Hello and Nice to meet you everybody :)

[xeyp 47]

Hey!

I'm H.
I'm afraid I haven't read any other introductions so I don't know if there's any specific etiquette that I should follow. 
In my defense I had no idea this part of the forum existed, until I was made aware of it by (I want to say Mr.) gogoblender on my first post.

My History with Sacred (1) -or- Why I feel an unstoppable urge to play Sacred every Summer
Having rushed from there to here to introduce myself proper - now I realize that I don't know where to start from.
I was introduced to Sacred in around 2004-2005. I had just moved to a new school and met a dear new friend. Not long after getting to know 
one another he invited me over to his place. We managed to arrive at his place before his mom, so we could hop on the PC for a bit before she
came an had to use it for work. As you can imagine he said look at this and started Sacred, the OG very sunny Start Menu appeared (I love UW but miss it everyday)
and he loaded his Seraphim an started fighting orcs and undead at NIGHT in the middle of a desert.

For some context I had played Diablo II and other ARPGS (like NoX, love that game) but to be fair while I liked them I didn't like-LIKE them  
Sacred had some other magic, however, somehow the world seemed a lot more magical in a very natural kind of way (the hidden magical places definitely didn't hurt haha)
Diablo, for me, while a great game had a world that felt crafted, created, put together - you could see the artist in the work, which I take as a huge negative if one is to immerse themselves
in a world. Sacred for me was like learning there's magic in the world, entering your dresser and coming out on the other side in a magical world that is as natural as the one you came from
and it seems like it has always existed. In other words it just felt right. 

Fun fact, my first character was a battle mage ;) (my latest is also a battle mage)

Every year during summer break I'd be sent off out of town to one set of grandparents or another. However, I'd been given a PC for my birthday earlier in the year so I'd be out of town, but not
out of Ancaria haha. I'd play outside in the early hours of the day and when the heat (and my desire to play) got too unbearable I went inside hopped on. I loved hearing all the ambient sounds 
and songs of Sacred when I played at night and the wind coming from the balcony would blend in with the sounds coming from the speakers.

After some time of playing on and off (it isn't an easy game if you're a child that isn't reading the DarkMatters guides and doesn't understand any of the mechanics) 
I, through some coincidence found that Underworld had released! I called my buddy this time to my place and as we opened the game we saw the two new Characters at level 25! 
We quickly started a new Underworld campaign as the Daemon and - she... could... FLY! We were absolutely lost for words, and we couldn't stop talking about it - not to mention that 
the Underworld was as eerie as can be. 

Again I played on and off for at least another 2-3 years and then another summer came, but this time I stayed in town, this time, however, everybody else was out of town so I was at home
with my trusty computer. For some reason a mystical force guided me to Wolfe's Lair... I had never read guides on games or even thought about mechanics. I just played them and picked what 
looked cool!  
   I swear I think I played at most 2-3 hours of Sacred that week, the other time was spent going over everything on that site. I then spent another week of just testing this and that to make sure it 
   was all right, it all seemed like someone telling you magic is real and giving you a guide on how to perform it yourself, I couldn't just take the words for granted as it seemed to good to be true.
As I was reading this and that and clicking here and there I found myself clicking on the Forum button - and for the first time I saw someone put all this magical knowledge together to make something great.
I did say that my first Sacred love was the Battle Mage - so having that information you can probably guess which build I found and replicated first - Csaszar's Gow BM guide! 
I remember hitting level after level and finishing the Ancaria Campaign shortly before summer and one Friday after school I met up with my friend, we went to his place, ordered pizza and I copied my save over.
Then proceeded to blow his brain - he'd never seen anything like this and we got through a large part of the Campaign that night. 

