deusmurr

One last post for now, finished most of the crystal area on the far northwest, nothing really exciting except huge amounts of enemies, more than I saw anywhere else in the game. Most of them only drop potions though, so figure out which ones for yourself and focus on others. Apparently the highest level anything gets is 221, and all the bosses were 220. That's high enough level to drop a 235 Wayne's Wild Rage, but I didn't see any level 245 The Second Ring (the highest level thing I ever saw) or any 230 Megalcarwen, though 230 Megalcarwen was dropping off level 218 creatures with Mooney's mod. Must have tweaked something, I guess. Also, just to reiterate the power of -Opponent Chance to Evade, I went through the entire game with a single ring with -Evade, and little to no attack, -defense, or anything else, and against level 220 bosses and the guardians I still had 100% chance to hit (96% against Narmul, don't pick at 4%). That's a SINGLE instance of -Evade, -30-40% on a ring. It's *that* powerful, get it, wear it, love it. Think I'm going go see if Sacred 3 is as bad as I've read, oh joy (EDIT: it is, I'm not finishing this nonsense). Hope I was informative and at least mildly entertaining.

Oh boy, the desert! Griffins, sand people, scorpions, scarabs, harpies, spiders, and for some reason, lions (lions DO frequent some parts of the desert, but it still seems so out-of-place that most people would think otherwise). At least the monster variety is back. The northwest side of the desert seems packed with enemies, and lots of champions, would be a great place for grinding experience and loot. The lions in the southwest are the only filthy potion-droppers that I could see, everything else has lewtz. Just kill it all and take its stuff, what does a scorpion need a pair of boots for anyway? IRRELEVANT, your mission in life in to kill everything and take all the stuff. Garganthropod was a joke. I said I was bored, remember? I took off my Leech %, wore the Leech Per Hit stuff, and took off my weapons entirely. I punched him right in the mouth for 7K (with Pelting Strikes spam) until he died. It took a good long while, and he never did much more than snippetysnip with his claws and try to sting with his tail (UNDERGROUND for some reason, how stupid can a scorpion be?) And in the jungle, a VTOL demon? Seriously, what the flying fyou know what? Not even worth the effort of the fantastic four-letter word. Someone would just edit it out of my post anyway. Never mind. Short Story: Dryad Area. Stuff lived; all dead. Joking aside, these areas are getting shorter and shorter, which is probably a good thing. Patience has limits, people. Facetteleon only did twice as much damage with his lightning as the little Fenfire Wisps were, he was only leeching from me for 418 (or was it 481? Pointless either way) and only when I stood right next to him. He didn't seem to do much else. In the Wasteland, the Demons there (NOT the flying demons as I've read, the sickly purplish-gray alien-lookin' thingies) have a percentage-based lifesteal lightning spell as the skeleton mages did in the swamp. Again, 11k unmounted and 16-17k mounted. They also aren't guaranteed to use it, and it has a LONG cooldown when they do. As far as I can tell, if they're going to use it, they open with it and will be dead before they can cast it again so... don't aggro a dozen at once? I read in a few places it was Flying Demons that caused problems, but I been eyein' dem rascals for three zones now and not seen a thing. So far the only real threat I've seen to a Warding build is champion Harpies and Furies (which are just tiny harpies on Christmas Isle) that can debuff. EDIT: OH, the flying demon eyeballs in the far, far southeast area (Bloodwood), and the Draconic Dragonflies, those are the Leech % enemies, and they can use skills every 10 seconds or so. Definitely percentage-based damage, was hitting me for 7-10K and 12-17K (dragonflies and eyeballs) depending on whether I was mounted... so again, not exactly a huge percentage. Just don't aggro a dozen of them and you'll be fine, even if you have 16K life and 3M shielding. Also, in the far northwest area there are crystals that have a % Lifesteal, again the usual damage range. Nonthreatening. Didn't bother screwing with the guardians, just slaughtered them in a couple seconds each (I was more interested in what they could drop). At level 216 (level 200 with 97% survival bonus, don't know how much that affects it but there you go), they were high enough level to drop stuff like a 230 Kira's Wall and some 225 set items, but *not* high enough level to drop the 230 Megalcarwen's stuff (or the 230 Sword of Rebellion, it was 220). Either there's higher level stuff somewhere, or some of the items I've found were only possible because Mooney's mod jacked up monster levels to 218 (and 220) in some areas. I'm surprised nobody jumped in when I mentioned it earlier and said 'SCUSE ME THERE SIR, THAT CAN'T ACTUALLY HAPPEN! Oh, they don't even respawn either, so that's garbage. Must be a multiplayer-only thing. I'm not doing all the quests in Bloodwood to figure out which ones open Abishai Stronghold, but the enemies only scale up to 210 here anyway. Checking out the far northwest, please hold... going to bed at the moment, so you may be on hold for a while. Just like a REAL on-hold call, right?

