Sacred 2 - Item Drop Mechanics

[Cthulhu 0]

Per a quick discussion I had with Antitrust, I've decided to post this spiel on this forum. I have not seen anyone else attempt to discern the game's item drop mechanics at this depth. Thus, this may be useful to the few of you who are into studying a game on this level. If someone else has already done similar research, I applaud you for being faster at getting the word out than myself... and would graciously appreciate it if someone would delete this thread.

 

I warn you however, as you will soon find out, there's still some work that needs to be done before anyone will be able to make a comprehensive list of the game's drops. If you're fine with that matter, read on:

 

 

 

 

How this began: A few weeks ago I set out to create a database that would allow someone to look up a unique/legendary/set item. They could then see what monsters they had to focus on killing in order to get the item desired.

 

Unfortunately, the game uses a seemingly far more complex set of algorithms to handle drops than Diablo 2.

 

 

1: The Server Scripts

 

As some of you may or may not know, quite a bit of knowledge can be discerned by reading what's inside the various scripts used to populate a server instance. The following are the ones pertaining to items:

 

A) blueprints.txt <- A script generated by the editor that gives the game the data to fill out all of the items within itself. The names for the items are stored separately in the "Global.Res" file found within your localization folder.

+ This file also gives the game what it needs to create individual item bonuses, the possible bonuses that rare items can incur, etc.

*Thus, if you are already getting ideas - don't try to make your own custom items unless you wish to edit over a previous item.*

 

B) drop.txt <- This script provides a the data that the game needs to know what the possible drop patterns are and what is included within them. One of the things within a pattern is a variable that some of you may recognize - the Danger Class.

 

C) creatures.txt <- This can be used to cross-reference with the drop.txt file and the blueprints.txt file in order to discern what all of the monsters are capable of dropping.

 

2: What is Done to Determine a Drop's Contents

 

The game uses several variables when you "roll" for a drop:

 

- The weighted probability associated with an item. (see drop.txt)

- The "dice" roll of your character, which is modified by the zbonus values located in balance.txt, along with your +% chance to find valuables. (dice rolls are determined to exist by viewing a binary dump of some of the game's system files)

- The drop pattern of whatever breakable item/chest/monster that's dropping items. (see drop.txt)

- Danger class (see creatures.txt, drop.txt; danger classes themselves are apparently defined internally, I haven't found them yet in any binary dumps; I hope I've overlooked them).

- Damage preference (This is less defined than Danger Classes; I think it is defined within one of the libraries or executable file).

- Damage probability (Again, undefined).

- And this is the BIG ambiguous variable that I was referring to:

 

"Initialization Type"

 

Whatever this happens to be, it is an argument that's sent to a small routine that runs inside Sacred 2 called the "Drop Manager". After viewing the binary dump of the sacred 2 logic file, the drop manager handles a lot of stuff (including, but not limited to):

- Keeping track of stuff that falls on the ground when you drop it.

- The items being moved around in your inventory.

- Item graphics

 

It appears to be a subset of one of the drawing parts of the game. So far I can only see the method calls and dependencies, but the contents of the methods appear to be (for the most part) unreadable, due to compilation.

 

Before we delve any further into this, I want to point out....

 

 

3: Merchant Offerings

 

Merchants, Blacksmiths, Rune Masters (and possibly the mount vendors) use a slightly different approach for their wares:

 

- Die roll modified by bargaining

- Danger Class

- *Damage preference & probability may or may not be used. They're present in the lists that the vendor pattern draws from, but I suspect they are ignored.

- Expected Type (Not clear on what this is, it may be another thing that's stored in the game's system files; I haven't been able to tell what it does from adjusting this value and testing the adjustment in single player).

- Minimum Quality (I'm pretty sure this pertains to the zRare Categories listed in the balance.txt file, but I haven't seen enough from adjusting this value and playing SP to be sure.)

