Gameplay Tips and Basics for "The Quest"

This guide covers English language gameplay basics, as there does not seem to be any such thing at this time. This is not a walkthrough, but will cover useful tips and tricks that I've learned while playing this game.

Gameplay Basics -Tips and Tricks

Some hard learned lessons, in list form:

• Repair your equipment often - your equipment does less for you as it gets more broken - your weapons will do less damage, your armor will decrease. The decrease is significant over time, and repair is inexpensive.
  
  
• Save often, and maintain several save files - if you accidentally get trapped somewhere and can't fight your way out, you can re-load the previous save, and won't lose much progress. This is also useful before buying/selling objects, gambling, talking to quest people, etc, as it's easy to do the wrong thing and want to reset it. Give yourself the option.
  
  
• If you get bored, or if you need gold, you can quickly earn gold by playing a card game at inns. Save before you play, reset if you lose. Later cities have higher wager amounts. I personally recommend using the necromancer deck, since it has a lot of healing and defensive cards, and you can just hang onto high damage cards until you can nuke the enemy down in a turn or two.
  
  
• Enemies can chase you on foot pretty much forever, but they can't enter cities, and often get hung up on even single obstacles in their path. Ranged enemies will leave you alone if you walk backwards long enough while they stand still and lob attacks at you - once you leave their attack range, you are also out of their sight range and will not be chased.
  
  
• Enemies are typically predictable, and generally not smart. Use positioning to divide your enemies, and fight them one at a time. Hide behind trees/rocks/piles of skulls, etc, and close the distance between you and ranged enemies, so they get minimal "free shots" at you while you approach them. Positioning is everything.
  
  
• Enemies, plants, and containers (pots, chests, shelves, etc) reset after a "week" of game time. If you feel like you need to go through an area again to grind experience/money/equipment, you can do so.
  
  
• Balance is important - melee heroes can cast spells to heal themselves, and/or weild bows to take out enemies at range - everyone can use wands to their full effect. If you try to make a hero that can "only" do one thing, you're probably going to have a bad time. While you don't want to have a hero that's bad at everything, don't pidgeon-hole yourself into a certain role, either.
  
  
• If you're creating a new hero, and you have some game experience, consider not using a pre-made class; some abilities are just not really useful (I'm looking at you, stealth), and some, you'll never use with other certain abilities - for example, you're not going to be using dual-weild AND block at the same time - so if you know what kind of character you want to make, you may as well not have both of those skills as primary skills. Repair is another skill that strikes me as not being super-duper valuable, since you can just pay a blacksmith to repair things for you, and repair hammers aren't really expensive. (Note that the "repair" ability is actually very useful when you're in the middle of a long dungeon and want to refresh your gear - but the repair SKILL is not really that necessary - it just makes your repairs less expensive/your hammer lasts longer. Hammers are not super expensive.)
  
  
• Enchating your equipment is important - health and mana drain on weapons are extremely valuable, and you can supplement your character's weaknesses through defensive enchants. Are you a Norgur warrior having a hard time with casters? Enchant magic resist. Getting paralyzed too much? You have choices here, buddy. Of course you can also use potions, scrolls, wands, etc to achieve the same end - but enchanting is nice, since you can set it and forget it, and you don't need to "restock" or "recharge" it - and you won't be caught off guard.
  
  
• According to the developers, strike enchants DO stack. You can get Blood Draining or Mana Drain twice on the same weapon, and they will proc twice as often.
  
  
• Hang onto wands - they don't weigh much, anyone can use them, and their power depends on the wand itself, not the user. All they cost to operate is gold, or mana (later in the game) to recharge. Scrolls are also moderately useful, for the same reason, though less convenient, since they are consumed on use. Note that you are charged the same amount to recharge a wand, whether it's completely empty, or you used it once - I'd recommend using them down to almost nothing before you recharge them so you aren't wasting gold.
  
  
• PICK HERBS. A lot of potions are actually kind of inconvenient to stock and use, but herbs don't weigh much, and it's easy to make mana and health potions. Potions aren't super expensive or anything, but it's also just nice to be able to make them on demand.
  
  
• Always always carry a few healing, mana, and curing potions - for poison, and paralyze. It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and have to re-load a save cuz you died :)
  
  
• Once each level, you can drink a potion that will give you permanent stat increases. Be sure to drink them anytime that you can. You can make them through alchemy, or find them in certain places - I'd recommend always keeping some on you, once you're able to make them.
  