Looking at above, I did some playing around, and turning off Battle Stance's CCReflect didn't seem to make any difference, and I realized why when I saw that enemies only had a 2% chance to hit me. The kittymount's defense bonus, Battle Stance's (enormous, was over 1,000%) defense bonus plus evasion bonus, other gear's evasion, +Skills boosting Combat Reflexes, etc... no wonder nothing was hitting me at all. Just another example of how one can "accidentally get unkillable". Even wearing a Tabula Rasa Megalcarwen's set ("blank slate", nothing in the sockets at all) and getting off the kitty and such, most things' chance to hit me was around 24%. I suppose that means CCRef is mostly just an extra layer of protection (a very potent one with some builds), though an unnecessary one. Going back to filling Bronze sockets with crit and -regentime, and filling the rest with off-class runes for Leech on Hit, because it's one of the weakest setups I can think of that might be amusing for a while. Edit: After fixing a few things to go rune hunting (and looking for a couple Khandar's Slicers, just to go with the Leech on Hit theme) and with this intentionally crappy setup and the Balance.txt tweaks, bosses are SCARY (now that they can actually hit me). With as long as the health bar takes to update and as slow as potions work and such, getting repeatedly hit for a third to half my health (anywhere from 18 to 25K kept popping up, usually alongside a big red "you about to die, son" flashiness) kept me wondering if I was going to win once that second boss joined in. This is what I wanted, challenge! Also, spitting spiders are rather nasty in huge packs. I decided that if I'm going to do something for giggles, I might as well overdo it and +10 Life Leech on Hit per socket wasn't enough. I hopped on the elfy with mad +Skills and did some shopping, found tons of nice stuff (%Damage and Flat Physical ring, Deathblow and %Crit rings, Leech and Dual Wield, Deathblow and 60% ice damage, Damage and +9 All Skills, etc). I shopped for a couple hours and only ended up socketing the Deathblow and Leech things, because I wanted to keep things civil. I ended up with 85% crit (which is a minor bonus, several DB rings had crit on them), 87% Deathblow (which is massive), and 3,300 life stolen per hit (to be determined, don't think it'll heal me through an angry boss very well). That set sword thingy may be better than Khandar's Slicer for this, I'd have to find one at high level to know for sure... Holy Wrath, that's the name. Yet another item I've found tons of and thrown out that I eventually want to play with. EDIT: Nope, can't leech through a boss wailing on me for 25K a hit (half my health). Halving enemy damage (to still about triple what Niobium usually is), I can barely beat these about half the time... Life Leech on Hit just isn't enough damage or healing for when the dookie hits the industrial fan. Would probably work well if I didn't have enemy damage multiplied so high though. Do a lot of bosses have the Enraged buff? Now that my damage output and defense are low enough to actually see it, I swear these Bloodclaws are doing more and more damage the lower their health gets, to the point that even after halving their damage (so the fights start with them hitting for 5k or so) they still end up nearly, or actually, twoshotting me at the end. Half of these fights I'm not winning because Divine Protection is as unresponsive as the rest of the controls can be. The bosses are hilariously easy to beat on two conditions, one of them well-known: 1) I swap out a ring and amulet for the Tooth and Nail set bonus of Leech %, the item level doesn't matter. Now I'm stealing 60K life per swat and I'm basically unkillable, particularly dual wielding dexterity weapons (which gives the fastest swing speed). Big Bad Bosses just fall over like a regular champion. 2) For some reason, the boss takes a liking to my buddy Pennsakk, and tries to kill him, and only him. He's immune to damage and fights, keeping the thing's attention while I stab its back into oblivion. Someone may want to keep him around for doing just that in some games, so I mention that it happens. Maybe someone could cheese a boss to death with it if they had to. Speaking of cheesing, getting pretty bored. I threw on a full set of 12.5% Leech and threw a Gruma's Talisman or two into select sockets (and actually grabbed Toughness just because it's like 31% at high levels). Just to be a pain in my rear, I *finally* found a Kira's Wall after I'm never using a shield again... bleh. I've just been blowing through everything as fast as I can, don't really even care about quests anymore (though I have 409 complete at this point, so I made it most of the way). I need a new job like Giles the librarian, just luridly staring at the Seraphim all day. He's right though, Seraphim do have great tittles (they're particularly fond of large tittles over their "I"s) and most of them do have great firm asse- I mean they have a FIRM reputation as great war ASSETS, that's it. Dragon and Carnach weren't anything special as far as I saw. There were skeleton mages in the swamp using some sort of Life Leech Spell (and it had no initial tracer, only the return trace of Life Leech, so I assume it bypasses evasion or sidestepping it and simply "you take this much damage, too bad, deal with it"). I don't know whether the damage dealt was a little over 8K or around 16-17%, but it wasn't very dangerous after switching from an all-shield build. If it's a flat 8K damage, those would be terrifying as a no-life build... if it's percentage, then it's just as inconsequential unless you're allowing yourself to be chased by 10 of them at once. Oh, I also have spell damage turned up to 27,850%, maybe that's some of it, will have to test. No, with the vanilla damage setting and being mounted the damage actually went UP (health percent gained on mounting), so it's definitely percentage-based. I kept reading "oh but wait until you get to the swamp, theeeee swaaaaaammmppp", but there wasn't really anything here except a bunch of dead dudes too slow to catch me and a bunch of dumb critters that don't (drop tables, *can't*) drop anything but potions. The Miasma was more of a waiting game than anything else... with all the Arts in my big combo specced for Area of Effect stuns and damage, I just aoesploded everywhere whenever the Miasma thingies spawned adds, and then stood in the lightning downing a potion once in a while waiting for more stuff to whack, repeat until dead (which takes FOREVER, good thing I carry three stacks of potions for no particular reason). I tried and I certainly have the footspeed to just run circles around them, but was too lazy to do so... why go through all that effort when the other option is just... like... not, yeah, let's not do that.

