OT: Sacred 2

[jiansonz]

OTOH, I failed the 'Adventure Tours' quest. The customer did not earn the right to wear the "I survived the desert" T-shirt. Oops.

Did you find the dragon in SE swamp region?

Yes. I found the somewhat obscure path leading to it only because I saw a '!' (epic office employee) on the map a bit north of there, so I figured there must be a way to get there.

 

[Gripphon1]

I hate Miasma bosses. Why did they make them that way, didn't they realize how incredibly laggy game is unless you have beast of a machine? So stupid. I died and lost 78% survival bonus due to megalag at last Miasma boss. Game freezed and I just died. It's now almost like starting game from beginning, it took like 30 hours of playing to get to that survivability bonus. And I'm not on Platinum yet. To skip obvious advices, yes I play on lowest possible settings on both sound and graphic, turned off shadows and whatever effects and I modified some stuff as suggested by some to reduce lag. Still game unplayable at Miasma bosses. I click to attack zombie, character stands like a moron for few seconds doing nothing. Then she attacks, and then between attack she again stands like moron doing nothing. Such delay and everything. Unlike Archangel Wrath, Pelting Strikes don't autoaim target unless you put them in combo with something, but that is not reliable cause Pelting Strikes sometimes don't hit at all, just animation is played. It took me 1 hour to defeat last 2 Miasma bosses which is ugly long. 1 hour of battling with lag and patience.

Luckily that thing is done so I can now enjoy the game, as long as I ignore Miasma bosses on Platinum.

 

[jiansonz]

I hate Miasma bosses. Why did they make them that way, didn't they realize how incredibly laggy game is unless you have beast of a machine?

Game developers usually have new and powerful gear, so I think they often do not realize how demanding some parts of what they are making are.


I recently had those fights on my Silver campaign. IIRC, it slowed down a little but it was still very much playable.


Aren't those fights needed to progress the main quest? Or will you simply not bother with the main quest past Act 5 on Platinum?

 

[zaphodbrx]

You will need to do all the main quest to finish the game and move to the next difficulty.

I don't have a problem with the fog and honestly this game is like 5 yrs old. There should be no excuse.

 

[Gripphon1]

Game developers usually have new and powerful gear, so I think they often do not realize how demanding some parts of what they are making are.

Obviously they didn't include possibility that not all players will have strong enough computers to run the game flawlessly at all parts. How can there be such huge difference in playability between parts of a game is beyond me... if one game lags, it lags everywhere and a bit more on some parts. This game works nicely on most parts, and some parts, especially Miasma, are simply unplayable for me.

Those parts really are needed to pass to proceed in campaign, but I'm not really sure when will I actually proceed to Niob. I will either do it immediately so I can die few more times on Miasma things and proceed to Niob then increasing my survivability bonus, or I won't do it for quite some time until I'm able to 3 shot those zombies Miasma is producing so I don't have to kill them for 20 minutes, which is lol since those bosses are very easy in general. Takes 20 minutes to kill single Miasma, and in those time I can rerun and kill main bosses 4 times in free play mode. That's how annoying Miasma is and how much time and energy I must waste on terrible playing conditions and why I really hate doing that part of campaign. And there are 3 of them in light campaign, so I must pass the same process for 3 times.

 

[jiansonz]

Elyme the Dryad has now left the desert. I must say I liked that part a lot.

Harpy Queen was a tough fight for me - there was a lot of whiffing going on. I realized quite a while after the fight (when I missed a lot against some of those beetle riders (that I normally would just pwn) outside the Khorum city wall I thought 'WTF?') that she had debuffed my Sinister Predator. Ah, so that's how important SP is to me!

I was trying to find my way to the spot where the quest 'A Different Kind of Bar' leads to, but it was tough to find a path up the southern mountains. I found two dungeons there. Eventually tried those because sometimes there is a back exit in the dungeons that leads out on the other side. Nope, not this time. One of the dungeons looked like some kind of scorpion temple. It did indeed have a second exit, but that only led to another floor that ended with a large open space with just some loot. When I exited, I understood more what was going on here:

Uh...OK.

Then I found the path up shortly afterwards, a little more to the west.
Poshly dressed people acting weird, calling me 'tasty' and whatnot, and then this gruesome view from the balcony in the back:

I was sure they were up to no good, and I was almost sure they were vampires.

After I had fetched that scoll of Devil's Fire and advanced that chain of quests to the end, I just had to go back into the scroll dungeon to see what would happen if I opened those treasure chests I had earlier promised not to. Way cool, more encounters with my favourites!


