The simplest build ever?

[podgie_bear 184]

This is my first attempt at writing a build or recording my experiences while playing. So please be kind and if you have to flame me, be prepared for me to cry all over you (I am warning you, it could get messy!)

 

I have been trying out various builds that I have seen on this and other forums and after many disappointments and frustrations, a few harsh and usually unprintable words and especially managing to restrain myself from throwing the mouse at the monitor, I have decided to take action. One of the great things in the original Sacred was the ability to develop a character that could kick butt with the best of them, but without needing a lot of skill or experience to be able to play well. For example my Wood Elf used only 2CAs, Thornbush as a main attack and Call of the Ancestors as a mob killer (which was rarely needed anyway!). And I took her all the way to Platinum in HC without any problems, until she died in the Valley of Tears, killed by lag. I don’t think that a character should be so complicated that while you are trying to remember which combinations of weapons, CAs, buffs and armour are best to use in which situations, a simpler character can walk up to you and beat you to death with a rock!

 

So I decided to make my own build, one that is simple to use, easy to develop and fun to play. It should also be so simple that the rawest newbie can play it. Therefore I will not get into Blacksmithing, Bargaining or anything else beyond the basics. I will only use weapons and armour I find and will only use the services of the Runemaster so that I can get the one type of rune I will be using.

 

After trying out various characters, I decided to make an Inquisitor build and to limit myself to just 1 CA for my mob killer and trust in my ordinary attack to keep me alive. As for a boss killer, if I can’t take them down with my main attack, then it is a poor build that does not live up to what I want to achieve. I also decided to start on silver difficulty and not to make it a HC build, purely so that I can test out the build without having to keep restarting if I got it wrong, rather to learn from any mistakes for a future, perfected build. So this is what happened ………

 

Attributes.

I put all attribute points into vitality because I want this character to be able to survive without having to rely on specialist equipment.

 

Skills.

Level 2.

Dual Wield. The Inquisitor seems like it could have been made especially for this skill. With no ability to use shields, it would be a total waste not to make the most of this skill.

 

Level 3.

Astute Supremacy Lore. Since Clustering Maelstrom is going to be my mob killer, I want to make the most of its damage potential.

 

Level 5.

Armour Lore. With no shield and being surrounded by enemies while casting Clustering Maelstrom, I am going to need to get the best from my armour.

 

Level 8.

Astute Supremacy Focus. To lower regeneration and raise my CA level without penalty.

 

Level 12.

Concentration. To help lower my regeneration time as much as possible.

 

Level 18.

Combat Reflexes. Increases the chance to evade hostile weapon attacks and reduces the chance to sustain critical hits.

 

Level 25.

Toughness. Adds resistances for each type of damage and reduces incoming damage.

 

Level 35.

Spell Resistance. To increases resistance to spells and add some protection from spell-based critical hits.

 

I am now level 41 and have just completed the game on silver difficulty. I played straight through, doing only the main quest and character specific quest (except for the Blind Guardian Quest so I could watch the concert) I had no real problems and expect to kick butt just as well on the higher difficulties with this build. I plan to pick these skills later as I expect them to enhance this build perfectly.

 

Level 50.

Constitution. To increases health total and health regeneration for the higher difficulty levels.

 

Level 65.

Speed Lore. To increase my attack and defence values. I am not too bothered about the increase to running speed since I am mainly fight while mounted on my Shroud Spider anyway.

 

Thank you in advance for your comments and I hope this article inspires some other inexperienced players to try making their own builds rather than relying on what published builds they read to play the game with. After all that is Sacred's greatest strength, the ability to experiment and customise your character however you want to.

Edited June 20, 2010 by podgie_bear

[gogoblender 3,071]

The idea of running "au naturel" is good. And I agree that Sacred is the absolute fount of inspirational build creativity.

 

If you're at level 41 and loving it, it's probably a good sign that are being sensible about choices and can vault out of Silver quickly all the way to plat... even Niobium?

 

Important to me is the crucial level 75 where last skill is picked and then about 15 - 20 levels after your synergy tween build choices becomes evident, specially versus bosses.

 

Keep going with this Podgie, and a nice writeup

 

 

gogo

[podgie_bear 184]

I intend to try and take it 'all the way', but may have to start again in the near future, since this was made on Sacred 2 patched to 2.4, without Ice & Blood. If I can upgrade in the near future, I will happily start again but only after trying out the Dragon Mage.

[Arperum 3]

An other Near live of the land player! I'm currently building up a shadow warrior without any help, not even runemaster or any other merchants/backsmiths at all.

