The SX255 story (in pictures)

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Due to popular demand (one administrator), I’m posting some fan art/comics I did about Sacred 2 (with a small original description tale to each picture). Originally I wanted to do all the art at once, and then upload it, but I’m lazy and drawing is hard. So here is half of what I did by now. I sorted it out to be in chronological order, so art quality will vary.

Don’t hold your breath for more – at best it will only be added in months.

 

Shopping

After playing for some time I noticed that temple guardian cap icons in inventory have the head as part of the icon. No other character class has this. Since temple guardians are cyborgs, they could have removable heads, but this razes so many follow up questions ether way.

Also the random generated shops have way to many temple guardian specific stuff when there are none of them around. I know its almost completely random generated, but come on. Diablo 2 didn’t sell druid pelts for a reason.

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The art of propelled levitation

Sacred 2 - The game of fun glitches and flukes.

Ah, propelled levitation - the temple guardians in-game jump substitute with a fair distance. I love using it when exploring.

Still, the game doesn’t allow much jump control, which leads to some “moments”. Case in point: you have a small crack, ravine or river to cross and walking around would take to long. So you get to the edge as close as possible, power up the boosters for a jump, lift of... and instantly hit the invisible wall because the game thought you wanted to just fly as far as possible in that direction. And then you have to wait 20-30 seconds on recharge to try again.

Sometimes walking around is easier and faster.

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Clipping

Only happened to me once in the evening when I stopped to get my bearing on the map while the farmers were going home. Simply put cylindrical collision detection work poorly on elongated rectangular objects like horses.

And when you talk to NPCs while on a horse, they speak directly into the horses neck.

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Exploration

Since the world is 2D landscape, you can jump or teleport anywhere as long as its close enough, not above you and there are no invincible walls in-between.

Some horses can leap. Some walkarounds take to long. Do the math.

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Its called a scabbard

Sacred 2 - The game of fun glitches and flukes

So after playing the game 40% through I finally decided to stop missing out on all the content and updated the game from 2.12 to 2.65 + community patch 130. And it just took me a couple of hours of new game to get this – your weapon effects don’t turn off when you ride a horse.

The axes look are even funnier.

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Shopping 2

Sacred 2 - The game of fun glitches

Random generated gear can sometimes have unusual properties. Sometimes you get stuff meant for other classes. But in Sacred 2 you can find gear for your class only with modifiers your class doesn’t have. Case in point: Temple guardians can’t get alchemy skill, but can find gear that needs alchemy to unlock modifiers.

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Let me just check the map...

This is what checking the map in Sacred 2 looks like. And in the unpatched version all completed quests, represented by green circles, are on by default.

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Bloody portals

Tried something new to improve myself and it careened out of control into this. Makes you appreciate people who can draw landscapes a lot more. Though the speech bubble is better.

So the story behind this can be surmised with this picture.

Since I normally don’t have that much time to play videogames anymore, I have to use guides to get the best out of big games. Sacred 2 doesn’t have Oblivions fast travel system, but has a couple of Diablo 2 portals, which you need to activate. So I went searching for the second nearest from starting location portal… 3 times. God knows how many kobolds (which look like evil gnomes) I had to mow down in the process. Turned out the guide I was using was for later patched versions, as those portals didn’t originally exist.

Just another reason to update this game to the max from the start.

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Epic Battle 0

Sacred 2 - The game of fun glitches and flukes

True story.

Terus - the general of the Undead Legion - is the first true boss most people will encounter. And every true big epic boss has his life bar displayed above the screen and makes the camera pan out to the max for the entire battle.

Long before this I had tweaked my options file for better gaming experience... with triple max view distance. Ended up fighting the battle with an orbital view. Got a great sword out of it though.

The moral of the story – don’t exceed the maximum camera distance in this game.

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Instant horse

With the new instant horse teleportation system you will never need to remember where you parked.

Or the game developers just gave up on making a sensible game mechanic.

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What the gods is a Hyppocampus?

Sacred 2 - The game of fun glitches and flukes.

This is what a broken quest looks like. The lonely hyppocampus was supposed to display various in-game effects, but none of them showed on 2.12 version of the game. Came of depressing and slightly creepy.

And if you wander what is a hyppocampus, it’s apparently a misspelled hippocampus, an ancient Greek name for seahorse. Why spell it with a “Y” I have no clue. German developers.

