chattius

Hard to give a good advice on this one. Light sabres seem to be really rare. You get them best with a level 2 shopper and the higher you are in level the harder they are to find. However in single player (multiplayer campaign?) it seems that solving quests adds to the chance that you get better offers from a shop if you did many quest in same area. My daughters say they use to see light sabres only in Thylysseum (spelling?) after doing nearly all the quests and bargaining being at 2.5+ times the level. Is this the area with the most quests? Knowing that a dryad can be played unarmed, light sabre build should be playable too, if fun and not power is what counts most. Take a really really good amount of time to get a good low level light sabre with a very useful scalable sword modifier and then boost your base damage with damage x-x. If you find high level light sabres be happy and swap the weapons.

Considering that the spidergirls play niob with just exploding RI for group control, I would say yes. For weaponless dryads a double kick with explosions is faster than a spinning kick which does just one hit to enemies near you.

Old post about t-mutant drop chance boosting in SIF Mainly posts 8+11 Some tests with the serafim shopper made considering building an item hunter a good idea - with good boss killing and t-mutant luring. Was cancelled when deciding that our chests are way too full anyway and the character if played in a party would be best party with another character of the same type to lure even more. The base idea: techno-celestial seraphim Life leech from celestial set and perhaps weapon for x% life leech with archangel wrath (dual shot) for fast boss killing Instant Belief to charm a bunch of enemies and lead them to t-energy swamps (mountain between octopus and harbour at main quest) Doing senses for better magical find and perhaps even bargaining to work out a good energy shield

Sorry, wednesday after a long german carneval weekend. 3 days playing tuba at street parades. I think the correct name is raging nimbus and not tempest. Sorry I play the german version.

Background This character was designed for a handicapped boy who plays sacred with my second daughter at the local youth club. He lacks a bit on fine motoric moves and eye to hand coordination. So the idea was to roleplay a warlock who died and was resurrected by his wife, a voodoo priestess. The idea was to teamplay and use auto-targetting combat arts if possible. My daughter played a totem build with alchemy to unlock bargaining. She had time for bargaining when the boy had to rest for a bit. So the planed teamplay was to use skeletal fortifications and totems to spam an area with a hail of arrows. The shadow warrior gives some team protection from his buff while the dryad does party healing while the totem cooldown is active. The character had to be done in a way that even at level 150 on niob there would be still some fun in trying out freshly modified combat arts. On the other side he had to be quite robust, because running away would not always work because of the illness of the player. Playing invisible is not nice in teamplay as is having too much skeletons which may block the movement of the characters. The skills and combat art modifications Lev Mod Arm MCF ALL ALF CNC DWF Shi CDI AMg Con ..5 2 1 5 1 ..8 4 1 8 5 1 .12 6 1 9 12 2 1 .18 11 1 9 18 6 1 9 .25 12 1 9 25 21 1 9 1 .35 12 1 9 35 35 1 9 17 1 .50 12 1 9 50 50 1 9 48 1 1 .65 15 1 9 65 65 1 9 65 1 29 1 .75 19 1 9 75 75 1 9 75 1 49 1 .90 19 50 9 75 75 1 9 75 1 75 1 100 19 75 9 75 75 1 9 75 26 75 1 Lev-Level, Mod number of modifications(see list below), Arm Armour Lore, MCF Malevolent Champion Focus, ALL Astral Lord Lore, ALF Astral Lord Focus, CNC concentration, DWF Death Warrior Focus, Shi Shield lore, CDi Combat discipline, AMg Ancient Magic, Con constitution Reflective Emanation: tough(1), antimagic(2), idol(3) Skeletal Fortification: focus(4), arcane power(5), scatter shot(6) Grim Resilience: fortify(7), readiness(8), reflex(9) Spectral Hand: swiftness(10), chill(11), double attack(12) Rallied Souls: armament(13), vivification(14), contagion (15) Shadow Veil: avoidance(16), nimble(17), shadowmaster(18) Nether Allegiance: sharp blades(19) Attributes All in intelligence combination skeleton fortification, (rallied souls), spectral hand Playstyle The RpH (regeneration per hit) is at 6 seconds and recharges the combination except the cooldown. When the cooldown ist still active (unmodified) frenzied rampage is used with a x% lifeleech shuriken. Which damage can the skeleton fortification do? Skeleton fortification does 5900 damage (without acute mind from the dryad) at level 100 and Combat Art level 50. It has a cooldown of 6 seconds and does 9 doubleshots in 10 seconds (jumped from 8 to 9 at Combat Art level 50). So the theoretical rate of fire at full areas is at 3 towers , 9 double shots in 10 seconds: 3*9*2 in 10 seconds = 5.4 shots a second. You have 4 seconds per tower creation you can fill with other combat arts. At a Combat Art level of 100 it should be a cooldown of 4.3 seconds (4 active) and 1 double shot per second so rate of fire should be 8 shots per second. Ancient magic and combat discipline add to the damage of the fortification and both are at mastery at level 110.

