xeyp 53 Posted July 6, 2024 (edited) Hello everyone, long time Forum Stalker here - finally making my first post, which hopefully is in the right section. There are Three and a half questions and a bit of a guide/experience in this post: - (the half question) Does going over the 1:1 Character level to Trade level benefit us (it's only half a question because there was definitely a difference between going from 1:5 to 1:20 and further, but there's the possibility that I might just we looking to confirm my beliefs?) - (Question 1) Is the Ratio of Character Level to Trading Level important (I.e. Relative difference) -or- is it the just the Absolute number of levels that the skill goes to after reaching a 1:1 ratio with the Character's lvl. - (Question 2) I wonder if there's something that I might've missed in order to bring the ratio even higher? I'm also assuming the skills have a cap at 255, however, reading Wolfe's Lair section on Max Levels - there's an asterisk that states: *Even if you exceed the value shown in skill point screen you will still see the effects of additional points awarded through items in the actual stats that the skill effects - (Question 3) Does Trading actually benefit from going over 255 and how much so? For people that are not interested in the Context a Guide of Replication and my Experience, but rather want to compare notes and answer the question posed by the thread - here's the final ratio: Spoiler 1:33* - as in Level 1 Trader with +32 To All Skills. *Theoretically it could be 1:34 if you could find a 4 socket, single handed sword with +1 To All Skills, but that would be extremely rare. Here's a picture: A bit of context As it happens every summer, I get an urge to install and dive into Ancaria once more, but time and time again as I start getting to the end of Gold I find myself with less and less time, so I have to delete the game (don't worry I keep my characters in a big, well-named folder structure) until the next Summer comes. As much as I love the characters that I've built, every time I install the game I always get the urge to start fresh - this time was no different. Of course every start requires a proper setup. The Setup and how to Replicate it (I group the characters I play in two categories - one is Solo Self Found-like, where I don't pick up Trading and I don't mule equipment to them - and the other either pick up Trading or I just build a dedicated Traded to equip them whenever the need arises - this discussion is centered around starting one such trader from scratch and realizing that I this might be the best ratio of Character level to Trading Level (I seem to remember that the higher it goes, the better). Of course, we're talking about a level 1 Dwarf that has had some money (around 2,000,000 to be safe) muled to them and another character has completed the Bravemart Delivery quest in a Local Multiplayer / Cooperative Game, and has saved it (otherwise the poor dwarf would be level 4/5 just from the completion of this quest). Now, considering that boots and belts can only be worn from level 2 onwards, our end goal is to somehow get every other piece of equipment with the maximum amount of sockets and enough +x Trading or +x To All Skills Rings or Amulets to put in them. Now, there's a catch if you just do that You will end up with: Armor Type(max Sockets) Helmet(3) Armor(4) Cannon(3) Shoulder Pads(2) Gloves (1) One-handed Weapon(3)* Shield(3) + 4 Rings + 2 Amulets ------------------ +25 To All Skills @ level 1 (this totals to) +26 Trading Which seems amazing, however, after reaching a certain Trade level you will start finding (even at level 1, which is crazy) items with full sockets and +1 To All Skills. Now, unfortunately I cannot tell you where the 'breakpoint' is so I suggest splitting the acquisition of your super crazy lvl 1 Trading Suit into two stages. Stage 1 a. You buy all max socket pieces of equipment b. You buy enough Rings and Amulets to fill the sockets c. Put 'em in. Stage 2 a. You find all max socket pieces of equipment with a +1 To All Skills a* Here's a little something I didn't know - there is a single handed sword with 4 sockets. Alternatively, you could always search for a 3 socket weapon with +1 To All Skills b. Buy enough Rings and Amulets (Don't forget you could get one Socketable per item back from your previous suit) c. You can now go to the top and Check the Spoiler Section and Provided Image Aftermath | What changes I've noticed with this suit - A substantial increase in Gear pieces with max Sockets, +5 Chance to Land a Critical Hit and 20% Regeneration Special Move on rings and amulets, +%x WIDD and a lot more other funky things that one might not expect to find at such a low level. (I, myself gathered 20x +5 Chance to Land a Critical Hit in Amulets and Rings and two Single handed Swords with 4 sockets each for a future DW build) Conclusion and Use Case - A good shop for a build that you've pre-planned can absolutely be enough (due to the amount of protection and general stats that you're getting from the Socketables) to take you through Silver entirely, with another Shop at 20-25 just for Weapons. - If definitely feels a lot faster to shop for the rarer Item Properties and Bonuses saving a ton of time when starting as new build. Edited July 7, 2024 by xeyp 1
