BluePhaze

So a change I have meant to write about for a little while in Gears of War 2 is the effect that Smoke Grenades now have when they detonate. It used to be that when a smoke grenade detonated, if you were caught within the blast radius, you got knocked to the ground. This made it very easy for anyone to finish you off before you could get back up. Some loved it as it gave them more options for how to attack the enemy and could also be seen to even the odds against a better player. Some also hated it and felt it was very cheap and changed the gameplay way too much. Instead of straight out firefights, many players spent time turning the playing field into a series of traps using smoke grenades.

So a change has been made, now when you are too close to a smoke grenade when it goes off, your character cringes, and puts there hands up. You are stuck like this for maybe a second or so, but you do not fall down. This drastically changes the way people use the grenades, if you are planting grenades in order to disable opponents and make them easy targets, you better be VERY fast. Recovering from the stun is very quick and usually if you were not already rushing in when the grenade went off you will not get there in time and your opponent will be fully mobile again. While I am not completely comfortable with the new workings of the blast of the grenades (I will have to spend more time using them) I feel that the most important part of smoke grenades has still been overlooked. One change in Smoke Grenades between Gears 1 and 2 is that that actual duration that the smoke lasts has been shortened. So when you throw a smoke grenade you do not actually get much time or volume of smoke to really be able to take full advantage of it. This was one of the main reasons I liked the knockdown, if the smoke is not enough to screen the battlefield and hide what my team is doing, then at least I can use it to disable them with the knockdown. My main desire for smoke grenades especially now that they have been made less effective with their blast, is that the amount of smoke and duration that the smokes lasts be increased. That is the whole point of a smoke grenade to begin with isn’t it? Hide portions of the battlefield either to allow strategic maneuvering without being seen or to allow a rush on a cover position when outnumbered or outgunned.

So overall, do you think smoke grenades should actually put out enough smoke to be useful in their intended purpose? Do you like the smoke grenades how they are now? Not trying to start the whole cringe vs. knockdown debate back up, my focus is mainly assuming that the cringe is here to stay. And if so, what needs to be done for smoke grenades to be truly useful?

Feel free to leave your ideas/thoughts on the subject in the comments.

So for this first bit, I want to dig further into how skills work in Sacred 2. One major thing to remember is that Skills are different than Combat Arts. Combat arts are individual moves or spells you can learn. Skills allow you to choose the way that your character plays and what their strengths are. For example, a Skill might be Sword Weapons. This skill makes your character more proficient with swords by increasing the speed and attack rating of your character when using a sword. This skill also makes it so that you can use higher level swords than you normally would for your level.

On the other hand you have combat arts. These typically are moves or spells that you can use in combat, for example the Shadow Warrior has Demonic Blow. This combat art (called CA in the rest of this article) does a single hit on an enemy that does a great deal of damage. It does not matter what weapon you are using, it simply works with whatever you happen to hit the enemy with.

In this article, I am going to focus mainly on Skills.

While adventuring in the world of Ancaria, you will run into many monsters to battle and while fighting you will inevitably level up. At certain levels you will be given the option to learn a new skill. In total, you can learn 10 skills on any one character. Now there are many more skills than this available, but you can only learn 10. You cannot unlearn a skill, so choose wisely. The levels in which you are given the option to learn a new skill are:

Levels at which you get to learn a new skill: 2, 3, 5, 8, 12, 18, 25, 35, 50, 65

As you level you will also be given points that you can use to increase the power of your skills. Each point you put into a skill increases it’s influence. For example, once I learn the armor lore skill, each point I put into armor lore increases the of armor bonus I get from my equipped armor, but it also increases the level of armor I can wear, that way I can wear stronger armor that is made for higher level characters. As you level, the higher you get, the more skill points you get per level. Below is a listing of the number of skill points you get at each level.

Level 1-4: 1 Skill point per level
Level 5-11: 2 Skill points per level
Level 12-24: 3 Skill Points Per Level
Level 25-49: 4 Skill Points Per Level
Level 50-200: 5 Skill Points Per Level
So all together a little over 900 skill points will be gained if you take your character all the way to level 200.

