An easy character for a returning Sacred 2 player?

[idbeholdME 434]

13 hours ago, SLD said:

Map exploration shows its mf bonus ingame(exploration/4). Is there a source for the other two having any effect on mf?

Loading tip says SB has an effect on it. Not visible in game.

As for difficulty levels, it's mostly observation. I always notice a marked increase in rare drops. Or it could be that higher level enemies have an intrinsic bonus to drop rates. So say a level 1 enemy has a 0.5% chance to drop a yellow item, which can go up to say 1.5% on a level 150 enemy. Used example numbers, but you get the gist. One of the two is definitely happening. Generally, the further your character is along the enemy level/difficulty curve, the better the drops seem to get.

Edited September 4 by idbeholdME

[SLD 335]

3 hours ago, gogoblender said:

I know you want your guide perfect

The problem is, that it never will be perfect. I am quite a noob after all. I have little experience actually playing characters and basically no experience playing the campaign... I expect my guide to be garbage... It's just that when I look at all the other guides, writing my own doesn't feel so bad anymore
 

3 hours ago, gogoblender said:

for this...you get the power-cow

Well since I've learned a female moose is a cow and connie sounds female enough I will happily accept the power-
Thank you!

 

2 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

Wow, now I see it too! I didn't quote you, that's for sure! I's some bug then. Weird!

And as I said it has happend in this same thread before where Jacek "misquoted" me and I answered with "No I absolutely did not say any of that"
 

3 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

I thought about the Griffon and others that could take off my shield and thought that some life would be nice for those rare occasions.

I gotta admit I don't really "build" for those occasions... I mean, don't get me wrong, I tried, but that just creates a planned buffless character. It just ends up bad in every other situation.
For the Griffon specifically you can just shoot it from too far away, so he can't fight back. You also don't have to do that quest at all... If I can farm guardians the griffon sure doesn't feel worth it, but thats of course my non-campaigny view
What about other debuff enemies? Well there are two more things to note:
1. This one is not "thoroughly" tested, but as I ran a lot of hellfire arenas in D2F and there are debuff monsters among those I have had some experiences that were quite weird. The Buff removed seems to be always the first buff. Not the first to be turned on, not the first in your buff selection to the bottom right. It's the first in your Combat Art panel. So with a 3 buff bfg sera that would be battle stance... Also I noticed that characters with spell block/reflection seem to get hit by this far less, suggesting that if the spell doesn't "hit" it doesn't disable a buff... but as I said this is only guesswork here.
2. The far more reliable answer to all debuff situations is of course divine protection. The duration should basically always be long enough to kill a boss so even before the possibility of permanent uptime you should be able to solve every debuff situation that way.

 

3 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

But I would like to hear about how it's actually hurting the player to pick it up, (you already talked about this in the damage cap topic in sacred 1, (when I said I had hundreds of thousands of energy shield on her), but I didn't really get it there either. I just didn't want to go completely offtopic there, that's why I let it go.) But since it came up again, I'd love to hear your reasoning about this leech thing! (I guess it's the more life-shield you have, the more they leech, right? In a nutshell...)

Ok, there are two leech mods +leech and %leech. Both do unmitigatable damage, but they do eat part of your energy shield pool just like any other damage. So energy can protect against it just not reduce the amount of damage taken.
+leech is just a flat amount, the more pool you have the more of it you need to get killed. Afaik It does appear on quite a few enemies, but the values are usually quite low, so you don't need excessive pool to prevent getting killed. 
%leech works the same as +leech with the exception of its damage being calculated of the victims maximum life(!). So when an enemy hits you with 50% leech you will be dead after two hits. Unless you have a pool greater than those 100% life, by having energy shield. So in cases where you have a high amount of the damage put on your energy shield instead of life (via the correct item mods or divine prot up to 100% of it) you actually want lower max life, as every %leech hit would thereby do lower damage. 
So for example:
Enemy does 50%leech, you have perfect 100% damage taken form energy shield first however that mod is called
with 1000 life you take 2 hits to die
with 1000 life and 1000 energy shield you take 4 hits to die
but with only 500 life and 1000 energy shield you would take 6 hits to die
and with 100 life and 1000 energy shield it would take 22 hits...

Thats how constitution kind of benefits enemies with %leech. Don't worry those are quite rare and 50% is an insane amount, but what I mentioned in the other thread, was one very nasty "bugged" thing.
The champion versions of the demon casters in the desolation have some kind of lightning spell that in niobium endgame will drain 66% of your life. It's not a spammable skill and those casters don't come in giant groups or something so this would not be that big of a problem... But that spell has the (probably bugged) potential to hit you twice  
Taking 2x66%=132% of your maximum life at once is guaranteed to oneshot every character... unless of course you have energy shield at least the size of 33% of your life. Of course spell block and reflect are luck based alternatives for the poor characters that don't have energy shields.
So two character classes have energy shields, two can at least be temporarily invisible
and Dryad, Dragon Mages and Inquisitors can try to kill the guy from range (sadly there are some fix spawned at cave entrance/exits so range isn't always an option)

maybe you could try upping your chances with having a very heroic pet with you

No don't look at my cow like that
And don't you dare touch the power-cow
Just go get some sheep ,
they'll follow you anywhere and Ike isn't around to complain anymore
 

3 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

So it won't ruin your build if you take all those, I think!

Sacred 2 is an easy game. You don't need perfect characters to beat it. And technically it is possible that taking constitution along the way makes the journey easier. I usually look at my characters from the perspective of "where will I end up?".

I don't skill for the character I have, I skill for the character I want to have
And I don't want to, at the end of my levelling, look back and wonder what could have been.
I do not want to make skill choices that I eventually come to regret.

Every Sacred 2 character knows, there are no do-overs in Sacred 2.
No respec options, no skill resets. 
If you take the wrong skill your player will just discard you.
You will be stripped of all your valuable gear, your runes, sometimes even your potions.
All of it will be gobbled up by the shared stash
and you will be replaced with a new version of yourself almost the same but still no longer you.

Remember those that have come before you, learn from their mistakes
and make sure not to fail me
so you will not have to share their fate my beloved, "BFG-Sera 6".



That rofl emoji probably just depicts what every dead poet is currently doing in their grave,
turning, left and right and some contorsonist freaks even both ways at the same time

[Sethi22 132]

Finally I get it! Thanks for clearing that up! (I always do every boss of course, that's how I operate. I can't let them live! So leaving the Griffon alive was not an option. (I'm sure it can be done without all the extra layers of defense I had, but it was one of my main worries, as he had caused me trouble before on Nio, when I came unprepared... )

However, I realized, what may have caused the bug with the quotes. You made the forum mind overflow with how much you wrote in the past months! So now whenever it sees something new, it automatically says "quote from SLD..." You hit the cap, man!

[SLD 335]

57 minutes ago, SLD said:

However, I realized, what may have caused the bug with the quotes. You made the forum mind overflow with how much you wrote in the past months! So now whenever it sees something new, it automatically says "quote from SLD..." You hit the cap, man!

So the forum has a "damage cap" as well and I'm causing so much "damage"...


Before Gogo flips out, this misquote was intentional, I just couldnt resist it

[gogoblender 3,206]

7 hours ago, SLD said:

The problem is, that it never will be perfect. I am quite a noob after all. I have little experience actually playing characters and basically no experience playing the campaign... I expect my guide to be garbage...

It wont be garbage

It will be good and a reflection of these times and everyone loves reading detailed guides for Sacred on this forum.  Now you see the courage it takes to put something up, putting yourself out on a limb and making a claim  

Go for it SLD.

You can update it as the years go by... time is always on everyone's side at DarkMatters

And maybe in another two decades from now another iteration of yourself, under a different name will come along and offer some kind (or even perhaps *gasp* harsh words) here as critique and improvements upon it... all in good spirit of course and all to add that extra touch of humanness that is never ending and that defies solution that we always aspire to in these two decades on these forums

Your fans await you sir 

 

gogo

[SLD 335]

So, while I'm still waiting for Jacek to tell us his exact choice of Game Version,
today has so far been a slow day in forum activity and I haven't had to spend hours on other threads already,
I have decided to go for the next round of general guide stuff, this time focusing on what can be done with(to? ) a new character.

On 9/1/2024 at 11:09 PM, SLD said:

--Game start:
---starting runes
---starting gold
---starting gear
---starting socketing
---starting bonus skill points

As we already have a nice table of contents here, let us begin with something that isn't on there

Character creation:

None of the things you chose here can be changed later.
You get to chose:

-A Character Class

-A Character Name

-Slightly varying by character class there are some options to change the appearance of your character and the chest imp. Has no effect on gameplay.
-Hardcore or not? I don't think this flag does anything other than that the character turns into some kind of unplayable corpse when you die ingame. Though I have not thoroughly tested this. Maybe you do get some kind of reward for playing the risky game mode. So far I don't know of any benefits to this.

-Difficulty, Bronze or Silver? This one is also a nobrainer. It does not force you to play Silver if you chose Silver, neither on SP chars nor on MP chars. All that it does is unlock access to the Silver campaign if you chose Silver. I am not aware of any downside to choosing Silver here.

-Master's touch? Always on. Normally active Combat arts of different aspects only send their own aspect's combat art on regen when used. With Master's touch all aspects' combat arts are placed on regen when any combat art is used, yet in return all regen times are lowered. As most effective builds repeatedly use the same combat art Master's Touch will be the better choice. In case of multiple combat arts that are always used in a fixed order, you would use a combo for that and as the combo just inherits the highest regen among it's components Master's Touch again comes out on top. Only quickly manually switching between combat arts from different aspects would be "better" without, but that build choice will basically never be "good". If you manage to come up with a build that represents an exception to this rule, you sure no longer need a guide to tell you what to do

-Campaign, Light or Shadow? Two different main quest lines, some side quests are only available to characters of a specific side, ork region enemy allegiances are slightly different and who knows what else. Important to note is, this choice affects all game modes not just campaign games. So a light campaign specific side quest can never be done by a shadow campaign character, not even in multiplayer free play mode. This can be important to access certain quest rewards. Seraphim are always stuck with Light campaign, inquisitprs are always forced to play shadow campaign. I do not know much about campaigns, so the question wether one is easier than the other or can be finished with less time investment, has to be answered by someone else. In the german client the campaign choice also effects your monster kill counter, light characters count "collateral damage" while shadow characters count "victims". As far as I know the english client always counts "kills". This is purely cosmetic and should have no effect on anything other than your characters concience
The campaign choice also directly effects the available gods to chose.

