OT: Sacred 2

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zaphodbrx

New member
So for the past few weeks I've been playing this brilliant ARPG game called Sacred 2 - Fallen Angel. And wow, I really like it.

It is very 'Diablo-like' in its gameplay but it has excellent 3D graphics ( no cartoons ) and rotatable camera. Furthermore, the length of the game is extreme! There are 10 (!) acts, in which you have to do the main quest ( light or shadow campaign ), the optional class specific quest ( which depends on the character ), and additionally 100s ( literally, around 600 according to wiki ) of optional side quests which can involve anything ranging between 'kill bandits', 'find flowers', 'rescue hostages' to really cool ones like getting unique mount or getting to hear a rock band concert ( after which you are given the musical instruments to use as weapons, for example a guitar can be used as a two handed axe, which makes a musical sound every time you hit monsters with it. really good stats on the weapons too ).

I have just finished with act 5 so I think I am halfway through the campaign, a total of 28 hours played with a now level 30 shadow warrior on bronze difficulty ( thats the easiest one ). And it's just been a blast. After being disappointed with skyrim and dragon age ( and to some extent Torchlight 2 as well ), I find Sacred 2 to be all the fantasy RPG I ever wanted. I think now the only other Diablo-esque RPG I have yet to try is 'Titan Quest'.

Check out this game, it's really good.
 
Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is really nice game. I played it for some time and have two unfinished characters. First is High Elf focused on ice and fire attacks, second is Seraphim with focus on Archangel's Wrath and Flaring Nova. Both on Gold difficulty.

Game is visually impressive, and amount of things you can do is large. I like the fact that, unlike in diablo, here every weapon and armor is possible jackpot, not only unique ones. Also nice system of socketing to optimize the gear for whatever you need. Unfortunately, my laptop is a bit weak to perform flawlessly on this game so I have parts of the game that are unplayable to me, like when you have to kill that Miasma fog or whatever it's called. It megalag festival. Other than that, nice game. Downside is you have to walk too much around. It's very fun for the first time, but doing it for second time, third time etc. gets boring really fast. Some mods are kinda imbalanced, like % life steal that takes % of life away from opponent and give that life to you. It's too easy to kill bosses with that. Overall game is really enjoyable to play, but kind of lacks a challenge. Everything becomes quite easy once you figure out what to do. Same like Morrowind Elders Scrolls III, same like Diablo II.

I really like creating self multiplayer game and kill final bosses over and over again. It's cool they made it possible that way so you can kill whatever opponent you want on the map.
 
Have any of you played the first sacred? If so, how does it compare? I've played the first some and it was okish, but not something that i'd consider playing extensively.
 
I was also once on the search on what RPG I should play next. I've played the first Sacred long ago and I liked that I always wanted to try the second one too.

I tried LOKI but I deleted it nearly the same day I installed it. To tell you the truth I never really gave LOKI a chance to prove me whether it's a good game or not but it was so sloppy that I couldn't simply keep playing it.

However, I have played Titan Quest a lot and I believe it's a small masterpiece. The game is based on mythology and the whole acts are filled with such creatures and bosses which keeps your interest very high on what you might face next. The game's atmosphere is very entertaining. Plenty items, plenty side quests, plenty masteries. Beautiful game.
 
Yeah I can definitely see how the campaign would be boring to play over and over because of its enormous length and all the walking around. I think I will play one of every class with bronze or silver difficulty, but not more. Gold requires lvl 60 to unlock, and I don't think I'll be getting there anytime soon.. It just takes too much time at this point.

A little question though, is there any real difference on the harder difficulties or the opponents just get higher lvl, higher hp/damage. If it is the latter then I don't see any reason to continue, just like I don't do NG+ on Torchlight 2.

If you wanted to play an 'advanced' version of Diablo 2 with real RPG questing and 3D graphics, but don't want to put up with the nuisances of Diablo 3, I think Sacred 2 fits the bill very nicely. And Titan quest is certainly on my play list as well.
 
I'm playing Ice and Blood expansion for Sacred 2. Don't know do you have it, but certainly install it. You get new really powerful enemy - Crystal Phoenix. It's the only thing I didn't manage to defeat yet, even though I didn't try with Seraphim. Also, don't know is it a part of that expansion or not, but you don't have to be even close to level 60 to go on Gold difficulty. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I started the game on silver difficulty totally skipping bronze, dunno.

Higher difficulty is needed because on silver opponents have maximum level they can be and you can surpass them making the game too easy. Here opponents will be level higher or whatever compared to you and it will be harder to kill them. They do higher damage, have better drops and such things. I've read that you can get one shoted by some opponents, that cannot happen at silver difficulty not in a million years.
 
Don't have the Ice & Blood expansion ( I will get it, later ) but I believe that's not the problem anyway. I think you can't jump from bronze to gold, you have to complete a silver campaign before going to gold. Or something like that.

