ka243

I would focus only on enemy cannot evade (if you need more hit chance). I think that's the one that gives the most effect. I also think its the highest "class" mod (gold?) while the others are lower quality.

Are you certain about that? Yes I am. I was in the cursed forest with my Temple Guardian most of the time and theese purple eyes and dragonflies never hit my life with they life leech attack. It is the same effect as you to % life leech dmg to an enemy (Gar'Colossus, Guardinas). When you hit them, you don't attack their life until the shield energy isn't down. Odd.... Llama seemed to agree with me too. I wonder if this is different between different versions of the game? Perhaps it does not work like this in console or in versions older than ice & blood...

Planning ahead is definately good. I found myself switching characters a lot at the beginning because I wasn't satisfied with my builds. Once I found something that worked well for me (my seraphim: see sig or my high elf) I stuck with them for quite a long time.

Have fun. For console players, check the second link in my signature. There's a lot of very useful information in that article.

I think that what you're doing is essentially alternating normal shots and Combat Art shots by alternating these buttons. Did you know you can hold down the button for this combo (SH+pelting strikes) and that it will fire the second that its ready and if its not ready, it will keep firing normal shots until it is? Soul hammer+pelting strikes combo will do significantly more damage than normal shots. If you have enough of the regen per hit modifier equipped, your Combat Arts will fire continuously and you won't need to button mash.

Read and very much enjoyed the twilight saga by stephanie meyer after seeing the movies. Only thing I was somewhat disappointed by was the end of the last book (I wanted to see a really big huge fight), but other than that the books were all excellent and I read them very fast even though they are long books.

Are you certain about that? Divine protection has 100% absorption and I remember life leech bypassing my shield (the lost souls in the swamp). Perhaps its a difference between console and PC (I play console) but this would surprise me...?

I actually prefer not to do this as I feel it wastes a slot. Once I activate the bfg, I never switch weapons and you can activate Combat Arts like a soul hammer + pelting strikes combo to fire the bfg with much more punch. Just hold the button down and it will keep firing. If the Combat Art is not recharged, a normal shot will be fired. As soon as the Combat Art is recharged, the Combat Art will be fired with the bfg. Use regen per hit for maximum effectiveness.

I also prefer the shadow path campaign. No getting lost in dryad city!! But my fav character is the seraphim with my bfg build so I have to play light for that.

Intelligence will boost the damage from the staff. Another good thing to add is maybe element damage +X%. I think there's some unique armor with intelligence +X% in ice & blood.

I was dropping the kobold cheif really really fast with my bfg seraphim at those levels, which is one of the reasons I liked it so much. Never tried it with an ice elf but it shouldn't take too long. Ice shard him repeatedly from close range so that all of your thorns hit. Once you mod your thorns a bit, he should go down pretty quick. Another tip is to use a concentration potion so your regen times are lower when fighting the boss. You will get plenty of these, especially fighting kobolds. Orc caves are the next place I power level, I don't really remember what level it was when I started. If playing single player, just go through the game until you feel the need to level, which you may not until gold at least. The orc cave is in the orc region and there are lots of posts about it. Search for orc cave on the forums. Its a good place to level in any difficulty level as there is good experience, lots of equipment and lots of gold drops. Just remember save and to restart the game once every few levels to increase the levels of the orcs in the cave and get more experience from them.

Cool, let me know how it turns out and if you have questions. I think this is definately one of the most powerful ranged builds in the game. I also found that console targetting for melee weapons is very imprecise: usually the first attack misses the enemy, which is why I prefer either ranged builds or spell casters (see my article in the xbox section of the wiki - link above regarding this). Good luck! I added a note in the build about why I don't use/like/need archangel's wrath in this build: Firstly and perhaps most importantly, it doens't auto-fire when you hold the button down on console (unlike soul hammer + pelting strikes combo which will keep on firing without me having to unpush and push the button again giving me an awesome auto-firing machine gun. Secondly, I'm leaving revered lore at one point (until after level 100 at least because I consider mastering other skills more important: Tactics, revered focus, constitution, armor, toughness), so archangel's wrath won't be nearly as powerful. Thirdly, with my focus on weapon damage, my bfg will do plenty of damage. Finally, I can do some fire damage by equipping gauntlets that convert physical to fire damage if I want to. If you really want to use this Combat Art, go ahead, but I found I never needed it and I finished niob at a level much lower than most builds do. Edit: Added diety pick.