SLD 524 Popular Post Posted July 7, 2024 (edited) 14 hours ago, xeyp said: - (the half question) Does going over the 1:1 Character level to Trade level benefit us (it's only half a question because there was definitely a difference between going from 1:5 to 1:20 and further, but there's the possibility that I might just we looking to confirm my beliefs?) I share in your beliefs And the difference is so huge that I doubt it's just in our heads. 14 hours ago, xeyp said: (Question 1) Is the Ratio of Character Level to Trading Level important (I.e. Relative difference) -or- is it the just the Absolute number of levels that the skill goes to after reaching a 1:1 ratio with the Character's lvl. As with the half question, we don't have metrics to measure this accurately but if you ever equip one of your gold level chars with about +40 to trading above its character level you will probably notice the amount of high quality items etc to be nowhere near the lvl 1 dwarf. Again a feeling but afaik we don't have anything better. 14 hours ago, xeyp said: (Question 2) I wonder if there's something that I might've missed in order to bring the ratio even higher? I'm also assuming the skills have a cap at 255, however, reading Wolfe's Lair section on Max Levels - there's an asterisk that states: *Even if you exceed the value shown in skill point screen you will still see the effects of additional points awarded through items in the actual stats that the skill effects I can't come up with anything better than your dwarf's approach. If no +trading/+">1 to all skills" items can be bought that's probably it. It should help to do the shopping in niob difficulty which you can reach by joining a dedicated gameserver but not pressing start yet and then changing the difficulty to niob on the gameserver(gameserver.exe in the sacred underworld folder). For exceeding skill lvl 255 it seems that it actually works more like the combat art levels. Though the Skill never shows a higher number than 255 you can have ~255 bonus points to a skill(but not more) that add to whatever actual skill level you have from hard points. meaning the actual cap is around 471 as you can only put in points up to your level. That the effects scale beyond 255 can be proven for skills like weapon lore that do state numbers. Does it work on trading? All we can do is guess. What I can say with almost absolute certainty is that you will never beat the lvl1 dwarf trading "ratio". That now already covered question 3 as well. (the"~255" bonus points I haven't measured accurately enough, could be 250 or 254 but they're certainly capped around that point and as combat arts can get exactly 255 bonus points I just guess it's the same with skills) Edited July 7, 2024 by SLD 1 1
gogoblender 3,420 Posted July 7, 2024 23 hours ago, xeyp said: Hello everyone, long time Forum Stalker here - finally making my first post, which hopefully is in the right section. There are Three and a half questions and a bit of a guide/experience in this post: - (the half question) Does going over the 1:1 Character level to Trade level benefit us (it's only half a question because there was definitely a difference between going from 1:5 to 1:20 and further, but there's the possibility that I might just we looking to confirm my beliefs?) - (Question 1) Is the Ratio of Character Level to Trading Level important (I.e. Relative difference) -or- is it the just the Absolute number of levels that the skill goes to after reaching a 1:1 ratio with the Character's lvl. - (Question 2) I wonder if there's something that I might've missed in order to bring the ratio even higher? I'm also assuming the skills have a cap at 255, however, reading Wolfe's Lair section on Max Levels - there's an asterisk that states: *Even if you exceed the value shown in skill point screen you will still see the effects of additional points awarded through items in the actual stats that the skill effects - (Question 3) Does Trading actually benefit from going over 255 and how much so? For people that are not interested in the Context a Guide of Replication and my Experience, but rather want to compare notes and answer the question posed by the thread - here's the final ratio: Reveal hidden contents 1:33* - as in Level 1 Traded +32 to all skills. *Theoretically it could be 1:34 if I could find a 4 socket, single handed sword + 1 To All Skills, but that would be extremely rare. Here's a picture: A bit of context As it happens every summer, I get an urge to install and dive into Ancaria once more, but time and time again as I start getting to the end of Gold I find myself with less and less time, so I have to delete the game (don't worry I keep my characters in a big, well-named folder structure) until the next Summer comes. As much as I love the characters that I've built, every time I install the game I always get the urge to start fresh - this time was no different. Of course every start requires a proper setup. The Setup and how to Replicate it (I group the characters I play in two categories - one is Solo Self Found-like, where I don't pick up Trading and I don't mule equipment to them - and the other either pick up Trading or I just build a dedicated Traded to equip them whenever the need arises - this discussion is centered around starting one such trader from scratch and realizing that I this might be the best ratio of Character level to Trading Level (I seem to remember that the higher it goes, the better). Of course, we're talking about a level 1 Dwarf that has had some money (around 2,000,000 to be safe) muled to them and another character has completed the Bravemart Delivery quest in a Local Multiplayer / Cooperative Game, and has saved it (otherwise the poor dwarf would be level 4/5 just from the completion of this quest). Now, considering that boots and belts can only be worn from level 2 onwards, our end goal is to somehow get every other piece of equipment with the maximum amount of sockets and enough +x Trading or +x To All Skills Rings or Amulets to put in them. Now, there's a catch if you just do that You will end up with: Armor Type(max Sockets) Helmet(3) Armor(4) Cannon(3) Shoulder Pads(2) Gloves (1) One-handed Weapon(3)* Shield(3) + 4 Rings + 2 Amulets ------------------ + 25 To All Skills @ level 1 (this totals to) +26 Trading Which seems amazing, however, after reaching a certain Trade level you will start finding (even at level 1, which is crazy) items with full sockets and +1 To All Skills. Now, unfortunately I cannot tell you where the 'breakpoint' is so I suggest getting splitting the acquisition of your super crazy lvl 1 Trading Suit into two stages. Stage 1 a. You buy all max socket pieces of equipment b. You buy enough Rings and Amulets to fill the sockets c. Put 'em in. Stage 2 a. You find all max socket pieces of equipment with a +1 To All Skills a* Here's a little something I didn't know - there is a single handed sword with 4 sockets. Alternatively, you