I beat the Gar'Colossus without any real effort, am now dual-wielding two leftover low level Ancrid's Blade (the little dex shortswords with Double Hit on them and not much else but sockets). The more I try to do new things, the more items I find are actually pretty useful, even if they don't seem like it at first. The Colossus hit me for 10,000 a few times so I used a few potions, but since it was exactly 10K multiple times I assume it was something scripted and I probably wasn't supposed to be standing in it, but I've been challenging death just to see if it'll happen. Reminds me of the ONE time in Sacred 1 I died as a BFG build, I stood in a dragon's ground Area of Effect just to see if I could survive it. LOLNOPE is your answer, sir. I'm only hitting for 8-11k or so, but dualwield shortswords attack pretty fast compared to everything else, and given 90% someodd Double Hit the numbers fly (55% from DW skill with an +All Skills set, 8-9% from each Ancrid's Blade, more from Pelting Strikes' mod). I'm curious whether Pelting Strikes' Double Hit mod scales in any way, the numbers on the wiki seem to imply the "more damage per hit" doesn't, then there are formulae near the bottom that suggest it does (at 16% bonus + .4% per CA level), but I don't see anything for Double Hit... is it just a flat 20% chance? All those flat bonuses like the Battle Stance's Reflect Close Combat's 20% reflect seem big at first, and the "insignificant" parts that people overlook (like Battle Stance also getting .1-1.0% RefCC per Art level) can make a huge difference in the long run, especially if using a build stacking +All Skills to boost Maximum Level Without Penalty and then boosting those Art levels as well. I don't know exactly how the scaling works (the chart on the wiki is a little wonky) but that CCRef on BS can get up to damn near 100% by itself at massive levels. Soul Hammer's Coup de Grace mod (25+0.5/level% Deathblow) scales to the point where at around level 150 *every* blow is a Deathblow, all of them (and much sooner if your other gear has some DB). This kind of thing is important to know, it's part of why alternating normal attacks and Soul Hammers worked so well. The first hit ensures the enemy has been damaged (in case DB *can't* function on 100% life, I'm not sure), and then even if they're at 98% Soul Hammer still does double damage and rips off 80% of a champion's life in one go. I could try *testing* my Double Hit chance with Pelting Strikes, but that's way more data than I want to collect for a game that isn't a traditional MMO (and I certainly won't be playing Sacred 2 for 25-30K hours like I did some others). Which reminds me, I should remove BS' Retaliation mod and switch it to Idol just to see the difference. I don't play with other people, but I'm curious to see the floods of numbers I've been ignoring and what they amount to. Something in one of those difficulty mods I removed must have been changing the level things spawn at, because all the level 215-218 monsters disappeared... they're all 185-194 now and not dropping max level stuff. I have a while to go before I get back to max level drops again I suppose, not sure when that happens story-wise (if it does at all, I hope enemies keep scaling up). Maybe at some point I'll just sprint through the main quest to see if I can find some high level areas, and come back for all the sidequests later (or not at all, depending on how bored I get). I have a compulsion that makes me go grab any ?quests I see while I can see them, even if I don't do them until later, so I don't miss them when I go to clear parts of the map, and just ran into Pennsakk the orc. Apparently he's going to be my buddy for a good long time, but at least he can't die. I was looking up what I screwed up so I could get rid of him, and apparently he sticks around for another two whole zones or something until Seraphim Isle. And then I saw some quests down south of the area only to find they were all the first *timed* quests I'd seen, so I had to do those. Just sprinting to the next main objective isn't working very well, what with all the escorts and such that keep popping up. I ran into a quest to kill a boss ogre that wasn't very hard, but the Ice Elemental boss was a pain. How are you supposed to kill him anyway, fire? All of the weapons I had were modified for lovetap physical and 81% ice damage (since almost nothing had serious ice armor up until this thing). I didn't have any weapons that dealt fire to test it and I couldn't hurt the stupid thing, all I could do was reflect on myself. I ended up summoning my carrier imp and pulling an old low-level two-hander out of the stash and killing him with Leech % (as long as the blow connects, they take the damage no questions asked). Got my thuper thpecial kitty mount, after reloading the game a couple times. One of the enemies I was supposed to kill for the quest was showing up on the map but not actually appearing in the game world. If I had known how easy the quest was I would have done it much earlier. The animations are a bit wonky, at least for dual wielding, but the movement speed is nice and it can go anywhere except in caves. One kobold I killed (for the pumpkin and kobold heart soup quest) didn't drop a heart, and no other kobolds I went to hunt down had one either. I wandered back by some 20 quests and a few game reloads later and there was a heart just laying in the field... that completed the quest. I now have the Enemy_armor, weapondamage, spelldamage stats in Balance.txt set to 37K, 27K, 27K for Niobium (30, 20, 20 higher than normal). I'm not sure exactly how much effect each of those stats has or the mechanics, but I have noticed that armor seems to actually make a difference now (hence changing my damage type to ice). A lot of enemies still barely tickle, like little rats hitting for 1k (still way higher than the 150-200 they were doing), but bosses are REALLY starting to hurt, especially spells.

I figured I'd mention it here in a new post, because it may help some people: I started with a fresh install and both the Shelob quest and the Haenir quest on Christmas Isle fixed themselves and are now complete. Appears something was interfering with scripts or somesuch and keeping the bosses from spawning (though it hadn't been a problem before those two quests). The quests themselves work just fine (though spawning that Fury Broodmother had downsides too, stupid thing knocked off over half my life on the first shot). Also, with the "could I have programmed it better" question, the answer is almost always yes. The real question is "could I have programmed it better in the time allowed with the team I was given?" That's usually a no. Game scripting and coding that I've seen is fairly simple at heart, but when you throw an entire game into the mix and all the interactions that need to happen, you end up with more than heart, you get the entire cardiovascular system and that's a BIG mess to deal with.

So far with both the Community Patch and a difficulty mod or two installed, I've done over 300 quests on my latest Seraphim. I think I permanently screwed up one quest (with the bandits at a bridge demanding a toll, and in haste I just "accepted" which I think broke it because I couldn't talk to/kill them afterward). Besides that one I screwed up, I've run into one other quest that doesn't work, The Root of All Evil. Videos and wiki suggest I'm supposed to go to a cave and kill a boss spider, but it doesn't spawn. Because this is the *only* seemingly broken quest I've found, I'm asking whether the quest works rather than whether a mod broke it (which may be the case). If someone knows for sure the quest works, I'll try reinstalling without mods at some point and see if that fixes it. The cave is full of spiders, but there's no Shelob. The quest marker points somewhere inside the cave, but there's nothing to interact with or kill. Make that two, I think I managed to kill the Ice Hydra before In The Name of God required it, now it doesn't spawn and the quest can't be completed. Going to reinstall and see what happens, I guess.

Most of it would probably just be gruntwork with items. First thing I'd have to do is "flush the system" with a game reinstall, undo any and all changes made by anything so I'm using just the Community Patch. Short of being able to search items (and I'm not a programmer, but I'd imagine setting up a wiki-wide search for items would take a fair amount of effort, so it's probably not going to happen) I do think that page about unusual items is a good idea. It'd be simple enough to do if a proper and easily-found page name came about... List of Items with Unusual Characteristics? Sorted easily enough by exactly *why* the item is unusual and how that makes it useful in some way... once the list gets long enough. I also need to get to a part of the game with the highest level enemies available to do item hunting, so I can easily ensure I'm getting "top quality" stuff. I know from specific experience that if you're looking for Lord Wayne's Wild Rage, they're pretty easy to farm off the ghosts near Whisperwood in the second area because they only drop 1-inventory-size items like jewelry and gemmae, but the level 218 ones outside will only drop the level 215 Wayne amulet, whereas inside a certain area (where the quest Banshee boss is) they spawn at 220 and will drop the +9/12 level 235 version. I've seen item levels up to 245, so can I really guarantee a level 220 item found is the highest level possible? That's easily fixable if I could locate the highest level places things spawn, but that's a question most easily answered by someone with experience.

