idbeholdME

Also on topic of bosses, I just realized that Jaftar in the Light Campaign path is also not listed. He is the guy holding the girls hostage in the cellar in Act 2. Now that I think of it, I don't remember him being a boss in the original Sacred 2. @Flix is Jaftar another case of a restored boss? As in, was he in the files but not used?

It was Enhanced Perception. And yes, it's pretty much mandatory, Mastered, to have a decent chance of finding Legendaries. Along with a very high Map Explored % is also very good. 150% gives another 37.5% CtFV. Hich survival bonus is also a given. Optimally, also some gear with CtFV. It is possible to find them without EP, but takes much, much longer. I've had a decent success in vanilla conditions with my Seraphim with Enhanced Perception. You can see the log of my finds here. https://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/72349-my-first-ever-legendary-in-sacred-2-d/ I usually do a full Ancaria run in complete Visibility Range gear right before I start grinding bosses on a character. Getting to 1000-1200% of Visibility Range and running dilligently through the entire map allows you to get up to 150% map explored. But other than that, I usually ignore it. Non-Legendary drops come often enough and bosses that can drop Legendaries have a set position.

I wouldn't say roughly. Inquisitor is painfully slow compared to others on his spider (equal to 130% of his unmounted speed). He can run up to 20% faster on foot and Riding Mastery would mostly just bring him up to par with other characters. Mobiculum on the other hand is equal to a TG on foot with 155% movement speed. Only the Shadow Warrior and Seraphim move 4% slower on foot than the other characters. The numbers are here in the comparison section: https://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Mounts And pardon me, the TG and SW mounts would be 7%, not 5% faster than the HE or DR mounts. Unique mount speed equivalent to the character's on foot movement speed: SW - 60%, but due to him being 4% slower on foot than others, equal to TG TG - 55% HE, DR - 48% SE - 40%. Also quite slow because of the lower base movement speed. More like ~36% when compared to others IN - 30% The wiki does not list Dragon Mage though. Not sure where one would datamine these values. Where the characters move roughly at the same speeds are normal horses, but who rides those anyway

Just mastered Riding and it's quite a difference. The bump from 148% movement sped to 169% (Riding at level 103, +21% MS) is pretty noticeable. The camera has to work overtime to keep up :D. And it will keep increasing as I find and equip more and better All Skill bonuses. Might very well end up somewhere in 175-180% territory. I've never zoomed around this fast in Sacred 2 And it could even be 5% more if it was a TG or SW (they have the fastest mounts in the game). Also, the answer to the question of whether the mount speed bonus is additive or multiplicative - it's additive. So all mounts receive the same bonus, but slower mounts benefit from the Mastery bonus more noticeably (higher relative increase). Overall, it's a usable skill that provides a very nice QoL increase. Still a completely wasted skill in caves (I treat mounts by the vanilla rules) but definitely not on the same tier of bad like Divine Devotion or Speed Lore.

Ah, OK. So probably remove him from the boss list and just keep the page then? Probably not even worth moving him to the CM Bosses section if he is not used in the CM Patch. Or create a section named "Other bosses" or something? Could also add the restored T-Energy Dragon to the CM Bosses section as that one is present in both the CM Patch and PFP. Will also add a note on Harrad's page that it's a restored enemy. Been too long since I played vanilla EDIT: Moved him to the "Other bosses" section and added a note that he was present in the vanilla files but never used and that some mods restore him. Also added the Mutated Dragon to the Community Patch Bosses as he is present there since version 1.60. He was also in the vanilla files but unused (that I remember for sure, unlike with Harrad) but the dragon's page only mentions that he's in Diablo 2 Fallen. I did not take the liberty to edit any info on that page for that reason.

Just created a page for the forgotten Du'Rach Commander Harrad'smit. https://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Du'Rach_Commander_Harrad'smit He was not noted anywhere on the wiki so created the page from scratch, using the same template as the other quest bosses and pictures I just took. Also added him to the boss list here: https://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Boss Wasn't quite sure whether to put him into the Quest Boss section or Mini Boss section, but ended up putting him ino the Quest Boss one. Can be moved wherever. Tried to keep the same format, but couldn't figure out how to exactly make the images the same size as for the other bosses. If anyone knows, you can have a go at it. And one last thing, the links for the "See XYZ's location on the SacredWiki map" all throw a 404 now. I assume it's just a matter of updating the URL? It currently links to http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php5/Sacred_2:Map_of_Ancaria. I assume that is an old link? I could probably update the links on the bosses' pages to the currently functioning one: https://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Map_of_Ancaria

