Sacred 2:Epic Office Quest

The developers at Ascaron decided to throw themselves into the game while they were writing Sacred 2: Fallen Angel. Literally. They created the ultimate in Easter Eggs. Each of the employees of Ascaron at the time of the game’s development has an avatar inside the game. As you travel through Ancaria, you will have probably come across people standing around with an exclamation point - - over their heads – as if they’re expecting you to strike up a conversation with them. However, they will tell you they can’t help you at the moment. If you press the ALT key (PC), they will have a full proper name like “Carolyn Hacker” (found in Clearview, near the Runemaster). They are part of the Epic Office Quest. This is THE longest, most convoluted quest in the game by far. Here’s how to solve it: First off, you need to make it into the Jungle area. Whether or not you wait until you actually are supposed to go to the Jungle is up to you. You can get there from the path going south from Teardrop Hamlet, or you can go by way of the swamp into the Bengaresh Desert region. From there, you need to make your way all the way south to the Archeologist Camp in the north end of the Jungle area. If you leave from Teardrop Hamlet, you’re best bet is to set the resurrection monolith active near the portal before you leave. Beware that if you go do this before you're supposed to, the enemies and such are going to be MUCH stronger than you and can kill you off very quickly - bring LOTS of health potions! From the camp, you will need to head east – either by following the northern border of the Jungle area until it curves south, or by going due south from the camp to the first bridge and then heading east. When you get close to the eastern part of the jungle area, you will see another small bridge. Cross it and head south and a bit west. You should see a cave entrance not far from the bridge. Note: there’s a Temple of the Gods on the top of the big hill on the east side you might want to visit while you’re in the area to get credit for your Polytheist Achievement/Trophy. Map to the Switch The Switch Cave The Switch Room The Switch Go inside the cave and you will find a small room with a pair of ghosts and an altar in the center. Kill off the ghosts and raid the jars and chests. Make your way to the altar and activate the switch. A message will appear saying “Something Wonderful has been Opened.” You will also hear some singers in the background singing the theme song of the game in a Gregorian style chant. See the picture below. So far, so good. If you’re starting point was Teardrop Hamlet, you can teleport back there using the F12 key (Fallen Angel - PC) or F8 (Ice and Blood). If you’re playing with Ice and Blood installed, you can also teleport using the map back to Teardrop Hamlet. From Teardrop Hamlet, make your way south along the road again, toward the desert area. When you get to the big T-Energy pool covering the road, you can check your map quickly. You will see that the southeastern side of Bluestone Lake now shows as being revealed. Your task is to head northeast toward the northern tip of the T-Energy pools, without, of course, stepping into any of them and while killing the T-Energy mutants along the way. It’s likely best to have plenty of health potions for this trip. There’s also a boss level quest along the way should you choose to do it. See the map below for approximate directions. Map to the Office When you get past the T-Energy pools, keep going north and you should come across a few bridges. You should also see an Ascaron employee standing on one of the bits of land looking over the falls (Andreas Liebeskind). Keep going north over the bridges until you get to the other side. Head east and you should see a rather lengthy staircase heading down. You should then see a ledge with another staircase going down to yet another lower level. Follow this path to the bottom. You will see another Temple of the Gods here. Feel free to stop and pray at the temple so you get credit for it towards your Polytheist Achievement/Trophy. Now then, after your break at the Temple, head east again until you get to the edge of the cliff. Head due south along the rim and you will need to cross a bridge. When you get as far south as you can go, there will be another bridge – this one takes you to the top of a mesa that’s in the Swamp area. There’s also a Hydra up there so be ready for a fight. After you’ve killed the Hydra, you will see a door in what appears to be a rotting tree. Go to the door and open it. The Office Entrance If you have already gotten to this spot before, the door would have been locked and you would have seen the words “Something Wonderful” appear as a tool tip. When you go inside, you will see a man dressed in Arabian style clothes. His name is Heiko tom Felde and he’s got a job for you. Heiko tom Felde He will tell you that development for Sacred 3 should have already started but all of the employees were on vacation – in the game. It seems they’ve forgotten they were supposed to come back – but they’re having way too much fun watching the game. