OT: Sacred 2

Orc cave is famous mainly because you can just re run it without having to remake the game. Not sure if that's the case with the other one.

P.S. you don't have to visit the shopper for selling, just shift-click ( halfprice though ).
 
As far as DPS characters go there are two types of useful rings: Flat damage rings and RPH rings. These also make the best socketables. Rest all is mostly crap ( including all uniques ). You can buy rings from shops. Some people even get bargaining skill and make dedicated 'shoppers'.

That is indeed a interesting strategy, using RPH rings to regen higher level arts faster. I do that to some extent too, but not really focused on it. I usually get 0.5 sec regen/hit somewhere and that's enough for me. There is another kind of ring I value most, and those are ring with mod "chance that opponent cannot evade attack". Also random rings with "opponent chance to evade -%".

I have noticed that those rings increase chance to hit dramatically, especially rings with mod "opponent cannot evade %". I'm kinda obsessed to have 100% chance to hit everything in sight, bosses included. Problem is I must have two setups, for creeps and bosses since when I have 100% hit against bosses, I have like 180% against most creep what are wasted slots.

Also now I'm using slots mostly for damage blacksmith arts + avoid rings + experience rings + to drop valuables rings. You could say I use everything pretty much, balance between those mods. Also random lifeleech rings I find. This Enchanted Perception Seraphim is fantastic. Drops are great.
 
Amount of RPH and CA level needed really depends on character type and level. I think you have Dual wield Seraphim, in which case you are hitting fast and getting twice the effect due to 2 weapons. Even plain attack with DW is not much slower than pelting strikes. On the other hand, if you were using a big 2 handed polearm or a slow ranged weapon like BFG gun. then you do need a good amount of RPH. But even then you don't need too much. My dryad only has 2 rings devoted to RPH ( both 0.9 ) which is enough to regen lvl 53+ CAs. Higher CA level is useful for more damage as well as sometimes extra effects ( like dryad's darting assault gets 1 more arrow on lvl 49 ), though it caps off later due to the "highest CA level without penalty" effect.

Flat dmg rings are basically the best at higher levels for offensive DPS. I think there is a thread on Darkmatters explaining that. Other things to look for ( a ring can spawn with 2 modifiers )
- Damage +X%
- Chance for death blow
- chance that opponent doesn't evade ( like you said )

As far as items go I have always used set items. The drops of set items are biased on the character and the skills you are using to kill monsters. So with dryad I could easily get the Detheya set using Capricious hunter build. You can keep replacing the set items with higher level ones of the same kind. Also these are all armor sets only. They don't constrain your choice of weapons which you will need to keep replacing with increasing level and difficulty to match monsters.

Don't use blacksmith arts please. They are useless past early levels compared to the alternatives and worse they are not removable later. As far as socketables go I would only use a few types - flat dmg, RPH rings, sometimes +HP amulets and +6 niob runes, that's about it.
 
Are those flat damage rings you talk about rings which give damage x-x or something like that? They seem to become useful at later levels, for now I'm getting rings like 5-5 dmg or something, and my weapon damage alone is 120+ per weapon, so doesn't seem too good for now. Maybe I'll start getting stronger rings soon when I get higher levels.

I'm using blacksmith arts because I have problem with removing items from sockets. It seems I'm able to remove only 1 item from sockets, all the rest simply disappear from sockets then. So I'm filling rest of the sockets with arts or with items if I'm certain I won't remove them ever. Maybe it's downside of ice and blood patch. I'm not playing community patch cause I can't install it, I have UK version of Sacred and can't even update the game properly. So perhaps those socket problems are fixed in community patch. When I want to use sockets again, I simply sell item and buy it back, you have clean sockets then.
 
When I want to use sockets again, I simply sell item and buy it back, you have clean sockets then.

I didn't know you could do that o_O

Anyway, Blacksmith arts are still useless, and the unsocketing behavior works like you said , it will remove only one socketable and the remaining will disappear ( unless you have lvl 75 blacksmith mastery ). Community patch doesn't change this.