My History with Sacred (2)
Here's a little secret - that time we ate pizza and played the Underworld Campaign - it was after Fallen Angel had released. 
My friend had told me about it, even sent me a trailer, for some reason I was really against it, I now feel that subconsciously I feared that capturing 
lighting in a bottle once was a miracle and there's no way they could do it again, as I said earlier, while Diablo felt made and put together, Sacred felt found - like a relic 
that has always existed and the developers just dusted it off and placed it in a nice looking display case. So in one of the breaks of blowing everything to pieces with my
Battle Mage - he, again, showed me something. I don't know how or from where, but he'd gotten a Demo for Fallen Angel and I, while of course saying that it was okay but 
the first one was better was secretly falling in love again. I saw the same magic, it was there! So I saved up money and got it as soon as I could.
Disaster would strike, however, while I did have the game - my old trusty computer was in fact - old, too old to play Sacred II. So I had to sit on my hands, look at the 
Game's case lovingly daydream while waiting for the next big holiday, I think it took at least another half a year. (now that's real pain!)

Soon as I could run it I steamrolled through the Light campaign with the High Elf and Shadow Warrior and I loved it. The OST is glorious and I still listen to it every day. 
I never again compared it to the first game, it was to me like a separate wonderful Ancarian universe with its own way of doing things different, yet familiar. 
I played some multiplayer while the servers were online and those were of the best days of my gaming life, I am incredibly saddened that I never did play Sacred 1 online
as it always intimidated me when I was younger.

I never got that deeply into its mechanics though, I sort of reverted to "I use this because it is cool!"

Where I am now and Where do I want to go?
   To be quite frank, making new characters and builds in Sacred 1 was too fun for me to settle down and go past Platinum into Niobium and beat both campaigns. 
Now I've decided, however, that I'm sticking to one character and am making the trek! 

   After this I want to read up on Sacred 2's mechanics and really dive into it - I've never played the Blood and Ice expansion although I've bought it twice lol.
I think that I might go crazy with all of the little choices the game gives you such as the little talents trees for each skill and planning all sorts of "off-meta" or 
as I've taken to calling them 'odd-fun builds' / or / 'optimizing for fun' haha.
   Finally, after getting my fair share of Sacred 2, I'd probably go back and forth between the two. 
It's a little embarrassing to admit, but I've never really played with the Seraphim, Vampiress and Daemon in any meaningful way :O and I've barely touched the 
Dark Elf 

A great dream of mine is, of course, finding a great group of friends here and getting to play either Sacred with them as regularly as our schedules allow 

Here's a few questions I have for you folks:
I've decided to test a very unusual build (Sacred 1), using stats, mechanics and techniques of/for scaling that I don't think were meant as the main sources of Offense and Defense 
in a build that if it works - it would because of the breadth of builds that Sacred's great itemization allows for. Is there a place in the forums where I can journal my progress
and whatever findings I may stumble upon and I think more importantly - would there be interest for one such On-going Build/Character Journal? 

~~ If you've had the patience to read all of this, thank you and nice to meet you

P.S. As far as I'm concerned nothing after Blood and Ice bearing the Sacred name exists, neither does DeepSilver (lol, only half joking about this), that's my unwavering stance on that.

 

[Timotheus 430]

Hi xeyp, welcome to the FDM 

I've been roaming this place since 2007, and played S1 religiously in my late teens, early 20s. It really is a shame you felt intimidated to play S1 online because that has been my most positive online experience - maybe because Sacred was a bit of an obscure game and the people you would find online time after time were as into the game as you (and I) were. The Sacred International Forum (SIF) was very active - I spent a lot of time there - and it was a really fun and welcoming community. Sadly, as with most things online, they dissapear. Thankfully these games can still be enjoyed offline. 

Maybe I should jot down my first experience with S1 as well somewhere. Your post was a very interesting read, and resembles mine quite a lot if I'm honest.

Stick around, we're quite a nice bunch of people 

[xeyp 47]

Hi Timotheus, thank you for the warm embrace

After writing my intro, I went back and read the first page of intros and I read the following in Munk's post:

"I return because the game is great, and warm, and human.  I find peace and sometimes even a little joy playing."

