LEXX

I have to say, I came to a similar conclusion, after my Vampire run. I like maxing out characters and reaching endgame content in ARPGs, but in Sacred that seems like a much lengthier process, and I've lost motivation to do it. Going further after lvl50 doesn't seem rewarding enough, because all I'll be grinding for is numbers, but the character itself and the gameplay style won't change between level 50 to max. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, a lot of hanck'n'slash ARPG are like that, including their daddy, Diablo 2. In D2 you can reach a point where your build takes shape around level 50, and then you keep playing the rest of nightmare and hell difficulty for fun and higher tier loot. The only difference, in D2 it doesn't take long to get there... unless you have to grind for gear, then it's pain. Diablo 2 also increases champion and unique spawns in higher difficulties to make it more interesting, I'm not sure if Sacred does a similar thing, or the whole world has fixed spawns that never change and only get a level boost in higher difficulty. I'm happy I could finally play a full campaign of Sacred, and will be looking forward to doing it again with another character in the future.

Oh, I see, I should've installed Reborn from the get go, to take full advantage of the rebalancing. Your post made me consider starting over from scratch, but if I do that I'll probably try a different class this time, as I don't want to go through the process of building another vampire, I'm afraid I'll get bored if I do that, after spend a lot of hours on that class already. It will have to be something different from the melee play style. I want to make a build that is both powerful and lazy/less effort, that focuses on using just a few skills and having good survivability at the same time, because I'm a bad player and I like it simple. I've read somewhere that the Dwarf has an overpowered skill, "Mortar Grenade". Maybe I should make a build that focuses on that ability, while still keeping the vampire in mind for future continuation. The question is, how viable is the skill in Reborn? I guess I'll start the character, once I get the Mortar Grenade I can test its power, since I can easily switch between vanilla and Reborn.

@Dax thank you for the recommendations. Unfortunately, I've already focused on swords, so I can't train Axe Lore, I have no available slots. I might take a few screenshots to show my build. I feel like right now my gear is underleveled, since it is all set or rare (yellow) items from bronze, and a few items from silver Underworld. I jumped in Arcania on silver, and I'm very happy to see that I can use my portal waypoints, and don't have to discover them again. I killed the desert dragon once, didn't get anything good. I assume that, if I want to farm him, I need to make multiplayer games? I will give it a try. I also need to mention that up to this point I played the game 100% vanilla, but yesterday I've installed the latest Sacred ReBorn patch, and I'm loving the quality of life features it provides, but I also have a feeling that it makes the game even harder. I've already noticed that my Ripping Claws are damage nerfed by 25-30%... wasn't very happy about that. On the plus side, it looks like the attack hit chances are improved, not only for combat arts, but also for the regular attack. I hope I'm right about that. By the way, the Dryad Forest is one of the few places I'm not looking forward to going back to. It's a frustrating place for a melee character with all the enemies with entrapment spells. But you got me curious what these "living trees" are. And speaking of summons, at the moment I have focused on training only the spells I use - Turn Into Vampire level 22, Ripping Claws lvl25, Whirling Claws level 27, and Claw Jump lvl15. The question is, is it late to start developing the bats and the wolf summons? Do I need to bring them to around the same level of the enemies I'm facing in order for them to be effective? I'm level 63 at the moment and I'm in Act 2 Silver, fighting enemies that are 2-3 levels above me. I will farm the desert dragon and share some screenshot with the build and gear I have, so you can tell me how bad I've screwed up. I'm not going to lie, I've read a few vampire builds here on the forum, just to get a better idea how build the class for melee in permanent vampire form, but these builds are from before 2010, so I'm not sure how viable they are.

@RuDDicK thank you! I've noticed the weapon switching bug, and figured out how to deal with it. It's not a big deal at the moment, since I only use one weapon (a rare 2h sword) and don't have viable alternatives. I also just realized that I've screwed myself big time, and have to replay the entire campaign on silver, because I couldn't finish the Underworld campaign... I'm not even sure if beating it on silver would grant me access to gold. But the end of Underworld is brutal, I got to the part with these annoying squid/slime-like creatures that freeze the cooldown of my combat arts and I couldn't pass through the area to reach the final dungeon. It was day time and fighting them was impossible, so I decided to try and run pass by them, but they were so many! I ran out of potions (I had around 30, and it still wasn't enough) and I had to reload the save and export the hero, since I didn't want to lose my survival bonus, which is at 70% at the moment. I'm not dealing with these guys again, this has to be of the most frustrating enemy type I've ever seen in an isometric ARPG.

