Hal900x

Just finished it. The ghost NPC gave me some diaries, but I didn't pick them up before the town transitioned to daytime. What are they?

Southwest of Lakeview Tavern, in Act II, there are a lot of ghosts. Taking a path directly South of the nearest resurrection stone, you come to a ghost guard who tells you "You need permission from the baron" to pass the gate. I haven't found anything in the wiki other than that you cannot pass because "The baron is long dead". There looks to be a whole town beyond it, with a merchant icon. Maybe there is another way in but I haven't found it. There looks to be a path parallel to the river running NE that leads to Lakeview Tavern but I can't seem to find that either, I just end up following the river until it's blocked. Pretty good sized area back there that is clearly populated with something! I tried looking at the online map but I couldn't locate Lakeview Tavern even though I was pretty certain I was looking in the right place. Also could not find the icon key for the online map, only the in-game one, on the wiki even though it says I should see both. EDIT: I figured it out. This game is great but has some major flaws. The quest tracker is one of them. Often my objectives vanish from the map, and/or the next step in the quest doesn't show up in the log. Sacred II doesn't know how to recover from a crash, in particular. And of course, there is the pathing...God, it's so bad. Still, I play every damn day.

Yep, that's what I was looking for. Still playing, just haven't posted in a while.

Yeah that explains dust devil but not goldenglade. No matter what I do, invest skill points, items, etc it's regen time does not go down. Maybe because it's a defensive ca?

How can I tell what gets unlocked? Because even if I do have the skill, it still only says something like "modifier: ranged weapons". There is still no number after it whether it is unlocked or not.

Unlock what bonus? There is no number next to it. You mean to say I am not getting any of the 3 or 4 different stats on the item unless I have the modifier skill?

Most gear pieces etc have a "modifier:skillname" property on them. This is before or after the usual bonuses you might see. I've got some shoes that say modifier: ranged weapons, followed by chance to evade 5%, physical damage +6.5%, etc. The ranged weapons modifier has no number after it. Another pair of shoes might have Shield Lore, etc. So far it's always been just one of these blank modifiers on each piece. How does this work? Does it boost the numbered modifiers on the item by a multiple of the "modifier" skill?

I noticed that Goldenglade Touch's regen time is not reduced by Combat Discipline. Didn't see anything about this on the wiki, but I'm guessing it only benefits combat arts that are attacks or do damage. That or it's a bug. Edit: it gets weirder: Dust Devil is at 46s regen. Putting it into a combo makes it 45.9s. That's not 10%. What's going on here? Is it a display bug?

Can you mount a horse with quest npcs following you? That's the only thing I can come up with. Completely new to the game, just got my first horse. I dont have Riding skill but I didn't think you needed it. Edit: Nevermind, it was a glitch. Reloaded and it was fine

I'm using this early Dryad build to try out Sacred 2: There are so many different stats, esp. on jewelry, in this game. Sure, I know what they supposedly do, but I don't know what to prioritize and equip. I have like 10 rings and pendants with so many different things: spell intensity, chance to evade, reduced chance for enemy to evade, base stats like Stamina, just on and on and onnnn. The deep mathematics guides bewilder me a bit, so any help would be appreciated.

That's just...awful. Woody, since you are so knowledgable, tell me: I killed my first boss today, and the best item that dropped was also the one I didn't have room for in my pack. I summoned my imp, who was off-screen. I walked to him, put a bunch of stuff in, and went back to the item. It wasn't there. I lost the single best drop of the game so far. Is this a bug, or are items supposed to vanish as soon as you move out of sight?

Is there a key/mouse combo to quickly move items to or from the stash, rather than dragging them individually? I tried out shift, alt, crtl and right/left click combos but maybe I missed something. so far I've only succeeded in dropping of destroying items :|

I've run into a couple NPCs that accompany you for killing quests and do attack, like Wilbur in Sacred 1. So not really escort NPCs. I assume the behavior is the same as for summons, so I'm worried I will have the same issue. I did play with all those control keys but they still leave my screen all the time, even if I set "close to me" behavior.

Only just starting, but so far the followers are useless. They stray far behind, out of screen range and seem to attack randomly. I have played with the Range key and the individual/group attack modes but neither seems to change anything. Is there a way to get them to actually stay close to you so you don't lose them?

Thanks Woody. It wasn't documented in the key reference in the manual or the game binds. There is always a bit of digging with the Sacred games.

Taking a break from Sacred Gold to check out 2. Is there a hotkey to "attack in place", ie stop moving so you can attack from range with bow, magic, etc? There isn't one shown in the keybindings. IIRC in Sacred Gold it was CTRL. Or is there a mechanic that makes this unnecessary?