-Gods are the most powerless beings in ancaria. Your character has to choose one of the six gods to laugh at. Arranged in two rows, Seraphims can only choose from the top row, Inquisitors can only choose from the bottom row, shadow campaign characters can't choose the first god, light campaign characters can't choose the last. The god of your choice bestows upon you a divine gift, a special combat art that you will use every time you accidentally hit its hotkey, default is "G". The divine gifts come with a godly regeneration time of 15-30 minutes depending on which one you chose. This regeneration time can only be lowered by wasting a skill slot for "divine devotion". Even with that skill the regeneration will never be lower than 15% of the starting value, meaning it will always take at least 2 minutes to regenerate. None of these divine gift combat arts last long enough to reach a reasonable uptime. It was obviously designed to be a special oh-:eek: button, but if you need an oh-:eek: button that is stronger than your health potion you will have already died. It is also not usable as an oh-:eek: button because the divine gift has a cast time. So it's actually at best a oh-future-:eek: button that you can use before combat to help you for a short period of time.
I won't go into detail about every single divine gift. The only reasonable one that can be used for defense at the start of a boss fight is Forens' inspiration. It gives a high chance to reflect basically everything. All characters that aren't inquisitors can choose it.
Inquisitors have to choose between a short term summon that turns on him, a crowd control skill that makes a crowd uncontrollable and Testa's odd "Will-o-wisp"s that are supposed to do something beneficial. I would go with Testa on Inquisitors and Forens in all other cases.
I also would suggest never to waste a skill slot on Divine devotion. The divine gift should only be used in special cases where you, for whatever reason, need to deal with something that you aren't strong enough to deal with safely, so lowering regen from 15 to 2 minutes shouldn't make a difference. You can't use it in the same fight twice anyway and if you plan using it in multiple fights in succession you can basically just wait those 15 minutes. That is still a better choice than wasting a skill slot or even skill points on that.


Now that we do have a character we can talk about things a new character can do.

Runes:
There are two ways a new character can get runes.
1. Kill enemies. That one shouldn't come as a big surprise.
2. The rune chest. Every charcter has near their singleplayer campaign starting location a chest with a special beam of light shining down on it. It's a starting chest that contains one piece of equipment and a rune. I think in the base game it is only one rune, certain popular mods may increase it to up to three and it is never a random rune always a specific rune. In multiplayer campaign games you start at the MP island so this chest, if it exists at all in MP would be quite a distance away. Multiplayer characters can however repetably start Singleplayer campaigns and farm the starter chest for runes. Singleplayer characters should at least be able to open it once per difficulty (haven't tried it though so I might be wrong).
No matter how you acquired your first runes, if your build needs other runes than the ones you got you need to enlist the help of combomaster. And that guy wants gold.

Gold:
How does a new character get Gold? You'll notice a pattern here, as again killing enemies is an option. But there are alternative ways that aren't as dangerous. NO matter wether a character is SP or MP it can enter a MP free play game. And there you can open chests repeatably. So with many chests reachable withoutt the need for combat you can technically already farm an infinite amount of gold at level 1. Obviously that would be enormously inefficient. There are however a few "strategies" to improve the yield. 

Option 1, Safe and legit: You can just start a mp free game on silver difficulty, there are some "magic hiding places" on the starting island and a lot of chests inside the town of Sloeford. Fountains also always drop a health potion so you can pick those up while you're at it. If you have at least the cm-patch installed you will also be able to directly teleport towards unlocked harbours and balloons. This allows adding the chest and crystals inside the Seraphim camp of the crystal region to the run. All in all this run does not make you super rich, but it allows you to easily farm up enough gold for whatever else you might need to get started.

Option 2, Risky but kinda legit: Items and gold amounts from chests are actually not dependent on your characters level but the level of the enemies in the area. So sneaking your lvl 1 char into an area where the enemies don't scale down to level 1 would allow you to snatch some higher level items that can be worth significantly more gold. With the CM-patch option of travelling directly to any open harbour without needing to reach a harbour first, you can technically at the start of the game teleport directly to the dryad region. The town there is "safe" and has multiple loot containers to open so if you manage to reach the portal there once you can farm items of around lvl 20. Sadly between the boat and the safe part of town is a spot where one or even multiple turtles can spawn. Lvl 20 turtles... You can get lucky with a no turtle run, or manage to run past a turtle before it reacts. As you are kinda in town and enemies are supposed to stop fighting and leave town when they get pulled in to close it is not as dangerous as it sounds but there is certainly a risk of dying here. However, as your character does only need to accomplish the run once and then go via the portal, it is kinda safe to do even for hardcore characters as you can just start a new character until you get it right. In the end this method helps with creating early game gold faster for other things you might want to do before going into combat.

Option 3, as risky as option 2 but nowhere near as legit : Now we start exploiting. It's not just gear pieces that you can acquire at a higher level. Even things like health potions, that don't change with level, have kind of a level attached to them. A health potion from the dryad island will have a significantly higher gold value than one from a sloeford fountain. But they still stack. So how does the game keep track of the stack value if every potion has its own value? It doesn't, at least not as long as you only have the cm-patch installed. Other mods beyond that might fix this already. But without such mods the game just treats a full stack as multiples of the "first" item of the stack. So if you have no health potion in your inventory you can pick up an "expensive" health potion dropped from a chest in the dryad coast town(quite a common drop) and then go and get "cheap" potions from sloeford that will automatically stack on top and turn into expensive ones. You can also just buy potions from merchants for ~4 gold a pop. Once you got a few potions stacked you can just split the stack(shift+left click is the correct combo, I think) separating one expensive potion and selling the rest as a stack for like a thousand gold each... not quite sure what the exact value it is that ypu would get there but I think its somewhere in that ballpark so basically you can go to a merchant and buy dozens of bottles of "1000 free gold coins" and when you reset the merchant, by teleporting away and back, you can do it again... This method should quickly solve any starting gold requirements you might have, but it does abuse a bug.

Option 4, for mods like D2F where you can enter any difficulty right from the start: You can get the equivalent benefits of a supercharged option 2 or 3 by using option 1 in a hgher difficulty. For example, loot from the crystal region camp will be around lvl 70+ on the highest difficulty in D2F. Selling that can yield tons of gold and directly dropped gold at that level is even more insane.


Starting Gear:
Now that our lvl 1 character has gold, we can put this to good use. Again we go to the highest difficulty setting our game allows us to and we teleport back and forth between sloeford and the starting island to reset the vendors on the starting island in a free play multiplayer game. Our target is to get gear pieces for every slot. First priority is a socket, then as high as possible physical armor on the better armor pieces like chest helmet and potentially a shield. Movement speed on boots and potentially on pants as well can also be quite nice to have. Bracers can give a nice amount of +%damage bonus. For many characters buying a bow or energy staff as the first weapon can be a wise choice as the range gives extra defense without measurably losing anything in offense. Rings can give you either flat damage or flat attack rating, Amulets should be used for hp-regen.

Socketing:
Once you have all your gear pieces with sockets you go to the blacksmith. Fill the sockets with the "Anneal" and "Whet" blacksmith arts. These are Really op in mods where you can access higher difficulties, quite strong in standard game versions and crap wherever dimitrius has his way, currently that would be the addendum. Usually I would go with at least 3 or 4 anneals. In the weapon you can also consider socketing a "+flat damage" ring and a damage converter, I would suggest converting to magic damage.

Bonus skill/attribute points:
Since the CM-Patch invented quests that reward skill and attribute points you can get some extra power for your fresh character from those as well.
The main one here is the Ancaria Airlines quest:
https://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Ancaria_Airlines
You can reach it in Sloeford and finish it without any combat involved, rewarding one skill and attribute point. The points are only rewarded after leaving the current game session and starting a new one. Legitimately every lvl 1 char can do this quest once in bronze and once in silver difficulty, but as always, this side quest can technically be exploited by infinite repetition in free play mode.

Once properly geared with hp regen somewhere you could also improve your lvl 1 char with some Survival Bonus by getting a wolf near the Sloeford portal to chew on you. You should be capable to get tanky enough so that a wolf on bronze can chew on you forever, allowing for afk farming survival bonus.


So this should cover all the points from the outline I quoted above. Another chunk of guide knowledge delivered
Back to grazing I guess

[Sethi22 132]

I was screaming "Airlines!" When you wrote there's no point starting in bronze, but I see you covered it later on. And look at you, thinking about exploting that quest in MP! I never even thought about doing that more then once on each difficulty level!  You indeed have bad influence, sir! You've just spoiled a completely honest, hard working player.

[SLD 335]

10 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

You've just spoiled a completely honest, hard working player.

Now you know why I never did things like Save/load in Sacred Underworld. That kind of cheating is just too inefficient

[Sethi22 132]

Your pupils are waiting, @SLD! You thought you could get away with this, didn't you? Not on my watch! Now you have to complete the guide. Yes, sir!

Edited September 17 by Sethi22

[SLD 335]

On 9/16/2024 at 12:28 PM, Sethi22 said:

You thought you could get away with this, didn't you? Not on my watch! Now you have to complete the guide.

 

On 9/5/2024 at 11:48 AM, SLD said:

So, while I'm still waiting for Jacek to tell us his exact choice of Game Version,

As Jacek doesn't seem to return, the priority of writing these guides has shifted quite a lot.
 

On 9/16/2024 at 12:28 PM, Sethi22 said:

Your pupils are waiting, @SLD!

Currently I think you are the only one who's waiting and you're not playing Sacred 2 right now, becauseyou're busy chasing screenshots in Sacred Underworld.

On my end, I currently don't have the time to write those guides. But I know you won't let me forget about them
 

[SLD 335]

Ok, some recap where all the other guide stuff I already wrote is located...