Hello there! So I got back into Sacred Underworld, something I thought I'll never do, but it happened, and I'm happy to say, this is my best time I ever had with the game, after previously failing to progress much in the regular campaign. I still have some problems with it though... for example, the intense backtracking still drives me nuts from time to time. On the plus side, progressing further in the game got me to the parts I was missing out on in my previous attempts, stuff like the more interesting monsters, boss encounters, and loot. I got hooked and finished the original campaign on bronze (because I'm a noob), and got pretty strong by the end, one shotting most monsters with my melee vampiress. Here's the problem now... I decided to continue in the upper difficulties, but first I wanted to complete the Underworld campaign on silver difficulty. I've switched to it, and all of a sudden I'm doing miserable damage. On my character stat screen it says my normal attack should be doing an average of 1500 damage and my Ripping Claws attack is supposed to be doing an average of 6000 damage... and that's exactly how much damage they did by the end of bronze, but at the start of Underworld in silver, my regular attack damage is 400-500 and my Ripping Claws around 2000, even though it says they should be 3x times stronger. I'm talking about the damages during daytime, of course. What is the cause of this? Are the enemies tougher? I'm sure they are, but what exactly makes them neglecting 2/3rds of my damage? Do they have more armor and defenses, but similar health according to their class? I hope the reason for the bad damage is not some game breaking bug, that's my worst fear. Seeing the damage numbers plummeting like that, and all of a sudden going from having an OP character to struggling to kill regular enemies, is really discouraging. Anyway, I'm still looking forward to continuing the original campaign on the higher difficulties. I'll use this thread for further questions and help, if that's okay.

For the 10th time (at least) the most amazing, atmospheric and immersive RPG of all time - Gothic 2: Night of the Raven. My all-time favorite video game, together with its predecessor, and the one I recommend the most to every fan of the genre. On a pure role playing level, the first two Gothic games are among the best in the genre. They've pioneered many immersive world building aspects that we don't see in other open world RPG's, even to this day. But other than that, there's something else that is special about these games, that I just can't quite explain. It has to be experienced.

Тhis song actually inspired Metallica's Welcome Home (Sanitarium)

Yes, the Community Patch is already installed. The Character Editor will be something to keep on back of my mind, if I want to switch builds in a later difficulty. I'll install it, but I hope I don't have to use it on my first class... still, it's good to know that an option for respec exist. Speaking of which, I like the pure melee Shadow Warrior builds for a starting class. I wanted to do 1h+Shield build, but I saw only one build here on the forum and people are questioning it, because the guy didn't invest points in weapon expertise. What would you recommend for a noob, 1h & Shield, Dual Wielding, or Two Handed?

Thank you so much brother! Believe it or not, your post convinced me to give Sacred 2 another shot. I'm not interested in downloading legendary or any kind of loot, as I love hunting for items myself. It's much more satisfying when you put and effort to get the items you need and you finally see them drop on the battlefield. However, I am 100% sold on the Character Editor as I would love to experiment with builds... not cheating, just reseting my passive skills and see what works... basically, like a regular respec option. Sacred 2 is huge yes, and it goes on for multiple playthroughs, with a level cap of 200 if I'm not mistaken. So that being said, playing for numerous hours and finding out that my character doesn't work at level 50-ish, with no option to respec, will be another game killer for me. So thank you very much for bringing up the Editor, I would definitely try it out. By the way, if anyone has already mentioned the editor in the older posts from more that a year ago, sorry, I haven't reread them, so I don't remember. I also like your game plan for Sacred 2... going for level ~10 on Bronze and then switching to Silver for increased rewards and challenge, sounds fun, especially if I stick to the main stories and quests and venture to the side ones only if I need extra experience to handle the challenge... yeah, I can live with that! My approach before was always grinding and picking up everything that is on the map, because I felted it was mandatory to gain the levels, loot and active skills. It was also kind of a habit for me in any games if this type, because it's hard to just ignore the side content, even if it's not too exciting or interesting.... it's just that in Sacred 2 there's SOOO much of it that it feels like a chore to try and clear all there is. So I need to change my ways and ignore some of it, if I want to progress. The rest is in my favor... I like the world much better in 2, except the dungeons I've seen so far... it also has similarly boring caves like in Underworld, but I'll have to live with it. Another plus I've already mentioned - the passive skill system and loot are very interesting to me, even though I don't have a full grasp on them yet. So yeah, I will definitely be doing some Sacred 2 in the upcoming months, I'm a bit busy with work during summer season, so I'm not gonna rush into it and spend too much in-game hours from the get go... maybe that would be for the best. Btw: If by that "special cut scene" you mean the concert with Blind Guardian... yeah, I've been there, and I absolutely love the band, especially their early work and songs like Trial by Archon+Wizards Crown. Unfortunately even their epic in-game concert and their legendery instruments as part of my gear, wasn't enough to keep me going last time. Which reminds me of the easter eggs and humor. Yeah they're definitely a plus, but not a bit selling point for me. A lot of the humor comes from dialogues, but in these types of games I almost always skip the dialogues, especially if they're not fully voice acted. I just can bring myself to care about what NPCs have to say, when 90% of the side quests are "save my ship, or cow, or chicken", "find my child", "please escort me", "go over there and kill 5 bandits" and so on, you get the picture. About Sacred 1 (Underworld) - I don't think there's anything that can convince me to go back to that game at this point... but thanks for trying. Back when I made this topic, I was critical on the game but not too judgmental.... Now? I just hate the world, I can't spend 20 minutes in it. It's not a problem with the game, it's a problem with me... the world of Sacred Underworld goes against most of what I like and want from an open world game. I already mention Divine Divinity as an example of what I think is a good isometric open (or not fully open) world and the difference with Sacred is like night and day.

