Beginning Inquisitor

A quick walkabout the first part of the game - without spoilers, I promise.
Also some quick tips upon in-game efficiency and some undocumented mechanics.

Starting a new game

1- walk up to town. Threaten the guard to get past him. If you kill off the bats for his entrance quest you don't get any extra XP. In fact if you aren't far through the game and you accepted his quest quit out and restart.

2 - walk NW until a guard interupts you. Go into the building on your right. Go down the steps and talk to the dog. Don't be afraid of him, get him to come with you. Now you have a monster Great Dane in your party who can tank all those damn zubats.

3 - Go talk to the Bishop and advance your main quest.

4 - Go back down to the inn (Beer symbol). You can buy your basic cheap essentials here; a shortbow, ammuntion, useful seals. You will pickup basic armor, for free, lying around so there's no pressing need to get any yet. Go upstairs and stand next to the old man next to the bed. Press F6 to quicksave the game. Talk to him and ask him about the crusades. After you listen to his story in full he will give you The boots of St. Bauldinio, which has random stats. If you load from the dialogue autosave the stats will be the same; the game decides the stats of the boots randomly from when you begin your conversation. You can change the stats assigned to the boots by quickloading to that point before you spoke to him (F9). Try to get +EXP or +Hit as well as some useful atribute stats/extra armor on the boots. This item remains relevant for the entire game~.

5 - Go to the NE corner of the map and talk to the Master of the Paladins next to his campfire.
Go to the Paladin HQ (NE building inside the stockade) and accept the help of the guy who comes to talk to you.

Now that you have two party members, go wild. Talk to all the villagers and kill all the monsters.
Note: Priests are the most tactically oriented of the three classes, and therefore the most fun. Priest gear should place extra emphasis on EXP gain because of the enormous amount of time it takes to get to the required level to get access to the Initiate and Magister level spells.

You do not split the total EXP you gain between you and your party members. It's easy to level-up in Inquisitor. The +EXP buffs from your equipment affect your party too: they gain the same amount you gain after the experience multipliers are applied.
The +EXP effects from gear only work on the experience earned from killing creeps. Quest rewards are uneffected. ~90% + of the EXP you earn is from killing creeps though..

How to build your skills at the beginning

No matter which class you start with put as many points as you can into Speed and intelligence.
Intelligence is the most useful attribute at the beginning because of the much bigger mana pool it gives you.
Even if you are playing as a Dumb tank Paladin with no damage spells you can utilize the various Seals that contain lightning, fire or frost attacks to blast apart your enemies.
Speed is useful because you dont have to spend such a long time walking from A to B.
It really moves the game along.

The first skills you should prioritize are the Identification skill and the Perception skill (Both of these require the Intelligence attribute by the way).
Having to rely on vendors to identify all the cheap stuff you get from drops is not only fiddly but expensive.
Note: these skills are nice to have, but not 'necessary'.

The Perception skill helps you to spot caches of goodies that lie littered about each map and also mitigates some trap damage.
Maxing this skill is nigh essential in hard mode. You can max the skill by drinking a large potion of perception.
Alternatively you can up your perception skill by casting one of the spells that improve your perception.
Both of these methods improve the level of the skill for the duration of its effect and bypass the need to actually waste all your skillpoints.

After getting Disciple level Identify ignore it thereafter. You can learn about elite items with the spell Sixth Sense in the inquisitorial school of magic (it's an apprentice spell). It's not worth buying the tome and scroll you need to get this method working though. Wait for the needed item drops.

The size of your purse will grow rapidly after about an hour of playtime. You will soon have far more gold than you need for the Easy or Medium difficulties, so ignore skills like smithing, stealing and high level identify as pumping levels into those skills will very soon become redundant. The afore mentioned skills may appear midly useful in Hard mode where you have a lower income and more wear and tear on your equipment, but ultimately it's a losing tradeoff. Be deadlier.

Take note when you will be able to level up a skill to the next tier. Take note the level and attribute requirements. It's more effective to build several skills to the disciple, then journeyman, then master tiers in balance than to level up your weapon or magic skill to the exclusion of others.
Buying items that have a +Non-magical skill bonus as a part of its stats helps your character improve tremendously when you have been building your skills up evenly.

