Sacred 2 vs Path of Exile: Similarities, Differences, and Why You Should Play

[Ryanrocker 200]

Hey there guys, thought I'd share some thoughts about why Path of Exile will most likely be the game for me that fills up my Sacred 2 crave. With Sacred 3 looking worse and worse as the "next" big game for me to sink my teeth into, I have been meandering through other games and trying to find ones that can compare to the enjoyment I had from playing Sacred. I'm also here trying to raise awareness for the game, because as of now it's just me and Chrona and a handful of guys from the DA forums and I'd love to see more of you ingame I'll also post the official beta trailer down below as well. So without further ado, let me go into what I think are the similarities and differences between Path of Exile and Sacred 2...

 

 

Similarities

- You are able to level up individual skills, very similar to how the Combat Art rune system in Sacred 2 works. In Path of Exile, skills have their own experience bars, and level up as long as you character has them equiped. So instead of eating some CA runes to increase your skill, you fight more monsters to level it up.

- Skills are found as drops, very similar to how you had to find Combat Art runes before you could use them. Only difference is that there is NO skill trader in Path of Exile like the Rune Master in Sacred, so you really have to find them through either drops, or choose from quest rewards.

- Skills can be modified to have different effects, sometimes totally changing how a skill previously worked. This is similar to the Modification Point system that Sacred 2 uses, but instead of putting points into a lore/focus to get mod points, you slot "support" skills into your regular skills.

- Wide character selection with 6 classes to choose from, although they are all humans.

- Every single character class can be made into any fighting style you want. I found this similar to how the build design process in Sacred 2 works. In both games there are basically no character design limits.

- Character level up system involves 1350 passive skills Although certainly a larger amount of passive skills than Sacred 2 offered, a lot of them are duplicates (IE +% life) so it's not actually that large. Also keep in mind that in Sacred you put points into skills after you selected them, whereas in PoE it is a one point investment.

- Good closed multiplayer servers!

- Leaderboard system that is relatively competitive, so if you like that side of things it's there. Sacred also had the leaderboard system under Ascaron on the official forums before it went down as I recall.

- Hardcore mode!

- Takes a decent amount of time investment to get to max level. 100 max level in Path of Exile and 200 max level in Sacred 2. The reason I bring this point up is because in games like Diablo 3, it's extremely easy to hit max level and a lot of people got burnt out from that.

- Activated skills have awesome and interesting color/visual effects, very similar to how most of Sacred 2's Combat Arts were visually distinct.

- 3 separate difficulty modes, where you have to beat the previous difficulty in order to unlock the next one. Sacred 2 uses the same idea except with 5 difficulties.

 

Differences

- The game uses a theme of an exile, so early game gear is meant to make you feel like one visually. Your armor will look like it's missing a few links or buckles early in the game. This is different from basically all the armors in Sacred which look pretty good visually I'd say.

- There is a isometric, unrotational camera so you won't be glimpsing any far off horizons. Obviously different from the 360 view we had with Sacred.

- The game is not one huge continuous map, but rather separate instances that you travel through. However, I do want to point out that the zones are truly random and unique every time you instance. In about 2 hours of running the same zone for experience, I don't think I encountered the same map structure twice.

- Questing system is mainly fetch/kill quests and there only a handful of optional ones. Sacred 2 had over 500 quests.

- The game is free to play, and they have said in their mission statement that they will be funding the game on supporter packs and cosmetic items. So there is no pay to win system.

 

Other Thoughts

- Finding groups to party with is just a click of a button and you are in the server/party

- Loot allocation can be set by party leader

- Crafting system that is extremely well thought out

- No gold! Instead a currency system based around crafting is implemented along with a global trade channel.

- The endgame is NOT endless grinding, but is instead what they call "Maps". These are special challenge dungeons that will reward you will slightly better loot.

- There are leagues and challenges that they constantly update. For example a 4-month "Turbo" hardcore league just started. These leagues are interesting because it means everyone is back to level one and there is a fresh economy to start in.

- Free to Play!

