idbeholdME

I assume most of the relevant Disarming stuff drops from various bosses and "one of a kind" enemies you can encounter in the game. I remember reading only about one specific Unique item. The Tree Rage. From what people were saying in the thread, it sounded like it would require disarming a certain boss, but I actually got 2 Tree Rages already on my Gladiator. One dropped from a Dragon and one dropped from a random enemy I think. So that one is probably not Disarming exclusive. Yeah, I momentarily tried Disarming in the early stages of my Gladiator but once I noticed that the chance goes down every level, I loaded a save a couple levels back and got Agility instead of it.

I remember reading up on the skill when I was first starting, but it seemed most of the Disarming exclusives were just some white items. Or are there any notable uniques or usable items that drop only through Disarming? And either way, the Battle Mage seems better for disarming than the skill itself.

Another piece of information not mentioned anywhere in the usual sources (like the wiki). This sounds like a particularly bad side effect of the skill. Will probably mean I'll never pick it.

Well, on my Gladiator, Agility and Parrying together give a total of like 800% bonus to defense with mostly just item skill bonuses (although I sadly did spend about 30 hard skill points on them near the beginning), which is worth 40 additional Heroic Courage levels of defense. So a pretty decent chunk and if it helps bring an enemy hit chance from 18% to 16%, it is definitely worth it. But a Gladiator can take those because he is really not demanding when it comes to skill choices. So it is just a little extra on top as there are no other skills to really pick. But yeah, after having experienced the late game with the Gladiator and seeing that a defense of at least 50-60K is needed to be relevant, there is no way that Agility or Parrying alone will help there. I will go for Meditation instead of Parrying on my Seraphim. She is quite hungry for skill slots as is (already had to leave out Trading). Very glad I made a Glad (pun intended ) as my first character so I could gather all the intel for future characters.

Just sharing my experience. So first, when googling it, this is the first thing that comes up http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred:Csaszar's_Guide_to_find_the_famous_ICON_set While that method would probably work it seems extremely time consuming and aimed at multiplayer, so not really helpful for solo players. I've found that the best method for single player is through quest rewards. Not multiplayer, not LAN, because you have to be able to save and load repeatedly. The way it works is that when you complete a quest, it increases the chance for the next quest to reward a set item, if you did not get one from the quest you just turned in. While I only got 3 Icons in hundreds of hours on the Gladiator (think I got 2 from quests and 1 from a drop), within a couple hours of playing my Seraphim, I got 2 Dragon Statues, 1 Dark Elf Statue and 1 Grail. I got very lucky there, since my Gladiator got the other 3. The basic principle is that you stack up your chance for a set item from a quest and then save right before turning one in and reload until you get what you want. The chance seems to be capped as I didn't notice much of a difference between 5 and 10 completed quests. The maximum chance seems to be at about 5 or 6 completed quests. Which by a rough guess from observation seems about a 25% chance that the next quest will give you a set item. So: 1) Complete any 5 quests, making sure that you do NOT get a set item from any of them (save/reload as needed). Because if you do, it resets the chance for the set item. The goal is to stack the chance as high as possible for the most efficient farming. 2) Do another quest but before turning it in, save. Then proceed to turn in and reload until you get what you want. Also, it might be optimal to do this at very low levels in Bronze. Just rush several quests and then keep spam turning in the 6th or 7th one until you strike gold. The benefit of this method is obviously that every time the quest gives a set item (which happens pretty often when fully stacked), there is a chance to get an Icons part. Much more consistent than just farming enemies. It might get tedious, but it's the fastest method I've found of target farming the set. Once you gather the full set, just save it into a LAN game and bam. All of your future characters have access to the full set. Can't wait to try this on my Gladiator. It should definitely speed up the XP farming using Split.