When learning new skills you will also notice that some skills are grayed out at first. These are called secondary skills and they can only be learned once you have put 5 points into any of the primary skills in that group. So for example, if I want to learn the Dual Wield Skill as a Shadow Warrior, I first need to spend at least 5 points in other offensive skills like Sword Weapons, Tactics Lore, etc… It does not have to be 5 points in any one skill, just a total of 5 points spent between any of the other skills in the offensive skills category. This adds to the planning you need to do. If you want a particular skill, and it is a secondary skill for your class (grayed out) then make sure that you pick a skill to put some points in that you are actually going to use. Don’t just pick any skill, and dump 5 points into it just to get to the skill you want, if you do that, you have just wasted a skill slot.

There are 4 Categories of Skills:

Class Skills – These are skills where most of them are specific to your class, Shadow Warrior, Seraphim, etc…
Offensive Skills – These are skills usually tied to combat and weapons, Sword Weapons, Hafted Weapons, Ranged Weapons, etc…
Defensive Skills – These are skills usually tied to keeping you alive, Armor Lore, Constitution, etc…
General Skills – These are skills that do not fall into the other categories, Alchemy, Devine Devotion, Blacksmithing, Riding, Enhanced Perception, etc…

Depending on your character class, the skills in the Class Skill category will be different. The other categories will be mainly the same, but your class defines which skills are primary (available to learn right away) vs. what skills are secondary (require 5 points in other skills in the category before they can be learned). So while dual wield might be available right away for an Inquisitor, it is a secondary skill for Shadow Warrior and so requires that you have 5 points in other skills in the offensive skills category before your Shadow Warrior can learn it.

When choosing your skills first think about how you want to play your character, look at each skill and read the description of it. You cannot undo skill choices so make sure you plan ahead. The next article will go a bit more into how skills work with your Combat arts and how they can effect your character overall.

Till then…

So for anyone who got the “Invalid Code” message when trying to use the code that came in the box with Sacred 2 for the 360 should be good to go now. I have now successfully claimed my new carrier imp…

Once you get him, he is basically a mobile version of the Hero’s chest that you have in some towns for stashing your goodies.

That’s it for now…

So if you logged into Sacred 2 today on the 360 you may have noted that the game had an update. This update fixed some issues including the addition of local coop trading. So if you are playing locally with two players on the same Xbox, you can now trade! Also included in the update were the following:

· Player-Trade on a single console added
· Preparation for future DLC via the new implemented in-game marketplace added. This also affects the IMP that will be available after Microsoft has done some internal changes tonight. Please try this out later today.
· A change to the save game routine has been made to avoid a loss of the user’s save game (if this ever happens)
· A fix for a teleport problem when entering a specific dungeon (“Undead Legion” quest)
· A fix for a calculation problem in the leaderboards has been added
· Changed the names of the invite option from “everybody”/”friends only” to “public”/“private”

These details and more info can be found at the official Sacred 2 forums which are on the Team Xbox site here: http://forum.teamxbox.com/forumdisplay.php?f=152

There is another patch in the works, no details on what it does yet, they also mentioned the carrier imp codes should be working soon…

More later…

So figured I would drop a quick note on what the survival bonus is in Sacred 2 and what happens when you die. This is mainly targeted at the Xbox 360 version but most holds true for the PC version (the main difference on PC is you have hardcore characters who can only die once.)

Survival Bonus in Sacred 2 can be seen by bringing up the General Information Screen (Right Shoulder Button, then choose General off the radial menu). In this screen you will see your characters survival bonus. This bonus goes up whenever you are in combat. Basically when you are attacking or being attacked. It does not matter how much damage you do or how much damage is done to you. It simply goes up whenever combat has been engaged.

What does it actually do for you though? The higher your survival bonus is, the stronger and higher level the enemies around you become. So instead of fighting enemies that are your same level, you start to fight enemies that are above your level. This in turn increases the amount of experience you get, as well as the quality of the items/loot that drop off of killed enemies. So to put it simply, survival bonus is your best friend! The longer you stay alive the more experience and treasure you find.

Dying however will reset your survival bonus to 0%. So in effect there really is a penalty for dying in Sacred 2. Some people have said many times during our online sessions, “Man I am glad there is no penalty for dying in this game…”. Then they wonder why I keep finding better gear and leveling up faster than they do :)

So to get the most out of Sacred 2… use common sense, try to stay alive… currently my level 52 Shadow Warrior has as survival bonus of 85% and the enemies are roughly 10+ levels higher than me. I tend to find a good deal of 3 star treasure as well….

Anyway, this was just to answer some questions I had gotten in game from friends lately… If you are playing Sacred 2 on the 360, feel free to message me if you want to play. Gamertag = BluePhaze v2

Later…