And yes the dmg rings get much better later on. In late platinum you can get 24-24 dmg rings. Keep in mind you can socket any number of these and they all just add directly on to weapon damage, it is a big deal.

Btw why don't you have CP? You can ask on darkmatters forum and maybe they can help you to install it.
 
I'm sure there is some solution on how to update UK version of Sacred. When I tried to google about it, I lost some time on it and failed to update the game. It's troublesome version it seems. I'll get to it sometime during either winter or summer to see what can be done. For now I'm gonna just play, I'm too lazy to seek working solutions around. Or simply reinstall the version of the game that can be updated without much trouble.

Too bad sockets work that way. I kinda change gear frequently since I level up very fast and get new stuff all the time, so I definitely feel like loosing good stuff if I'm using rings/amulets on slots instead of arts. I could put some throwable rings in such slots, but still I kinda don't like the idea. Even when I find exactly piece of equipment I'd like to use so I can fill it with mad stuff I found, chances are I'll have better drop of it soon regreting I already socketed my best stuff. Right now I don't really have too many throwable rings that are actually more useful than arts. Random evasion -% rings and stuch stuff maybe, but that's it. Since I have damage art on every piece of equipment, it adds to quite nice number.

Or maybe I should just change my playing style and simply socket stuff into gear without looking back too much. I developed somewhat cautious approach with rings/amulets when it comes to socketing them. I'm very comfortable using best stuff when I can resocket it no problem, but I was never confident using best stuff on same piece of equipment. Or I rather rarely do that.

Or... best thing to do for me is to level up some shopper. I'll naturally get tons of jewelry to socket for other characters. I could level up new char to 45 in 7-8 hours no problem for shopping purposes, but then you would naturally want another that has bargaining mastery at 75 and that will take too much time to do... and I don't even know what kind of rings and stuff can I expect from shops at those levels. And I don't have any shopping gear, I just sell those.
 
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See it depends on your philosophy of playing the game. If you look on sacred wiki or darkmatters forums, they have a lot of tips for doing characters like this:

Dedicated 'shoppers' using bargaining
'Smiths' using blacksmith skill
Magic finders wit enhanced perception
Specific boss/area runners
and so on.

My opinion is that all of this is pointless. I just play the game for questing and use whatever gear I can get along the way.
 
I saw those tips, and always wondered why would I bother with all this. I can totally see a point in making level 2 shopper for example, it's very easy and possibly very effective. I didn't make it yet ofc. But to have higher level shoppers and smiths and stuff, I don't really see a point. Why would I waste my time on those characters if I can simply develop my "real" characters at the same time? Instead of shopping for stuff, I could simply kill stuff and get whatever I might need. Shoppers offer easier supply for rings and amulets, but still you get those as you level up too...

Don't know, I kind off share your view and say screw all that, go play the game and leave shopping for ladies.
 
Thoughts of Elyme* the fledgling Dryad and jiansonz the Total Noob:
(they morph in and out)

"Nice intro movie. Whoa! We're live and those guards are attacking me!"
D2-like controls kicked in and I ran along the shoreline.
"Looks like I have a bow. They are melee, I am ranged. Keep the distance. Fire! Hmm, looks like I missed. Okay, what did they say on the forum now, CTRL-click equals the Diablo shift-click? So turn around and fire in their general direction? Yup, that's the ticket. Down you go! (run another length) and you too!
What wimps. Lucky for me. And if the'd had bows, I'd be f*cked, I suppose. Okay, how do the controls work now? Mouse wheel zooms in and out. Neat. Ah, I can move with the keys as well as the mouse (newsflash: you already saw that in the controls section *smacks head*). A and D turns me, W and S moves me forwards and back. Got it.