Exactly what I was trying to say, but said quite a bit better in a lot less words  

And after reading the rest I was left with the impression that somehow, someway all our paths share more similarities than differences and even converge in some places.
I feel that Sacred has an ethereal kind of quality to it, there could be a carbon copy of it tomorrow but it won't feel the same. It might seem trite, but to me it really does feel
like the difference between cooking with and without love, same ingredients but somehow a different result. Using today's lingo, Ascaron definitely cooked

You definitely should jot it down @ me when you do, would love to read it.
Also - the games can and should definitely be enjoyed multiplayer as well, back in the day I think we used Hamachi to 'fake' a local network, I assume there are still options. 

[idbeholdME 434]

Well, as for me, my first contact with the series was Sacred 2. A covermount version from a gaming magazine called LEVEL that came out in December 2011:

https://archive.org/details/czlevel211dvd

Only played it for a bit initially as a Shadow Warrior (stopped at around level 40 or so) but came back to the game in 2013 or 14 and it was then Sacred captured me. My main character was a Pyromancer High Elf. This was all with just Fallen Angel. Then another long break until like 2019-20.

Now with the PFP, I have extensively played all characters besides the Dryad and Dragon Mage and have probably several thousand hours on the game.

On the other hand, I only played Sacred 1 for the first time a couple years ago. Just ran a Gladiator into Niobium, finished it and... never really came back. Tried Seraphim for a bit but dropped her after a couple dozen hours and that was it. Not really feeling the urge to play S1 when Sacred 2 exists.

Edited July 8 by idbeholdME

[xeyp 47]

But no Battle Mage though haha. (also nice to meet you idbeholdME  )
My take is this, and please don't take it as a challenge to your preference of Sacred 2, it's more like a self-rationalization for why a lot of folks who started with Sacred 1 don't like the 2nd and vice versa.
   I feel that both games are as similar as the original Titan Quest is to contemporary Grim Dawn (same devs) and as different as the original Titan Quest is to contemporary Grim Dawn  
   I'd even go as far as to say that Titan Quest and Grim Dawn share more direct mechanics(the skill trees among other things) than Sacred 1 shares with Fallen Angel.

In a sense they're so different that any sort of comparison is completely dominated by the initial bias it started with, in other words if you're looking at Sacred 2 to be a better Sacred 1, you'll still prefer Sacred 1 
and if you're looking for Sacred 1 to be at all like Sacred 2, you'd still prefer the 2nd. 
To me, as I said in the opening post, after I got over my initial skepticism, when I'd compare the two to somehow discredit Fallen Angel in-case it didn't live up to Sacred's magic - I just stopped comparing them, it had (for me) the Ascaronian touch. So I treat it like its own thing, that all sounds so defensive and weird but it's my perception on it, which is why I feel comparing the two really does neither any good. One area where it's really easy to spot this difference is in the art style. They carried almost nothing from the first game in terms of tone, with it being very serious and dark in a lot of aspects, where the second feels a lot lighter both literally and metaphorically. Both great, just different. 

What I really miss in Sacred 1 from having played the 2nd though, and please don't laugh at me - the friggin' Ragdolls - they are so satisfying, I just can't. Get a large weapon with the Shadow Warrior, do a large Area of Effect-type sweeping attack and watch 'em fly. I think the ambiance in both is stellar, but objectively speaking I think my favorite Sacred music is from the 2nd. Oh and the shared stash, I hate the whole dance we have to do with Multiplayer saves in the first game in order to transfer a ring or anything else. I do love the much cleaner treatment of Saves and Exports in the first, but it's what allowed for item duplication in the first place. Oh, and the F12 Teleport in multiplayer (it was F12 for the Haven's Isle right?) that was crazy convenient. 

... and my biggest pet peeve for both is the lack of a way to respec skills and attributes. I get this in games that don't have enough content and use punishing mechanics to stretch playtime with alts, but Sacred is anything but content-starved.

Did you have anything that stood out to you from playing the first game, even something that you might prefer - at all or did it all blend together in a sort of a forgettable experience - and also really irked you?
Even more importantly what were your first impressions, it's wild to me to imagine starting with Sacred 2 with no context of the original and then going back.

P.S. the covermount version was a DEMO right? I can't imagine buying a magazine and getting this gem.