I got kinda bored and was more interested in potential numbers than playing the game, so I ended up editor-bumping myself up to level 200 and farming some Megalcarwen's at max level (at least I think level 229 monsters will give max level, 230 set items). I grabbed a bunch of perfect Wayne's amulets (the level 235 +9/+12All ones) and The Second Rings and stole some from the Elfy, and used Blacksmithing to fill every socket I had with silly amounts +All Skills and +All Combat Arts. I wouldn't be fighting with them, but I socketed an Officer's Saber (3 gold sockets on a sword, yey!) and a Kufferath Defender (4 sockets on a shield, more yey!) because reasons. The end result was +438 All Skills and +512 All Combat Arts, resulting in 1.3M shielding and a level 180 Soul Hammer with only 1 rune read (this is still very, very dumb, because of how abysmally poorly +Skills and Arts scales in huge amounts). The regeneration on it ended up at something like 2.1s which allowed for 2-3 normal attacks in between Hammers... but the Hammer itself does SO much more damage than normal attacks (in Deathblow range it's like 30K vs 170K) that I very much doubt it's worth trying to optimize the speed to allow an extra attack... it'd just be lowering damage. Combined with what's learned above, it seems reading a few runes at particular levels can increased your DPS by a lot by allowing an extra attack, but eventually if you keep your regen low enough by gaining Arts through gear and sockets, you will Hammer HARD enough that normal attacks are basically irrelevant in comparison. Again, that basically means you can't screw it up too badly, which I suppose is a good thing. Next project is to do some shophopping to see if I can find some beastly amulets and hit 10M shield. SHOOT FOR THE STARS, LITTLE BILLY! Oh, I just found a beastly pair of rings, one with -Opponent Chance to Evade and 54 flat physical, the other with -OCTEvade and 1.8s regen per hit. I've never used that stat before, but a quick test says a skill hit can proc its own increased cooldown, so a 2.1s Hammer becomes 0.3 seconds essentially, allowing me to spam it at animation speed again. Nah, that ain't broken at all... The best amulet I managed to find was +56.2% Max Shields, and I duped the crap out of it, and filled every socket I could with it. I filled bronze with The Second Rings. No matter whether I started in full +All Skills or had gone to %Max Shields, my maximum shielding hovered around 1.61 million, I couldn't get it any higher without a much more significant time investment. I did manage to find a single amulet with 25% Absorption by itself, making for 95% with one item. Sacrificed a shield slot there, but it was too good to pass up, Sooo, the final number to the question nobody ever asked, you can get a around 1.6 million shielding for a little patience, as a Seraphim. After reinstalling the game to wipe out any mods I had and effects on stats they may have, my big shield set had 4.85M shielding rather than 1.6, so apparently one of my mods was nerfing it by quite a bit. Also, I just died for the first time ever on three characters, on the Christmas Island just to make it worse. Granted I was playing around with enemies set to deal 27x damage at the time, but still... died to treants wearing Christmas decorations stunlocking me. Aaaand it turns out most of the problem I was having was with a specific enemies, trying to deal with those stupid Furies on Christmas Island, it wasn't the trees at all (something was stunlocking me, yes, but it was the furies who were stripping off all my shield instantly). That all-shield build should do well against anything including enemies that leech, but the one thing it can't handle is enemies that strip buffs. Apparently there are more enemies who do this, including some bosses, so I can't suggest it for a long-term choice anymore. Just *poof* and suddenly your 20K hp is getting hit directly for full damage and you die in 3 seconds. Maybe I'll play around with a life-build dual wielding with celestial magic and see what happens there, Combat Art slots are kinda scarce for that though. Even with Celestial Magic Lore, Celestial Magic Focus, and Ancient Magic skills taken, it still seemed pretty pointless. While it was amusing to round up dozens of enemies and fry them all with a Pillar, it did it slowly (at about 13K per tick) and in the same amount of time I could have slapped them all to death with swords. Baneful Smite only did around 35K (each thorn from Glacial Thorns can hit that hard), even if it sometimes did it to more than one target. Both skills had regeneration times around 19 seconds. I don't see how a Seraphim specializing in magic is supposed to compare to something like Glacial Thorns, which ends up firing 150+ thorns a shot and can be spam cast at 0.4 seconds. The High Elf I played around with ended up being the fastest boss killer I've had so far (including vs the Seraphim when I was stacking huge amounts of Leech %)... she simply 3-shot whatever boss got close. Instill Belief is useful CC in a pinch, but normally simply being careful will remove the need for it... might help against stuff like the Furies if you do stick with a shield build in a game where they can be instantly stripped off. If you need to heal, Hallowed Restoration is... not worth the Art slot, we have potions for that (even if it can break some status effects, the nasty ones will prevent you from using Restoration anyway like Stun). If you need more than one or two potions, you're not prepared for wherever you're adventuring. Cleansing Brilliance is just terrible compared to the other buffs (BFG, Warding, Battle Stance are all potentially amazing). So overall, Celestial magic is... junk. Opinion, but strong enough I don't think I could be convinced otherwise.

