Sacred:Combat and Game Basics

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 or injury applies to any or all of the types separately. For example, physical injury and poison damage are each calculated using their respective damage and resistance values, then once computed, the four types are subsequently added to arrive at the final figure.

Your effectiveness when fighting is determined by several factors. In particular, the injury 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 injury. 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 her 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.

Timers

This is THE point. Everything in Sacred is about timers. Well, what is a timer ? Simple enough to define, Hard as hell to manage when playing some class builds.

• Definition of the word timer : Ok, come on, find your way among the mysterious pages of your favorite dictionnary.
• Sacred Definition and use of timers : As said before, timers are the element of Sacred gameplay to be taken into account everytime you need to change even the pointless thing on your char. A badly managed timer can mess up all your build. And breaking balance with timers is really easy.

How to use Timers to fine tune your build.