could always search for a 3 socket weapon with +1 To All Skills b. Buy enough Rings and Amulets (Don't forget you could get one Socketable per item back from your previous suit) c. You can now go to the top and Check the Spoiler Section and Provided Image Aftermath | What changes I've noticed with this suit - A substantial increase in Gear pieces with max Sockets, +5 Chance to Land a Critical Hit and 20% Regeneration Special Move on rings and amulets, +%x WIDD and a lot more other funky things that one might not expect to find at such a low level. (I, myself gathered 20x +5 Chance to Land a Critical Hit in Amulets and Rings and two Single handed Swords with 4 sockets each for a future DW build) Conclusion and Use Case - A good shop for a build that you've pre-planned can absolutely be enough (due to the amount of protection and general stats that you're getting from the Socketables) to take you through Silver entirely, with another Shop at 20-25 just for Weapons. - If definitely feels a lot faster to shop for the rarer Item Properties and Bonuses saving a ton of time when starting as new build. Helloooooooo and good morning xeyp!! Its 730 AM here in Montreal and were here off to a sunny morning of weekend gloriousness! Seeing your combo Introduction/question/guide with its beautifully formatted colors and organization is worthy of it journeying to becoming a true, and useful DarkMatters Sacred game guide! . Thank you for finding our little Sacred hole here in the universe. And, as well, coming to us from long-time-stalker-status land. Its one of my favorite expressions because its so meaningful The concept of introduction and its section here was created some 20 years ago at Erialc's insistence that people here should come first, and that its only proper *British* manners It quickly became my favorite and most often re-read section of our forum Meeting new people who are not only interested in the game but possessed of the same ,aligned, generous spirit is a magnificent way to start the day Enjoy the boards friend, and welcome to DarkMatters gogo 1
xeyp 53 Author Posted July 7, 2024 11 hours ago, SLD said: I can't come up with anything better than your dwarf's approach. If no +trading/+">1 to all skills" items can be bought that's probably it. It should help to do the shopping in niob difficulty which you can reach by joining a dedicated gameserver but not pressing start yet and then changing the difficulty to niob on the gameserver(gameserver.exe in the sacred underworld folder). Woah, I had no idea about that, that's a huge tip, thank you! Now I gotta check what's the difference between Bronze and Niob shopping at level 1, lol. 11 hours ago, SLD said: Though the Skill never shows a higher number than 255 you can have ~255 bonus points to a skill(but not more) that add to whatever actual skill level you have from hard points. meaning the actual cap is around 471 as you can only put in points up to your level. That the effects scale beyond 255 can be proven for skills like weapon lore that do state numbers. Does it work on trading? All we can do is guess. What I can say with almost absolute certainty is that you will never beat the lvl1 dwarf trading "ratio". That now already covered question 3 as well. Again, didn't know that 471 is the actual cap, going to write that down in my notes asap Now, assuming that it does work for trading, I've a question that you might have and answer for: - Can you get +470 to trading / all skills (total) at 216? (Unfortunately I've always stopped somewhere around level 80-100 due to the schedule I've had at the time, so I don't know how item bonuses scale at that level) I'm asking, because here's my train of thought (please correct me if some of my beliefs / experiences seem to be incorrect) - When considering Skills and Skill Point distribution for a build, my experience has led me to believe that the higher the character level, the less actual impact the skill selection has relative to the equipment ( especially when the diminishing returns are taken into account) and because trading directly affects equipment, it might be argued that it is actually the best skill to take for Defense, Offense and General Utility. Also, given that rarely do builds depend on all 8 Skills, again - my experience leads me to conclude that the last one or even two Skills have the lowest impact. Meaning that even if people who argue against Trading for reasons among the lines of: 'You could source your gear via loot or dedicated Trader and it could've been another useful skill instead" can't really argue against it (especially if the choice left is Disarming / Riding etc.). Now assuming my experience somehow lines up with the truth, it only confirms Skill selection and not the Skill Point distribution part of the process. Because while one can pick Trading on all Characters that have it for little to no cost to the build - pumping 215 points into it is another matter. Given that I generally don't plan for going over 100 in Build-enhancing-but-non-critical Skills that would mean that the cost of Trading is more than two Skills, which is a BIG cost and can heavily affect the build. That being said I do have a Wood Elf with a somewhat standard Explosive Arrow build that has picked trading, but has a dedicated trading suit that keeps it well above her level, so the convenience factor is absolutely there with absolutely no cost to the build. If the answer is yes, that'd open the door for very exciting dual-purpose builds and significantly raise the weight of Picking, but not necessarily investing in Trading for my builds going forwards. --- 4 hours ago, gogoblender said: Helloooooooo and good morning xeyp!! Its 730 AM here in Montreal and were here off to a sunny morning of weekend gloriousness! Seeing your combo Introduction/question/guide with its beautifully formatted colors and organization is worthy of it journeying to becoming a true, and useful DarkMatters Sacred game guide! . It's my pleasure, privilege and honor to be greeted by a legend such as yourself I've been lurking here on and off for a long time and have come to expect