Thanks in advance!

Krieg, that 10-level gap doesn't seem to be universal. I can't explain it (perhaps someone here with more experience with the game can?), but my roommate and I have been playing together on a single console, both with the offline co-op and via online co-op. The other day his level 30-something Shadow Warrior found a really awesome item for one of my low-level Seras, and he wanted to trade it to me so I could store it until I was high enough level to use it. We started a game in online co-op campaign mode, and his level 30+ SW and my level 6 seraphim happily joined up together and traded items. We didn't even think about the level gap issue until we were ready to exit the game. I don't know if this was due to being on a single console, or due to being in campaign mode. We did START the game in online mode, but the fact that we're on a single console may override that in some way. All I know is, the level gap is apparently not as hard-and-fast a rule as I initially assumed. Hopefully someone can shed more light on how this works?

I've had a fair bit of success with deciding on a specific weapon type for a new character right off the bat, then usually the first two new skills I take are the appropriate weapon Lore skill, and Tactics Lore. I agree that Tactics is wicked-good, especially for a Shadow Warrior, who can max out the upgrades on TWO aspects' worth of Combat Arts with it. And despite logic to the contrary, each break point in TL that gives you an upgrade tick gives a tick for BOTH of those aspects, which can be spent independently (I.e., spending a tick on a CA in one aspect does NOT use up any of the accumulated ticks for the other aspect), essentially giving you double value for your money.....very nearly broken for that character class, IMHO. You should have seen the expression on my roommate's face when I explained the above to him.....he was planning to take Death Warrior Focus just to be able to upgrade Combat Arts!

Oh, I agree completely about the Mentor potions, I would hoard those like they're going out of style! But the yellow (concentration) potions are only useful if you're using CA combos heavily (which I typically don't), and the green (anti-poison) pots aren't needed in the same numbers as plain health pots unless you're facing lots of poison-based enemies, so I typically don't keep nearly as many of those around, either. I'm paranoid about undead, though, so I hoard Undead Death pots, too. I think that's a carryover from the Sacred 2 beta, when the undead in the eastern High Elf region were initially VERY overpowered and painful to encounter. Others with more experience with higher-level gameplay than me may be able to speak to this better, but I suspect that it's not "too late" for your character at all. You might need to neglect Bargaining for a few levels to boost your survivability with other skills, but I suspect you'll be fine in the long run if you can find that balance between utility, survivability and damage-dealing. Good luck!

Hit the town well in EVERY town. I haven't gotten very far through Silver yet (I keep deleting and making new characters!), but in my limited experience, if all you care about is potions, you'd probably be best off to just make sure you hit EVERY well, chest, barrel, flower pot, etc. that you run across. I believe that wells are guaranteed to always drop you one health pot, and in my experience the other containers often (though not always) contain at least one potion of SOME type. And if you end up overstocked on yellow or green pots that you don't often use, you can always sell them and use the proceeds to buy more red pots! Alternatively, you could spend some time levelling your toon in a place where she's not in too much danger from the enemies, but still getting decent experience. That should net you more levels, more pots, and lots more loot that you can sell for money for pots if necessary. Also, are you keeping your defensive skills and/or Combat Arts levelled? Armor Lore, Constitution, Toughness, Combat Reflexes, Spell Resistance (against casters), and especially Warding Energy/Divine Protection with Warding Energy Lore are god-sends (pun only slightly intended) for a seraphim who seems a bit on the fragile side. And don't neglect your Dexterity and Vitality attributes! As always, just my $.02. Good luck!

Oooh, I didn't realize those of us who missed out on the collector's edition could still get one! I can go home in about an hour and a half and find out for myself, but....does anyone know off the top of their heads how many points it costs to buy the imp from XBL?