Edited July 8 by xeyp

[Schot 411]

Love your enthusiasm xeyp.  Welcome to DarkMatters! 

I'm a big fan of the BM as well and like you, I just loved to poke around and try stuff.

Like a Galloping Infernal.  Equipped with WIDD for extra damage and just a touch of pain to drop my health to very scary low levels for crazy WIDD boosts on my fireball.

Nice to see folks popping in and keeping the spirit alive.

Cheers! 

 

[xeyp 47]

Hey Schot!
Another legend in the house!  
Love the Galloping Infernal and I've definitely seen it before, but you can't make me play a WIDD build ever haha.
I get very uneasy when my HP isn't full, most likely because I spec into defenses late if at all, I love my glass cannons - especially if they're melee lol. 
They add a bit of thrill, but I'd say WIDD would be too much thrill

[idbeholdME 434]

On 7/8/2024 at 5:32 PM, xeyp said:

P.S. the covermount version was a DEMO right? I can't imagine buying a magazine and getting this gem.

Nope. The full Fallen Angel. Czech Republic and Slovakia to an extent used to be bastions of covermount games. I have tons of full games from gaming magazines, be it LEVEL or Score. From late nineties to mid 2010s.

As for the other question, the main thing that stood out for me was the save system. Being able to save to numerous slots, at any place and loading in exactly where you saved instead of in some hub is super convenient.

Also felt that there were a bit too many playable characters, which led to loot dillution.

The balance also seemed honestly terrible in most aspects, especially in late Niobium. In the expansion area, I mostly had to spam the Gladiator jump because it stuns enemies. Armor seems basically useless compared to the damage enemies do, which they do so much of anyway that you are going to be playing around death safety feature (you can't be killed for a couple of seconds once you get the low health warning) all the time.

Split was a pretty interesting mechanic, although can't say I miss it. Definitely intended as just a power-farming thing.

Extremely disappointing final boss, a bit better in Underworld. I also found the main story quite uninteresting. Can't honestly remember much from it.

I did pretty much everything possible on the Gladiator. He's at level 167, sitting in Niobium Valley of Tears, where I power-farmed since like level 150 before dropping the game. Might come back to it at some later point. I was just at the point of starting to close the gap with enemy levels (who were all in the 200+ range since forever).

Edited July 10 by idbeholdME

[xeyp 47]

5 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

Nope. The full Fallen Angel. Czech Republic and Slovakia to an extent used to be bastions of covermount games. I have tons of full games from gaming magazines, be it LEVEL or Score. From late nineties to mid 2010s.

This is absolutely nuts, I'm very, very jealous, but also very happy for you haha 
I did the good ol' 'save lunch money for a 2-3 weeks' to buy a game - so it better be good!

Yeah, the Ancaria Campaign's boss really is disappointing, so I always treated the dragons/zone bosses as the real bosses
I can't comment on Niobium scaling though, as I suffer from excessive Alt-itis and usually can't get past Platinum before I make another one and start from scratch. 
What you say about the loot dilution is actually a big part of that - I'd be playing with character X and something would drop and make me think of a weird build with character Y, then 
I'd be planning the build in a notepad, save it on my desktop - and before you know it I can't stop thinking about it and can't wait to try it out... and in the process of trying out... you get the picture.
I'm really working on getting to Niobium this time though. 
 

5 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

you are going to be playing around death safety feature (you can't be killed for a couple of seconds once you get the low health warning) all the time.

Huh, I've always wondered what that was, but always assumed that it activated if you were very close to dying, not necessarily at 0hp or below. I've also not experienced with dragons in my most recent playthrough (glassy very in-progress character) but I'm essentially on 2 hits from the dragon and if I fail to move out of the way the 2nd hit would always get me (thanks for the save) and never get the stars around my head.

In regards to the Story I think they followed a general principle of (still followed to this day by many games) - simple story with simple motivations and Good worldbuilding for those who do want to lore-hunt via  books and quests. I would've also appreciated a more narratively complex and nuanced campaign - but I'm not sure how well it would've done with players, since ARPGs aren't known to be a good vehicle for storytelling and thus the target audience has very different expectations, and a branching narrative with in-world consequences would've definitely bankrupted them way before release.