- *Initialization type

 

* One of these are what was fixed internally to stop bargaining from letting the vendors put up unique, set and legendary items for sale. I'm suspecting it was the initialization type since

 

 

----------------

 

Despite the above, there are some strong assumptions / facts that I have been able to discern:

 

 

- Based upon their danger classes, all monsters have various drop patterns. Some do not hold anything, while others can have junk, gold, runes or the very wide ranged "Standard list".

For example: Certain legendary weapons, such as "Magisil" show up in the standard drop list; this list only gets used for (in order of most possible to lowest possible):

 

- the crystals on the Seraphim island (if you didn't have the misfortune of finding a mutant)

- see further below for monsters...

 

As you have probably seen, the last boss doesn't always give good stuff. That's becuase his danger class allows for either the drop pattern of the t-energy crystals from seraphim island (note: he obviously does not drop mutants, thankfully) or empty drop patterns?

 

So, from only looking at the drop patterns for the last boss, one would think that he either has a chance of giving you something from the standard drop list or nothing. But having played the game, that is obviously not the case.

 

From looking at his empty drop patterns, he has initialization types.

 

So what does this mean?

 

Guesses:

 

A) Initialization types take care of loot rolls in the event of Ascaron not bothering to specify a specific one for a monster/chest/whatever.

B) The initialization types stack up to form complex randomization/dice rolls that finally pick something out of a monster/chest/whatever's specified drop patterns.

 

Furthermore (these are hypotheses):

 

A) After a blue print list is selected via the drop patterns, the game may use: (any possible) combat arts, elemental damage and weapon types that you hit the monster with. This narrows down which item TYPE will be rolled on.

B) Using the weighted probabilities, your chance to find valuables + anything else that might adjust your zbonus rare scores, the game picks an actual item to drop.

 

 

 

Also, in addition to the last boss, "danger class 10" is shared with some other monsters/bosses:

- The region dragons

- The storyline dragons

- The Carnac

- The Scorpion king

- The Crystal boss

- The Forest Guardian

- Various unimplemented monsters (I.E. T-Energy Dragons)

- The Blind Guardian band members (LOL!)

 

 

Ultimately, does this mean that the Seraphim Island, last boss and other monsters pointed out up above are the best ones to "farm" for rare items? I think it's too hard to tell from what we have at this point. I suspect that Ascaron is not totally finished with the drops in the game.

 

Other nuggets of gold:

 

 

There is a drop pattern of unique/legendary/set items that is used for determining quest rewards. All items in such a table have only a .10 percent weighted probability of being given to you. That's the only definite I have been able to derive; beyond that definite, it's guess work:

 

- I THINK you MIGHT need to have Bargaining Mastery in order to even have access to this table

- And/or it may only be possible that it applies to quests with high star ratings

 

Some of the interesting things seen within this drop pattern are:

- Another unique Glaive besides Lord Wayne's Player Killer and the Glaives of Artherton (has 2 gold slots, +chance to find valuables, + offensive skills, -% combat art regeneration).

- A unique hammer (Gives life leech, strength, experience per kill, 2 gold slots)

- 3 unique batteries that can only drop from quests (Solar, Dura and Ultra; Blueprint ID's 2486, 2658, 2660).

- Most of the set items within the game

- Practically all of the legendary items, with (presumably) the exception of the one for the Ascaron mega-quest.

- Various other already seen unique items

Edited February 6, 2009 by Cthulhu

[Antitrust 32]

Wow

 

 

This programming stuff is a bit out of my league, but some things I noticed so far:

 

Also, in addition to the last boss, "danger class 10" is shared with some other monsters/bosses:

- The region dragons

- The storyline dragons

- The Carnac

- The Scorpion king

- The Crystal boss

- The Forest Guardian

- Various unimplemented monsters (I.E. T-Energy Dragons)

- The Blind Guardian band members (LOL!)

Someone told me he had found the Shield of Mirrors in multiplayer, from some random drop. Until then I thought it was only a Blind Guardian quest drop, but your research could prove the opposite.