After playing the game much more last night with the new patch, I'm both excited and relieved. The single-console co-op trading works beautifully (*does a happy-dance of joy!*), the only issue is that occasionally if you are standing right next to your playing partner and hit LB to pick up loot from the ground, it will now open a trade window. A very minor issue, and definitely worth it to be able to trade! Also, apparently the RB radial menu works a bit differently than I'd initially thought. From what I can tell, the menu is DESIGNED ("feature"...hee hee!) to work as follows: Hold RB to bring up the radial menu, then press the left stick in the direction of the menu you want, hold the stick in that position for a second or two, and....voila, menu screen. Prior to the patch, you could press the A button to skip the 1-2 second delay of holding the stick in the desired position, and open the selected menu screen instantly. After the patch, the A button no longer does this, so the ONLY option to open the screens is holding the stick for a second or two. To be honest, I didn't even realize that you COULD open the menus by just holding the left stick in position....I'd always pressed A and gone on with my gaming. So from the perspective of someone who hadn't used the A button "quick" option, there is no change in how the radial menu works. It's just us impatient A-button-pressing types who feel like things have gotten slower. Apologies if I mislead anyone, and apologies specifically to Unaki if I was a bit snappish in my response to him/her.

Oooh, checking out those offsite links to the other forum has really made me want to make a Bargain-Hunter character now. One question, though....I checked the Bargaining page on the wiki, and while it has lots of info on the numbers (and good advice for starting Bargainers), it doesn't really explain what the "special offers" are you that you have an increasing chance of receiving from vendors. Are the "special offers" the game's way of saying "yellow items"? Or does this mechanic work in some totally different way? Just wanting to know what to expect before I dive in, thanks in advance!

Thats just your game lagging. I beg your pardon, but you're mistaken. I've played a lot of this game in the past week, and up until I applied the patch, the response from the radial menu was as instantaneous as any dedicated gamer could wish. As soon as the patch was applied, the responsiveness of the RB radial menu immediately dropped noticeably. There was no lag in the game at the time. Please don't assume you know better than the person who has seen a particular aspect of the game in action. This delay in the menu has been reported and confirmed by a number of other Xbox 360 players on other forums, too.

I'm at work, so I can't confirm this in the game myself at the moment, but I read on another forum that BOTH profiles still have to be logged into XBL Gold memberships for the trading to work. Can anyone else confirm this? Edit: Also, I've read reports on the TeamXbox forum for Sacred 2 that the new patch causes the RB radial menu to be very unresponsive. As in, you press RB to bring up the menu, but then you have to press A several times before the menu registers that you've selected something. I definitely noticed this in the 10 minutes I played with the new patch installed this morning. Anyone else notice it?

My gamertag is PlumptiousCat, but I don't know when exactly I'll be back on a Gold membership so I can party up online. I was on the one month free trial of gold, but it ran out recently, and this is the month for car insurance and a lot of other big bills that need to be paid. So whenever I can spare the fee without putting myself in the poorhouse, I'll try to find some of you all on XBL. P.S. - It also doesn't help the finances when my 1st-generation Xbox 360 finally, officially died on THE VERY DAY I bought Sacred 2, which meant I had to run out later that day and buy a new console. I'm enjoying Sacred 2 a lot, but I'm not convinced yet that it was worth $260.

Here's the text from the patch info link:

