idbeholdME

So far, I only increased some numbers. Upped the frequency: 1 to 3 3 to 5 5 to 7 Rain definitely occurs much more often now. It could take hours normally to stumble upon a square with rain by default (1% chance). Now I encounter a couple of them every hour (at 3% chance). Makes the weather much more lively. I might try to fiddle with it more later thanks to the map Flix provided. One could actually create regions where a certain type of weather would occur regularly. Like setting a square to a 100% probability of rain, the surrounding ones to 75%, the ones next to those to 50% etc. and create rain-zones, snow-zones etc. Although... If I remember correctly, isn't there a quest in the orc region that affects weather (something about manipulating rain?) Wonder if changing this file could break some scripts.

Sure. I'll probably come back to this later to format it better And also, I am still not sure whether my assumptions were correct. It seems to make sense but if anyone could confirm this is indeed the way it works, it would be great.

Hmmm. So 0 should do something too? Could it be a night exclusive effect? Or does it simply force night? Will try later. And regarding earthquakes, it was either not implemented or happens only in some set area. Had no effect in Thylysium and the nearby area. But going by the defines.txt, the entries don't really seem to correspond with the actual in-game effect. I don't see snow in there and it even ends at 128, where log_2(128) results in 7. But from my testing, 8 is still another weather type.

The sliding characters is a thing I also remember, yes. But it was very rare. I think with the PFP, I encountered it once so far (a random NPC in Sloeford just flew away). But it's fixed on game restart, should it affect any important NPC. One more thing. As I keep playing and exploring the map, I noticed that the valid teleport locations, ports etc. always show their labels (area names) on the fullscreen map, including the active resurrection monolith. It somewhat clutters up the map as I explore more and more locations. Especially the "Activated Resurrection Monolith" one covers up a ton of the space on the map (it goes all the way from Sloeford past Thylysium on full zoom out) . As these labels always stay the same size, the more you zoom out, the more of the map is effectively covered by them. These labels only showed when you hovered over the respective areas in the vanilla game. Would it be possible to revert this to the original behavior? Meaning that they would show only when you hover over them? It makes looking at the map to look for quests a bit more annoying than it should be, constantly having to change zoom levels etc. to see whether a quest circle is obstructed by the label or not or when you are simply in the surrounding area and the label is right on top of your character indicator. I assume this was a change that got carried over from the CM Patch (it happened there too) and is related to the teleport location changes. So my hopes for being able to change this are slim, as map behavior is in one of the .dll files I think. But still, thought I'd ask, just in case. I am OK with the teleport changes, but getting rid of the permanently displaying labels would be nice And one more minor, map related thing. The 2 buttons in the top right (eye and pin) behave very strangely. When you hover your mouse over either of them, it keeps constantly swapping the highlight between the two, making it a lottery as to which one you will press once you click. It happened to me in vanilla too so it's not strictly PFP related, but it was always a very minor thing.

