OT: Sacred 2

[Gripphon1]

Thank you on the pic. I might not take Combat Discipline then after all.

I'm a big fan of Perception. Not only you have easy access to %MF on rings which does scale quite higher than "normal" MF mod, you also can get experience per kill % mod as well to boost both easily. I see you don't use either of those on your character, so I can see why you don't appreciate Perception. After I saw how fast characters with focused % experience can level up, I totally go that route with all characters now. Also compared two of my seraphims, one with Perception and one without, to notice that one with it is getting considerably better drops. Or should I say higher amount of high quality stuff. But Perception does scale rather bad, biggest impact it has is to unlock mods on rings and amulets that provide nice stuff if you care about it.

 

[zaphodbrx]

Yeah.. Actually, the dryad is fitted out with a bunch of +% visibility rings at the moment ( instead of damage rings ) to get the Cartographer achievement. But then I got bored and dropped it. Maybe I'll start on it again.

Also: You can respec using S2CE ( a third party tool ). I've used it occasionally to compare various CA modifiers, skills, etc. Just really annoying you can't do that in the game itself.

 

[Gripphon1]

Great, I have at least 1 second delay at first dragon on shadow path with dryad, goes over 2 seconds when he is breathing fire, so basically I can barely heal myself with potions, not to mention how terribly hard it is to avoid his fire. I just died twice cause I couldn't activate potion. And I use lowest graphic settings and turned of all possible effects to have the game work as best as it can. I guess my laptop is just too weak to perform good in some parts of the game. Miasma is unplayable where delay can get up to several seconds for example, no matter what I do.

Anyway I have to rise my fire resist and pray he won't nearly instashot me since potions are very unreliable at that place. Naturally I turned off the buff with fire sensitivity. I really don't know how will I defeat the dragon at higher difficulties if I get there. Tons of fire mitigation and stuff probably with lifeleech.

 

[jiansonz]

There be dragons? Yikes...

 

[jiansonz]

(not sure if anyone is still interested, but here goes)

Life is good for Elyme the Dryad. Level 30 now. She's found a very nice rare (at least I think it's rare - yellow text) ring that has 0.4s regeneration per hit and a chance of open wounds (or whatever it's called). It was found in a container in a safe and populated area - it feels a little weird that nobody reacts to me going through stuff that clearly belongs to other people. Like the time I found a quite valuable mage staff inside the merchant's store!

Another ring has 0.3s RpHit. Base regeneration time (with both buffs on) for Ravaged Impact is now 1.5 seconds, and because I have fully modded it and unlocked the 'Double Shot' ability, it can now sustain itself. A double barrelled shotgun - it rocks!

Speaking of rocks, Elyme has now been to the concert. Pretty cool and well done movie. Two thumbs up. That Hansi guy is also my favourite temporary companion so far.

Favourite quest I've completed is the Orpheus quest. I don't agree about it being a 4-star difficulty quest though. Compared to the rest, it barely qualifies as a 3-star one. Or did I miss something?

I do not quite understand how the blue/yellow item system works. Does the name not have anything at all to do with the abilities?

Another question, this one about set items. I collect these pieces, at least the Dryad specific ones. Are there some sets that do not give any partial set bonuses for wearing two items? I have a ring and an amulet from a set called something like 'In Memory of Trees' and if I put these on I get a partial set bonus (shown in blue text if I hover the pointer over that special set icon). I also have two pieces of another set called 'Detheya's Agility' and I see no partial set bonus there. Maybe this has something to with the former set only having three pieces in total while the latter has several?

Relics also confuse me a bit. I see a pattern in that the triangular ones are called Beveled (blue text) and the octagonal (?) are called Hallowed (yellow text) but the Armor value seems to be more tied to item level than to the shape. I care only about these values (there are also some skill bonuses for general skills, none of which I have, so I don't care about them). Is this a correct assesment?


Clocking in at 38.75 hours, 7.1% of the map revealed. Wow.

 

[Gripphon1]

Hey, I'm interested. For some reason I really have strong will to play this game, so having something to read in here is also a nice bonus.

