Hey! I messed around a lot with sacred almost 2 years back but never got to finish any runs and my motivation for actually running the game died. But I did find a some new things. And it is nice to see some new activity on 1 of my favourite childhood games, so if you are interested here are some glitches and tricks.

Combo Master Menu Storage Tricks: So if you just do try and do menu storage on the combo master normally it won't work and only reason it works on the merchant is because the 'sub menu' for selling items. But with the simple trick of quick saving with you inventory open on screen you can store the combo master menu over quick loads. This allows for 2 new tricks, that mostly focuses on saving gold.

Free Exchange: By loading back after placing all 4 runs in you can do a run exchange without losing any runs or having any gold cost. Note, after loading you need to swap what rune you want to exchange for at least once before the accept button works.

Free Combos: By fully making and then placing a 4x combo into the combo build menu and then loading back before, you can build that full combo for 0 gold cost.

These 2 tricks mostly saves gold but that means we are in less problems of running out of potions and could go for less quest reward stacking too. Note about the exchange trick is that it is slightly slower then the double rune activation trick with the merchant, so it may be optimal to make half the amount you need with it and then use the merchant trick still.

Fly Clipping: When The timer for fly runs out it tries to put you down on the floor again and can push thro blocking walls that normally you can not pass thro. While this is trick kinda used in the current run, it can be used for a bigger time save. As you can use it to go thro the locked door where the switch to lower the water for the water element, the door you normally use to exit after you pressed the switch. Video of the clip: For the run you would use the portal, that spawns after grabbing the earth element, to go back out the dark elf dungeon. After exiting out the dark elf dungeon you will time it so that the fly runs out almost perfect if you active it as directly after going out of the cave again. But be warned if you get hit by slow poison you will not make it in time, so be careful of that. I have not found any other places where this could be used yet but maybe there is.

Braverock Tavern Sewers 1 Skip: This is a small skip that skips going down the actually sewers the first time you need to go down there to meat the prince. When you talk to the guy outside the tavern, the guy who opens the door, it updates the quest progression and dialogues. So if you have a quick save in the forest hideout you can move that quest menu over to that save and update so you can talk to the prince inside the forest and get all the quest updates there skipping going down the sewers. But this alone would softlock you later as the path down the tavern sewers is now locked when you head down there the 2nd time. and this can not be skipped as the quest update is a location trigger on the bottom floor. But what we can do is that before we talk to the prostitute in Braverock that tells of the guy outside the tavern we can put a hard save. if before we go down the 2nd load that hard save and move that quest back we can spawn that guy outside the tavern again and have him open the locked gate. What this do is that we effectively trades having to go down the sewers once for some loads screens instead. It should save a few seconds but is a very minor time save.

Local Multiplayer: Using local multiplayer mode can save huge amounts of time but can be questioned if it should be allowed, personally I think it is ok as it is part of the game but can see arguments for it not being allowed. But what this dose is that it allows the use of haven isle, from where we can get a lot of the portal location and save a lot of time not having to ride to a lot of location as well as make the run a little less rng like as we travel less areas with mages that can trap us. Also creating a character directly for this gives you a starting gold bonus (but no runes)

I mostly messed around with routing with this before and have a practically full route for this if there is any interest in running using this to setup portals.

Other useful information and small tricks: Maybe already be known but just in case.

The speed you can find on bots is tied to the difficulty, we can find up to 30 speed on silver, compare to I think 22 on bronze. This could make doing some early game on silver worth it. Also the speed difference can make you get hit significantly less. Around +28 or more speed is where a lot enemy's to start missing you because you run to far away. (specially with fly active as that extra speed too)

Poison res effects not only how long we get effected by slow poison but also how much slower we get and even a tiny bit of poison res helps a lot!

Knockdown Momentum Boost: When you instead of dying gets knocked down to the ground you get knocked away a short distance, normal very short before you stop on the ground. But if this knockdown happens exactly as you enter/exit into another area that momentum gets stored and won't be slowed-down/stopped until you get fully stopped by hitting some objects, if timed correct you can store momentum that flings you across the map in an almost instant. This is almost impossible to use intentionally but could allow for some crazy moment if a way to set this up consistent is found. (in local multiplayer you can trigger this boost without entering or exiting a area by exiting the game as it happens and the rejoining the game)

If you talk to a npc at the exact same time it get teleported away the game will glitch out and fling you around in hyper speed. I assume it tries to move you close to that npc but can't find a path there as that npc may be located in another area. I doubt there is any real use for this, but still fun.

Potential Future Glitches: Sacred is incredibly broken, mostly just because of quickload, but I yet to find proper ways to implement the 2 most crazy glitches into a working faster route.

Event ID manipulation: So I call this Even ID not sure exactly what it is called in the game, but I refers it to things such as: Getting a quest, Completing a quest, Quest rewards, Opening a grave, Entering different areas and Opening the portal menu. And probably more things. But what is interesting in this is that for example the game do not tell the game enter this new area when you go into the trigger to enter it. but instead says run event XXX or something similar. and then it checks what campaign your in and takes from some list what that event XXX should do. And with quickload it is possible to move quest progression menus (accepting quest or completing them) from 1 campaign over to the other, and when you click the accept quest button it runs the even id the menu should have but said id now points to something else now.

