idbeholdME

Battle Extension and Dedicated blow both fire only 1 shot when mounted in the unmodded game. Looking at your equipped melee weapon (fist weapon I assume), I can tell you are using some mod. The wiki info describes the vanilla game without any mods and when not, it is specified (like Willpower increasing Lightsaber damage in CM Patch for example). As for Battle Extension specifically, most of the big mods touch this Combat Art in a significant way which is probably the reason it's behaving this way. So if you do make an edit, consider specifying the mod in which it's behaving like in your example. I am running with the PFP and just recently thoroughly tested all TG's animations.

I've heard fables about the Orc Cave ages ago. Even tried it, but the constant double loading screen really slows it down a lot. I think it's better for item farming than XP farming. Jungle was a contender but I also find that the density there varies wildly. Sometimes, there will regularly be groups of 15 Garema around every corner and other times, you will just keep finding straggling groups of 5. The Garema give pretty good XP, but the density leaves a lot to be desired, especially due to the Jungle being basically a corridor. If anything, I was considering also including the 2nd half of the Jungle. A run with focus on killing Blood Dryads, who have good density and very good experience per kill. But it is a very long run and I wanted to limit it to 3.

Finally decided to share where I'm farming XP when powerlevelling. I got top 3 spots that seem to give the most XP, all things considered. The important aspects are proximity to an experience statue, monster density and XP value of the monsters there. Without further ado: 1) Pig Fields. Situated Nort-East of Ruka, the forest is inhabited entirely by Boars, Boars, Goblin Boar Riders and more Boars. Well, besides a small pocket of Thraconians who landed on a nearby coast. Thus my custom name for it - "Pig fields". All the enemies deal purely physical damage, so no nasty surprises. The XP reward per kill is generally good. Ranging from average (boar riders give the same XP as a goblin) to very good (Terror Boars). Main care should be taken to not get stunned by an Elite Terror Boar and swarmed to death as the density in this area is massive. Easily the most reliable run and is pretty early in the game so a great place to do a bit of grinding when moving up a difficulty. Here is the screen of the area: The central point is the red circle, which is where the experience statue is located. I recommend making a save there by using F7 so you always spawn there after game load. This is the easiest area to farm even without Mentor potions. The red arrows represent paths you can take from the statue and kill stuff in the area just by using the statue. Just pick a direction, run in it and kill as much stuff as possible. Once the buff runs out, go back to the statue and pick a different direction. The other colors represent the paths you can take using the "Statue prolonging method" by keeping up the 100% bonus XP from the statue by quaffing Mentor potions and never letting the effect drop. As far as details go: 1) You take an experience statue and receive a 30 second bonus of +100% XP. 2) If you drink a Mentor Potion before the effect drops off, you will retain the 100% bonus for however long the Mentor Potion lasts. 3) This can be maintained indefinitely, but if you time it wrong or let the buff drop for even a second, you will be back to the regular 50% bonus. Once you feel you've cleared the area enough, just quit and reload. One of the main benefits of this area is the best placed experience statue in the game, which can save you quite a lot of Mentor Potions if you keep coming back to it, sort of like a checkpoint. You can also try luring some packs nearby to the statue if you are having trouble killing stuff quickly, the boars luckily move pretty fast. The entire area has a lot of flexibility in how to run it, so take the highlighted paths only as examples of those I find myself running the most often. Find the paths, loops, directions etc. that best suit your needs. The path branching off to the southwest will lead you alongside the border wall, where some normal goblins and bears will also start to appear. A good way to finish off the run once you've cleared out the forest itself enough. Still very good enemy density. 2)Northern Swamp. Reliant solely on the statue prolonging method. Located North-West of the Marigold Fields, the area is inhabited mostly by Undead and Mutants. To run it optimally, it is important to keep the effect of the purple potion (Undead Death) running simultaneously with the Mentor Potion, due to a pretty high concentration of Moldered Skeletons (which like getting up several times in a row). The density is above average, but the experience per kill is massive, especially from the mutated skeletons in the area. Here is a screen of the path: Once again, red circles is the experience statue or in this case - the temple of the gods (also contains a +100% XP altar, same as statue). It's your choice of where you start the run (Temple is a bit shorter run but less monsters along the way). Red arrows indicate roughly what you can run under the statue effect, blue where potion prolonging is required. The overall gains from the run can vary wildly, mostly depending on what monsters spawn. If you get lucky and get tons of mutated skeletons, it's massive and has the potential to be the best of the three, but not consistently. 3) Southeastern Swamp Another statue prolonging run. It is mostly the area southeast of Lizurath (Werewolf village). By far the most dangerous run because the area contains the infamous "spit spiders". So be sure to run this area only if you can reliably take them on. They have a deadly poison DoT which absolutely requires either damage mitigation, damage over time reduction or detrimental effect reduction. Or you have to kill them fast (the DoT stops when they die). Either way, the main attraction here are the Werevolves. There are tons of them and they give very high XP per kill. Not as high as the mutated skeletons or Bog Demons, but the density more than makes up for it. Once again, here is a screen: Again, red circle is the experience statue, red line where you can run with it and blue is the Mentor prolonging path. Definitely the most dangerous run, but very consistent. The Swamp is also a great area to farm gear, because enemies in there generally have high danger class. Werewolves have the highest out of regular enemies and the mutants in run 2 also have high danger classes. Even the Undead Elites like zombies and skeletons are good for drops. I've gotten more rarity tier 14 pieces in the Swamp than anywhere else in the game. Overall, the hardest thing about these is keeping track of the Mentor Potion effects while also killing stuff and moving in the correct path. I find it useful to take some long cooldown skill like 30 seconds or so and keep track of the potion effect through that. So for example, if the potion lasts 75 seconds, I will take a skill that has a 30 second cooldown and drink another potion after I've cast it twice. But even then, I often find myself missing the window by a second or two, leading to a run with vastly reduced effectiveness. It's up to you whether to restart or continue (at least utilize the effect of the failed potion). Also, if you make a save near a statue, don't activate it immediately after load. There is a bug which makes the statue uninteractable if the first thing you do after load is using the statue. Always kill at least one enemy before activating it, that prevents it from happening. Also one more general note: You can take the statue effect with you anywhere you want in Ancaria and you can keep it up indefinitely as long as you keep chaining Mentor Potions. One such potential location would be taking it to the Blood Forest, specifically to where the giant spiders (Garganturas) are, which is mostly around Diaanja's lair. The Garganturas are probably the single highest XP awarding enemy in the game (on par with Bog Demons) while being relatively harmless. But I haven't tested this thoroughly. So you can theoretically farm anywhere you like, but I find these 3 spots to be the best.

