Sacred 2:Lady in Black, the unknown member of Mib

[size=5]Lady in Black[/size] I had no good name for this character. It is a bit like Schot's Bolting Terror, but without the ice aspect. But at level 51 she was wielding a Death's Chirr energy pistol which had its german name close to the

[url=""]tiny pistol[/url] Will Smith is using in 'Men in Black'.

She was wearing the full Adornments_of_the_Ancestors which is black.

So we had the name. Now we come to the most important part of each new character: a fitting music. Even I am old enough to remember the orginal version of 'Lady in Black' from Uriah Heep I decided to listen to the version of [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_(band)"]Gregorian[/url], a german experimental group with changing members. They adapted several modern songs into [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_chant"]Gregorian Chant[/url]. I had the luck to hear them years back at a concert at Hamburg, it was amazing. I didn't found a good video of their version quickly, so I just took one: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr9GSW83p0I"]'Lady in Black' sung by Gregorian[/url]

[color="#FF0000"]This is not a guide for a beginner. [/color] It is more an example that you can play away from mainstream and still have a funny to play and robust character.

[b][size=3]Why was this character started?[/size][/b] I am re-writing horse combat arts, so that my kids can play on a horse without the frustrating bugged regeneration times. Horse-Combat Art's are spells and the character was made to test them. So we had to take riding, ancient magic and combat discipline to boost the horse damage. On a horse we will not have any buff's, so all the protection has to come from skills: armour, shield lore, constitution and even alchemy. So we were at 7 skills already. Alchemy trophies would be a buff replacement so we had to increase their duration if needed. We would need hand selected stuff late levels, so we played with just 9 skills as long as possible and left the 10th skill open for bargaining. We have a trader chain till level 135 so we didn't need it early on. So we are at 8 skills for the horse combat and all we had to fight bosses indoors would be a shield to hide behind and alchemy boosted shurikens to do damage. This would not be enough. But there were only 2 skills left, and we had no concentration yet. So the idea was to play without concentration and play pure arcane. The idea was: an enemy can't hit what he cannot see. So now the character idea was done.

[b][size=3]The Skills[/size][/b] 02 armour lore 03 arcane lore 05 arcane focus 08 combat discipline 12 shield lore 18 ancient magic 25 riding 35 alchemy 50 constitution 65 open for bargaining at high levels Why a melee elf doesn't need a weapon lore is discussed in the link.

[b][size=3]The playstyle[/size][/b] [b]Phase 1: The beginning[/b] As long we have shadow step not fully modified, we read runes into blazing tempest and frostblaze till they reach their malus. We use a bow and whichever combat art is recharged. This will keep us alive till we have modified shadow step. Attributes: We will put every attribute point into vitality. At Level 75 we start to put them into intelligence.

[b]Phase 2: Hording for Shadow Step[/b] Shadow Step and its modifiers Phase Shift: We want to stay invisible all the time late game. If we are invisible enemies with rooting spells won't see us. In mid game we use alchemies trophies to have a block chance versus rooting. Vanish: If we are invisible we will not be hit and don't need just physical invulnerability. Explosion: If we are invisible we will have time to quaff a heal potion, which is boosted in effect because of alchemy. So no need for modifying to mend. Shadow step will always do an explosion in difference to magic coup and cobalt strike, which need higher Combat Art-levels to reach 100% explosion chance. Shadow step has a cooldown which gets less with higher Combat Art-level. So it's no mistake to read runes into shadow step till its malus and above. We will do a combination of shadow step and frostblaze. Survivors will be targeted with blazing tempest. As soon we have a shield with block chance melee scaling with shield lore we will swap to a one hand ranged weapon. We do every skill point in arcane lore, arcane focus and shield lore (in this order) till we reach mastery. Skills which are needed to unlock another skill will receive 5 points. We will read every spare rune into grand invigoration but we will have unmodified crystal skin early on as the one and only buff.

[b]Phase 3: Blink and shoot with Magic Coup[/b] Magic Coup and its modifiers Heavy Damage: The main damage will be done with weapons. The explosions of shadow step and cobalt strike are mainly to weaken the targets so that magic coup can deal double damage with deathblow. So we can optimize for weapon damage and get our hit chance from trophies and jewelry. Life Leech: There is Regeneration per Hit (RpH). So no need to modify for steal mana. Life leech is unresisted damage and will heal us. Stray damage: Our goal is to have a combination with 3 combat arts doing Area of Effect.