Putting magic in a socket as a damage converter to do the weaken effect depends on the used Combat Art's. If the used Combat Art has an attribute reduction of more than 20% the weaken may block the higher reduction of the Combat Art. If the enemy is least protected to magic the balance is changed a bit towards socketing magic. -chance that enemy can evade x% and chance that enemy cannot evade x% (too lazey to look up english names) The first seems to have a bigger impact against normal mobs. At Bosses the later seems to get better. My guess would be that if an enemy has evade than this evade is reduced by the first. While without evade the enemy gets a negative evasion in the hit formula. The second seems to be added to the hit chance somehow. I would add at least one or two of them, very nice for normal left click attacks. Weapon Combat Art's seem to have a buildin base x attack value which climbs with combat art level. To make best use of base x it should be enhanced by x% attack value. So socketing blacksmith whet may actually work with high Combat Art's cause of RpH. Another idea is to socket base damage: damage x-x and have it boosted by Combat Art, tactics, whetting, ....

Magic coup is nice if you like melee and even in hybrid playstyle. It is a weapon attack so regeneration per hit (if you are on a console or have AddON) will work. This allows to have a spell at a high level and cut down its regeneration time with a weapon hit. You can do some funny builds this way: Frostflare sniper- modify frostflare for area damage, equip yourself with a bow and combine if with magic coup. Frostflare will slow down the enemies so the magic coup shot will more probably hit the slowed monsters and doing a secind explosion. With a bit training and optimnizing the equipment you should be able to kill a group before it reaches you. Tempest/thrower- You stand inside the tempest(s) and throw shurikens at approaching enemies with magic coup Terrorist: you use shadow step modified for invisibility(6 second at higher levels) and explosion and do some spells and magic coup throwing while the enemy can't see you We tried different hybrid playstyles with our shield maiden and the above ones work nice once you get used to them.

Ascaron is no longer and its coders now work for other companies. Some people in the german forum (not ascaron people) work on an inofficial quest patch. Same people who reinstalled the christmas island. They have a prelease for several fixed quests. Link to the german thread: inofficial german quest patch The people who do it posted that they work on it in their spare time and they don't want emails and such. It's in the testing paase still. People with the german version can download it and do some testing for debugging not tested classes. Probably the national variants will have different checksums but editing the quests scripts should be doable once they are tested out