I think people are hallucinating the "higher resolutions". They will be very obvious, your character would be much smaller and the area you can see on-screen much larger. I have 20 years of tweaking experience with graphics and I have tried everything on Sacred Gold. The game was hard-coded for 1024x768 and it cannot be changed. I would love to be wrong, but I don't think I am. EDIT: Watched the video. Sure enough, he's running in 1024. Kinda funny, I've seen a few of these tutorials but they never think to compare "before and after". Probably because Dxvoodoo can force filtering and it looks a bit nicer, if you don't mind some minor texture blurring, and they just think it's a higher resolution

Yes, I have perused it but not extensively. I really like the game but one of the most frustrating issues (for me) is that certain hotkeys just fail frequently, notably the gold pickup hotkey. That, and you must move before attacking when casting Soaring Demon. I am wondering if there is a fix for these. I will keep looking.

I will check it out, thx. Yeah I have done every screen tweak in the book. Windowed is all well and good, except it's locked at 1024x768, which is tiny. Sacred is very primitive in it's video mode, a "forced" resolution that cannot be altered. "borderless gaming" 3rd party app works pretty well, except it seems to increase the lag. It gives you a borderless fullscreen window, the best of both worlds but yeah, more lag. Dxvoodoo 2 is also helpful in reducing the lag, using a Glide or DirectX wrapper that allows a number of tweaks. Supposedly the latter can force higher resolutions, but I think that is a myth...I tried it without success. You can combine both mods and get a decent lag reduction along with borderless windowed mode, but then textures shimmer a lot. In the end I suck it up and run fullscreen, and save and quit when I want to check the web. Sacred is simply one of those games with graphical limitations that were out of date even when it was released.

OK now I'm really baffled. I thought I had combos figured out, in that the regen times were summed. They are not. A combo with regen times adding up to ~22 secs gives a combo regen time of 74 seconds. That isn't even multiplicative, it's some hidden formula I guess. Just when I thought I had a mechanic that actually worked...frankly that is kind of infuriating. So apparently combos are pretty pointless without a potion, unless the displayed regen time is incorrect. About to test it.

Fantastic. Thanks again. So the individual regen times are added together and the sum is applied at the end of the combo, hence the potions. Huzzah! Are the mechanics nearly the same in 2? I might skip to that for the fact that I suffer from a lot of machine-independent lag and, despite having tweaked for hours, still cannot get Sacred to run in any format that can be alt-tabbed out without major probs. Not to mention certain keys simply fail to activate intermittently, especially the loot button

PS: I really appreciate the replies given that this is a dead game. Is there a version of Sacred that is still popular? Perhaps I should move on to 2, 3 or wait for the upcoming new one. I hadn't realized how seemingly abandoned the game is, unlike some other ARPGs I play like Titan Quest. But the mechanics are very deep and that really attracts me to a game like this.

Thank you Augmint. I just this moment discovered the first point. The reason I was confused is that while in Soaring Form, the description of Descent actually changes to "Hard Hit". And it is in fact boosted by any +Hard Hit items, just as Assail is boosted by "Attack" runes, including those of other classes with a different name but identical function. EDIT: I should note that the former is from my experience, the latter is heresay from a guide. Could you elaborate on the combo reply? Example: I have two different spells in a combo, each with a different regen timer. The first regen is 9 seconds, the second is 7. When I use the combo, does the game wait 7 seconds and then cast the second spell in the combo, or is the 9 regen skipped and the second spell fired immediately? That is what I'm trying to determine. From your description, it sounds as if the potion is used to fire a second combo immediately, but I'm still not clear about the timing within a single combo, or what exactly the point of a combo is, other then collecting a bunch of gear with boosts to spells and creating a combo that uses more powerful spells than I can normally use without eating runes.

Thank you. I believe I have read the entirety of the wiki that's applicable, but didn't find the answers I am looking for. I also read the Daemon guide on Gamefaqs, which was informative but didn't answer this one. In fact, there seems to be very little on how Attack, Multi-hit and Hard Hit figure into the Daemon...only that they do, at least some of them. I will continue my search.

I'm a newbie to the game, but from playing a few levels it seems to me that in the Soaring form, using the skill again does the Descent finisher, and the normal attack becomes Hard Hit, correct? Now, first off Hard Hit has a regen time. That's confusing since the animation is just the standard pew pew pew of the regular crossbow attack. I'm not sure if Hard Hit is being mixed in with regular attacks, it always does a Hard Hit every time, or I need to trigger it somehow, perhaps with the mysterious "CTRL+Right Click" listed in the manual as "Attack or Special Move". I also notice that the icon only changes to Hard Hit when I have a crossbow equipped. If I switch to sword and shield the icon goes back to Descent. Is that correct? Boy does this game have a lot of undocumented mechanics!