Blue/yellow colors are about modifications item have. White color too. Some mods are white, some are blue, some are yellow. System is a bit different than in diablo, cause yellow ring doesn't necessary have more than one mod on it, nor does it have more powerful mode than random blue ring for example. There is some connection between name and modifications to some extent.

Sets give various things for some specific number of items equipped. Not all sets give something with 2 items equipped. I believe there are sets who don't give anything unless you have whole set equipped.

With relics, armor they give is most important factor for them, shape is irrelevant. Unique relics have shapes with many edges, but that doesn't matter anyway. Shapes are probably connected to rarity of relic.

I see you are enjoying the game. Moving slow, solving quests, enjoying nature and music... well, yes. You will cross beautiful lands on your journey. Make sure to visit crystal plains sometime in the game. Mission won't lead you there, but you can reach it with boat. Its northwest area on map. You will get to the boat following the main quest later. That crystal planes area is amazingly beautiful. Music is not bad either.

"There be dragons?"
You have no idea, man. I hope you don't have fobia on some certain animals, they be crawling all over your monitor. I remember the excitement of playing the game for the first time when I had no idea what will I meet. Also excitement before facing very first boss... priceless.

 

[zaphodbrx]

Another question, this one about set items. I collect these pieces, at least the Dryad specific ones. Are there some sets that do not give any partial set bonuses for wearing two items? I have a ring and an amulet from a set called something like 'In Memory of Trees' and if I put these on I get a partial set bonus (shown in blue text if I hover the pointer over that special set icon). I also have two pieces of another set called 'Detheya's Agility' and I see no partial set bonus there. Maybe this has something to with the former set only having three pieces in total while the latter has several?

You can check what sets you are wearing and their bonuses on the character tab ( hover mouse on the last icon on the right hand side ). Most complete sets ( such as Detheya's agility give little bonuses until you have most or all of the set ).

Relics shape has nothing to do with their properties, it's just a style thing.

 

[felixbavaria1]

I do not quite understand how the blue/yellow item system works. Does the name not have anything at all to do with the abilities?

White items can have white modifiers, blue items can have blue modifiers (more powerful), rare items can have yellow and gold modifiers (very powerful). For instance, you can find rare javelins with %LL.

Relics also confuse me a bit. I see a pattern in that the triangular ones are called Beveled (blue text) and the octagonal (?) are called Hallowed (yellow text) but the Armor value seems to be more tied to item level than to the shape. I care only about these values (there are also some skill bonuses for general skills, none of which I have, so I don't care about them). Is this a correct assesment?

The armor value is tied to the item level and the item quality (white, blue, yellow, or gold). The item text simply depends on the item quality (blue = beveled, yellow = hallowed, gold = sacred (?)). Unique (gold) relics can also have more than one resistance type.

By the way, you should get Enhanced Perception (= MF skill). It also unlocks +MF modifiers on items.

Clocking in at 38.75 hours, 7.1% of the map revealed. Wow.

Wow indeed. I thought I was going slow (doing almost every side quest, etc.) and I finished the campaign in ~ 45 hours at level 60.

 

[Gripphon1]

I continued to farm my favorite Seraphim (dual wield pelting strikes), running Goblin Cave. I've socketed 10-10 damage rings to gain over 50-50 damage total with socket bonuses, and it makes a difference in killing speed (weapons have 120 and 150 damage average to compare). Not that major for now, but it did shove off 5-6 seconds per run (taking now 34-35 instead of 40 per run, also depending on lag).

And I'm very happy with her now. She has ~50% experience gain which is ~100% with mentor pots, ~170% MF including all bonuses and ~48% deathblow. Only potential problem is I focused on damage output with her and on enhanced perception, so I have a feeling I'm not nearly as sturdy as you would expect from the Seraphim. I'm pretty sure orc champion has damage of enraged players since when I put him low on hp, he hits like a bulldozer. His hit alone can take 1/3 of my hp, and I do have ~4000 on level 59 now. I wonder did I overdo my focus on damage, we will see when I get to bosses later in the game.