It uses spells for defense: Expulse magic to block magic, shadow step to stay invisble for several seconds late game, nimbus to slow enemies for tactical maneuvres, meteors to stun. The elf doesn't have access to that many defensive skills other races have and she uses 3, not 2: armour lore, shield lore and constitution. This build played well before the AddON, so even without regeneration per hit. The AddOn brought Regeneration per hit so now you can have spells near the malus and don't have to worry about regeneration times cause of RpH, result the AddOn made this character more powerful. In niob: against spells stack several expulse magics against arrows use HIGH level fireskin to burn them, and shield lore pushes your base defense against melee: shield mastery to block and push base defense, fireskin with a high chance to reflect and if that is not enough: you can even get evade from that storm spell Against all: quite high hitpoints and you regain life quickly with life leech from magic coup and GI buff. You have to see a shield master character to see how powerful shield mastery in combination with a yellow shield which has blockchance scaling with shield lore is. Shield lore gets better and better the higher you are in level. Thats the reason the Spidergirl-Dryads worked out shield lore even earlier than the shield maiden. In fact: this build is skill wise like a standard ice elf who offered combat discipline for fire focus. Since combat displine is offensive and all our 3 fire spells are defensive it has a better defense than (most) caster ice elves. And some fun the AddOn brought: You can wield a bow and do a combination of frostflare (modified for Area of Effect) and Magic Coup. You play sniper and fire the combination at long distances. The froistflare slows the enemies so the arrow has a greater chance to hit the moving target and a hit recharges the combination instantly with RpH. The slowed enemies need more time to reach you, so you can do a 2nd combination before they are at your place. 2 times frost flare Area of Effect and DoT, 2 Explosions of magic coup, often enough a whole group is dead before they are at your place. I see you play console, hmmm, don't know if the console's auto targetting allows this playstyle. But the fun of the shieldmaiden is that it allows several different ways to play her.

In the german forum mcgeitner posted some numbers: Gloves with 34,7% poison converting Vendetta is the character quest reward for the Highelf, high natural fire damage no gloves Vendetta nothing socketed damage 370-452 phys. 125-154 Fire 245-298 chance to ignite 38,5% with gloves Vendetta nothing socketed damage 371-455 Phys. 88-109 fire 41-50 poison 242-296 chance to ignite 11% chance to poison 32,5% no gloves Lava socketed damage 368-451 phys. 84-105 fire 284-346 chance to ignite 43,9% with gloves lava socketed damage 371-455 phys. 78 fire 311-377 chance to ignite 47% So watching the part with gloves but no lava. The Physical damage is converted by roughly the 34% of the glove, but the natural fire damage is strange. It dropped way more than 34% but is not totally converted. So my current theory is: Step1: A x% Converter glove converts x% of the physical damage and all of the non physical damage to its damage type. Step2: The weapon damage added by attributes is splitted by the ratio of original damage typed of the weapon Step3: x% damage from buffs and equipment calculation Step4: damage converting from sockets Step5: Combat Art-converting If the numbers are correct I can see 2 uses: defensive Use a weapon with a high natural magical (or ice) damage and wear ice (or magic) converter gloves. So a successful weapon hit can weaken AND slow. offensive Use a weapon with high non physical damage, socket it with the damage type you want and wear any converter glove. The weapon damage will be nearly non physical in the needed damage type. With energy lances with 4 damage types and a glove in the 5th type it should be possible to do all 5 damage types. Hope I can do my own testing at weekend in 10 days.

Before the AddOn the x% damage adding was before any damage type converting. The AddOn brought some changes, but I never played a character in the AddON who had both: damage type socketing and damage type converting glove. But if you say it adds in a single line on a console: What will happen if you have say 70% fire from a lava and 45% fire from a glove. Will it be 115% percent. And would that mean that you turn 100 physical to 115 fire before any x% damage calculation ? Would it be possible to boost your damage on high niob levels this way, once the sum climbs above 100? I hope that I am able to recover my mental powers in a week after carneval season is over here in germany. Currently I suffer a lack of sleep, not from celebrating but from all the car crashes after the parties.

Deathblow shouldn't work on x% life leech. The fact that you see bigger life leech to begin of a battle: Weaken and deep wounds both reduce the maximal hitpoints of an enemy. And since x% lifeleech is calculated from the maximal hitpoints, which are lower for a while because of the above effects, it does less damage. Weaken is 20% reduction of attributes, deep wound 8% reduction on enemy max life. The life seen is the ratio between actual hitpoints and maximal hitpoints. If an effect which reduced maximal hitpoints wears off the ratio changes: it has suddenly more max hitpoints at same health. This is perhaps a reason to what you have seen. But normal damage boosted up by deathblow can have a big impact too if it is done in a damage type not resisted by the enemy.

