Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire

Quest for Glory II: Trial By Fire is the second game in the Quest for Glory series. It takes place in the land of Shapier, with our plucky hero having to deal with four elemental creatures and unraveling a conspiracy in the city of Rasier. Sidequests include some minor thieving as a thief, joining the eternal order of fighters as a fighter, and passing the W.I.T. entrance exam as a thief. In addition, all character classes have the chance to become a Paladin for the next game by doing honorable actions, although this is particularly hard for a thief.

If you intend to play this game on a modern computer, using an emulator for older drivers such as VDMSound or DOSBox may help. A remake of the game is also planned at agdinteractive.

The interface is strictly conducted over a parser, typing pauses the action in the game to allow you to choose a command, and some built in verbs are available as short-cuts, such as accessing the map or your compass. Spells and actions must sometimes be targeted with a mouse, and you can right click on most objects to do an equivalent "look" command, so you don't have to struggle to figure out what they should be named. Conversations are two-way as before--you can ask about topics, such as rumors, elementals, and so on, or tell someone about a topic to relay information or initiate a conversation.

In addition to solving puzzles, you'll also have to engage in combat and work on perfecting your skills. You will have two or three gauges of health depending upon your character class. All character classes have Health Points and Stamina. Your health points determine how much damage you can take, and are decreased when you suffer damage in battle or gameplay situations. Losing all your health points kills you and ends the game. Your stamina determines how many actions you can perform, every time you perform an action it consumes a little bit of stamina. Performing actions which require stamina drains it and if you run out of stamina doing strenuous activity like running will lower your health. Some actions in battle can not be performed without sufficient stamina as well. Wizards also have mana points, which determine how many spells can be cast, each one draining a set amount of mana. If you are poisoned your health will drop steadily until it wears off or you cure yourself, and you also need to rest and get meals at the inn or eat rations to keep your character from starving or dying of exhaustion.

Your abilities and the ways you solve puzzles will vary with your character class. Fighters generally have to rely on brute force, and using strength and fighting monsters to clear their way through things. Thieves will rely on picking locks and breaking into places, using stealth to avoid notice, or disarming traps. Magic Users will want to use spells from a distance generally and find some creative application of magic to get through a situation. Paladins share traits in common with Fighters and Magic Users, and will generally take an approach more similar to Fighters, but they also get more helpful abilities at their disposal and have the ability to participate in more sidequests.

The game also uses a time-sensitive system where the game transitions between different hours of the day and night. You can rest for an hour at a time to recover some health, stamina, and mana, and you can go sleep for the night to restore all your stats. Most activities in Shapier can only be done during the day, but thieves may have a. Time passes extremely quickly while traveling, and you may be best off building a fire with a flame dart spell or a tinderbox at night to avoid getting woken up by monsters when you may be low on health or vulnerable. Keeping a large number of rations is also essential for making long trips across the world map.

General Advice
Early on in the game, the most important thing you can do is to avoid getting hopelessly lost in the streets of Shapier. Your first priority is finding the moneychanger so you can exchange your cash. Your second priority is buying a map and a compass so you can navigate the desert more easily and Shapier without even having to go through the alleyways. Ask Ali Baba for directions to the moneychanger and follow his somewhat confusing instructions carefully, then make your way back and get that map, you can use it from now on to travel anywhere you've visited instantly.

The game is on a very time-sensitive system, every few days a new elemental will show up and you'll need to find a way to defeat it. Build up your stats and explore a lot in the early days, and when an elemental shows up ask everyone you can find for advice. You'll want to sleep in the inn at night, buy rations from the meat seller, and have plenty of waterskins filled with water for when you go into the desert--pills are a must too.

Surviving in Shapier
Food and Shelter:

You'll need to buy rations from the meat seller in Shapier, or eat each evening at the Katta's inn, and you can rest at the inn for free throughout the game.

Combat/Survival:

Stocking up on pills from the apothecary is essential, other than that just save your game often, run away from the rhinos, and don't go picking any fights when you're too weak. You won't need to get into many fights in normal gameplay, but you'll want to practice your skills somehow.

Monsters:

(Daytime) (Day/Night) (Night)

Building up your Skills
Strength. Strength can also be increased by most activities involving physical exertion or consuming stamina, including running and fighting. Training with Uhura is a good way to build up combat related skills, including weapon use, dodging, and vitality. Otherwise you'll need to leave Shapier and wander in the desert to fight monsters, and you'll want plenty of water to survive out there.

Attributes such as Vitality can be increased by taking damage and engaging in combat, Intelligence can be increased by casting spells and solving puzzles, Communication is increased by talking to people, and Agility is increased by most any thief related action or dodging, and challenging the rope walker may help as well. Luck is increased by most random events including combat.

To practice the Climbing skill, you can repeatedly try to climb the ledge with the griffin, and the best way to build your Throwing skill is to just pick up a lot of rocks, and throw them all at once until you run out of rocks or stamina.

Pick locks. You can practice on virtually all of the doors of Shapier, there's only one door that will actually take you anywhere in any case. Not used very frequently.

Stealth is hard to build up, but going to the character menu and choosing to sneak will gradually increase it.

Combat based skills such as Dodge, Parry, and Weapon Use can be increased by going into combat and doing those moves repeatedly.

Magic Users can increase Magic just by casting any spell and can level up any spell by casting it repeatedly. The only spells which are really worth leveling up at all are the combat based spells which do damage, namely zap, flame dart, and force bolt.

Honor is a new stat you can increase by doing honorable actions, and is dropped whenever you perform dishonorably. Completing all the optional sidequests, and avoiding robbing anyone blind or doing anything deliberately cruel helps.

For a more detailed list of spells and abilities, see the main Quest for Glory page.