 

So I hope you enjoyed reading or found out something interesting/new about Path of Exile from this post! Accounts can be made for free here http://www.pathofexile.com/ If any of you decided to play feel free to add me DARK_Rocker

Edited June 16, 2013 by Ryanrocker

[Chrona 82]

There are some friends from Sacred 2-german community too: Mawark, Hanfhaus, Vanylla, Slevin and his brother

 

useful links:

wiki: http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Path_of_Exile_Wiki

crafting: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/54003

reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/

some good streams:

http://www.twitch.tv/devmoon

http://www.twitch.tv/fireknight747

http://www.twitch.tv/void_moon

 

The next 4 month I'll play onslaught league ->add me DARK_Chrona hope to see you ingame

The Onslaught league is a hardcore league designed for players who found our existing hardcore gameplay too easy. We've increased the attack, cast and movement speed of monsters.

[Ryanrocker 200]

 

The next 4 month I'll play onslaught league ->add me DARK_Chrona hope to see you ingame

The Onslaught league is a hardcore league designed for players who found our existing hardcore gameplay too easy. We've increased the attack, cast and movement speed of monsters.

And it's certainly a huge challenge. Lost a 35 Templar and 20 Shadow today, but must rebuild!

[Chrona 82]

Updated 0.11 Path of Exile Review (also serves as a guide for new players)

 

too much text to post here, check it out:

http://www.requnix.com/path-of-exile-review

 

[Ryanrocker 200]

Updated 0.11 Path of Exile Review (also serves as a guide for new players)

 

too much text to post here, check it out:

http://www.requnix.com/path-of-exile-review

I notice they don't mention the T-Shirt you can get by completing all the challenges in the 4 Month League Chrona, will you be trying to complete these challenges? I think the unique item one will probably be the hardest for me.

[Chrona 82]

 

Updated 0.11 Path of Exile Review (also serves as a guide for new players)

 

too much text to post here, check it out:

http://www.requnix.com/path-of-exile-review

I notice they don't mention the T-Shirt you can get by completing all the challenges in the 4 Month League Chrona, will you be trying to complete these challenges? I think the unique item one will probably be the hardest for me.

No, I don't wanna play Anarchy, but I can give you my uniques for the achievment, have four now

 

[Ryanrocker 200]

No, I don't wanna play Anarchy, but I can give you my uniques for the achievment, have four now

 

Now that I think about it, is it even possible to have all 90? I mean we only get 4 stash tabs to start with, and I'm not sure how many character you can make for mules but that seems like a lot of space needed

[Chrona 82]

 

No, I don't wanna play Anarchy, but I can give you my uniques for the achievment, have four now

 

Now that I think about it, is it even possible to have all 90? I mean we only get 4 stash tabs to start with, and I'm not sure how many character you can make for mules but that seems like a lot of space needed

you dont have to store them on your toon. I found a unique and counter goes 1/90,2/90 etc... I think its accountbased

you can create 24 chars...and I've 24 premiumtabs

[Ryanrocker 200]

you dont have to store them on your toon. I found a unique and counter goes 1/90,2/90 etc... I think its accountbased

you can create 24 chars...and I've 24 premiumtabs

I saw the sale on the premium tabs early in the week and decided to wait for regular tabs to go on sale, but now I'm reconsidering. Do you label them for item categories and whatnot? I just wasn't sure if it was worth double the price of the regular ones

[Chrona 82]

 

you dont have to store them on your toon. I found a unique and counter goes 1/90,2/90 etc... I think its accountbased

you can create 24 chars...and I've 24 premiumtabs

I saw the sale on the premium tabs early in the week and decided to wait for regular tabs to go on sale, but now I'm reconsidering. Do you label them for item categories and whatnot? I just wasn't sure if it was worth double the price of the regular ones

 

yes, made tabs for gems, %gems, uniques, currency, jewels, flasks...etc.

don't worry, premium tabs will be available soon again (04.05.2013,15.06.2013)-> maybe in 3-6 weeks

 

[Ryanrocker 200]