Garganthropod has a strange behavior quirk when attacked from range. He works perfectly fine when engaged in melee, but when at range, he has a proclivity to enter this idle/taunt animation. When hit with any form of damage from range, the animation will reset. As long as you keep hitting him at range before this animation completes, you can pretty much lock him in place harmlessly. Once you get close enough or you let him finish the animation (not hitting him for its full duration), he will resume moving and attacking normally. The only thing he sometimes manages to do when stuck like this is summon the Scorpions. I tried looking into his behavior.txt definition: He is the only creature in the game that uses the "moveprob" parameter in its behavior. Could that be the cause? Or is the behavior.txt even relevant and is AI just hardcoded somewhere? EDIT: Here is a video demonstrating what I mean: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wmq1weuxlxtzm7f/Sacred 2 - Ice %26 Blood 2023-07-12 18-27-20.mp4?dl=0

Yeah, I just fought the Gar'Colossus in Gold and hitting him with Glacial Thorns, I saw 4 different numbers show up when hitting him. 1. Regular hit, passed the SR check. 2. Critical hit, passed the SR check. 3. Regular hit, did not pass the SR check 4. Critical hit, did not pass the SR check So a level 74 Gold Gar'Colossus had enough Spell Resistance so that a decent number of my Thorns did reduced damage with Spell Intensity of a little over 600 on a level 65 character. By late game Niob, if you want to have a decent chance of winning this check against bosses, you should aim for well over 2000 Spell Intensity. For anything else, much less is needed. Spells that do not pass the check will deal 30% less damage baseline and also make it so that any enemy armor is much more effective. If the enemy has a decent amount of it against the element of the spell, you can expect even larger drops in damage. As for PVP, note that any built-in spell DoTs, like Frost Flare or Blazing Tempest are not affected by this, they can only be reduced by damage mitigation or detrimental effect reduction. So it could be that if you were testing with those, you did not see a difference. Also, there is this line in balance.txt: AdjustPvPFactor = 200, which most likely means that PVP damage is only 20% of regular damage. If the characters also had Pacifism, Toughness etc., I can see early level characters having trouble dealing a lot of damage to each other. Life Leech would indeed not be affected by this scaling.

Decided to take the build through Silver, to feel it out. Also kind of liked the prospect of making a caster without Ancient Magic to really see if it's important. There have been 2 major obstacles. Namely 2 boss fights, one side and one main: Du'Rach Commander Harrad'Smit - he has 100% Ice damage mitigation. Had to chip him down with the physical portion of Glacial Thorns and Cobalt Strike. Facetelleon - has around 85% Ice damage mitigation. But as it's a T-Energy Creature, Cobalt Strike brought him down relatively fast. And minor annoyances: Skeletons - those in the Swamp all have 30% Ice damage Mitigation, the Elites have 40%. Ice Elementals - they have about 60% Ice damage Mitigation but are generally quite fragile (low HP). A combination of Frost Flare and Cobalt Strike still takes them down relatively fast. Elites can be shotgunned with Glacial Thorns. Raging Nimbus for groups is pretty good too as it does mostly Physical damage.

Oh, it has the mount/dismount animations that a thread recently showed up about on the forum. Have they been cut before release or broken by some patch? Can't really remember if they were there from when I played Fallen Angel.

Spell Intensity only increases the likelihood of the spell passing the SI vs SR check. It works like attack x defense for spells. If you fail that check against an enemy, your spell will do 30% less damage before any other calculations. Picking Focalize on Crystal Skin makes it so that the intensity you get from Intelligence is enough for everything and you don't have to gear for it at all. Can free up some slots. Also note that the Feel Cold mod has a limited range. Enemies won't be affected by it if you are casting spells from max range. It will boost damage a lot, especially if you level Crystal Skin a lot, but can be a quite dangerous playstyle. The range of the Feel Cold mod is 75% of Temple Guardian's level 1 Icy Evanescence/Fiery Ember for comparison AND the enemies have to be in it for a moment to be affected. Chances are that if you're kiting, you will often not benefit from it. Here are a couple demonstration screens of where the range limit is. The demon is heading towards me and I hit it with Frost Flare - it's not taking increased damage from Feel Cold. An inch closer, and it would. You can play around it if you like dangerous playstyles, but can become pretty hairy around bosses, which is where you'd utilize it the most. With smaller enemies, it gets even worse: The Assassin is walking towards me and is still NOT taking increased damage from Feel Cold even at this range. He most likely is in the area of effect, but the delay before it gets applied is at work here. Good luck trying to benefit from it against ranged enemies like fighting a swarm of Fen Fires or a group of small dragons in Niobium Anyway, there are not that many enemies with high spell resistance, besides some exceptions like Scorpions in the Desert. Overkilling your intensity will not do anything besides making your spells always do their listed damage, but having a decent amount so that you can punch through most enemies is still desirable. Bosses also have very high amounts of spell resistance. The main benefit of Willpower (besides increasing shield strength for TG and seraphim) is that it reduces the duration of secondary damage effects, along with boosting your spell resistance. Still not worth putting actual points into on non-energy shield characters. The wound effects from gear only work for weapon attacks. The HE can use it with Magic Coup, but that's about it, besides regular attacks of course. I think that disregard armor also doesn't work on spells, although not a 100% on that one.