Damage type calculations changed a bit in the AddOn, so that you can now have physical and more than one not physical type on an attack. So I wondered where the gloves with damage type changing will fit into the formula. 1. 2. natural weapon damage types 3. 4. adding percentual damage modifiers depending on the damage types 5. 6. damage type changing from socket in a weapon 7. 8. damage modifying done by a combat art ( for example magic coup) 9. Somewhere in this formula the gloves should fit in, but where and how? Is it in position 1, 3, 5, 7, or 9. I am planing a Kungfu Inquisitor and in difference to a Kungfu Dryad he can use gloves. The question arising was: how to modify Purifying Chastisement. If I modify the Ruthless Mutilation for smolder and fire damage and wearing a physical to magic glove, what would be best modifying for the Buff: more fire or more magical damage? If the gloves apply in position 1 or 3 than a glove with changing to fire would win from fireskin and fire demon if being an elf, or Purifying Chastisement modifying for fire.... Lots of thoughts, and no time to play till the carneval season is over.

Well if I look at my builds, all are more or less a hit and an explosion: elf: self recharging magic coup sohei: normal hit to recharge mind strike which explodes seraphim: self recharging archangel wrath with a polearm at close distance with 2 exploding shots Temple Guardian: normal knife attack to recharge deadly spears dryad: spidergirl build has exploding RI's .... For recharging a spell I think RI might be best: faster Animation.

No easy answer: It has many many variables. Do you play hybrid and want the weapon hit to recharge your main spells with RpH (regeneration per hit). In this case a weapon miss would mean that you can't use your spell right again. Do you play a class which has no weapon Combat Art's? Do you need something unlocked on a weapon you really really want? Most of my new characters (after AddOn) don't use a weapon skill anymore except two: My Sohei-dragon mage: The Sohei (see dragon mage guide section) is a mentalist who recharges mind strikes with his polearm. To spam the mind strikes I need a high hit chance and so I gave him a weapon skill. My deadly spears Temple Guardian (Dampfläufer, on Temple Guardian board): he/she or it uses knives to recharge deadly spears. Knife normal attacks have fastest animations. The Temple Guardian weapon Combat Art have a terrible long animation which is slowing down my spamming of deadly spears. So I use normal knife attacks to recharge deadly spears. I look for knives which have -enemy chance to evade scaling with sword skill. So I don't need to socket hit chance jewelry at higher levels. Why do my other characters have no weapon skill: Hit Chance arguement Most weapon Combat Art's have a base x attack values which scales with the combat art level. So if I play a build based on RpH I have Combat Art's near the malus and therefor a quite high hit chance, even without a weapon skill. (See Spidergirls in dryad guide section: they play melee without a weapon skill) Attack speed Several classes have Combat Art's which boost attack speed for a while: acute mind, ... . Also you can socket attack speed. Unlocked modifiers Most uniques single hand weapons have no modifier which has to be unlocked. Free choice of weapons: Since the hit chance is optimized to hit without a weapon skill: it dosn't matter for these characters which weapon is used to hit. You can neither say no or yes if you generally ask if a weapon skill is useful.

Regeneration per Hit 2seconds means that each time you do a hit with a weapon that the regeneration time -not the cooldown- of a regenerating combat art is cut down by 2 seconds. It will not affect the cooldown which starts after the regeneration part is done. Buf if you modify totem for less cooldown it will have less and less cooldown while its regeneration climbs up with each combat art level. You won't be able to do a totem each 3 seconds, but you can do high level totems quite fast because you can more or less ignore the regeneration part. Regeneration per Hit is working on the consoles.