We will now use a combination of shadow step, cobalt strike ( read runes till it matches the regeneration of shadow step) and magic coup. Magic coup should have a regeneration which allows spamming. So keep its regeneration time below your RpH plus animation time. Use magic coup while the combination is recharging versus survivors of the horded group. Using some jewelry which lowers the enemy chance to evade will be needed.

[b]Phase 4: Lightning from nowhere[/b] Cobalt strike and its modifiers Heavy damage: We have collected a group, there is no need to have a chain lightning to distant enemies Chain reaction: we have only attacks which do magical damage. So there is a high chance that a target is allready weakened. Explosion: We want the whole group weakened so that magic coup can do a death blow effect with its explosion.

Our attack combination remains the same, but we do a second with just cobalt strike and magic coup. It will be used while the first one is recharging. We put remaining skill points into combat discipline.

[b]Phase 5: Vade retro Satanas![/b] Expulse Magic and its modifiers: Expansion: We fight with combinations and we want a bigger radius if the AI decides to run for magic coup. We want to stay inside the circle. Pentagram: Our combination is good enough to fight undeads already. Protection: we use this when we fight bosses with nasty Combat Art's and enemies which can see through invisibility.

As long we won't have mastered combat discipline (around level 85) we will cast it manually. Later we will use it in a 4 Combat Art combination. The playing is still the same, gather a group and ignite the combination.

[b]Phase 6: It's magic, if it's ancient magic[/b] There is a spell missing, why we don't modify it? The reason is that we don't need to modify it this early. Ancient magic is way more important than modifying grand invigoration at this time. This is an arcane build, no need for bronce modifier. This is an invisible build with alchemy healing and RpH regenerating, no need for silver modifier. To get the gold modifier we would need 198 +/- modifier points if I remember right. Arcane lore will stay at 75 and so we would need 125 in focus to boost Combat Art-levels. So we can't modify it before level 125. And what we will get? Run speed for a horse character? Or decreasing debuffs which we can reach with expulse magic too. The 50 points into arcane focus will be done after having some more skill mastered, starting with ancient magic to fight magic immunes.

[b][size=3]How to stay alive[/size][/b] Building up a good defense is a complex theory. For the elf half of the defense comes from her spells. I created a check list for my kids what they have too look for when designing a character and in which order the hit and damage calculation seems to be done. I put this stuff in an extra article: The 9 lines of defense

[b][size=3]The equipment[/size][/b] There was a funny thread somewhere claiming that a good psychologist may guess the age and the country of a player by looking at the character and how it is played in a mud (old text based multi user dungeon game). So I am obviously german and starting my army time before re-union. Being outnumbered the tactic was to be able to withstand damage, deal out some damage and doing a delaying retreat. So guess what the most important piece of equipment is in this build? No not the 120mm Leopard gun, it is a shield.

[b]The shield[/b] The character has [s2wiki]Shield_Lore[/s2wiki]. Also shield lore is nice, the main reason for me to take shield lore is not mentioned in the wiki yet. It are the modifiers on shields which can be unlocked with shield lore: block chance melee, block chance ranged and defense value. Such an unlocked modifier can start with 24.8% block chance for just one point in shield lore. The higher shield lore is the more block chance the shield gets. A Level 2 shield may have more than 80% block chance with high shield lore in niob. So we look for a nice yellow shield with scaling block chance melee. There are some really nice ones: My favourite is a shield which has 300 physical armour and 50 each in fire, ice and magic. It has 2 silver sockets and a fix 13.3% chance to block combat arts. But the best is: it has a 80.4% chance to block melee. Now add the mastery effect of shield lore which is around 37% at 200 shield lore. Even the block chances are not directly added but dampened, they will sum up to something close to 100%. Be consequent if you take shield lore as an elf, take a yellow shield with scaling block chance. And because shield lore is so important in this build it will be mastered as one of the first 3 masteries. What about [url="http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php5/Sacred_2:Kira's_Protection"]Kira's Protection[/url]. You need a lot of luck to find one. We germans have a saying: 'Pech im Spiel, Glück in der Liebe'- 'no luck in gambling means lucky in love'. I am married, we have 5 Kids, so guess how many Kira's I found yet ;)

The disadvantage of a shield is that it never reaches 100% block chance --- and Murphy is a cruel god. So the next item I always use is an defensive one too:

[url="http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php5/Sacred_2:All_Class_Unique_Amulets#Artamark.27s_Star"][b]Artamark's Star[/b][/url] [url="http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=14765&view=findpost&p=6885421"]Why to use the Artamark's Star[/url] I have explained in the link.