I've done a few quests in the jungle already. The fight with Asmarael was probably my most exciting yet (in close competetion with Shelob and with that huge Nautilus-like monster back in Act 3). Once again, I got paralyzed by a knockback effect, but the God spell did indeed release me from that. I was impressed by the amount of damage Asmarael inflicted with her spell that shoots a lightning arc.
Her summons were less impressive, though. Even though I pretty much knew (from the journal) that she would summon spiders, the first time she summoned them it happened at a bad time for me, so I was still a little surprised/startled. She managed to heal up a bit into the fight, but the second wave of summons were only alive for about 2.7 seconds.

I'm experimenting a bit with other ranged weapons, mostly throwing potions and most recently shuriken. It just dawned on me that they are one-handed, which means I can use a shield with them. I had missed that for a long time! This one is pretty nice, I think:

After the meeting with Mer-Kil, the main quest hasn't felt like it has progressed, really. I hope that some answers can be found in the deserted and overgrown elven temple in the jungle.

 

[zaphodbrx]

After I had fetched that scoll of Devil's Fire and advanced that chain of quests to the end, I just had to go back into the scroll dungeon to see what would happen if I opened those treasure chests I had earlier promised not to. Way cool, more encounters with my favourites!

What is this? I can't recall these treasure chests.

The weapon I like best is bow. Nothing like sticking a dozen arrows into your enemy.

Also, stats?

 

[jiansonz]

What is this? I can't recall these treasure chests.

You know which dungeon I'm talking about, right? It is on the eastern edge of the desert, a bit S of the dungeon with a bar and no enemies inside it.

Since it at first looked like there was not going to be any quests related to that dungeon, I entered it, but then none of the chests were clickable (cursor did not turn into a 'grab' icon). Then the main quest brought me there, and now the chests were lootable but I had promised not to loot anything so I didn't at that time.

Spoiler

They all spawn 1-3 undead (mostly mummies and some sort of undead priest I have not seen anywhere else).

 

[jiansonz]

The weapon I like best is bow. Nothing like sticking a dozen arrows into your enemy.

Yup, that is indeed cool. But I got so addicted to the sheer effectiveness and speed of the blowguns so that's what I am using 98% of the time. There is no projectile in flight, the attack is instant. I can of course still miss the to-hit calculation, but I can't miss because the missile and the enemy do not connect. Going with blowguns from the start makes the Dryad very noob friendly, at least it was so for me.

Also, stats?

Here she is now that she has returned to her homeland and is about to play chapter 9.

She has 6344 life when not riding.

Regeneration times for most important skills:
Ravaged Impact: 0.4s
Darting Assault: 0.7s
Tangled Vine + Goldenglade Touch combo 9.7 seconds (which is just about the same as Tangled Vine's duration. GTouch lasts for 12 seconds.)


That Kral mechanical demon thingy was a freak. He hit me for like 1800 damage before I was even up on the "arena". Twice. I spotted those glowing pillars and could destroy three of them before really moving out on the platform. Once I got up there, I figured may as well try to beat this freak (I'll soon find out if I must run over and destroy pillar #4 first), and I did with no trouble. Just two Vine/GTouch combos and Ravaged Impact spamming with my best blowgun, the unique Aestus Obscura (modded for poison - damage type seemed almost irrelevant in this fight since that machine has decent protection from every damage type).

 

[zaphodbrx]

Looking good! Pretty high level.

I think you can get more than a 1 pt DA/ RI for higher damage. Cooldown increase can be countered by RpH. Darting assault gets 1 more arrow at level 49, btw. Socketed runes give less regen penalty.

I also question the use of Nature Weaver Lore. Now you have excess points in that tree and nothing to do with it. Alchemy or spell resistance would have been a better option.

Inventory is pretty neat! I usually have masses of potions and other junk in there.

Never had a problem with Kraal and didn't notice any glowing pillars. He really has only one damaging attack, which is on a cooldown and can easily be healed by potions in the meantime.

 

[jiansonz]

I think you can get more than a 1 pt DA/ RI for higher damage. Cooldown increase can be countered by RpH.

Probably. I don't like to tie up gear to require specific abilities, though. Still, I currently only have one ring (with 0.9s RpH). I'll look into this.

I also question the use of Nature Weaver Lore. Now you have excess points in that tree and nothing to do with it. Alchemy or spell resistance would have been a better option.

You may be right there, but I can still argue that I like this choice.
- At the current level, NW Lore doubles the effect of Goldenglade Touch regeneration, of Ancient Bark armor boost and AB basic life regeneration. And this with no regeneration cost.
- Casting time is reduced by 20%. I can definitely feel the difference with my favourite boss combo (which has two NW skills) and this feels important in intense fights.
- I really wanted to fully modify my three Nature Weaver CAs before level 70 (which it would have taken with only NW Focus available). As it was now, I could do it at level 65, which I was happy with back then. I had originally planned to unlock NW Lore at level 50 (which means I could have had the CAs fully modded a couple of levels after that) but the Shelob fight made me take Constitution as the 9th skill instead.


