The manual is in PDF form with the Steam version, but it’s not very useful. You have to learn most of it by playing.
I haven’t gotten around to installing this yet, but the more I read, the more curious I am. The first Sacred didn’t really grab me.
Troy
A big patch was just released here, my favorite bit they fixed was this:
Only five side quests involving hirelings can be accepted at the same time.
If you run into a city for the first time and go around collecting all the quests it’s possible to end up with a small army following you around, though most won’t fight and those that do are fairly ineffectual.
Not sure if this is up on steam yet though, probably not.
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Charl, your equipped weapon is displayed like a combat art. You start with only one slot for a weapon, and you’ll eventually get four slots, which can be chosen with F1-F4. They don’t show up on the paper doll, but instead show up in the little globes opposite your combat arts. The convention is that the globes on the left are your left click (weapons attack), whereas the globes on the right are your right click (combat arts).
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I’ve never been unable to pick something up unless my inventory is full, in which case an item will sticky itself onto my cursor. Does the item show up when you hold down the “alt” key? Note that you’ll also get a name on your own characters as well as friendly characters when you hold down “alt”. Those aren’t items! :) Did you try the “Q” key, which vacuums up everything in a radius around your character?
-Tom
patch bugged my character in a sorta good way – my glacial thorns at rank 13.7 now does 787 damage per shard, instead of 130ish. :D
on the other hand, my glacial thorns spell now takes on the element damage of whatever weapon i have equipped, if said weapon converts physical damage to an element – and since i have a fire staff, my ice shards do 580ish FIRE damage (instead of ice) along with 200ish physical. wtf, ascaron!
(note that my high elf is only level 19)
I was pretty disappointed in this game… singleplayer feels like multiplayer with just 1 person. You can’t even access any options or make save slots without quitting to the main menu.
How long does it usually take for Steam to get the latest patches for games? Also, is there a way to tell if the Steam version has been patched before I pull the trigger and make the purchase?
There is a new patch, it fixes some of the previous complains, like th lack of a ingame menu.
Patch Log : http://forum.sacredeng.ascaron-net.com/showthread.php?t=52104
Talk about frustration.
Bought this on Impulse after reading Tom’s review and some comments in this thread and a couple other forums. This was Friday morning, and I’ve now downloaded it I believe 4 times, possibly 5 and Impulse chugs along nicely until it finishes and then lets me know that there was an error and I should retry the download.
With a 12+ gig download that’s not a quick fix. Be nice if there was some sort of a check occasionally so the whole thing wouldn’t have to be nabbed again or a little more information on what the error was. So much for this being my long weekend game. I like Stardock and supporting them, but I’m kind of wishing I’d stuck with Steam on this one, never had this kind of issue with anything on there.
Still looking forward to trying it out.
BLARGLE NEED PATCH FROM STEAM NOWWWWWW
So three of us played for several hours last night and the new patch really helped on my middle-range system that was having problems prior to the patch. Apparently, there was a problem with some single-core processors (!) that was fixed.
Also, horses seem to be fixed. I routinely lost my horse unless I carefully kept up with it. Now whistling seems to work as the magical insta-summons it was supposed to be.
-TomMy short thoughts on Sacred 2 so far…
- I love having a hardcore mode available from the first, instead of waiting until after i finish the game.
-Graphics are crisp and elaborate and quite appealing. Just in the starting area there seemed to be greater individuality and unique territory than the majority of Titan Quest’s levels.
-I like how “bandits” are often hiding in the brush.
-Somehow, for some reason, being killed on Silver/Hardcore barely two steps out of the starting area of the Elven Mage made me giddy with joy. (The Seraph seems vastly more powerful at first, and i don’t see that diminishing for awhile).
-I have no idea about the direction of my future character development. And, i’m not really certain i have the time anymore to have multiple play-throughs to discover the game’s depth this way. I played most of Fallout 3 on Very Hard because i don’t have time to replay it multiple times.
-The world seems enormous as compared to the starting zone, according to the world map. At least, it will be if most or all of the land area is explorable…
Tom, what difficulty level were you referring to when you praised the difficulty scaling? I found the demo too easy on bronze, but was wiped out in the crypt near the start when I tried a new character on silver. (Are we supposed to be able to handle that right off the bat or to come back to it after levelling up?)
Unrelated question: how much aiming is involved in playing the mage (high elf?) character? I didn’t do so well with aiming the seraphim’s bolts but I tend to like to play casters.
I started on silver, and made it up to level 20 before petering out for awhile. If anything it was far too easy with an inquisitor.
My biggest disappointment with the demo: When I equipped a laser gun on my angel-hooker warrior, it made no sound effects when firing.
A lot of aiming. Sorry. The seraphim has a nova spell that should not require aiming. Maybe try that.
What are people’s favorite classes in terms of skills? I’ve got my Temple Guardian up to level 9 and am finding the skills to be completely uninteresting. I don’t expect to find anything quite as cool as the shockwave thing from Titan Quest, but skills like a third arm that basically add onto my normal attack and yet don’t allow me to use my laser arm just aren’t cutting it.
Also, Silver difficulty is completely unchallenging. I think I might just start over on hardcore with a new character once the update is released for Steam.
Sacred 2 isn’t going to be very hard for a while. At least not in the starting areas. If it’s not challenging enough at first, then just make a beeline along the storyline missions. You’ll quickly get to the main city. After that city, once you pass the wall into the next land, I think you’ll find it gets to be more challenging. The orc lands and the desert get pretty crazy. Of course, your character class and how you’ve got your buffs kitted out makes a big difference. Some of the classes are much easier to solo than others.
Piemax, the bronze difficulty seems too forgiving if you’ve ever played a Diablo. Note that the patch lets you start a multiplayer game on gold, but the way the leveling work, you won’t encounter anything below level 40.
Also, I think there might be a “to hit” roll with ranged casters or something. Either that or you have to make sure you keep the target targeted. My main is a dryad (basically an amazon) and she misses all the time, but there’s no graphic of a fireball veering wildly off to one side, so it’s not quite as disconcerting.
The character display lets you page through the last ten monsters you fought. This shows your percent chance to hit each creature, which is based on comparing your attack value to its defense value. I don’t know if it shows the same thing with spell intensity and resistance, which might determine whether the fireballs are hitting.
-TomThanks for all the info! It’s too bad about the aiming, but I went ahead and bought the game anyway; I liked the nice mapping features and, perversely enough, the fact that I got killed on the silver mode that other folks find easy :)
Finding this a touch tedious. I want to like it; indeed there are things to like. I finally realized I wasn’t supposed to “do all the quests in a certain area and then move on”. When I tried to play like that I wound up wandering all over the map and getting frustrated when it was time to turn a quest in and I was a far away from where I needed to turn it in (since a quest might take you across the map, past a town wherew there are yet more quests to get, and then yoiu follow one of those for awhile, and so on and so forth).
I like the open world.