I usually do muggers and kobolds til about level 20 in silver. Make sure you do the cave at the entrance to the kobold area! You will kill over 40 kobolds in this cave alone in a very condensed area. I always eat a mentor potion in this cave because mentor potions are plentiful drops from kobolds which is what makes this area so great also. Don't forget to get the quest rewards after finishing the kobold champ and recovering the mugged goodies (in the same spot). If you open the tombs there are also zombies in some of them that give more experience than the kobolds. It will make the silver campaign that much easier. If you're bored though, go for it. Next levelling place I use is the Orc cave. Read posts on the orc cave, there's lots of them. With an ice elf you will have lots of physical armor, so this is a good place.

Here's my strategy for beginning of game levelling: Somewhere near the beginning of the game, when you have enough armor to not take damage from this, activate a defensive buff (which has not been modded for reflection yet - ex: battle stance, crystal skin, ancient bark) and start a bronze game, go piff off some kobolds so they attack you, then watch them hit you until you get a high survival bonus so that you will have better stats from said survival bonus and a better chance to find valuables that you get from this. I find a fast way to level at the beginning is this: Start a new game in bronze or silver (if your character can handle it - probably as of level 5), Accept the quest to kill the kobold chieftan and recover the dude's artifacts who got them stolen in soleford (sword, etc... there are 3 things to recover). Teleport to western tyr lyasa, go get the dudes artifacts killing some kobolds on the way (just to the east of this teleporter). Continue north to the kobold area and enter the cave right near the entrance to the kobold area. Go into the cave and drink a mentor and concentration potion. Mow down ALL the enemies in the cave, checking the graves to wake up the zombie-like enemies that give lots of experience. Exit the cave, you will have killed more than 40 kobolds in the cave alone. Proceed to the kobold boss and kill him. Teleport to soleford and claim the quest rewards for 13000+ experience and items (these quests have high difficulty levels and so give good rewards sometimes). I've found this is a very very fast way to level up at low levels.

Life leech and % life leech will deal damage directly to your HP, bypassing your shield completely. 4% lifeleech should do 2000 damage to a player with 50 000 hp 0 to shield. (4% of 50 000 = 2000)

I like doing the kobold quest and stopping in the cave at the entrance to kobold land for the first several levels as the quest has nice rewards and theres a lot of experience to be had at low levels in that cave and the enemies are not dangerous. All HE spells can be cast from the special mounts, not regular horses. If you are using a Pyromancer build, use a Pyromancer mount. If using an ice build use an ice mount.

You only have to cast bfg once to activate it each time you start the game up. If you're playing console, note that the BFG weapon usually appears in the last weapon slot available. Meaning you might have to hold R or L to see the slot where the bfg is put. The bfg can be fired on console by either holding the button for a combat art such as soul hammer, pelting strikes or a soul hammer + pelting strikes combo after casting the buff or by pushing the button for the weapon slot to which the BFG is attributed to fire a normal shot. If the buff is greyed out, it means that you already cast it (you don't need to cast it again in this case). If you push the button to cast the bfg buff again, the weapon will disapear (buff will be uncast). I usually set all my buffs to L+button, all my active Combat Arts to a, x, b and y and other things (like the open weapon slot that needs to be open to cast the bfg buff) in R+button slots. Does that help?

Damage over time cannot be mitigated also - watch out for the swamp and big poison damage from spiders combined with those annoying life leech critters.

I think fire elf is a more easy character to play for a beginner, but you might consider getting ice focus even on the fire elf to have ice skin with high physical resistance available. Ice skin and fire skin cannot be used simultaneously but ice skin is very good for certain situations (ex: orc cave because orcs do only physical damage).