Yeah, level is pretty high. It's been hovering around the monster max (and up to 3-4 higher) since late Artamark. There are SO many enemies...


And a question: I am closing in on the chance to get to Mastery in some of my skills. Is there any specific skill (among the ones I have) where you think that Mastery adds something more knock-the-socks-off awesome than the other skills.

 

[zaphodbrx]

And a question: I am closing in on the chance to get to Mastery in some of my skills. Is there any specific skill (among the ones I have) where you think that Mastery adds something more knock-the-socks-off awesome than the other skills.

There are, but not really suited to the build you have ( eg. Concentration mastery allows you a third buff slot )
Best for you imo are capricious hunter and tactics lore mastery.

You should put those nature weaver points into those other skills. Else there will be an annoying + sign constantly on the top left.

 

[zaphodbrx]

so jiansonz, any updates?

 

[jiansonz]

Chapter 9 (Dyr-Lain) is easily my favourite part of the game so far, and I doubt that any of the rest can "beat" it. I really like jungle and beaches in this game, plenty of that in this chapter. Plus some interesting and involving quests, and two huge and varied dungeons. Ran into two unexpected (i.e. no talk/quest about them beforehand) bosses, one called the Forest Guardian, and then this one:

OK, maybe it was not totally unexpected. I was after all in a faraway place and had started to bump into baby dragons...
I got to see an awesome 'firebreath while flying' animation in this fight!
(I had fire relics up, and Goldenglade Touch was running, thank the gods.)

I've decided to do the rest of the areas in the order of increasing maximum monster level here in Silver, so now I am in Cursed Forest, and I've just been to Diaanja's place. Nice and involving quest, and Diaanja became one of my favourite NPCs in the game.

But one I think is even cooler is Darya D'Arquelyght. First time I talked to her I immediately came to think about the Odd Little Girl in Icewind Dale. So I could not quite know whether to trust her or to expect some demonic snake queen pulling the strings...

So this San Holo character was an old flame of mine? Hard to believe. If he can't 'be a man' about my calling, I fail to see how I could have been attracted to him in the first place. And how stupid to challenge me when he's a complete wimp. Oh well, food for the worms, recycling of nutrients and all that, I suppose.


The Dryads in this game are not like Dryads in most other games. They are much more like woodland elves. Heck, the city of Dyr-Laigh is even a dead ringer for Suldanessellar! (the elven tree city in Baldur's Gate 2)
Beautiful place, Dyr-Laigh, and I loved the soothing music there.

Both my Focus skills plus Tactics Lore now have Mastery. I could add a couple more runes to most of my CAs. Pushed Ravaged Impact to level 7 (4 runes read, +3 from gear).
Dust Devil now has the Spell Shield modification. I will put it in a combo with Goldenglade Touch and use it against bosses I think are mostly spellcasters. I think that something like a paralyzing spell is the biggest threat to a death-less noob campaign for my character.
(Not that it's easy for me to guess which profile a boss has. Sometimes I get hints but often not much.)

Elyme has completed two of the bigger sets. Here she is trying out Leaves and Twigs:

Not bad, but a bit too much Nature Weaver oriented for this character's build. It got sold to a zombie merchant.

As you can see, I've also found Glaurung's Head, the last piece from that set I did not have. I expected Glaurung's Head to be a helmet, so when I looked in my inventory for it (I had seen the green text when I picked it up, so I knew it had to be there...), I could not find it at first. Did not expect it to be an actual 'head', hehe. The full bonuses are pretty good, but I am not prepared to give up all the goodies I have in the five (!) jewelry slots. Glaurung's Head beat my current shrunken head by about 2000 miles, though. That head had something like 4.8% spell resistance and 26 Armor at the cost of 4% regeneration time. I have not seen any magical or rare heads, just non-magical and now this Glaurung's. Do blue/yellow heads even exist?

Those relic sets are interesting. But I seem to be cursed with the ability to find many pieces from many sets rather than completing any of them.


Haha, loved this incription on a grave: "I've never predicted anything and I never will" - Gazza
This is a reference to 'bad boy' football* player Paul Gascoigne who said this in an interview.
(* soccer for you non-europeans)

You should put those nature weaver points into those other skills. Else there will be an annoying + sign constantly on the top left.

Call me weird, but I like blinking plus sign. I prefer having it there.

 

[zaphodbrx]

There are four dragon bosses in the game - grunwald, SE swamp region, Desert region and underground in the Dryad island ( which you found ). There's also fire,earth,ice, poison lords and a whole host of CP-added bosses like Harpy, wild boar, minotaur, etc. Knowing your thoroughness, you have probably found all of them . You can check out the easter eggs section on wiki to see if there's something you missed ( there's a car showroom, for instance ).

There's a pretty huge quest called 'Ancestors Chambers' in Dryad island, but that area is a little tricky to get to.

So did you finish the main quest? Cursed forest is very long btw.