My first sacred2 character more than a year back on PC was a melee elf and I was puzzled when I suddenly saw 'extra damage 1' lines. I think in the old PC patch it was something like how many 'x times thousand' life leech damage you did. I was doing fixed life leech but magic coup at its malus, so the fixed life leech resulted in 'extra damage 1' once it was above 1000. Other player got the extra damage lines only when fighting bosses, the answer was they did x% life leech which climbs above 1000 mainly at bosses. Patch 2.40 was the one which brought exact life leech numbers I think. Life leech was working nicely all the patches, just the displayed lines were confusing sometimes. So you have old Life leech lines on console, but you had mana leech (regeneration per hit) full functioning from beginning. We have no consoles at home and only a 4800baud internet access. And the consoles I watched at a shop couldn't be updated with an usb-stick. Not touching a console ever, thats why I hesitate to post console stuff normally. But this 'extra damage 1' rang a phone in my head: I was the only player who had a build designed on really high 'fixed life leech' in the german forum and so I was quite alone with my question post scriptum: I am not really sure if the console is the same as PC pre patch 2.40. But seeing no extra damage lines at low levels even with a x% life leech weapon could explain it, below 1000 life leech it is not displayed. You console people should do simple tests: Kill a boss, watch his hitpoints in last kill , look at your x% leech and do some maths what x% leech are from the hitpoints of the boss. If you do 1% leech at a 100000hp boss life leech should be 1000 and displayed as extra damage 1, at a 200001hp boss with same 1% leech it should be displayed as extra damage 2. I am not really sure if it is x times thousand life leech. I stopped my maths and testing when 2.40 came out.

Detheya gives 3.5& Ll. A doublekick is at 7%. So maximal 14-15 Twisted Torment/ Ravaged Impact combinations would be needed to kill each boss. I think there are around 7 twisted torments stacked in average currently at level 105 niob before a boss drops. The build is close to the point that the whole combat is done in the duration of one dust devil for spell block and one acute mind to speed unarmed (which has no weapon skill) and casting speed (spider build has no voodoo lore). A boss fight starts for me with: Tangled Vine/RI to hold the enemy at place, reduce its attack speed, no damage modification on TV dustdevil/RI to give some spell block and evade acute mind/RI to speed up spamming the headhunting combination (AM is not modified for intelligence) and then repeating Twisted Torment/RI If a character has no detheya using a life leech weapon should do the same trick. I haven't tried yet to kill with only twisted torment and no x% life leech. The build has only the first 2 modifiers in twisted torment yet, has no voodoo lore and no ancient magic.

For the spidergirls ravaged impact is at RpH and twisted torment at double RpH. RpH is at 3.x seconds. Weaponless you do a doublekick. So you get 2 times RpH from one RI for twisted torment versus bosses in general. In normal combat it may happen that the first kick already kills an enemy which was damaged already from an explosion. So you want ravaged impact recharge for the next enemy with just one kick. The used shrunken head has 1.7 seconds RpH on it already. Niob heads can add a nice RpH or deathblow value if you are lucky. So at start do the scorpion, and put the scorpion head back into chest and get one with good modifiers if you only need the ghost pet.

It seems to stack damage and head chance. For headhunting I get best results if I use it at high levels and recharge it with regeneration per hit from a life leech shuriken.

The level of the head is only for its use as armour. High level heads have higher modifiers on them. For the whole rest: its only the type and colour what matters.