I'm surprised to get a response to this topic a year later... thank you very much sir! I probably would have kept updating the topic with my experiences with the games, but just a couple of days after I posted it, I once again lost interest in the games. Now that Wolcen turned out to be a complete disappointment and a Diablo 3 rip off, and after replaying some of my favorite games in the genre, I'm really running out of ideas of what to play to satisfy my addiction for loot hunting. You make some good points, but you're not 100% on the spot about my taste for the genre, let me explaing better. Here's what I want from games like Sacred 1 and 2... Most important aspects: 1. Fast paced gameplay and leveling - as I already explained in the first post, the first two Sacred games don't deliver in these aspects, in my opinion. By fast paced, I mean like Diablo 2 or Titan Quest (even though TQ starts very slow), but not like Diablo 3 or Path of Exile, which are way over the top, especially with their splashy action and effects that makes it hard to tell what is happening on the battlefield (I hate that). 2. Interesting loot and skill system... they don't have to be perfect (there's no perfect loot systems in any game I've played), just to keep me interested in farming items and leveling would be enough. I think here, both games deliver. 3. Varied world and dungeons - I don't like the world of Sacred 1, it's incredibly boring to me. It's way too open (just like said, a desert), every town and dungeon/cave feel the same... at least from what I've seen. I much rather have a world that is divided in smaller sections/dungeons and acts, with each area/dungeon offering something unique to the eye. I also like more linear worlds that take you on a varied journey, like in Titan Quest or the first Dungeon Siege. I'm not saying that these games or Diablo 2 have no repetitive looking areas - they do, but the every act in these games is completely different and offers a couple of new dungeon types to explore. By that I mean, you're not going to see a crypt in act 3 that looks like the crypts in act 1. Sacred 1 and 2 have no act separation and the crypts and caves (God, I hate the caves) are painfully repetitive. 4. The enemies - I don't know what is it about Sacred, but the enemies are incredibly boring and repetitive. Add to that, the infinite re-spawning the moment you leave the screen and as a result travelling and exploring the world drive me insane. Like I said in my first post, re-spawning should always happen when you save/exit and reload your game, not while you take a step off screen. And that's the same reason I can't get into Sacred 2. While the world seems a lot better in 2, the repetitive boring enemies and infinite re-spawning kills it for me. Almost 80 percent of the enemies are humanoids on 2 feet, or wolves, or bears, or rats. Where are the monsters, where's the originality? I have to mention again Diablo 2... does it have a lot of repetitve monsters? Yes. Does it have a lot of re-skined monsters that appear in different acts? Yes. But the monsters are interesting. And there's random spawns unique and champion groups who give 5x times the experience, have higher drop chance for loot, and get random abilities and auras. The champion spawns in Sacred, never felt unique and are just as boring as the regular monsters. Not to mention that you don't feel the benefit of fighting them, because the experience gain is sooo SLOW... Aspects I don't care about in a game of this type: 1. Story and lore - you're right that I love story driven RPGs - games such as the Gothic series, Morrowind, the first Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, the Fallout games. When I play "Diablo clones" the last thing I care is the story... in fact I skip dialogues even of first playthrough. Which brings me to the next point.... 2. Quest complexity - I don't care quest complexity at all! "Go to "X" location and kill "X" boss" is fine by me. Yet almost all quests in Sacred fail to satisfy me. Why? While simple enough, they lead to nothing interesting - no cool dungeons, no different monster encounters than what you're already fighting in the overworld, no cool bosses, no rewards at the end. And I definitely hate repetitive quests, like the endless escort quest in both games. I'd take Diablo 2's total of 30 quest any day over the hundreds of meaningless quests in the Sacred games - I just wan to visit an interesting location and slay some epic monsters that are unique to the quest I'm doing. Take Titan Quest for example of that. I know TQ is not everyone's cup of tea and that's understandable. But that game has some of the most memorable boss fights. Not to mention, when you unlock higher difficulties, you also unlock some optional Epic and Legendary boss fights, which are very rewarding if your character can handle them. I think that covers it... I need to add that my criticism is based on the first 25-30 hours of gameplay, that's the time mark I was able to reach in both Sacred 1 and 2, before I lose interest completely and abandon them for months or years. However, there's a good possibility I'll give the games another chance in the upcoming months if I struggle to find what to play.... maybe I'll try only Sacred 2 this time.