Here is what I do for early hunting: Somewhere near the beginning of the game, when you have enough armor, Ice Skin and start a bronze game, go piff off some kobolds so they attack you, then watch them hit you until you get a high survival bonus so that you will have better stats from said survival bonus and a better chance to find valuables that you get from this. We will get to level 20 in the fastest way I know how which is this: Start a new game in bronze or silver, Accept the quest to kill the kobold chieftan and recover the dude's stolen artifacts. Teleport to western tyr lyasa, go get the dudes stolen artifacts killing some kobolds on the way. Continue north to the kobold area and enter the cave right near the entrance to the kobold cave. Go into the cave and drink a mentor and concentration potion. Mow down ALL the enemies in the cave, checking the graves to wake up the zombie-like enemies that give lots of experience. Exit the cave, you will have killed more than 40 kobolds in the cave alone. Kill kobold chieftan. Teleport to soleford and claim the quest rewards for 13000+ experience and sometimes some nifty items! Rinse and repeat until level 20. I've found this is a very very fast way to level up at low levels. Let me know how it turns out. I hope this is helpful.

I am almost sure that life leech is not stopped by energy shields. Since it bypasses damage mitigation it would seem logical for it to bypass energy shields too. So, more life is always good. I remember my health being depleted on console version in the niob swamp via life leech even with my divine protection up and running.

Happy birthday spunky! You must be a sagitarius. Mine was 21st and I'm a scorpio/sagitarius cusp.

If you're not going to use the BFG, why do you need 2 buffs? I'd say suggest skipping concentration in that case in favor of another skill - maybe toughness or warding lore (to boost divine protection) or combat discipline.... Divine protection is so much superior to warding energy in every imaginable way. I don't think archangel will work with regen per hit but I could be wrong. Some of my comments on use of warding energy vs divine protection in my guide: http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?sh...c=13311&hl=

Posted my take on the BFG build - best optimized for ice & blood or console play fully taking advantage of regen per hit here: http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?sh...c=13311&hl=

