Sacred: Anducar

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

Turns out I had to first kill the Elite Guard who tried (and failed) to ambush me before Anducar himself would show up, so after using the lure and kill method the robed wizard himself popped out and explained that Vilya was actually working for him in exchange for him to resurrect Prince Valor (she's dumb), and that everything was now in place as he planned - including me being there. Why were your guards so frigging annoying then?

Anyway, so begins the epic combat where the old man runs slowly around the room, and throwing very slow moving spells. Erm... Looks like the few potions I have left will suffice in this combat. Unlike Shaddar he is even susceptible to BFGs so it is with ease that he is defeated... and then he transforms into a demon which I think gives Vilya a heart attack because she just dies outright at that point too.

The fight now is a bit harder with a lot more fast potion usage to survive his attacks. Well, his one unfair attack that you cannot evade anyway. All the rest are easy to side step or soft enough to eat. Eventually he dies and in a cutscene Valor's ghost takes Vilya's ghost away from the collapsing temple, leaving me stranded there in the deepest heart of a demon army that just lost the one guy that was keeping everything together. Awesome. >_<

I suppose something like this happens next.

And that is how Sacred ends! There are more games in the series which might see a continuation of this story but for now its au revoir and thanks for reading. :)

Sacred: The Climb

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

Since it seemed the theme of this place was to just throw endless mobs at me across a long distance travel I decided to load up fully on potions this time. I previously was only carrying enough to fill up 30% of my pack - this time I decided to forgo the loot as I had over two million gold at this point anyway and fill it up 100% with potions before beginning my trek up the ash mountain.

As usual the great bugs were easy enough to avoid but once I started the climb in earnest there were these fast little demons that hit hard and could actually keep pace with me which meant I had again to go slow, especially when they had shadow demon buddies nearby. A new critter type - cerebopods, which look a lot like evil starfish with tentacles, made their appearance here and proved dangerous foes with their high physical resist. The BFG was rarely out of my hand on the climb up, and when it was I simply wasn't moving - letting it recharge.

A good distance up the runners and shadow demons gave way to bigger troll like demons and more cerebopods of various colours, but none had the paralysis ability and I could outrun them all so that made progress quite a bit easier until finally I reached my goal, a large grey tower with some useful merchants nearby for resupply. Right outside the door was a familiar face, the necromancer Shaddar!

Thanks for killing me that one time, I feel better now!

Sacred: Crabs and Bones

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

It seems the pirates were in need of help, because some bastard demon raised a whole bunch of undead on their island and it was up to me to go sort it out. A connecting cave that ran underneath the channel was my method of getting to their actual base, and both it and their seaside town was overrun by crabs and pirate skeletons. After clearing the docks they managed to land their ship and help out a little, with one pirate named Conrad wanting to help eliminate all the undead. I'm afraid he joined them in the end.

In typical pirate fashion though, another just wanted to throw a party - requiring me to fetch a keg of ale, a bunch of crab legs and his four best buddies. Well, I gave him the food and booze but I kept his four buddies with me first to try rescue the Pirate Helmsman who was trapped on the next island over. We rowed over in a little dinghy and were immediately set upon by an army of crabs, led by the most fearsome and difficult opponent I've faced yet: the Queen Crab.

Certainly made me feel like I was level one!

She needed to die if I was to free the Helmsman from her clutches but with incredibly fast and strong attacks coupled with that damned paralyzation spell it was an insanely difficult combat, one that required a lot of running, multiple rounds of BFG, all my potions, and cost the lives of those four pirate party go-ers. Dragon Knights they were not. Eventually she died and the Helmsman and myself returned to the pirate port, ready to sail to the Volcano Island where the demon was said to be based. As for the party pirate, he was so hammered when I got back to him he didn't really care that his buddies were crab food because it meant more booze for him!

Sacred: Holy Hell

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

Took a much needed detour to a massive walled city called Purgatori to take a breather from running from all the giant bugs. I also decided to help out the residents there with killing undead goblin creatures and ghouls, dealing with a demon who wasn't a demon, and baking cookies. Once that was done I set out again to find the mines, stopping only to aid a woman being chased by a swarm of giant wasps. Just to give you an idea of how tough the foes here were I really needed to use my BFG to stand a chance.

Finally I reached the mine and it was filled with shadow demons and demon worshipping Mohkva people. While the worshippers weren't much of an issue, those demons were crazy strong - came in groups of 6-8 and all of them could paralyze me which meant running past was not an option and fighting without the BFG was a risky gamble. This made traversing this place a frigging long nightmare.