On 9/1/2024 at 11:09 PM, SLD said:

-general guides:
--Combat art/Buff usage
--How attribute damage works
--maybe something on damage type usefulness
--maybe something on Survival bonus

This is here:
https://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/72710-an-easy-character-for-a-returning-sacred-2-player/#comment-7145889

On 9/1/2024 at 11:09 PM, SLD said:

--Game start:
---starting runes
---starting gold
---starting gear
---starting socketing
---starting bonus skill points

This, amended with a "---character creation" part on top, is here:
https://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/72710-an-easy-character-for-a-returning-sacred-2-player/page/2/#comment-7145948

From my earlier outline, I should continue with:

On 9/1/2024 at 11:09 PM, SLD said:

--later socket options
--maybe also something on important item mods: hit chance stuff, mitigation, dot reduction, leech%,

Later socket options:
From "only smithing arts and maybe runes", you transition to "one ring/amulet + Snithing arts/runes", so the "valuable" jewellery piece can still be recovered, to "basically only jewellery" in endgame.
Stats that can be useful to socket are:
+all skills
+% damage mitigation (there are some unique amulets with this mod)
-% dot damage, this is its own multiplier and can easily be stacked to 100% with a bunch of sockets, if you can't reach 100% mitigation yet. Afterwards it's kinda superflous.
-% opponent's chance to evade, and
+% chance opponents cannot evade, these are for attack based builds to make sure they always hit; mixing both seems to give best results.
+%opponent's level for deathblow, and
+% chance to disregard armour might be nice for attack based builds
+% cast speed, only really useful on EE,D2F,Addendum etc where the action speed cap has been increased to 450 a value you can basically only reach with lots of socketing.
+% experience and +% chance to find valuables for when you need nothing else...

for casters -% regen -%aspect regen and +% chance for half regen might help,
also + specific/all combat arts etc. to utilize the lower increase of regen from bonus combat art levels. 

In early/midgame runes with "life gain on hit" can be used to help with life recovery on certain builds that otherwise would lack it and the seraphim runes with +% physical damage mitigation can be used to reach full physical immunity early, which can, in the easier parts of the game, nullify almost everything.

Also in everything pre addendum, socketed set jewellery doesn't count as "worn" for the set bonus. So don't make that mistake

Something on item mods:
For the hitchance stuff,
spells always hit, attacks can use "attack value"(ok) and the "-% opponent's chance to evade" and "+%opponents cannot evade" mods(better). Havibg a mixture of all the option seems to yield the best results. I wouldn't actively pursue "attack value" as it usually does the least. Attack based combat arts usually come with a built in bonus for attack rating that can't be seen anywhere in game, so your actual hit chance with a combat art will most likely be higher than the one shown on the "last ten enemies"-section of the skill tab. 100%(or more) hit chance is a reasonable goal and every attack based character should aim to reach that asap. "-% opponent's chance to evade" on rings boots, gloves and bracers can appear in stores somewhere around level 5 I think at least by level 8 it should be quite possible to buy. It is a kind of trash level mod so it does not need bargaining at all. Buying a lot of gear/rings and socketing this stuff is the main way for attack based characters to reach good hit chance at early levels.

Mitigation and Dot Reduction:
Both add with themselves and multiply with each other.
Stacking 100% dot reduction will basically negate every damage over time effect on you.
Stacking 100% damaage mitigation will do the same and also negate the damage from every hit you take.
Sounds super OP? It is. Though there are a few things to remember:
Vulnerability(from enemy spells) is the same as -%mitigation so your 100% immunity might turn out far less impressive should a monster have this effect. Also, monsters with "ancient magic mastery" can also penetrate some of that mitigation. Both of these cases are usually super rare and/or require high level enemies. Usually a 100% mitigation character should do quite well.
Lifeleech effects from enemies attacks or spells don't do "damage" in the usual way. This special damage can't be mitigated so this can still hurt. It is however only encountered in some areas of the game.
The main downside of going 100% mitigation is, that it is really hard to get. There are not that many sources for this mod and reaching 100% can take quite a while depending on what mod/version of the game one is playing. Under normal circumstances you should not expect reaching 100% all channel mitigation before hitting level 100. But even in cases where you can't reach 100%, damage mitigation remains one of if not the most valuable defensive stat in the game. For those that don't or don't yet reach 100% mitgation the dot reduction stat might be a useful way to deal with many of the most damaging annoyances in the game and this stat is far easier to max out, but again is already worth it without reaching max.

Lifeleech%:
From the most broken defensive stat in the game we move to the most broken offensive stat in the game, that at the same time is also the most broken recovery stat in the game. The %LL bonus, as everything that's cool, only works with attacks(except maybe in the addendum it can apply to spells with a chance...). It takes the % value of the opponents maxmum hitpoints(or current in the addendum) as basis for a massive chunk of extra damage on said opponent and healing for you. Especially on bosses this amount often outscales all other damage you can come up with and heal you by more than your maximum life every time you hit them. As an example, endgame bosses in niobium can have like 4 million hitpoints so a single %lifeleech would add 40k damage and self heal to every hit you do to them. While 40k may sound like an achievable number of damage with a good build, you are not limited to 1%LL and your character can still do normal damage on top. So it should be obvious that this mod is super op and of course it is agein quite limited in the available sources. In the base game you only get it on Two handed melee weapons, throwing stars, and very few unique/legendary one handed melee weapons and one legendary energy staff. On top of that there are some full set bonuses with it and that's basically it. The CM patch and some other mods drastically alter this availability mostly leading to higher maximum values being achievable in the end.
Against non boss enemies this mod is of course nowhere near as effective and having a good baseline of "normal" damage is always a good thing, but it still provides good recovery in these situations. LL% is a "must have" for all attack based builds, and if it can't be combined with good normal damage it could at least be stuck in a weapon swap. This odd mod also does its damage per hit, so one should always aim for as many hits per time to shorten the boss shredder process
To give an example of where this mod can go, with CM-Patch you can make a shadow warrior with kanka set(should be around 4%LL+), a jewellery set with ~2%LL and dual wielding something like Kal'Dur's legacy or rare fist weapons ~3%each leading to 12%LL+... If you get it to 12.5% or have enough normal damage one use of "frenzied rampage" would kill the boss even without rolling a single "double hit". You could also go with a Khral's sceptre(~4%LL) and shoot 4x10%LL with the same combat art. This would execute a lot faster though you'd have to use it a few times in a row... When you now "upgrade" your game to EE and use the full 450 attack/cast speed cap the question of "how many seconds does it take to kill a boss?" starts to shift more towards "how many bosses can I kill in a second"...



That was now all the stuff my original list contained besides the two builds. Especially the mods and socketing stuff may be lacking other important things so if you like socketing something else and wonder why it's not on the list it might just be an oversight. I did not go through a list of all the mods, this is just what I came up with right now. For the mod stuff it's even worse than the socketing half, as here I didn't think at all and just wrote about the stuff I came up with in the original outline. I'm sure there's more that should end up in this category.

This turned into quite a lot, so I guess it's time to recharge the power-cow

[Sethi22 132]

Very well done, and thank you for your hard work! I'd like to ask about damage mitigation, as I'm really lacking in that department (too...) Is there maybe some list of the uniques that have damage mitigation for all types of damage? I remember the shield Glacial Defender having it for example, but it's kind of rare, I think, I don't remember finding too many items with this mod. And can it be shopped? It has been a while since I played Sacred 2, and my memory is blurry. So can this mod be found on yellow stuff too, or only on uniques? And how do you reach 100% with it? Just throwing in the uniques, or do you actually need toughness to reach it, and maybe some buff, like purifying chastisement with the modification, and the rest from items? Can every character reach it? I've never been even close to 100%, that's for sure. 

I've played far less Sacred2 than 1, so if you found me nooby in 1, I'm definitely even noobier in 2. Although I've been to Niobium a couple of times, and have a Nio shopper and smith, and have beaten the badguys in the end, as you might expect, I'm generally lacking technical knowledge. (And what little I had, I've mostly forgotten since.) So your work is not wasted at all, and I'm sure if Jacek will ever return, he and anyone else newish to the game reading this will find it very useful indeed! (I would still urge you to copy-paste it all to a separate guide section where it's easier to find, but it's up to you, of course!)

Edited September 20 by Sethi22

[Hooyaah 2,972]

8 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

Very well done, and thank you for your hard work! I'd like to ask about damage mitigation, as I'm really lacking in that department (too...) Is there maybe some list of the uniques that have damage mitigation for all types of damage? I remember the shield Glacial Defender having it for example, but it's kind of rare, I think, I don't remember finding too many items with this mod. And can it be shopped? It has been a while since I played Sacred 2, and my memory is blurry. So can this mod be found on yellow stuff too, or only on uniques? And how do you reach 100% with it? Just throwing in the uniques, or do you actually need toughness to reach it, and maybe some buff, like purifying chastisement with the modification, and the rest from items? Can every character reach it? I've never been even close to 100%, that's for sure. 

I've played far less Sacred2 than 1, so if you found me nooby in 1, I'm definitely even noobier in 2. Although I've been to Niobium a couple of times, and have a Nio shopper and smith, and have beaten the badguys in the end, as you might expect, I'm generally lacking technical knowledge. (And what little I had, I've mostly forgotten since.) So your work is not wasted at all, and I'm sure if Jacek will ever return, he and anyone else newish to the game reading this will find it very useful indeed! (I would still urge you to copy-paste it all to a separate guide section where it's easier to find, but it's up to you, of course!)

You may download this file:

There are also certain rare chest armors which have damage mitigation which may be obtained by shopping in addition to unique armors which occasionally drop. Other jewelry, namely Gruma's Talisman and Darwargen's Circlet also possess this modifier.

Glacial Defender is not in fact terribly rare; in addition to a generous amount of damage mitigation, it also adds base armor of all types and a nice boot to Combat Art Range.

[Sethi22 132]

Thanks a lot for the list and the download too! I've never seen this wiki page, but I really should have found it, I think. Recently though, I got use to whining on the forum and asking everything from SLD, as he shows such tremendous patience answering my dumb questions, it's unbelievable! He is my wiki now...  

(Oh, Armantin too, and Torik for the Dragon mage! Of course! Memories... Yes, they're starting to come back now! I'm the other way around with the Sacreds, 2 is distant memory, 1 is fresh. But I have several chars going in 2 as well, so time to dig them up again! )

[Sethi22 132]

(See, SLD, this is why you should move your guide to some separate place. Because where I go, all these strange offtopic things happen. Now we're talking elvish in the middle of your guide. And what will Jacek find, when he comes back? What will he make of all this? ) Now to try the wizardry! I hope I won't screw everything up!

[SLD 335]

19 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

I'd like to ask about damage mitigation, as I'm really lacking in that department (too...) Is there maybe some list of the uniques that have damage mitigation for all types of damage? I remember the shield Glacial Defender having it for example, but it's kind of rare, I think, I don't remember finding too many items with this mod. And can it be shopped? It has been a while since I played Sacred 2, and my memory is blurry. So can this mod be found on yellow stuff too, or only on uniques?