Here's my take on the BFG seraphim build. I finished niob at level 104 with a build similar to this but I'm convinced that it can be done much earlier having learned a few things via this build. I wanted to share my experience with this character even though I know there are similar guides, I think this one has some unique and helpful information. Thanks very much to dobri for his guide which helped me in creating my character. All experience was done on console but I think this will play on PC just as nicely. To use this build best on the PC, you need Ice & Blood because regen per hit doesn't work on pc prior to ice and blood. However, it works great on console! In my opinion this is definately one of the most powerful player vs environment builds in the game both offensively and defensively. If any mod wants to add images, feel free to do so. This is my first guide so please be nice - Discussion is welcome of course. The basis of the build: 1)BFG is the most powerful weapon in the game – because there is no restriction on the level of the weapon you can wield. This is the only weapon in the game for which this is the case. Here's a table of maximum weapon level (other than BFG) that can be wielded at all character levels: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php5?title...ble_Item_Levels This is a major reason why for me a BFG seraphim is more powerful than a ranged dryad. By level 100, I was wielding a level 150ish bfg. By comparison, the highest level weapon possible to equip at level 100 for any other weapon type is 127. At level 15, the highest level weapon (except bfg) that you can equip is: 20 (I would aim for a level 30 BFG at this point)... At level 75, the highest level weapon you can equip (except bfg) is 95, etc (I would aim for at least a level 112 BFG at this point).... A good goal in the beginning of the game is to eat enough BFG runes to maintain your weapon level at least 2X character level and near the end – level 75ish at least 1.5X character level. BFG also comes with a built-in chance to pierce which increases with Combat Art level (no need to mod it for pierce) and scaling ice damage. 2) You get the benefit of a huge amount of skill points in your weapon lore and you only need to put one point in it. I had one point in ranged weapons but the amount of runes you read in bfg gives you a humongus bonus to ranged weapons which boosts your attack and attack speed. 3) By specializing in one aspect for damage, we will maximize the damage of that aspect. This aspect is exalted warrior. We could spread ourselves out among revered damage and weapon damage but the BFG does so much damage, we want to boost this directly. Plus there is a huge synergy with regen per hit and the soul hammer+pelting strikes combo that we don't benefit from when hitting with revered Combat Arts like archangel's wrath and flaring nova.... 4) 2 buffs only – Divine protection is infinitely superior to warding energy IMHO. Divine protection is uber – it absorbs a lot more damage, you can chain cast it properly modded around level 34 in console version (see notes about this in the Combat Art section) and it gives HUGE combat art block (reflect seems to work only with stun effects). Warding energy often goes down while divine protection remains standing. Recasting warding energy takes a lot longer than recasting divine protection (just try it to see the animation times).... Not mastering concentration lets us master other skills earlier. 5) Chain-castable Divine protection and dashing alacrity combo make us run fast, hit fast and have a really big shield. This is one of the quickest builds to attain 150% run speed which is something I like very very much especially since we will be modding dashing alacrity as quickly as possible (see below). I hate moving slow and this character moves fast - very nice. 6) Regen per hit is an uber mod with BFG especially when combined with a soul Hammer + pelting strikes combo. All those hits will regen the combo so even at the beginning of the game you will have a machine gun – and that machine gun is a BFG.. and you can hold the button down on console and the combo will autoexecute the milisecond the combo is recharged (no need for button mashing ever again)! Ok So here we go with the skills (heavily inspired by dobri - order is somewhat different): Level 2 - Tactics Lore: 75+ points (Mastery 1) Increases damage and chance for critical hits with all weapons. Start getting that damage up right away. Level 3 - Ranged Weapons – 1 point only do not add more. It will boost attck and attack speed. The BFG buff gives a HUGE boost to this skill. You might be tempted to skip this skill because you have such a big attack speed boost from dashing alacrity and big bonuses to hit chance from buffs but I don't recommend it because of the big bonus you get to this skill from the BFG buff which will add a lot of attack value which is then multiplied by your buffs. Very nice in terms of adding chance to hit bosses. Level 5 - Concentration: 1 point only for 2 buffs, boosted by all skills it will reduce our regen times. Level 8 – Revered tech focus: 75 points (Mastery 2) – Get this first to mod bfg buff and get higher Combat Art level without penalty in BFG buff. Level 12 - Armor Lore: (Mastery 4) 75+ points increases exisitng armor resistances, reduces/removes regeneration penalty from armor, lets us wear higher level armor without penalty. You can get this earlier if you have high level armor you want to use earlier. Level 18 - Exalted Warrior Focus – At least 51 points for mod points. Reduce regen time for warrior Combat Arts, reduce regen penalty for