In Ice and Blood, you get a new character(Dragon Mage). Two new areas were added, and the Carrier Imp comes as default. You can also fast travel between waypoints by clicking on them.

The Community Patch I mentioned earlier requires Ice and Blood.

I knew all of that! :P
Maybe I should've been a little more clear on what I was asking...

I was looking for your thoughts on how good all of this content is...or isn't.

So, yeah - how do you like the Ice and Blood content?
And how do you like the Community Patch?
Are they good? Bad? What do you like about it? Not like about it?

I've not tried out the Community Patch, but I have played in the new areas. The Crystal Region has more dangerous general enemies, but the Cursed Forest has a boss that requires doing the quests correctly in order to encounter it. I believe the Cursed Forest boss is tougher. Given that the game has a long leveling treadmill, the added content plus the improved convenience more than make up for some balance changes. I did play in the Christmas Island before it was removed, so I can recommend the Community Patch if you want to see what that area is like.

I'd say that if you're interested in a larger selection of items, character builds, and the most content then the CP with Ice & Blood is definitely the way to go.

@DaveO
Thanks for your thoughts on everything, Dave. :D
Much appreciated.

Now, hopefully more will vote-up S2: Gold to the GOG wishlist and get GOG to get this complete edition of the game!!

EDIT:
@Dave
Oh, how long is the new Ice and Blood content, in terms of hours approximately?

If GoG does decide to bring in this game, I do hope that the Windows 7 stability issues are either addressed with a 'How to run the game without crashes' sticky(most likely) or working with the current owners of the franchise to add in a final thoroughly tested patch. Registration of Ice and Blood is a bit tricky, but that would hopefully be no longer a concern for a digital version of this game.

That would ALL be great! :)

I'd love to see Sacred 2: Gold hit GOG - b/c this means no annoying Securom DRM w/ install limits and revokes allowed bullcrap!

And, yeah - any sort of magic they could work to get the game to run better on Win 7 and kill any nasty issues would be pretty sweet! :D
And some sticky threads on GOG on helping gamers out w/ dealing w/ Win 7 w/ Sacred 2: Gold would be pretty sweet, as well.

I'm going to give the Community Patch a try with this game. Stability under Windows 7 is still not good enough for my tastes with the vanilla version. I'll post a reply after trying out the CP for a while to see if things are better.

Yes but I would recommend getting the Gold Edition (which includes the Ice & Blood exp. pack) and I think the next latest patch 2.65.0, there's a hotfix available as well but it's small.

I enjoyed Sacred (and Underworld) more than Sacred 2 but it's still a good aRPG. :)

Edit: For stability in Win7 try getting the latest patch to work then the community patch. Run the sacred2.exe with admin rights, desktop composition and visual themes. Oh and compatibility mode for XP should help, it did for me but that might depend on other settings (such as hardware). I would also recommend to not play with too high settings specifically the elite texture modification that was included in the Collector's Edition and PhysX, this will give a nasty spikes in performance and a huge memory leak unless you've a monster computer.

Push for this and upvote it in wishlists PLEASE! :D

I read a lot about how Ice & Blood is illegal to sell (they don't have a distributor or something) in the US yet it's still available at GamersGate at least and the Gold Edition. Sacred 2 however is also available at Steam so that's an indiciator it could end up here. I don't think Deep Silver is really signed up here but considering GOG already have Sacred Gold it shouldn't take that long depending on legal issues and such. Then there's the question of how GOG select their games. They maybe don't really want it here yet I read somewhere that they actually want good games here that went under radar (sort of) or perhaps wasn't praised enough.

It's a pity they can't release some kind of timeline with releases.

I have the UK version (It was a gift from a friend) and I've been looking at buying Ice and Blood. However - if GOG.com releases a Sacred 2 combo pack...I'd rather pick that one up. That wold be awesome.

Does anyone here play Sacred in multi-player and use voice chat? I'm considering organizing a 4 player group for questing (4 is the limit for campaign coop I think).

I would recommend that you buy it. It's not that expensive and if you're really aRPGs there's a lot of content so a lot of value for the money. Just get S2 Gold Edition and if DRM troubles you there's always fixes out there (I know they're against EULA but whatever, as long as you pay for it there's not a single company that would try to sue players for it). :)

I'm a bit tempted myself to buy the Gold Edition at GG for about $25 with their current 20% discount but I'm not sure how they treat DRMs and they probably have something of their own plus SecuROM.

CDV owns distribution rights for all Sacred 2 products in USA.
They went insolvent - so, that's the problem.
They're not in business anymore.

Deep Silver owns distribution rights for Sacred 2 products in numerous Overseas territories [for Portugal, Sweden, South Africa, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, UK, Italy, Spain & France].
Deep Silver are the current holders of the Sacred IP (for future Sacred games).

If we want Sacred 2: FA; S2: Ice and Blood; and S2: Gold Edition sold here in the USA, we really need CDV and Deep Silver to hammer out a deal so the game & its expansions can be distributed here in the USA by somebody (either Deep Silver or CDV).

What I'd really like to see, is Deep Silver somehow get a hold of the USA Distribution rights for Sacred 2 products. Unlike CDV, Deep Silver is actually still business - and Deep Silver does have a lot of good RPG's in their stable (Risen series and Dead Island).