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to locate all 89 of the employees hiding throughout the game and tell them to get back to work. Yes, 89 employees… It isn’t called the Epic Office Quest for nothing. The employees can be found in most areas of the game with the exception of the following: The Island of Mounts The Crystal Plane The Blood Forest Northend/Christmas Island This is, of course, because these areas weren't part of the game at the time this quest was created. Your best bet would be to retrace your steps and make your way back as far as the falls to have a talk with Andreas Liebeskind – your first employee. From here, you can and probably should teleport back to Teardrop Hamlet – or better yet, to Sloeford to start rounding up the employees. Now then, this is where the quest becomes truly “Epic” There are several ways to go about this. The easiest and least nerve wracking method is to create a list of the employees by the region they are in. Print it out on paper and keep it handy so you can mark them off as you find them. It’s also a good idea to bookmark the Sacred 2 Map of Ancaria as a reference. The first thing to do is round up the employees in the areas you’ve already been to. If you’ve talked to any of the employees before talking to Heiko tom Felde, have no fear – the exclamation marks over their heads get reset when you do talk to him. Sorry, if you talked to them before getting the quest, they don’t count. What? There’s a reason why the quest is rated at 5 stars – the highest difficulty rating in the game. If the developers wanted to make it easy – they would have just put Heiko tom Felde in Sloeford and had you go from there. Once you’ve caught up, it’s generally best to just go on with your game and when you do come across an employee, mark them off your list after you’ve talked to the employee and sent them on their way. There’s one employee in the swamps you might want to look for. His name is Benny Kayser and he’s a bit different from the other 88 employees. You see, he actually drops something valuable. He drops a ring called Benny's Promise – which is part of a two ring Set called Kayser's Luck. It’s one of the few Set items that all characters can wear. It has a + All Skills boost – which may not seem like much, but when added to Ellen's Commitment (which has a + All combat arts bonus), you also get a Max Hitpoints boost that will vary depending on if you’re playing Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum or Niobium. Benny can be found in a forgotten fortress south of Hissil'Ta – the main city in the Swamp region. The ring set is available to ALL character classes and is the easiest way to get the Fashion Police/Victim Achievement/Trophy. Until you complete the quest, there will be no updates to the log book. It will appear as complete even if you don’t find all of the employees. There will be no further information as to which ones have been found and who’s still left out in the game. (Which is why you want to print out the list of employees.) Note: The CM Patch changes this somewhat. A list of employees you've contacted will appear in your log book. When you DO find the final employee, the completed quest indicator will go off, and the log book will update telling you to go visit the Ascaron offices again. Is it worth the mega schlep back there? Of course it is. If all goes well, you will be in the top floor of the Great Machine’s domain when it does go off. Make your way back to the offices to collect your rewards! When you get there, you’ll need to go to the top floor and talk to Holger Flottmann. He is in the guise of a Stone Warrior from the Bengaresh desert region. Holger Flottmann [Image:HolgerFlottmann.jpg http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php5/Image:Th_HolgerFlottmann.jpg] He will congratulate you on your success. He will tell you to visit Bettina Wegener who is located one floor down. She will give you the keys to the employee lounge. When you get to the lounge, and you enter, you will trigger a magic hiding spot that will release the following goodies: Stradal's Hammer – a Legendary/5 star class weapon Ellen's Commitment – the 2nd part of Kayser's Luck Potions galore – Health, Mentor, Concentration, Recovery Gold – a nice pile of it Note: The CM Patch likewise makes changes here as well. Instead of Stradahl's Hammer, you get a legendary lightsaber. By the time you get to the end of the game, Stradal's Hammer may seem like a weak item – and it probably isn’t one you’d want to go up against the Nameless Guardians