Question 1: Looks like I can't look up. What if I need to fire at something high up?
Question 2: can I somehow change the CTRL-click so it works with Shift-click instead? Countless hours of D2 (not to mention D1!) has this ingrained in my backbone, plus CTRL is more awkwarldy placed than Shift. I didn't see it in the options meny but maybe I can tinker with a settings file somewhere?

"Right, let's take a look at the fallen foes. Oh crap, they disappeared! Ah, so you need to be quick to pick up things? That's good to know. Talk to the poor guy the guards first attacked. Bastards. Some XP and a gentle push in the main quest.

Many menys and buttons. Where is my gear? *I* Okay, I have five healing potions. Can't see my bow. Ah, I can drag it away from the weapons slot to the inventory and take a look. Latest enemy section. Neat. Those guards had 50 hps, that does match getting killed by two of my arrows. How many HPs do I have, btw? Ah, 135."

Question 3: I see no arrows. Is the bow unlimited or does it have durability like in D1?

Question 4: I seem to know a spell, Twisted Torment, from that Voodoo aspect (which I, btw, don't plan to invest in at all with this character). Damage is pathetic (my arrows hit many times harder!) but slowdown of enemy sounds good. It looks to be chosen in that slot I assume is the right-click, but nothing happens if I right-click. Do I need to do something else to activate it or is this ability required to be targetted at something?

"That urn looks to be something I can interact with. Oh, I kicked it! A gold piece. I'm rich! Uh, probably not...

OK, gotta practice some archery. That must be my bread and butter before I find anything else. I am also more scantlily clad than I think is healthy. For more than one reason. Some leathers would be nice. Yeah, leathers.
Fire here, fire there. Run along the beach, do a quick 120 degrees turn and smack an arrow in that pole. I can't be sure, but it looks like I hit. Do the same thing again, but do a late 'look down a bit' adjustment and hit the base of the pole. "


Question 5: I have seen in the wiki that I can, during the course of my character's journey, unlock up to 10 skills (they come fast in the early game, slower later, and the last one(s) won't be reached within this difficulty at all) but I see in build guides several "points" in these skills. Some are recommended only 1 point, some have a hundred or more. Something called Mastery (special benefits) at 75. Where do these extra points come from?

* During character creation, I did not get to choose a name. The saved game says only 'Dryad'. Did I miss something, or do I need to 'make a name for myself' first, hehe?

Ah, I found the the manual. Going to RTFM now, then.


I am looking up the wiki and the manual for lots of info about controls, skills and combat arts (Dryad-only for the class-specific parts, though). How the game works, basically. But I want absolutely NO spoilers about enemies, places, items and such. The discovery is a big part of the fun.
Question 6: is it possible to find hints in-game about strengths and weaknesses of certain enemies, etc?
 
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Q1: You can't look up or down. I guess you need to namelock enemies that are above or below you.

Q3: Unlimited arrows, no durability on any item.

Q4: I guess it needs to be targeted at something. Never used that spell though.

Q5: The amount of skill points per level-up grows, in the later game you get 5 skill points per level-up.

*: "Dryad" is the default character name, and you can edit it during character creation.

Q6: Every enemy has two colored bars apart from its health bar, which show the damage types it does (physical, fire, magic, cold, or poison - no lightning damage here), as well as the armor types it has. Note that armor is generally a flat value, so the bar shows the relative percentage of the respective armor types, over the total armor. Furthermore, as you already found out, you can see the stats of the last 10 enemies you killed.

Have fun! You do play silver difficulty, right?
 
jiansonz..

Ranged characters work completely different in this game. I'm sorry but you'll have to unlearn "Diablo 2" habits starting with shift+click. Yes technically Ctrl+click does something similar but its actually pointless so your better off just targeting everything directly.

If that doesn't float your boat you can go for a newbie friendly melee char like SW or Seraphim. The first time I started too was with a Dryad.. found that I sucked with a bow and picked up a poleaxe along the way which made things a lot easier ( despite having nothing to do with the character ) . At around lvl 6 I decided to ditch the character and delete it ( because it really isn't a build of any sort ) and restarted with melee.