Correct. All % bonuses stack together into one big total and then get applied to the base value of said stat. Going from 800% to 900% is not nearly as big as going from 100% to 200%. So if you already have many hundred % bonus to a stat, flat increases are going to be better. That is why in the higher levels/difficulties, flat damage rings are better for increasing weapon damage than % bonuses. The optimum for all stats is a combination of flat and % increases. Going overkill in one area or other will be less effective. So you should gear for what is best for a given character. Generally, the more % you already have, the less effective any additional % will be. But the more % you have, the more effective any flat increases will be. The one exception is damage mitigation, which is only in % form and stacks additively. Although as far as attack value goes, the best solution by far is simply rings with "Opponent's chance to evade -X%". Enemy defense value is insane in higher niob levels, especially when enemies have Combat Reflexes. So simply countering it with attack value is generally not enough.

If anyone wants to get rid of the rapid fire ranged enemies and give them their melee weapon sets back, I reverted the responsible changes in equipsets.txt. Download link from dropbox here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/a8ax6nailvfrbz9/equipsets.txt?dl=0 Just replace the one in scripts/server with it.

Yes, I added it. Originally, there was no note and it said: "This can be a powerful tool for customizing damage output in a way that no other character can. However, the player should take care that they're not unintentionally changing the expected damage types on their combat arts. '''The player should only socket damage converters into Batteries if they want to convert the damage of every attack and spell!'''"