So far I've been following guides for all of my builds so far because that skill tree is just daunting for new players. But yesterday after my latest death, I decided to try out planning my own build with the offline skill tree. And man was that just one of the best things I've ever done! Never in a game have I had to check the most optimum path of getting to a certain skill, or hell even being able to choose about 100 skills! The customization is amazing when it comes to builds and really just blows me away

[Chrona 82]

the offline skill tree is a great tool

 

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/19723/page/1

Edited June 23, 2013 by Chrona

[Chrona 82]

with patch 0.11 my gpu-temp went up from ~60°c (140°F)-> 75°c (167°F)

cleaning fans+case, turning off shadows had no effect...but today I found a solution:

- switched from windowed fullscreen ->fullscreen

- disable post processing in graphic options

- disable reverb in sound options

new temp: 50°c (122°F)

 

bad FPS?(check with F1)->hide global/trade chat (I only enable it in town)

Edited June 24, 2013 by Chrona

[Ryanrocker 200]

My drop rates make no sense to me...I was farming the Ledge with 75% item rarity gear and literally got no blues, and then the second I take all the gear off I got 2 unique drops in a row? What madness is this GGG?

[Chrona 82]

My drop rates make no sense to me...I was farming the Ledge with 75% item rarity gear and literally got no blues, and then the second I take all the gear off I got 2 unique drops in a row? What madness is this GGG?

I completly ignore IR/IQ ->

 

with better equip/stats (ignoring IR/IQ) you can farm faster->more kills=more items

Edited June 25, 2013 by Chrona

[Chrona 82]

 

Version 0.11.1

 

Features:

• Helmets have been updated with new names and art. There are no longer any repeats of helmet art in the progression. Note: Existing helmets have had their name and art updated, but higher tier ones (that previously had repeated art) will show new art from the lower tier. This will be fixed in a future patch. To fix your helmet manually, put it on the cursor and type /fixmyhelmet
• Support for the upcoming Descent race league has been added.
• Stats refactor - The way in which damage is calculated has been changed, to make future expansion easier. Most of this is internal and won't affect gameplay. The following effects will be seen in game:
• Melee skills with Damage Effectiveness have been changed to having a "Deals % of Base Damage" stat.
• Spells with Damage Effectiveness no longer have their own damage affected by Damage Effectiveness. Damage values on these skills have been updated to reflect this.
• Physical damage on items is now scaled by physical damage bonuses (in a similar way to how elemental damage worked before).

 

 

Content:

• Diamond Utility Flasks have returned! They make your Critical Strike Chance "Lucky" for 3.5 seconds (that is, your Critical Strike Chance is rolled twice, with the best result taken).
• Added five new Unique items, three of which were designed by our Diamond supporters. One of them is a Unique flask. The fifth unique is the new race reward item, Demigod's Stride.
• Added alternate art items for Season 3 race rewards.
• Added four new cosmetic microtransactions effects: Raise Mummy Skin for the Raise Zombie skill gem, Necrotic Footprints, Vampiric Footprints and Lightning Footprints.
• Added 3D art for the Zahndethus' Cassock, Heartbreaker, Nycta's Lantern and The Supreme Truth unique items.
• New audio has been added for currency item drop sounds and various impact sounds, including Energy Shield impacts.
• A visual effect now plays when a Unique item drops.
• Continued to incrementally improve the sound, art, effects and environments.

 

 

Balance:

• Increased Flask drop rate slightly.
• Torr Olgosso's damage, survivability and AI has been reworked to make him a more challenging Rogue Exile.
• The Melee Splash support gem now works with Shield Charge.
• Shield charge can now be evaded.
• Rebalanced the damage Infernal Blow deals when exploding a monster. It was affected by the Stats refactor and now needs to be calculated differently. It should still be the same overall damage as before.