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The art of propelled levitation 2

Sacred 2 - The game of fun glitches and flukes.

So I decided to pat the tigers on the unique mount island and couldn’t figure out how to get out of the pit at first. Decided to jet on to the suspended bridge just above me… and went right through it – the game allows you to jump on bridges just above you, clipping and all. As long as you can click it and walk on it, while standing under it, the distance doesn’t mater.

So naturally I went and headbutted the Griffinborough stone bridge.

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Draconicon

At first I though it was a cheap lame horse with dragon features the game developer threw in at the last minute, but then I misread the name of the beast as “Dracornicorn” and it became awesome.

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Its not grave robbing, stuff just falls out

Sacred 2 - The game of fun glitches

This one happened when I was inspecting every grave in town cemetery when the usual happened – a zombie crawled out. Except this one had a delay with a SMACK sound (critical hit) before appearing right in my face.

And that’s not counting intentional rope lifting skeletons and 2 for one caskets.

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Urgent but delayable

Yep, True story.

This quest summarizes why trigger based quests are ridiculous when they try to convey urgency. Since the next event triggers only from player action, the reason to hurry is lost.

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Mission: Optometrist

When all class quests go hilariously wrong.

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Metal Rat

Sacred 2 - The game of fun glitches and flukes.

True story.

I was defending myself from a pack of werewolves when one of the carcasses started moving back at me. Turned out that a big rat decided to join the fight and was dragging the dead werewolf only because it was in its way. If it wasn’t for the simple AI I would dear to say that rat had balls so big he rolled into battle.

So yeah, this game created a scenario where while fighting werewolves I got attacked by a rat wearing an entire werewolf for a hat.

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The great mysteries of life: the electric turd

Well here is a mystery that will haunt me to my grave: what is up with that huge lightning spewing steaming turd?! Its huge, steaming, shaped in the form of a Celtic triad symbol with no beginning or an end, and it spews lighting, with flies flying around (didn’t draw them as it was too much work already). Nothing in the area comes close to making it and its mystery probably bugged everybody who ever came across it.

As far as I know some big game forum moderator by the name Llama8 made a quip about there being a quest related to electric poo, and that pile of FECAL MATTER! actually exists in the second game. Which now begs the question: What came first? The lama or the developer who put it in the game? I’m obviously overthinking it.

Reminds me of that convoy in “Fall: Last days of Gaia”. Still don’t know what was up with that.

Still need to figure out how best to draw/animate smoke and lightning.

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Debuffed

Here is my Christmas theme contribution.
Sacred 2 features an entire island dedicated to Christmas, which is very fun to run around. One of the hostile inhabitants on the island are the furies – small blue versions of the harpies. Nothing special, except for their champions being able to cast lightning that removes your buffs instantly. I have yet to encounter a regular enemy in so many numbers with that ability. Suffice to say it hurt, a lot.

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Interruptions

This happens all the time. Fail to spot some enemy next to the NPC and they might jump you while your reading quest dialogs (many of which you can’t repeat). God help you if you’re also on an escort mission, as the world doesn’t stop for anybody.

Conveniently the temple guardian can upgrade his passive energy shield to inflict magic damage to all close combat enemies. Tends to kill many interrupting pests before I’m done reading the text.

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Speedy Delivery

This is the first fan art I ever drew of the game. No screenshots were used in the making of this picture - the quality shows.

Incidentally, this my first in-game encounter with a dragon.

 

Yep. Just like Diablo 2 – you can go against hoards of enemies with ease, but once you’re up against the final boss all those strategies go out the window.

True story. Not saying that the passage was that small. It’s that the swamp dragon was that big and kept clipping through everything.

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Welcome to Lizurath

Population: always smells of wet dog + 1 cheating bitch

[tom.morrow 89]

WOWWW

 

uhm... what just poped into my head? (wait for da gogo-multi-quote)

 

 

Why spell it with a “Y” I have clue

 

Anything that helps the hYpe ...

 

 

awesome incredible great work

 

 

Cookiegurl is da best.!

Edited October 23, 2013 by tom.morrow

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Well problems

True story.
That was my first reaction to that quest. And it takes a lot for me to forget basic werewolf lore. Man, this game is so immersive sometimes.

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Look who’s talking

Short quips like this what makes repetitious killing of hordes fun.