I'll try to get back to you on balance once I reach Niobium.

What were you Defense values/Chance to get Hit I'm wondering?
(since it's the first layer of defense and generally much better than Protection, which armor gives - I've never had a problem with a Glad with good defense and Heroic Courage, but then again that's only up to Plat)

[SLD 329]

5 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

death safety feature (you can't be killed for a couple of seconds once you get the low health warning)

Never heard this explanation for the odd "1hp self stun slide-away". I once read somewhere that it's a chance to cheat death based on your survival bonus, basically a reward for surviving making it easier to keep your bonus if you've already reached a high amount. That one seemed like a logical explanation, though I have no clue where I read that. 
How did you come to your explanation? Was there any kind of testing involved or did you hear it from someone else somewhere. I'm so curious now that I have read two differnent explanations. Especially as your version sounds potentially exploitable as the warning_level can be changed in settings.cfg. If you can be onehot from above warning level you'd set it to 99% and if you can't be oneshot that way you'd set it to 1% as you'd only need very little recovery to get back above the threshold to be unkillable again.

[idbeholdME 434]

On 7/10/2024 at 2:23 PM, xeyp said:

What were you Defense values/Chance to get Hit I'm wondering?
(since it's the first layer of defense and generally much better than Protection, which armor gives - I've never had a problem with a Glad with good defense and Heroic Courage, but then again that's only up to Plat)

With Gladiator, those two are luckily taken care for by Heroic Courage and yes, the main layer of defense comes from the extremely high defense rating it provides. Enemies hitting me are actually chunking me quite badly, but the 35% chance of getting hit does a lot. The most dangerous enemies were actually Nuk-Nuk chieftains IIRC. They have an extremely quick ranged attack that can basically two shot me. Not enough to be unplayable, but a couple quick hits can quickly send me down if I don't quickly leech it back or just perma stun them with the jump. Also the fact that many enemies deal a majority of non-physical damage (like the screen shotted Hell Golem) and non-physical armor is extremely hard to get in reasonable numbers in Sacred 1. Whenever enemies use special attacks (some of which can be multi-hit, like 3 times in a row) every hit does like 12K or more damage to me. Defense works well enough against normal hits, that enemies do most of the time, but their CAs also get a massive built-in attack boos, like the player characters' do, so I have to always pay close attention either way.

As for attack, Heroic Courage gives me 6000% extra Attack Rating and Hard Hit CA for example, another extra 1700%, so CA's hit most of the time. The 67% is for normal attacks. I honestly can't imagine playing a weapon character that does not have a built-in CA to boost the rating (like Heroic Courage). Seems it'd be impossible to reach reasonable hit chances for weapons in late Niobium without at least a couple thousand % bonus to it.

For reference, these are the stats without Heroic Courage on:

23 hours ago, SLD said:

Never heard this explanation for the odd "1hp self stun slide-away". I once read somewhere that it's a chance to cheat death based on your survival bonus, basically a reward for surviving making it easier to keep your bonus if you've already reached a high amount. That one seemed like a logical explanation, though I have no clue where I read that. 
How did you come to your explanation? Was there any kind of testing involved or did you hear it from someone else somewhere. I'm so curious now that I have read two differnent explanations. Especially as your version sounds potentially exploitable as the warning_level can be changed in settings.cfg. If you can be onehot from above warning level you'd set it to 99% and if you can't be oneshot that way you'd set it to 1% as you'd only need very little recovery to get back above the threshold to be unkillable again.

Not exactly sure what the mechanism for the death prevention is, but there definitely is one. A single instance of damage can't kill you outright and once you reach a certain health level, like 10% or so hitpoints (no idea what the exact value is), you won't die for like the next second or two no matter what.