your name to pop up in every important post. Please don't flatter me so for I have a long way to go before anything I post can be considered valuable enough to go there. Sacred for me was the first ARPG that I really dug into mechanistically and the guides in Wolfe's Lair the Wiki and DarkMatters for me are like gospel, they are the holy word! 5 hours ago, gogoblender said: The concept of introduction and its section here was created some 20 years ago at Erialc's insistence that people here should come first, and that its only proper *British* manners It quickly became my favorite and most often re-read section of our forum Meeting new people who are not only interested in the game but possessed of the same ,aligned, generous spirit is a magnificent way to start the day Enjoy the boards friend, and welcome to DarkMatters I swear I went over the Rules and Posting Principles before my first post (checked it again just to make sure I didn't miss anything) but I didn't see anything about Introducing myself here - I'll do so ASAP, as I do have some questions that I didn't know where to ask and doing so here would have gone against the Rules and Posting Principles Thank you again for the warm welcome an I hope that I can add my spark to this wonderful fire! 1
gogoblender 3,420 Posted July 7, 2024 55 minutes ago, xeyp said: Woah, I had no idea about that, that's a huge tip, thank you! Now I gotta check what's the difference between Bronze and Niob shopping at level 1, lol. Again, didn't know that 471 is the actual cap, going to write that down in my notes asap Now, assuming that it does work for trading, I've a question that you might have and answer for: - Can you get +470 to trading / all skills (total) at 216? (Unfortunately I've always stopped somewhere around level 80-100 due to the schedule I've had at the time, so I don't know how item bonuses scale at that level) I'm asking, because here's my train of thought (please correct me if some of my beliefs / experiences seem to be incorrect) - When considering Skills and Skill Point distribution for a build, my experience has led me to believe that the higher the character level, the less actual impact the skill selection has relative to the equipment ( especially when the diminishing returns are taken into account) and because trading directly affects equipment, it might be argued that it is actually the best skill to take for Defense, Offense and General Utility. Also, given that rarely do builds depend on all 8 Skills, again - my experience leads me to conclude that the last one or even two Skills have the lowest impact. Meaning that even if people who argue against Trading for reasons among the lines of: 'You could source your gear via loot or dedicated Trader and it could've been another useful skill instead" can't really argue against it (especially if the choice left is Disarming / Riding etc.). Now assuming my experience somehow lines up with the truth, it only confirms Skill selection and not the Skill Point distribution part of the process. Because while one can pick Trading on all Characters that have it for little to no cost to the build - pumping 215 points into it is another matter. Given that I generally don't plan for going over 100 in Build-enhancing-but-non-critical Skills that would mean that the cost of Trading is more than two Skills, which is a BIG cost and can heavily affect the build. That being said I do have a Wood Elf with a somewhat standard Explosive Arrow build that has picked trading, but has a dedicated trading suit that keeps it well above her level, so the convenience factor is absolutely there with absolutely no cost to the build. If the answer is yes, that'd open the door for very exciting dual-purpose builds and significantly raise the weight of Picking, but not necessarily investing in Trading for my builds going forwards. --- It's my pleasure, privilege and honor to be greeted by a legend such as yourself I've been lurking here on and off for a long time and have come to expect your name to pop up in every important post. Please don't flatter me so for I have a long way to go before anything I post can be considered valuable enough to go there. Sacred for me was the first ARPG that I really dug into mechanistically and the guides in Wolfe's Lair the Wiki and DarkMatters for me are like gospel, they are the holy word! I swear I went over the Rules and Posting Principles before my first post (checked it again just to make sure I didn't miss anything) but I didn't see anything about Introducing myself here - I'll do so ASAP, as I do have some questions that I didn't know where to ask and doing so here would have gone against the Rules and Posting Principles Thank you again for the warm welcome an I hope that I can add my spark to this wonderful fire! hah.. no worries! and thank you for the especially kind, and supportive words ... Just read them to Schot right now and were like... waaaaaaaaaaaaah hahhah, I only mentioned the introduction section as a reference...I think you've done a marvelously skillful bit of writing here with your first post, and you've already met @SLD who is a wiz with math and can offer great perspective on numbers, craft and magic, which is all this game is about Again, thanks for finding us, enjoy your new home and stay smiley! gogo ps and now that you've made your first post, you have won yourself the power to add an avatar.... WOOOOOOOOOOOO 1