  
• Cloaks and robes are the same thing; don't just assume that robes are body armor, like I did :) Higher level robes can hold better enchantments, so absolutely use them.
  
  
• Make notes on the map - "The Quest"'s map system does not make note of much, including the location of questgivers. Make simple notes at everyone who has a name or offers a service that isn't obvious on the map. Do they offer training? Do they seem like a quest NPC that you'll likely be looking for later? Do yourself a favor and make a note of anything of interest now. Same with dungeon entrances and exits. It's also a useful reminder to mark where powerful enemies show up on the map, so you can avoid them until you're strong enough.
  
  
• When it comes to quests, there are usually several ways that you can complete a quest - a "good" way, an "evil" way, and sometimes there are just other ways to bungle quests in general and get no resolution. Generally speaking, in the core version of the game, quest reward items are pretty irrelevant - you won't really miss anything special regardless of how exactly you end a given quest - just note that your FAME stat cannot be increased or decreased by anything other than quests. That's the only reward that really is irreplacable/unique.
  
  
• It's a good idea to check the wiki for "The Quest" if you're trying to make a specifically "good" or "evil" character, so you know how to get the appropriate fame increase or decrease out of a quest. Sometimes morally grey actions give you specific results. For example, you may lie about something, and gain fame as a result - or you may say something with the intention of infiltrating a cult, and it actually ends up hurting your fame. It's kind of complicated and hard to predict sometimes.

This list is obviously not exhaustive, but these are all general gameplay lessons that I wish I'd known going into this game.

The wiki for this game also contains a fair amount of specific information about quests and locations, though it's very sparse at the time of this posting. This can be found here: http://thequest.wikia.com/wiki/The_Quest_Wiki

[hellskitty]

Thanks for the tips! Starting it on iOS

[Shindragan]

Just a little correction to "just note that your FAME stat cannot be increased or decreased by anything other than quests. That's the only reward that really is irreplacable/unique."

Fame can be decreased by doing crimes like stealing or attacking villagers.

Enemies can enter cities, but they cannot get past a square with a guard, they can follow you around guards (for example, if you enter the first village from the north with enemies behind you, they will enter the town)

Great guide! Thank you for this.

[TZODnmr2K5]

I was wrong, it does indeed respawn, I spent 7 days CAMPING instead of indoors at an inn!

[TZODnmr2K5]

The enemies/items no longer respawn after a weeks time, they must have nerfed it in a patch!

[Baby Choo]

3. yes you CAN use the save file from The Quest iOS version and port them to the game installation folder of the game on Steam, but just know that you won't get the achievements this way however - you still have to play the game on Steam to make them count, but you can use this method to continue your existing journey from iOS to Steam.

[Baby Choo]

Thank you for making this guide, it's such a pleasure to see that people still care about this classic game, I've been playing this on my first iphone since it came out on it on 2009, a decade after, i'm trying to complete it for the nth time right here on steam, GG!

[Baby Choo]

2. The main game is relatively grindy in terms of levels, enemies do spawn but at a slow rate after you clear them out the first time. However, if you have access to one of the higher levelled expansion packs of the game, often times there will be free gears in the very beginning of them that allows you to gain faster access to the game's content (extreme caution is advised if you don't want to spoil the game for yourself this way!) I would recommend purchasing at least one of the relatively just slightly higher levelled expansion packs to have better gears once you gain access to the major port in Mithria, as those gears would come in handy soon but also later on in the game, without having you one shot everything.

Also keep in mind that those "starter gears" I'm talking about here, they also DO respawn after a while, so they could be an alternative source of your income, whenever you are short, good deal.

[Baby Choo]

1. I noticed that one of the fastest ways to decrease your fame level - making it move to the left, is by directly attacking peaceful creatures/civilians around towns and cities, given that it's relatively much more difficult to increase your fame on the other hand, you have to do so by completing quests, but to be able to use "Evil alignment required" gears, one of the fastest ways to do that, is by attacking peaceful civilians/creatures. Also to the gears that require Good alignment, you can only use them when your "fame meter" is at least more on the right side, which requires you to complete quests that increases your fame.

[*Logan*]

Thanks for the tips

[Xargock]

Feel free to leave suggestions, if you have other great tips or insights, especially to complex mechanics, how stats and abilities really work (calculations, specifically), etc.