At least the second floor was home exclusively to flaming spiders (how does that work?) which made it really quick, but the last floor again had the demons that needed to be slowly ground through. Eventually I came to the kidnapper demon, a strong Subkari type who didn't have the path finding issues of his predecessor. Still, it was a doable fight and eventually I was victorious. It seemed to be guarding a gate though which needed both ends shut so I stepped through and found another Sakkara demon!

Did you miss me?

Yup, another boss fight right away and this time with no geometry to hide behind. Fortunately it wasn't as strong as the last one and I still had enough healing potions to just power through it. Once it fell I returned to the underworld where the now freed Vilya was waiting. If only that was the end of it!

Sacred: Shaddar

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

With the demon essence trapped in the gem, we returned to Braverock castle and handed it over to the sorceress Shareefa for disposal. Only instead of being a buxom tanned woman she transformed into a pale thin whiny male necromancer with greasy hair: Shaddar! After doing his bad guy spiel about using the gem to attain god hood / more power he snapped his fingers and Prince Valor along with his guardsmen died and turned into zombies who we needed to destroy.

Shaddar then teleported away with a captured Vilya just for good measure. Fortunately a wise wizard who showed up out of nowhere was there to tell us to go rescue the baroness and stop the crazy bastard, otherwise we wouldn't know what to do! :P Getting back to Shaddar's tower was easy since there was that handy way gate right beside it that he forgot to close. This time the basement was set up for a ritual and we had to deal with the handful of Sakkara cultists Shaddar still had with him before facing the man himself.

I made everyone look like a fool!

To his credit, he was completely immune to my BFG (and possibly to all magic) but since my character was mostly specced for physical attacks and still had four knights backing her up he was in all sorts of trouble regardless. Upon his defeat we tossed him down the giant hole nearby and returned to Braverock triumphant. As for the demon gem thingy? I assume I kept it since it is never mentioned again.

Sacred: Sakkara

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

The streets of the city were filled with fighting so it was pretty easy to get up to main castle itself (especially with eight NPCs behind me). Once there we confronted DeMordrey himself and to his credit he was one tough cookie, surviving many rounds of BFG-ing. He kept getting distracted by my companions though, which proved to be his undoing. Once dead, Prine Valor took his place on the throne with Vilya at his side but our job wasn't finished.

We needed to take Shareefa down to the ancestral forge where she could put the elements together and summon the lose Sakkara Demon for one final fight. The damn thing was three levels down and had a metric ton of undead in the way and while we did reach there in the end it did cost one party member, Glubba the ogre, his life.

With the elements forged into the "Heart of Ancaria" gem, Shareefa told us how to summon the demon and wished us luck as she was teleporting out to seal us in - you know, in case we lost. I really dislike that woman. Anyway, with no other choice we summoned forth the Sakkara demon (who looks a lot like a D&D Balor or Tolkien Balrog) and began a most difficult and epic fight, that is until I found its one weakness: It didn't know how to walk around a particular object in the room. Exploiting that, the demon was soon defeated with none of the remaining party getting killed.

That mortal knew my one weakness... pillars!

Sacred: Dam Fetch Quest

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

Highmarsh was a relaxing enough diversion, seeing me deal with thieving gargoyles, collecting some weed (really), and allying with a friendly dark elf named Valaria  for a short time to kill some Sakkara cultists and their pet demon. I also wondered about the economy of such a place when I child can pay me five thousand gold coins for returning a smiley bunny to her. Unfortunately it was soon time for me to make my way back up the mountain and into the next set of drow infested mines, this one being far more annoying than the last in that it was intentionally made as a maze instead of a mine. It was very slow going until I reached the second floor where there were no drow units at all, instead there were just a variety of ghosts and the occasional, easily avoidable cave fish.

With nothing there that could paralyze me (cave fish being the exception but they were very few) I could sprint past all the foes and activate the dam lever to drain the water before ducking out via a convenient escape hatch. I still had to jump down the mountain again past more drow, but once I got into the water temple itself it was just a small two level dungeon the first being one small room with spiders and the second just having ghosts and cave fish again, most of which I avoided simply by jumping to the elemental receptacle (and back) gaining the element of water.

With all the elements now in my possession it was time to head towards Mystdale Castle, where Shareefa said she would be waiting for me. You'd have thought she might at least get some of the elements herself but noooooo. On the road there I found the miserable swamp village of Gloomoor which had a nasty spider infestation (which no one seemed to mind). I did help out as much as I could though, by collecting spider venom sacs, rescuing trapped lumberjacks, and destroying a lich in a nearby dungeon. That last task was crazy with the amount of undead scum present, the type you needed to slay three times if you didn't have the "undeath death" potion, and there were simply too many of them and not enough potions so it became a mad dash to slay the lich and escape. The BFG was made good use of here, but even it couldn't clear out all of the horde. I just killed the leader and escaped, that's enough of a win for me.