All channel Damage mitigation is available as two kinds of modifiers. Normal "%mitigation" and "%mitigation unlocked and based on armor mastery".
Normal mitigation is the mod on most set and unique items that have mitigation.
The "linked mitigation" can usually only appear on rare items and very rarely on unique or set items, in the base game I think the only instance on a unique would be the shadow warrior's unique belt. Also as this mitigation is linked to armor mastery it will only ever appear on items lvl 75 and above.

Rare Shoulder and chest armour pieces can be found/shopped with normal mitigation, linked mitigation or rarely even both. At least in later mods (D2F, EE, addendum) rare lightsabers can roll normal mitigation as well. Other than that there should be no rare sources for mitigation.

For unique/set pieces you already mentioned the glacial defender for normal all channel mitigation, the other item in this slot is the Kira's set shield(really rare but has a higher value of that mod).

Some classes have set pieces on the not shoulder/chest armour slots like the seraphim with endijian wings. There are also set leg plates for the temple guardian.

And beyond these things there are a few unique amulets like "tanit's collar" that have all damage type mitigation that can at endgame levels reach like 3 or 4 % so with enough of these and a lot of sockets obviously everyone can reach 100%.
In general all classes can wear a chest armour.
Everyone except for inquisitors and temple guardians can chose to wear a shield, while those two both get a buff with mitigation.
Many classes can wear shoulder pieces, but not all...
Some classes can use the toughness skill to help.
Some classes have extra set items and the shadow warrior gets an extra unique belt with a linked version of the mod.
With CM patch shadow warriors get a super charged linked version on the kanka chest armour...

Some mods significantly lower the values on some set pieces for balance reasons etc. So it depends on how easy/possible it is to reach 100%. In the base game seraphim, temple guardian and shadow warrior are probably among the easiest. They might make it without socketing, otherwise "some" to "heavy" socketing might be required.

If you really want an easy way for 100% mitigation play a barbarian in D2F, that guy gets a sick buff, combined with toughness you'll have made it more than half the way already...
Or you play the base game to a high enough level that a seraphim can constantly keep up her divine protection. That thing can also give a sick amount...

For all the set items with mitigation mods there may not be a seperate list but you can look at all the normal and cm-patch sets on the wiki pages of each character.

As always mod content may differ and don't try reaching 100% mitigation in the addendum as it's supposedly capped at 90% there(At least that is the intention, I haven't tested if it's working yet).
 

2 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

See, SLD, this is why you should move your guide to some separate place

So far there is no guide only a lot of unstructured general information that I originally thought could help jacek who seems to now have moved on anyway. Should there ever be enough to make proper guides out of this, than some copy and paste will solve all this. And so that those pieces don't get lost my last post already summarized and linked all the other stuff together. You also made clear that for a guide that mentions mitigation it might also be a good idea to include sources for that mod.
 

2 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

And what will Jacek find, when he comes back? What will he make of all this?

He will return many months from now. He will have forgotten all about this thread and create a new one, ask some build questions etc.
He will then again ask "And what about Master's Touch?"....
Just look at his post history

All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again... So say we all?

[Sethi22 132]

Wizards, scientists... You guys are really in your own league! Well answered again, and thank you again! And I even understood it all, which is a big thing, so you made a great effort in writing it as noob-friendly as possible.

((For example what you guys are talking about with Maneus in the "How is Sacred2 weapon damage calculated" topic is way above my head, I'm just "oooos" and "aaaas", and "whatdaaaa" there. But this I can understand, so well done!))

Edited September 21 by Sethi22

[gogoblender 3,206]

On 9/20/2024 at 5:36 AM, SLD said:

Ok, some recap where all the other guide stuff I already wrote is located...

This is here:
https://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/72710-an-easy-character-for-a-returning-sacred-2-player/#comment-7145889

This, amended with a "---character creation" part on top, is here:
https://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/72710-an-easy-character-for-a-returning-sacred-2-player/page/2/#comment-7145948

From my earlier outline, I should continue with:

Later socket options:
From "only smithing arts and maybe runes", you transition to "one ring/amulet + Snithing arts/runes", so the "valuable" jewellery piece can still be recovered, to "basically only jewellery" in endgame.
Stats that can be useful to socket are:
+all skills
+% damage mitigation (there are some unique amulets with this mod)
-% dot damage, this is its own multiplier and can easily be stacked to 100% with a bunch of sockets, if you can't reach 100% mitigation yet. Afterwards it's kinda superflous.
-% opponent's chance to evade, and
+% chance opponents cannot evade, these are for attack based builds to make sure they always hit; mixing both seems to give best results.
+%opponent's level for deathblow, and
+% chance to disregard armour might be nice for attack based builds
+% cast speed, only really useful on EE,D2F,Addendum etc where the action speed cap has been increased to 450 a value you can basically only reach with lots of socketing.
+% experience and +% chance to find valuables for when you need nothing else...

for casters -% regen -%aspect regen and +% chance for half regen might help,
also + specific/all combat arts etc. to utilize the lower increase of regen from bonus combat art levels. 

In early/midgame runes with "life gain on hit" can be used to help with life recovery on certain builds that otherwise would lack it and the seraphim runes with +% physical damage mitigation can be used to reach full physical immunity early, which can, in the easier parts of the game, nullify almost everything.

Also in everything pre addendum, socketed set jewellery doesn't count as "worn" for the set bonus. So don't make that mistake

Something on item mods:
For the hitchance stuff,
spells always hit, attacks can use "attack value"(ok) and the "-% opponent's chance to evade" and "+%opponents cannot evade" mods(better). Havibg a mixture of all the option seems to yield the best results. I wouldn't actively pursue "attack value" as it usually does the least. Attack based combat arts usually come with a built in bonus for attack rating that can't be seen anywhere in game, so your actual hit chance with a combat art will most likely be higher than the one shown on the "last ten enemies"-section of the skill tab. 100%(or more) hit chance is a reasonable goal and every attack based character should aim to reach that asap. "-% opponent's chance to evade" on rings boots, gloves and bracers can appear in stores somewhere around level 5 I think at least by level 8 it should be quite possible to buy. It is a kind of trash level mod so it does not need bargaining at all. Buying a lot of gear/rings and socketing this stuff is the main way for attack based characters to reach good hit chance at early levels.

Mitigation and Dot Reduction:
Both add with themselves and multiply with each other.
Stacking 100% dot reduction will basically negate every damage over time effect on you.
Stacking 100% damaage mitigation will do the same and also negate the damage from every hit you take.
Sounds super OP? It is. Though there are a few things to remember:
Vulnerability(from enemy spells) is the same as -%mitigation so your 100% immunity might turn out far less impressive should a monster have this effect. Also, monsters with "ancient magic mastery" can also penetrate some of that mitigation. Both of these cases are usually super rare and/or require high level enemies. Usually a 100% mitigation character should do quite well.
Lifeleech effects from enemies attacks or spells don't do "damage" in the usual way. This special damage can't be mitigated so this can still hurt. It is however only encountered in some areas of the game.
The main downside of going 100% mitigation is, that it is really hard to get. There are not that many sources for this mod and reaching 100% can take quite a while depending on what mod/version of the game one is playing. Under normal circumstances you should not expect reaching 100% all channel mitigation before hitting level 100. But even in cases where you can't reach 100%, damage mitigation remains one of if not the most valuable defensive stat in the game. For those that don't or don't yet reach 100% mitgation the dot reduction stat might be a useful way to deal with many of the most damaging annoyances in the game and this stat is far easier to max out, but again is already worth it without reaching max.

Lifeleech%:
From the most broken defensive stat in the game we move to the most broken offensive stat in the game, that at the same time is also the most broken recovery stat in the game. The %LL bonus, as everything that's cool, only works with attacks(except maybe in the addendum it can apply to spells with a chance...). It takes the % value of the opponents maxmum hitpoints(or current in the addendum) as basis for a massive chunk of extra damage on said opponent and healing for you. Especially on bosses this amount often outscales all other damage you can come up with and heal you by more than your maximum life every time you hit them. As an example, endgame bosses in niobium can have like 4 million hitpoints so a single %lifeleech would add 40k damage and self heal to every hit you do to them. While 40k may sound like an achievable number of damage with a good build, you are not limited to 1%LL and your character can still do normal damage on top. So it should be obvious that this mod is super op and of course it is agein quite limited in the available sources. In the base game you only get it on Two handed melee weapons, throwing stars, and very few unique/legendary one handed melee weapons and one legendary energy staff. On top of that there are some full set bonuses with it and that's basically it. The CM patch and some other mods drastically alter this availability mostly leading to higher maximum values being achievable in the end.
Against non boss enemies this mod is of course nowhere near as effective and having a good baseline of "normal" damage is always a good thing, but it still provides good recovery in these situations. LL% is a "must have" for all attack based builds, and if it can't be combined with good normal damage it could at least be stuck in a weapon swap. This odd mod also does its damage per hit, so one should always aim for as many hits per time to shorten the boss shredder process
To give an example of where this mod can go, with CM-Patch you can make a shadow warrior with kanka set(should be around 4%LL+), a jewellery set with ~2%LL and dual wielding something like Kal'Dur's legacy or rare fist weapons ~3%each leading to 12%LL+... If you get it to 12.5% or have enough normal damage one use of "frenzied rampage" would kill the boss even without rolling a single "double hit". You could also go with a Khral's sceptre(~4%LL) and shoot 4x10%LL with the same combat art. This would execute a lot faster though you'd have to use it a few times in a row... When you now "upgrade" your game to EE and use the full 450 attack/cast speed cap the question of "how many seconds does it take to kill a boss?" starts to shift more towards "how many bosses can I kill in a second"...



That was now all the stuff my original list contained besides the two builds. Especially the mods and socketing stuff may be lacking other important things so if you like socketing something else and wonder why it's not on the list it might just be an oversight. I did not go through a list of all the mods, this is just what I came up with right now. For the mod stuff it's even worse than the socketing half, as here I didn't think at all and just wrote about the stuff I came up with in the original outline. I'm sure there's more that should end up in this category.

This turned into quite a lot, so I guess it's time to recharge the power-cow

Great ref material

Please copy paste it out so it can be referred to properly in other answers to other players and I'd even like to share it out on other sites as a mini-wiki "cull" ... theres some situational comparison situations which is some of the best ways to hook players into success with this game.