 

 

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where Knockback could force a monster into an inaccessible area.
• Fixed a bug where Melee Splash did not always apply to all monsters in the radius.
• Vendors now assess stacks of currency items correctly and offer full price based on their contents.
• Selling items with 80+ total quality now correctly separates two 40 quality sets if possible.
• Fixed a recent bug where Raised Zombies had 75% resistance to all elements.
• Fixed a bug where hidden monsters showed buff effects
• Fixed an issue where the Divine Weapon Effect on claws looked like the Regal Weapon Effect.
• Minions of player minions no longer count towards monster count and no longer receive the monster buff for multiple players in the instance.
• Fixed a bug where Energy Shield regeneration through Zealot's Oath worked in Maps that restricted life regeneration.
• Fixed a bug where the Energy Shield recharge timer would still pass even when the ring that suppresses it was equipped.
• Fixed several crashes.
• Fixed a case where a kill from a totem or minion might not be assigned correctly.
• Fixed a bug where monsters killed by converted monsters would not grant experience.
• Fixed a minor bug with extra gore where critical strikes were not causing extra gibs.
• Fixed several issues related to skills greying out at the wrong times.
• Footprints will no longer make sounds when you're not walking around.
• Fixed a bug where footprints left decals on the ground in town areas.

 

 

Edit: We added this patch note line after this was originally posted:

• A visual effect now plays when a Unique item drops.

 

• The Melee Splash support gem now works with Shield Charge.

[Chrona 82]

Descent Races

Race Season Three runs from Saturday June 29 (New Zealand Time) for approximately six weeks.

 

Path of Exile's Race Season Three starts next weekend! We've designed a new signature event for this season - the Descent league that PC Gamer announced over the weekend. Today's news post goes into more detail about the development of this league and how it works.

Path of Exile race leagues are short duration events where players compete in a fresh economy to win prizes. With durations ranging from minutes to one week, they allow players to demonstrate mastery of the game. We group them into Seasons and have run two of these Seasons since entering Open Beta in January. For more information, please check out the announcements of Seasons One and Two.

After the last two seasons, we surveyed our racing community and took a lot of feedback on board. During the design of Descent races, we tried to take into account the following pieces of feedback:

• Players asked for leagues that didn't filter back into the regular leagues upon death. This would mean that we could potentially change item drop rates and how items are given out. Many players said they felt that the choice between using currency items in the race or keeping them for regular play diminished the fun of a race.
• Hardcore racers really loved signature races. Being able to improve on a record throughout the season was very popular.
• Players asked for races with different starting locations and area progressions.
• To reduce the RNG effects of shops (and attrition strategies related to using waypoints/portals to fill flasks), a common request was disabling town.
• Some players wanted difficulty through means other than crazy combinations of league mods.
• A frequent request was a steeper level progression so that players were discouraged from just skipping monsters.
• Some players asked for no instance management so that the player has to push forward and can't just farm a safe area.

In the first two seasons, players competed by racing through the standard Path of Exile game as quickly as they could, trying to gain more experience than other players. We occasionally added interesting properties (special game modifiers, super fast monsters, random ancestral totems) to these races. These events have been very popular, but when designing Season Three, we wanted to offer an experience that differed from running through the core Path of Exile plot.

Our random level generation system allowed us to easily string together a new set of levels and build a minigame around it - the Descent league. It's an alternate shorter version of Path of Exile designed specifically for our race events.

In a Descent event, you start in the outskirts of the Phrecian Forest and must search out a forgotten cathedral. As you descend into its depths and explore dungeons, caves, ruins and more, you encounter challenging combinations of monsters and bosses from all areas of Path of Exile.

There is no town to return to. There are no waypoints or portals for travel. Players cannot party up with each other - they start out alone and will perish alone. The only way to restore flask charges is to kill monsters or to level up. You can't backtrack to previous areas or re-run an area that you have completed.

At the end of each Descent level is a pair of a special chests. Each contains a different set of predetermined items that help focus your character build in specific ways. The catch is, you can only choose to open one of these chests per level. While almost all of the resultant items are useful, the choices that are made can drastically change how the event is played. For example, the chests at the end of the first level contain a choice of either Life Flasks or Quicksilver Flasks (which increase movement speed when consumed) and Scrolls of Wisdom. As the event is timed, a decision to focus on survivability over racing speed can have large consequences. The predetermined items from chests (and lack of NPC shops) reduce the random variance that players often experience in traditional races.