Just did some tests regarding the info about batteries on the wiki: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Temple_Guardian_Battery Specifically about damage converters in batteries and how they also convert the damage of all Combat Arts. And while yes, they visually do: It is only that, just a visual bug. In practice, all the Combat Arts still do their original damage types. CAs that showed fire damage before still set enemies on fire. Stuff that was showing magic damage before is still weakening enemies and not poisoning them. The damage also does not get reduced by enemy poison armor and such. A skeleton with about 500 poison armor still takes full damage from Jolting Touch showing pure poison. So I'm probably going to add a disclaimer to the wiki page that it's just a visual bug. Luckily, TGs can't wear gloves, so don't have to test conversion on that But would have been cool to be able to have an Ice damage Furious Emblazer Reminds me of damage conversion in Grim Dawn. There, many skills even change color depending on their damage composition. Just imagine a pure green jet of flame Ahhh, what could have been.

Just did The Prison Revolt quest again and finally decided to take screens of the carnage there. It is the only place in the game where you can see such gory sights. It's almost as if Ascaron later decided to tone it down a little bit but forgot to clear this area up. Really interesting that these models have been created for this one side quest in the game. Detailed, cut off limbs, decapitation, blood everywhere. It is also the only place where you can see an Inquisition Guard with a bow, so also worth a screen:

Finally found another worthy entry to this thread: There will be no peace in Ancaria as long as this weapon exists

TQ has static enemy levels, dependent on area/difficulty. So no scaling per se. You know exactly what you are dealing with in a given area, allowing you to just grind a couple levels in the worst case acenario. It provides a much better feeling of increasing power. In GD, every level up will be scaling the enemies as well, drastically so in the 95+ level territory. GD is definitely more fluent in combat and faster paced, which is why I think most people prefer it. TQ also requires pretty high level for your character to truly shine. Once you start regularly using multiple active skills in combat from both masteries, it is a joy to play, but that only happens in the 50+ level territory. In GD, the experience feels mostly the same from level 40-50 onward as far as skill trees go. Any further power gains are mostly from 100s of % damage bonuses on gear. In TQ every additional skill point feels very relevant and I look forward to every level-up and those 3 juicy skill points. You can regularly be adding new skills to your repertoire in the late game. In GD, it feels fine until level 50 but past that, once you start getting less skill points per level at 50 and 90, it starts feeling a bit meh. Wow, I just hit level 92. That passive skill is now level 5/12 instead of 4/12 :/

I haven't really felt that way. Titan Quest at least does very little to overwhelm the player and you can respec skills easily in both games. GD is a lot more complicated in many aspects. The case you describe is a particularity of GD specifically. There are some skills that are only good with proper gear support and some are god tier at quick leveling while being mediocre late. TQ is my #1 ARPG. Love it to death. While most prefer GD, it has 4 major flaws for me: 1) Too much power has been shifted to gear. My optimal ratio of skill/gear power is about 50/50 or 40/60. But it's like 15/85 in GD. You can't do pretty much anything without good gear in Grim Dawn while in Titan Quest, the skill tree alone can get you very far. 2) The skills have too high caps and there are not enough skillpoints. Leading to most builds being mostly about spamming one or 2 buttons and then having "devotion proccer" skills and gear that supports those 2 buttons. In Titan Quest, I can eventually max several skills leading to a much higher variety in gameplay. I have multiple "main" skills on most of my TQ builds. In GD, it ultimately boils down to about 2 and then taking every passive that boosts those 2 skills in some way with a single point in devotion proccers/utility skills. 3) Aggressive lategame scaling. Getting less skillpoints the higher the level you are actually makes grinding out the last couple levels very counterproductive. You are making yourself noticeably weaker by going from level 94 to 100. You get basically nothing and enemies still scale out the wazoo. That is the one thing that should never happen in an ARPG - make the player feel bad for leveling up. 4) Game revolves pretty much exclusively around resistance shredding. If your build doesn't lower enemy resistance to your main element by at least 50%, it will not be effective. Making many builds feel very samey. I still like GD a lot, but it's probably about #4 for me, after Titan Quest, Diablo 2 and Sacred 2.

Yep. Definitely looks like it. This bug/exploit has been prevented in most community patches/mods by making staves ranged by default, including the PFP. On the other hand, Shadow Warrior and Temple Guardian can now use them as ranged weapon even without having access to the Staff skill. As for reverting it, I am not really sure what all that would entail.... The change originated from the CM Patch, so probably only people who worked on that would know.