I'm not sure whether this is a glitch or bug, or just me being paranoid, but it's been happening pretty consistently over the past two days, and I haven't seen mention of it anywhere else, so I thought I'd run it by everyone here and see if anyone else has noticed it. I've had Sacred 2 for Xbox 360 for about a week now. I'd created a seraphim, Dryad, SW, TG and HE, and experimented a lot with different character types (create new char, try out a couple skills and CAs, delete char, rinse and repeat). I tell you this to let you know that I've created a LOT of new characters (far more than just five!) over the past week, so by now I think I'm pretty familiar with how the game behaves for the first 3-5 character levels. The game has started behaving differently over the past two days. Initially, all of my characters received what I would consider average loot drops. Mostly unimpressive no-star items (being very low level in silver difficulty), the occasional one- or two-star item, a small number of CA runes, and a bit of gold and potions. When I talk about an "unimpressive" item, I mean the console equivalent of a white item with one or MAYBE two very low-level modifiers. The kind that sell for maybe 10-20 gold when you reach the first merchant. Keep in mind, I'm talking about brand-new, level 1-2 characters in Silver. In the past day or two, that has changed. Where before most of my items were unimpressive, now they are downright crap. I took my level 11 seraphim (in single-console co-op with my roommate's level 11 TG) and literally went on an adventuring spree until my inventory was FULL, and I got the "you can't pick up any more" message. When I went back to the merchant to sell stuff, I discovered that 4 out of every 5 items had NO MODIFIERS AT ALL. I mean no regen bonus/penalty, no nothing. Just the name of the item, that's all that was in the tooltip. I can understand that every once in a while the odds of random item generation will result in a piece of near-worthless loot, but this was CONSISTENT beyond any possibility of coincidence. My roommate seemed even unluckier, as not only were most of his drops just as worthless and modifier-less, he had maybe a quarter as much loot as I'd collected. We've tried EVERYTHING to figure out what's gone wrong and how to fix it. We tried switching which of us was "hosting" the game. We tried using different characters. I even tried completely deleting my character save file from the Xbox hard drive and starting all over from scratch. The only thing that seemed to clear up the crazy-awful loot issue was when I selected a different memory storage device and essentially started a new savegame set on the internal Xbox memory (not a removable memory card, but the onboard one), rather than the hard drive. I created a new seraphim, and her drops promptly went back to what I'd considered "normal." Until this morning. I logged on briefly this morning before work because I had a few minutes to kill. Downloaded the new patch (yay!), and logged into my seraphim (who is level 8 now). Checked her inventory, because I hadn't taken the time to sell stuff off before I'd saved and quit......and easily half of her inventory was crap with no modifiers. Nothing that she actually had EQUIPPED was affected, thankfully, but when I took her out for a brief spin, everything that dropped was more of the crap loot with no modifiers. This is a level 8 character in Silver. I know that occasional bad loot is likely, but this is just too consistent to be anything but a bug. Has anyone else had issues with this sort of problem on the console versions of the game? And if so, does anyone know what causes it:) The only thing my roommate and I have done differently over the past two days is that we (very briefly) tried out a Free World game, but decided we wanted to do main quest stuff, and quit out of it after just a few minutes. My roommate says his single-player characters were having occasional modifier-less drops even before that, but he was playing while I was at work, so I have no way to be sure of that. I can't keep deleting entire sets of characters every time the loot goes south, or the game will be unplayable. Please help, I'm very frustrated! P.S. - Sorry for the wall of text, but I wanted to be sure to explain the situation completely, as it's kind of subjective.

I downloaded it about an hour ago, so it's live. As a side note, when I downloaded it, Xbox Live did NOT show it listed under Game Add-On downloads, I was only able to download it by inserting the Sacred 2 game disc and starting the game....then I got the prompt from XBL that new content was available, and was able to download it. I only had about 20 minutes before I needed to head to work, so I didn't get the chance to try out any of the updates (I'm especially excited about the single console co-op trading--YAY!), but here's hoping it works smoothly.

Gogo, I'm playing the Xbox 360 version, so your comment may not apply to me, but could you explain a bit more what you mean by "Access to a higher level than the level quest was completed in"? I've read over that sentence several times, and it's just not making sense to me! Thanks!