This is incredibly broken and can cause a ton of different effects, most notable that I have found useful is wrong warps. But there is possibility's to get quests too.

But there is 3 major limiting factors for this to be useful in a speedrun.

1. The only thing I found to be able to carry a "Event ID" over to another campaign is quest related menus. This limits how many different id's are possible to move. But if another things could be used to carry a "Event ID" then this could allow for more things.
2. The requirement for entering the Underword campaign is level 25, that is very slow to get to. The fastest way I found is to use the secret tunnel to go to Mystdale and do a quest reward stacking on 1 of the easy quest in there. But it is still over 5 min of just load screen I think. Also the beginning of underworld campaign is slow and I currently have no wrong warp from Ancaria campaign over to underworld to skip it.
3. And that ties into the 2nd limitation, is testing. It's very time consuming and incredibly difficult to test this with brute force method and I lack knowledge on how to make tools for helping and testing this. And just finding wrong warps is not that bad but the problem is that you can not only get quest with this but also complete quest, but from what I have seen it is only possible to complete a quest you already have active, making it absurdly difficult to test for that.

But there is a huge potential for this to allow a crazy wrong warp route. because of 2 things, the hologram of the seraphim is always active and getting to it skips act 1,2 and parts of act 3, and normally this would be a problem as you can not enter the Braverock tavern but 1 of the few wrong warps I have already found takes you instead that locked of area (another into the seraphim area too) So there is not that much missing for this route to be functional but the what could be the biggest thing is that the current fastest way to level up to 25 is very very boring so I am not sure any1 would want to run it this way.

But if there is interest in this I can share the info I currently have on wrong warps locations and do some more digging into new warps and other useful things.

Object ID manipulation: If possible this has potential to be even more broken, but is very unlikely to be possible to use because of 1 thing, RNG.

So by object I mean everything from Items, Intractable/Movable props on the map, Enemy's, NPC's and even invisible triggers. All these things share the same type of ID to store them in memory. And it is super simple to mess with this, actually the current speedrun route kinda do this when we use the merchant to activate the same rune twice. We could also use the same trick to sell the same item twice too if we need gold for example. But what happens when we use the merchant sale menu to quickload back (or forward) a item to a time where said item do not exist? well that menu stores the id not the actual item and if another object in memory has the same id at that time then the item that we get in out hands is said object. This can let you grab practically anything the game has loaded in memory, you can place non item things in you inventory for weird effects, summon npc's to your location and much more. The potential is almost endless for what this could do as it looks like ground triggers is also given the same type of id.

But it is almost impossible to control the id of items as the game progress further on. But some ideas for how this may be possible to use:

• A fresh character have all start items in fixed id slots.
• It is likely the game prioritizes filling empty id slots over making new once. So if we can control so that we remove a id slot (drinking a potion?) and then update the game in a way that loads new thing into memory then maybe if we have a save before that we could load those potions into the future and have there id be the same as what was loaded into the memory just.

I think this is most I found, I may have missed something about the route as I know I found a few smaller things to improve on Bloodymary's route but can't recall what it was anymore. But if there is any questions or interest in looking into the more advanced glitches just ask, I still enjoy glitch hunting sacred even if I don't think I will make any runs at the moment.

Hey! I messed around with glitch hunting and routing this a lot last winter but never actually got to finish a run I was happy enough to upload back then. But returned to play a bit again and plan to work on a run again, got even more inspired to do so by finding a new way of clipping too. So if you could add a Any% (ng+) category.

Outside of that I also have some question, specially about this part of the rules: "Skipping portions of levels allowed as long as entire levels are not skipped via glitches." That is very vague and don't make too much sens considering it is for All Talents. Are you meaning for it to be glitchless? or? Full level skips would not work in All Talents anyways, even tho there are a lot of glitches in this game that could break down that category a lot. It is best to avoid having anything vague in the rules. And as the game is not exactly getting a lot of runs and is unlikely to get so in the future, it may be better to leave things more open and make changes or splitting category's as new runs get made. If the new runs are so different that it may make sens to change something.

And 2nd is more of a request I guess, but I think timing for start and end would make more sens if timing starts when we gain control, (after clicking away the message after the intro). Don't see too much of a point to have the full intro be timed, And it nice to be able to walk away and maybe get something to drink while it plays without stress. And maybe even more so, would be to have the time end on killing Able. As that is also the final required input(auto dialog menas no more required button presses) and it is nice to let that full cutscene playout with auto dialog instead of feeling forced to mash thro it too.

Hello! As there do not seem to be any better place to post this I do it here, but I have found this, what I at least assume is a new, trick to skip several of the unintended to be skipable cutscenes! Saving minutes of doing nothing if you can get all of them.

Here is a video where I try to go over how the skips work:

But in short, this makes use of the spell wheel (or weapon wheel) to overwrite the game locking you from moving your character, as it have property's to change what control works itself. As well as the fact that it has a delay after you press the button until it actually becomes active, letting you overwrite control mid cutscene. Tho there are more weird things going on depending on what cutscene, I do point on some more details on how some cutscenes are different in yt desc.

On another note, I have a question if someone else knows about a fix for missing URL on saves? Meaning broken saves when doing save jump ladders. I suspect it is just my very bad PC that can't keep up with the spam of save and load, but you never know if there is some way to fix it as it tend to lose a good bit of time every run.