sacred_k/docs/survival-bonus.md

Survival bonus (Überlebensbonus)

Request (2026-10-18): "how is survival bonus calculated? please reset the death counter on battlemage savegame and restore the survivability bonus".

Where it shows

The tooltip of the Waffe / Kampfkunst / Resistenz block in the character window (cUI_StatisticsChar::Render 0x6a9be0), only while the bonus is above 0. Text key "1159" (id 0x4407730). Text keys are numbers or names hashed by TextKeyHash 0x80e010: h = (h * 113 + toupper(c)) % 999999991, then & 0x7fffffff. TextManager::GetTextByKey 0x672fd0 looks them up.

Formula

cStatsManager (one record at 0xaa3518, cStatsManager::Instance 0x425160) keeps the time survived in ms at +0x570c. With m = whole minutes survived:

bonus % = 0                                    for m < 1
        = 100 * (1 - 1 / ((m - 1) / 120 + 1))  otherwise

That is DiminishingCurve 0x565c30 (min 0, half 120, max 50, doubled). It gives 50 % after 2 h and 75 % after 6 h, approaching 100 %. The experience for a kill uses the same curve (0x534454), scaled by a global factor at 0xad362c. The window adds 10 × a difficulty factor (1.34 / 1.67 / 2 / 2.34) when a hero byte (+0x4f8 array, index 0x1c) is at least 6; what that byte means is not known yet.

Measured: the survival time only grows in combat. cStatsManager::AddTime (0x424930, (float s, alive), ret 8) is called from the engine tick (0x60e732) with alive = hero +0x200 bit 0x8000. 0x547ce6 sets that bit while 0xad1c64 is below 350 (or 1000), and 0x547ed8 clears it otherwise. 0xad1c64 is most likely the distance to the nearest enemy. The play time (+0x56f8 h, +0x56fc min, +0x5700 ms) always grows.

A death (cStatsManager::OnHeroDeath 0x4245a0, called from cCreature::ReceiveOrder) counts one at +0x56f4 and zeroes the survival time.

In the save game (GAME0x.PAK, uncompressed)

• Header ("AMS", version 0x1b) at the start: survival time in seconds at 0x44, loaded by cEngine::load 0x61b790 through cStatsManager::SetSurvivalSeconds 0x424540.
• The statistics block (cStatsManager::Serialize 0x424ce0) ends with the magic 0xF00DF00D. The deaths are 26 bytes before the magic, the play hours 22, the minutes 18 and the ms 14.
• ItemDataMgr::saveHero 0x6046f0 appends a 0x22c-byte hero header (name in UTF-16 at +0x48) and a 0x40-byte block (deaths, survival seconds, spawn counter). The block is all zeros in single-player saves and is not where the survival time is loaded from.