Vanilla 1080p + SMAA + CAS

The goal of this guide is to get smooth 1080p experience with a proper UI scaling, antialiasing and adaptive sharpening.
All in vanilla version and without any gameplay modifications.

Showcase

Before you begin

1. Always be careful when using any 3rd party mods or tools, it's always better to minimize network activity for such things. At least scan it with antivirus!
   
2. Always backup your save files and original game directory.

"Native" 1080p

By luck I have stumbled upon PureHD project, and looks like it's the only tool that provides decent UI scaling, rather than simple stretching.
There is not much info about it, other than mention on PCGamingWiki, which is kinda strange.

1. Download/Install PureHD (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Sacred#High-resolution_rendering)
Copy pureHD.exe and pHD.dll to the root game directory.

2. Configuration
Add/Change these lines in Settings.cfg:

PHD_RES_SCX : 1920
PHD_RES_SCY : 1080
WAITRETRACE : 0
COMPAT_VIDEO : 1
DETAILLEVEL : 2
FONTAA : 1
FONTFILTER : 1
FSAA_FILTER : 0
FULLSCREEN : 1
GFX32 : 1
GFX_LIMIT128 : 0

3. Check that pureHD.exe runs properly.

D3D12 translation

Sacred is originally using DX7, let's translate it to 12.
Game will behave much better under Win10+ (i.e Alt+Tab and OSDs will work properly), also it's required to get ReShade working.

1. Download/Install latest stable version of dgVoodoo (http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2/)
Copy dgVoodooCpl.exe, dgVoodoo.conf and everything from MS\x86\ to the root game directory.

2. Configuration (dgVoodooCpl.exe):
x Select [General] Output API: Direct3D 12
x Check [DirectX] Filtering: Force Antisotropic 16X
x Check [DirectX] Filtering: Force filter only if not point sampled

3. Check that pureHD.exe runs properly with dgVoodoo.

SMAA + FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS)

Finally, let's get decent antialiasing with adaptive sharpening by utilizing ReShade.

1. Download/Install ReShade (https://reshade.me)
x Select pureHD.exe
x Select Direct3D 10/11/12 API
x Select Standard and SweetFX packages

2. Configuration
-> Run Game
-> Hit Home key
-> Enable CAS.fx and SMAA.fx processors

3. (Optional) create shortcut for pureHD.exe for convenience.

Notes

• Read about SMAA: https://iryoku.com/smaa/
  
• Read about CAS: https://gpuopen.com/fidelityfx-cas/
  
• Despite all the daisy chaining, game runs relatively stable, there is no blocker issues or heavy glitches.
  
• Never forget to save your progress constantly, F8/F9 is your best friends (yes in Sacred you can fail your quests permanently :) ).
  
• Rarely, game fails to properly draw itself on first launch, most likely due to some race condition.
  Fix: Just re-launch it.
  
• I wonder if this contraption will run under Linux with Proton/DXVK XD... are someone willing to test it?

[Eczekreteal]

Praeda the dgvoodooworks perfectly fine you are just doing something wrong settings depends on you GPU and this guide doesnt show everything

[Praeda]

This (dgvoodoo specifically) doesn't work as of 2025; Game crashes on launch, otherwise UI is tiny at 1920x1080 with PureHD mod

[CakeMongler]

Reborn crashes my game on startup. I can't resolve it.

[Dislamlin]

Stay away from this mod.this may curse your game.complete campaign in vanilla and do reborn project for new expirience.

[CakeMongler]

Tried to figure out how to download this fu***ng PureHD and failed again.

[Witch Doctor]

It works great now, even in great resolutions. Many thanks!

[trsted.]

ReShade makes my game crash when I open the big world map (M).
Not sure why tho. Any help?

[trsted]

RebornHD mod made Sacred too arcadey for me. I prefer the Vanilla game

[BassHunter]

crashes occasionally when zoomed all the way out

[AQQABALAH ASPYRANT]

dgVoodoo.conf is not in the zip file in relase dgVoodoo v2.81.3, as of November 16, 2023.