After doing more playing around with Combat Arts (and catching a good case of wanderlust) I figured out sum mo' thangs, a few that come to mind: 1) East of Teardrop, way in the southeast of the first zone, there's a big area full of T-Energy blue goo, and massive amounts of T-Mutants. I didn't think anything of it, but I wanted to see where the goo went and if there were any quests over there, so I wandered around killing everything that moved, leading to the first point... T-Mutants have a comparatively HUGE chance to drop the mutation sets, which seems intuitive but I never would have known. The only other place I regularly find them is in certain types of chests and other environmental clickies. Given I *did* kill the entire area which was hundreds and hundreds of mutants, I did get almost a full set of Megalcarwen's. They don't really seem to drop much else. Knowing where to find stuff is good information, so it's here. And then holy crap, there's an entirely new area east of the blue goo that I somehow never noticed, it's like finding America in your backyard (in all my playing, story-wise I've never actually gotten past the second area north of the big gate). Also, mutated dragons are pussies... I was wandering, saw a huge dragon appear on my screen and had the self-preservation OHGODITSCOMINGRIGHTFORMETACTICALFLEEING kick in... but once I had cleared an area to fight it, it died in a couple good whacks and didn't even drop anything. 2) I didn't notice until I got my regeneration to stupid-high levels, but I was wrong about Soul Hammer being instant, it most definitely does interrupt normal attacks instead of being an instant blow (at least at 0.2 seconds). I did a fair bit of number watching, and with Soul Hammer on automatic I couldn't find any way to get it to weave with normal blows... the animation completely locks out normal swings and replaces your normal attacks. Given my normal swings were hitting for ~12K and Soul Hammer was hitting for 18-20K, replacing my normal attacks wasn't so bad. Dashing Alacrity alone is 80-110% attack speed at really high levels, and Sword Lore is 40%+ just from Mastery, making attack speed on gear totally pointless with a vanilla cap of 150%. Given I have max attack speed modified to 250% and animation speeds, auto attacks and Soul Hammer were about the same DPS because Soul Hammer was hitting significantly slower, but vanilla games will find entirely replacing normal attacks with Soul Hammer (even at level 1) beneficial. I will have to do some more testing with reading runes and find the level where weaving normal attacks is possible again, will edit when I get around to testing it. Weeellll, off to see a Runemaster about some conversions... With the game changed back to 150% max speed, using a two-handed lightsaber (I don't think the weapon type matters for 2h weapons, but the handed-ness does, weapon type DOES affect speed for 1h weapons), the exact Soul Hammer timer I needed to weave normal attacks in between was 1.0 seconds (tested on a Bloodclaw boss every 0.1 seconds difference). In Deathblow range, I was doing 24-25k with normal attacks and 48-50k with Soul Hammer every 1.0 seconds... so basically, I was doing slightly more DPS with Soul Hammer at a lower level, doing 39-41K Deathblows but hitting slightly more than twice as fast, and using no normal attacks at all. I assume a good part of that is Soul Hammer's extra damage, Deathblow, extra crit, etc... the difference would be significant on a different build less dumb than my current one. Basically, for quality of life, keep Soul Hammer at level 1 and as fast as possible, or around 1.0 seconds... unless you're maxing it out to use as a massive killing blow, but it takes a LOT of runes read to increase the damage significantly. I didn't test with a 1h weapon, and there's at least two different weapon speeds to test, and I... ugh. Maybe later. Also, three bosses at once is REALLY rough on only 180K shield, Divine Protection for the photo finish... almost died to wandering werewolves and rats once my shield cancelled itself. 3) Testing at 250% max speed (because that's what I play at, all of combat just *feels* smoother) at 0.6 second Soul Hammer I was able to weave attacks, and killed a Bloodclaw in 16.9, 17.0, and 18.1 seconds. Testing at both 0.2 and 0.5 speed, I had 6 kill times between 21.4 and 23.0 seconds... so there's definitely a point where if you have enough Execution Speed (and Attack Speed to match) weaving normal attacks in between Soul Hammers will give you a significant damage boost. I assume this point exists somewhere for a vanilla 150% speed (probably 1.0 seconds) but the difference wasn't really big enough to bother... it's huge at 250%. I'm all tested out for now, back to doing quests (with my newfound attack strategy).

Oh, so *that* Wiki IS you guys, I love you guys hard. I've used the Wiki for so much stuff from figuring out the best way to do a certain skill to delving into the best socketing for +All Skills sets to peeking at the mechanics behind Arts and trying to find items with certain stats (so I know what to keep an eye out for). Knowing that little tidbit makes it even more likely I'll get bored enough to contribute, as I do with almost every game I play for a while (to Mass Effect build strategies and how to beat the AI at its own game to Kingdoms of Amalur and just how much damage it's possible to do in a single strike given you do all the farming/crafting for tens of hours, to old D&D games and builds and such... I'm autistic and leurve muh numbahs). With that in mind, I had an idea or two over the last couple weeks for things I wish I had been able to find, and I can put them here and maybe help with them if nobody minds. 1) A lot of pictures of items are at low levels, or were taken by a character without the proper unlock skills. The page will state that an item has Projectile Block, and the picture will have "Projectile Block: Shield Lore", but it doesn't tell you how much anywhere. Often I wanted to know just how powerful an item was compared to others and I couldn't find out until I actually got it to drop, which can take forever farming bosses if it's legendary, etc. 2) Again, pictures at low levels and relative item strengths. Some pages don't mention or show proper stats, like just how much %Max Shield Endijian's plate has, or that its percentage scales dynamically with which difficulty you're in (like the set bonuses do, I noticed the number going up and down when I dropped in Bronze for the night to farm survival bonus). Often I wanted to know how much of a stat an item had, but I wanted to know how it compared to other items, and it's hard to compare the stat strength on a level 30 chestpiece with a level 225 shield even if you do get the gist of how big the numbers scale. Maybe a way to standardize the pictures and examples to maximum level? 3) There should definitely be a page of "unique uniques", "rule-breaking items", etc. I don't think chest items or helmets can even roll %Max Shield, yet Endijian's Chest and Sophia's helmet have them. Nothing can roll %stats that I know of, but tons of items have them. Rings can't roll %absorption, but Testa's ring has it. Shields can't have four sockets, but Kufferath Defender does (you know how many times I threw that thing out thinking it was junk, only to spend hours looking for one once I knew it was exactly what I wanted for a buff set?). I kept having to open the page for Seraphim sets, then Seraphim Community sets, then All Class Uniques, then Seraphim uniques, open each individual page per set or item and manually look at all the items (and odd, random levels) trying to figure things out... only to later find an item that wasn't even listed that I was looking for. I ended up openings dozens of pages dozens of times (the same lists of the same stuff) over the weeks, as what I was looking for changed. My OCD GOTTA KNOW GOTTA KNOW GOTTA KNOW RIGHT NOW is probably responsible for half your bandwidth usage by the way. That's all I can think of for the moment, what are people doing that needs the most work right now, or how can I help with my ideas?