Seeing those audio book covers made me realize one thing. Has the High Elf ever appeared in any promo material? Barring the Dragon Mage who was an expansion character, the High Elf never appeared in any cutscenes like the others. Dryad, Temple Guardian, Shadow Warrior and Seraphim appear in the intro cinematic, Inquisitor gets his spotlight in the Sacred 2 Gold Edition trailer, which leaves the High Elf. Does she appear anywhere besides the 2 loading screens?

Another find - Du'Rach Commander Harrad'Smit is COMPLETELY immune to Ice damage (100% Ice damage mitigation). Very interesting as the Desert is generally weak against Ice. He even has 0 Ice armor, just mitigation. Added to the list. Also, Harrad'Smit is not listed among the quest bosses on the wiki: https://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Boss

Funnily enough, I actually gathered the set on my own. I got 3 pieces by regular play and the other 3 by save/loading early game quests (before normal sets can drop) until I got the missing pieces as rewards. But it also was exactly the point where I burnt out on the game a couple years ago. I might come back and do some power-splitting in the Valley with it and grind to level 200. I consider characters that complete Niobium as finished, but I want at least one level 200 character in vanilla just to say that I did it. That is why I power-farmed the Icon set to grind experience, but never actually got around to doing it The Gladiator was my first Sacred 1 character ever so bringing him all the way to the end of Niob was already a big achievement for me. My goal isn't to really reach the state that is in the video, I'd rather roll a different character than grind a thousand hours on the same one.

Interesting. I looked at it more from the perspective of the main quest and why the characters would either want to turn off the Great Machine or take its power, but it is true that the class quests also tell a lot about them. I guess that why I was leaning very slightly towards Shadow with the Dragon Mage. Seeing as he is basically a member of the cult we get to fight in act 5, I don't really see him as a guy who would have the well-being of others high on his priority list. Although it could be a different cult, seeing his starting area being very, very far from most of the world. But the Light character selection blurb for him doesn't really help either I definitely wouldn't budge with the High Elf. Having seen and heard her in the Light version many years after the Shadow one, it just felt... off. The sheer arrogance, condescension and outright toxicity towards others is a perfect fit for her. Shadow all the way Dryad I have played the least of, but from what I could tell from the few of her class quests that I completed, it was indeed just that. Mostly stumbling upon nature related situations and resolving them. Haven't played her in Shadow. But for the sake of balance and the general theme, I put her in Light. The Shadow Temple Guardian definitely is just a merciless machine going for the objective with no remorse. Even his intro text states so. I can see the appeal and if it was just a regular Temple Guardian we got to play as, I would probably have picked Shadow as my canon for him. But I really like the aspect of him having been unearthed after a very long period of inactivity and seeing the state of the world after probably couple thousand years, something inside him flips and he decides to go against his overriding directive (protecting the Machine at all costs). Kind of like breaking his own programming. Yes, he was supposed to guard the Great Machine at any cost, but seeing the jump from when he was buried and reawakened made him realize that status quo is no longer an option. The world is basically dying due to the rampant T-Energy from the Machine. Guess I find the aspect of him coming to this realization with the help of several millenia of "sleep" compared to just brutally following the original mission statement, appealing. Same with realizing the atrocities committed during the Dragon Wars with the dragon poison. And ultimately "killing" both the Demiurge (The Great Machine) and the Mother (The Guardians) so that the Temple Guardians can truly become independent seems like the perfect ending for him. Definitely the most relevant character to the main quest out of the 5 besides the Seraphim/Inquisitor. And with the Shadow Warrior, I guess I mostly found the redemption arc of the Light version a bit too cliché Apparently, the Shadow Warrior did some pretty heinous things in life (even the Light path mentions him being a war criminal), I feel like he would be overjoyed to continue that path with new powers, especially after being ironically given a 2nd chance by the people who de facto executed him, the Elves. But Shadow Shadow Warrior was also the first ever character I played in Sacred 2, so I might be biased