Damn, can't believe I missed this file... So wait. Does that mean that every single sector (square) has it's own settings? Damn, Is there a coordinate map available somewhere so I could test in a specific area? I assume that: type - would be the type of weather (rain, snow, storm etc.) density - how intense/visible the weather is? No idea honestly. It is between 10 and 100, meaning it is probably a percentage. frequency - no idea because it seems the squares are determined on game session start and don't change (at least from me running around). Also a percentage. Could be the chance for the weather effect to happen? As the minimum value here is 1 (compared to 10 in density), it sounds about right (1% chance of a square having a weather effect). hours - doesn't seem to matter as almost everything is set to this value. There are some other values for some coordinates, but like 99% of them have the 16777215. Or could it specify the time of the day when weather can appear? I could toy around with it but without a coordinate map, it would be very difficult. EDIT: Gonna try a brute force method. Backup the original file and set frequency for every coordinate to 100 Putting 100 for frequency everywhere definitely increased the squares it rains in, but interestingly enough, it's not on all the time. Now it seems like it rains in every other square, but it still gets interrupted most of the time upon entering a new sector. Density affects a couple of things. It now rains everywhere like it does in the Swamps It also increases the volume of the rain. At 100, it is really audible. And it also affects the footsteps. With density on 100, every step sounds like it does in the swamp. Like stepping into a huge puddle. It also determines how much darker does it get when it rains. type is the weather type: NOTE: By default, all enabling weather in the game options does is that it allows for the very small, occasional gusts of wind (visible on PhysX particles). This happens regardless of the set weather type. 1 seems to do nothing. Probably used to set no weather for a square when weather is turned on. The only thing that happens with this are the default gusts. 2 is wind. At density 100, you can actually hear the wind howling in the background. PhysX particles are flying around wildly and trees and grass are swaying strongly in the wind. 3 is rain. Setting the type to 3 everywhere actually makes it rain in every single square in the game. Running around, it is raining non-stop. 4 is thunder storm. Rain (3) + thunder and lightning (6) + wind (2). Screenshot from Thylisium bridge. 5 - no idea. This weather type is never used in the vanilla file. But considering that 6 DOES something and is also not used anywhere, it might actually do something. 6 is also never used in the game but testing it, it enables lightning ONLY. No rain, just thunder strikes and flashes :O 7 is snow. Ever wondered what it'd look like if it snowed in Thylisium? 8 is never used in game normally. Testing it out, it gives snow (7) + lightning and thunder (6) + wind (2). All three once. Past 8, there doesn't seem to be any effect so it is most likely the final one. Really can't spot what 5 does, if anything. So to sum it up: type = the type of weather. See the list above. frequency = the actual % chance the square will have a weather effect. From observation, this seems to be determined on game start/first sector load and remains that way until you quit. It doesn't re-roll this chance every time you enter the sector. Scratch that. Once you get far enough so that the sector actually unloads and then come back to make it load again, the chance is re-rolled. Just had that happen to me. density = determines the severity of the weather effect hours = no idea But to make something that would make sense and consistency would require going through all the main map squares one by one and tuning them to one's desire xD. I'm probably just going to increase the frequency where the numbers are very low (1 or 5) and keep the rest. I doubt there is a way to do this in a non-static way, so just fine tuning the numbers is really the only option. If there was a coordinates map, one could create a custom weather for various areas but that's about it.

I'd like to make weather effects occur more often and to last longer. The way it works by default (from observation), at least in the first act area, is that the game randomly selects some "squares" of the map where a weather effect applies. As long as you are in the square, the weather effect lasts. It is quite easy to find the boundary line where taking one step in a direction will stop the rain after a couple of seconds and taking one step back will start it again. But as you are moving most of the time, you only get to enjoy the rain for like 20 or 30 seconds, before you exit the square. Again, this is how it behaves in act 1 areas. I remember it raining/storming nearly constantly in the Swamps. Is there a way to increase the number of these squares where weather effects are happening? Optimally into larger blobs, so a larger area of the map would be covered by it instead of singular squares? I'd assume that the density/occurrence of these "weather squares" is set per area somewhere. The question is, if it's hardcoded or changeable in some file? It just makes it feel really out of place when there is rain occurring in exactly 1 square area of Thylisium and nowhere else around.

I have one question about this change in the PFP: All sources of "Experience per Kill," whether from equipment, potions, statues, or combat arts, will now stack correctly, rather than overriding one another. I assume, this makes it no longer possible to maintain the statue buff indefinitely using mentor potions? I remember being able to use an experience statue, gain double XP and as long as I prevented the buff from dropping using mentor potions, it would maintain the +100% XP instead of the +50%. Correct? Also, I assume it makes the mods like Tutor or Insight worth considering now, as they stack with other sources. Correct?

Thanks for the clarification. Gonna go with the damage mod on Bronze then as the Knockback will just raise naturally with CA levels (0.5% per level).