battle stance. Level 25 - Revered Technology Lore: One point initially, 75 points later on (if you get that high in level). This skill will improve the damage of all combat arts in the revered tree, including the damage provided by the BFG gun's damage mods. Level 35 - Constitution: (Mastery 3) 75 points. Adds directly to your char's HP totals, and improves the regeneration rate of HP. Level 50 - Warding Energy Lore: 1 point initially 75 points later on. This skill will directly improve your Divine Protection and Warding Energy (if you decide to use it which I didn't) and will provide more shield points and better damage absorption. Level 65 - Toughness: 75 points (Mastery 5). Adds directly to the armor rating and provides a reduction of the incoming damage - also known as all-channel damage mitigation. Skills Points Allocation and Masteries: - Tactics Lore (Mastery 1) - More damage with the bfg. - Revered Focus (Mastery 2) - For less regen penalty from the BFG and more levels without penalty for BFG and divine protection in which we will be eating lots and lots of runes. - Get at least 12 points in Warrior focus to get the 10th mod point. - Constitution (Mastery 3) – Its important to have this skill so that you are less likely to be killed in one hit if something gets by your divine protection. - Armor Lore (Mastery 4) – more resistance is nice and this skill adds a lot to resistance. - Get at least 51 points in Warrior focus to finish modding your Combat Arts Toughness (Mastery 5) – Some damage mitigation That should be plenty to finish niobium in single player. At this point, you'll have a good feel for the character to know what you need. Skills worth mastering afterwards include warding energy lore, revered tech lore and warrior focus. Not mastering these skills first allows us to prioritize the first 5 which in my mind are more important for this build. Bargaining Build Variant: Its helpful to have a shopper to buy things for you. If you want to make this build into a shopper, drop out Warding Lore & Revered Lore and get either EP or Alchemy (if you play PC only – Alchemy is not practical on console) and bargaining. If you go for EP, make sure to use lots of gear with +Experience modded by enhanced perception to take full advantage of this. Get EP early in the build if you want it at all so you find some good low level gear that you can save for other characters. This character makes an excellent bargaining character because she is so powerful and can afford to miss a skill or two for bargaining and EP. Mod Points Note: Modifications become available when you spend the following amount of skill points combined in the focus or lore skills for one aspect: 3, 5, 9, 14, 22, 31, 42, 55, 70, 87, 106, 126, 149, 173, 199. Mods are very important for this build! Combat Arts and Rune Reading: - Read as many runes as possible in dashing alacrity and divine prottection (once you have fully modded DA and gotten at least the first 2 mods in divine protection). Effectiveness will go up while regen and cooldown will go down. - Maintain battle stance at regen level without penalty. As soon as the regen penalties start to get lower (as level increases), go ahead and exceed this level. The regen penalty is marginal compared to BFG. - Read enough runes in BFG to maintain the BFG gun level at 2*character level at the beginning and 1.5*character level after level 75-80. Don't worry about exceeding the pnalty level. Read only one rune in other Combat Arts and raise their levels via +all combat arts equipment and jewelry when you feel the need. You can read more runes later on in pelting strikes & soul hammer after level 100 if you feel like your regen times are getting too low, but I never did this. Modifications Order (Warrior tree – feel free to modify this order but I think this is pretty good): 1)Battle stance: Agression: More damage is good. 2)Dashing alacrity: Sprout (what!? Why? : In the beginning of the game, you can't run fast. You will be able to attack fast very quickly due to bfg buff and boost to ranged weapons). Extra run speed is welcome. You will eventually get dashing alacrity to a level where it will give more than a 50% bonus to both run and attack speed anyway so the brozne mod choice matters only at the beginning of the game. 3)Dashing alacrity: Delay – increase duration (run and attack faster for a longer time early in the game) 4)Dashing Alacrity: Impatience – Reduce cooldown : we want this chain-castable asap – faster running and faster attack speed = faster killing and faster moving around the world = less time to finish the campaigns and reach niob. Impatience will make your life a lot easier in the early game and its convenient because you'll be able to use a Dashing alacrity/Divine protection combo more easily. 5)Pelting Strikes: Succession – Double hits = More power and more regen per hit because of more hits! 6)Soul hammer: Aim – more crits – get this nice and powerful. Aim is better versus regular mobs which we fight most of the time. You could pick wounding too I suppose versus bosses this will be effective. I pick aim because most enemies will go down so quick dot won't have time to work. 7)Soul Hammer- battering: reduce targets armor class 8)Soul hammer – Coup de grace: Deathblow for the Combat Art that stacks with the deathblow mod (or so I've read).... 9) Battle stance – Flexibility: Evasion – The regen penalty of this buff is not that high – on my build (where I picked drill and regretted it) it never got beyond 20%. Anyway, we have regen per hit to regenerate our combat arts, so evasion wins. 10) Battle Stance - Retaliation – Unless you're playing group then you could choose idol 11)Pelting Strikes: Focus – less regen – We have enough attack bonus already. 