Pretty much all the videos of Sacred 1 out there show insane numbers with builds by power gamers who have the best possible gear and probably thousands of hours on their characters. I've seen some where they show inventories and they are fully decked in 20 copies of the best jewelry piece and BiS armor and weapons at the highest levels. That is basically unachievable for 99% of the players, who are going to be struggling in late game Niob a lot, maybe even sooner. I did too when I arrived in Valley of Tears at about level 150. It got slightly better since then, but I am probably like 1000 hours of grinding away, minimum, from the state in the video, if not more. I can clear entire Niob with the character, but carefully and methodically. I can't even one shot regular enemies in Valley of Tears without a crit, let alone elites and bosses. And that is after updating several pieces of my gear.

Here is a list of characters/alignments that I have played for longer periods of time for context: Seraphim - Light Inquisitor - Shadow Shadow Warrior - Shadow Temple Guardian - Light/Shadow High Elf - Light/Shadow Dryad - Light (shorty, did not finish campaign) Dragon Mage - Shadow (shortly, did not finish campaign As for the canon alignments, here are mine: Light - Seraphim, Dryad, Temple Guardian Shadow - Inquisitor, Shadow Warrior, High Elf Either - Dragon Mage Seraphim and Inquisitor are set so no argument there. Shadow characters: Shadow Warrior. It really feels like he has a reason to seek revenge. Sent on a suicide mission, resurrected for nefarious purposes, denied his final rest... Nobody can blame him for having had enough of it all and deciding to give the world a piece of his mind... and much more. High Elf, I just love how arrogantly toxic she is to everyone and everything with the Shadow alignment. Even with the Light alignment, the snark and arrogance seeps through with some voice lines. She absolutely feels like the type that would desire the ultimate power over everything else. Light characters: It just fits for the Temple Guardian. Being the last "sane" one among his kind, being accidently unearthed after having been buried for Testa knows how long. Having a fresh perspective of the world after such a long time, he realizes the true severity of the situation with T-Energy and the Great Machine having an adverse effect on the world and sets out on one final task to finally lay the Great Machine to rest. And as for the Dryad, I simply can't find a reason for her to be evil. The only thing she could really desire is to save the world and especially the nature, which the T-Energy destroys, mutates and corrupts. With the Dragon Mage, I don't really feel one way or the other with him. But if I had to choose, it'd probably be Shadow. But again, the Dragon Mage is as close to a 50/50 as it can get for me. So how about you? Do you have your own canonic alignments for the classes? Kind of interested in what the general consensus is.

I know the difference between spell CAs and weapon CAs. I brought a Gladiator to late game Niob Underworld, Valley of Tears (a level 169 character vs level 186 or so enemies) and I have had a pretty hard time dealing damage efficiently with weapon based attacks due to the problem I described, that the damage vs enemy resistance is first done on the non Combat Art damage and only then multiplied by the % bonus from the weapon CA. My level 132 Hard Hit tooltip says 783K - 973K damage, but I am only doing ~9% of that to Cerebropods because my base damage is so low and split over multiple types so the enemy resistances are mostly negating it. And that is after I spent a dozen or so hours by hardcore shopping for gear to increase my base damage (% of attribute dealt as damage), it was more like 7% before that. But I did reach a stage where I can 2 shot Hell Golem Warriors (who take about 14% of the listed damage compared to 9%) with regular Hard Hits and being able to one shot them sometimes with a crit. But one shotting stuff like Crerebropods? That is pure dream territory for me and I don't see that changing even if I pump Hard Hit all the way to 255 (which would render it pretty much unusable due to regen time anyway). I have pretty much no idea about other characters (only played a caster Seraphim through Silver). Maybe they have some broken weapon CAs that allow you to one shot the game effortlessly, but I played the Gladiator pretty extensively, and am very, very far from that stage. So unless by "right build" you mean that there is some extremely overpowered CA the other characters have, then that might be it. But here is an example from my Gladiator: Stats of my Hard Hit and normal weapon hit: A higher damage roll of a non-critical hit with Hard Hit on a Cerebropod with its stats: If I doubled my current damage and scored a lucky crit (x2) damage, then I might get close to actually being able to 1-shot it. Maybe.

