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SacredSDK

A Lua modding toolkit for Sacred Gold (Ascaron, 2004) that lets you add quests, dialog, NPCs and behavior without touching a single vanilla game file. Mods are written in Lua, live under custom/, and are loaded by a thin proxy DLL injected at startup.

Verified on the Sacred Gold Steam edition, build 2.0.2.28 (2006-10-13). The GOG edition works identically (same code, no DRM wrapper).

What you can do

• Author quests & dialog from scratch in Lua — state machines, journal entries, branching, inline text — baked to Sacred's native bytecode.
• Register a quest with the engine itself so the game writes its journal entry, plays its fanfares and keeps its state in the savegame (Native Quests).
• Use the engine's own verbs — rewards, timers, sounds, area triggers, objective counters, compass, chests, shop windows, cut scenes — one Lua builder per shipped record (Vanilla Verbs).
• Spawn living NPCs at runtime — guards, enemies, quest-givers, companions — set their stance, faction, equipment, level and AI, no FunkCode edits.
• Play a class with another creature's body — the Dwarf as Wilbur, the Battle Mage as Alcalata — keeping the class's skills and combat arts (Hero Classes).
• Give an NPC custom spoken dialog that renders in the game's own talk window (Dialog Text).
• React to game events from Lua — trigger handlers, talk detection, per-tick callbacks, world-load hooks.
• Mutate vanilla content safely — load the decompiled originals and rewrite them, byte-perfect round-trip.

Start here

If you want to…	Read
Build three working mods in 15 minutes	Quick Start, also a Steam guide
Install the SDK	Installation
Write your first mod	Writing Your First Mod
Author quests, dialog & state	Quests and Dialog Authoring
Let the engine run your quest	Native Quests
Reach for a vanilla record	Vanilla Verbs
Place chests and clickable objects	World Objects
React when the hero walks somewhere, or close a road	Zones and Barriers
Stage a cut scene	Cut Scenes
Spawn NPCs & companions at runtime	Runtime NPCs
Play a class with another creature's body	Hero Classes
Give an NPC custom talk-window text	Dialog Text
Look up a sacred.* function	Lua API Reference
Understand how the SDK works internally	Reverse Engineering

Community

• Quick start guide on Steam
• DarkMatters forum thread: questions, bug reports, mods

Design rules

• The vanilla install is never modified. Everything lives under <game>/custom/.
• Runtime replay, not file surgery — content is added by spawning/scripting at runtime or by serving generated .bin/global.res files through a read-time redirect, never by editing Sacred's .bin structs in place.
• Native where possible — the SDK drives Sacred's own engine paths (its dialog resolver, quest registry, AI) rather than drawing its own UI over the top.