The importance on Bargaining/Enhanced Perception

[jurrasicpunk 0]

Alright so I've got a few toons, one of them is my seraphim who sits nicely at like level 45 or so and she does well. Well as I look to other characters I like to think how I can build them, and how I could build them so that someone who just got the game can pick them up with little hassle and play through before they decide if they wanna dive into the game fully.

 

The thing is I'm wondering the importance of Bargaining and Enhanced Perception and all the other general skills in the game. With a lot of build I contemplate they leave very little if not any room for these skills as the spots are filled up with skills like the defensive ones, and the attack skills. Even some take up more than one tree so CA skills fill the spaces.

 

How much of a drop in game play would it be to not pick up any of the General Skills at all? Like as far as speed and ease goes. Anyone's opinions are welcome, just back them up with your thoughts please.

[Rndm 1]

Don't think you actually need any general skills, though it's suggested you have one to two characters (one with bargaining and ep or two that both have one of these skills). Think you only need one shopper and one rare hunter, though if you like finding uniques I'd try to squeeze EP into some of your other characters' builds. As for the other general skills, I never take any other skills, though some people who like cutting their travel time down will take Riding, and I think there are a few builds that take Divine Devotion in order to make their deity ability more effective. And blacksmithing is broken on consoles so I wouldn't take that on any character. IMO take EP on one character, choose another to take bargaining (they'll be able to shop for all of your characters), and other than that (imo) you'll be sacrificing the power of your build to take the other general skills. You might want to look up some good shopper/rare hunter builds in the guides section (like the january sales seraphim- I believe it involves being a dual wielding monster who also has EP and Bargaining). Hope this helps you out, good luck!

Edited October 5, 2010 by Rndm

[Shattered Rift 2]

Having never used them, you can live in the ignorant bliss of not knowing what you're missing.

 

However, to give a serious answer...

 

Bargaining needs to be used on a toon who is going to be a Bargainer (max Bargaining skill, run a Bargaining suit, etc). And, on the console, I'm not sure what to think about Bargaining. Ideally, you want a Bargainer to buy jewelry so that a Blacksmith can socket it. On the console, without Blacksmithing, Jewelry has a more limited use. Plus, shopping for hours is pretty boring.

 

Enhanced Perception can be given to any toon (in any point amount), but better quality drops are still drops, and drops are random. You'll get better stuff, but you can't control what you get in the way that you can with Bargaining. On the other hand, you don't have to manage EP: it just happens as you play (since playing is all about killing enemies).

 

Alchemy is useless on the console.

 

Divine Devotion, while possibly fun with Testa, is only worth the novelty value.

 

Riding could be all right, but it's widely agreed that there are better skills for just about every build.

[Sincere_420 0]

I am a level 57 HE pyro with bargaining and ep, bargaining is at character level and I can get it to 160+ I think with relics and gear (im at work) and ep is at 1 and I can get it to like 75 with relics and gear. so far...I dont know how much EP has played out but me and my GF have loads of 3 star weapons and sets in our bank

 

bargaining on the other hand..wow! I dont think I can ever not have it. the items I pull from the vendors is just stupid...+4 skill ammys with LL, bows with 3 sockets and 4 mods on them, some of the armor pieces are just insane too.

 

blacksmithing is broken dont take it.

 

alchemy isnt good on consoles, my GF has it. you cant hotkey the trophies on your potion slots you have to actually go into the inv and use them and at any given time you have upwards of 20+ trophies on you and you cant really read what one your using when you have a dragon breathing down your neck. (its things like this that make me wish you could respec, not 100000000000 times, just once at say 75 )

 

dont have any experience with devotion one

 

and riding is what it is..

 

hope I was some help brother

 

long story short bargaining is way to sweet, just alot of gear switching before/after you shop. EP from what I think I have seen has helped me get mulitple x3 weapons/sets/rings/ammys with very little switching of gear (just relics) with only 1 point to really make it shine

 

but this does infact only leave you with 8 other skill choices to pick from

 

cheers!

[locolagarto 15]

Lots of great responses and opinions here, guys.

 

This is a great subject and this kind of discussion has always been full of ideas.

 

When I first started playing Sacred2 on XBOX, furian67 had been reading here on FDM about bargaining, and bargaining suits. I was so deep into the game that stopping to shop just seemed like a huge waste of time. I let him do the shopping ( which was mostly for +all skills rings and ammys). Blacksmithing doesn't work on console, But you can socket high level gems into low level gear without changing the level of the gear. (This was patched out on PC)

 

After playing for a bit, I realized that in order to really make the best use of the sockets, I needed specific gems for my build. There really wasn't anyway to find what I needed, other than bargaining. So I built a Queen of Blades seraphim and maxed out my bargaining at character level 126. I was finding +11 all skills and making every character that Furian and I had awesomely powerful.