SLD 524 Popular Post Posted July 8, 2024 (edited) On 7/7/2024 at 7:34 PM, gogoblender said: @SLD who is a wiz with math and can offer great perspective on numbers, craft and magic, which is all this game is about thanks for the high praise. Sadly SLD is almost blind and it takes a lot of time for him to read and write posts. Since the appearence of Maneus I've been spending multiple hours per day trying to keep up with whats going on but I certainly will have to dial that down again soon. On 7/7/2024 at 6:59 PM, xeyp said: Woah, I had no idea about that, that's a huge tip It's also a bug abuse so it gives op items at low levels but doesn't neccessarily add more fun to the game. Just like you can dupe items by dropping them in a campaign save and repeatedly reloading it etc... If you're trying to make a character as perfect as possible these are shortcuts for getting there. If you want to enjoy the journey things like that will ruin it for you. Levelling in this game looks the same at level 50, 100, 150 and 200 so if you take away most of the other stuff that changes along the way the game can become quite boring. On 7/7/2024 at 6:59 PM, xeyp said: Again, didn't know that 471 is the actual cap, going to write that down in my notes asap I have already answered that. To clarify: The 471 I pulled out of my arse. There is a maximum from bonus points somewhere around 250 my guess is 255 and points actually spent are added on top even though the inventory screen can't show a number higher than 255. As you can put a maximum of 216 hard points in I added 216 and my guess of 255 and I'm getting 471. Its inaccurate and there have been no precise measurements made for this. Back when I played sacred 1 more I didn't know about this at all which is why I have never pursued more accurate data. On 7/7/2024 at 6:59 PM, xeyp said: Can you get +470 to trading / all skills (total) at 216? There's a unique amulet that gives easily more than 50 points to trading so yes you can basically cap the skill with a weapon swap. But the skill would still only go to around level 256 as the amount of bonus you can apply is capped, see the paragraph above and the post you were answering to. So if you want macimum effect of the trading skill assuming that trading skill above 255 does something (which we don't know as trading skil has no numbers on it) you have to put in hard points. On 7/7/2024 at 6:59 PM, xeyp said: Also, given that rarely do builds depend on all 8 Skills Well all reasonable builds take 1. Constitution to prevent being killed before the next Leech instance fills you back up. 2. All builds that have Armor Lore take it to reduce movement penalty and increase resist same thought as with constitution. Battle Mage is the only class that doesn't have armor lore. 3. Every character takes either magic lore or weapon lore. They increase damage multiplicatively. You should never take both. Hybrid builds are always worse than at least one of their halves. 4. Almost every character takes at least one skill that lowers regeneration times for whatever they are using. Even Hellpower demons will chose at least one to get the hellpower regen down giving more space on items for other mods. The only exception are ranged characters that aren't woodelves using multi hit or hard hit combat arts. These are bugged with ranged weapons and unaffected by concentration. These skills also don't increase in regne time no matter how many runes you eat. Example would be the famous crossbow gladiator. There's a guide for it though the writer of that guide had no clue about these things and never understood why his build was so op So now we are basically down to only 4 skills to chose. Among those are agility and parrying as only other defensive choices, weapon focus skills, trading, forge lore for dwarves and extra combat art regenration skills. And then there are the useless skills riding and disarming. "Sacred:skills" has a nice categorized list for all of those btw. For the question wether there is always room for trading the short answer is usually yes in some cases you have to dump parrying or agility but ther are certainly exceptions like attack based dwarves that want smithing another regen skill for stuff like dwarven steel and a weapon focus skill they'd lose both parrying and agility. Bold all elemental battle mages are might also be in that category. I hope that helps putting into perspective which skills trading would have to compete with, how little diversity buids crafted for perfection actually have etc. Trading is extremely powerful if you don't already have gear muled don't dupe jewelry for socketing etc. Wether the quality of traded items can exceed the possible quality of drops in the wild is unknown to me yet it is certainly far easier/faster to buy a lot of good stuff than to find it. Good luck beating my 140% reg special moves darkelf chest armor with 4 sockets Another thng to consider however is that by chosing trade you will be standing in town for a lot of time instead of actually playing the game. It also kinda devalues drops as you will basically never find something better than what you've bought. So in the long run it's quite an anti-fun mechanic as well. On 7/7/2024 at 6:59 PM, xeyp said: Please don't flatter me so for I have a long way to go before anything I post can be considered valuable enough to go there. Sacred for me was the first ARPG that I really dug into mechanistically and the guides in Wolfe's Lair the Wiki and DarkMatters for me are like gospel, they are the holy word! The "guides" of those people landed there the same way yours did. The build guides were mostly written by people that like to write their journey down and share it, not neccessarily people that know much about the game mechanics(see the crossbow gladiator). Mechanics guides are a bit higher quality usually but even the attack speed guide from wolfe's Lair measures speed from "very slow" to "very fast"... What kind of metric is that? The standard unit for scientific accuracy is "1 Maneus" and most of the information that we have on the sacred games doesn't even reach a tenth of that. That's why it's so exciting for me to see Maneus do his thing. Everything he touches creates new infornation the sacred community did not have before. He has the holy word, but so far only for Sacred 2 damage calculations. Edited October 12, 2024 by SLD 1 1