For example, let a late game Niobium dragon breathe on you and stand in the fire. Your health will basically instantly drop the the minimum level and only after a short bit, you will keel over dead. A single tic of damage chunks like 50% of my HP, so should die pretty much instantly. But I was pretty much always able to run out of it even if I made a mistake in my kiting. The effect also has a cooldown. Seems to be either a certain time period or having to heal to full HP for the effect to "recharge". Probably the former, I always just stood back for a bit whenever that happened. But it definitely can't be exploited by "juggling health" around the threshold constantly. But it is guaranteed, not a chance. I counted on it many times and it has never failed. Was also playing a fully unmodded game too.

Edited July 11 by idbeholdME

[SLD 329]

5 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

Not exactly sure what the mechanism for the death prevention is, but there definitely is one. A single instance of damage can't kill you outright and once you reach a certain health level, like 10% or so hitpoints (no idea what the exact value is), you won't die for like the next second or two no matter what.

5 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

But it is guaranteed, not a chance.

I just created a new lvl 1 gladiator to test this a bit. went in bronze over the bridge an and let one of those thugs kill me... he took a few hits until my hp were down to basically 0(or1) nad then Gladiator gets "stunned" instead of dying is immune for a short period of time after which the next hit killed him. So you seem to be closer to the truth than I thought and the SB garbage can basically be excluded as the new gladiator had none.
Next I sent the gladiator into a niiobium game to repeat the same test. He gets one-shot keels over immediately, slides away yet lies "stunned" on the ground this time. Enemy ignores him, he gets back up only to be instantly knocked over again. He gets up a second time, one-shot a third time and this time he actually dies. I retried this with multiple thugs again and they all ignore him while he's flat on the ground and again he gets knocked unconcious twice before getting killed. Even though these tests don't give enough data to know anything for certain, I'd guess that the threshold has nothing to do with it at all. Wether he got killed slowly or absolutely obliterated he always cheated death the first time. Interesting however is the fact that the one-shot overkills had a "more severe" animation and that this one could occur twice in a row before he actually died. My guess is that the relative amount of overkill somehow factors in here. At least my 3 suicide attempts are further evidence for there to be no "chance" involved.

I did no testing wether one is actually damage immune during that time of being stunned. Your dragonfire example suggests that, but I remember it being possible to get killed in this game and some of the more deadly stuff like the poison spit attack from a "tarantula mortis" that could hit you multiple times in a row also have the poison dot afterwards. Maybe there are some things that might buggedly bypass this safety net. Maybe the death safety was only introduced to the game at a later time like with the underworld expansion or sth. Just some ideas...

Also want to add the information here, that no testing has been done towards wether all character classes behave the same way when "cheating death". I can only say for sure that a similar mechanic does exist on dwarves. I'm not in the mood of suiciding with all character classes now.

Thanks for sharing your experiences that sparked this expedition to shine some more light onto this odd mechanic.

If anyone wants to do further testing on this all I can say is "knock yourself out"

[xeyp 47]

Holy hell, now I can't wait to get to Niobium to get my ass kicked haha. Thank you @idbeholdME for the screens and explanations, will definitely get back to you on my suffering in Niob when the time comes I have a feeling that I might need to level my trader too - in order to make it.  

@SLD That's some nice quick testing - and that pun was awful, keep them coming  

I've got to say thank you both so much, I'm learning a ton

[SLD 329]

On 7/10/2024 at 3:01 PM, SLD said:

I once read somewhere that it's a chance to cheat death based on your survival bonus, basically a reward for surviving making it easier to keep your bonus if you've already reached a high amount.

found some source for that here:
https://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/71919-enemy-resistances-impact/
I pulled the quotes out so you don't have to read the whole thread:
 

On 1/31/2022 at 6:04 PM, Lindor said:

On 1/31/2022 at 5:26 PM, idbeholdME said:

I have a "stun" effect above my character and can still drink potions/retreat to safety. If enemies bring my HP to 0 again shortly after that, then I die. It was the same with Anducar. His spikes pretty much one shot me when I was there on Silver, but could kill him thanks to this mechanic. How does it work exactly?

This depends on your Survival Bonus. The higher your survival bonus, the more often you can get "killed" without actually dying.