You can only move up to the next mastery level of a skill when you have both the required level and the neccesary base stats. The attribute points given by equipment do not count toward making up the minimum stats you need to master a new skill tier.

Buying Gear

As you go through the storyline you can get many fantastic items from chests in hard locations or as a reward for completing a quest. However, some of the randomized items the vendors sell are superior to most all uniques. These are the Blue pieces of gear with +All Atributes and +Non-Magical/Magical skills.
If you do spot one of these and you can afford it, by all means buy it.

I would suggest, however, that you begin your ideal outfit with amulets, rings and belts.
These items do not deteriorate.
If you aren't an efficient player it can be crippling if you don't do it this way.
This is because more expensive equipments are far more costly to repair. You will notice the bite if you get some 8~9K gold gloves too early. Repairing them from half costs about 1000 gold right there. Gloves are the most perishable equipment behind your weapons. Helmets and boots deteriorate more slowly, but again they both have a low durability count. Chest armor depletes quickly at low levels, but takes less dents when you level up your armor skill. Paladins that equip a big shield while they have a high shield skill are able to soak up much of the damage intended for their chestplate and helmet.

Experience gear is 5% of the cost of +stat+skill gear. It has a cumulative effect over time, and the ammount of money it saves you on purchase and repair costs allows you to buy many magic boxes.
Ideally you will spend the first half of the game with super expensive rings and amulets and with disposable armours with +EXP buffs.

Once you have a large bank go shopping (13K+ for one talsiman/ring that you can't conceivably improve upon). Learn the shape and look of the type of gear (blue) you want to buy, go to the vendor that specializes in the type of gear you want and repeat the act of asking to see their goods until something fantastic appears in their stock.

Exploring the map + Tips

Use F4 to tun on auto label display for items

You can command your party members to attack a door or chest with 'z'.
You can hit or shoot at a locked object by shift+left-clicking.

When walking around oft you will come across Devil's Roots occasionally. Don't sell them they're too useful later.

When stepping onto a new grid the place will be fully stocked with enemies unless it is populated with humans. In a small map square it is usually easiest to find everything by circling the circumference of the map, then performing another tighter loop in a spiral. Larger maps should be carefully zig-zagged if the topography is uniform.
Big mobs, once cleared, are gone forever. Single enemies respawn on a map in key locations when it's revisited; ie. spiderwebs get a new spider.

Healing
Stamina replenishes slowly if you walk (R toggle) and quickly if you wait stationary.
Spiders are very annoying because they poison you. The poison debuff not only leeches at your HP but it drains your stamina too. If you get poisoned, and you definitely will, my advice is to go to Hillbrant and get yourself and your party healed by the Father which costs 67 to 99 gold, although it's free if you're playing as a priest. The Fathers around execution sites can also proved healing for 222g a pop.
Another healing option is to go stand next to the priests in Hillbrant Square and wait it out, but that way is Incredibly Tedious. Do yourself a favour: if you dont have enough gold to seek contant healing early the game tip yourself a few hundred gold with the cheat: `\getmoney XXXX<Enter>

The basic difficulty guide, and suggested creep pattern, of the First realm is:
Hillbrandt
Hillbrandt place of execution
Hillbrandt Cemetery
Ashburn
Ashburn Cemetery
Hillbrandt Cemetery Underground (Promotion) - Good idea to have journeyman Perception
Ashburn Cemetery Underground
Iron mines; Ground level - (get your speed up to 30+ and kite the large mob while using your most powerful AOE Seals)
Road to the Dragon Rock (All) [Let it be known: Trolls are really Ents]
Dragon rock
Tree of Death
Dragon Rock Underground
Iron Mines
Orc Caves (Below Iron mine)


Speaking of potions, if you play well you will soon have many more potions than you can use. This is rather annoying in the iron mine beacuse of all the orc trophies you wan to pick up.
When you have too many potions don't sell them - jettison them next to the spawn location in Hillbrandt town. You can use them later.

Magic Boxes

Frequently you will find magic boxes. If you first tell the djinn "I need healing!" he heals you, and you can then ask for one of the other options: escape, shopping or a beatdown for the enemies in a screenlength radius. Asking for any of these options first will lose you a chance of free healing.