Specifically the defense rating and the 2 skills that increase it, Agility and Parrying. I am starting to think that they are mostly useless on higher difficulties. Attack can be increased in many more ways (mainly CAs) but defense is quite hard to get to relevant levels unless the character has a CA that boosts it. I have a level 170 Gladiator in Niobium with both Agility and Parrying (the better shield bonus), but his defense rating is still quite disappointing in Niobium anyway. Sitting at 8937 without HC on, enemies have about a 55-57% chance to hit. With HC, the defense goes up to 66152 and the chance to get hit goes down to about 17% chance with Heroic Courage on, a much more reasonable level where enemies regularly miss with normal attacks (although the few that use melee CAs still hit uncomfortably often, like a Hell Golem Warrior with it's 3 swing Attack which usually hits me at least twice anyway). Now the main reason I'm asking for others' opinion is: I have started a hybrid Seraphim and was thinking whether taking Parrying is worth it or not. As she lacks any CA that boosts defense, I'm getting the feeling that it won't be worth it in the end anyway. Yes, it will definitely help in Silver, Gold and might be somewhat relevant in Plat still, but if it brings the enemy hit chance in Niobium from 70% to 62%, is it really worth it? I was thinking about taking Mediation instead of it. Yes, I know that Meditation stacks unfavorably with Regeneration Spells on Items, but I feel like it's gonna give a greater benefit in the end than Parrying. I'm gonna be getting hit most of the time anyway and Parrying is gonna cut down a couple of % at best on its own, especially without the shield bonus. My plan for the seraphim was: 1. Weapon Lore (starts with it) 2. Magic Lore (starts with it) 3. Constitution 4. Heavenly Magic 5. Concentration 6. Armor Lore these 6 are pretty much set in stone. Then I was planning: 7. Parrying, but the more I think about it, the more I am leaning towards Meditation. Even despite the unfavorable stacking with Regeneration Spells, it will still end up being worth like 2 or 3 items with Regen Spells on them. Which honestly seems better than a couple % lower enemy hit chance. 8. Probably a weapon type lore. Most likely to be Long-handled Weapons. Not interested in Riding and want to make a character without Trading. My Glad already has it and I'm planning a Dwarf Blacksmither/Trader. But that is besides the point. The main question is: Is a defense rating related skill (Agility/Parrying) worth it if I plan to bring a character all the way to Niobium? Would you take it over Meditation?

As all the other skills still work past 255, despite not showing higher numbers, I assume Trading also still has an effect? I've just recently breached 255 with my level 169 Gladiator and I assume it still improves traders past that 255, correct? Just wanted to make sure as you can't really tell with Trading as it doesn't show any numbers at all.

Very important info regarding the limit on spell damage. I was toying around with the idea of starting a pure spellcasting Seraphim. Will stick to the original Hybrid idea then :/ An update on the enemy damage reduction. Reached level 169, did some shopping, upgraded my damage etc. Enemies still haven't moved from their levels (still in the ~190 range). Adding screenshots with my current stats against a level 189 HGW. At this moment, a non-critical hit deals anywhere between 100K-123K. The damage dealt has climbed to about 14% of the listed one. Could the cause be, that the resistance x damage formula takes into account ONLY the base damage of the "Weapon" attack damage of the weapon before using the CA multiplier bonus? Calculating the resistance damage reduction based off of that and then applying that to the final, CA multiplied damage? It is the only reason I can think of it behaving this way. So first doing the damage reduction calculation and only then multiplying the damage resulting from that calculation with the CA bonus %. Meaning that the listed damage of CAs is mostly irrelevant (e.g. only listing the potential maximum if the enemy had 0 resistances). I did add some rings that increased the base damage (attribute dealt as damage), which could explain the climb from 10% to 14%. Because only this base damage plays a role in the damage x resistance formula. Cereborpods now take about 62K damage, which is about 7,75% of the listed damage, up from 5%. Which proportionally corresponds to the damage increase with the HGW. I am fairly certain that this is the cause of the huge discrepancy. Either that, or the enemy resistances are multiplied by some hidden modifier (unlikely as the multiplier would have to be massive to reach these damage reduction numbers). Which should in practice mean, that you should always prioritize flat damage increases over % bonuses, because only the flat part is used against enemy resistances, and the result reduces the total CA multiplied damage. A normal attack (31K damage on average), deals about 4.3K to a HGW, once again, exactly about 14% of the listed damage, which reveals how it really works.. The enemy damage reduction from resistances is calculated based off the damage listed for the base Weapon attack, and the result is then applied to every weapon based Combat Art. Which in my case, having the damage types quite splintered, comes out at a total of 86% damage reduction for the HGW. This makes enemy resistances matter much more than I had originally thought. Seems I'm gonna have to re-focus my gear to only one damage type. Guess I still have some shopping to do. TLDR: Weapon based CAs first do a normal hit and then multiply the damage resulting from that by their stated %. They do NOT deal the damage listed in the character sheet. That damage would only be dealt if the enemy had zero resistances.