xeyp 53 Author Posted July 8, 2024 3 hours ago, SLD said: It's also a bug abuse so it gives op items at low levels but doesn't neccessarily add more fun to the game. First of all, thank you engaging in this topic so thoroughly I'm learning a ton. Yeah, Bug abuse definitely isn't my thing, but it's fun to know that there is such a possibility if for some reason there is something that I'd like to try that might require a manoeuvre like that. What it might be the most useful I think is being able to quickly create 'stash' characters and being able to send them to all difficulties to mule items for your other characters instead of having to level them to the appropriate levels. 3 hours ago, SLD said: There is a maximum from bonus points somewhere around 250 Now this is something that I was so not aware of - so much so that you mentioned it in the previous post and it went over my head. But I'm not going to take it as something entirely bad because this combined with the knowledge of the Unique Amulet that can help you reach max Bonus actually makes for a more nuanced way of looking at things. As there is both value in a 'Pure trader' with hard capped trading and a 'Casual Trader' taking it as an auxiliary skill and spending no points on it. Maybe the Pure trader will be able to more fully equip a character with pieces that as you say are hard-to-impossible to replace, where the Casual trader may be able to 'plug' any holes in the equipment with decent enough gear until better drops come - and in that way make sure that the build doesn't fall apart in any point of a playthrough. 4 hours ago, SLD said: I hope that helps putting into perspective which skills trading would have to compete with, how little diversity buids crafted for perfection actually have etc. Oh, absolutely, I should've worded it differently, more like "...rarely do build that I make use all 8", the Meta builds in any game usually look all the same in their conceptual exploitation of the mechanics and usually reach the same playstyle as everything just dies instantly making any gameplay differences largely irrelevant. That is why I have a preference for Off-Meta or even 'Anti-Meta' where I feel that (especially based on the individual build) the skills are weighted differently in terms of importance. I just love figuring out how odd a build can be and still work even if(sometimes especially if) it requires forgoing some defenses and relying on manual operation instead of face-tanking. 4 hours ago, SLD said: Example would be the famous crossbow gladiator. There's a guide for it though the writer of that guide had no clue about these things and never understood why his build was so op Haha, yet another thing you've opened my eyes to, amazing. Thank you so much - I'm like a kid at Christmas that was already happy with what he got and then got some more. 4 hours ago, SLD said: Another thng to consider however is that by chosing trade you will be standing in town for a lot of time instead of actually playing the game. It also kinda devalues drops as you will basically never find something better than what you've bought. So in the long run it's quite an anti-fun mechanic as well. There's the thing and I don't know if I'm alone in this, but I love trading and getting to see what type of item the game can create. After the first 10 minutes in Bravemart, once I'm warmed up it absolutely starts feeling like that scene in the Matrix - you stare at a screen of numbers and then suddenly start to understand the system. So for me it is a fun-fun mechanic. I, however, agree that it devalues drops somewhat - that's why I think it's great that you can't find Uniques and Set items in the shops and some Uniques are really build defining, some builds can also rely on a certain Set to be as strong as they can, but most importantly having multiple characters definitely still brings some joy to loot if you're keeping in mind what you need for each one when parsing through loot. Again on the other hand, some off/anti meta builds that I've made and tested are so out there that there's almost like a certain equipment requirement for it to function and that without Trading is an absolute pain, especially in the early levels when you don't have a lot of Magic Find or Survival Bonus --- And again, thank you for the discourse SDL, this is the most I've talked about Sacred with someone in probably over a decade. 1
SLD 524 Popular Post Posted July 9, 2024 17 hours ago, xeyp said: thank you for the discourse SDL It's SLD not SDL and certainly not DSL or LSD either. 17 hours ago, xeyp said: Survival Bonus If you can facetank a weak enemy like a wolf in bronze, you can just let it chew on you and go afk to increase SB. If you do it in a SP game you won't drop, in multiplayer you have to but something heavy on a key like a book corner on Ctrl, to prevent disconnect due to "inactivity" 17 hours ago, xeyp said: What it might be the most useful I think is being able to quickly create 'stash' characters and being able to send them to all difficulties to mule items for your other characters instead of having to level them to the appropriate levels. Just drop the items in a campaign game and save it if you want to mule something anywhere. The "stash" characters can acquire and distribute items that way independant from game difficulty. 1 1
xeyp 53 Author Posted July 9, 2024 My apologies, SLD. Touch typing has its benefits, but sometimes I do swap the places of letters and fail to notice it, especially on names and abbreviations that don't trigger spell check. Yeah, I've heard about that SB trick, but I'm always actively doing something on the computer unfortunately. 6 hours ago, SLD said: Just drop the items in a campaign game and save it To be fair, I've mostly only muled from low level traders to toons just starting out as the time spent versus the 'reward' is better than for toons at higher levels and I don't especially enjoy the whole process too much(which is why I was trying to figure out if I can't just boost trading fully through equipment and forgo a dedicated trader and the muling that it entails). I just remember that Csaszar's "POSSIBLE PREPARATIONS BEFORE STARTING A NEW CHAR - GUIDE" mentioning that you need Mules at level 60, 100, 140 to encompass all difficulties, but that might've been for (non-LAN) multiplayer, so I've just be setting aside separate exports of my toons at certain levels whenever I start fresh. Okay, time to go implement all I've learnt, test a few build ideas and hopefully produce a guide or two that are at the very least entertaining.