You just need a thesis question, statement or a snappy title to bring it all together

You'll really be surprised how much focus and possibilities for expansion a great title thats "yours" brings to a guide or reference article. It'll also let you put your work into its all quantum singularity universe here in the forum, something you can keep going back to with updates and which over the years will amass more connections ... like a Black HOle

You just cant use Secret Agent Ice Elf Build... cuz its taken  

Good Morning Saturday Folk... someone hand me the dancing cow!

gogo

[SLD 335]

3 hours ago, gogoblender said:

Good Morning Saturday Folk... someone hand me the dancing cow!

 

3 hours ago, gogoblender said:

Great ref material

Please copy paste it out so it can be referred to properly in other answers to other players and I'd even like to share it out on other sites as a mini-wiki "cull" ... theres some situational comparison situations which is some of the best ways to hook players into success with this game.

You just need a thesis question, statement or a snappy title to bring it all together

So far I just use this thread to lay down my thoughts. It was originally all meant to help Jacek after all. Once all the pieces are there, we can think about how to best structure this stuff and make it more accessible. Sethi already told us that talking about mitigation without saying where you can get it is kinda incomplete. There may be more that should be changed before it gets into a more final form. 
For now al of this belongs here as this is the thread where first Jacek and now Sethi as well have asked for this information. It's also where Jacek would go looking for it should he still need it.

It'll still take a while until I'm done here.
The two character builds are coming up next, when I think the power-cow has been sufficiently recharged.

[gogoblender 3,206]

26 minutes ago, SLD said:

The two character builds are coming up next, when I think the power-cow has been sufficiently recharged.

Certainly...recharge... on!

two double Jagermeisters.... order up!

 

gogo

[Hooyaah 2,972]

Please Note:

The conversation which began here regarding a method of resetting all quests in Sacred 2 has been moved to its home as shown and linked below.

Thank you to Sethi22 for insisting that I share this information with everyone.

HUZZAH! 

 

[SLD 335]

I think the power-cow is sufficiently recharged. I'm supposed to continue with:

On 9/1/2024 at 11:09 PM, SLD said:

--Bfg Sera
---proper casting bfg in an empty slot
---attribute choices
---skill choices
---combat art upgrades
---something about gear
---maybe something on gameplay
----shooting far
----special behaviour of an archangel's wrath combo
---different variants pure tech/ tech+exalted warrior

So as is tradition I will start with something that isn't on that list, that I remembered might be useful for some happy exploiters

Over-levelling skills:
You can put skill points that you have available into skills that are at least one level below your character level. Once they reach the same level as your character the option to put in more points will go away. But as always the devs didn't think of everything. 
Back in the day, enough lag could allow you to spam click more than one point into a skill making it exceed your character level by quite a bit. Exploiting this to the brim with multiple macro buttons etc could easily result in 10 or more points spent at once. I haven't seen this lag based exploit happen in many years so I guess modern machines are just to fast, but don't worry, anything the community touches gets more exploitable
At some point an option to add 10 skill points at once by shift-clicking was added, that basically allowed to overshoot your current character level by 9 points. For this one I think the original devs are to blame. But the community doubled err I mean quintupled down on that one and implemented Ctrl-clicking for 50 points at once. With that option you can for example get a skill mastered as early as level 26 as long as you can get enough bonus points from somewhere. Generally early masteries and early bonus modification points are the most useful ways to utilize this overshoot skill point exploit. It might also be possible to put in more than 200 hard points into one skill by using this method at a high level, but I haven't tested that yet.
As always exploit at your own risk, some fun might be lost this way. Also remember that you would need to have these skill points and that getting one skill to mastery early might create a serious lack of skill points for your other skills. Also, the "10 at once" and "50 at once" are actually "up to 10/50 at once" so if you happen to have less than 10/50 skill points it will just put in all that you have. 


Now lets get to BFG Seras:


proper casting bfg in an empty slot:
A BFG Seraphim uses the "BeeEffGee" buff and thereby created weapon. Vital to it's OP power are the two "Enhancement" modifications that add a lot of physical damage to your weapon damage via the buff.
Usually to maximize the effect of a buff you would cast it while wearing a weapon set that adds to combat art level or increases the relevant focus skill etc. In case of the BFG you don't do that. The BFG buff when casted from a filled weapon slot will still add the Enhancement-damage to your inventory tooltip but not to the weapon itself, when casted on an empty weapon slot however the created weapon itself will have this massive amount of physical damage added. The difference here is that the bonus damage your dexterity attribute gives you is based on the damage of the weapon in your hand therefore the empty-slot-casted BFG will get a lot more damage from dexterity. This by far outscales any benefits a higher BFG buff level could get you, so always make sure to cast your BFG with an empty slot selected.
Also, don't let the inventory screen fool you, attribute damage is not properly multiplied with damage increases before it's being added to the inventory tooltip so the difference may look small while in fact it is not.

attribute choices:
There are six attributes to choose from.
For the BFG-Sera, Strength would only give relatively useless atttack value and Intelligence does nothing at all.
Vitality and Willpower would give increased life/shield amount. Willpower would also increase Spell Resistance. All these defensive benefits are relatively small and I would generally not suggest putting points into these two attributes either.
That leaves Dexterity and Stamina.
Dexterity gives a small bonus to Attack and Defense Values and a significant amount of Weapon Damage bonus. It is a solid choice.
Stamina reduces the regen times of combat arts, which for a ranged character is quite valuable as "regen per hit" only happens when the projectiles hit and therefore only allow you to shoot in quick succession when you're in melee range. Having really low regen times can be quite hard especially with heavy buffs like BFG and investing in Stamina can help solve this problem.
So Dexterity or Stamina?
In situations with infinite attribute points I'd put some in both and
in all other cases I'd probably go with stamina as lots of damage may be nice, but you already have a lot of damage and casting your combat art is the main build enabling thing so in the end regen times are more important than raw damage.

skill choices:
In general you get to choose up to 10 skills in Sacred 2.
For a BFG Seraphim you always want:
Armor Lore, as it reduces regen times let's you not be slowed down by higher level armor and gives %bonus to armor. All characters want that one. With mastery it can also allow for some linked mitigation mods on rare chest armors and shoulder pieces. Those can be quite useful and tanky for midgame purposes.
Toughness, as it gives mitigation and mitigation is the king of defense in this game. The extra resists are also nice when you're not at 100% mitigation.
Revered Technology Focus, as it allows for higher levels of the BFG buff to be used.
Revered Techology Lore, as it directly increases the values of the BFG buff's "enhancement" and "accuracy" modifiers.
Concentration, as regen times are important and the ability to have more than one buff active is also something we don't want to miss.

For the most minimalistic build option these 5 skills are already enough.

Let's take a look at all the other skills and which ones make sense to take under which circumstances.

General Skills:
Divine Devotion? Don't use that one it'll never be worth it.
Alchemy? Can be nice if you have infinite access to things you want to eat. Basically potions while playing with the Addendum, or when you're duping four-leaf clovers. Otherwise I don't think it's worth taking.
Riding? A must have with Addendum as mastery will unlock mitigation on mount trinkets, otherwise it's kinda useless. It does reduce reg times while on mount but outside of the Addendum mounts are unreliable, not allowed in caves until EE and then you still can't directly enter caves while on the mount etc. Also the tiger isn't very fast and with certain gear you can potentially run faster without it. It does increase your hp pool but also your hitbox against things like meteor shower so wether you win or loose here depends on the situation. So wether/when you use the tiger is still up to you but usually taking the riding skill is not worth it.
Enhanced Perception? If you want to farm for loot, extra mf is never wrong. Depemding on the game version, just putting in one point to enable the use of relics with a bonus to EP can already be quite helpful.
Bargaining? If you like spending more time with the merchant than playing the game this skill is for you. Remember that utmost investment is necessary, maxing this skill and creating a full suit of gear with bonus points to it. At later levels the really high quality wares tend to be unshoppable due to insane unreachable bargaining requirements, but it is still the most reasonable source for good jewellery to socket, so If you like the merchant go for it
As always the Addendum is special allowing you to buy set and unique items...
Blacksmith? With the CM patch a Seraphim can become a real man and learn blacksmithing. If you don't have another character that can socket things for her, this might be worth taking. The main purpose here is socketing bronze/silver sockets with rings/amulets. Never put more than one point into this. Make a gearset with some skill bonuses and save the otherwise entirely wasted points. The "lucky removal" chance will never be good enough to rely on so don't go for mastery either. Again the Addendum makes changes that make this skill more valuable but the rule "another char can do it for you" remains.

Defensive Skills:
Pacifism? Only if you want to write a guide on how to find the one other player on the planet that wants to play Sacred 2 pvp.
Shield Lore? Our BFG is two-handed so no use for shields. Even if you like using a throwing star at certain circumstances, this skill is only worth choosing when you use a shield full time and then you're no longer a proper BFG Sera.
Constitution? More Life and HP-regen? Can be useful if you don't want to use shields and don't plan on becoming damage immune via mitigation. I wouldn't recommend using this.
Warding Energy Lore? Shields are usually sizeable enough and you don't get much flat mitigation from it but in certain more challenging mods that bit of flat mitigation can help a lot. Obviously only use with energy shields and then only in cases where again a full 100% mitigation is not planned.
Combat Reflexes? The defense against critical hits is irrelevant as critical hits are only a factor of 1.2 (or 1.5 in certain mods). The evade chances only help with attacks and on top of that can never really result in good evade chances against enemies where it might be useful, so this skill basically works best against normal mobs, where you should not need it. I would not recommend it.
Spell Resistance? Crits are same as above. The "Spell Resistance" effect can at best make you win the "spell intensity"-check, which would supposedly lower the damage from a spell to 66%. Though I can't find a source for the exact calculations here, I'll just assume wherever I got that number from is correct and therefore this would also be a rather weak defence. [Edit Maneus has revealed it's actually lowered to 70%(determined by the parameter SpellResistFactor in balance.txt.) so it's even worse.]
Also it only works on spells. That leaves the mastery bonus. This one might be doing something valuable, but again only for characters that don't have 100% mitigation or 100% dot damage reduction from their gear already. Though it might also help against slow effects I would usually choose one of the named mitigation options to solve dot problems and then spell resist seems to be quite underwhelming. As of my current point of knowledge I wouldn't recommend taking this one.