For now experience is great in this Goblin Cave. Each level from 51 to 59 took between 17 and 19 minutes. If this pace continues even in higher levels, I could be level 75 in no time. I'm not yet sure how to distribute skill points. Tactics Lore will me mastered first, but I have to choose among one of defensive skills what to master first. For now I've put some points to Armor Lore, some to Toughness, none in Constitution, and I feel I'll need some of those to survive against bosses. Even though now I don't use damage mitigation at all, against bosses I'll use equipment with that so who knows.

 

[zaphodbrx]

4000 hp is kinda low for level 59. I have 11,000 for Dryad at lvl 76 ( that is with mount though ). However, Sera does have the energy shield from DP and WE. If you focused on that, health shouldn't be an issue.

 

[jiansonz]

Haha, I found a message in my mother tongue! Not the prettiest expression, but still:

The White Griffin is now defeated. But it actually dealt the most 'pain' after its death. More on that later...

OK, so it does physical + cold damage. Frost relics up!
No visible protection from poison or fire. Fire is my better weapon, so I chose that.

My intial Vines (two tries) failed, so I just assumed the Griffin flew over tham, and that they thus don't work. So I just kept Goldenglade Touch up, drank a focus potion and spammed Ravaged Impact as well as I could. I felt slower and less accurate than usual.
It took a while to gnaw down the HPs, but I got less and less nervous when I saw that as long as Goldenglade Touch was up, it could not do much to me:

(I have a little over 1800 HP and Goldenglade Touch heals almost 600 HP/s)

Decided to bring in a little help from my Goddess, Forens, near the end. First time I've tried it. Neat.

Troubles came later, when I celebrated in Clearview and decided to take advantage of my new shorter regeneration times because I've unlocked Combat Discipline and put my most used CAs in single combos. But they were much shorter than usual. Huh? I drank a focus potion to see if that effect was still running. Nope, the regeneration times got even shorter and potion also gives a swirly graphics effect. So I started to eat some runes, mostly for Tangled Vine to get the duration up. As long as TVs regeneration time is shorter than that of Goldenglade Touch, it won't affect the time for the combo of these two. After six or so, I decided to eat one rune each for both my buffs to see how that would affect my attack skills and the NW combo. No effect?

OH NO, THE BUFFS ARE NOT ON!!

That darn Griffin must have sapped them somehow. The screenie is proof of that. I am positive I had them on when I started that fight. That also explains the fumbling feeling I had in the fight. Geez...

Oh crap, the numbers I have compared and fiddled with are buff-less regeneration times.

So now I have a stupid 17 seconds regeneration on Tangled Vine (and thus, my beloved combo)!
That's not feasible to use for some time now. Maybe with potion help, but not otherwise. Duration for Goldenglade Touch is 12 seconds, and I can't have a 5 seconds delay where I can't refresh it. Goldenglade-only works OK, that's just a short gap (less than 1 second - although I would prefer having about a 2 seconds window to recast it while it's still running).

My two attack CAs are still fine, thanks to the 0.7s RpH I have on gear. Thank Forens for that.

OK, I need to stash that shrunken head again, and maybe not wear my battle vest anymore. I think I'll go find myself a nice lightweight armor now (leather bikini?), until I can pump NW Focus a couple of more levels. I've found Detheya's armor and it has only a small reg penalty, but it's ilvl 45 so I get a big run speed penalty here at level 35. It gets stashed for now.

@felixbavaria: nope, I won't take Perception or wear any MF gear (unless the gear is also great otherwise). I don't know what's dangerous in this game, so I better wear some gear that actually helps me fight. Stuff that only boosts experience gain is not for me in this campaign either.

I only have 2 skills left, and the next is reseved for NW Lore, so I can mod those skills in time, and get boosts to GTouch and Ancient Bark without regeneration costs. And the last skill point is not until level 65, which I may not even reach.



A cool find: a set item (ring) called Guenhwyvar's Refuge. You know, I could really use that figurine of Drizzt's sometimes. Would have been awesome to be able to summon Guenhwyvar whenever I needed her.

 

[Gripphon1]

Just mix Vine with some of attacking combo to get regen per hit to work and regen all skills faster.