SLD 524 Popular Post Posted July 9, 2024 (edited) 2 hours ago, xeyp said: Yeah, I've heard about that SB trick, but I'm always actively doing something on the computer unfortunately. I'm surprised by the fact that you don't need sleep, but I think the SP version of this might work with the game running in background, so you can do something else on the computer while farming SB... Edited July 9, 2024 by SLD 2
SLD 524 Posted August 14, 2024 On 7/8/2024 at 6:54 AM, SLD said: The only exception are ranged characters that aren't woodelves using multi hit or hard hit combat arts. These are bugged with ranged weapons and unaffected by concentration. These skills also don't increase in regne time no matter how many runes you eat. I have to cast some doubt on my own statement here. Was just playing around with a test vampiress(knight form) and found out that while her bow multi hit was working as described here, her hard hit did say 0.6 sec regen time but took more than a minute, so in case of hard hit there might only be a "visual bug", while multi hit has an "actual bug" 1
xeyp 53 Author Posted August 14, 2024 (edited) Huh, that's handy to know. Was considering doing a ranged build on a non-wood elf character in the future and will test it out thoroughly before I go deep into one As long as I have you here talking about 'bugs', I recently started a new daemon, a character I've not played with at all, upon starting the game you're given a claw weapon and I noticed that the daemon would often times hit twice with in a single strike, is that a bug or a feature. I scoured the wiki and the forums but I didn't see any mention of it. To top it all off she does the same with any 'smaller' weapon - the tiny hatchets, the daggers etc. Since I've not played around with the small weapons either, I started a new Wood Elf, famous for being fast with a dagger, bought one and nothing, no double hits or anything like it. Are you aware of any official/unofficial resource that talks about this? Is it a bug or a feature I wonder. Edited August 14, 2024 by xeyp
SLD 524 Posted August 15, 2024 10 hours ago, xeyp said: Are you aware of any official/unofficial resource that talks about this? Is it a bug or a feature I wonder. not aware of anything, but I believe it to be a feature. 10 hours ago, xeyp said: I recently started a new daemon, a character I've not played with at all, upon starting the game you're given a claw weapon and I noticed that the daemon would often times hit twice with in a single strike, is that a bug or a feature. I scoured the wiki and the forums but I didn't see any mention of it. To top it all off she does the same with any 'smaller' weapon - the tiny hatchets, the daggers etc. Since I've not played around with the small weapons either, I started a new Wood Elf, famous for being fast with a dagger, bought one and nothing, no double hits or anything like it. I noticed something odd with the daemon claws as well. What I noticed is: In the inventory screen the claws only do half damage. So they also only benefit half from infernal power, rings etc. I linked that to "fist weapon" kind of mechanics. You swing both left and right in return, basically you do 2 half hits. Combat Gloves however somehow seem to do full damage even though they hit both left and right. I guessed it's because they are "two handed" weapons, so they are supposed to do more damage. My findings made enough sense to believe it's an odd decision but an intentional game mechanic. On the other hand, the use cases were so niche that I wasn't interested in doing more detailed research. Now you bring up daggers and hatchets and it immediately becomes a lot weirder. At least I've never heard of "hatchet boxing" before Looks like there'd be a lot more misterious melee attack mechanics to look into. If you want to test all the different weapon types on all characters to test this stuff further, the weapon speed article on wolfe's lair might also give some info about weapon type related stuff. https://nightwolfe.proboards.com/thread/2343/attack-speed-info-guide-characters While testing the double hit phenomenon, as that already requires hitting stuff with all the different wepons, one could also measure the attack speed in numbers, as the linked article is lacking in quality there. Are all the "fast"s similarly "fast" or whatever. I hate it that the accurate information, that was obviously gathered to write that guide was then thrown out of the window in favor of "slow" and "fast". Oh and don't feel pushed to doing this now. The info is just there to help do it right in one attempt, if someone ever choses to try and figure this out after reading this. I'm certainly too lazy to do this myself... Back to grazing 1
xeyp 53 Author Posted August 15, 2024 (edited) Hmm, I'm not entirely sure how I'll time this accurately - record and then count frames? Also, I'm leaning towards this being a feature as well, more like a quick 'make up' for: (from the article you linked) *Both the Daemon and the Dwarf's Combat Arts gain no apparent benefit whatsoever from Attack Speed, including Assail (Daemon) and Assault/Heavy Blow/Wrath (Dwarf). This appears to have been an oversight made during Underworld's development and is quite harsh on the Daemon when using certain weapons with Assail. At first I thought that the double hit may make up for the lack of Assault skill, then I remembered she had Assail, now it turns out its speed doesn't scale with Attack speed, which definitely leaves smaller weapons the most affected. Could it be that they couldn't fix the issue in code w/o massive engine changes - so they massively increased the claw attack speed and allowed for Double Hits? 