 

 

Other nuggets of gold:

 

 

There is a drop pattern of unique/legendary/set items that is used for determining quest rewards. All items in such a table have only a .10 percent weighted probability of being given to you. That's the only definite I have been able to derive; beyond that definite, it's guess work:

 

- I THINK you MIGHT need to have Bargaining Mastery in order to even have access to this table

- And/or it may only be possible that it applies to quests with high star ratings

The Kobold Chieftain quest giver can give you set items, without any Bargaining. It's 4 stars, so you might be right on second one.

 

 

I'd like to learn more about the drop patterns. Is that something that can be seen in the game code, or did you note the in-game monster/chest drops?

[Zinsho 0]

Gogo got a shield of mirrors the other day in MP, however it was multi-colored sockets as opposed to the 3x bronze sockets that was shown on the wiki. No clue what he killed to get it though. Have to ask him.

[Cthulhu 0]

Yeah, I had a feeling all of the programming stuff would be confusing. If I were not so brain washed from studying C++ and this game ATM, I might be able to come up with better explanations. But sadly, I think the explanations I posted are about as good as it gets for now until we get a better understanding of how the game handles picking items out of the drop patterns.

 

 

Quest Drops-------------------

 

 

As for your observations on the quest drop, I almost want to say that is evidence enough that at least a 4-5 star quest is required for there to be a roll on the quest table I referenced. However, I now wonder how much DOES Bargaining Mastery effect one's chances of getting any of the legendary/exclusive uniques to be a quest reward?

 

For what it's worth, I am under the assumption that the "4-5 star quest reward table" is relatively new/improved - recall not too long ago that the quest drops were improved.

 

------------------------------------------

 

 

Shield of Mirrors / Spiegelschild---------------------

 

That is indeed true. I've had the Shield of Mirrors drop once in SP mode when I cranked the ZBONUSRARE scores (you can think of these as the default "chance to find valuables") all the way up. I don't know if it is caused by the fact that the Blind Guardian members fall in Danger Class 10, but it's a strong correlation.

 

However, I haven't seen any of their other instruments drop aside from the cymbal, so it could possibly be a misplaced item that someone overlooked.

 

Edit: Zinsho - it may then be possible that the mirror shield's slots get better in each difficulty. From looking at the blueprints, all of the blind guardian band members instruments are explicitly stated as being instruments. The mirror shield does not have the "SPECIAL_BG" affix at the beginning of its name.

 

Furthermore,

 

newBlueprint = {
 id = 2634,
 name = "unique_shield_Spiegelschild",
 palettebits = "1111111111111111",
 dmgvariation = 0,
 minconstraints = {17,14,0},
 lvljump = 9,
 usability = 0,
 allotment_pmfpi = {1000,0,0,0,0},
 uniquename = "unique",
 specialuseonly = 0,
 bonusgroup0 = {401,1200,1,9,0},
 bonusgroup1 = {418,1500,1,9,0},
 bonusgroup2 = {856,1000,1,9,0},
 bonusgroup3 = {857,1000,1,9,0},
 bonusgroup4 = {860,1000,10,9,0},
 itemtypes = {10279,},
 wearergroups = {'WEARGROUP_DEFAULT',},
/
/
/
/
newBonusgroup = {
 id = 856,
 name = "SB_neut_slot_bronze3																											",
 bonuslist = { 2,},
}
/
/
/
/
newBonusgroup = {
 id = 857,
 name = "SB_neut_slot_silver2																											",
 bonuslist = { 57,},
}
/
/
/
newBonusgroup = {
 id = 860,
 name = "SB_neut_slot_gold3																											  ",
 bonuslist = { 758,},
}

}
/
/
/
newBonus = {
--  name = "sb_neut_slot_gold",
 rating = 10,
 basedonskill = "SKILL_INVALID",
 type = "BONUS_SLOT",
 spez = "SLCAT_GOLD",
 spez2 = "",
 usagebits = 65535,
 minconstraints = {10,7,0},
 difficultyvaluerange0 = {0,1,1},
 difficultyvaluerange1 = {1,1,1},
 difficultyvaluerange2 = {2,1,1},
 difficultyvaluerange3 = {3,1,1},
 difficultyvaluerange4 = {4,1,1},
}

 

Its last 3 bonuses are indeed multi-colored slots.