I can give more tips on Dryad if you want, it is very powerful but definitely not newb friendly. PS. better start on bronze difficulty. Also, get I & B latest version and community patch if you can, if you don't want to miss out on things.
 
Ranged characters work completely different in this game. I'm sorry but you'll have to unlearn "Diablo 2" habits starting with shift+click. Yes technically Ctrl+click does something similar but its actually pointless so your better off just targeting everything directly.

Okay, I am starting to understand how things work. I've found a blowpipe as well, and CTRL-click is pointless with that, but I have had situations where it's been useful for the bow, when enemies are so far away that the normal targetting won't work, or it makes you move towards them when I don't want to. I can score the occasional free hit with CTRL-click. I also use it to destroy bear traps and such.

I generally don't like melee. It took me several characters in D2 to even try it, and I am still not very comfortable with it. With the exception of the Phoenix Striker, of course, but I think she plays more like a caster than a meleer.

I can give more tips on Dryad if you want, it is very powerful but definitely not newb friendly. PS. better start on bronze difficulty.

The blowpipe feels very user friendly to me. Just point and click. Range is not the best but it's fast. Bow is a little wonkier but that works reasonably well for me too.

I am going with silver at least until I get creamed a bunch of times.

Also, get I & B latest version and community patch if you can, if you don't want to miss out on things.

Yeah, I have those. Great that you can pause the game. I believe that was not the case in the standard game?
 
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Enjoy your exploring of the game, Sacred is pretty good for that.

There are parts of the map I never visited yet, also many bosses I never tried to beat. Also tons of unsolved quests too. I might try to go solving quests and remembering which of them seem nice for experience when playing in free play mode. I enjoy playing free play mode killing stuff around from time to time.

Today I followed someones advice on fast leveling technique with solving first 3 quests of chainquest The Unholy Crusade in free play mode. Experience gain is just mad, and farming is decent too. If you care to clear dense mob packs around quest points, whole session lasts up to 10 minutes, and in that 10 minutes you get full level of experience using mentor potions, up to level 41 I currently am with pyro elf. Leveling is going very fast, I could get 7 levels in a single hour of playing with this method. Pyro elf has screen wide killing spell, so it's going fast with her. Don't know how long would take other chars to do it. But still, this is probably fastest leveling technique I tried so far. In goblin cave it took close to 15 minutes to gain level, this is considerably faster. And fun too. Amount of humans you kill is incredible. From time to time you have humans all over the screen, you almost don't see grass from them. It's rather rare they are in those quantities, but that happens. And every one of them gives over 1k xp.

After some fast leveling, I'll be ready to defeat the game and proceed to higher difficulty where I plan on exploring the map more to see interesting spots for leveling and stuff like that.
 
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Okay, a few more questions now that I have advanced a little more. With emphasis on 'little' - I go very slowly and often just enjoy the scenery. A visit at the mechant (I've met one so far) can take 20 minutes, simply checking out all the stuff, etc.

Q: Now that I am level 5, I have three button slots I can put combat arts in, and they correspond to the keys for 'Combat Art 1', 'CA 2' and 'CA 3' in the controls meny. So I can do quick swaps between the CAs I put there. Are these all the buttons I will get (plus a few more, as I see there are a few more buttons in the meny)? Seems really few and limiting to me, and there seems to be a real need to change (with a lot of guessing for a noob like me!) which ones to have hotkeyed for different areas/enemies. This reminds me a lot of Diablo 1 where you only have 4 skill buttons. Compare to D2 where you have 16(!) buttons. Even though some of them may be needed for Attack, Throw, Town Portal and Unsummon, that still leaves a dozen for skills.
I have read a little about combos, but they also need to be placed in these CA button slots to be easily accessible, right? So they compete for the same button slots.