Offensive Skills:
Sword Weapons, Pole Arms and Magic Staffs are of no use to a BFG Sera.
Dual wield? could only be used for Bargaining or Buff sets and for shooting Archangel's wrath with two weapons with %leech. All things to consider but usually you would only consider this when you don't need anything else anymore. If bargaining or Buff sets would benefit from dual wielding (over a shield) might depend on the game version/available items. If you choose dual wield, one point is enough.
Damage Lore? If used with something that converts damage to poison or fire (e.g. Archangel's wrath or rare gloves) it can prolong and intensify the burning/poison damage. I wouldn't recommend using it at all but if you do always go for mastery. Damage Lore without mastery is useless.
Speed Lore? Sadly doesn't give enough "speed" to be worth anything. The attack and defense values aren't worth pursuing either.
Ranged Weapons? The speed bonuses only affect left-click attacks and the Exalted Warrior CAs. The attack rating will always take effect even on Archangel's Wrath. As the BFG buff gives a large amount of bonus points to this skill I would recommend taking this no matter what, but if you play a pure Archangel's Wrath version of the BFG Sera you could technically leave it out. More than one point here would probably be wasted again as you get such an enormous amount of bonus points.
Tactics Lore? Like the speed from "ranged weapons" tactics lore only effects left-click attacks and EW CAs. Archangel's Wrath instead uses "Revered Technology Lore" for these stats(execution speed, damage and crit chance). Therefore a pure Archangel's Wrath BFG Sera can leave out tactics lore. Otherwise this is quite a potent damage buff and gives mod points for the EW Aspect.

Combat Art Skills:
Celstial Magic Lore/Focus? I see no point in this aspect. Technically celestial light can bundle up enemies, but why not just shoot them instead? Don't waste points here.
Ancient Magic? BFG Seras don't do spell damage so this has no effect.
Exalted Warrior Focus? For all non pure Tech versions of the BFG Sera this is a must have to allow higher levels of Battle Stance and mod points. Obviously it's also need if you want to use EW CAs as main attack. 
Combat Discipline? Provides a relatively low damage bonus and reduces reg times in combos by 10%/20%(/with mastery). As so many other skills it does "something" so if you really need nothing else you can take it but otherwise it's pretty weak and I wouldn't recommend it. Also, dumping 74 hard points for mastery just to get the 20% reg reduction instead of 10% is probably quite a dumb idea as well.


So after the mandatory 5 skills: tech lore and focus, concentration, armor lore and toughness, the most useful additions are

-Ranged Weapons (to utilize all the free bonus points, mandatory if using EW CAs for damage)
-EW Focus (for Battle Stance)
-Tactics Lore (only if using EW CAs for damage)
-Some of the lesser Defensive skills
-whatever general skills you fancy (Bargaining, EP, Blacksmith, Riding, Alchemy and not Divine Devotion )



At this point it makes sense to rip up the outline again and talk about build variants first.

different variants pure tech/ tech+exalted warrior:
The BFG Seraphim always uses BFG so the Tech Lore and Focus are already there. The Seraphim has three combat arts she can use with her BFG.
-Soul Hammer: One shot per use, big damage, bad mods. I wouldn't use that one.
-Pelting Strikes: Two shots with normal game, four with CM Patch and modable for more with EE. This skill is ok in the base game but all the community changes make it outstanding in both applying normal damage and %leech if you happen to have that on your gear. So especially from CM Patch onwards you would want to use this CA.
-Archangel's Wrath: This one is a very special alternative. It only shoots once, moddable for a second shot, prevents pierce from the bfg but can be modded for splash in return. It's main benefit is that it is on the Revered Technology aspect, therefore uses tech lore for damage and cast speed and doesn't get slowed by a "too heavy" weapon. It allows to ditch tactics lore, ranged lore and even the EW focus if you really don't want some or all of those and also has far less problems with the limited amount of skill points especially in early game. The only downsides are that using Archangel's Wrath needs more tech mod points and that in CM Patch and beyond the projectile count of Pelting Strikes will outclass it offensively. 

This choice basically determines a range of builds from the minimalistic "pure tech Archangel's Wrath" version over "adding Battle Stance to it" to "full Pelting Strikes".

Another choice all these builds can make is wether they want to use the permanent shield "Warding Energy" buff. It helps with defense early on but also weighs heavy on the regen times, so I would only use it if I feel it's necessary. A lategame option that isn't really compatible with Warding Energy would be reusing Divine Protection. That would be the defensive non plus ultra but deactivates Warding Energy all the time. So if you like the active recasting of Divine Protection you'll have no use for warding energy later in the game anyway.


combat art upgrades:
You get CA modification points for spending hard points on the aspect's skills, that would be Tech lore and focus for the tech skills and EW Focus and Tactics Lore for the EW skills.
Obviously you only need to modify CAs that you plan on using.

Pelting Strikes:
Bronze mod "Succession" supposedly doesn't work at all pre EE so you might want to pick "Thrust" in that case.
Silver mod should be "Focus" for the regen reduction.
Gold mod both are bad. Reducing opponents armor doesn't do much in lategame should you go for a lot of the "chance to ignore enemy armor" mod on gear. Crits generally don't do much either. I'd probably go with "Precision" for the crit chance.

Battle Stance:
Bronze mod "Aggression" for more damage
Silver mod "Drill" can help with regen times, though picking "Flexibility" for the evade chance won't ruin the build either as the effect of "Drill" isn't that impactful.
Gold mod "Retaliation" because "Idol" would only help others and who cares about others

Dashing Alacrity:
If you really wanna use this go Sprint-Delay-Impatience

Assailing Somersault:
I'd only use this to cross rivers etc. For that either Bronze mod makes some sense "more range" or "less regen". In the end it doesn't matter. Neither do the Silver and Gold mods.

Archangel's Wrath:
Bronze mod "Salvo" doubles on hit effects like %leech.
Silver mod "Explosive" and "lock" are both nice but I'd go with the area damage of "Explosive".
Gold mod "Vulnerable" because the other one is useless. If you scale the burning effect with Damage Lore you don't need the chance increase from "Greek Fire". Otherwise the burning effect won't be worth increasing its chance.

Divine Protection:
Capacity and Boost are necessary to reach 100% uptime.
The Gold mod either reflects projectile attacks or spells. I would go with spells as they are usually the more nasty stuff both damage wise and other side effect wise. On top of that ranged attacks can be evaded so you're always more vulnerable to spells than ranged attacks.

Warding Energy:
Projectile Reflection-Magic Mirror-Block
Should you plan on being a 100% mitigation tank that uses Warding Energy purely to fend off leeching hits you can of course replace "block" with "resource"

BeeEffGee:
Enhancement-Enhancement-Accuracy
Doing damage is always good and the ability to scale the "Accuracy" mod with Tech Lore is just absurdly op. Beware some mods may "fix" this interaction.


something about gear:
Weapon: BFG... that one was easy.
For casting non BFG buffs creating a weapon set that improves them might be worth it.
For early boss killing a %leech throwing star might help for later boss shredder bs a Khral's sceptre might be nice for killing the "egg"(T-Energy Hub thingy at the end) in multiplayer games you can use Archangel's Wrath to hit it twice per shot with any kind of leech weapon, if you don't have any faster way yet. Even works with melee weapons.

For the armor pieces you'd usually go for set items with lots of sockets to fill with whatever you need. Rare mitigation Chest and Shoulder pieces might be worth using though the ultimate plan would probably be to squeeze in 8 pieces of the "Revelation of the Seraphim" set for leech% combined with Endijian's wings and post CM patch also the "Tooth and Nail" set for %leech again.
Depending on the game version these ideas may be unrealistic as some mods for example significantly reduce the damage mitigation of the suggested set pieces making them defensively a very bad choice.

Well you see a pattern here, mitigation as defence and leech% as offence.
Early socketing should contain some -% opponent's chance to evade to make sure you reach 100% hit chance against everything. In EE onwards if you later want to aim for maximum firing rate remember to stack "cast speed" and not "attack speed" as all combat arts use the first one.


something on gameplay:
First of all what to expect: Eat lots of buff runes. Don't expect to have low enough regen times to use your chosen attack CA much in the first 50++ levels. Don't eat runes in those CAs unless your character has super high level and your regen time remains low. Low regen time means faaaar below one second especially in mods like EE where your firing rate can go through the roof. The mid game solution for regen times is socketing some regen per hit and fighting enemies at very close range. The early game is just left click attacks that still oneshot almost everything
Get the concentration skill early to use a second buff. Use your first skill points on Tech Lore and Focus to get mod points for BFG. If you go for a pelting strike variant still prioritize tech first as it will take forever till you can properly use pelting strikes. Also don't waste early points on tactics lore, taking the skill is fine just don't put points in, as you get bonus points from the BFG weapon itself.
The Focus skill(s) concentration and armor lore are your main drivers for regen times should you ever want to use your combat arts these are important. Should you choose to use a mount get one that reduces regen times for the active combat art you are using, tech tiger for archangel's wrath and warrior tiger for pelting strikes.

Shooting far:
Should you ever want to shoot a boss without that one retaliating you can use this simple trick. Holding both Ctrl and Left click allows you to shoot at the ground. While you keep those buttons pressed you can move the mouse to shoot at different spots on the ground. And if you aim far away it will allow you to shoot all the way to the horizon as energy weapons don't actually have a range limit. Knowing all this all you have to do is get close enough to a boss to spawn it, you can then even back a little bit off just make sure that the boss is still visible in the distance. Now you shoot at the ground, change aim for the boss and wait until it's dead. The boss can't see far enough so It won't react at all. Works on basically everything where you have enough space like the Carnach or the Octagolamus. In the end you can only do this with left click attacks so you would want to transition away from this tactic, but if you want to get in some early boss kills while you can't tank their damage or kill them fast enough to not have to tank their damage this might be a useful trick.

Archangel's Wrath in a Combo:
Achangel's Wrath performs really weird when it is put in a combo. To be precise, it can kinda aim for you and make the most lazy playstyle possible. You hold down left click and when you now right click for the combo it will only fire if something is in range and automatically target that. If nothing is in range the right click won't interrupt the movement. Not sure why this skill performs differently than other ones and only in a combo I guess it has something to do with it's ability t get a "homing projectile" mod even though taking the mod is not required for the odd behaviour. Just one nice and relaxing gameplay method I encountered by accident



Well, everything I had in the outline is covered so I guess the power-cow can go back to recharging for the SW build guide.