So, when it comes to Combat Discipline, it only affects weapon based CAs partially. To quote the wiki: The Damage bonus from Combat Discipline affects spell damage based combat arts fully, but for weapon-based combat arts it will only boost the bonus damage from the CA (eg, if Battle Extension is giving to character an additional +20% damage, Combat Discipline will affect that +20%, so if CD gives it +10%, a player will end up with +22% damage bonus from Battle Extension).. As there is no way to see anywhere in game, how big this portion is and how much it scales (for the purposes of weighing the impact CD has on the different CAs), I tried checking spells.txt, where CAs are defined. Looking at Soul Hammer for example: Trying to compare it with the info here: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Tokens I assume that: entry1 is - et_mult_weapondamage (x+y*calvl)/1000 is the damage multiplier entry3 is - et_damage_any_rel (x+y*calvl)/10 percent added to all damage So a level 1 Soul Hammer and Combat Discipline at 77 (140% bonus), it will increase the bonus which results from entry1, correct? In this case, we get 1255/1000 = 1.255. As 1000 is the base (normal damage) and 0.255 is the bonus, I assume it is this bonus part, that gets multiplied by combat discipline. So in this case, 0.255 * 2,4 = 0,612. EDIT: Never mind. Apparently, the Combat discipline bonus just gets directly added to the % damage bonus the CA gives, not the weapon damage multiplier. On the wiki, there is this note about Combat Discipline for Weapon Based CAs: This increase in damage is direct; it increases the +xx% that the CA adds to base damage. So if you take combat discipline, just add it to the result of entry3 (or whatever entry et_damage_any_rel is). This means, on the contrary, that CD will become less and less effective with weapon CAs compared to the listed percentage as you level them up. Example: Demonic Blow at level 50 gives 40 + (10* CA-level) bonus % damage = 540% so CD at level 77 (140%) would just make it 540+140 = 680%. So a 140% bonus from CD will only really increase the total damage of a level 50 Demonic Blow by ~26% (680/540). Basically, the higher the sum of all your applicable % damage bonuses (including from any gear, blacksmith arts etc.), the less of an effect will CD have on total damage. Let's assume that you also have 100% bonus damage from gear and 200% from tactics: 540% from Demonic Blow by itself + 300% from gear and skills = 840%. Now if you add the CD bonus of 140, it will end up only increasing your damage by about ~16.6%. It can still be a worthwhile investment if you have a skill slot open but is definitely not necessary for a successful build focused on weapons and not spells. Initially, it can help a lot but the effectiveness will drop off in the mid to late game as gear bonuses scale up and you level the CA. I will still keep the list of the CAs base weapon damage multipliers and mods affecting them here, but it is not really relevant for calculating CD value.

Despite the wiki claiming that: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Chance_for_Double_Hit Ranged weapons are unable (at the code level) to trigger Double Hits. Keep this in mind when choosing combat art modifications. This modifier should be more properly called "Chance for Close Combat Double Hits." I've actually tested these mods (on a completely fresh install of the game with no game mods and a new character) with ranged weapons and surprisingly, they work just fine. Frenzied Rampage does 3 instances of damage with ranged weapons (2 visible projectiles but the second one always deals damage twice) and with the Double Hit mods, it triggers even with ranged weapons. Seeing anywhere from 3 to 6 instances of damage with the mods active. Is the wiki info outdated? Was it a changed in Ice & Blood? Did nobody try this before me? So many questions, but I can with a 100% certainty say, that at least Frenzied Rampage supports double hits with ranged weapons.

Same trend here. A couple of items seem to get repeated quite often in a lot of quests reward drops. But as a fix is in the works already, I assume the behavior of quest rewards will be the same as in vanilla. EDIT: I'll keep playing for now and just discard any Uniques I get from quests as if they didn't drop. Really enjoying my ranged Shadow Warrior so can't wait for the next release before continuing playing

So the text on the wiki is verbatim copied from the game description in the vanilla game? That really was confusing, as it makes it sound like it does 2 things. Thanks for the clarification. http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Scything_Sweep And I assume Hurl works with ranged weapons?