[claudius 104]

Looks like a cool build... I think you have a lot of defense which is excellent. In my experience clustering maelstrom can rip huge mobs with astutes x2 even if it takes 2 or 3 casts. The trick with this build is that you need to mop up after the Clustering you might have a few champs hanging around. One strategy is to run the champs to the next mob and bomb them again. But what I usually do is use levin array and callous execution. It might seem crazy to use callous execution with no skill behind it (tactics/gruesome) but the idea is to wear a bit of rph jewelry [oops only works in ice and blood but you can get a similar result with deathblow which DOESn't work on spells in Ice and Blood) and then raise the level of levin array to the point it can kill things. Wearing niob levin array rune in a bronze slot (3 socket skirt or shoulders) or niob clustering runes... Will give you more CA levels and also even more close combat reflect.

 

Against bosses this build will struggle. Let me know if you need a ride to gold-niob I have a dark campaign runner/templates [edit if you later come to ice and blood]. The thing you CAN do to kill bosses is to use % LL pole/twohandedsword/shuriken...

 

This build has a lot of defensive skills. I would spec jewelry to offense and %xp. Why xp? Because the most numerous low life mobs are in the first few regions. As you progress you get to more numerous more powerful enemies. Those powerful enemies hit harder and are more dangerous. My inquisitor is level 57 in gold and he is fighting kobolds and skeletons. He melts through them (niob jewelry and niob smith arts), but he gets levels pretty decent because he has +70 xp on kills (%)... So he is just running that path with all those toxic elementals rounding up about 10 of them then pop-pop-pop green numbers... While the toxics are respawning he hits clearview just past the portal if you head for the ruins with the ghosts you can usually find 2 or 3 packs of skeletons converging for big xp.

 

Let me know how this goes. Inquis is very squishy I am curious how this turns out. A lot of defensive skills! I can't tell if its genius or sheer folly!

 

I think since you have concentration that gruesome inquisition focus is a good idea... Will help your mop up melee skills. You can purifying chastisement to increase your damage by quite a lot. I would choose + magic (levin), crit (because its always on even full health), damage (because you already have a huge defense. Probably replace speed lore though Inqui does have a lot of dex. You can always wear whets/anneal for attack defense.

Edited June 20, 2010 by claudius

[podgie_bear 184]

Thanks for the advice Claudius, but it does defeat the object quite a bit (not using more than 1 CA and no buffs). This baby must either stand alone, or fall into obscurity.

 

An other Near live of the land player! I'm currently building up a shadow warrior without any help, not even runemaster or any other merchants/backsmiths at all.

 

How many CAs are you using? My Shadow Warrior only used 2 CAs, Shadow Veil, buffed to sneak around everywhere and Skeletal Fortification as my only attack CA. It worked well and almost beat bronze difficulty, until my save got corrupted. Rather than restart it, I decided to try another character first, this Inquisitor is it.

[Arperum 3]

I'm meleeing, my build is here, I use more then 2 Combat Arts though.

[podgie_bear 184]

Oh yes, I had read your build. It looked interesting, I just have this bee in my bonnet about seeing how simple a build I can make that is still able to complete the game.

[S-P 6]

Nice one. I've never been a big fan of using lots of CAs/Buffs, may give this a go in the future.

[essjayehm 58]

Good luck, PodgieBear!

 

I don't want to rip on you, but I do think you will hit a wall in Gold, around Garganthopod. I guess you should be defensive enough, but the boss fights will start to take a Looooooooooooooooong time.

 

Maybe Raving Thrust may have been a better choice for a 1-CA toon, although which mods to pick would be tricky....

 

We'll patiently await your results

[podgie_bear 184]

I am in no great hurry to beat the game, I am quite happy to enjoy the journey rather than rush to the final destination. As regards ny choice of CA, I decided to pick the most all round useful and since there are very few bosses but huge numbers of mobs, I wanted a mob killer.

[S-P 6]

What mods did you use? And are you using any buffs? I found the Inquistor to be pretty slow with Duel Wield, although it maybe me as I'm used to Seraphim DW.

[podgie_bear 184]

What mods did you use? And are you using any buffs? I found the Inquistor to be pretty slow with Duel Wield, although it maybe me as I'm used to Seraphim DW.

 

I am not using any mods, just vanilla Sacred 2 patched to 2.40 and no buffs at all. My only CA is clustering Maelstrom. The wholepoint of this build is to see if it is possible to beat the game with the simplest build possible. If I can do this, I will try again without using any CAs or buffs at all.

 

And no, I am not a masochist, I am just curious to see what is the least you can do to your character and still be able to complete the game.

[S-P 6]

Let us know how it goes, will be interested to know how far you can take it.