Do you remember your first death?

[Belix]

It happened to the best of us. Sooner or later, our first character was slain by something... do any of you lurking veterans remember your very first fate?

In my case, it turned out that Level 12 Battle Bears are notably hazardous to squishy Battle Mages. Who'd've guessed?

[Night Ω Wolfe]

Can't say that I remember my very first death... but I do remember my first TRUE death.....

See I never got into hardcore play, I couldn't stand the idea of putting all the effort and time into creating an great character and gathering tons of AWESOME gear for it only to lose it all permanently. But some of the long-term, hardcore gamers talked me into trying it and even gave me loads of awesome starter Sets and loot to get me started.

Well I went into a multiplayer online game and no one was around yet so, not thinking at all, I decided to spend my time waiting for them getting some screenshots I needed for the website. The way I got all of the super good shots of enemies was I would get in a good spot and let them beat on me, taking tons of shots over and over... if I took enough chances are I would get the perfect one. Well I went into the Hero Cave with the high level really tough beasties and let them beat on me... kill me per usual.... then thought "Oh crap, I'm in hardcore!".

[Belix]

Oh no, that's awful! Sounds like something absent-minded I would do! ;D But look at it this way, it did save you those hours after all. You might have invested another 30 hours into that character before it met its fate, and given your feelings about losing the time, it would of been all the more frustrating!

Not to turn this into a hardcore discussion, but, I personally agree with you and myself have never been inclined to play hardcore modes on any ARPG. But despite the fact that I don't use it, I do hugely appreciate that the developers added the option for those that do enjoy it, as I know there are players that love it and find it thrilling. Unfortunately the general trend with games these days seems to be to overpromise and undeliver; while I understand Sacred was fairly buggy at release, it comes from a time now lost, when developers did more for less, even if everything they did didn't turn out quite right. How many games today let you style your username with colors and symbols? How many ARPGs let you ride around on horseback? How many PC games include the option of running dedicated multiplayer servers? I'm sure others could think of even better examples.

Hey, you forgot to mention, did you at least get a good screenshot for your effort?

[Night Ω Wolfe]

Heck yeah I did!!!

[Belix]

Beautiful! But I squeaked in horror at level 92... here I thought you were talking about a low level HC character that was maybe level 10-20 and recently started. But you wouldn't be seeing a level 92 foe with an orange circle if you weren't close. Yikes!

Edit: I just realized, what I described above was my first death playing, but I remember now my first true death several years ago. I make a point of installing and testing newly purchased games just to ensure the disc isn't defective or anything, and when I got Sacred Gold I installed it and gave it a quick spin. I had already tried the demo some time ago, so I knew the game seemed worth checking out, but I just had to try the Battle Mage, who then as now is the character that interested me the most initially.

So there I was, completely new to the game, hadn't even figured out you could zoom in or out yet, and I conquered that troll. And then I noticed this Runestone of the Dancing Dead... which I tried to left-click on to read like the other one. But it wouldn't let me read it even after I clicked on it repeatedly. At which point I was suddenly mauled by a pack of tiny, leaping, angry opponents that took mere seconds to kill my poor Battle Mage.

Later, when I figured out I had spawned them by clicking on the stone repeatedly, I found myself having a hearty laugh at my own expense.

[Night Ω Wolfe]

Hahaha that is precious! Best death story ever!

Actually, luckily, I was only level 20 or less.... I started out with just images of the enemies in that guide and most others, but later decided people would probably find it useful to see the resistances on the enemies that you see next to their name, plus the name itself is good to have in the image. So I merged two different images in photoshop adding the name bar to all the good shots I already had!