I have a couple questions about this mod. 1) In the game, all it says is that it increases the knockback chance. Pretty straightforward. On the wiki, it says that it increases the knockback chance AND has an additional statement that "If they tumble against additional opponents they will inflict damage upon impact." so Does the knockback of Scything Sweep (not the gold Hurl mod), inflict damage ONLY if you take the Knockback Bronze mod, or does SS do that by default? If it is the former, then that might make it worth picking. If the later, then the Knockback mod is pretty useless because you can pump the knockback chance simply by leveling up the CA. 2) How does the above behave with ranged? I'd assume it works, but just to make sure.

Oh? So it actually was a bug? Good to hear that my memory actually wasn't tricking me. Also forgot to mention, that when the drops happened, there were very often duplicates, which was another thing that tipped me off.

Quests were definitely a good source, but I don't remember ever seeing 4 at once. Guess it must have been a changed in Ice & Blood, which I've played a lot less compared to just Fallen Angel. Not that I'm complaining and it seems like it's normal from what you're saying, so all good. At least quests are a bit more worthwhile to do now As I'm playing through the campaign, I've so far got 2 quests that gave me 4 items and a decent amount of them gave me 2 (always 1 set and 1 unique). EDIT: Another strange thing just happened. Playing the Shadow campaign, I just finished the "Thwarted Attack Plans" quest. But I also had Meliondor from the "Unexpected News" quest with me at the time. After clearing up the enemies in the battle in front of the camp, all the Inquisition troops threw themselves at Meliondor (the poor guy). They are non-stop attacking him but doing no damage to him at all. Not sure if this was always happening or is a new bug. It doesn't really matter as they can't kill him, but kinda funny xD. I'd assume that Meliondor was probably the most "perished" escort NPC in the game, considering where you get him and how far you have to walk with him. The poor guy doesn't deserve this

Ah, thanks for the info. So far, I am continuing playing my ranged Shadow Warrior (currently level 20). Still haven't dropped a single ranged energy weapon to test with Frenzied Rampage (RNG hates me). But other than the general FR behavior shenanigans with pretty much everything ranged (described in the edit of my previous post), all else seems to be running smoothly and without issues. Any thoughts on the double hit mods actually working with ranged attacks of FR? It seems to contradict any info available online (which claims ranged attacks can never Double Hit), which I find very weird since it is the vanilla behavior. As for the PFP, the text of the mod should probably be changed back, because it currently says it only works with melee. EDIT: Energy weapons seems fine. Same behavior as Bows. EDIT 2: Had a strange thing happen today. The "Mutated Black Bear" quest just gave me 2 Set Items and 2 Unique Items as a reward. Not sure what that was about. Just turned in the Kobold Chieftain quest and the same thing happened again. 2 Set Items and 2 Unique Items in the reward. I don't really remember this ever happening to me before. Anyone else encountered this?

