Sacred 2 - Patches, Trailer

A v2.10 patch for certain localised versions of Sacred 2 is available from the official site. German, Italian, French and the "International" version (represented with a UK flag) are online, although I can't see any word on what the patch contains.

A new trailer is also available at the official site, showing off the Carrier Imp - an in-game special item for the Collector's Edition:
Everyone has been in this position... At the end of a huge battle, you find that great unique or set-items dropped. Unfortunately your inventory is full, and you're out in the middle of nowhere miles away from the nearest city.

With the Carrier Imp it's not a problem anymore! This little devil protects the players chest, and he will always find a way to drag it to you, from the lowest valley to the highest mountain peak, so you can safely store the valuable treasures found on your journey.

Every proud owner of the Sacred 2 - Collector’s Edition is entitled to get such a cheeky, little helper. This devilish helper can only be used in the Ascaron Closed net, therefore you have to activate a registration key which comes with every collector’s edition.


Are you are interested in taking a closer look at the little guy and
his huge load?

A video of the Carrier Imp can be found here.

Click to expand...

Finally, Sacred Gold has been added to GameTap's roster of free games.
More information.

There's a patch notes in german at WorthPlaying.

http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=56297

[Quick translation : ]

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel Update 2.10
1. Performance has been heavily optimized.
2. Game balancing & AI has been more made better.
3. The (loot-)dropping behaviour of the enemies has been made better - the possibility of drops has been increased.
4. Automatic update tool now available.
5. Several bugs in the lobby area have been corrected.
6. The quest system has been considerable optimized (Dialogs & Quest texts).
7. Performance of the main menu has been made better.
8. Activating the ALT key shows now the names of all items which are lying on the ground and all names of NPCs and of characters.
9. The quick-save function has been optimized. Characters will be directly saved by pressing F9.
10 Activating the F12 key sets the character to the place of the last activated respawn (Respawn stone). [Hope I got this right.]
11. Sound FX has been optimized.
12. The game users now medium settings as a standard.
13. The quest book now has a better overview.
14. While doing an mouse-over over a living bar of a companion, one now gets the information, which quest has been assigned to this companion. [This translation might sound a bit weird, because I don't know what the Readme is actually talking about at this point.]
15. The side quest compass remains fixed, even when new side quests are accepted.
16. The amount of companions for the character has been reduced to 5 now.
17. The strength of the Boss and Elite enemies has been reduced a bit.
18. The fighting animations of the heroes have been further optimized.
19. Considerably more set- and unique- items have been added.
20. The price system has been adapted / adjusted furthermore in general. The prices for mounts have been lowered a bit.
21. The prices for forged weapons & ingredients have been reduced.
22. In towns, there is no PVP possible any more (safe zone).
23. A hardware cursor has been added.
24. Several other bugffixes have been made.
25. Closed Net Server 3 > 6 Slots [I didn't translate this one at all.]

Thanks for that effort, Alrik. Clearly a significant release-day patch they had organised.

2, 6, 9 and 13 were main points of criticism in the (p)reviews so far.

Tonight I'll try the CE version.
I don't know if I'll install the elite textures in the bonus dvd.
I own a high-end rig but I haven't sata raid 0 hdd, so I think the loading process of heavy wieght textures will slow the game.

I'm curious to check the patch improvements (but I can only compare the final game with the english demo...).

Their release schedule is completely opaque to me. It might help the hype to clearly publicise the release dates, like most games. I don't really buy games at retail any more but my favourite online store has shifted the date several times, so they obviously don't have a clue, either. The official Deep Silver site even lets you pay for a key without a clear date when you can use it.

Maybe their communication resources are slightly overstretched.
It´s announced for Steam.

I can see CDV has confirmed digital releases, although I can't see anything specific for steam.

Either way...when? Another situation where there are torrents now but I can't even get a date to buy it.

A few pieces from the official release date thread.

CDV USA decided to hold back Sacred 2 PC until Nov. Console version will come early next year.

The UK version is gold and has been released in many countries, for example Scandinavia, Australia, maybe even South Africa. But not in the UK.

The problem in the UK:
The retailers refuse to order a PC version alone. They demand a simultaneous release. At the moment the street date is Nov 9th.
In the German forum a user said he has read in the GamesTM (a print mag) that the console versions will come out in Febr 2009. Heiko tom Felde explicitly refused to contradict this upon request and said it would be announced later. Kudos to Ascaron for not posting some marketing bullshit.
Of course that's only the status of the German console versions. I cannot imagine an international version before the German version though.

The CE will not be available for DL.

New drivers with Sacred 2 optimisations are announced by:
Intel (Centrino)
nVidia (SLI)

Further optimisations will be done for slower PCs. "As port-back from the console." Whatever this means.

Both XBox360 and PS3 will support 1080p native.

It isn't out in Australia. Looks like they have less idea than I do.

They didn´t say it's out in AU. I extrapolated this from a thread about the AU version. Upon rechecking it seems it's indeed not out.

Complete chaos. I wonder why it's so hard to communicate a couple of release dates?!

I installed the game (loooong installation!).
First strange bug. The game requires the mobo integrated soundcard to be active.
Same problem I had with Mass Effect.
I have e Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi and I had disabled the on-board sound max.
The games didn't run.
I enabled the sound max in c-mos and both games now run.
Second problem: Vista requires autorization to run the game at every reload of a saved game.....

The game runs fine at max spec, but in dungeons and caverns it's difficult to see the character (free camera mode) and animations run slower and lag.
I've a high end pc (Intel E-8500 oc at 3800 Mhz, nVidia 9800 gx2, 4 Gb ram (2,75), Vista 32 bit, so I think the game needs more optimization.
I think I wont install the elite texture pack (coming with my CE).

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
WHAT I LIKE:
The world (bigger and more detailed)
Characetr animation and combat/magic effects.
Character skill and powers system (should make it possible to develop a "deep" character).

WHAT I DON'T LIKE
The inventory system (weapons, armor and items too small. Difficult to distinguish good items in shop inventories).
Localization (Italian localization is terrible and a lot of dialogues are half italian and half english...... really baaaaaad. I'm thinking to uninstall and reinstall in english language.
Camera system and poor view in closed environments (caves, dungeons, etc)

Update:
Ascaron released e new patch.
It's a patch-fix (about 20 Mb) to solve some problem not solved by the patch (multiplayer, compatibility, etc.)

Link to the Italian site