I don't play Sacred 2 for challenge. At least not yet, as I got tired of being 1-shotted by things playing MXL for months. What I like is the immense open world and massive amount of RPG quests. I spent 10 hours this week doing ALL the side quests I could find in Act 6 & 7 ( and there are still about a dozen left in Act 1-3 ), while the main quest has progressed to act 9. I guess I could ignore all of them and just kill enemies to level up while going through the main and class specific quests, but I like the RPG action more. Maybe for the next characters. As it is, I have 4500 hp at lvl 37 and nothing on bronze is really dangerous to me. Though I did die twice early on, through carelessness.

That's why I didn't theorycraft too much into damage and armor types, skill builds, and so on. I just pick something that looks good and go with it. I plan to make 1 of each character type ( eventually ), probably on silver difficulty so that would be useful.. However I will probably not play on higher difficulties with the same character as it would get boring, I'd rather start with a different character type.

One thing I find problematic at the moment are ranged attacks/ spells. The targeting kind of sucks and it misses a lot/ low damage / can't tank things. My first character that I picked was a dryad, but I got tired of the bow and just picked up a poleaxe and started hitting things. That actually worked fine till level 6 but then I deleted it and restarted with a shadow warrior reasoning that I might as well pick an actual melee character. Then yesterday I tried a high elf. Same thing, I ended up using her 1 melee skill instead of the spells because of awkward targeting/low dmg. I guess it gets better later on, it's just not newbie friendly.

I did try out Titan quest: Immortal throne recently and.. it's okay I guess, but it doesn't blow me away the way that Sacred 2 did. The graphics are kind of dated and it reminds me more of 'Age of mythology' than a Diablo 2 style RPG. I might finish the campaign once, but that's about it.
 
An update after a long time. I have now completed a bronze difficulty shadow warrior ( Shadow campaign ) and silver difficulty Seraphim ( light campaign ). On both I went out and did as many quests as I could find ( though I did this better the second time and found lots of cool quests in hidden corners of the map ). And there really are a lot. Clocked 48 hrs on the shadow warrior and 51 hrs on the seraphim. Enjoyed it all, though maybe only 10% of that time were spent on the main quests. I suppose people generally don't do ALL or even most of the 600 odd sidequests in the game, but it was just new and interesting to me so I did them all. They cover any number of cool/weird easter eggs like meeting a 'Yoda' in a swamp, and of course delivering letters, hunting treasure, reclaiming a throne, killing bandits.. basically, anything you might expect from a fantasy RPG, and it's there.

Silver is considerably harder than bronze, but the big thing I noticed was that the enemies keep up levelling along with you. The level limits on areas are still there but very high so you don't really max out on a region and then have to move along just to get enemies that don't suck. For example the lvl cap in Tyr Lysia (act 1 ) is 49 ( Lawl! ), compared to the bronze cap 6-12. This also makes sidequests more viable as if you get tired of a region you can just move the mainquest along to the next one and can come back later with appropriately levelled enemies. Final result is lvl 40 on the shadow warrior ( understandable as the highest levels in bronze are around 41-42 ), and lvl 56 in silver. Don't know if I will be playing gold difficulty or higher. Since you can't just start in gold, it seems more interesting just to make a different character type.

I again made a melee build ( dual wielding swords ) for the seraphim, as I haven't quite worked out ranged stuff and spell casters seem even worse. Hopefully I'll be able to improve on that and maybe make one of all classes. Also I'm getting the expansion pack now which has a little more content ( but not that much ).

I am surprised there is not that much fandom about this game compared to the diablo series, all forums I could find have 1 year old posts now. It really is very good.
 
I've checked some stores but none seem to have it. That may have something to do with it. Shame because it looked like a decent game to me.
 
zaphodbrx said:
I am surprised there is not that much fandom about this game compared to the diablo series, all forums I could find have 1 year old posts now. It really is very good.
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The Sacred franchise is a good ten years old now (I certainly remember joining the official forums in '04, and that was after the game had been out a while) & things quieted down quite a bit after Ascaron went belly up. :( There's a "community patch" here which has fixed some stuff, enabled other things that the devs didn't for one reason or another. Unfortunately you need the Ice & Blood expansion to use it & that wasn't ever available for the US market (due to issues between the US & EU distributors).

Cyrax said:
I've checked some stores but none seem to have it. That may have something to do with it. Shame because it looked like a decent game to me.
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You can buy it (S2 Gold = original + Ice & blood) from Steam (here), not sure if the CP mod works with it though.
 
I installed the Ice & Blood expansion. I am aware of the community patch, but haven't tried it out yet.

