Survival bonus and platinum level

[belgarathmth]

Hi, I just posted this over at Dark Matters, and I thought I'd try to post it here too, in case anyone might be interested, and would not see it there:

Hi, friends, I'm back playing Sacred 2, reveling yet again in its awesomeness.

So, I used to worry about maximum level caps and survival bonus, afraid that if I ever died, the enemies would be of such low level that I'd *never* be able to gain levels with that toon at a satisfying rate.

Then, I just over the past couple of weeks leveled a new shadow warrior to 62, rushing through silver up to platinum.

Since I am now playing my first "hurried" platinum level toon, I have become aware for the first time of *minimum* regional levels.

Basically, I have a level 62 shadow warrior playing on platinum level in Artamark, where the *minimum* enemy level is 79. So, all the mobs (and bosses) have purple circles. This was challenging but not much of a problem, until I just made the mistake of going up against the "Big Bad Wolf" boss, with my level 62 to his 79 or 80, and, although I almost won by scarfing health potions, he got me at the last moment.

My hard-won survival bonus plummeted from almost 90% to .02%! Yikes!.

However, the enemies are *still* coming up at level 79 to my 62.

So, I guess my basic question here, as a platinum level noob, is, does rushing a character to platinum level render the survival bonus irrelevant? That is, if I continue on to beat platinum level and on into niobium level, with the minimum regional levels near 20 levels above my own, does that render the survival bonus moot?

If the game goes on like this, I will enjoy platinum and niobium levels with all regional enemies at least 17-20 levels above my own, regardless of my survival bonus level. That's kind of exciting to me that I might not have to worry about that much any more. It's as if the main death penalty that I always worried about (weak, unworthy enemies almost forever after dying once), has been removed, as long as I always do the "rush job" through silver and gold levels.

The only place where that might hurt would be bosses. I might start to do more side quests and exploration just to try to get my level up to where enemies finally turn red instead of purple, even with a survival bonus of zero.

Thoughts? Are there other consequences to dying and the survival bonus (or penalty) system in the platinum and niobium levels of the game?

Also, I now finally understand why everybody always says "the game starts at platinum and niobium - get through silver and gold as quickly as possible so you can *really* experience the game". :)

[Heinrich6745]

Generally i always rush unless i am in no hurry and yes they are always going to be higher lvl than you when you rush and get to plat/niob.

my last character i rushed never died once till end of niob at 127ish i think?

granted my game is heavily tweaked out with spawns and tons of other crap lol ( so is my sacred 1, i use VET MOD).

Also you are correct about the game starts in platiunum, that is when you finally start seeing if your character build is good or not. :)