with, but it is generally worth a nice bit of gold should you decide to sell it. A Niobium class hammer can be worth more than 2 million gold pieces in Niobium. Not a bad chunk of change. Tips and tricks… I.) If you’re playing a High Elf and have the Shadow Step teleportation spell, you can navigate to a point under the final bridge taking you to the Ascaron Offices and use the Shadow Step to make your way up there. This does require access to the southern swamp area. Likewise, the Temple Guardian’s Propelled Levitation jet pack may also do the trick (untested). II.) If you’re playing Ice and Blood, there’s a bug in the game code that will reveal the locations of the employees on your map. To make a very long, complicated tale of programming woe short, the developers accidentally introduced a bug in the game that shows certain quests that should NOT have been displayed on the map. When you start a brand new game, each employee starts off with a quest script that tells you to talk to them (the exclamation point over their heads BEFORE you start the actual Epic Office Quest). When you start the Epic Office Quest, that original quest should be marked as Failed and marked as Hidden so it doesn’t show up as a bunch of red circles on the map. However, the bug in question ignores the Hidden flag that tells it to hide the failed quests. So what you wind up with – the locations of all of the employees you haven’t talked to prior to taking on the quest. That’s the good news. The bad news – if you’ve failed any other quests, those markers will be mixed in with the employee’s failed markers. There are also some other decision points (depending on if you accepted or declined a quest’s decision point) where a quest flag can be marked as Failed. And yes, those will also be displayed. This is where that bookmark for the Sacred 2 Map of Ancaria comes in very handy. See the Map of Employee Locations Hey.. It’s a bone the developers threw us and we’ll take it! Thank you very much..! Note: I have no data on if this bug affects Console versions of the game, however, it’s unlikely as the bug appeared somewhere between the original Ice and Blood release (2.64.0) and the two patches that came out afterwards (2.65.1 and 2.65.2) and there is no Ice and Blood release for the Xbox nor PS3. The Employees Tyr Lysia: Anca Adelina Finta On the map Andreas Liebeskind On the map Anett Bölke On the map Bastian Clarenbach On the map Bettina Wegner On the map Carolyn Hacker On the map Elvin Mehmedagic On the map Enrico Ausborn On the map Eric Lambertz On the map Janos Toth On the map James Mearman On the map Lars Hammer On the map Mark Kieschke On the map Melanie Thiemann On the map Ralf Armen Boettcher On the map Roger Boerdijk On the map Stefan Ruthenberg On the map Steffen Schulze On the map Steve Manekeller On the map Uygar Kalem On the map [u]Swamp:[/u] Antonio Bloise On the map Bastian Rolf On the map Benny Kayser On the map Boris Fornefeld On the map Daniel Dumont On the map Daniel Lieske On the map Dirk Schumacher On the map Guido Neumann On the map Simon Kranz On the map Tobias Berghoff On the map [u]Artamark:[/u] Alan Wild On the map Catharina Zeiß On the map Christian Bus On the map Christian Grunwald On the map Daniel Balster On the map Daniel Müller On the map Daniel Sawitzki On the map Franz Stradal On the map Hans-Arno Wegner On the map Jan Langermann On the map Jan Walczak On the map Lars Berenbrinker On the map Nadim Affani On the map Ole Metzdorf On the map Peter Grimsehl On the map Peter Kullgard On the map Raimund Lingen On the map Roger Swindells On the map Simon Trümpler On the map Thomas Dähling On the map Ulf Winkelmann On the map [u]Desert:[/u] Andreas Muller On the map Dag Winderlich On the map Felix Schuller On the map [u]Jungle:[/u] Alexander Conde On the map Maximilian Mantz On the map Ralph Roder On the map Simon Völker On the map Stefan Maton On the map [u]Nor Plat:[/u] Aarne Jungerberg On the map Frank Rentmeister On the map Jens Eischeid On the map Jochen Hofmeier On the map Julian Pies On the map Kay Struve On the map Marko Giertolla On the map Matthias Süß On the map Michael Bußler On the map Michel Dumont On the map Peter Luber On the map Stefan Hinz On the map Stephan Hodes On the map Torsten Meier On the map [u]Dragon Sea:[/u] Seraphim Island, Dragon Islands and Carnach Cave. Helga Parmiter On the map Marc Oberhäuser On the map Mark Intelmann On the map Mark Külker On the map Torsten Allard On the map [u]Dyr-Laigh:[/u] Christiane Clarenbach On the map Hoa Tu Ngoc On the map Janina Gerards On the map Markus Haeublein On the map Morris Röhle On the map Ralf Rüdiger On the map Sebastian Walter On the map [u]Wastelands:[/u] Christian Altrogge On the map Frank Lunnebach On the map Mario Endlich On the map Sebastian Fleer On the map See Also Easter Eggs Silly Messages Grave Inscriptions