In Descent leagues, the normal hardcore rules (where hardcore characters just become non-hardcore ones on death) do not apply. Characters and their items are permanently destroyed once a Descent event ends, regardless of whether they survived or died. We wanted to design Descent as a standalone experience where we don't have to worry about items making their way back into the regular Path of Exile economy. This freedom allows us to structure how characters receive items so that there are interesting choices as they progress. We're able to give out complex crafting items at certain levels without it being unfair to players who don't play the Descent events.

Because the goal of Descent isn't to accumulate wealth, we've designed it almost like a traditional single player RPG where the fun is working out what character build for each class stands the best chance of surviving through the difficult content.

Descent events last for one hour each and are the Signature Event of Race Season Three. This means that we'll be running approximately fifty of them over six weeks, spread over a variety of timezones. We'll be keeping track of the players who have reached the highest levels with each character class over the whole season so that we can give them prizes at the end.

Allowing players to replay the same event every few days is really interesting from a game design point of view. We've designed the Descent events so that they're difficult at first but get easier as players work out better strategies. The contents of the special chests are not known in advance, so players can pool their community knowledge to work out which ones are best for their own play styles. We expect that as players work out the best ways to build characters to handle the challenge we've constructed, they'll get deeper and deeper into the cathedral.

Because there's no backtracking or repeating areas in Descent, there are many tough choices when deciding which monsters or bosses to kill on each level. We provide support for skipping areas by having a choice of Quicksilver Flasks early on and by not restricting entry to the next level based on any criteria other than discovering the entrance. The higher levels are very hard and scale up quickly (as well as technically being designated as Cruel and later, Merciless), so you're going to want all the experience you can get from previous levels.

Note that because Descent races are the Signature Events of Season Three, there will be alternate-art Demigod's Stride items given to the top-three characters of each class at the end of the season, based on overall experience. Only the highest result of each character class on an account is compared.

Race Season Three runs from Saturday June 29 (New Zealand Time) for approximately six weeks. We'll be posting a schedule on events within the next few days!

 

[Spritzen69 1]

This looks pretty good. Will have to check this out when I get home.

 

Is there HC mode?

[Ryanrocker 200]

Is there HC mode?

Yup, and currently there is an 'extra' HC mode called Onslaught. The monsters move, attack, and cast 20% faster than in the regular leagues

[Spritzen69 1]

I'm surprised this hasn't gathered more interest on these forums, seems to me that this should tick most people boxes when it comes to ARPGs. Since I downloaded it, I've played nothing else. Can't recommend this enough, it's free so costs nothing but a bit of time for everyone to try out!!

I was impressed enough to go Regal, for nothing else but to support the continued development of this fine game.

[Ryanrocker 200]

I'm surprised this hasn't gathered more interest on these forums, seems to me that this should tick most people boxes when it comes to ARPGs. Since I downloaded it, I've played nothing else. Can't recommend this enough, it's free so costs nothing but a bit of time for everyone to try out!

I was impressed enough to go Regal, for nothing else but to support the continued development of this fine game.

Hehe, this is almost exactly what happened to me. I was just completely blown away by how good the game is if you put in the effort to understand the complexity of some of the mechanics. What's one of your in game names, that way we can add you

[claudius 104]

Hi, ltns. Is this game available past beta yet? I looked on steam.

[Ysne58 236]

I'm going to give it a try. It looks like the PvP isn't something any player is forced into.

[Ryanrocker 200]

Hi, ltns. Is this game available past beta yet? I looked on steam.

 

The game will be coming out of Open Beta in October, and it's a non-steam game

I'm going to give it a try. It looks like the PvP isn't something any player is forced into.

Awesome! Yup, you never ever have to touch PvP if you don't want to. It's definitely more of an 'extra' to the game

[Spritzen69 1]

Grr lost my Shadow (RIP) last night, whilst I like the idea that a HC toon simply moves from the HC league to the SC league (so you can still play them), I'm not sure I can bring myself to play in SC lol....

So anyway, thought I'd try out a Witch AE fire/ice build, just working out if it's worth moving towards the Templar's AE passives as well.

Feel free to add me:

DARK_Majik

Edited July 29, 2013 by Spritzen69