Griffin has debuff spell, so he... debuffs, yes.

For your first character it might a good idea to boost damage and protection as much as you can to see what dangers are in the game. Perception is more like skill for second or third character. Experience per kill is nice to have obviously, but also less priority for your first character. If you continue to play the game past first char, then you might want to focus on experience gain to level faster and to get to higher difficulties faster. Solving same quests with every character gets boring really fast, but building new character is awesome process.

Also do you use some program to take screenshots in Sacred? I've read about some programs, but want to check here too. For now I make game in window mode to take screenshot to paste in paint like I did last time. It would be cool to be able to take screenshots in full screen sometimes. Sacred doesn't seem to save screenshots anywhere I checked following advices from net.

 

[jiansonz]

F12 takes screenies for me. That function is provided by Steam (I bought the game through them) running in the background. The folder for the screenies is deep down in the file structure but I can find and open up that folder via Steam.

(I remapped the relic orb keys to F8-F11 instead of F9-F12, and 'teleport to monolith' from F8 to F6.)

 

[zaphodbrx]

jiansonz - you can respec/ reduce runes eaten in CAs/etc . using S2CE which is a third party tool. Could be considered a 'hack' because the game doesn't innately give you an option to respec. But I use it anyway.

Btw are you playing HC or SC?

Also do you use some program to take screenshots in Sacred? I've read about some programs, but want to check here too. For now I make game in window mode to take screenshot to paste in paint like I did last time. It would be cool to be able to take screenshots in full screen sometimes. Sacred doesn't seem to save screenshots anywhere I checked following advices from net.

You can press print scr in game, alt tab and paste in paint. works for me. It also saves it in a .tga file somewhere but that sucks because it lacks the weapon display, mini map, etc. and is not worth bothering with.

 

[jiansonz]

I play SC since I am completely new to the game and want to see the whole story. But I hate dying and will do my best to avoid it.

Just mix Vine with some of attacking combo to get regen per hit to work and regen all skills faster.

Didn't think of this. That's good, if I hit with 7 shots during the 12 seconds (should be easy), the 5 seconds gap is reduced to nothing.

 

[Gripphon1]

I have tried that Zaph, but all I get as a result of pasting is black screen. In window mode I get normal picture with same method for whatever reason.

So I've been researching a little bit about damage output and armor resistance in Sacred 2... Interesting system indeed. What shocked me is this however:

Enemies inflict only 65% of displayed damage on bronze, 85% on silver, 100% on gold, 330% on platinum and 363% on niob, which is depends on special line in configuration file "balance.txt"

Pasted from sacred wiki. So displayed damage of enemy is actually correct only for gold difficulty. And that difference between gold and platinum is insane, increase in damage output of monsters at least 3.3 times, probably more since their displayed damage might increase just like it does between difficulties. So if something is doing large amount of damage to me in gold, that same thing will tear me apart in platinum. Such huge difference in damage output. Now I'll focus on defensive part of builds more, I don't want to be one shotted by random kobold at platinum

Monster's damage is much higher than 3.3 times on platinum actually because of the way damage calculation is working. I wouldn't be surprised that for same armor value you have on gold difficulty, you would take like 4 and more times greater damage on platinum from same monster.

It seems niob and platinum are quite similar in damage output, but on niob monsters probably have much higher stats, like -% evasion, chance to disregard armor and such.

 

[Llama8]

I think most of the questions have been answered now...

Yes, the Griffin debuffs you when it hits you with it's ranged attack (IIRC), though as this is a spell if the spell fails (due to an item/spell mod that gives you a % chance to ignore enemy spells) then you don't get debuffed. Some CAs give you a % chance to ignore or reflect enemy spells, (eg, High Elf Expulse Magic, Temple Guardian's Reflection mod on T-energy Shroud, Dryad's Spell Shield mod on Dust Devil).

Regarding the relics, the more sides a relic has, the higher the bonuses it provides, so an oval relic would provide less armour/resist bonuses than an octagonal one.

As others have said, item mods are (broadly) categorised into white/blue/yellow/etc grades, in the same way that items are normal/magic/rare/unique/etc.