If it is impossible or would be too complicated to disable ranged staff attacks just for the Shadow Warrior and Temple Guardian, then completely restricting staves from the two may seem a bit harsh but SW and TG never had access to ranged staves and as that was made default in the PFP, the vanilla logic should be kept (IMO at least). With all the other classes, you would be taking the Staff Lore anyway if you wanted to make a Staff Build so it's not that big of a change for them to make staves ranged by default. But then again, that will be denying the 2 classes access to useful Staff weapons, like Rancuil's Dark Flame (which literally just dropped for me 10 minutes ago ) for buff casting and potentially tons of other items. As I doubt that anyone used staves as main weapons previously on SW and TG, probably just balancing the CAs could be a better approach. But who says when it's balanced? :/ But of course, if others have any input or ideas, let's hear them. I don't want to come off as some sort of the only authority on this Oh? Does something already exist to adjust auto-pickup behavior? I can't see an addendum section anywhere, could you please link? Gotcha. It's not really that big of a deal, just something I noticed and only really relevant in the very early levels. EDIT: Did some more testing with Frenzied Rampage, especially the mods and some very interesting findings. Testing with a bow. 1) Even though it launches only 2 projectiles visually, it deals 3 instances of damage. Happens both with and without the PFP activated. It is the second arrow that deals the damage twice. If only the first arrow misses, damage is dealt twice, if only the second arrow misses, damage is dealt once. If both hit, 3 hits. 2) The double hit mods that are supposed to only work with melee work with the ranged FR attacks. Tried both with and without the PFP. I took Double Hit, Double Hit, Life Leech and in both cases, managed to get 6 damage and Life Leech instances from a single FR attack after a couple of tries, proving both that the Double Hit mods work on it and that it is in fact 3 and not 2 attacks. Really strange behavior TBH. Especially considering it behaves the same with or without the PFP, suggesting it's been this way for a long time. I even double checked on a completely fresh install and a brand new Shadow Warrior and that is how it's apparently always been. As the tooltips for FR in the PFP have been changed for the double hit mods (to specifically mention it only works with melee), they should probably be reverted back as they actually DO work on ranged weapons (bows at least). It might just be an internal quirk of Frenzied Rampage, as the wiki specifically says that Double Hits for ranged weapons are impossible at the code level. Not sure.

Played some more today. A couple notable things. 1) Gartor, the new turtle boss in the pirate cave seems to have an improperly set level. I was there at level 16 on Silver. All other enemies were the correct level, but Gartor was level 12. 2) Just tried Frenzied Rampage with a 1-handed staff and HOLY HELL!!! Shadow Warrior never had access to ranged staves, but as the PFP makes all staves ranged by default, it is incredibly overpowered with Frenzied Rampage. It uses the same animation as a Melee Frenzied rampage (which looks weird by itself), but it also launches probably more than 10 projectiles within a single Frenzied Rampage cast in a non-stop volley fashion, automatically retargets once the first target dies, and annihilates pretty much everything. Definitely needs to be tuned somehow. The best would honestly be if Shadow Warrior did not have access to ranged staves at all, to stay in line with vanilla. But I somehow doubt that giving Shadow Warrior an exception for the staff change would be an easy thing, if possible at all.... Temple Guardian is the only other class that does not have access to Staff Lore. Can he even use staves? I played him only once and very briefly a long time ago. If he can, it would probably be good to check out how ranged staves behave with his CAs. So if possible, prevent SW and TG from being able to use ranged attacks with staves. Would be the best option IMO and in line with the vanilla. If not, then these two classes need to be thoroughly checked for how their non-single hit CAs behave with ranged staves as they never had access to that before and fix/tune it to reasonable levels. I pretty much never touched staves before, let alone ranged, so I have no idea how ranged staves behave with the CAs of classes that did have access to Staff Lore, but I doubt that they just use the same animation as they did for melee and spam projectiles non-stop. 3) The auto-pickup ignores the rule you select in the game options when it comes to items that are for a different class than you are currently playing. Playing a SW, It correctly picks up only blue and up for Shadow Warrior items, but still picks up all the garbage items for other classes. I think that has always been the case, but could make for another decent QoL improvement in the PFP.

Thought as much. Actually, as I was playing around with the original render.dll, the BFG fires the first projectile before it is fully aimed, confirming it brings back the original blending speed, shooting the first shot at an angle towards the ground when the CA is initiated while moving, due to the way she holds it while running (the end of the gun is above her). The second shot flies straight. With the PFP file, the first shot comes out only after she has already assumed the fully aimed position. Anyway then, besides the bow timing for Pelting Strikes, the ranged behavior of the 2 CAs now is exactly as it is in vanilla.