I don't feel like I have enough experience yet with the game to offer any kind of meaningful advice, but your suggested builds look interesting, so I'll definitely wish you good luck, and if you try them out, please keep us posted and let us know how they work for you in actual play. As far as using more than one CA aspect, again, I haven't gotten any characters to a high enough level to know whether it would work late-game or not, but the following strategy has proven useful to me at lower levels: If possible, try to pick the one (or two) CA aspects from which you will take the majority of your "active" (non-buff) Combat Arts, and then try to use the buff from one of the OTHER aspects. That way you minimize the impact of your buff on the CAs you'll be using most often. For example, I've tried to do this with my current seraphim, who predominantly uses Exalted Warrior and Celestial Magic attacks and spells, but uses Warding Energy as her buff. My plan is to socket runes and use +CA items to increase the power of Warding Energy without actually spending any skill points on Revered Technology, and focusing my upgrades and skill-based power increases on EW and CM. As I progress further in the game I may find that I have to focus exclusively on EW *or* CM for my damage-dealing, but I still plan to use Warding Energy as my buff, to try to keep regen times down on my main Combat Arts. I'm sure this is probably elementary build strategy, and not a huge revelation, but I thought I would throw it out there for those who may not have thought of it yet.

I'll second the thanks for creating a console section of your forums for us console-loving couch potatoes. ;D I've also been using sacredwiki.org extensively as I learn my way around the game, and I've naturally run into some of the ways in which the console versions differ from the PC version upon which the wiki is based. So if someone wants to message me privately about contributing console-specific content for the wiki, please feel free to do so. I've never done any wiki editing, and I'd be terrified of messing up someone else's good work, but if I can get a crash course, or you just want me to contribute content that someone else can edit and post, I'd be happy to help out.

I think the Armor Lore skill only reduces the encumbrance of the items you have equipped, not the random loot you're carrying around in your backpack, but I could be mistaken. I've also found the "I can't carry any more" messages to come far too soon in my adventuring, but that sort of thing has always been a staple of ARPG's since the days of Diablo I, so I've mostly just resigned myself to auto-selling cheap items "in the field" and saving the expensive loot to sell once I hit a merchant. However, I do find that the limited backpack space makes me "plan" my adventuring a bit more than I otherwise would, which actually adds a minor strategic element to the game. By that I mean, when I leave a town with an empty backpack, I try to use the world map to plan which direction I'll be going, and see where the nearest resurrection spire might be to where I'm headed, so if my pack fills up I can hopefully activate the pillar, warp back to a town with a portal and sell off stuff, then warp back to the newly-activated spire and keep on going. The only time things get really frustrating is when I'm adventuring in one of the "gaps" in the spire network. There's a noticeable one of those gaps in the northwestern corner of the High Elf region, near the kobold village which includes the quest target for the Kobold Chieftain quest. I lost out on a lot of loot while finishing that quest, cuz there are a LOT of kobolds around, and they drop pretty good loot for a character around level 20. I think it would be a great addition to the console versions of the game if they could release a patch where carrying capacity was proportional to Strength, or even to a skill like Constitution or Toughness. But at the same time, the PC versions don't really have that option, given the tetris system used there. It's just frustrating, cuz console gamers are accustomed to being able to increase that maximum limit in the majority of similar games (Baldur's Gate series, Elder Scrolls series, etc.).

Okay, I'm a bit confused.....perhaps the Dryad's Darting Assault works differently on the console than on PC:) o.O I've got a Dryad who's level 22 or so, and she's got DA at only level 2, I think (so yes, the low level of the CA may also play a role). When I use this CA, rather than AIMING 3 arrows at the target critter and two other nearby critters, she simply fires one arrow straight ahead (hence, at the target critter), and two other arrows at right angles to the left and right. So the arrows she fires go in a pattern like this: /|\ | | <-----Dryad-----> Since the enemies are rarely cooperative enough to stand at perfect right-angles to my character, I've found this CA to be of little to no use unless I'm completely surrounded by a thick cloud of critters. So can someone tell me, am I merely seeing the crappy result of my CA level being too low? Or does this CA merely work very poorly on the console as opposed to the PC?