Island #1 is the one where the Temple of the Gods is and is already accessible on foot (well, part of it). http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Temple_of_the_Gods Temple #12. One of the last ones I found back when I first played Sacred 2. Very easy to miss the detour. Only spotted it when I saw enemies there on the minimap when farming map explored in my visibility range gear.

I remember reading that a long time ago, but forgot. Either way, the important part: danger class < 9 being unable to drop Legendaries - is still unknown. From the thread: "Danger class (see creatures.txt, drop.txt; danger classes themselves are apparently defined internally, I haven't found them yet in any binary dumps; I hope I've overlooked them)." Adding the Legendaries to the other droplists enemies below classes 9 and 10 have access to doesn't make them droppable. The DropMaxRandomRare = 12, in balance.txt probably indicates something related to the rarity tiers, so tier 12, but I have no idea what it could affect. EDIT: Putting the DropMaxRandomRare to 15 only changes all rare items that drop into unique rarity. Regular enemies are still incapable of dropping Legendaries. It basically only indicates where the rare item cutoff point is when it comes to rarity tiers and how the game should display them. So nothing really relevant.

Unfortunately no. I am out of ideas about where the rarity vs danger class relation could be defined/hidden. If that could somehow be done, all droplists could be left the same and just add the Legendary items to them so that you could roll for them also when killing normal enemies. It could even be balanced so that the chance would be lower than from bosses thanks to the weightedprob value, but that's all what ifs.....

I was thinking something in the vein that the one on the Seraphim island allows to pick a destination, while the one in the abbey only serves as a target/receiver, without the ability to use it to teleport elsewhere. Sort of a precaution measure to prevent others from misusing it. If you know Stargate, then the one on the island would be a gate with a DHD device and the one in the abbey just a gate. https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Dial_Home_Device

There are a couple more un-openable lootables in the game, but I can't remember their locations off the top of my head right now. I think those were mostly an oversight. I don't really think it could be remains of something the original developers ultimately decided to not implement, but anything's possible As for what the thing might be, it is definitely a Seraphim construction. There is a part of it in the underground of the Abbey in the Seraphim Valley, where the Abbess is: Could very well be a teleporter receiving platform. Would have been cool if the platform on the Seraphim Island led here, which would actually lend credence to the claims of the sisters there which say they are waiting for the Seraphims' return. Can't really remember right now if I've seen this in other places... It ultimately ended up as just a decoration. Or maybe it's intentional to indicate that the Seraphim could use it at any time and make the Abbey sisters really happy, but they don't really care Most of them are rather condescending anyway, so would fit their modus operandi

Interesting read. So far, I've only ever brought one character to Niobium, my level 169 Gladiator. Back when I was deciding what to play first, it was a toss-up between Gladiator and Demoness. Ultimately ran with a Gladiator, but it turned out to be quite easy mode, mostly because of Jumping Stomp, which stuns pretty much everything in a huge radius. Regarding the runes, I just dupe them at a runemaster. I have no clue who thought binding rune drop rate the amount of runes learned/stashed was a good idea, but it's horrendous. I have no interest in starting low level characters over and over again just to have enough runes for my main characters. Did all the quests with my Gladiator, but still not nearly enough runes. Even when I was save/loading them all until a desirable rune dropped.