Overall I&B doesn't add that much. The main campaign and most areas are totally unchanged, it adds 1 new character class and 2 new areas ( which are both kinda weird ). Anyway, I did finish all of the quests in the 2 new areas with my Seraphim on silver, including the bosses, which aren't really harder than campaign bosses like Xanthiar or Garganthropod. I&B seems to be overheating my poor laptop a lot more than before - I'm going to get a cooling pad and see if that helps.

Also - using LL % from opponents mod on weapons makes bosses to easy. Broken mod imo, I don't use it.
Regen per hit ( rph ) another imbalance mod., but I use it, cause it makes my dryad so much fun.

I did notice one thing though, in I&B I can jump to gold after completing bronze campaign and from silver to platinum as well. Of course my bronze-complete shadow warrior is underleveled for gold, and silver-complete seraphim is underleveled for platinum, but it's not too much of a difference- I can still kill stuff in the weaker starting areas easily. I don't know if I'll be playing the higher difficulties though . It seems like a repeat of the same thing at higher levels - I had the same problem with NG+ in Torchlight 2. Also no respecs in the game- this actually bothers me a lot less than I thought in general, but if I could change over to a ranged seraphim to play the next difficulty after finishing silver with melee build that would be an incentive to play the higher difficulties, but no you can't.

I also managed to make a working caster high elf, a ranged dryad and melee inquisitor and temple guardian, all about lvl 20-30 in silver. Casters are much better in I&B thanks to expert touch, ancient magic, etc. But the ranged dryad has become my favourite once I figured out how it worked. Additionally she is somehow bugged to get set items - I find an insane amount of set items with her ( more than all other characters combined ) for no reason that I can think of. The game has many bugs though.

Will probably be taking a break from the game for now. Maybe try out the community patch as well later as well as see if I can find some third party tools to do respecs.
 
I might also try community patch for a new enemies and such.

I totally agree with LL% imbalanced. I use it on Seraphim to farm last bosses quickly for items, but otherwise I would skip such mod, at least on lower difficulties since it makes battle too easy. There is also balance problem with spells. Don't know did you notice, but spells are strongest if you leave them on level 1 and don't level them up with runes. If you level them up, they gain damage, but lose cooldown, resulting in lower dps every time you upgrade the spell actually. My strongest Seraphim has all skills level 1 and she is incredibly strong cause of it. Casting spells every 0.2 seconds is OP. You do gain levels on spells with equipment anyway, just enough to balance damage and cooldown. There are exceptions ofc, some skills are really worth pumping up as much as possible, but those are rather rare. Overall, you will have harder time at the beginning, and will be much stronger later on when it matters.

Higher difficulties are more or less just for the challenge of the game. Bosses are stronger etc. Everything else is the same. Maybe they cast new spells as well. Both Xanthiar and Garganthropod were very easy for me. With both Ice elf and Seraphim I just stayed away from them, ran in circles avoiding hits and killed them with range spells. Same is true for all bosses actually, except maybe first boss and last bosses. They are the only ones who actually put up a non-onesided matches. That's why I'm gonna eventually go on higher difficulties to see do bosses upgrade in battle strategy, or are they the same.
 
I was going to say 'looks interesting, can't wait for it'.
But then I read the description on the main page which was extremely vague and said something about 'focusing on multi player'. That set off alarm bells in my mind, especially after the online only and RMAH fiasco..

So I dug up a dozen threads on darkmatters.org and it's pretty depressing:
-No loot dropped by monsters, infact no inventory or items period.
-Only 2 abilities for each class, no skill tree or stats.
-No open world system, no side quests, just corridor based levels. Run along the corridor and kill monsters.

And ofcourse it isn't being developed by the original sacred team, who are trying to make a different game called 'Unfounded' instead, as a response to how much "Sacred 3" sucks.

Seems like an attempt to grab some cash based on a brand name. And they are a lot more transparent about it than Diablo 3.
 
Long time, no post..

Well, I installed the community patch, which adds a lot of new stuff. I also downloaded a character editor so that I can finally experiment more with skills and aspects. Kind of a cheat, but it's a shame that Ascaron didn't give us a legit way to respec, its not like I am using it to add +stats or w/ever.

I finished Platinum difficulty with my Dryad. It is my best character and has found a ton of good equipment such as the full Detheya set. Also I have RpH on it ( see discussion below ) and she has the best escape and crowd control abilities that make for ridiculous cheese against bosses. Only died once on this character and I think that may have been a glitch- a random dragon champion ( nothing else around ) one shotted me from 80% life. Though a few act bosses did take me down to ~10-20% life (from full ) in one shot.

I also completed the Epic office quest (whew! ) with High Elf character , and also most Achievements such as Dungeon Master, City Guide, Polytheist, Tomb Raider. In fact all achievements are done apart from two - Dedicated and Master Cartographer (and the 3 multiplayer achievements, but don't care about those ) . I'm pretty sure I have completed all the quests there are in the game, on one character or the other, except one or two Community Patch quests that I missed.

