Sacred 2:Combat and Game Basics
Contents
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 portion of the oval around your portrait in the upper left 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.
Your effectiveness when fighting as regards to melee and ranged 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 "Chance 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 two-handed swords, 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. Hafted Weapons 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.
Combo
Most Combat Arts can be placed in combos to increase their potency. For instance, a Shadow Warrior could create a combo of Demonic Blow and Frenzied Rampage (for one hard hit to one monster and several smaller hits to it or other nearby monsters if the first one has perished). Up to three Combat Arts may be included in a combo if a player has taken the skill Combat Discipline or four Combat Arts if a player has achieved Combat Discipline mastery (75 hard skill points). Without Combat Discipline, a combo may only contain two Combat Arts.
Chance To Hit
Sacred 2 differs greatly from Sacred with the inclusion of new modifiers like evasion and others that make the process of choosing socketables and/or armor that offer benefits for hitting enemies successfully much more complicated. With Sacred, the only element a player had to consider was Attack, while Sacred 2 introduces evasion. The Chance to Hit Calculator will calculate all chance to hit modifiers and easily help players determine if what they are wearing, socketed or wielded as weapon is increasing or decreasing their chance to hit.
Armor
Increased levels of Armor provide greater Resistance by enabling more effective use of equipment, and also permit increased movement speed by reducing the encumbrances imposed. Armor may also affect the regeneration times of your Combat arts and plays a great part in balancing Combat Arts.
Damage
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 successful resistance v.s. the type of damage being inflicted, the lesser the injury.
Damage Types
Regarding the 5 elements used ingame, involving damage and their corresponding Chance for Secondary Damage Effects
Damage Mitigation
Damage Mitigation is an extremely important aspect in Sacred 2 Fallen Angel and its expansion, Ice and Blood. In essence, it means that a certain part of the damage your character had just taken is completely omitted before any other damage calculations begin (armor rating, resistances, etc.).
Survival Bonus
The longer your character stays alive without dying, the more your character's stats will increase.
Spell Intensity
Allows a character (or monster) to deal maximum damage with his spells more often.
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.
Enemy Levels
Auto Leveling
Comparisons have been made between Sacred 2's method of balancing player to monster difficulty via leveling to that of Oblivion's. Sacred 2's auto-leveling of enemies is a wholly different method than Oblivion's and is, in fact, needed for Sacred 2 to function properly.
Many players interchangeably use the term auto-leveling with the understanding that leveling is handled the same way in both Oblivion and Sacred 2, while both in fact are different. An important consideration which distinguishes the two as being different, is that Oblivion would introduce a completely new monster type to offer a player challenge as his levels increased, while Sacred 2 would simply offer the same type of monster but at a different level.
In Oblivion, it would be difficult for a player to do what a majority of gamers have done in the past, which is getting ahead of the power curve while remaining there indefinitely and receiving good experience regarding the same chosen monster. It is impossible to go and craft a perfect weapon, with the hope in returning to destroy the previous enemy with ease especially if it was guarding a treasure chest that the player was curious about. This would have been impossible to do because the monster that was previously guarding the treasure chest, as in Oblivion would have now changed into a more powerful monster to match the character's new level.
This is a significant difference from simply having an upwards adjustment to an enemy's level based upon a player's new level as in Sacred 2. Sacred 2 auto-leveling of enemies will have a rat (enemy) leveling from one to forty, which is different from Oblivion's method of increasing player to monster difficulty, which would have introduced a completely different and new monster type, a Minotaur for example, to match the player's level at forty.
The two types of leveling found within Sacred 2 and Oblivion are distinct and markedly different from each other.