More experiences, Save-Editor-Enhanced Edition I've been sticking to wearing crappy gear with severely buffed enemies, and my damage was noticeably lacking. My hit chance was so horrible without all that %Attack Rating from the blacksmith that my hit chance against lowly vermin was in the 65% range, and I had to do some shophopping to grab some -Opponent Chance to Evade rings. I tested %Attack Rating rings, -Opponent Defense, +Attack Rating rings, they all sucked horribly, but -Evade was dozens of percent to hit per ring. On that note, is -Evade and Deathblow on the same item even possible (that would be a dream item right there)? I have never seen one in probably 10 hours total shophopping, never seen an amulet with both %Max Shield and Absorption either. Anyway, it took me a frightfully long time to realize Flaring Nova was Revered Tech and not Celestial Magic. I had since started using Combat Arts (at all, I had never really used them before because my Leech % and Attack Speed build killed everything so fast I never got the chance, as will any build stacking a town blacksmith's %damage I imagine) and wanted to make some changes. I figured if I had Enhanced Perception at level 5 and Blacksmith at 1 and I wasn't using either, and desperately needed damage, I could do some more testing. I already had Revered Tech *Focus* for shield levels, so I save-editor-swapped the skills for Combat Discipline and Revered Technology Lore (Flaring Nova damage and such, I had to have something). I slapped a bunch of crappy (I wasn't shopping for hours for this) +All Skills and +All Combat Arts jewelry into my gear, and I learned some things in the process of playing around with it and getting to level 125: 1) Assailing Somersault isn't the long, slow, ungainly flight it might seem to be from the description or expectations. It's actually more of a shadowstep-esque facestab with a big damage bonus. You know those enemies that are always sauntering away from you at half a mile an hour, and whenever you try to hit them you MISS, REPEATEDLY, because you're always swinging where they used to be? And then you have to realize what's happening after 3-4 failed swings and try to run ahead of them to actually hit them, all the while a dozen kobolds are throwing rocks at you and causing stuns? Somersault them and use that lightsaber to brighten up where the sun don't shine. Also great for leaping into big groups of enemies and putting yourself right where you want to be (in the middle, for splash damage if your weapon has that, and for Pelting Strikes). You won't really be spamming it so I'd mod it for range, Area of Effect, and Stun. You can leap into a group of enemies from all the way across the screen, and hit most of them and stun some of them... good times when stacked with Flaring Nova in a combo. 2) Pelting Strikes is one I tried over and over on an earlier Seraphim, and I hated it. There was simply no point when twoshotting everything at hyperspeed, and it felt slow... sporadic, uncontrolled, and worse, unreliable. When you do far less damage, Pelting Strikes is far more useful. The damage bonus per strike is actually pretty large if you mod it for such things and have it at a decent level (and especially with Combat Discipline). With Dashing Alacrity's bonus to attack/casting (and thus Execution) speed, it goes off pretty fast. Also, the skill itself doesn't say so, but PS has a HUGE bonus to melee range, and the autotarget feature actually works pretty well if you just let it do its thing (and there's actually stuff to hit, I was killing things too fast and that was screwing with the skill on an earlier build). I modded PS for 20% Double Hit for extra chance to splash, though some may want the 16% extra damage per hit to overcome armor. Both are good, depends on your gear and your target. With enough hit, reducing an enemy's defense is pointless, so mod it for cooldown. I modded for armor reduction because the weapon I'm using does lowered damage of three different types, you may want to go 10% critical for an all-physical weapon. 3) Flaring Nova is, as I mentioned before, Revered Tech and not in the Magic school. This means it may be a viable option for utility if you're already dealing in Revered Tech for Warding like my latest Seraphim. You won't be hitting stuff across the screen with it, but you only need to hit stuff within the range of Pelting Strikes anyway, and enemies tend to group up fairly tightly when they do (if you jump on them early enough, they spawn and move in tight packs and then spread out when fighting). The damage won't be great unless you're stacking tons of Revered Tech Lore (I didn't, I used it for utility not an attack), but all the power lies in the mods. I modded it for two pulses which reduces its range (doesn't matter for what I wanted it for) and allows for a double-roll when stacked with the silver Stun mod. Slowing the enemy down just seemed pointless to me if they're already all stunned or dead, so I took Flux at gold level for damage. 66% Flux damage and two pulses at -30% damage still makes for a nasty, quick ability with which to hit large groups. Keeps those damned brownies from running in circles everywhere. 4) Soul Hammer was the one skill I did use on my first build, but that was more for giggles than anything else. On the latest build I actually use it constantly. I realized I could cast Dashing Alacrity, hold down left-click on an enemy to attack at full speed, and hold down right-click with Soul Hammer selected to have it automatically cast on cooldown as well (which is some serious number spam at 0.5 seconds, get some FIST, baby). Open Wound isn't all that great, but 20+.2%/level crit is amazing for overcoming armor, especially on a skill that already packs a wallop like Soul Hammer (and with other skills/masteries and a few incidental pieces of gear, that total crit rate is probably going to be more like 50%). Choosing between the Disarm mod and Armor Reduction, eh... I've always gone with Armor Reduction (especially lately, with the three-different-damage-types weapon I mentioned), but I suppose a 25%+ chance to disarm an enemy (the ones with weapons, anyway) could be useful if you're fighting extremely defensively against a boss. Are there major bosses with weapons you can disarm? Anyway, lastly is another "wounds" mod I don't like much because the only wounds that matter are Serious Open Wounds and neither mod on Hammer is Serious... besides, Coup de Grace is great. It adds an additional 25+.5%/level Deathblow to Soul Hammer, which is a 100% chance to deal DOUBLE damage when an enemy is below that life threshold. It does stack with Deathblow on other gear, though there are severe diminishing returns (50%, 30%, 30% may only give you 70% someodd total). You will most certainly notice when fighting bosses and their health hits that threshold and Soul Hammer starts pounding huge chunks out of their life while your other attacks are scratching them. I decided I liked some of these abilities and most of them were useful, so I threw them all together in a combo that I've used a LOT. Use the minimap to figure out which enemy is the champion and pick on him, Assailing Somersault leaps into a pile of enemies, splashes (from the skill and may from a weapon too if it has that ability like Maul's Swordstaff or Sword of Rebellion), stuns things, Flaring Nova goes off after you're right on top of everything, hitting them all twice and stunning more stuff, Pelting Strikes swings wildly all over the place slapping down mostly-dead enemies, and then if the champion is still alive (and will definitely be in Deathblow range) they get a big Soul Hammer fist right in the mouth. EDIT sidenote: I'm all about making games less annoying with personal touches. I got annoyed with having to spam recast Dashing Alacrity (even though at this point its duration is longer than its cooldown, so it has no effect on combat at all) and I remember reading somewhere someone changed a buff, so I did some digging of my own. Under Sacred/scripts/shared there's a file called Spells which contains all the characters' abilities. Dashing Alacrity is called "Inspire" in german, or "se_co_befluegeln", and as a quick hackjob I modified the part that adds a fraction of a second duration per Art level from 200 something to 2000000. That's "entry0 = {"et_duration_sec", 2000000, 10, 0, 8 },". Now Dashing Alacrity lasts 20K seconds at this level and I can cast it once and forget about it, for less annoyance but no real combat impact. EDIT 2: Oh mother Fuddruckers (it's a hamburger joint around here, I can use that word!) Combat Arts don't save their level in a combo anymore, I can't abuse it. Anyway, I socketed all my bronze sockets (and a handful of silver for completion) with regen time and crit so that with Tactics Lore and gear I have 97% critical chance and most of my Arts have a regen time around 0.2 seconds. I filled the rest with defense and a handful of damage. The Arts have REALLY crappy damage now because they're all level 11 instead of 130, but we'll see how it goes... with all arts at level 130 and all skills at +300 I was smashing things pretty well with combos (Flaring Nova alone was doing 11K on both hits to a pretty wide area), and Soul Hammer was still hitting for 3-4% of the Undead General boss's HP, sometimes I saw 80K crits with it which nearly oneshots champions. He put up a good fight but he's back in the dirt where he belongs. Yeah, this is definitely the weakest setup I've ever had on this character, both defensively and offensively. On the upside, my Arts cool down so fast I can spam anything I want and teleport all over the place every split second spamming stunnovas everywhere, but nothing does any real damage (except Soul Hammer spam at 0.2 seconds, which is a goddamn champion skill as I stated before). For the first time ever, I actually had to use an Ice Crystal to convert the majority of my damage to one element to increase my ability to overcome armor. Since I'm doing so little damage and most of the other... what are they called, Forge Modifiers or something? They're based on damage types with secondary effects whose damage over time dealt is based on initial damage (and doesn't stack) and mine is garbage, so trying to spread fire or poison everywhere seemed less appealing than splash Freezing everything. Might try a Magic Pearl too, not sure whether enemies have less Ice armor or Magic armor, or whether -% all stats is better than -25% attack and move speed. The biggest thing I'm learning as I try different stuff is that some builds are definitely better than others, but I don't think you can *fail*. Any idea you have, any way you want to play, you can find a path to success. Unless you decide to play straightup naked, maybe I'll try that at level 200 just for giggles. So yeah, that's what I learned today mommy