It's Armor Glow. Happens when you stack enough items with a specific resist and/or damage type. If you check your active set bonuses, it will say "+15% to X Resist". Depending on the element, the effect will have the specific color. Multiple glows can be present at the same time, creating other hues. Details here: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred:Armor_glow

I am already running around with 67% bonus XP per kill, so permanently more than if I had a Mentor Potion. 117% bonus with a Mentor Potion. I am already wearing a pretty low damage Unique Weapon just because it has a 44% bonus XP per kill. Yet as I continue levelling up, I am absolutely not looking forward to the prospect of having to run around in Valley of Tears for 4 hours straight just to go from level 213 to 214....

So, I hated this thing in Sacred 2 and it seems that unfortunately, it's in this game too. Been noticing it a lot while grinding levels in Valley of Tears. Just hit 160 and the XP gained from the same enemies drops noticeably on every levelup. With my gear and a mentor pot, a Sakkara Demon was giving about 80K XP at one level and on the next, it dropped to 78.5K. And it keeps dropping by about 1.5K every level. That combined with the ever increasing XP requirements will probably mean I will not be bringing my character to the level cap as I had originally planned. Is the table on this page accurate? http://pctalk.info/Games/Sacred2/Wolfes.Lair/SacredUnderworld/Pages/GameBasics-ExpGuide.html I assume it applies to Niobium difficulty too. Char. Level/experience. Gained 100 / 100% 110 / 83% 120 / 72% 130 / 50% 140 / 42% 150 / 35% 160 / 28% 170 / 22% 180 / 19% 190 / 15% 200 / 12% 210 / 9% The thought that on level 210, I'll be gaining about a third of the XP I'm currently getting on level 160 is truly discouraging. I'll keep going for now, but expect the levelling speed to reach unbearable levels quite soon, and that is with me wearing a 67% bonus XP from monsters. I remember reducing the high-level penalty in Sacred 2 at some point (was easy enough, just editing one of the .txt script files). Not fully removing it, but just making the drop less severe. Unfortunately, the files of Sacred 1 are not that easily moddable. Is it doable in some easy way, or is it hardcoded somewhere? I'd like to fiddle a bit with the numbers to find something that makes reasonable sense for single player.

This page claims that too: http://pctalk.info/Games/Sacred2/Wolfes.Lair/SacredUnderworld/Pages/GameBasics-ExpGuide.html I'd assume it's true, but can't say for certain. With exploring as much of the map as possible, without resorting to glitches, out of bounds areas or means not all characters have access to, I ended up with 59.43% on my Gladiator after somewhat diligently exploring the maps (wall hugging most of the time in all areas) in the base game and Underworld, including secret areas. Although not sure if it is a direct XP increase (as in 59.43% map explored = 59.43% more XP) or if it is only some portion of that like it is with Map Discovered and Magic Find in Sacred 2.