An update. Giving all dangerclasses access to the same droplists as the bosses with dangerclass 9 or 10 have, is NOT enough to make regular enemies able to drop Legendaries. I managed to make the most trash enemies literally rain sets and uniques by giving them the same drop lists as bosses and increasing the ZRareExpectation15 in balance.txt, but no matter what, Legendaries will simply not drop. However, once I increase their dangerclass to 9 or 10 in creatures.txt (the scarabs in the desert in this case), Legendaries instantly start dropping. Which means that the droplists are only one piece of the puzzle. It is easy to make any enemy drop the same amount of items as bosses, from exactly the same droplists, but Legendaries are locked out for anything below dangerclass 9. Which means that the original goal of this whole experiment - to make enemies from lower dangerclasses potentially be able to drop any item, including Legendaries - is still without a solution. I can't find the dangerclass connection anywhere in the relevant script files. It must either be hardcoded (which would suck), or it's hidden somewhere. Could be why every dangerclass is initialized like 8 times in drop.txt, but I can't really tell the reason for it.... If I somehow managed to remove the dangerclass restriction, then it would just be a question of adding the Legendary items to relevant drop lists, which the lower dangerclass enemies use. Anyone any ideas? EDIT: Oh, also, the weightedprob in drop list entries indeed is how likely that item is to be picked compared to others. Just put the weightedprob for Magisil to 20000 and literally only Magisil is dropping. So basically loaded odds, which is another thing I hate in ARPGs. I might actually equalize it for all Legendaries. Would explain why by the end of my farming, I've been getting mostly duplicates. And from observation, even if you manage to roll the abysmally low chance for rarity tier 15, it only means that you can roll for them, not that you will actually get one. You have to be additionally lucky for the game to pick a Legendary item based on the wieghtedprob and hope it doesn't just greet you with a random trash rare item, or any of the rarity 13 or 14 items which are also present in the same droplist.

That's why I'm asking. I barely played the TG back in vanilla Sacred 2, and in Ice & Blood, it does not follow. So I'm asking whether it did ever follow the player, so I can either replace the statement completely, or just clarify that that functionality has been removed in I&B. My cousin still has the Fallen Angel version of the game somewhere, so I might be able to eventually check it myself, but it's not going to be any time soon.

The wiki states about both of these CAs that: The effect follows the Temple Guardian around while it lasts http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Fiery_Ember http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Icy_Evanescence However, that seems to not be the case. After casting, it just remains at the spot you cast it. And once you walk out of the radius, even the damage mitigation drops. Did it behave differently before Ice & Blood? Because currently, those statement are just wrong. The only Source Warden skill that sticks on the Temple Guardian is Charged Grid. Just wanted to check with somebody else before I make edits to the wiki.

Long time no see, I've decided to drop one more batch of Seraphim screens. This time, from the forgotten ATTACKX animations. They seem to have been disabled in most community mods/patches. But they still work, I restored them and these are the results. In order, captures from: 1 handed ATTACKX animation Dual Wield ATTACKX animation (2x) Polearm ATTACKX animation EDIT: For some reason, the forum seems to be automatically downgrading the quality of the pictures even though I'm in the 2MB upload limit. Either way, that allows more screens: Another dual wield one. Assailing Somersault with Dagger.

One more set I cobbled up together: Guardian of Purity: Dusk version: The 2nd screen was taken just as the night was setting in, so it comes out more as grey-ish than white. Really makes me sad that the game does not have a sort of transmogrification system. Would make it much easier to try things out than first having to gather items up from 3 mules