@Mare, so the side quests are somewhat necessary? I was afraid of that. I agree with that, I just haven't found anything in Sacred that is worth putting hundreds of hours into the game. We have different tastes and that's fine, I respect your opinion and I'm grateful for it. To be honest, Titan Quest gets me bored too, but only if I put too much time into it. For me it is the perfect title to go back to every now and then. It's just such a beautiful game, the environments are gorgeous, the loot system and character customization are fantastic. Morrowind is one of my favorite games of all time, but that's a story driven RPG, I mean, the difference between that and Sacred is like night and day. I can play Morrowind and the Gothic games (which are my all time favorite) for hundreds of hours, making different choices, joining different factions and even reading the books... but when I play a hack and slash D2 clone, I want crazy action, I want to build powerful characters, I want kill epic monsters and hunt for loot. I want to play Sacred for 200 hours too, but for that to happen, I need the side quests to be more enjoyable, I need more diverse monster encounters, two way teleportation from any location and less backtracking... and no enemy re-spawns unless I save/quit the game. Tonight I'll do another session in Sacred 1, I just started a Gladiator a few days ago, but again I begun to get really bored with the game and that led to this topic. Last time I played I was in a cave and I triggered an escort quest, however the quest didn't appear in my logbook and there's no waypoint on the map for it, so I don't know where to go to complete it and because of that, now I have 3 characters following me everywhere and refuse to die because they don't engage in battle... it's the little things like this that makes it really for me to like the game, but I WILL try. Thanks for the replies guys.