My Experiences as a Seraphim, Part II: May the Force... uh, Maker, be with you! After seeing how ridiculously overpowered it was to stack damage mitigation and reflect stats and Leech % (nothing can damage you and you hit for well over a HUNDRED THOUSAND on bosses, per swing), I decided to try going the complete opposite direction. I decided to limit myself to using nothing but lightsabers, and stack Willpower instead of Vitality (lightsabers get their damage from Willpower, the only weapons to do so). This is the tale of at least the beginning of my adventure. I took 75 Tactics Lore for damage, 75 Sword Weapons for double hits and speed (since lightsabers are technically swords)... 75 Armor Lore to wear phat lootz, 75 Constitution for regen in combat (especially important with absorption warding percent less than 100% and vs leeching enemies), 75 Warding Energy Lore for extra shielding (stacking with all that Willpower), 75 Revered Tech Focus to modify Divine Protection and my shield's max... uh, shielding (via increasing the max level of the skill Without Penalty). That's offense and defense, leaving... 1 point in Concentration (as necessary to use both Battle Stance and Warding Energy, you have to at least take the skill), 5 points in Enhanced Perception as a stepping stone (and a wee bit more loot doesn't hurt), and 1 point in Blacksmithing. Given all the shielding a lot of that may seem like a waste, but at level 117 I was running into level 143 enemies that were dropping level 150 loot I couldn't even use until I was 120 (which I could *barely* use at 120 with barely mastered Armor Lore and Swords, so there is a method to the madness). Console players won't want to take Blacksmithing because it's horribly broken, and I don't know how well it works without the Community Patch either, so be careful on that one... Also, I don't think Seraphim can even take Smithing without the Community Patch. Assuming you have the ComPatch, 1 point in Blacksmithing does a few things... it allows you to socket amulets in silver slots and socket rings in bronze slots (instead of gold and silver, respectively). This allows you to fill a set of gear with +All Skills amulets and rings, even the bronze slots, to increase your own blacksmithing, so you can work on higher level items without wasting skill points, and you can use THAT to socket the crap out of your main gear with %Max Shield and %Absorption Warding Energy amulets (those stats only appear on amulets, and gold sockets can be hard to come by, hence the Blacksmithing). Early on I wasn't sure the build was going to work at all just because the mods I have installed (or have tweaked myself) make the game so much of a pain at lower levels, but once the character hit its stride around level 30 there was no stopping it. I couldn't find any information on the Wiki about just how much Willpower actually does for shielding, so I did some testing. On a character with 15K someodd shielding, the two Art Mods for shield power alone buffed it to 71K, and then the difference of 220 points of Willpower buffed it further to 93K. I assume the scaling is similar for Temple Guardians, meaning stacking Willpower is a viable defense for shield users, even without abusing Blacksmithing. It also buffs Divine Protection (as does Warding Lore and %Max Shield) so you can get some seriously beefy shielding in a pinch. Early on, Divine Protection will add a couple times your normal shield in an emergency, later on DP adds 100K to a shield that's already at over 600K, so it doesn't scale very well (or at least not as well as the base Warding itself). It's still useful for one reason: activating Divine Protection instantly sets your Absorption Warding Energy to 100%, no matter what it was before, so if your Absorption stat is only 50% (meaning half of damage taken gets through to your health) you may get surprised by a boulder to the face for nearly all your HP and Protection can save you by making your life impossible to damage for a while. This build ended up at level 120 so far with a measly 16K life, and some enemies can hit harder than that (though 92% Absorption saves me) so any big damage that gets through before you can stack Absorption is scary. Take note of the wings from the Genesis Siderea set, not only do they look lovely they have the Absorption stat on them in a big way. 100% absorption isn't a bad thing if you have enough shielding, but it's not necessary... If you have the combat regen from Constitution mastery, you only need enough absorption that you can outregen the damage your life does take (which is even easier to do if you're using Leech % or Leech on Hit). So, I mentioned this build being completely overpowered once I realized just how much shielding was available (from Endijian's chest, one of the Sophia pieces has %Max Shield and another has %Willpower, etc), and it very quickly got to the point that nothing was a threat anymore... Seraphim shielding is just too good if you actually make use of the tools available. Early on I decided to play with a few self-imposed challenges (or as I like to call it, "Character Retardation", because that amuses me) and later on I added quite a few more. Seriously, you never got bored playing Diablo II and made an all-curse melee necromancer who never uses any gear except a bone helmet and a scythe? I'm still in the process of transitioning out of some of my horribly overpowered stuff so I don't know exactly what'll happen endgame, but here's what I've been doing so far: 1) I will not wear Damage Mitigation or take the Toughness skill. I will try to avoid reflect and block stats where possible. I will only use lightsabers, and all stat points will go into Willpower, making me as squishy as possible except the shield. 2) I changed balance.txt a bit at level 120, and over doubled enemy armor, more than tripled their damage, etc. I immediately noticed a difference. I'm already using some spawn mods and such, so I assume when I get caught trying to tank FOUR Bloodclaw werewolf bosses and such it's really going to hurt. 3) Even though I took Blacksmithing, I will not abuse it anymore to stack %Shield and Absorption. Additionally, I'm going to start limiting myself to nothing but rare drops (except Maul's Swordstaff, seriously who designed an item with Deathblow, Double Hits, and Splash Attacks? Gimme more), no more Endijian and Sophia OPness. If it's not too harsh and I can get the pieces to drop, I may go even further and limit myself to only Megalcarwen pieces (the Mutation set with almost no stats, but tons of sockets) that I Whet myself without +All Skills, so they're really crappy. We'll see how that goes, no more town blacksmith giving 40% damage a socket. Let's see if I can make myself regret trying all this, or if I still need to make things worse. It'll be a good test of just how OP shields are... that I've survived so far without any real troubles already says a lot. For now, the information above should make a decent explanation for anyone who wants to try a similar character build. All shields is definitely possible and just as overpowered as stacking Mitigation, in its own way. Immortality is immortality, no matter the flavor... well, maybe a lich would disagree when discussing sexytimes, but that's not the point here. Well, even nerfing the crap out of myself and wearing excessively stupid gear setups, I managed to beat four Bloodclaws in one fight (two at once, then two more at once as they wandered into me) though I almost ran out of shielding because I only had 150K and they were outdamaging my health regen. Had to use divine protection at the end and if it had worn off and killed my shield before I won... A bit scary, but doable... gives me hope for other bosses and enemies later on in the game, I can do this. EDIT: After a fresh install and removing some difficulty mods (for the sake of untainted data) it turns out my max shield gear gives me 4.85M shielding with vanilla values, not 1.61. Apparently all my values from testing would have been low on the shield side of things.