Sacred: The Dark Side

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

Before accepting Shareefa's quest to talk to some orcs I decided to first assist some of the surviving soldiers with retrieving a missing pet wolf and retrieving a bow from a magic bear dungeon (don't ask). I also chose to help the local elf rangers with an ice elf problem they were having in this region. Sure, there were some demons and blood thirsty giant bears running lose but the ice elves were the issue and that is no joke because when I ran into the first group I got OWNED. This is because all the ice elves come in large groups and all of them wield FRIGGING LIGHT SABERS!

This is not the game you are looking for!

My task was simple, I just had to remove three of their priestesses from the forest but they were guarded by huge clusters of these evil jedi/Sith. This was the first time I had to use the BFG on groups but it was close to the only way I could get past to my targets. The last one had a PAIR of ice dragons defending her too, which made it all that much harder to get to her. Eventually I did though, and boy did I make her pay for being so annoying to get to.

Deep in the woods I also located another friendly orc village but these ones weren't very talkative, just scared because they were low on warriors, new to the region as refugees, and have all these Sith lurking about the woods nearby. Having had enough Star Wars for now I returned to Prince Valor's encampment and accepted Shareefa's envoy task. The orcs she wanted me to question were the ones in Khorad-Nur who were already friendly to me. She even opened a gate for me for fast travel there but I opted not to take it she did so indoors which meant Speedy (the horse) wouldn't be able to accompany me.

Instead I just rode back to Mascarell (past the still warring factions on the street) to use the way gate back to the orc city and had a quick chat to their local shaman who gave me a rather large demon horn. Apparently something big and fiery is on the loose in the south. Something that's raising all the dead.

Sacred: Khorad-Nur

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

With D'Cay defeated I was let into the orc city (which they call "Khorad-Nur") as promised and was surprised to find a whole bunch of friendly orcs within. Alas the "warriors" outside would still attack me but at least there was an exception to the rule. Not only did they also have a way gate to help speed my travel but they had some really nice gear which I purchased, upgrading the pieces from their local smithy to super high quality, and buying out all the healing potions I could.

I eagerly went to help the locals too, doing tasks like retrieving the scroll of Matt Damon(?) from a lich infested ruin, chasing down some murderous, thieving and rebellious ex-slave goblins, and bringing one orc lady's dog (her husband) back alive from a distant sister city to the South - that one was overrun by undead. I also found a burning ruin with lesser fire demons and Sakkara cultists hacking up a dying seraphim. Didn't take any chances there and BFG'ed the lot of them back to hell.

Even orcs like this guy!

My efforts were well rewarded as I returned to Khorad-Nur at level 20, with a "magic saber of light" as loot in my pack (yes, straight from Star Wars complete with the "vrunk" SFX, poor damage though), and best of all - a painted (or undead) fast riding horse that I found near some mines. After being on foot for so long, this speed boost was very welcome and nothing in the region had any hope of catching me while I was mounted atop it. Alas, it was finally time to resume my mission so I stepped through the local way gate back to Porto Vallum and began the ride to Wyvern Pass.

Sacred: BFG

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

One of the skills available to a Seraph is called "BeeEffGee", which summons a large, holy spear that shoots destructive heavenly energy at things. Magic works with different rules to that of conventional weapons in this game. With conventional weapons there is a roll to hit section to see if your opponent parried etc. With magic, if the graphic touches you - you are hit. You take damage. The end. This particular skill puts out a truck load of magic damage, firing a shot (which goes through all enemies) as fast as I can press the mouse button. Takes a while to recharge and a little bit to cast but the effects are impressive.

Guess how I killed DeMordrey's Dragon.

With all the enemies dead (and starting to respawn), Wilbur and I continued on our journey - handling an evil magician in his mansion and a cave full of slavers with captives that were all freed before coming to the small town of Slaters Grave which had its own share of bandit and slaving issues. We were less fortunate in the rescue attempt there as the local Hill Giants were faster than the women we freed.

We then pushed on North and finally reached the Sharuka encampment - the one supposed to reinforce Prince Valor at Wyvern's Pass. Upon showing the Count's signet ring though the Captain revealed that that was in fact, the signal to kill us. At that instant the other guards attacked and slew Wilbur instantly before freezing in terror. Apparently I was a few levels too far above from what they'd normally aggro. This made executing them one by one all the more sweeter.