Sacred:Combat and Game Basics

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Combat Basics Injury to both you and your enemies is calculated in "hit points". Once your hit points (or your enemy's) are depleted, your (his) life is ended. Your current life reservoir is reflected in the red oval around your portrait in the upper right corner of the screen. Your enemies' are reflected in a horizontal bar that appears when you target them by placing the mouse cursor over their image. Injury/Damage comes in four types: Physical, Fire, Magic and Poison. Each weapon or spell that inflicts injury delivers some combination of these four damage types; perhaps all physical, perhaps half fire and half magic. In the discussion below, any reference to damage applies to any or all of the types separately. For example, physical damage and poison damage are each calculated using their respective damage and resistance values, then once computed, the four types are added to arrive at the final figure. Your effectiveness when fighting is determined by several factors. In particular, the damage you inflict upon your enemies depends upon three main factors: Your Attack Speed – How quickly do you strike your opponent? Your "To Hit" – How likely is it your blows will land? The damage dealt per hit – How hard do you hit? Similarly, the injury they do to you depends upon the same factors, but in mirror image. Attack Speed The rate of attack for any character is affected by her Attack Speed rating ("AS"), and also by the type of weapon in use. Some weapons, such as daggers, are intrinsically faster, while others, such as crossbows, are innately slower. Additionally, certain characters have a natural ability to use some weapons faster than other characters. You should be aware of this synergy. Selecting an appropriate lore (e.g. Axe Lore for use with Thaine's Axe) can increase attack speed. Your attack speed is not affected in any way by the enemy you are fighting. To Hit The chance you have to effectively land a blow depends upon both your character and your opponent. You have an Attack Rating ("AR"); your opponent has a Defense Rating ("Def"). Both of these contribute to the likelihood of landing a blow. The higher your AR, the better your chances. The higher your opponent's Def, the lower your chances. The Chance To Hit formula explains in more detail. At the same time, your enemy is striking you as well, causing you damage. That calculation is exactly the same, replacing your AR with your enemy's, and his Def with yours. Damage Dealt The actual damage inflicted upon your opponent again depends upon both your character and your opponent. The higher your damage value, the greater the injury; while the higher their resistance, the lesser the injury. The Damage Inflicted calculator describes the mathematics of this. Again, substitute your enemies damage for yours and your resistance for your opponent's to perform your injury calculation. Day/Night Cycle Sacred features a day/night cycle in which the sun rises and sets every day. Nighttime is not especially dark in Sacred, but the screen will become dimmer and the player's minimap light radius is reduced significantly. This reduction is not affected by (and does not affect) bonuses to Far Sight or Increased Light Radius. The World Discovered percentage is also not affected by day/night. Therefore nighttime will simply make clearing the fog of war more difficult. At night, NPC's in towns and cities will begin carrying torches to light their way. NPC's don't lock up their houses or go to bed and shopkeepers stay in place ready to do business. There are no quests that are dependent on whether it is day or night. The length of one 24-hour day in the game is approximately 68 minutes of playing time. Therefore 1 in-game hour passes about every 3 minutes. Daylight lasts significantly longer than night, with about 54 minutes of sun and only 14 minutes of darkness. The overall length of this cycle can be increased by the bonuses Extended Day and Extended Night. Managing the day/night cycle (and using the Extended Night modifier) is especially important for the Vampiress, who is harmed by sunlight when in her vampire form and whose minions are stronger at night. Experience Each character gains experience for every kill made and when the character has gathered sufficient experience it will advance to a new level, allowing it to improve it's skills and attributes. The experience required to reach the next level increases with each level obtained, making each successive level more difficult to achieve. Timers Much in Sacred is based on Timers, the ability to be able to regenerate a Combat Art quickly enough to be able to use it again without taking too many blows from monsters while waiting for the regeneration to finish before they kill you. Simple enough to define, but difficult to manage when playing some class builds. Sacred uses three distinct timers, any of which can be used to release Combat Arts which can inflict damage, create a shielding buff, and/or a wide manner of other in game effects. A badly managed timer or group of timers can cripple your build and breaking balance with timers is, unfortunately, very easy. How to use Timers to fine tune your build. Resistance (Please place new content for resistance here)