If you choose the "I don't need anything" option the djinn will gift you one of: 500g / misc.equipment / one attribute point / one skill point.
When you have a surplus of the boxes (and the difficulty is high enough for you to need to find the patience) you can reload from the dialogue autosave to get the djinn to gift you a skill point with each broken box.
The boxes also save a lot of time in the mid-late game when you are inside a long, trophy-less dungeon and you need to repair your equipment and open up space in your bags. "I need shopping!"

Another incredibly tedious thing you have to do in this game is walk all the way back up to ground level mid-way through a dungeon as you inventory fills and your equipment gets shredded.
A nice shortcut - which saves you about four minutes each time you use it - is to use the 'escape rope' function that the box djinni offer you.
You can then gift yourself one magical box with the cheat: `\givenewitem kamenmudrcu
You gain nothing but time so it's fair enough.

Once you have gotten the best equipment you can from the shops the only useful thing you can spend your money on is magic boxes that you can break to ramp up your attribute or skillpoints. When doing this yet another way to save time is to find out how much boxes are selling for (a little less than 4000g normally), then remove the appropriate ammount of gold that it would take to buy the number of boxes you want with the cheat: `\givemoney #<enter> (the ammount is negative in this case).
Than add the corresponding number of skillpoints: `\addskillpts #<enter>

Spells and Seals

Firstly, to learn a new group of magic you need to find or buy the spellbook and double-click it.
It seems obvious if you thought to try it, but if you didn't how to use the book the tooltip isn't in the item description or in the game manual.

When playing as a thief or paladin spells are used more for utility than for combat. Magic of Miracles has the Levitation spell which lets you and your party float over acid or lava without taking damage.
Pagan magic has the Shatter spell which opens a chest or door instantly. Divine magic and Magic of the True Faith both have spells that boost magical resistance which can be extremely helpful if you know you are about to walk into a mob of casters.

The most overpowered Seal for a character in melee range is the Oval lightning one. It's electric blue and in the description it says it summons a thundercloud which follows the target. In its effect it fires five or six balls of lightning all dealing the base damage in the description. Unlike the Firewall Seals ALL of the different lightning projectiles can cause damage to one target. This means if you walk up with a level three or four thunderstorm seal and unleash it point blank you tend to instagib medium level enemies. Second most useful is the circle yellow seal. It fires a 360 array of ice balls. If you are engaging multiple enemies at close range, walking to a well placed spot in between your foes and zapping them a few times works wonders.

All of the triangle seals do single target damage. Every other kind of elliptical shaped seal deals some AOE excpet for the yellow oval which can, at max, contain a 15-120 damage nuke.

Looking Good

Throughout the game your alignment bar moves extremely slowly. Some of the info in this section may not be entirely accurate as you can't judge the effect of some actions by naked eye. Thus, I have no idea if extorting money from an NPC, or instead being benevolent to them, can cause a change in your alignment.

If you learn and cast Heretical or Infernal magic (I think some of the Pagan spells are OK) you will become more diabolical. Torturing anyone drops your alignment. Often torture is unavoidable to advance the story. Torturing or burning an innocent severely drops your alignment.
Buring a heretic may help your alignment. I don't know - comment and let me know if you do.

Triggering a trap upon a chest inside a city summons a guard. Killing guardsmen gives 350 base XP and the contents of whichever chest you just bashed open. Unfortunately killing a guard deals a slightly noticeable negative shift (in other words - it's Massive) to your alignment.
Few chests hold unique items. If you are trying to play towards the 'good' ending try to only open just these chests.

If you get the Paladin's Enemy Estimation skill to its highest mastery level you are able to evaluate their HP, resistances, and even their alignment. Most mobs are neutral. City guardsmen, wild zombies etc. are all neutrally affiliated. Orcs, and many other creatures, are Evil. Priests and guards summoned by most alarms are good. Again, it's hard to tell exactly what effect killing an Evil creature has on your alignment, but it's a safe bet that you become more saintly by doing so.