 

I seem to recall getting an all bronze slotted shield in silver-single player and then later on a second play-thru, Blind Guardian gave me one with different colored slots. I could be confusing it with something else however... but if I am not being wrong, you might know what this means.

 

------------------------------------------

 

 

The Drop Patterns-----------------

 

 

They're in one of the C++ script files located in the Sacred2/scripts/server directory. They're plain .txt files and don't take too long to understand, but it requires a lot of back and forth work between files in order to understand how to locate everything.

 

I think if I were to save us some time, I should probably go ahead and try to at least make a listing of what each danger class can possibly drop, as well as what monsters belong to a danger class.

 

 

Oh, and interestingly enough (I cannot believe I just noticed this)- barrels, chests, and the like don't use the weird "initialization types".

 

That means we can, for now, clearly list everything chests, barrels, graves, etc. are capable of dropping!

Edited February 7, 2009 by Cthulhu

[gogoblender 3,304]

How did I ever miss this topic? I feel ashamed for only coming across it by following a link to it in DarkMatters from another forum!

 

It's a fantastic read as usual Cthulhu. If you ever have that time to figure out the game's drop table with a listing, we'll definitely be able to find a permanent place for it as reference for players.

 

 

Nice work!

 

 

gogo

 

 

p.s. this is nice reference quality stuff. Hope you don't mind if I moved it to the general guides section for Sacred 2.

[Schot 415]

Oh wow. I missed this juicy bit as well. Sacred never fails in it's complexity eh, haha. I also have a Shield of Mirrors multi colour slotted from the Orcs on a Plat server. If I were to wager a guess I'd say gogo's is from Plat as well. Possibly a high level drop item. One rule I've always followed is kill speed. This was a major factor in S1 and appears to be in Sacred 2 as well. Kill 20 champions each in no less than a minute vs. no longer than 5 seconds and you'll see a dramatic difference. I never did pin down whether it was kill speed or simply high damage but either way the results are the same. Great drops!

[Spyrus 0]

I have shield of mirrors x 3 level 22 , 45 60 all drops from silver,cold with m. So, I guess it is random

[gogoblender 3,304]

Bumped. Cthulhu's topic has been the object of a lot of threads lately on a few forums. Hoping everyone here gets to take a look at it as well.

 

 

gogo

[Cthulhu 0]

I think I should update this. I'm glad it's been getting some use

Edited July 3, 2009 by Cthulhu

[gogoblender 3,304]

I think I should update this. I'm glad it's been getting some use

 

 

Hurry!

 

 

gogo

[coolsteve77 0]

Hello everybody.

 

I started this topic not knowing if it was anywhere else on the forum so I hope I'm not duplicating anything. First off I'd just like to point out that I played on SP for a few months of buying the game all because I could not be bothered with the logging in and out. My findings on SP was that almost every quest giver after about level 20 gave a set piece if the quest had more then 2 gold stars. I'm on the PC by the way!

Now I have started playing MP and love it... BUT !!

I find that set items drop rarely and the rewards are less. I have a couple of level 30 and over char's and was hoping the farther I got the more pieces would fall. I have tried farmer schot's guide.. I have tried the orc cave. to no avail I find squat.... BUMMER!

Now I'd like to go into gold with a full set because I find the game alot easier with set items compared to bargained items so any tips on how to get set items frequently would be appreciated.

[soldats 0]

a couple points

 

gr00 and myself had a conversation about a month ago regarding drops[he with knowledge of this thread and I without- this becomes important later]

 

though the forest guardian is a danger class 10, he has yet to drop any legendaries for me, though I've farmed him near 200,000 times across all my characters[dead and alive, usclosednet hc], ALTHOUGH....only one of my characters has bargaining[and mastered as well] and she is the only one who has found all the legendaries I hold. don't know if that's a correlation, but it strongly supports cthulu's findings.