Edited 18 hours ago by SLD

[Sethi22 132]

Power cow rules them all! Nicely written again, and I don't even want to say thank you any more, because it's getting boring. So instead I'll give you one of these for your hard work this time:

You really love your mitigation thing I see, and you have some balls going in without constitution (and warding energy lore?) and that's the pro's way, I guess. But for scared noobsters like me, at least one of these is required. (Well I'm so unfamiliar with all the mechanics and numbers and calculations, that for me, actually both seem to be invaluable, but we've already touched on this earlier...) Maybe if I manage to get even close to 100% mitigation once in my career, I'll be more at ease with ignoring them, but right now, I wouldn't even dare to think about doing a char without constitution.

(Well I do, I have one, my completely invisible utility shadow warrior didn't take any of the defensive skills, as being invisible and killing everything without ever being seen is  a bit OP as it is, you don't need anything else...)

But for chars that are actually visible, (and especially new chars, who don't have a helping hand from shoppers,) going in without constitution is a bit hairy, isn't it? So let's pretend you don't have tons of items stored from previous sessions, and you don't have shoppers ready and waiting, how would you get your mitigation thing going? Hoping for some set drops? Or shopping like crazy? I'm not trying to make fun out of this, I'd really like to know. So then I guess you would definitely keep your toughness at char level and reach mastery at level 75 (or earlier, you nasty SLD!See, I didn't know this overleveling thing either...)  That's 12% mitigation then, if I get the wiki right. (And by level 75 you probably already met a few bosses on your way, and survived.) We can't use shields of course, so what about the rest? The remaining 88%?

It's true that BFG is so strong, you'll rarely get hit at all, because everyone will bite the dust before coming close, so I see your point: best defense is a strong offense! (But then let's pretend something even more ridiculous: let's pretend, you're as bad a player as I am, and that you don't always hit your target, because you can't even aim properly sometimes, and also that you're distracted by certain circumstances (like watching sports in another window for example, while orc caving hardcore, as I always used to do...) So what I'm trying to say is: let's pretend you'll get hit quite often! What's the plan then?

So to summarise: Are you sure, that going this mitigation way with a completely new char without any help is a good idea? I don't know if it's just me with my hardcore mania, who finds this approach really weird, or if it really is weird, but to put it simple: would you advise going this mitigation way even in hardcore? Without constitution? (And possibly even without warding energy lore?)  And hope for the best until then?

Well, I have several other questions as well, and even though I'll probably become the laughing stock of the community (I'm getting used to it, don't worry, I can take it! ), I must confess, that I haven't even tried any of these mods you talk about, I only recently realized there's a thing called Enhanced edition, and Addendum I only found out about today, reading your post and searching afterwards. (I told you I was even noobier in Sacred2, than 1!) So most of my questions would be about these mods, but that's another story, and I remember there was a topic about this (I think Xeyp started it in the summer? What mods you advise for a new player or something like that...) I was (even) deep(er) into Sacred 1 then and I didn't read it, but I hope I'll find it...

Other than that, I'd like to ask about Divine protection: I of course had warding energy buff as well (being the ultra defensive, "what if something bad happens" type of player), and used it only as extra against bosses, but you say it can reach 100% uptime, (I've never been close to that.) So how do you reach that, and roughly what char level is it even possible? Do you plan your char like that? "Ok, I'll reach 100% uptime at level... and then..." Or it just happens, as you progress with your mysterious calculating ways? Obviously you pump Rev tech focus and stamina, I know. But even with the focus kept at level and all your points going into stamina (I did mine half dexterity, half willpower), it would take quite some time and careful socketing to get that, no?

And warding energy lore and willpower help it too, right? So how on earth can you use this efficiently without the lore and adding points to willpower? (And you don't list Warding energy lore as required skill, it's somewhere between "don't take it", and "take it if you must, noob!" if I got it right? ), so you would definitely rely on divine protection more than I did with all my other defensive layers.

And another one about it too: if using it together with the buff, it deactivates it when running out, as you said. Do any of the mods you wrote about here (and maybe earlier as well) change this loathsome behaviour? 

(Oh I'm done. I haven't written this much in ages. At least you see that I really care, and your work is not wasted! And at least now I feel your pain writing these long messages! Even though my reply is much shorter, this really is hard work! Even asking dumb things is hard work, especially in english, using the dictionary and everything... So well done again, and be prepared for even more stupid questions in the future, I'm just full of writing this at the moment.)

Cheers!

 

Edited September 28 by Sethi22

[SLD 335]

15 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

So let's pretend you don't have tons of items stored from previous sessions, and you don't have shoppers ready and waiting, how would you get your mitigation thing going? Hoping for some set drops? Or shopping like crazy? I'm not trying to make fun out of this, I'd really like to know. So then I guess you would definitely keep your toughness at char level and reach mastery at level 75 (or earlier, you nasty SLD!See, I didn't know this overleveling thing either...)  That's 12% mitigation then, if I get the wiki right. (And by level 75 you probably already met a few bosses on your way, and survived.) We can't use shields of course, so what about the rest? The remaining 88%?

I currently don't have a normal game version or only CM patch version lying around and I haven't played either in many years, so making a testrun of this isn't possible right now. I don't leave out Constitution or Warding Energy Lore because they do nothing at the start. I leave them out because I always plan my build for the result not the journey. I don't want to waste hundreds of hours of gameplay to reach 100% mitigation and then have skills that no longer do anything for my character, because I'm the kind of guy that would start over at that point to make a character with a better skill in that slot.
Ok let's imagine the New Character experience and we try to not exploit anything at all. We go to my new char section. We make a sera, get both bronze and silver airlines, get some gold from chest buy a full set of gear smith some blacksmith arts and then we start killing kobolds in silver. Until we can get a bfg rune we shoot with a bow. Once we get runes we dump them in bfg and another buff. Assuming the game isn't EE's challenge mode or the Addendum, I don't think I need to go with the Warding Energy buff, but if I'm wrong I'll find out soon Once I have the option to use a second buff via the runes I'll pick up one level in concentration. The rest of the skillpoints go into Tech lore and focus. I'll pick up ranged lore at some point because it helps with hit chance and gets the annoying attack speed reduction out of the way. Whatever order I choose to pick these 4 skills I'll be done by level 8 and probably get armor lore at 12. All this time I'd be basically oneshotting kobolds, farming runes. My mod points go into BFG first, so that one is done by like level 5 or something. The kobolds I kill are basically repeated runs of the Kobold Chieftain quest with all its nice handplaced champion kobolds and lots of chests for some extra loot. If I really had to, I know I could use this strategy all the way to around level 40. Obviously this would be super slow levelling so I'd rather want to move on to the orc region at some point. I don't like shopping at all but after the level 1 stuff I would try to buy some hit chance rings. For other gear upgrades I'd probably stick with what I find. Set Items for the higher socket numbers are the main goal here. I could socket some sera runes for ohys mitigation but I don't think I would need it in the base game or CMpatch versions. And now the main "breakpoint" I'm aiming for is somehow getting strong enough to kill a "real" boss. My go to guy is the Carnach as if you can make it through to  his cave level once, which is only a short portion through the caves, you can pick up the soulstone on the lower level where there is nothing else in the way. The Carnach can be cheesed at range or if that is too exploity for this thought experiment I guess I would level a while longer at the kobolds for better gear or try the Gar Colossus as that one can easily be perma kited. Once any boss can be killed quickly and reliably, I farm them for all the loot that I feel I need. If gear is good enough I level in the orc region or the island with the poison lord.

So by level 75 I will have farmed hundreds of bosses because I don't play campaign and I will have survived all the dangerous areas by not going there, because I don't ülay campaign. Could this bfg sera make it through the campaign? Probably, but it would need some skill knowing what is dangerous and how to play around it. Playing a ranged character carefully should get you through the campaign with ease. If you need more defence go with the warding energy buff as the second one and postpone battle stance for it.

How do I get mitigation going? Well once I get set items with mitigation bonuses I would wear them, as having some is already better than having none and it combines well with toughness. For the all channel stuff I wouldn't think about it much because in the base game it shouldn't be necessary and you won't reach it prior to level 100++. You can go for 100% phys mitigation with the help of sera runes but that's mostly for if you have access to higher difficulty ones. Niobium runes give 5.5% each and have a min level requirement of 39. The BFG Sera is a ranged character with high damage, being super tanky is usually not required. The flat mitigation from the energy shield can be used to lower the enemy hit damage to 0 if your %mitigation and armor resistance get the original value low enough, so if you want to tank something it's possible that way and the warding energy buff gets also scaled with tech skills so you don't need extra skillpoints to use this defensive option.
For enemy dot damage use the dot reduction mods on amulets/gear.

So how do you eventually rach 100% mitigation? To give you an idea let's do some window shopping at the wiki
I suggested Endijian's Wings, wiki says: 18.6% at item level 225. (Technically you could get a level 240 version at the end)
I suggested the Revelation of the Seraphim set, wiki says: 18.6% from chest 17.7% from shoulders, both lvl 225 again.
The wiki states a level 200 toughness skill would give us 25.1%. This skill can go beyond level 200 but at least we know from the wiki's fromula that it won't exceed 30% mitigation.

So 25.1%+18.6%+18.6%+17.7% would already be 80%. Because the BFG takes away the shield slot and we don't have a buff with % mitigation, if we want to have 100% we need to do it the hard way.
The wiki lists a level 199 "Tanit's Collar" amulet at 3.7% and a level 199 "Darwargon's Circlet"amulet at 2.9%. Those amulets do actually drop and they can also go above level 199 but given just what the wiki shows us we'd need ~6 "Tanit's" to become immune. Now silver and gold sockets increase the values here so actually 5 can be enough.

But that is at like max level?!?
Yes and if you want to make it earlier you need a lot of bonus to the toughness skill and more than 5 of the amulets, or a build with a shield, or you use the mitigation from the divine protection CA or you pluck the hole in your %mitigation with the flat mitigation from the "warding energy" buff or you accept only having full immunity for physical damage or, or, or...
Oh I totally forgot that you could replace the set shoulders and chest with rare double modded ones. That would also help a lot if you don't absolutely want that %leech set bonus.

100% mitigation is for many character's a "chase" goal that you won't reach early, but eventually it should be possible for every character to achieve this. The bigger question is wether it is worth investing all those sockets into it. For characters like the BFG sera that only need like 5 or 6 of those amulets I would say yes for characters without toughness or a shield or both etc I would guess it's not worth it.
 

15 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

It's true that BFG is so strong, you'll rarely get hit at all, because everyone will bite the dust before coming close, so I see your point: best defense is a strong offense! (But then let's pretend something even more ridiculous: let's pretend, you're as bad a player as I am, and that you don't always hit your target, because you can't even aim properly sometimes, and also that you're distracted by certain circumstances (like watching sports in another window for example, while orc caving hardcore, as I always used to do...) So what I'm trying to say is: let's pretend you'll get hit quite often! What's the plan then?

