Boriska, my sniper mistress

[Sethi22 12]

Well, here it is guys: my very first guide for my favourite character in my favourite hack&slash game: the sniper daemoness (with Egill's set crossbow) in Sacred1. The joyful sight of this girl hopping around with her crossbow always warms my heart!  I guess for most of you, this game is only nostalgia, but not for me! I still play it daily, it’s every day work for me. It’s my job. And who knows? Maybe somewhere out there, there exists another old, brainless alcoholist like myself, who still plays it and would like to know and try… So why not? Besides, I always wanted to write a guide so others would see how clever and experienced I was. So here goes (I’ll try to be newbie friendly, (are there any newbies? I guess not) so it might get long, you have been warned!)

First of all, she can do it all! She went from bronze to niobium, killed every single boss in the game, without ever dying. Hardcore, so to speak. She is very versatile and very safe (despite not concentrating on defense at all, instead going all out on offense with socketing…) She was at least my fourth daemoness to niobium, I tried almost all the daemoness builds on this forum: death comes from above, poison mistress, the choir girl, fire wall-tentacle hybrid, pure caster with discs, pure caster with hell sphere… But all of them had something in common: they had to be rather close to their foe to take them down. All of the daemon spells and combat arts are like this. Being short of defensive options, this becomes extremely risky in higher difficulties, and sooner or later, all of them died a horrible death, thus I was sad.  But I never gave up, and since I wanted to do it hardcore, I finally found the perfect solution (for me at least): here is my hybrid sniper girl, who EASILY beats every boss and every mob this game can throw at her!

But before we start, let’s talk a sec about runes in this game! So for me it took a loooong time to realize, how scarce runedrops become in higher levels. Just let me give you a number to think about: I had several characters, who did EVERY quest that gives runes from bronze to niobium (I don’t like rune farmers, I do quests instead, but it’s your call…). Not only did I do every quest, but I saved and reloaded a zillion times for the right runes to drop! (You can of course just save and reload before talking to a quest giver guy after the quest has ended, and stubbornly extract the runes you need). But even like this, at the end of Niobium, I was only looking at about 6-700 runes memorized. Which means you can barely max out 3 of your skills completely!  So the less skills you use, the better you’ll become, hence my sniper girl only uses 4 skills, which are: Soaring daemon, Infernal power, Blazing disc and Tentacles, and really maxes out only one of them: Infernal power.  

So it's about time to discuss our form: Soaring daemon. I won’t repeat the things explained in the excellent „Death comes from above” guide, I’ll only add a couple of things: that build with Aarnum’s set is absolute overkill, I love it! It’s plain and simple, no hybrid stuff, no need to think. Tons of damage! It’s just beautiful! But it dies. At least under my hand, it does. Because there are all sorts of troublesome creatures in this world, that make your jumping delight become a nightmare: Shadow guardians who lock you in place and Cerebropods, who silence you and take away your casting skill, Dragons, who somehow miraculously survive your murder attempt and burn you to ashes… And the list goes on. So we need a backup plan. Jumping in is good, and you can jump in with this girl as well (although she mainly uses a crossbow – when you use soaring daemon’s landing phase, ranged weapons work just as well), and packs a serious punch too. Our preferred weapon: Egill’s shot of prudence with all attribute points spent in strength is pretty punchy too when diving, but she can also be very deliberate and cunning, and take the fight to her own playground! Because when she meets a foe she is afraid of, she can always back away and snipe it without any risk at all. (These stupid dragons don’t even know where you are, and you just keep putting holes in them from the other side of the screen, or hovering above water, where their fire is useless… It’s fun!) But bringing down all the badguys with just sniping would be really tiring. We need Area Of Effect! And here is where Tentacles shine. Any badguy killed will be gruesomely consumed by large tentacles growing out of the ground, that damage everyone around them: so when you jump into a mob, there won’t be any survivors. The whole bunch dies. When you shoot them from afar, the same. You shoot one, all the rest standing near it, dies.  But Tentacles is a spell, so we need to be hybrid (both weapon and magic orientated) to give it enough damage. We have our 3 skills already, but what about a 4th one? A real damage dealer spell for single targets? For the times when you’re too tired or drunk to shoot continuously? Blazing Disc is I think the best bet for this role: You only need to unleash your 4x Blazing Disc combo, (have infernal power on of couse), fly close to a boss once, all the discs stick to the boss, damaging it until they expire, and then you just fly away and maybe finish it with your crossbow, or just watch it melt by the discs themselves. To give you some perspective: these four discs literally one shot Anducar for me in every difficulty level up to niobium, (then he needed some help from my crossbow as well…) They’re pretty good!

So we have everything: we are FAST because every level of soaring daemon adds to speed, we have good damage for single target from our discs and crossbow, we can destroy mobs in one single click, and when the scary boss comes, we can also back away and shoot it from afar where all its miserable spells and attacks fail to hit us… It’s perfect!

