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Welcome to Darkmatters, Efrén!! If you keep your proceedings on this thread for now, it'll keep the various attempts together. How about starting a new thread if you get some success? If not with this community here for finding players, I know there have been players on Steam Community looking to connect to other players.\ https://steamcommunity.com/app/225640/discussions/ If you're able to get a stable connection going, it would be a worthwhile effort and thread/guide for new players gogo

A long time ago, but not in a galaxy far, far away, I used to play a game called Patrician III, made by Ascaron. Because of that game, I became a member of the Ascaron International Forum and learned of an ongoing project called "Sacred". At first glance, I wasn't a fan of the game. I'd tried RPG's before but never really liked them; however, what I saw looked good and somehow the environment as well as the few things of the storyline looked interesting. So, when the demo was released - a few days prior to the release of the game, if I remember it correctly - I decided to download the demo and give it a try. if I didn't like it, I can delete it, if I did, I could give the game a go. Well, the rest is; as they say; history. My first attempt was the Seraphim as I liked her looks (after all, MMORPG means "Many Men Online Role Playing Girls") and the idea of combining magic with the use of weapons. However, her start was quite hard due to her location and after a few deaths I was about to give up on the game. Still, I decided to give the Gladiator a go as well, since he was the other "main" character of the game. He too died in his first fight, but by now I began to understand the mechanics, so a new attempt kept him alive. After that, the next fight was a bit easier, escaping from the arena a piece of cake and off to explore I went. With a better understanding of the mechanics, it became easier to face and kill the amount of goblins you encounter. Crossing a brook into another part of the first area was a piece of cake and soon other enemies were lying in the dirt, playing dead as well. Not much longer I began to realise that a blue item was better as a white one, a yellow better as a blue and that extra bonus at those weapons often had a positive effect of what you do. I also learned the hard way that it wasn't a good idea to eat too many runes, since regen time went up a lot faster as the damage modifiers did. So off I went, from Bellevue to the area around it, then accross the bridge to Silvercreek and beyond all the way into the first area. I learned lots of interesting things, exchanged info with some members of a Patrician III board I had joined and of whom I knew they were trying the demo as well, learned even more and realized I had begun to like that demo. In fact, I liked it that much I'd decided to actually buy the game. And so I did the first weekend after the release. And only then because of work making it hard for me to buy it at release, otherwise I'd had it a couple of days earlier. I played if for a couple of days in SP to get a better feeling of the game, the controls and the atmosphere - which is still an important thing to me - and at some point joined some ppl of that Patrician board to do an MP game. We had our fun, but for some of them the game wasn't what they thought it would be, so they bailed out. I decided to keep playing and because of knowing it would be more fun with a community as at a private server, decided to join the Sacred MP community. SC was my first attempt, it was nice, but somehow after reading so many comments at the SIF - or Sacred International Forum - decided that HC would be more challenging and certainly more fun. Or perhaps it was more fun and certainly more challenging? Well, fun it was indeed. I still remember the wolves showing torches at nightfall. I still remember how players died, decided to run to Porto Vallum before logging off and ending up with creating another 20 or so characters because they kept dying in the first part of the game. I remember how Ascaron released a huge patch for free, calling it the "plus" upgrade and changing the name in Sacred Plus afterwards, which solved quite a lot of bugged quests and other bugs. I remember how nice the HC community was and at some point having Gogo run a bank to support starting characters with gold. Usually gold he picked up at the starter's island which was dropped by other players. I remember the item drops and so many other things. And most of them are fond memories, although "Clan-RUS" always left a bad taste in my mouth with their monster-spawn killing of players as I lost 2 of my chars to them as well; including one level 115 seraphim that just had received a few setpieces of another player. But games slowly fade away and with Sacred it wasn't any different. I think I played more hours of that game when Underworld was released and I had a blast! Especially with my Cannon Dwarf. So when Ascaron asked players to sign up to their Sacred 2 beta test, I did and was accepted. I had a good time in that Beta period, even when knowing the existence of Ascaron was about to end if the game failed at launch. And it did - very unfortunately - because Deep Silver pushed for a release, while the bank demanded money. Using another publisher for the NA release certainly didn't help Ascaron either. I've played quite some time in Sacred 2, never did much of multi player mostly because of what happened at Clan DA and I had that clantag in my name, but also because I had to change my lifestyle a bit. Yet, even then I kept playing Sacred: UW and enjoying it. That was, until I upgraded my computer and began using Win7. I tried to run the game, but somehow it always failed at launch and eventually I just uninstalled it, hoping to be able to play it again some day. When Steam had the game for sale at some point, I bought it, knowing that the Steam game was said to run better at modern OS as the old disc versions. And it did, until I upgraded my system to Win10. Same problem I had before appeared, being the game locking at loading the fonts, forcing me to reboot my PC or laptop. So I had kinda given up on the game, fearing the only solution to run it would be using an old PC or - after buying a new one - downgrading the curent one to Vista and run the game on that. That was, until I decided to look at this forum and found this post at the forum: Today I tried the fix and it worked. For the first time in ages I was able to play the RPG I liked so much, which brought me into contact with some great players and a nice community. And while playing the game I realized something else. It's been 12-13 years ago when Sacred was released. I've been playing this game for multiple times in the past 12 - 13 years and usually I have been enjoying every bit of it. Just as I've been enjoying Sacred 2 for the same reason. In those 12 - 13 years I've been playing Diable 3 and although I like that game, I do miss something in its atmosphere. In those 12 - 13 years I've been playing Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim and Elder Scrolls Online. And although I enjoy(ed) all these games, I still missed something in it. I think that "it" is the atmosphere and humour of the game. In both Sacred and Sacred 2 you know you're in a gloomy area because of the atmosphere. Marshes had that gloomy, dark look over them, other area's were people were happy, are bright and light. But it was also the outfit of what you encountered. Sakkara priests wearing dark habits and sickles to harvest the souls of their victims. The comments they made when you encountered them, the things Goblins yelled when encountering them. The inscriptions at tombstones, menhirs, signs or what people said. It was all part of what the Sacred experience made special. For me, Sacred is like that first love you once had. Every now and then your thoughts return to that person and you wonder how (s)he's doing. Perhaps you're even in contact with that person and occasionally doing nice things with him / her. It's been 12 - 13 years since I began playing Sacred and somehow I got the feeling I'll be playing Sacred 12 - 13 years from now. And I'll be enjoying every minute of it, I'm certain of that. And now, if you excuse me, I've got a Seraphim to level to 216. Thorin