In the PFP, it's numbers 10602 (var1_c), 10603 (var2_c) and 10604 (var3_c). The var wings have this in the model0Data: model0Data = { name = "models/heroes/seraphim/sets/angeldust/c_sera-angeldust-wings.GR2", surface0 = { mgr.surfGetID ("seraphim-angeldustfx-wings_c"), mgr.surfGetID ("seraphim-angeldustfx-wings-var3_c") }, surface1 = { mgr.surfGetID ("seraphim-angeldust-wings_c"), mgr.surfGetID ("seraphim-angeldust-wings-var3_c") }, The other "vars" have the same, except their respective number. However, there is also 1405, which has the model0Data empty and has only the base model defined. No surfaces: model0Data = { name = "models/heroes/seraphim/sets/angeldust/c_sera-angeldust-wings.GR2", Considering that there are 4 total variations of the wings, could this be the cause? EDIT: Nevermind!!!!. It was actually the simplest solution, the #1. The var3_c was missing the SURFACE_FLAG_TENERGY in surface.txt. Added it and the wings are now animated correctly. I was originally looking at just "seraphim-angeldust-wings-var3_c" and not "seraphim-angeldustfx-wings-var3_c". Thanks Also, back on the topic of the ATTACKX animations, it turns out that not all of them are working. On the Seraphim, all I tried worked without issues and hit twice whenever they triggered. But now I'm playing a Temple Guardian, and even though the animation triggers, the 2nd hit never lands/happens with a 1 handed weapon. BUT, when on the Mobiculum, it triggers and hits twice correctly, so with Battle Extension active, you can land 4 hits in one attack if the ATTACKX animation triggers. Seems like Ascaron either didn't have time to completely finish all of them, or some of them are simply broken. It'd probably be best to try out all the melee ATTACKX animations for all weapons on all characters and list which of them mechanically work and which of them do not. All of them can trigger, but apparently, not all of them can actually land 2 hits. And one more very important thing: as the PFP removed all the ATTACKX animations from the animation.txt, they all have to be restored. Not only the attacks themselves, but animations for mounts, special mounts, animated clothing etc. Otherwise, they are completely stationary. Just found out that the Mobiculum for example, has a separate animation for the ATTACKX attack than all the normal ones. Gonna be a hell of a copy&paste job, especially for the Inquisitor's clothes (gonna leave that for last ). Also will eventually test all the characters. Once I'm done, I'll share the updated file with anyone who wants (for use with PFP), but it's gonna take a while... The attack animations so far (will keep updating as progress goes on): DONE, FIXED & TESTED - Seraphim and Temple Guardian. LEFT TO TEST - Shadow Warrior, High Elf, Dryad, Inquisitor, Dragon Mage. And one more find - the % that shows up once you reach weapon lore mastery is actually the percentage you have to roll the ATTACKX animation. I reached 44% and it triggers very often. So it's not an increase, but shows the actual chance you have to get the double hit animation. The + in the value is irrelevant, like with Spell Resistance Mastery. This fact actually makes melee Weapon Lore skills relevant again, as it can increase DPS significantly.

This CA is great when it works, but the problem is that it usually doesn't. When it works properly, it deals 5 ticks of damage to the target enemy and the damage is quite nice. However, most of the time, it will only inflict 1 or 2 ticks of damage and then the beam stops doing any damage. The cause seems to be that the CA picks a physical point on the enemy model and then connects the beam to it. As long as the line between your arm cannon and the point on the enemy's body is unobscured, the damage continues being dealt. But if it gets obscured in any way the damage stops. For example, if a humanoid enemy runs at you directly and the beam is targeting a point on their chest. The damage is being dealt, but then the target turns around. Because the contact point is on their chest, the game evaluates it as the target no longer being visible and Archimedes Beam stops doing damage. Or even if the target just raises its hand in a way that it intersects the beam at any point, it stops any further damage. Also, if the target turns more than 90 degrees realative towards you (sideways) or more, it stops dealing damage no matter what. This frankly makes the CA very difficult, if not impossible to actually use against single targets. I don't think a fix for this is possible, but it really detracts from this otherwise pretty good CA. Honestly, the Lost Fusion tree suffers from targeting issues a lot. Archimedes Beam has the problem described above, which makes it extremely inconsistent to use. Furious Emblazer is near useless unless you manually place it to the left of the enemy you want hit, but at least it can be worked around. A real shame with Archimedes Beam, as I was really enjoying the Lost Fusion tree before the issues with it started happening regularly. Humanoid enemies, especially small ones like Goblins, have a very high propensity to just ignore Archimedes Beam after 1 or 2 ticks of damage. Some enemies can be consistently hit by the full duration, like most wild animals. So it really depends on the particular enemy model and where they have the contact points for the beam. Just putting this out here as a warning to anyone who's going to try the Lost Fusion tree. EDIT: The problem with the beam is that the "damage line" is only created once the beam starts and never updates its position. One would expect that the beam would retarget on each tic, but it does not, leading to visuals not reflecting reality. Basically, whenever you use Archimedes Beam, create an imaginary line from your hand to the target point. That line stays there for the entire duration of the cast (5 damage tics). So even if an enemy walks behind you when casting it, the TG turns around and the beam visually turns too, the damage will only still be happening on the original line. Any enemy that manages to move slightly sideways after first being hit by the beam will avoid any further damage. If a different enemy walks into the original line, they will still take damage even if the beam is no longer there. I don't think there is a way to make the beam retarget on every tic (would make sense). so just take it as a quirk of this particular CA.