 

on top of that, gr00 and I further discussed drop mechanics....and I noticed a pattern while playing the many hours I've put in....that set pieces seem to drop in correspondence to the aspect from which the ca I was using to land the killing blow called from. that is...I tended to find more endijian's set pieces when I was using aw and fr. when I switched over to using rp to kill, I found more revelation set pieces....and that is all covered here in speculation, which strongly supports cthulu's findings, without any BIAS on my part not having read what he posted.

 

I would definitely say that certain Combat Arts/aspects used determines what drops, especially sets. bargaining mastery has no weight in determining what drops in terms of sets in my experience[90% boss kills/10% mob kills = total time played].

 

I don't know if the type of damage, ie, element matters in drop mechanics, but I haven't noticed a pattern yet. as for ca vs non ca, I don't have a left clicker to contribute knowledge.

[Rllulium 0]

on top of that, gr00 and I further discussed drop mechanics....and I noticed a pattern while playing the many hours I've put in....that set pieces seem to drop in correspondence to the aspect from which the ca I was using to land the killing blow called from. that is...I tended to find more endijian's set pieces when I was using aw and fr. when I switched over to using rp to kill, I found more revelation set pieces....and that is all covered here in speculation, which strongly supports cthulu's findings, without any BIAS on my part not having read what he posted.

 

I would definitely say that certain Combat Arts/aspects used determines what drops, especially sets. bargaining mastery has no weight in determining what drops in terms of sets in my experience[90% boss kills/10% mob kills = total time played].

 

I don't know if the type of damage, ie, element matters in drop mechanics, but I haven't noticed a pattern yet. as for ca vs non ca, I don't have a left clicker to contribute knowledge.

I can on the other hand say that I have never noticed anything like this. Using characters that only utilize one aspect for bosskills, I do not get more of a specific aspect, the three are pretty much evenly spread. It would be interesting to have a large research on this subject to see if there really are any influence.

[soldats 0]

on top of that, gr00 and I further discussed drop mechanics....and I noticed a pattern while playing the many hours I've put in....that set pieces seem to drop in correspondence to the aspect from which the ca I was using to land the killing blow called from. that is...I tended to find more endijian's set pieces when I was using aw and fr. when I switched over to using rp to kill, I found more revelation set pieces....and that is all covered here in speculation, which strongly supports cthulu's findings, without any BIAS on my part not having read what he posted.

 

I would definitely say that certain Combat Arts/aspects used determines what drops, especially sets. bargaining mastery has no weight in determining what drops in terms of sets in my experience[90% boss kills/10% mob kills = total time played].

 

I don't know if the type of damage, ie, element matters in drop mechanics, but I haven't noticed a pattern yet. as for ca vs non ca, I don't have a left clicker to contribute knowledge.

I can on the other hand say that I have never noticed anything like this. Using characters that only utilize one aspect for bosskills, I do not get more of a specific aspect, the three are pretty much evenly spread. It would be interesting to have a large research on this subject to see if there really are any influence.

 

 

ran a quick test last night to prove my point

 

100 mixed miniboss kills using frenzied rampage = 57 denderan's, 18 armantin's, 12 infernal's, 5 grave's, 3 lucreti's, 1 executioner's set pieces.

[some minibosses dropped 2x or 3x set pieces on kill]

 

100 mixed miniboss kills using demonic blow = 61 armantin's, 21 infernal's, 19 denderan's, 8 lucreti's, 5 grave's, 2 silence's set pieces.