Thus our skills are (I took them in this order, taking constitution only at level 50 because I didn’t feel I had any need for it earlier, but you can change it of course)

Meditation

Magic Lore

Concentration

Weapon lore

Hellpower

Agility

Armor

Constitution

As you see, we don’t take sword lore, so we can’t use Aarnum set, which is sad, but we take magic lore instead and become extremely crafty and versatile. (Aarnum’s set requires you to take sword lore, because the rings have to be socketed inside the sword for it to work, and you can’t use the sword without sword lore. Our preferred weapon, Egill’s crossbow is different: you can socket or wear the three rings in the set anywhere you like, and the set still works, it needs ranged lore (which the daemoness can’t even take as a skill, so it’s out of the question), but you can oversocket that requirement with any ring that has a required skill that you have (for example weapon lore or magic lore, or any skill you currently have above level 10), and then you can use the crossbow for the demise of your enemies. Our main skill, Infernal power, together with our base attack bonus from agility gives us more than enough attack rating, so hitting things won't be a problem even without ranged lore.

Our versatility comes from being able to deal all four types of damage: physical, fire, poison and magic. We can be a clever sniper girl with our rather small, but continuous physical, fire and poison damage from our crossbow, (which by itself is enough to finish any champion you come across in a few shots), and when we meet the tough guys, we can use our discs that do physical and fire damage, while poking them with poison from afar (ok, if you only use the crossbow, it takes some time to knock out bosses, but who cares? It’s perfectly safe, the most dangerous things bosses in this game can throw at you are all limited in range, and you can just position yourself outside of that range, and finish them off, with a high level soaring daemon, you can fly rings around them before they even know what hit them!) On the other hand, our tentacles do  poison and magic damage. It’s really wonderful! Nobody can outsmart or outresist us! We are the ultimate outsmarters!

But what about socketing? Well, I didn’t socket a single protection amulet in this one, only damage rings. Mainly fire: "weapon damage fire", and "fire damage+%" are both good, the second one is even better if you can find it, as it helps with our blazing disc's fire damage as well. If you happen to find a good damage ring with "poison damage+%" on it as extra stat, don't hesitate to use it, it helps both our crossbow damage and our tentacles. But the main thing is: damage in every slot! We don’t need defence, we can fly away and finish them from afar. You see, the thing is: I rarely jump in landing my soaring daemon form, I use it sometimes, when I know that there wont’be any danger left after I land, but most of the time this girl stays up in the air and snipes from there. It’s up to you, how often you want to dive in, as diving in is by far our greatest damage dealing skill, but also the most risky. If you want more defence, get more SPEED! This is a kiting build. 

And to finish the socketing section, finally something about poison damage: our first priority is fire damage, because that's our base damage type that gets multiplied by our Infernal power. Our weapon poison damage doesn't get any help from our skills, and is mainly there to give you an edge over fire resistant monsters. (Like the dragon near Mascarell- that worm is especially resistant to fire, but you can just hover above the river near it and shoot it with your crossbow till it collapses. It takes some time, but it's absolutely stress free. He doesn't stand a chance.) It's up to you, how much you focus on the poison side of things, I didn't pay much attention to it, but I happened to find some nice  damage rings wich had "+poison damage%" on them too, those are really nice for your tentacles as well. (And about the magic damage of tentacles: 2 sources of damage is more than enough to focus on, just ignore the magic part. It's nice to have it against poison resistant enemies like undead, so your tentacles consume them faster, but I didn't pump it in any way, it's just there as a bonus.) Ovarall probably one of the best rings to use are Aarnum's set rings with oversocketing, they are GREAT!!!    

At early levels, you won't be able to sustain infernal power and tentacles together, but after level 30 or so, the two can go together, and then when you’re 100+, you can toss in a disc or two as well for total overkill mayhem! (And save your precious 4x blazing disc combo for bosses of course.) 

Concerning attributes, I put all my points into strength, because my chosen weapon, Egill’s crossbow has a +% to poison damage based on your strength, and strength also gives extra hp, so you get more offensive and more defensive from the same stat. However I had many rings with bonus to reg spells stashed away, and also some that gave bonus to mental reg, if you don't have anything to work with, you might want to consider putting points into mental reg. I went with strength, because I was completely fed up with dying, and wanted to have as much life as possible, not because of the poison damage bonus. If you want to be more offensive on the magic side, you can even go full mental reg, or split it. Keep in mind though, that all our spells have long durations, we don’t want to spam them, we just need to sustain them which isn’t that hard, a few pieces of gear with + % regeneration to spells does the trick. Same with soaring daemon and regeneration of special moves. We don’t want to use it all the time, we really don’t care about reg spec move at all. Our crossbow, Egill’s has a huge amount of reg spec move on it, which is more than enough to sustain the form infinitely. So everything went to strength for damage, and for the bonus hp. (If you want to dive in more often, then you can use more gear with reg spec move, and of course use the great level 1 soaring daemon combo trick mentioned in the „death comes from above” guide more frequently, to get back to the air as soon as possible.)

