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Overview -
Ease of Use -
Setup -
Customization -
Features -
Performance
- Support
- Review
Score
 Overview:
Sapphire
(created by Isudus) is an on-the-fly buffing utility which is designed to buff
yourself and others. Although it doesn't support pre-saved buffing
profiles, it does keep separate settings for each of your characters.
It's main advantage is that it allows you to switch settings quickly and
adapt to any situation as needed.
Requirements:
*
Decal
2.6.0.3
*
Decal .Net Interops
*
Spell Filter (1.4.0.0 or higher)
*
Microsoft
.NET Framework
Ease of use: I found the interface layout to be
somewhat awkward. For example, when casting spells for other people
you'll find everything you need to configure on the fly under just 2
tabs (main and other). However if you're casting spells on yourself
you'll find everything scattered across 4 tabs for the exact same
features (main, items, self, and config - which has the disable icons
for each school). Another example is that you can't add underclothes to
the item list like everything else and this must be done via a checkbox
on the config panel. If you can't figure something out you'll soon
discover that there is no context sensitive help or help documentation
on the author's web page. Thankfully many aspects of the interface
conform to what you'd find on other buffing applications such
as
ELTank
or
Infinity.
There are no cryptic buttons and none of the features are buried where
you can't find them.
Setup: The author was thoughtful enough to
make the program do a lot of the work for you. That makes changing
around your buff profile a snap. Some of the things it does is
automatically detect what casting levels to use, intelligently arrange
the spell order, automatically hide skills you don't have trained,
automatically determine what type of object you placed in the items
panel and select the appropriate spells to cast on it, etc. All of the
settings that you don't need to configure on the fly are moved to their
own panel so they don't clutter the screen. Another neat feature is the
wield button on the items panel (which will add everything you have
equipped to the window all at once) and the trade window button on the
"other" panel (which adds everything in your trade window into the item
buff queue all at once). The author has even included buttons to shut
off casting a whole school without the user having to uncheck any of the
settings they put in earlier. Aside from having to jump around to
different tabs a lot I found almost every aspect of this program to be
designed around the ability to do everything quickly. And for this type
of program that is a very good thing! I score Sapphire's setup features
at 5 out of 5.
Customization: There are other
applications, such as
Nerfus Buffus
II, that provide more control over the buff cycle than
Sapphire but they accomplish this by making buff configuration setup
into a long and tedious process. Notable things Sapphire cannot do are
customize which prebuff spells are cast, change the spell casting order,
choose the exact level of each spell cast, change out equipment (such as
mage armor, jewellery, or casters) at various points in the buff cycle,
or manually choose which spells are applied to individual items. Most of
these features aren't even used by most people and I felt the author of
Sapphire did a great job picking out the most popular customizations
people wanted. It does somewhat let you tweak the level of spells
Sapphire globally chooses to cast, adjust stamina and mana management,
buff untrained skills needed to activate equipment, and there's even
options to regain mana without having trained life magic. I do wish it
recognised unenchantable items and items with no mana conversion (such
as Buadren's) so it wasn't casting unnecessary spells. I also wish it
were possible to unselect defender from being applied to casters since
my mage doesn't have melee defense trained and hasn't spent XP into
coordination.
Features:
Regaining mana: Sapphire
supports regaining mana by using life magic to cast stamina to mana and
revitalize. It also supports using Ulgrim's casting stein in combination
with using food to restore stamina. It doesn't support casting health to
mana, using Elysa's Wonderous Orb, laying down to regain stamina, using
healing kits, using health or mana foods, or using health/stamina/mana
elixirs.
Saving settings: Sapphire automatically saves separate settings for each
individual character. It doesn't support loadable pre-saved profiles.
Equipment changes: Sapphire does not support any equipment changes. This
applies to prebuff, postbuff, or during the buff cycle.
New game features: Sapphire supports casting hermetic link/mystics
blessing on wands, casting defender on wands, and casting banes on your
paper doll. It does not yet support fellowship spells.
Buffing other players: Sapphire can cast item buffs on items other
players are wielding in their hands as well as items viewed in a trade
window. It can also cast every beneficial creature or life buffing spell
on other players.
Output options: Sapphire can suppress the casting output making it
easier to chat. It displays the name of the spell it's currently
casting, the total number of spells in queue, the number of remaining
spells, and the total casting time. It does not allow you to cancel a
specific spell from the casting queue without aborting.
Other features: Sapphire can buff non-equipped items which makes it
possible to put on mage armor to boost your magic skills while you buff
everything else. It also plays a sound when finished buffing and
provides a 2 minute warning when buffs are about to expire.
Performance: Some users have reported
various stability issues with the application. Everything from missing
some banes, to getting errors while buffing, to crashing AC on exit. So
far I haven't encountered any of these problems and it's been working
like a champ. Buffing speed seems pretty fast and the order it cast the
buffs was pretty efficient. On my mage for instance it cast only enough
prebuffs to get me to the skill needed for 7's and then put level 7
versions of mana conversion, endurance, and hermetic link toward the
beginning of the buffing queue.
Support: The web page did an excellent job
describing what this program could do for you and offered excellent
pictures to show you what you were getting. It was easy to see what
support files were needed and there was a forum to post questions and
report bugs. The author has also been active supporting user issues on
VNBoards and has been
expeditious providing updates to the application.
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