12)Pelting strikes – Precision: More crits Total points required to mod these Combat Arts fully: 75 in tactics lore + 51 in warrior focus, 75 in tactics lore + 12 in warrior focus will get you 10 of the 12 Why wait so long to finish battle stance: 4 reasons – you will have chain-castable divine protection at this point and the last 2 mods of battle stance are defensive. Divine protection gives us the defense we need. Secondly, at this point you will have a very good idea of your regen penalty from this buff to help you determine whether you need the extra regen time (drill) or the extra evasion (flexibility) more. Finally, not many enemies will get close enough to hit you in the first place (bosses are exceptions). Of course if you find yourself lacking in the defense department at any time, feel free to move the battle stance mods up the list. Revered Combat Art Mod order: - 1)BFG: Enhancement, Enhancement, Accuracy (if you don't pick the enhancement mods, revered lore will not increase the damage of BFG). Accuracy will boost our hit chance which is nice at high levels. If you decide to take penetrate, which I don't recommend, make sure you take the hit chance mod on battle stance instead of the damage mod. - 2)Divine Protection: Capacity, Boost, Improved mirror: VERY VERY VERY IMPORTANT mods. This is our main line of defense. Having this chain castable ASAP is important. On console versions it becomes chain castable at Combat Art level 34ish. Once you get the first 2 mods, eat all the runes in this Combat Art that you can get your hands on. This Combat Art Gave me 25K shield points with a long duration (much exceeding cooldown and regen time) and combat art blocking at character leve l04. After playing with this defensive bonus, it makes lots of other characters seem very fragile in comparison. Note: It's come to my attention that on the PC version only, Divine protection is harder to make chain castable on as of version 2.40. With capacity and boost, duration will still be just below cooldown. It can exceed it by eating lots of runes (Combat Art level > 150). I would still probably play the character the same way, if you want to get concentration master earlier and get warding energy because you're concerned about the second between when DP will wear off and when you can cast it again go ahead. - 3)You don't really need to mod any more revered Combat Arts. Modify warding energy buff if you want to use it. In this case, I'd choose 2X Field force for the extra shield energy and BLOCK. Block will compliment toughness - the field force mods don't seem to scale so increasing Combat Art level may not be useful. Divine protection already blocks spells very well and ranged damage is just not a big deal in this game. If I were to pick one other Combat Art that might be useful it would be flaring nova modded for expand (NOT Flux) and stun. I hear the expand mod can stun an entire screen of enemies which would be quite useful in areas like the swamp if you are being pounded on by creatures that do lots of DOT and life leech damage. We can do plenty of damage with our gun and flaring nova will not regen our Combat Arts with its hits. I don't like flux because I feel that the range of nova with flux is very small (its actually reduced after you take this mod from what it was at the beginning too small to be useful in my opinion). What about archangel's wrath? I don't use this for the following reasons: Firstly and perhaps most importantly, it doens't auto-fire when you hold the button down on console (unlike soul hammer + pelting strikes combo which will keep on firing without me having to unpush and push the button again giving me an awesome auto-firing machine gun. Secondly, I'm leaving revered lore at one point (until after level 100 at least because I consider mastering other skills more important: Tactics, revered focus, constitution, armor, toughness), so archangel's wrath won't be nearly as powerful. Thirdly, with my focus on weapon damage, my bfg will do plenty of damage. Finally, I can do some fire damage by equipping gauntlets that convert physical to fire damage if I want to. If you really want to use this Combat Art, go ahead, but I found I never needed it and I finished niob at a level much lower than most builds do. Points necessary to fully mod the first 2 Combat Arts: 31 Combos: - 1)Divine protection & Dashing Alacrity – Put divine protection first. I notice that this seems to animate faster than the reverse combo for some reason – also if an enemy starts hitting you, at least the shield went up faster. - 2)Soul Hammer & Pelting strikes (I recommend putting soul hammer first – if the first guy goes down you'll switch targets before firing off pelting strikes) - 3)Divine protection alone (in case you need to recast it before the combo containing it is fully recharged – it does happen) - 4)Free slot – assulting somersault to jump over stuff or dashing alacrity alone in case combo is not recharged yet but you want to cast the run fast spell quickly without waiting for divine protection to animate (in towns for example). Note that on the console, if you hold down the button to fire combo 2 – soul hammer/pelting strikes, after the combo is executed, it will immediately execute again if recharged and an enemy is in range or will fire regular shots until the combo is recharged again if it is not. This is AWESOME with regen per hit because the hits from the combo and the regular attacks afterward (if they happen) will all regen the combo.... this is how we get our