If you Do end up going bad it barely changes the game, assuming you have a decent level in Eloquence/Authority. You'll just finish the game with the 'bad' storyline ending. Ending the game as Good or ending the game as Bad shows you the same cinematic regardless. It just shows a different text box. So I recommend not giving a @#$% about the moral choice system.

To improve your alignment cast Good spells from the Divine, magic of True Faith, or magic of Miracles schools (I think Inquisitorial is neutral). I'm guessing here, but I think casting Divine spells has a more pronounced effect upon your allignment than casting Miracle spells or True Faith spells does. Probably vice-versa for Infernal over Pagan/Heretical too.
That Good spells may positively effect your alignment is merely a hypothesis, but I'm confident that the reverse is true. Learning a Dark class of magic has the most noticable effect.

Keep in mind that if you try to bribe someone and their price for answering that question is low, what they have to say isn't even worth reading.

Bugs

From time to time the graphics will glitch out and show up as red blocks. Don't ignore it. Save and restart Inquisitor.

90% of the way through the game, on hard, I got the red screen of death and the game crashed as I exited that level of the dungeon. My level autosave, my dialogue autosave and my quicksave all became corrupted and I lost my game data. One level from unlocking Magister spells.
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)

Hard Mode

All other creatures have extra HP. Happily, this includes your two earlygame meat-shields.

Because you have to fight with each critter longer your gear will take more dents and need to be repaired faster relative to the other modes. In order to earn enough gold to get the items you want, learn quickly how to position your avatar so you get attacked as little as possible. Toggle 'D'rink on and off while your party tanks for you to maximise the efficiency of your potion use.

The potion/coin drops from creeps aren't as good in Hard. Inefficient play can cripple you and force you to farm trophies to afford all the Seals you need for tough dungeons.

The most effective earlygame spell is Blade of Fire (MoM).
If you wish to cast nuke spells to clear mobs of enemies first buff yourself with Divine magic's Bless spell.

When an NPC gifts you a unique item, that item is often created at the end of the conversation (with random stats). Going back to a save before the conversation started allows you to change the stats on the item.
If the unique comes to you as an item drop from a corpse or chest you can't alter it (Unless you go back to the level autosave when the map hadn't yet been created yet, I assume).
You can get a unique shield from the chest in the Vice-govenor of Hillbrandt's house; try it out for me.

Quest guide

http://www.gog.com/forum/inquisitor/complete_quest_walkthrough

http://www.gog.com/forum/inquisitor/complete_quest_walkthrough_part_2

http://www.gog.com/forum/inquisitor/complete_quest_walkthrough_part_3

[Ragnaman]

First its " dont get smithing", then its "repairs are expensive", so which is it ?

[President T]

Concerning alignment, I found this on the forum. Would be worth adding if true.

[quote=Kovi;1621724915818307898]Schools of magic have no influence on the game's ending. There should be just one effect on your combat regarding their split between permitted and forbidden - if your alignment is closer to Good it will cost you more to cast a forbidden spell, and if your alignment is closer to Evil it will cost you more to cast a permitted spell. The cost should be the amount of Mana and Stamina points needed to cast a spell. [/quote]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/241620/discussions/0/1621724915812312672/

Thank you for the guide. Very helpful and added to my experience!

[Cameo]

"Without spoilers, I promise."

*Proceeds to tell you exactly what to do step by step, spoiling the f*ck out of you*

[GOLDENEYEGOD]

bad guide the first guard doesnt even have a bat chest

[tracksone]

Some good here some bad. I implore people to NOT just dumb stats into int at the start unless you plan on going that route. Thats noob advice, bad advice

[JuanJuan]

Well done

[Azrubel]

Thank you!

[fwe]

Regarding the 'Entry'-Quest on tip#1: As of GOG Version 1.10, this quest will give you 150 XP, so you are swapping this amount for 465 XP for the rest of your party.

[Daiamonto]

Bad guide honestly you forgot a lot of stuff and barely know the game, and about invstigation thats the WORST skill in the game, as 6 points of inquisitorial magic is the same crap of 20 from investigation, perception is only good for first time players, players that are extremely atentions can save those points for something else.

[T0AD]

thanks, great guide that helped me get my footing in this game