Indeed. I looked into the animation definitions myself and in vanilla, that is exactly what it does. Just launches 2 normal attacks. I tested it myself by just copying the animation definitions from the vanilla animations.txt and replacing the ones in the purist fixpack and it completely restored the vanilla behavior. SM07 was indeed Frenzied Rampage. Was about to start replacing it for all weapon types and also when mounted, but you beat me to it. Once again, big thanks for looking into this. Off to test the new file now. EDIT: Seems OK now, at least behavior-wise. But upon checking the files, I noticed one thing off for Pelting Strikes. The BOW timings. Pelting Strikes has different values but as it in practice should just copy the normal attack, it should have the same timings too. Or alternatively just use the way it's done in vanilla, so the override method: ["overload"] = "ANIM_TYPE_ATTACKA_BOW", Also, I'm not sure how BFG is defined, if it has it's own entry or uses the BOW or GUN timings. If separate, might be worth checking too. Otherwise, all the other weapons have the same timings for Pelting Strikes as for the base attack, so should be correct. Also, not sure if order matters here, but several of the entries for Pelting Strikes have a wrong timings order. No idea if it might cause something unexpected. Everything else is correctly ordered by timestamps. Example: And when checking Frenzied Rampage, it is set correctly (only copies the base attacks) but I noticed a difference in timings for the base TGUN attack between vanilla and fixpack. All the other ranged weapon types have the same timings as vanilla. This is not a difference in Frenzied Rampage itself, but the actual base attack which Frenzied Rampage uses. Vanilla TGUN: PFP TGUN: Same thing also for ANIM_TYPE_ATTACKB_TGUN (0.2665 vs 0.4000). And one last animation related thing. As I was scanning over the various attack definitions, I noticed one difference in the Shadow Warrior attack timings. Specifically entry 38, 48 and 55 - ANIM_TYPE_ATTACKB_BH (just look at them in vanilla and the PFP). In vanilla, it has 2 ATTACK occurrences on B, C and D while in PFP, it has only one, happening at a time exactly in the middle of the 2 attack timings. It seems like a double hit was occurring in vanilla on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th attack in the sequence for BH weapons (hafted weapons?), which has been removed. Although I have not tested this yet. Who knows how many of these differences are there in total. Would it be worth to compare at least the attack animations and see if there are any further timing differences?

INCREDIBLE STUFF!!!. Seems to work perfectly. Pelting strikes is back to 2 shots, tried a bow and the BFG. Will try Frenzied Rampage in a bit. This would make a great addendum download for those who want completely unchanged CAs. As I've said before, the 4 or 5 shot salvo these CAs fired made using any other CA on a ranged Shadow Warrior and Seraphim completely pointless so it's awesome to finally have the option to revert back, without losing all the fixes in the community patches.. Otherwise, the 1.2 release seems to be working perfectly. Did various stuff in act 1 for a couple of hours and hasn't crashed once. I'm also playing with the Reduced Fog mod and the vanilla Physics (as someone mentioned before, I also like leaves and debris swirling around everywhere ). One last thing on an unrelated note. This is not caused by the patch, but when playing in fullscreen mode and there is a loading (from the menu or entering a cave/dungeon, saving and exiting etc), instead of a smooth transition and showing a loading screen, the game always just freezes for the duration of the loading and then abruptly resumes once it's finished. Even when launching the game in fullscreen mode, it causes the first 2 logos to not show at all, only audio can be heard. The first visible thing is the nVidia logo and instead of showing right away, it slowly fades into view. When playing in windowed mode, everything works fine, including the intro logos. Is this just a "me" issue or does it happen to anyone else? EDIT: Update on Frenzied Rampage While Pelting Strikes seems fine and behaves as it should, Frenzied Rampage still seems somewhat finnicky. It still has the same animation as it did when it fired 4 or 5 projectiles, but the beginning of the animation does nothing and then fires 3 projectiles (bow). The sequence goes: Click to use FR - (animation starts) pause , RA... TA TA. The first projectile fires after the initial delay, then there is a tiny pause and the last 2 projectiles fire off in a very quick succession. If possible, please try to restore it to the original behavior like Pelting Strikes. It is quite possibly the last thing that remains from my wishlist I checked the vanilla animation and that looks perfectly fine. He draws the bow and after a short pause, release 2 shots in a very quick succession. It even has a different cadence from ranged Pelting Strikes, which fires the first shot immediately and the second shortly after that. There is a bigger pause between the projectiles than for Frenzied Rampage but the total time seems very similar as Pelting Strikes does not have an initial delay and gives the 2 CAs a distinct feel. IMO, just restoring that one would be perfect. Or even better. Just tell me which entries are for which Combat Art and I can probably do it myself. I can see how it works comparing all the 3 files. From what I can see, Pelting Strikes is the ANIM_TYPE_SM02 in the Seraphim section and Frenzied Rampage is ANIM_TYPE_SM07 in the "zenturio" (shadow warrior) section?