[some minibosses dropped 2x or 3x set pieces on kill]

 

I always play/conduct tests on usclosednet hc, so there is no manipulation or customization of drops

 

if that sample is too small, I can do the tests over again with 500 miniboss kills with the same results if you would like

 

[edit]

meant to say the night before. gf goes to work at 4:15am so sometimes I just stay up playing until she has to leave...and here I am 4 hours later...aka sleep deprivation

Edited August 12, 2009 by soldats

[Rllulium 0]

ran a quick test tonight to prove my point

 

100 mixed miniboss kills using frenzied rampage = 57 denderan's, 18 armantin's, 12 infernal's, 5 grave's, 3 lucreti's, 1 executioner's set pieces.

[some minibosses dropped 2x or 3x set pieces on kill]

 

100 mixed miniboss kills using demonic blow = 61 armantin's, 21 infernal's, 19 denderan's, 8 lucreti's, 5 grave's, 2 silence's set pieces.

[some minibosses dropped 2x or 3x set pieces on kill]

 

I always play/conduct tests on usclosednet hc, so there is no manipulation or customization of drops

 

if that sample is too small, I can do the tests over again with 500 miniboss kills with the same results if you would like

This is indeed intriguing. I really can't say that the sample is too small for the sake of the argument; I believe that you are right about it's influence on drops. If you would like to claim that "This is how it is" officially, say for the Wiki, larger samples may be needed however.

Larger samples may also help answering the question of how much higher the droprate for a specific aspect set would be.

 

Nice find!

Edited August 12, 2009 by Rllulium

[gogoblender 3,304]

soldats, you ran a test sampling with 200 miniboss kills in closed HC? In one night? Can you tell me how we can do this on closed servers, and how much time it took you ? Being able to get a valid sample like this from HC Closed is very cool. I'd like to see if I can replicate your findings as well.

 

 

gogo

[soldats 0]

correct.

 

I spend almost all of my time boss farming

 

I also omitted other class set drops because I felt their influence did not matter...

 

all I did was work in a clockwise fashion starting from the griffon and chose the fastest routes to the quickest minibosses. this means skipping certain ones such as daloriel and the werewolf. each run would take about 720 seconds with an average of 10 set pieces found. I set aside about 10 minutes of forest guardian kills, which took about 20 seconds per run.

 

total time played is around 4 hours?

tried sleeping, but couldn't so I was up until about 4:45am...

[soldats 0]

gr00 also had some speculation as to whether or not having more people in game[partied vs non partied] would affect drops. I got slightly better results when I had my second account in game at the same time, but the difference wouldn't be significant unless I ran more than 100 runs....

 

it could also be coincidence

[elderago 0]

interesting waaaaay out of my league of limited knowlege on scriptiny but I understand enough....sort of anyways

[Mikey-Flies 0]

Any further updates to this testing and spelunking in the scripts?

[tubby 0]

Hey (first time posting yey)

 

Though I did not conduct tests such as soldats, he gave me an answer to a question I was asking myself the other night.

I kept asking myself why I kept picking up danderan set items when I wanted armantin set items.

 

After reading his posts, I noticed that my main CA is frenzied rampage with the occasional demonic blow. So yeah just wanted to somewhat agree with his findings haha.

[Anty 0]

It probably won't turn up anything knew but im currently building a HE with barganing and EP, then try farming on Griffin and Boar miniboss. . . som1 gimmi a heads up if this is gonna be wurth the effort?

[Foosnark 1]

Has anyone else noticed that set item drops seem to be very streaky?

 

Doing orc cave runs for instance, I might find three pieces of Endijian's, one Revelation and a Inquisitor piece within 15 minutes. The next time I start up the game, I will find nothing good in the cave for two hours.

 

I realize the nature of random numbers can lead to this sort of result, but I have to wonder whether there's not an additional factor on drops. Level? Current time? Some luck factor initialized at the start of play?

[Dragon Brother 620]

Its most likely fickle lady luck messing with you

[Uninvitedguest 0]

Since the last patch all of my toons regardless of difficulty and skill set have set items drop as quest rewards about half of the time. Is this happening to anyone else? or is it a helpful glitch in my game?

 

Also the Aspect I am using doesnt seem to effect the type of set drop; my HE is a pyro yet I seem to have more stormite drops.