Once you complete Egill's set, the missiles fired will pass through enemies, which is great! Egill's isn’t that rare of a find, I had plenty stashed away with my mule characters, I always keep finding it, it’s really easy to get! And you don’t really need it at all, you can use any crossbow you like, and if you find it, you can use the crossbow without the rings to it as well, the % damage based on strength remains, only your missiles won’t pass through enemies, but that’s no big deal, as our tentacles take care of area of effect anyway...

How many points you put into each skill is up to you, I usually bring all my skills up to level 50 first, and continue from there. With this one, I stopped with Hellpower at 50, and pumped all the rest. I’m no expert in this, you’ll see what you need based on the gear you find. Constitution is a good bet when you don’t know what to increase, as we want to survive. So all the rest of the skills get pumped till the end, with a little emphasis on constitution. If you want to dive more frequently, you want to have more concentration, from gear, or from level up points, it’s really up to you. I didn’t use a single piece of „reg spec move” gear other than the crossbow itself, but I did pump concentration all the way.

Now let’s continue with our main damage and attack rating skill, Infernal power! Well, there’s not much to talk about. MAX it! Every 4 runes you find, that you trade with the combo master, should go into this one. This skill is our bread and butter, have it active all the time and pump it as high as you can. You simply cannot get enough of it, it’s complete addiction. You need it! (And the satisfaction you get from finally maxing it out after all the work you put into quests and realoading them for the right runes... Well, people, it was all worth it, I think! I can understand though that this reloading business in single player is not for everyone, I got addicted to it lately, it gives me purpose somehow...)

Soaring daemon, Blazing discs and Tentacles are good too, read as many runes as you can, but maxing out Infernal power is our main goal, as that skill helps both our weapon and magic side. Enough said.

Combos? Well I have the level 1 soaring daemon combo for panic situations, so I can get back to the air immediately, whatever happens. I have another soaring daemon combo with the current level of the skill as the second slot, I have an Infernal power-Tentacle combo kept at the current level for the third slot (for the times when you suddenly find yourself in a dangerous situation when you can’t put your Infernal power back on because it’s on cooldown), and finally the all famous, all badass 4x blazing disc combo for bosses, and that’s it.

Concerning gear: Although we don’t spam spells, every bit of regeneration spells equipment helps, because our spells can run out of duration at the most inconvenient of times, and we have to be able to put them all back on as soon as possible. So for body armor I used Taelon’s breastplate of magic, for belt Kleb Dracad’s recovery, as it gives an enormous amount of reg spells as well as constitution (although you could go Pandora’s girdle of frenzy for the added Infernal power (with less reg spell). Draelokk’s appealing arms comes in handy with it’s bonus to infernal and tentacles, and also the best possible damage stat for a hybrid girl like us: "increases all damage types +%", so it's definitely the best in slot. The other slots can be filled with whatever you like. I prioritised + all skills, so Pandora’s evil spur for shoulders, and Dralcibs’s claws for gauntlets. On your legs and feet, you should probably wear speed stuff. I used Kleb Dracad's mending for the speed, agility and xp bonus, and Draelokk's speedy feet for the speed and attack bonus. You can definitely find better rare items than these, but it's a good starting point. Basically what you want is equipment that has enough sockets in it for many-many damage rings. Since we use a simple auto attack as our main choice of inflicting harm, we really need to put all our efforts into it for it to do enough damage: so all our socketables need to be damage rings. We don't need amulets. (Using auto attack with a crossbow from afar is great against Cerebropods: they can silence you as they like, you just laugh at them and snipe them to the afterworld, it’s really satisfying after all the pain these dudes have inflicted upon my previous characters: It’s revenge time, you ugly purple monstrosities! )

About weapon slots: Egill’s for one, one slot for pure speed gear for when you want to go faster, one for reg spell, one for magic finding (diving in for the killing blow with magic finding gear is profitable!) and maybe one for a real damage dealer melee weapon, like Thain’s axe of flames for your diving needs. As mentioned in the death from above guide, this weapon is awesome for jumping, and it is a guaranteed drop!