When you're choosing skills, just be aware that weapon-based attacks won't get benefits from skills that affect spells/non-weapon based CAs/attacks, hence Tactics Lore is the skill that boosts weapon damage & weapon-based CA damage. If you're going for a weapon-based build you "should" really be using Tactics Lore & Ranged Weapons (or the weapon skill for whatever weapon you're using) as this will increase your damage by increasing attack speed, hit chance & you'll be able to use higher level weapons than your character level (which you'll get in the higher difficulties as the area monster level caps are higher).

For the defensive skills, Armour Lore & Constitution are a given, but for Spell Resistance/Combat Reflexes, choose whichever you prefer (for a Dryad to get AL/Con). For the Sinister Predator buff, if you've not modded it yet, I would strongly suggest Marked Shot (silver) & Unflinching (gold) as these both reduce the target's chance to evade/dodge your ranged attacks (not spells), so you shouldn't need any other bonuses to hit chance other than what you get from Ranged Weapons & Sinister Predator. For Ancient Bark, Rugged is probably the better (stacks with Armour Lore for stupid resistances), along with Repel (chance to dodge/evade any weapon attack, the other one only works on melee attacks though if you're in melee range a lot this will increase your damage output in higher difficulties) & either choice for the gold mod.

 

[jiansonz]

Elyme the Dryad has now fully mapped Tyr Lysia and completed 220(!) quests. She's level 42, has been played for 68 hours and seen 15.3% of the map.

@Llama8: here are the modifications I have picked so far:
Ravaged Impact: Perforate, Breach, Double Shot
Darting Assault: Reload, Throwback
Sinister Predator: Eagle Eye, Market Shot, Hunting Focus
Tangled Vine: Sprawl, Impair
Goldenglade Touch: Flow, Perservere, Diligence
Ancient Bark: Rugged, Divert

She has made it to the desert city of Khorum, which I think is going to be her base for a while now. The riff-raff out in the desert (mostly bugs) has not been dangerous to her yet, so I think good progress can be made here. Looks to be several quest givers in the city as well.

She has also shortly stepped into an area east of the section with all the waterfalls. The first opponent she met there, a champion hydra, is by far the toughest non-boss monster I have fought, so I turned back and will go there later...

Question: I have the option of sailing from Thylysium to some remote places (I presume they are from Ice & Blood and Community Patch), and I wonder at what stages in the game (chapter and/or character level) these areas will be appropriate to go to:
- Christmas Island
- Seraphim hunting grounds (crystal) in the far NW
- Forest area in the far SE


A serene moment in between all the gory fighting:

 

[zaphodbrx]

The desert area is chapter 6.. in order to get the main quest to progress ( chapter 2 ), you have to go through the dragonwall..

Christmas Island, Crystal plane and Cursed plane are bonus areas. You can do them any time you like.

The area with the waterfalls and the champion hydra is part of a quest called 'Epic office'. I know you don't want spoilers but to be honest there is no way you could find or do this quest without looking up spoilers. Epic office is by far the longest and most complex quest in the game.. for more information just check sacredwiki pages..

P.S. your CA choices match exactly with mine, except I didnt use goldenglade touch skill.

 

[zaphodbrx]

By the way..

A significant problem on bronze.. and you will face the same problem on silver since you are playing very thoroughly.. is that of level capping. If you didn't know already, enemy levels are capped by area.For silver Tyr Lysia ( Chapter 1 ), we have- West Tyr Lysia has level cap 35, East Tyr Lysia at 49.

Once your own level exceeds the enemy level cap for the area, this means that enemies will not be able to match you and they will not not give much exp. thus it's not much fun playing that way.

The game is set out such that level caps occur linearly, eg. on silver Artamark ( chapter 2 ) caps out at lvl 54, Nor Plat ( chapter 3 ) at lvl 57 and so on. There is a strong argument therefore to play the chapters in the correct order, not to mention that you can't progress the main quest without doing that as well. Bonus area caps are much higher ( eg. silver Cursed Forest is lvl cap 70 ) so I would suggest doing them after completing the main quest.