This guide was written before the AddOn. Things which have changed for PC-Players with the AddON: Deathblow is no longer for spells. Regeneration per Hit (RpH) is working now. Acute Mind and staff combat got nerved a bit. So one idea could be to do more totems at a slightly lower damage. Adding hunting focus as Oddi asked and use shurikens from inside a dustdevil modified for spell block and radius. The regeneration times of the Totem won't matter much if you socket RpH and you can keep the totem at its malus once you have enough regeneration per hit. The hunter buff is best modified for hit chance. Add a few -enemy chance to evade rings to counter the lack of a weapon skill. The next steps: Without nature lore the nature spells won't do much damage. So modify tangled vine not for damage but for defense purpose: radius and slowing enemy attacks. Kep the regeneration time of tangled vine below 3-4 times RpH. Acute mind is discussable if you modify it for intelligence or not. I have no experience how much intelligence it will give without the lore. And against Bosses the life leech shurikens will add a big amount on damage. So damage boosted Totems are not needed in boss fights. Once your RpH is around 3 Seconds you should be able to keep your buffs at their malus and recharge your totem with a few shuriken hits. I would choose the old-classical regeneration system if you play the AddOn. For head hunting: you need only twisted torment modified for it. Don't modify your ghost pet for head hunting. Make a combination with torment and ravaged impact and your life leech shuriken will recharge the combination, as long ypour twisted torment regenration time is below your RpH. This way you can stack several twisted torments and add their chances to get a head.

Yes weaken seems a fixed 20% attribute reduction. Damage lore mastery is said to add nothing. Given that deep wounds are now only 8% hitpoint loss and don't stack anymore: weaken seems to be better than deep wounds. I wonder how a combination of both is calculated: weaken and deep wounds together.

Background I recently used an old necromancer-build which I did short before the AddOn for a challenge again. I had to play a underworld-inquisitor who was not allowed to use a weapon lore or a magical lore other than the netherworld one. Since tactics are the lore for inquisition they were of limits. So the build was straight forward: 2 inquisition focus (to unlock astute supremacy focus) 3 armour 5 damage lore 8 speed lore (I wanted unarmed hits for RpH, Regeneration per Hit) 12 astute supremacy focus (for buff only) 18 concentration Up to this it was a melee build, just to reach a level when underworld spells would have useful regeneration times. 25 netherworld lore 35 netherworld focus 50 ancient magic 65 constitution I stopped the character when the AddOn didn't allow to use Inexorable Subjugation in begin of a combination anymore. With the discussions about Kungfu-Characters raising up I recycled the old character to do some tests. And one single item proved to be really useful: Weaken I equipped the character with gloves which turned damage to magical. Even damage lore mastery doesn't boost the weakening effect the 20% attribut decrease is something which shouldn't be ignored. Less enemy constitution: 20 percent less hitpoints is like raising your damage. If you need 5 strikes with 2000+ damage to kill a 9000hp beast you will need only 4 to kill a weakened 7200hp target, maybe even deathblow kicks in earlier. Less enemy strength: the enemy is less likely to hit you, and if he does , it will be for less damage less enemy dexterity: you have a higher chance to hit your enemy .... So weaken will give you damage, protection and hit chance. Compared to the other damage types: ice: reduced run and attack speed- mainly for better protection fire: damage over time. But to make the DoT ticks sum up to a full weapon hit it will take longer than 4 hits, so weaken kills quicker in a no boss scenario. poison: the same Of cause enemy resistances are a big part in the calculation but against not magical armoured enemies weaken shines. And its not only for sockets: The dragon mage has a mind strike which does more damage the more armour the opponent has. Doing a maelstrom reduces the damage of the mind strike. But the weakening effect of maelstrom turns the calculation, so that a maelstrom/mind strike will do more damage than the mind strike. It's somehow funny I was socketing mainly different damage types into my weapon slots for a long time and only looking for the enemies resistances to make a proper choice. But playing unarmed and having to find good damage changing gloves I put some more thoughts in what to socket for my other characters. My inquisitor test character from above is doing magical circle-kicks to weaken surrounding enemies so that he is less likely to be hit while he gathers enemies for the explosion of Dislodged Spirit. And the surrounding enemies have less hitpoints to survive the explosion. What are your tricks with the different damage types?

Hmmm, ask one with an old patch who plays a dryad with dual wield to equip a staff in left hand and sword in the right to report damage with and without acute mind. Then do staff in right and sword in left and repeat the test. If the bonus applies then acute mind should boost up sword damage noticable this way, or?