Just as a side note, this crap is getting seriously out of control. My Seraphim is now level 114, and has 13,623 life... and 364K shield. Apparently it doesn't even matter that Mitigation is OP because shields are OP too. It became so unbalanced that I figured "why not go for 100% absorption?" and grabbed a lower-level Star Meadow wings and a Testa's Band ring I had in the stash. I can facetank two Bloodclaw bosses at once and only lose a third of my shield (takes a lot of Soul Hammers to kill those bastidges). On that note, after I finally decided to play without Leech %, I found my Sereish Steel of Thunder JUST TO TAUNT ME

A question comes to mind, and it's actually relevant to My Experience as a Seraphim, or rather my second experience (the all-willpower, no-mitigation, no-leech, ward-and-light-sabers 'tard I'm playing with, may the Forces be with you). Warding Energy's basic absorption is 50%, yet mine is stated at 70%. It doesn't seem to come from Revered Tech Focus or any of my skills or stats that I know of, it's not coming from gear (I know the stat can come up on items), the only thing I can think of (it being *exactly* 20%, or 10+10%) is that maybe it's a hidden bonus from I just tested and it isn't from any of the Art Mods, it doesn't matter whether the skill is level 40 or 101.2, I... I don't know. Even equipping an extra 22.5% +absorption doesn't change the stated 70% total under the almighty lying Sigma, so it can't be from gear (even though I can clearly see the difference in how much damage I take, so the stat works even if it isn't stated properly). Where is that extra 20% coming from, and can I do it more? Ideally my absorption would be around 90% or so, and if I can do it without wasting slots that'd be wonderful. My current health and shield is at 15k/138k, so taking a much smaller amount of damage would help a lot when fighting stuff that can slap me in the mouth for 20k (I'd be surviving a dozen hits instead of four). EDIT: This question still stands if anyone sees it, where is that 20% absorption coming from? Was it part of the Community Patch or something? It's basically irrelevant now because my character has gotten so OP I'm going to throw in some self-imposed challenges to the run. At level 120 I have 16K health and 680K shield and it's... just... stupid. I can facetank dozens of magic-casting enemies and a boss (hitting me for 15K) for quite a while without even flinching.

Do people mind frickken-9-year-necros around here, as long as the post is useful? I was looking for the answer to this myself and found this topic, and since I'm currently screwing around with a no-mitigation-no-leech seraphim (who uses willpower, lightsabers, and Warding Lore with the Warding Energy buff) I figured I might be of some use (not to the dude with the question, they've probably died of old age by now, but anyone else who might have the same one and see it). I couldn't find this information on the wiki either for when I was making the character, so I just *hoped* I'd be alright, so far it's worked. Given all my points in Strength and 420 Willpower, I have 71,510 Energy Shield. If I move all 178 points I have over into Willpower for a total of 640 (there's some survival bonus in there) I have a total of 93,437 Energy Shield. That's 21,927 more shield, or 99.66 more Shield per Willpower at level 109. Keep in mind that's with mastered Warding Lore for 150% someodd more and the Art Mods that give extra percentages to max shields, so I don't know the absolute base amount per point and I'd never be able to figure out the hundred-character-formula for how it works anyway (Algebra II was a LONG time ago). As an interesting side note, my total shield goes up by another 87,192 to 180K someodd (EDIT: with Divine Protection. This sentence didn't make any sense at all before). With as hard as I remember some bosses hitting, it'll definitely be necessary on a no-mitigation-no-leech run. How does the Temple Guardian compare, with their supposed regen-in-combat? Never tried one. My last seraphim had no points in Warding Lore and specced for reflection mods and Vitality, and I remember her level being in the hundreds (with 200 warding runes read) and having something like 5,000 shield, which was totally useless. Normal enemies blew it off in two spells... so investing in your Energy Shield will definitely make a huge difference. Anyway, if people hate these necros yell at me and I won't do it again. IT'S NOT NECROMANCY IF INFORMATION NEVER DIES