 

On 1/31/2022 at 6:22 PM, idbeholdME said:

On 1/31/2022 at 6:04 PM, Lindor said:

This depends on your Survival Bonus. The higher your survival bonus, the more often you can get "killed" without actually dying.

Interesting. I'm currently sitting at 95% and any unforeseen incidents so far have been saved by this. It helps that the enemies stop attacking you as long as the effect remains above your head. So the higher the SB, the less of a cooldown it has? Or is it just a higher chance?

 

On 1/31/2022 at 6:32 PM, Lindor said:

I'm don't know actually. I always thought it's a fixed number per gamesession, dependend on the SB you have on load-in. But I'm not sure, it's just a guess. What I do know is it depends on the SB.

So @Lindor was the culprit linking it to Survival Bonus. Though there is no further information telling us whether he was right or where he got that information from.

[xeyp 47]

Interestingly I recently had a character that got clapped, to say nicely. Before dying I did have at least one or two instances of the stun-save. After dying and returning to finish what killed me, I experienced instant death during the several times it took me to finish the job. (p.s. update your equipment instead of finishing the campaign, lol - starting to appreciate the no-export - export mechanics of Sacred 2)
That being said, please take this with a mountain of salt, it's just one person's experience. 

[SLD 329]

23 hours ago, xeyp said:

Interestingly I recently had a character that got clapped, to say nicely. Before dying I did have at least one or two instances of the stun-save. After dying and returning to finish what killed me, I experienced instant death during the several times it took me to finish the job.

Maybe if SB is involved it is also linked to character level or other things. My earlier test indicated it worked with 0 SB but I tested with a lvl 1 character. Could be that a higher character needs more SB for it to work which would explain your experience. Could also be the Idea of a limit per game instance or it shutting off when you "loose" SB implemented as SB being lower than at game start meaning my tests might have benn 0%->0% =not lower... A lot of interesting stuff about a mechanic I'd never want to rely on

23 hours ago, xeyp said:

(p.s. update your equipment instead of finishing the campaign, lol - starting to appreciate the no-export - export mechanics of Sacred 2)

I can't figure out what you're trying to tell me with this portion here. The first half(until "lol") seems to be a comment on you dying multiple times because you didn't update your gear and tried to finish/[rush for] the campaign ending. But I don't get what the export stuff would have to do with this. Please explain what you are thinking here.

23 hours ago, xeyp said:

That being said, please take this with a mountain of salt, it's just one person's experience. 

With like 10 active people around "one person's experience" is quite a lot.

And I don't want your "mountain of salt", you deserve to be "salty" after multiple consecutive deaths

[xeyp 47]

35 minutes ago, SLD said:

I can't figure out what you're trying to tell me with this portion here. The first half(until "lol") seems to be a comment on you dying multiple times because you didn't update your gear and tried to finish/[rush for] the campaign ending. But I don't get what the export stuff would have to do with this. Please explain what you are thinking here.

Basically, this character doesn't have trading, so I have to get on my dwarf trader, buy equipment, drop it on the floor of an MP game save - and then load w/ the other character to get the equipment. 
In Sacred 2, as you know much better than myself, the Campaign progress and character are separate things, in S1, however, I'm not sure how you can 'leave the SP campaign' get the armor from MP and then return (unless you're playing on MP to begin w/ to avoid this kind of issue) but I prefer my SP campaign, so I can play a lot more casually and rely on saves to save me from asleep-on-the-keyboard type of death after a long day.

[SLD 329]

4 minutes ago, xeyp said:

In Sacred 2, as you know much better than myself, the Campaign progress and character are separate things, in S1, however, I'm not sure how you can 'leave the SP campaign' get the armor from MP and then return (unless you're playing on MP to begin w/ to avoid this kind of issue) but I prefer my SP campaign, so I can play a lot more casually and rely on saves to save me from asleep-on-the-keyboard type of death after a long day.

I understand now. Yes you can't "return" to a sp campaign. I basically cheat by using copies/extra exports to restore multiplayer characters that died. But I don't really play campaign or any dangerous content.