Q: I currently have two villagers (wannabe hunters) who follow me around. They say they want to learn how to hunt deer, but I do not see that I have started any quest relating to this. They even followed me into a dungeon. They do offer a little help (alert me to foes, do a little damage, take some heat off of me) but they can also be confusing because I may mistake them for an enemy (or much worse, the other way around!). So when will they be satisfied with their lesson?
 
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You have started your class-specific chain quest by talking to the hunters (clicking on them). Take them to the deer next to the farmhouse on the path from the shoreline to Sloeford and the quest will continue. If you are unsure about the quest location, open your quest log (L) and select the blue quest. A blue circle will appear on the map and a blue arrow on the compass, telling you where to go.

Re: combat arts - you will get up to five buttons once you level up a bit. The combat system is not nearly as complex as D2, and it usually amounts to "right click until everything is dead". You'll probably want Ancient Bark and Sinister Predator in your buff slots (need Concentration to unlock the second buff slot), and Ravaged Impact and Multishot (forgot the actual name) as primary combat arts. The rest can be filled with utility skills (tangled vine is a good one to have).

A typical noob failure is to read more than 1 rune into combat arts other than semi-buffs (buffs with a limited duration and fixed cooldown). So for maximum DPS, Ravaged Impact + Multishot should stay at level 1 until you have items with regeneration per hit (kind of like mana steal).
 
You have started your class-specific chain quest by talking to the hunters (clicking on them). Take them to the deer next to the farmhouse on the path from the shoreline to Sloeford and the quest will continue. If you are unsure about the quest location, open your quest log (L) and select the blue quest. A blue circle will appear on the map and a blue arrow on the compass, telling you where to go.

Thanks. I think I'll first keep them around for a sidequest that involves kobolds and plants (being a botanist myself, this sounds nice).

EDIT: Ah, I found another section of the quest log that contains this quest.

Re: combat arts - you will get up to five buttons once you level up a bit. The combat system is not nearly as complex as D2, and it usually amounts to "right click until everything is dead". You'll probably want Ancient Bark and Sinister Predator in your buff slots (need Concentration to unlock the second buff slot), and Ravaged Impact and Multishot (forgot the actual name) as primary combat arts. The rest can be filled with utility skills (tangled vine is a good one to have).

I am still doing a lot of micromanaging on the fights - I follow my instincts. Probably not the most effective but I will learn. So I combine Attack and Ravaged Assault with evasive (Forst Flight) and healing (Goldenglade Touch) moves, and run around a lot. I wouldn't need to at this stage but I want to develop good habits early. I have learned the two buffs you mention, and have Sinister Predator on. The two CAs I know I want to use that I haven't found any runes for yet are Tangled Vine and Darting Assault (<- that's the name you sought).

The combat system may not be as complex as in D2, but the skill system, the item system (and the interaction between the two) sure is.

A typical noob failure is to read more than 1 rune into combat arts other than semi-buffs (buffs with a limited duration and fixed cooldown). So for maximum DPS, Ravaged Impact + Multishot should stay at level 1 until you have items with regeneration per hit (kind of like mana steal).

I have understood most of this. I am following the general outline of a Nature/Hunter hybrid build guide. Then main thing I need to choose is the order in which to unlock the skills (and some are prereqs for others), and which CAs to mod first (and on occasion ponder if I should pick the other choice than what the guide recommends) :)
 
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I've made level 2 shopping char. It's pretty much finished in literally 5 minutes, how long it takes to level up and to buy 3 bargaining runes. Also shopped +1 bargaining hat, so now my bargaining is 6, and char level is 2. Everything is filled with yellow at shops. Rings and amulets I shop are comparable to stuff I farm with level 60 characters. Very mad and very easy to do. Now I can farm gear for new characters which will last up to level 60 no problem. So cool. I recommend.
 
The two CAs I know I want to use that I haven't found any runes for yet are Tangled Vine and Darting Assault (<- that's the name you sought).

Remember you can buy any rune you want for any 4 runes + 500 gold at the runemaster NPC (available once you solve a certain quest in Sloeford, or later on in most villages).
 
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