 

[jiansonz]

There's a pretty huge quest called 'Ancestors Chambers' in Dryad island, but that area is a little tricky to get to.

This is one of the two large dungeons I referred to.

Around that upper part of Dyr-Laigh, I found a quest (or rather a chain of short quests) long after I had done all other quests. I was mopping up unvisited dungeons when this quest triggered when I happened to be close to a ghost outside a dungeon in the ruins.

So did you finish the main quest?

Haven't set my foot on the Wastelands harbour yet. Monsters there have max level 73 so that will be next up after the Forest.

 

[zaphodbrx]

I find cursed forest too dismal/scary . Done the whole thing once ( on silver with a seraphim lower level than yours ), never went back again. Cursed forest main quest is absurdly long ( 26 part chain quest iirc ).

Glaurung and the set relics are CM patch additions. So you'll find them to be better in general. No, I don't think there are any magic/rare shrunken heads.

btw: do you have Detheya set?

 

[jiansonz]

btw: do you have Detheya set?

Still at 5 of 7 pieces, and only using the helm. That's mainly because I've socketed most of my good +damage rings in other items. Although those armor pieces I wear are also pretty damn good.


I like Cursed Forest so far. Kinda cool with those zombie villages with a monolith each, so I can sort of 'move my base forward' once in a while.

 

[jiansonz]

"Cheated" a little in Khormynth's labyrinth:
(standing on the last square - I figured it must be 'safe')

But as a completionist, of course I did not want to avoid any "penalty dungeons", so I went back. I ended up in three different dungeons, are there more?

For all the creepy buildup, the fight with the Abishai was disappointing. I cast my Goldenglade Touch + Dust Devil combo before talking to it, and then blasted in down in less than five seconds (at least it felt that short). Maybe I got lucky and caught it off-guard with some massive damage output? I dunno. Saw that it had about 70k life. Without a very large damage mitigation, 70k gets chewed up very quickly by this character.
Finding my way into the fortress was the hard part. I must have spent over 10 minutes after talking to zombie Mishirla trying in vain to find that secret entrance he said would be 'right over there'. It wasn't 'right over there', it was a pretty darn long way away from where we were talking...

Very cool part of the game, this Cursed Forest. I am a little confused about where I can and can't go, though. Looks like some large areas should be possible to map but I could not get there. Also, is there any significance to the large dead tree just S of the tree wall S of the Abishai section? Or it's just added for more depth?


And what about that tiny dungeon on the island with special mounts? I could not find anything of interest down there.


Wastelands is more like an obstacle course than a regular area. Pretty cool though, with all the fighting.
Great Machine was a very scary area for me, much more so than Cursed Forest.
Don't like this type of 'futuristic' stuff at all. Was actually glad to find some bugs there. This meant the place was not completely devoid of life...

The max monster level for the Great Machine areas on Silver is not listed in the wiki. It appears to be 76.


Visisted Ascaron office now that I had rounded up all the employees. Was fun to read all the quotes on the name bars. I got my reward but I never found this Heike tom Felde guy again (he who started the quest). Where did he go?


Christmas island was up next. Quite cool enemies and quests, but it was weird that you could only visit a rather small part of the island. Or did I miss something?
The Grinch (dragon) debuffed me, but this time I noticed this and quickly got them going again.

One of the dungeons on the island was not tied to a quest (that I could find, at least) - the one the Christmas Ogre supposedly came out from. I found some christmas presents in there. The glowed like containers usually do but I could not open them. Strange.

This was cute, but no thanks. Not good enough.

I've found Detheya's boots, so now I have switched to those 6 pieces. Only missing the armguards.
The +5 All Skills was the main selling point for me. With all the extra CA levels from this set, I ended up with 1s regeneration time for Ravaged Impact, which is still fine as long as I have Ouroboros' Advent equipped. Three of my CHunter CAs (especially Forest Flight) are now quite a bit higher than my HCALWP but that's still not a problem.

I am now playing the Crystal fields. I seem, area wise, to be approaching the halfway point. It will be interesting to see if I will be able to eventually claim the Master Cartographer award. I'm currently at 73.9% (need 80%).

 

[zaphodbrx]

Christmas island is a little weird. It had two versions, Christmas island and 'Northland'. The CM patch enables both of these to be run simultaneously.. So the odd stuff that you noticed may be because you didn't do the quest 'The Northland expedition' , which can be got from a North Artamark town ( the one with the volcano, which btw you can get to by forest flight or through a passage in a nearby dungeon ). The other quest is called 'Can Christmas still be saved?'.

The dungeon on the isle of mounts displays models of the temple guardians mount ( all other mounts are outside ).

Yeah, the Abhishai's secret entrance is a nuisance..

You can go to the start island ( via free play multiplayer ) to get a little extra map revealed %. Its a small island to the south west.