So you want to blindly afk between the guardians with a hardcore character while you sit on the toilet... Dude, in the lategame mitigation is the only way to make this possible. In the early game you pick a character with a life regen buff like shadow warrior or highelf or a dryad with bark and scale that buff through the roof, that'll make you look invulnerable, but it caps out at like 5k life per second. Again regen and mitigation can obviously be combined, but in this guide I was talking about a Seraphim and therefore a life regen buff was not an option. The best alternative you have here is getting the warding energy flat mitigation high enough to not take any damage, but I don't think that can realistically be achieved against Orc champions. I think those orcs can also spawn with elemental weapons so the rune phys mitigation variant wouldn't cut it either.
So what's the plan then? Well I'd like to hear what other defense that is not mitigation woud allow you to stay in combat indefinitely. Theoretically maxing constitution gives some  good regen and combat reflexes and armor can then be used to get hit less and take less damage per hit, then you might be able to reach an equilibrium where the 4 orc champions don't get you killed but that strategy probably won't last you till niobium level 200.
 

15 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

So to summarise: Are you sure, that going this mitigation way with a completely new char without any help is a good idea? I don't know if it's just me with my hardcore mania, who finds this approach really weird, or if it really is weird, but to put it simple: would you advise going this mitigation way even in hardcore? Without constitution? (And possibly even without warding energy lore?)  And hope for the best until then?

I have never played real hardcore. I play a softcore char that I restore from a backup when I manage to get it killed, so I don't have to farm survival bonus again. If you want to play hardcore in any game you need to know exactly where the dangers are and how strong your char needs to be to overcome them. A good Sacred 2 player might know all this stuff but I don't, so when I think I'm ready to take on some danger I try, fail and restore my char
From my perspective going for constitution(pre mastery) just gives some extra hp. In this game that seems to be the worst defense unless you are stuck in a constant health pot spamming situation where it would also raise your recovery. Maybe eating health pots is a normal thing for you, but I try to build my chars in a way I don't need those. Remember, I'm almost blind, I usually can't see my current HP amount at all so I "need" a build that takes care of that on its own most of the time.
Warding energy lore increases the shield size, but shields can't even drink potions at all so the main benefit from this skill is the flat mitigation bonus which is tiny compared to the one the buff already gives you.
If I would have to do this hardcore playthrough I would fail because I don't know enough about the different game situations and am almost blind so I see the danger far too late. But I would certainly use the warding energy buff as second buff to get more tanky and I wouldn't rule out warding energy lore later when I have skillpoints for that, but only for the extra flat mitigation. What I don't get is where you find all those skillpoints to raise constitution and warding energy lore etc. Without a bargaining character you won't be swimming in +all skills jewellery or something like that. By level 75 you can master ~4 skills. Those are tech lore and focus, armor lore and toughness and if you wanted EP for some MF you'd already be screwed and I didn't even mention concentration for the third buff the EW focus for that buff and tactics lore for a pelting strikes build... btw the ninth skill would be ranged lore that doesn't need to be mastere, but that also would only leave a single skill slot left for your odd defensive choices, but if you don't have a seperate smith you would maybe want that...
In an infinite skillpoint and skillslot situation I would consider some of the things with lower priority but those are odd rules and the only mod raising the number of skills so far is the Addendum.
 

15 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

Well, I have several other questions as well, and even though I'll probably become the laughing stock of the community (I'm getting used to it, don't worry, I can take it! ), I must confess, that I haven't even tried any of these mods you talk about, I only recently realized there's a thing called Enhanced edition, and Addendum I only found out about today, reading your post and searching afterwards. (I told you I was even noobier in Sacred2, than 1!) So most of my questions would be about these mods, but that's another story, and I remember there was a topic about this (I think Xeyp started it in the summer? What mods you advise for a new player or something like that...) I was (even) deep(er) into Sacred 1 then and I didn't read it, but I hope I'll find it...

Yes Xeyp has made a nice thread that contains some info on these mods, the mods also all have their own threads where you can learn more about what they might change. I don't know all the details either. I played the standard game first, obviously and then moved on to the cm patch at some point. After I got bored with that I played the D2F mod but I haven't mentioned it in my sera guide as it doesn't contain a BFG or a Seraphim character class . After D2F I checked out EE for a short time and then moved on to look at the addendum, which is also what I have currently on my pc. In my guide portions I sometimes commented on these other mods because they are more or less just slightly other flavors of the same base game mechanics. The only mod that actually limits %mitigation for example is the addendum(90%max). In all other mods going 100% mitigation is a solid choice, the easiest 100% being a "barbarian" in D2F that can reach it before level 100
Xeyp's thread:
https://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/72692-sacred-2-questions-from-a-newreturning-player-setup-and-installation-cp-ee-pfp-differences-help-a-newcomer-understand-where-to-start/

 

15 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

Other than that, I'd like to ask about Divine protection: I of course had warding energy buff as well (being the ultra defensive, "what if something bad happens" type of player), and used it only as extra against bosses, but you say it can reach 100% uptime, (I've never been close to that.) So how do you reach that, and roughly what char level is it even possible? Do you plan your char like that? "Ok, I'll reach 100% uptime at level... and then..." Or it just happens, as you progress with your mysterious calculating ways? Obviously you pump Rev tech focus and stamina, I know. But even with the focus kept at level and all your points going into stamina (I did mine half dexterity, half willpower), it would take quite some time and careful socketing to get that, no?

From the wiki:
"The Capacity modification's increase of duration scales with Combat Art level. The Boost modification's decrease of cooldown does not. With both of these modifications, it would theoretically be possible to maintain Divine Protection indefinitely, but the CA level would have to be 134+ for the duration to start exceeding the cooldown."

Now I'm not sure if those numbers are actually correct but the ballpark fits. The main problem is to get the duration longer than the cooldown. The "regen time" is actually quite low and eating 200 runes shouldn't be a problem at those kind of levels so there is need for the focus but no need to invest in stamina etc. I never had a seraphim high enough to reach that point and on top of that I despise the need to regularly recast that thing but technically it is the best defense in the game so I had to mention it in the guide.
So before it has 100% uptime you already basically used it correctly, I.e. when there is danger like a boss that does damage. Should your character and focus skill get high enough and you took the suggested mods the downtime between two uses will just slowly decrease all the way to nothing and beyond(short overlap between old and new shield). That just happens when it happens and it does so on its own. I wouldn't "chase" that with socketing or anything I'd just eat those 200 runes at some point and then wait for the magic to happen at the later stages of the game. A divine protection always starts full it's kind of a recovery tool and it comes with a huge chunk of %mitigation on top of that.
 

15 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

And warding energy lore and willpower help it too, right? So how on earth can you use this efficiently without the lore and adding points to willpower?

They both would increase the Shield amount and the lore would give a tiny flat mitigation as well, but the point is that you'll get the full shield every time you cast it and according to the wiki it comes with 20%+0.2% per level mitigation, so the supposed lvl 134+ that you need for full uptime would also come with a 46.8%+ all channel mitigation! If you invested in mitigation elsewhere and got toughness etc. that shield can't be damaged by anything but leech effects and the few supposedly existing enemies with ancient magic mastery. You don't need a larger shield amount for that thing when it can't take damage, right?
 

15 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

(And you don't list Warding energy lore as required skill, it's somewhere between "don't take it", and "take it if you must, noob!" if I got it right? ), so you would definitely rely on divine protection more than I did with all my other defensive layers.

Well I usually don't use divine protection at all, but if I had to encounter dangerous things I would certainly consider using it in the early and mid game to pluck the %mitigation hole and get some extra shield pool on demand that doesn't require me to brick my build with a skill that will later become unwanted/useless. 
Warding Enrgy Lore is not a "take it if you must, noob!" but more a question about endgame goals. If you plan on not having 100% mitigation and don't want to use Divine Protection either, than it adds a bit to the flat mitigation from the warfding energy buff and also increasing the shield amount relative to the life amount helps against %leech from enemies. It's something you can do. But it's certainly not a skill every bfg sera has to take like the tech focus.
 

15 hours ago, Sethi22 said:

And another one about it too: if using it together with the buff, it deactivates it when running out, as you said. Do any of the mods you wrote about here (and maybe earlier as well) change this loathsome behaviour?

I think the answer is yes
Yeah I know that wasn't very helpful, but I'm absolutely certain that there is at least one mod that "fixed" this interaction. The only possible options would be EE and the Addendum. I fear it may only be the latter and that one does a lot of other things to this game. I wouldn't recommend the addendum to someone who doesn't know a lot about Sacred 2 already, because it will give a wrong impression on what "Sacred 2" is like.


I'll go back to grazing for now

[Sethi22 132]

Nono, no grazing! Well ok, maybe a little bit of grazing to recharge, but not too much! You still owe us the lightsaber build! Just kidding of courseYou've earned your grazing big time! (OMG how do you do this? You say you're a slow typer! I'm a real fast typer, I type much faster than I write with a pen, and I got fed up with it after asking two real questions: 1.: How come you don't die like this? 2.: How the heck is it possible, you don't die like this, really? These were my questions basically, stripped of all the nonsense I tried to decorate them with, to showcase some absolute basic knowledge of the game at least...But asking them in another language made me completely exhausted!) So hats off for your patience, sir! You are something else.

So you do die occasionally, and that's good to know. That makes me feel better! I thought you do this suicidal approach without ever suffering such a thing. (Then the problem is with my hardcore mania, of course! It all started with Diablo 2, and now I can't ever play these games in any other way. And I can't let any of the bosses live either, sadly.) If you don't go to dangerous places for a while, it could work! It should work! Well, if you say it works, then it works, and that's it.

Oh, man, I'll need to read all this thread again and again to pump all this information into my head, I'll treasure it and have already copied it to my favourites bar.

After all the info here, my only question will sound kind of strange, I know. It's not because I understood and processed all the things here and have nothing more to ask about them, it's because this is the only thing I'm absolutely sure I didn't understand: The  Carnach and what? Soulstone? But...but that's Diablo, no? What soulstone? Sorry if I'm missing something really obvious here!

I'll let you leave to your pasture now without bugging you with any more technical questions, I still need time grazing amongst all the infoplants here, too. So just one short answer, and you can be off to recharge for the lightsaber build!

 

 

Edited September 28 by Sethi22