In the last couple of years (8) I've been trying to get into the Sacred (I & II) games, but I just find them to be very polarizing. I'll try my best to explain what I mean in this topic. I don't expect anyone to agree with me and I'm not trying to change your mind about Sacred. I'm just looking for a place to share my opinion and maybe have a little discussion that could potentially help me to finally appreciate these games. So let's begin, and please, excuse my bad english... like I said, I'm trying my best here. I love hack and slash ARPGs! I'm definitely no expert in them, but I view them in a certain way and have my own criteria for the genre. I think they're probably my favorite genre of games. When done right, the so called "Diablo clones", outshine other games, thanks to their replayability. I'm not saying Diablo 2 and it's ilk are the best game ever made (far from it), but they are the most addictive games. Unfortunately there's not many true hack and slash ARPGs out there and if you're a fan of the genre, you'll have a hard time finding what to play. I mean it's not hard to list all existing D2 clones, they're like 10 games, maybe less... If you look for something new, sometimes you just have to stretch out and reach for games that just don't fit the criteria. There are things that I absolutely love about the Sacred games. The character customization is very strong. The loot system is great too. In fact I find both, the customization and loot, to be very original and fresh and usually that would be enough (well, almost) to convince me to play such a game. But I also like the atmosphere of Sacred I, and while in Sacred II they kinda ruin it, I still think the world was interesting enough to explore (up until I got bored with it). So what's my problem then? Well... Sacred I & II are regarded as Diablo clones, but that couldn't be further from the truth. So what? That doesn't mean they're bad games, right? Of course not, but only if they didn't tried so hard to be a Diablo clone in the skin of something else. Confused yet? I'll try to explain... please, don't hate me. My main issue is that the game is too big, which severely slow down character progression. You have a big open world with enemy re-spawns and a ton of backtracking with no 2 way teleportation. If you want to teleport to a far away town to turn in a quest, you need to go to the nearest teleporter... which in most cases is not near at all. In Sacred 2 you can only teleport to the portals but not back to the location you teleport from. Or, you can teleport to the last monolith you've activated, but again, it's a one way ticket... I'll never understand why didn't they let you teleport to every monolith that you've discovered. Am I correct on this or am I missing something? For some reason big open worlds in isometric games just don't work for me. The isometric point of view makes exploring very tedious. You see, in a 3rd person (over the shoulder point of view) or 1st person RPGs, you have the ability to look around you in 360 degrees, as far as the draw distance of game allows you. In an isometric game you can barely see further that your own nose, making exploration a chore. Add the backtracking and the enemy re-spawns and you have a bad formula. Divine Divinity did isometric exploration way better than Sacred, by making the unexplored areas dark not only on the map but in the game itself, making it easy to keep track to where you've been. I'm not saying Divine Divinity qualifies as a true hack and slash masterpiece, no, I think it's more of a story driven RPG than it is a Diablo clone. Divine Divinity also didn't have enemy re-spawns and questing was diverse and meaningful which differentiates it from a classic hack and slashes. In Sacred 1 the unexplored areas are dark only on the mini map, which makes it hard to keep track of the area you want to explore. In other words, open world isometric exploration feels like mowing a huge lawn... and there's nothing fun in that. Now, I get it, this is something you don't have to do in every playthrough, maybe only once to familiarize yourself with the world... but what happen when I can barely even reach the half way point of the game in my first playthrough and get completely burned out from it? That always happens. A few months will pass and I'll get tired of playing Diablo 2, Titan Quest, the Torchlight games, and say to myself "maybe I should try again the Sacred games, maybe the last time I didn't gave them a fair try", then I will install them, play them for about 10 hours each, get tired of the extremely slow progression and the never ending boring quests, and then uninstall until the whole process repeats a few months later. And speaking of the side quests, well, that's my other big problem. They are useless! I'm not complaining about the story, I'm perfectly fine with bad stories, because I don't care about them. The problem is the side quests themselves lead to nothing interesting. No cool bosses, no cool rewards and no cool locations. And all the escort missions drive me insane, they are the worst! Does that change in the second half of the game? You tell me, I haven't been there and probably never will. I'm interested in how you guys play these games? Do you ignore completely the side missions and just focus on high level monster killing and the main quests? I guess I could just ignore everything and stick to meaningless exploration, that could make the game more enjoyable but for how long? Now let me draw the comparisons: Diablo 2 - no open world, no meaningless exploration and almost all quests are optional. You have no enemy re-spawns unless you refresh the maps by save/quit the game, so you're completely in control of that aspect. Also, no backtracking, always going forward to a clear objective, to the next boss, or the the next farming spot. You have quick progression, the game is no too long, the main goal (Hell difficulty) you can reach in under 10 hours and by that time your build is also reaching its final look (at least when it comes to skills). Titan Quest - the same thing. The game is designed like a long journey. You start in a small village and almost never have to look back. No tedious wide open maps, almost everything is on your way going forward. You have epic bosses and diverse environments, every act feels different. The game is a bit long but possible to complete in under 15 hours and move to the next difficulty. The only negative is that there's no randomization in the maps and the monster spawns. The only random encounters are the hero spawns, but they are nothing special either Torchlight 2 - very smooth, fast leveling and progression, random maps, tons of bosses and dungeons to explore. And quick and engaging action too. All these traits also apply to games like Grim Dawn (though GD have some tedious maps), Path of Exile. Heck, even the highly criticized Diablo 3 covers more the these aspects very well. For me Sacred 1 & 2 do not qualify in that category. Progression is so slow and the game is so big that you have to play for hundreds of hours to complete all difficulties and move to another class/build. Like I said, that wouldn't be such a problem if the world offered some interesting boss and random encounters... but everything just feels so boring and scripted that the only way it could be interesting for me would be if the game is way shorter and the leveling is much faster. I just don't have the required time and even if I do, I lose patience with the boring monsters and quests. At the end of the day these games are about building badass characters, hunt for treasures, so the faster you get to that point (final difficulty/the endgame) and to the potential of your build - the better the game is. Like I said, I love the customization, the loot and the overall atmosphere, but that's just not enough to overwrite the bad feelings I have with the franchise. At the beginning of the topic I said the problem is that sacred tries too hard to be a Diablo clone in the skin of something else. What I meant is that the games looks and feel like something you should play through only once per character, but is designed with the idea to be re-played multiple times and waste hundreds of hours of meaningless questing and slow progression. That just doesn't right for me. I'm not trying to change your mind and I don't expect everyone to agree with me... but I'm sure at least some of you may feel the same way on some of the the points I'm trying to make. Or maybe you can change my mind? I hope you do, because I really want to like the games.