 

Once I got to PC. I immediately started the task of having shoppers strategically stationed at different levels. And I spent many hours shopping for the gems I used most. (+XP, Regen Per Hit, anti-DOT, etc)

 

Once I had gathered a chest full of jewels at various levels and Set-Armor for my characters, I found that I really wanted to spend more time just building and making strong characters through good skill picks, mod choices and play-style tactics.

 

So I don't spend as much time with shoppers as I used to. Although, there is just no other way to max-min a character in Sacred2.

 

As for the other skills.

 

Ehanced Perception is for treasure hunters. It may not be neccessary, as you can find good stuff without, but it helps

 

Alchemy is difficult to use on console, as you can't hot-slot trophies to a button, but with alchemy mastery you can have Mentor potions that that for 3 minutes instead of 30 seconds. 50% experience boost for 3 minutes is big. Yes you can socket +xp gear, but sometimes a skill slot is cheaper than 5 armor sockets.

 

riding is best used for horse mounts. It can make your unique mount faster with Mastery, but most players only take it if they need a primary general skill to unlock a secondary.

 

divine is probably the least useful of all the general skills. it give a small reduction in the cool down time of the god spell, but never enough to make the spell and active art.

 

In the end it's all about your choice. Utility character or Fun character or Fun/Utility character.

[bonkers31 0]

Scrap all general skills except enhanced perception and bargaining. Make one toon a shopper with enhanced perception, look on this site alot of great builds.

[rhs408 7]

I try to squeeze in EP any way that I can for all my toons to help me find good sets and rare drops. This of course requires that you sacrifice something else that would be helpful to you... for me, the offensive skills are the easiest to part ways with. On my latest TG I sacrificed not getting a weapon skill so that I could get EP, been very much worth it so far.

 

I don't think bargaining is needed on every character, although I'd say you need to have at least ONE toon with Bargaining to shop for decent jewelry for the rest of your toons. Aggressively shop any chance you get until you're around level 100 or so and have decent jewelry from levels 5-100, then you're done. You'll get more good jewelry over time with other toons from drops/EP, but having a good starting point as far as jewelry (especially anything with +all skills) makes a HUGE difference.

[jurrasicpunk 0]

Lots of good feed back which I love to see on forums. And I do have one character that has either EP or Barg. My 45 seraphim has EP not that high though but it does go above character level with gear and relics. And then there is my level 20 or so Inquisitor who picked up bargaining from day one of him. With the Inquisitor I don't really sacrifice much to pick it up. Got my damage skills, He mostly uses Callous Execution and the GI skills. The most I can see that I gave up on for it for him was a CA lore but I don't really use the other skills outside of defense or utility.

 

The thing is my seraphim seems like she is giving up a rather large piece of her to pick up EP because right now she can only pick up two more skills and I'd like to get Warding Energy Lore for my shield and maybe the lore for rev tech, again for the shield cause I picked up block at the end.

 

My other issue outside of it taking up a skill is the fact that items don't seem to scale in my favor. I've got tons of 3 star items and sets...all ranging from the 40-60 level range...which makes me feel like it was wasted. Same with Inquis with Bargaining. As he levels so does the gear that he buys and again, low level toons won't be able to use them.

 

past that not much of an issue. As a side note though, everyone says that you can't use BS on console which I don't intend to test. But I don't see a point in getting it anyway as I can already socket rings and amulets into gear at the black smith. Just gotta match them to their corresponding colors. Bronze slot only takes BS enhances and Runes, Silver takes the same a bronze plus rings, and gold takes same as silver plus amulets.

[Shattered Rift 2]

As a side note though, everyone says that you can't use BS on console which I don't intend to test. But I don't see a point in getting it anyway as I can already socket rings and amulets into gear at the black smith. Just gotta match them to their corresponding colors. Bronze slot only takes BS enhances and Runes, Silver takes the same a bronze plus rings, and gold takes same as silver plus amulets.

The "big deal" about the Blacksmith skill is that, in the PC version, it lets you socket rings into bronze slots and necklaces into silver slots. This is huge, and I can't emphasize that enough. Unfortunately, as you're a console player, that doesn't help you, but I wanted to make sure this was clear.

[jurrasicpunk 0]

As a side note though, everyone says that you can't use BS on console which I don't intend to test. But I don't see a point in getting it anyway as I can already socket rings and amulets into gear at the black smith. Just gotta match them to their corresponding colors. Bronze slot only takes BS enhances and Runes, Silver takes the same a bronze plus rings, and gold takes same as silver plus amulets.

The "big deal" about the Blacksmith skill is that, in the PC version, it lets you socket rings into bronze slots and necklaces into silver slots. This is huge, and I can't emphasize that enough. Unfortunately, as you're a console player, that doesn't help you, but I wanted to make sure this was clear.