Interesting. I'm currently sitting at 95% and any unforeseen incidents so far have been saved by this. It helps that the enemies stop attacking you as long as the effect remains above your head. So the higher the SB, the less of a cooldown it has? Or is it just a higher chance?

Thanks for the vid. I'm playing a Gladiator. My gear is far from optimal and I am far from the listed damage in the video (currently sitting at about half a million listed damage), but I was just surprised by the huge difference between listed damage and the actual damage dealt. Videos like these are cool to watch, but it has to be said that 99.5% of the players, if not more, will never reach that point. Hell, I'm at level 160 with 67% bonus XP from kill and levelling has been slowing down quite a bit anyway. I also don't really dupe items, so I won't ever have 8 copies of the same ring available without playing for thousands of hours :P. I don't know if the vastly reduced amount of damage enemies are taking is due to resistances or something else, but it has to have a reason. If it is because of the resistances, than the statement should be "resistances don't matter in the hyper-uber, perfect gear lategame" and not a genereal statement. Yeah, I'm not really looking into the berserk playstyle. About Cerebropods, I've tried running around with some spell resistance and it did nothing. Even now, I'm running around with 44 (31%) SR and every time a Cerebropod hits me before I land with Stomping Jump, it means a couple of seconds of kiting 100% of the time. And yes. It almost seems like different enemies have some inherent % damage reduction stat or something that does not show in the resistances. As I said, a Shadow Guard in Valley of Tears takes over 100K on the regular. HGW takes around 40K, Cerebropod about 20K. One of the variants of the Shadow Guard (Fervent) takes even slightly less damage than a HGW, while other Shadow Guards take 100K+. All enemies with similar-ish resistances, yet taking wildly different amounts of damage. I am still fighting enemies 30+ levels above my character level. Will se what happens once I get within the normal Survival Bonus range (18-20). And one last thing on a different note. There seems to be a death failsafe. Every so often, I can get Cerebropoded and immobilized by a Shadow Guard. Enemies swarm me, bring my HP to 0, but I still live for a couple of seconds. I have a "stun" effect above my character and can still drink potions/retreat to safety. If enemies bring my HP to 0 again shortly after that, then I die. It was the same with Anducar. His spikes pretty much one shot me when I was there on Silver, but could kill him thanks to this mechanic. How does it work exactly?

I can see that in the vid, but from what I'm seeing in my game, (enemies taking 90-95% less damage than they are supposed to), that state doesn't seem achievable in an unmodded game. I will continue levelling and monitor how it progresses. Just dinged 156.

I'm not really well versed with mods as I've been playing pure vanilla, so not really sure what to take out of that vid. I'll continue levelling and check back once my hard hit has about a million listed damage. My gear is definitely far from optimized (especially the weapon), but it still seems weird that a HGW takes barely 10% out of my listed damage. Also, a level 186 Cerebropod with 18.6K total resistance takes even less than a HGW. About 23K or so, meaning about 5% of my listed damage (464K-595K) on a non-critical hit. There must be some other factor at play besides damage vs resistance.

Wow, that's actually exactly it. The number of damage instances = 1 + the number of enemies within the stun radius. Just tried it and it checks out. Lone enemies only take the damage once and when there are say 3 enemies around the main one, it takes the damage 4 times. Had no idea it worked that way until now That might actually be a reason to level up Stomping Jump a bit more to increase the stun radius. This CA has already been top tier with the guaranteed stun on pretty much anything, mobility and the ability to ignore immobilizing spells, but this bumps it up even further.

As per the edit in the initial post, the stun duration seems to have settled at about 5 seconds (did not change from Platinum). Also, the CA level seems to increase the stun range. Currently using Stomping Jump spam to farm Valley of Tears on Niobium (the only way to fight Cerebropods is to perma-stun them). This made me revive the thread because I have an additional question about this CA. Is it normal, that Stomping Jump usually does its damage multiple times? Sometimes it hits enemies once, sometimes twice and sometimes even like 5 or 6 times. Seems that the bigger the enemy is, the higher the chance of multiple damage procs. Just asking if that was always the case or something is buggy in my game.