As for the enemy resistances in vanilla Sacred 1, they are applied to your base damage before any damage modifiers, which is massive. My late-game Niob Gladiator had 783 248-973 603 listed damage on his Hard Hit, yet dealt only about 100 000-123 000 damage to the Hell Golem Warriors on Niobium. About 14% of the listed damage. Reason? Because the HGWs resistances get applied to your base damage. My Gladiator did 27775-34525 damage against the HGWs 22237 resistance. I also had pretty split samage types, same as the HGW has resistances, so the damage was drastically reduced. And only after that does it get multiplied by any damage bonuses. Which resulted in me doing about 14% of the listed damage, because the base damage was reduced to that amount. In Sacred 2, the damage gets applied against enemy resistance after all your damage bonuses, so it's not that big of a deal. But enemy resistances are extremely powerful in Sacred 1 and it's pretty important to focus on one damage type to punch through enemy resistance. My last post here goes into detail: https://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/71919-enemy-resistances-impact/&do=findComment&comment=7135732 I hear people constantly say that it's primitive to become an overpowered god in Sacred 1, but I found that to not be the case, especially when it's your first character. It is somewhat easy in Sacred 2, but Sacred 1, especially Underworld, can be quite tough. And enemies chunk you for like 1/3rd of your health constantly in Niob. Maybe spellcasters have an easier time, but weapon characters require strict gearing to deal effective damage and good piloting to live. I pretty much have to resort to perma-stunning everything in the penultimate Underworld area with Stomping Jump to kill/live efficiently, especially the Cerebropods.

I definitely plan on modding it all the way. I have no need for Magic Coup, so mod points should be available. The radius increase would be a great QoL improvement, allowing for a larger area to fight in while still under the effects. If the banishing power can be pumped high enough with just Delphic Arcania Lore, it might be a wasted mod. The radius increase is a sure bet. But I never played with it, so have no idea what breakpoints/numbers are required for various things.

Oh, I know the patched file fixes it. I just thought that before, these effects were broken completely so was just surprised to see them even though I'm using the original file, as I was expecting them to not exist at all in my game. But it it's just the application of the effect on the main target that was broken. Never realized that.

One thing I noticed. The DoT visual effect from spells does not show up on primary targets, only the secondary ones. Was testing it out with Frost Flare, that has a very small base Area of Effect. Here is an example screen: The Frost Flare was targeted at the Kobold and the Boar was inside the splash radius so it got hit too. Both are taking the ice DoT damage, but only the Boar has the Ice DoT effect on him. I am using the vanilla s2render.dll. IIRC, it has been said earlier in the thread, that this file actually contained the restored DoT visual effects. So I assumed that they would not show up at all in my game, but to my surprise, they apparently do, but only on the secondary targets. Could this behavior be explained somehow?

Oh, right. I see it now. Thanks for pointing it out.

Yeah, it is just a 4th color variant of an existing helmet. The other 3 are used and can be seen in the game. I was just wonderimg what color this unused variant was. And whether anyone has ever seen it. Although, I could probably find that helmet type and then try changing the surfaces of all of them to the unused one to check? A never before seen color variation? I really haven't seen most uniques, especially non-weapons in Sacred 1. Only ever played 1 character to completion. Quickly glancing through the database, there are some incredible pieces. And yes, seeing the name, Helmet of Insanity very likely is a continuation of the Hood of Madness.

I've also been going over all the rarity tier 14 items in blueprint.txt as I'm going to be bumping their weightedprob in drop.txt and stumbled upon this unique Dryad armor piece: I presume it is an unused leftover (as the name implies) and it also only has a bronze and gold socket as its bonuses and nothing else so obviously unfinished. What I'm interested in however, is the itemtype (8605), specifically how it looks. It shares the item model with 3 other helmets, but has it's own surface: ("dr-magic-helmet-var2_n"). So it is obviously a color variation of an existing helmet but can never be seen in the game as the only item it is used by is unfinished/does not drop. Does this surface exist or was it also unfinished? I'd be interested in seeing how it actually looks, if it exists that is. One more question - I couldn't figure out what this was: It is some unique helmet that can drop for every class. I presumed Bunny Ears at first, but this item is actually present in the drop lists, meaning it can drop. I assume that the Bunny Ears can only be gotten from the quest and I can't think of any other piece that all. EDIT: For the 2nd question, after scouring the wiki, I think I know what that item is: https://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Helmet_of_Insanity I had no idea it was an all class unique. I took it for a Seraphim only item because that's the only character I've ever seen it on . Good to know that all the classes have access to what is arguably the best helmet in the game.