 

It's cool. On console that function is given to players no matter what general skill they pick so it's not a big deal to a lot of them.

[Shattered Rift 2]

As a side note though, everyone says that you can't use BS on console which I don't intend to test. But I don't see a point in getting it anyway as I can already socket rings and amulets into gear at the black smith. Just gotta match them to their corresponding colors. Bronze slot only takes BS enhances and Runes, Silver takes the same a bronze plus rings, and gold takes same as silver plus amulets.

The "big deal" about the Blacksmith skill is that, in the PC version, it lets you socket rings into bronze slots and necklaces into silver slots. This is huge, and I can't emphasize that enough. Unfortunately, as you're a console player, that doesn't help you, but I wanted to make sure this was clear.

 

It's cool. On console that function is given to players no matter what general skill they pick so it's not a big deal to a lot of them.

I think you're overlooking the difference. With a normal Blacksmith, you can slot rings into silver and gold slots (but not bronze) and you can slot necklaces into gold slots only (but not silver slots). With the skill, you can slot rings into bronze slots, and you can slot necklaces into silver slots. You do cannot do that in the console version.

[locolagarto 15]

As a side note though, everyone says that you can't use BS on console which I don't intend to test. But I don't see a point in getting it anyway as I can already socket rings and amulets into gear at the black smith. Just gotta match them to their corresponding colors. Bronze slot only takes BS enhances and Runes, Silver takes the same a bronze plus rings, and gold takes same as silver plus amulets.

The "big deal" about the Blacksmith skill is that, in the PC version, it lets you socket rings into bronze slots and necklaces into silver slots. This is huge, and I can't emphasize that enough. Unfortunately, as you're a console player, that doesn't help you, but I wanted to make sure this was clear.

 

It's cool. On console that function is given to players no matter what general skill they pick so it's not a big deal to a lot of them.

I think you're overlooking the difference. With a normal Blacksmith, you can slot rings into silver and gold slots (but not bronze) and you can slot necklaces into gold slots only (but not silver slots). With the skill, you can slot rings into bronze slots, and you can slot necklaces into silver slots. You do cannot do that in the console version.

In addition to the bonus Shattered Rift mentioned. The blacksmith skill also reduces the gold cost to socket. And with mastery it gives a chance to remove gems without loosing any in the process. Ultimately the best use of the blacksmith skill is to be used as a utility character to support your fun characters and friends.

 

Also a difference between PC and Console is that on PC the merchant smith is at a fixed level for the difficulty(silver,gold, etc). So you are limited on the level of Smith Arts on PC without a Utility Smith, On Console the black smith follows the spawn level of monsters in that region. I always socketed in Niob at the port to the wastelands. That was the highest level blacksmith in the game on Console.

[SpiritThief 0]

Not having a working blacksmith skill is made up for still being able to have DB on spells on the console

[essjayehm 58]

Not having a working blacksmith skill is made up for still being able to have DB on spells on the console

Good way to look at it!

 

I always assumed that Ascaron knew they weren't going to get blacksmithing to work on the consoles (maybe a bad assumption? I have no reasoning for that) soooooo, they gave the console version the "oversocketing" ability - to put high-level jewelery into low-level armour/weapons WITHOUT affecting the level as a way to give the console community a "sorry, we couldn't get blacksmithing to work".

 

My .02

[Shattered Rift 2]

I always assumed that Ascaron knew they weren't going to get blacksmithing to work on the consoles (maybe a bad assumption? I have no reasoning for that) soooooo, they gave the console version the "oversocketing" ability - to put high-level jewelery into low-level armour/weapons WITHOUT affecting the level as a way to give the console community a "sorry, we couldn't get blacksmithing to work".

 

My .02

It doesn't seem to fit: the Blacksmith skill doesn't seem to be very complicated at all, and nearly all of the functionality already exists in the town blacksmiths. I've always been under the impression that they simply forgot to add in the button for the Blacksmith skill.

 

I take it oversocketing didn't exist in one of the previous versions of the PC version? That part does strike me as odd, then.

[essjayehm 58]

I take it oversocketing didn't exist in one of the previous versions of the PC version? That part does strike me as odd, then.

Actually, I think PC did have it for a couple of months. That is part of my conspiracy theory... they patched oversocketing to PC to give the community a trial period before they released the console version. (To ensure oversocketing wasn't TOO overpowered)

[Arperum 3]

No, they simple fixed the bug for the pc version, and didn't do so for PS3, no conspiracys here.

[jurrasicpunk 0]

No, they simple fixed the bug for the pc version, and didn't do so for PS3, no conspiracys here.

 

I have to agree here. The thing is that it is easy to fix bugs and glitches on a computer game than it is on console. The Console's program for the game is contained all on that disk, there isn't really a transfer over. While on a PC the files on the disk are transfered and it runs off those more than the CD.