What else can be said about this unholy maiden? We covered skills, attributes, gear… maybe something about gameplay: when there are mobs around you, you need to fly, infernal, tentacle, and shoot. (You shoot much faster in the air than on the ground, your crossbow becomes almost useless once you’re on foot. You need to get back up as soon as possible!) When you’re single targeting, you need infernal and blazing disc. If that single target happens to be a tough boss, then let loose your 4x combo before entering combat, and fly close to it.  Well here’s the thing: you fly close, but you fly in spirals. You don’t fly straight ahead, because that is dangerous. Instead, you fly in spirals closer and closer, so the real dangerous things (poison tendrils or dragon fire) miss you because by the time the idiot boss unleashes its most deadly attack, you’re already at its side or at its back, and laugh at it. Maybe put a few holes in its back with your crossbow until it turns around, then just position yourself again to its side or back. Flank the dumb boss, see? You’re never in harms way if you do the spiraling good. It’s that simple. Of course you don’t even have to risk this whole spiraling-attaching discs process, if the boss is really-really scary, you can just snipe it from afar as always, it’s much slower though. The 4x combo is your real friend against bosses, sniping them is only a backup plan. And of course you can always jump in with your soaring daemon form for the finishing move!

Nobody will stand in your way for too long if you do these right. (One last word of warning though: probably the most dangerous thing you're going to meet with this build is water and flying through places where you're not supposed to. Be aware: the lords of hell don't look kindly upon deamons who don't watch their timers! So if your soaring daemon form runs out while you're above water, they punish you severely from afar, and your health will start dropping rapidly! Another good example of this is Hell's ridge, where you keep hovering in the big black emptiness sniping from there: once you see that counter going down, get over land as fast as you can!)

And finally something more about our crossbow: You can find crossbows, that deal way more damage than Egill's, if you're lucky. Crossbows that have fire damage% on them rather than poison, and better stats as well, but this baby has it all. It has everything we need in one package. It's the perfect tool for us, so we can socket everything else with whatever we want. Damage rings with "regeneration to spells" for example. (Yes please!!!). Or damage rings with even more damage as percentage... It's by no means the highest damage dealer weapon for us, and if you prefer, you can put an even better crossbow to another slot. (In this case, take care of leech and reg spec move in some other way...) Egill's has large amounts of life leech on it, no need to socket anything else with leech, the crossbow is more than enough! Leeching with your crossbow is fine on its own, but you also leech with your discs and tentacles, which means that you’ll be at full health almost all of the time, if everything is up and running. I don’t even remember the last time I used a healing potion.

This is all I had to say. It's definitely the safest way to play this character, that I could think of. This is not a build for minmaxers, rather for players who are too stubborn to give it up, but too distracted by weird states of mind to complete it hardcore with a normal powerhouse (Why on Earth did I want to do it hardcore and spend years on it, when you can just save and reload in singleplayer without any consequence at all? Well here my guide ends, I can't answer that question.) Try it! Enjoy it!

Edited February 25 by Sethi22

[Dax 449]

Thanks for writing the guide. I made it up to level 50 whith a Demon some months ago and hell yeah it was fun! The Demon's wonderful agility, her devastating firepower, combined with her mean personality... the answer is YES! The demoness is worth giving a try!

[Sethi22 12]

Good luck, and have fun! When you get tired from all the pew-pew-pew shooting action, you can always just put an end to their sufferings with divebombing them, if you want to see her more devastating side, it's there! In more dangerous places, like Valley of tears though, maybe it's better to pew-pew from afar...

Edited November 20, 2022 by Sethi22

[idbeholdME 293]

Interesting read. So far, I've only ever brought one character to Niobium, my level 169 Gladiator. Back when I was deciding what to play first, it was a toss-up between Gladiator and Demoness. Ultimately ran with a Gladiator, but it turned out to be quite easy mode, mostly because of Jumping Stomp, which stuns pretty much everything in a huge radius.

Regarding the runes, I just dupe them at a runemaster. I have no clue who thought binding rune drop rate the amount of runes learned/stashed was a good idea, but it's horrendous. I have no interest in starting low level characters over and over again just to have enough runes for my main characters. Did all the quests with my Gladiator, but still not nearly enough runes. Even when I was save/loading them all until a desirable rune dropped.

[Sethi22 12]

I failed miserably with my only gladiator:( But I was a complete newbie back then, I'll try again for sure! I did take a bunch of dwarves to niobium, which is comparable in tankiness (well it's even better I guess because of entrench) but all of them died. I'm really bad in surviving it seems, no matter how tanky a character I made, all of them fell flat on their faces. After a while I realized that no matter how defensive I try to be, it doesn't matter all that much, so I started flying around and kiting instead, watching my position against the tough guys and it worked better for me. But I'm sure to do a facetanking build one day!

Yeah runedrops suck! There was a time when I really became fed up with it and just packed one of my exported characters with runes and gave it to my main guy again and again in a cooperative muliplayer session. Or duped them at a master as you said, but after a while I returned to playing the game with quests, keeping the 6-700 number in my mind for skills, maybe it's because I got old and more patient. Or dumber. Or both:)

Edited January 24 by Sethi22