machine gun. Useful Equipment and modifiers: - Get as much regen per hit as you need. This modifier works wonders with the pelting/soul hammer combo. I found about 1.2 seconds to be sufficient for me at the end but you could get more. Up to midgame, 0.5 is enough. You will see the impact immediately - Conversion damage to X: Damage to fire, magic and poison – this is found on rare gloves that can be shopped or dropped. Converts a portion of physical to one of the above. I always have one of these equipped and sometimes change it with the area I'm in. These gloves sometime come with all combat arts +X which is very nice. - Try to get at least +20 all skills. You get ½ of the bonus you can possibly get from most skills at 21 points. - Experience per kill: levelling faster is good - All Combat Arts +X: A great way to boost your damage without increasing your regen times by very much. - Damage mitigation: more useful at the end than the beginning. - Evasion: If you need it - + HP: If you need it - Bronze slots: I mostly socket blacksmith damage in these. - Opponent level for deathblow: Mainly useful versus bosses, nice with soul hammer due to stacking gold deathblow mod. Its nice to have one piece of equipment with this mod. If you use it, socket 2 deathblow items in the SAME piece of equipment because you get less diminishing returns this way. - I like wearing the entire twilight of the gods set because its very small (3 items only so resonably easy to find), has a bonus to visibility range which works nicely with ranged weapons since you can see big clumps of enemies from farther away, has a huge armor value in the holy protection, a chance to find valuables, evasion and run speed. Other than that, I just wear the best stuff I find which is usually a combo of set and rare items. General Information and tips: If you play console, check out the console page on the wiki: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php5/Sacred_2:Xbox360 Stats: 1st 50 points in Vitality, Then add points to Dexterity to increase our damage directly. Around level 75ish add some points to willpower (about 25 or so, more if you want) if you want as this will increase the shield hitpoints of divine protection (by more than a point in vitality will increase your actual hitpoints) and add some additional spell resistance which also reduces damage over time. You won't need this before this point. Diety: You can only pick Lumen, Kybele or Forens. Lumen stuns for a short time (not very useful), kybele heals (we rarely need to heal and we have heal potions for that). Forens reflects damage - this wins easily in my opinion and was my choice. I sometimes use this before boss fights as it can be useful. Quick note about 2 unhittable critters: There are 2 unhittable critters that I've found with ranged energy weapons in console versions (bfg and weapons that look like it): flyers in the swamp and fen fires in the great machine (I can hit the fen fires on dryad island with no problem). I just tend to run by these flyers and ignore them, they really don't bother me. I keep a shield and sword or axe if I ever get really annoyed and want to kill them for some reason. The only 2 instances where I can think of that I did this were prior to fighting the mist of miasma to clear the field and prior to fighting the grand inquisitor so I don't have the nearby fen fires shooting at me. Dashing alacrity will boost my attack speed through the roof even if I'm using a weapon in which I have no skill and I have a very good hit chance against normal mobs due to all the attack bonuses I have, so its not particularly difficult to hit these regular enemies quickly in this way. Shields I like include glacial defender and stalwart safeguard for these purposes. A nice weapon choice is tinorwa's curse or sword of the blood dryads (because of built-in fire damage) for this purpose, but really any melee weapon/shield combination is fine considering you'll probably only use these once or twice per campaign at most. Feel free to stun the critters with nova before knocking them down if you want. Starting to play: Somewhere near the beginning of the game, when you have enough armor, activate battle stance (which has not been modded for reflection yet right?, RIGHT) and start a bronze game, go piff off some kobolds so they attack you, then watch them hit you until you get a high survival bonus so that you will have better stats from said survival bonus and a better chance to find valuables that you get from this so you get some nice items to start the game off. We will get to level 20 in the fastest way I know how which is this: Start a new game in bronze or silver, Accept the quest to kill the kobold chieftan and recover the dude's artifacts ("Muggers"). Teleport to western tyr lyasa, go get the dudes artifacts killing some kobolds on the way. Continue north to the kobold area and enter the cave right near the entrance to the kobold cave. Go into the cave and drink a mentor and concentration potion. Mow down ALL the enemies in the cave, checking the graves to wake up the zombie-like enemies that give lots of experience. Exit the cave, you will have killed more than 40 kobolds in the cave alone. Proceed to the kobold boss and anhilate him with your BFG combo. Teleport to soleford and claim the quest rewards for 13000+ experience and sometimes some nifty items! Rinse and repeat until level 20. I've found this is a very very fast way to level up at low levels. At high levels, if you want to powerlevel, the orc cave is a very good place because it has good drops, gold and experience. Let me know how it turns out. I hope this is helpful.