I have the 360 version, too, and I'll back up the previous poster that set items are not distinguished from regular items in any way EXCEPT: 1. They have 3 stars (though I didn't know they were stars, they look like round dots on my crappy non-HD TV), where "normal items have none, one or two. 2. If you look at the detailed item info, it lists the item name first, then the set name on the next line, THEN AN EMPTY LINE OF SPACE, before listing off the item's attributes. I have yet to see any other in-game items with a line of space in their item details. Trivial, I know, but it's twice kept me from accidentally selling off an item that I didn't initially realize was a set piece. "Hey, why is there an empty line......Ooooooh!!" ;D From what I can tell, the game rates things more like this: 0 star = crappy, white loot or starter items 1 star = basic magical items 2 star = decent or uncommon magical items 3 star = set (possibly unique, I don't think I've found any yet) 4 star = legendary (I have to assume this, as I haven't found any 4-star loot yet) I agree that this system sucks royally compared with colored text for item names. I have trouble believing that it would have been THAT hard to code for the different colors, as the loot names ARE colored red for unusable items, even on the Xbox 360 version of the game. The problem with the star system is that unless you're careful to pay attention to the stars, all of the loot looks very homogenous, and it's much easier to accidentally "overlook" a piece of really good loot. As I said above, I very nearly sold off a couple of pieces of sets simply because I didn't notice they were that good, and there was nothing to make them stand out in my inventory list. It takes a LOT of the fun out of the loot collecting for a hack'n'slash when all the loot ends up seeming the same. Also, to the previous poster who mentioned that this new loot system is a "trade out," tell me what exactly we got "in trade" for losing the loot colors and relic holder and other features from the PC game? Aside from the ease of playing the game using a controller while laying on a couch?

Longtime Sacred player, first time poster. I just got the 360 version of the game, and it's been okay fun thus far. My main complaint with the game thus far is the inability to trade with a fellow player on a single-console (non-LIVE) multiplayer game. I had the same problem as one of the posters above....my roommate/playing partner was playing a Temple Guardian, and all of the drops of Seraphim runes went to him instead of to my seraphim. I can kind of understand why the game would "assign" loot to each player, to ensure fair loot distribution, but the loot assigning should be tied to the player who causes the loot to be generated in the first place. I mean, I highly doubt that the game would generate 4 seraphim runes for a level 2 TG; my assumption is that those drops were generated due to there being a seraphim in the party (me). Yet the drops were assigned exclusively to the non-seraphim player.....not cool, since we CAN'T TRADE WITH EACH OTHER. *growl* I haven't tried giving any of my chars the Blacksmithing skill yet, although it was in the plan for my SW, who's only level 21-ish atm. So I guess it's good to know that it would be a waste of a skill slot. :S Hope they can patch that and get it working soon, though, because blacksmiths are by far the least common service in the game, and it would be really nice to be able to do that "in the field" so to speak. One other (minor) note for those people on this forum who help to maintain the SacredWiki.org site....you've all done a splendid job of making sure a lot of the game's info is available for viewing. Kudos, especially since my 360 is currently connected to a VERY old (non-HD) television, which makes it completely impossible to read ANY of the VERY TINY in-game text. I've been using the wiki site for vital info needed to figure out what different skills, CAs and upgrades even DO. It was even more frustrating at first....my "trial" char (a High Elf) got rather messed up since there were times I'd pick one upgrade over another simply because I could read the first one (or puzzle it out) but not the second. So I guess you could add "too small and not adjustable in-game text" to my list of minor complaints. But a note for future development is, a LOT of the mechanics are different for the 360 version of the game, and that probably ought to be addressed in the relevant wiki articles. For example, I got curious what I was supposed to do with all these "relics" I've been stuffing in my stash, so I checked the wiki. Now, I was a beta for Sacred 2 on the PC, so I was slightly familiar with the relic holder from my experiences there, but if I hadn't been, that entire article would have been complete gibberish for me as a 360 player. From what I can tell, there IS no relic holder in the 360 version, or if there is, it's been well-hidden. At this point, I'm not sure if relics can be equipped to the player like armor (haven't tried this), or whether they're smithed into weapons and armor, or what. admittedly, I haven't played around with the relics at all yet (I was killing time at work!), but as more information is figured out about how the console versions differ from the PC one, you might want to provide disambiguation on the wiki to clear things up.