I'm also planning to make a lightsaber themed shadow warrior on HC and finish silver difficulty with him.

Gripphon raised an interesting point about regen times getting raised by eating runes- this is true, but it doesn't take Regen per hit ( RpH ) into account. My darting assault fires 5 shots and has 4 sec regen time but I also have 1.8 RpH on my equipment, so five hits on opponents reduces the regen by 1.8*5 = 9 sec . So basically the result is that there isn't any cooldown at all ( the calculation even works if only 3 shots hit ). And this is a massive advantage.

This is why on WDM characters it is a pretty good deal to eat runes upto a level where you can balance out cooldowns and RpH, so that you can get the best damage. RpH is a pretty broken mod that way. LL% from opponents is perhaps the only other mod that is imba to that extent.

My High Elf caster is another story, since RpH doesn't work with spells. In this case I've found that it is better to socket a whole bunch of runes in equipment while keeping only 1 hard point. Without the +skills from equipment and runes the 1 point doesn't do jack when you keep levelling up, and my pyromancer skills have a minimum regen of 1sec anyway ( and the casting animation takes time too ). In practice, keeping the regen times ~2 sec works best for me. I did use platinum level runes muled over by another character though ( ie. twinking ).

Casters also have a big problem with resists. While monsters don't have immunities, they have various types of resists and for my dryad I can either switch out a fire bow vs enemies weak to fire ( we have upto 5 weapon switches ), or socket my bow with fire damage. For casters you can't really specialize in more than one damage types ( specially not early on ), and ancient magic mastery can reduce resists.. but that's only at lvl 75. So basically, if your enemies have are fire resist and you have only fire spells, Pffff.. suck up and deal with it. ( I took 15 min to kill the 'fire lord'- bad idea ). Especially glaring in the dragon caves ( act 5) where everything resists fire and is vulnerable to ice, and then in the very next act its the other way round.

I just think casters get a raw deal overall, apart from the resistance problem they also have no good left click attack, weapon indepenent means you can't increase their damage just by equipping a higher dmg weapon ( which is usually easy to find or just buy from a shop ), and doesn't benefit from good mods like RpH, LL% from opponents, Chance for open wound, Serious wound, Deathblow%, etc..

And the HE is the best caster class. On the other classes I've experimented with spells and I haven't found them as effective, so I've gone melee inquisitor, melee Temple guardian.. Dragon mage is again pure caster but he is just terrible. I played the DM to lvl 15 for achievement and that's quite enough.

Looks like darkmatters.org forum isn't as dead as I thought, I'll start posting there. This is probably my last post on the subject, unless anyone is interested.

The amount of time I have spent playing this game is frankly a little scary..

I might also look into Sacred 1. The graphics seem really dated to me but there is a class called vampiress which has a different playstyle in night and day, that seems interesting enough to play through the campaign one time.
 
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I see that's available for less than $20 - I might go ahead and give this a try and hope for better luck than I had with Van Helsing.
 
You've reminded me I have Sacred 2 on loan and never played it, I should give it back. I read the booklet and I didn't like the look of it, the story and the classes didn't appeal.

It does have Blind Guardian in it. Hurray!

I played Sacred 1 intensively when recovering from illness. It was ok, but the endless walks with constant reappearing enemies began to get on my nerves. If I have just been somewhere, they shouldn't be back already. Not enough "town portals" for my liking, esp in a massive world like that (I did like how big it was and sometimes full of surprises).

Also the only classes I could get some enjoyment out of were Seraphim and Battle Mage (liked the latter more).

Eventually the constant walking up and down got on my nerves, and the sounds. Some enemies died with such a pathetic wail...... and the characters you play with say silly things - when hitting a goblin they say "orc dog", things like that.
 
Vivi said:
It does have Blind Guardian in it. Hurray!
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Blind Guardian's Sacred Worlds song is the reason I keep coming back to the game. IMO this is among the best songs I have ever listened to, but its more than that. Sacred worlds is not just there, it provides a lietmotif for the game. It appears in the intro video, various bards play parts of the song in towns, even orcs 'sing' it ( very badly ). I also love the Instrumental version that plays in the main screen.

Apart from that the music is just great. Every character class has its own music, same with every region/ area, it feels really cool. they really put a lot of effort into little things, that's why I love the game.

The realm's .. bleeding
It suffers.. old and weak
No further arguing there is.. war at hand
System's failing!
Engines running

And now that all can sense the end is dawning
These lunatics deny the truth!
And I know I will not fail.. anymore

War! It's now or never
We shall stand together
One by one
This world is SACRED!

I'm coming home!

...

I'm bleeding, I'm fading,
Here in my final hour
When long lost memories.. return
And a voice is calling..
All is dead and gone..

..
 
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