'Larger' one-handed weapons like a regular sword did not have the double hit. Here's the thing I forgot to write down, dual wield might've removed the double hit, will have to check and will edit the answer it. Figured it out, I'm 90% certain it might be a bug, but there's 10% chance it might be an unfinished feature that causes these 'inconsistencies'. Making a new thread and will @ you there. One thing about the Nightwolfe article is it's very generalized, there's a huge difference between a 'full-sized' 1h Axe and the mini hatchets I think, for one no double hit, so the game definitely regards them as different weapon types. I'm not sure I'd want to take on the task of documenting that, if done correctly I would need to somehow get a all characters at the same level, w/o any inherent attack speed boosts and all variations of weapons to test which are the same which are different. A dwarf might be the fastest w/ 2H axes, but is he the fastest w/ 1H axes, what about small 1h axes, are there in-between or special variations? etc. etc. Edited August 15, 2024 by xeyp
SLD 524 Posted August 15, 2024 55 minutes ago, xeyp said: mm, I'm not entirely sure how I'll time this accurately - record and then count frames? well you can do that but from the attack speed "source" you already know that there are some kinda random different animations involved etc. I wouldn't try to measure each in super detail and then try to count their likelihood etc... I would just hit one thing many times in a row and calculate an average. The more hits you do the more accurate it gets. At that point stopping the time by hand might also be "accurate enough". 1 hour ago, xeyp said: lso, I'm leaning towards this being a feature as well, more like a quick 'make up' for: (from the article you linked) *Both the Daemon and the Dwarf's Combat Arts gain no apparent benefit whatsoever from Attack Speed, including Assail (Daemon) and Assault/Heavy Blow/Wrath (Dwarf). This appears to have been an oversight made during Underworld's development and is quite harsh on the Daemon when using certain weapons with Assail. At first I thought that the double hit may make up for the lack of Assault skill, then I remembered she had Assail, now it turns out its speed doesn't scale with Attack speed, which definitely leaves smaller weapons the most affected. Could it be that they couldn't fix the issue in code w/o massive engine changes - so they massively increased the claw attack speed and allowed for Double Hits? 'Larger' one-handed weapons like a regular sword did not have the double hit. No I'm sure it's not something demon specific to "help with attack speed" etc. Also you completely neglect the point about the half damage here. 1 hour ago, xeyp said: Here's the thing I forgot to write down, dual wield might've removed the double hit, will have to check and will edit the answer it. Figured it out, I'm 90% certain it might be a bug, but there's 10% chance it might be an unfinished feature that causes these 'inconsistencies'. Making a new thread and will @ you there. I'll wait for that thread then... 1 hour ago, xeyp said: One thing about the Nightwolfe article is it's very generalized, there's a huge difference between a 'full-sized' 1h Axe and the mini hatchets I think, for one no double hit, so the game definitely regards them as different weapon types. Yes "slow", "medium" and "fast" are also quite "generalized". I only linked it to inform you about that "anomalous weapons" section etc. It's the best info we currently have on base attack peeds. 1 hour ago, xeyp said: I'm not sure I'd want to take on the task of documenting that, if done correctly I would need to somehow get a all characters at the same level, w/o any inherent attack speed boosts and all variations of weapons to test which are the same which are different. A dwarf might be the fastest w/ 2H axes, but is he the fastest w/ 1H axes, what about small 1h axes, are there in-between or special variations? etc. etc. The "same level characters without inherent attack speed boosts" can be downloaded from Lindor. Can't blame you not wanting to do this mountain of a task. I don't want to do it either. And in the end the results will most likely only impact builds that noone plays, like attack builds without combat arts. Wait, I think I remember someone playing that... what was his name again?
xeyp 53 Author Posted August 15, 2024 35 minutes ago, SLD said: Also you completely neglect the point about the half damage here. I somewhat skimmed over it but it later made sense when I went back to make the tests. Thanks for pointing it out. 37 minutes ago, SLD said: And in the end the results will most likely only impact builds that noone plays... This is exactly why I don't want to do it, a lot of work for very little return for everyone. 37 minutes ago, SLD said: Wait, I think I remember someone playing that... what was his name again? Haha, oh shut uuup - and to be fair (to me) it's a Battle Mage build, he doesn't have CA's. But it's a great exercise in learning how to make the most of equipment, modifiers and is really helping me with other builds - where I think I've discovered that some modifiers can help make some skills more of a nice-to-have rather than a must-have. (more on that someday when he reaches Niob lol)
SLD 524 Posted August 16, 2024 13 hours ago, xeyp said: Haha, oh shut uuup - and to be fair (to me) it's a Battle Mage build, he doesn't have CA's. But it's a great exercise in learning how to make the most of equipment, modifiers and is really helping me with other builds - where I think I've discovered that some modifiers can help make some skills more of a nice-to-have rather than a must-have. (more on that someday when he reaches Niob lol) Can't wait to hear what you've come up with there. On to niobium with you!