Coming back to this, mainly to ask, whether the level difference between a character and an enemy plays a role in the damage calculation. Because I'm at level 155, my Hard Hit has 464K-595K (260K-312K Physical, 147K-200K Fire, 44K-68K Magical, 12K-14K Poison) listed damage and a non-critical hit on a Hell Golem Warrior on Niobium deals about 10% of that listed damage(38-52K). The HGW is level 189 and has 22 327 combined resist, Physical and Magic being the greatest. Also, a non-critical hit on a a Champion Shadow Guard at level 191 with 22 612 (high physical, medium fire and poison, no magical) resistance hits for over 100K regularly. Why do these 2 enemies take so drastically different amounts of damage when they have nearly the same resists? According to some explanations of how resistance and damage works in this game, 22K resistance against hundreds of thousands of damage should have little effect. How is it possible that a HGW only takes 10% of the listed damage? Level difference is the only thing I can think of but if that was the case, the Shadow Guard would also take drastically reduced damage. Honestly makes no sense. Even if it was just the minimum physical damage portion of the Hard Hit damage (260K Physical) and we also assume that the HGW just had 23K Physical resist, according to this: The resulting damage should be reduced by about 9%. 260K/(260K/283K) = 0,919 So even just the physical portion should be doing about 239K damage. Can anyone explain this?

Playing vanilla at the moment and the enemy resistances play a MASSIVE role. Playing a physical/fire Gladiator (about a 60/40 split), the area where Sirithcam is was especially painful as most enemies there take extremely reduced physical and fire damage. Fire trolls in particular are extremely durable compared to anything else in the game. Sirithcam also has main resistances Physical and Fire, which are my main damage types and killing him in Niob was a major pain, Hard Hit with about 270K listed damage hitting him anywhere between 10-40K, depending on crits. So enemy resistances definitely DO matter. As for player resistance, I am not entirely sure there, but I think they do matter, at least for normal enemies. Bosses still chunk me extremely hard (about 11K HP when the dragons are in the 165-170 territory) even though I have 6.5K+ physical resistance at level 135. And if the trend continues, I wouldn't be surprised to see the 17659 damage at the level cap.

Also an additional note. The .exe I provided was from the GOG version of the game. Not sure if Steam's is the same. Just mentioning in case it might cause any issues.

Correct. And it is a raw value, meaning any % bonuses then multiply it. Example: 100 Endurance, this modifier gives you 25 base Magic Resist. If you also have Armor Lore, that gives you 200% bonus to Magic Resist - you would gain a total of 75 Magic Resist from this mod. Same for attribute dealt as damage. 30% Strength dealt as physical damage with 500 Strength would give you 150 additional raw physical damage, which would then get multiplied by Weapon Lore %, Strength damage bonus and Combat Art damage bonus. These item mods are some of the best ways to boost your resistances or damage because there are a ton of things in the game that multiply stuff but not that many things which give a raw static base value.

Thanks a ton! Seems to have fixed it. Tried in the main game on enemies 30 levels higher than me and the normal combat music is playing again and changes between encounters. Haven't tried Underworld yet, but I assume that is fixed too?

Thanks for the history lesson. Had no idea about a potential Amazon class. Funny how this one thing slipped through the cracks. EDIT: Stumbled upon another unused one. This one is called "Servant" and looks like a Demoness rune. Interestingly, it has Spell Resistance +5 instead of the usual +2 on other runes. Now this rune I truly haven't been able to find any information about online. I've just been repeatedly mixing 2 runes to see what all can come up (loading after every try). Wonder how many of these will pop up.

Sure, why not: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wxfmfyg4fxzy2q6/Sacred.exe?dl=0