Sacred:Unique and General Gameplay Guides

Csaszar's Guide to find the famous ICON set

In Sacred Underworld the famous ICON set - the one that gives you burning feet - became a very very rare find. Its much harder now to have a full set in your possession than in earlier versions of the game (i.e; Sacred PLUS - where most players had at least one full set)

To make it more difficult to find was a good idea IMHO. Back in the old days we didn't have sets like Fad or Orla and ICONS was used either to split the enemies or for pure cosmetic effects. Now we need to face big changes:

A: Servers are much much more unstable now and their performance is far more worse than in older days.

B: With the already mentioned "new" sets (Fad & Orla) the purpose of the ICON set changed greatly.

Its important to understand that I am not writing this guide to further the use of ICONs. My goal is simply to help those people who never had a chance try it. ICONs is and could be a source of a lot of FUN. And if its used with care others wont suffer that much because of its use.

Overall these ideas could help you get burning feet if you are willing to pay its price: long boring hours.

I will try to split this guide into 3 main sections:

*How to find it

*Some ideas for general set hunting around the starter lvls

*How to use ICONS relatively safely

How to find ICON's

The process is based on the observation of the SETs lvl: its ALWAYS lvl1!

So its not hard to figure that a lower lvl char would find it easier than a max lvl niob toon. Of course this isn't that easy. Icons are very rare - and the chance to find them is low. So to increase the chance to find them we need a low lvl char with a considerable amount of MF.

Before we go into details I need to remind you of a few things:

a Like any other Magic find (or trade) the only thing we can do is to increase the chance. There are no guarantees that it will work for you. (but it worked for me more than once)

b It could take a lot of time. Not necessarily but possibly. Trying it wont harm you but generally only the really patient and determined souls will see its fruits.

The Character

Basically every char could do it. But if we would like to optimize it further I won't propose Wood Elf (simply because she cant use jump or fly to get around obstacles more easily) and the Seraphim (because of her lack of available sockets.)

Two chars are IMHO exceptionally suited to the job:

Dwarf*:built in MF - GREED - pros: increased MF / cons: GREED needs rune investment and if you stick to the idea keeping him low lvl and restarting your char often the runes would go to waste)

Vampiress: She is one of the toughest starter char (IMHO) and can jump across obstacles.

My ICON finder was (is) a Vampiress. (well more of nostalgia than everything else)

The Gear

Sockets sockets and more sockets - we are after a lot of sockets. Put max lvl dwarven MF forge in thoose sockets and your you MF will be increased DRASTICALLY.

The setup will be the following (vampiress):

Item Number of sockets

Helm 2 Shoulder Guards 2 Armor 4 Boots 1 Gloves 1 Belt 2 Bracer 2 Greaves 2 Sword 4 Shield 3

So you will have total 23 sockets available. That is +460 MF for a lvl 2 char. Amazing isn't it? (Another nice feature of this forged bonus that your char will be almost invulnerable - each forge will give you 30% to all resistances - total 690% bonus to all resists)

Where and how to play

We see that staying low lvl is important to reach our goal. So we need to stick to the starting territory and wander only a little bit around it.

You can do it 2 ways:

First you use your lvl 2 vamp and you avoid getting any XP. That means you need to repeat quests where little or no fightings are involved. Best would be to repeatedly do the "Pay Book"*** quest. This quest has a chance to reward you with a set item and it is pretty easy to complete (and fast. Relogging to start again is longer - at least for me - to finish the quest itself) and you don't need to fight at all. Of course doing this way means that you need to get into a pretty boring cycle: log in - do the quest - log off - log in again - start doing the quest again - etc...

The second way is to make the a low lvl hunter gear then pass it from char to char. I mean you start a new Vampiress (or Dwarf) play her till she reaches lvl 8-9-10 then start her over. Alternatively you can lvl her till 10-15 (maybe even 20). This way you will have increased chance to find some of the lower lvl sets. You can find them here.

If you choose this way the Goblin Lawn and the Porto Vallum area is an ideal place to hunt.

Some ideas for general set hunting around the starter lvls

Basically this is the above detailed way just you are not after the ICONs and do not restart your char until you feel it became too hard in your lvl1 MF gear. With minimal rune investment a Vampiress can get to and over lvl 20 in such a gear without any problems.

Ideal to find rares and the minimum lvl sets also mentioned above.

Remember: you need to spam the MF socket into your gear. Don't start exchange them into anything else. The sole purpose of this char is to have the highest MF possible at low level.

How to use the ICON set relatively safely

ICONs set will generate LAG. Its not a big deal if only 1 player are using it but the situation could become dire really quickly if more players log in with full ICON set.

As previous experiments and research proved it the main source of LAG considering the ICON set comes not from the graphical side (the burning effect) but the splitting effect. ICONs will cover a relatively large area really quickly with a damaging trail of fire which dissipates after a while but if your char is moving around you chance to split the enemies around you will be increased dramatically. Even with very low split (1-5%) a lot more enemies will be doubled. If your split is higher (10-20%) its almost guaranteed that every enemy who aren't killed really quickly will be split. Any more split over 20% would mean you are making an army of enemies in a few seconds. Now this is what the Sacred engine cant really handle.

So when using ICONs try to reduce the split you are using to a real low amount - it will still work better than a much greater value without burning feet.

Secondly: if you plan to use Fad (or Orla - don't do it) with ICONs avoid populated servers. It could be ok with 1 or 2 ppl (even together with 3 ppl) but if any more players are joining and/or the others use LAG creating CAs or they are using also ICONs too flee from that server! Lag will build up pretty quickly and it will threaten you and the others. In our HC way of playing that threat can turn easily to the end of your (or someone else) char. Its also a good idea of ask or warn the others (if there are other players around).

=== Last words about ICONs and LAG and such things ===

ICON could create lag - thats true. Fad and Orla could create LAG as well. And there are a lot of things who could cause LAG (sometimes much worser LAG). But never forget: the main cause of LAG isn't your actions but crappy coding and programming. So as long as you try to avoid threaten other ppl too much you can and you should try every strategy that suits you.

• Dwarf could be an interesting experiment. I am not sure how Greed influences Quest rewards. If it does Dwarf would be definitely the number 1 choice for us. This thing would need some future experiments.

• • It is possible (not easy but possible) to find a 4 socketed one handed sword. My lvl 1 dwarven trader uses such a blade. If you are not able to find that one a simple 3 socketed weapon will do.

• • • the "Pay book" quest is much easier to do if your char is able to jump or fly. If you know the quest you will understand what I mean

I would like to thank Erialc (again) for her invaluable help! (converting my babbling into something that resembles written english language)