New Players Only Guide
Sacred is a good RPG game that works differently from others. You’ll need to learn some specific game mechanics to play well. The most important things to understand are:
- How weapon attack speeds work for different character classes
- How special attack moves (called combat arts in the game) function
- Which character stats and skills make these special attacks stronger
You’ll need to do some research to understand these systems since they’re not typical for RPG games.
But anyway, the point of this guide is to give you some very quick and thorough advice, so that you can actually play the game and learn more on your own as time goes on.
Strength is a very good attribute, which makes melee class the best. It certainly is the best option for new players.
The Vampiress is pretty much the best class. When in vampire form, her claws are considered dual-wielding, but you only need a single weapon to gain the benefits from dual-wield, which is pretty good. This is the only game I know of which somehow made dual welding weapons work with an equipped shield!
Sword-Lore is a skill which is mandatory. Besides the attack bonus, which is a very important stat and needs to be kept at very high levels, the Sword-Lore skill also has hidden attributes which make wielding the sword much more viable. Just pick this skill as soon as you can and level it up to 25, or 30, until you reach much higher character levels and continue leveling it later on during late game. Agility is another skill you need, also for the attack bonus, which again, need to be kept at very high levels. “Attack Bonus” is your chance to hit an enemy, and this game requires much of it.
The rest of the skills are pretty simple. Constitution for life, Armor for defense and movement speed, Weapon-Lore (which is a different skill, not related to sword-lore) for damage (again, only need about level 25, and then continue leveling it again much later on) and Bloodlust and Vampirism for combat arts, which are a bit complicated. But you don’t really need to understand this yet. Combat arts are a fine balance, you don’t want to level them because they will take too long to regenerate. This confuses many people. Infact, you only need 1 point in all of her attack-based combat arts. Trust me on this, it will be very temping to level them further. Just don’t, until you understand how the game works. “Transform into Vampire” is the only combat art you should invest into at first, and only about 5 points into this. You can invest “points” (actually by eating runes) into some of her summon arts, just to experiment with them, but I would highly recommend you keep as little invested into CA’s as possible, and save all the runes.
The 8th and final skill, chosen very last, can be your choice, but again I would recommend you choose “Disarming” because you can gain some cool loot from a few people as sort of a trick.
And finally, for attributes, all you need is strength. Just keep leveling strength and choose nothing else.
This game is all about methodically building your character. Don’t expect much by way of quests or story or anything like that. In fact, all the side quests should be done when you hit the 5th difficulty, and good luck getting to level 200+ haha. I would also recommend starting in Silver and not the Bronze difficulty. The game world is GIGANTIC, and AMAZING, but the quests are pretty generic. This is not a game where you go and “win the story” or whatever. It’s is meant to be played over vasts amounts of time and with patience. It really is not for everyone. It’s definitely not like Grim Dawn, or Torchlight 2, or whatever wannabe Blizzard cartoon BS designed for teenagers born in the year 2000.
Additional Notes
Socketing is very important regarding your character build. On average, with the Vampiress, you will have about 17 slots from equipment. Skeleton skulls are a major contributing factor to DPS, the stronger ones are harder to find but do pop-up, and your socket layout should be roughly 20% skulls (or something like 4 skulls out of 17) and the rest to additional attack with blacksmith runes, purchased from the blacksmith.
With that being said, all your rings should also contribute to physical damage and nothing else.
For other gear, the main stat you want is “speed+”. This will make you run much faster. This stat is so useful, that you can ignore other, much stronger gear, in favor of weaker gear with speed bonuses. In general, the Vampiress is powerful enough on her own and doesn’t rely so much on defensive stats. A fair amount of speed to hover around in would be 70+, but I keep my total speed over 90+.
The second most important stat is magic find, which in-game is called “Chance of finding special items”.
So, in summary, this is what your priority for equipment should be:
- Sockets > speed bonus > magic find > constitution > defensive stats > everything else.
Also, there is a thing in this game called “survival bonus”. Again very important. You get this only by fighting enemies, and only during combat, and nowhere else. When you die this stat is reset to zero. Never continue playing after death. Always quit and reload.
How to Find Magic Items (Strategy)
Magic items tend to be blue or better items, as long as you are finding more of them when you have it equipped it’s doing it’s job. A tip if you wanna kill faster and get better stuff is to for example fight something tougher (dragon or special enemy for example) with your best weapon and then finish them with this that sword to get a better chance of getting better stuff from them.
If you wanna be cheeky you can also run away from them a tiny bit, drink an exp boost potion (blue potion), quicksave the game and then just kill them with that sword over and over until you get loot you are satisfied with (like green legendary gear set items or atleast brown super unique items).
Thanks! It wasn’t easy finding a new player’s guide!