Well, I did a couple of tests and for one, using the vanilla animation.txt makes Pelting Strikes and Frenzied Rampage behave as they do in the vanilla (2 shots). This brings me back to the first post I made in this thread. Seeing as animation.txt is responsible, shouldn't it theoretically be somewhat easy to revert back to the original behavior of these 2 CAs by simply changing the corresponding entries to the vanilla definition for those who want to? If anyone knows which entries are ranged Pelting Strikes and Frenzied Rampage, it should be possible to just revert those 2 changes but keep all other fixes intact, correct? Unless some other big change was made to the animation definitions in general, which is quite possible, seeing as the vanilla animation file has 24 MBs and the one from CM/Fix Pack has barely 2.5 MBs. And what I meant by differences in the animation file is this. Example entry 4 from the fix pack: And the same entry from vanilla: Or entry 7. Fix pack: Vanilla entry 7: Or entry 46. From fix pack: And from Vanilla:

Forgot to ask one more thing about this. Is the vanilla s2render.dll the only file needed to properly restore the animation speeds? I noticed the fixpack also includes a different animations.txt script. Should I keep the one from the fixpack or also revert that one to the vanilla? I can't quite remember if it had any effect on that. But just casually looking over the animation definitions for the Seraphim in both files, there seem to be a ton of differences between the two.

Thanks for the thorough explanation. The way it behaved was that the longer the game was running, the more likely it would be to crash. If I visited a crowded city within an hour of loading the game, it would occasionally stutter, but not crash. If I came back to the city after 2 hours of walking around in the wild, it would eventually crash. But besides these very crowded city areas with tons of objects and therefore textures, I had no issues with the normal Elite Textures. I'll probably start with the normal ones and swap to trimmed if it becomes too annoying.

Damn. I got so consumed by playing Sacred 1 that this has escaped my mind almost completely. Was expecting to take a break from Sacred 1 by around the half of January, but alas, addiction runs deep. Incredible to see the amount of work and effort being put into this. Had great fun reading about the findings regarding the Hunting Fever quests. I remember it always starting the counter at seemingly absolutely random points and polluting the quest log from the start. Great to finally know why that was and seeing attempts at fixing it. I will put off my Seraphim Sacred 1 playthrough and dive into this over the weekend. Will be interesting, as I intend to play with the vanilla s2render.dll for the original animation blending speed. Hopefully, everything works OK even if I do that. Will probably fire up a ranged Shadow Warrior or Seraphim to see how it interacts with the changed (massively buffed) ranged versions of Frenzied Rampage and Pelting Strikes. When I was playing with the CM Patch, I remember it causing issues when I swapped to the vanilla renderer.dll file on an existing character. My Seraphim refused to fire the BFG completely but when I made a new one, it worked fine. And one additional question. I'd like to ask about the actual difference between normal Elite Textures and Trimmed. What exactly is "trimmed"? Is there an actual visual difference in game when comparing normal vs trimmed? Or is it just optimization without visible effects? I played the CM Patch with the full Elite Textures, which did result in an occasional crash, but at a frequency low enough that it was acceptable. I just finished a fresh Sacred 2 install from GOG and downloaded the patch and Elite Textures. Will dive into it tomorrow.