Shard of Spring FAQ/Walkthrough Version 1.0.0 by Andrew Schultz schultza@earthlink.net This FAQ is copyright 2000 Andrew Schultz and is part of my effort to preserve the memory of old Apple IIe games. I am not affiliated with SSI in any way. Please do not repost for profit without my permission. However, if you ask me in a nice note referring to me by first name, I'll probably give you permission. Thanks! This neat little RPG sort of grew on me despite being a prequel to Demon's Winter(a game I thoroughly loathed, but I can see some of its good points now) and so I thought I'd leave some notes on it if anyone was curious and wanted to play(or re-play) through it. Check out my complete outerworld color map at-- http://members.fortunecity.com/cartographics Click on the "Shard of Spring OUTSIDE" link. ********************** OUTLINE: INTRO LOCATIONS ITEMS MONSTERS MAPS MAP FOR THE HILLS MAP FOR THE TELEPORTERS IN THE GATE KEEPER'S TOWER MAP FOR JUST PAST THE GATEKEEPER MAP FOR LOTHIAN'S TOMB TAVERN TALK (BY CITY) WALKTHROUGH BLACKFORT LAIR OF THE SWAMP KING EDRIN'S KEEP TUNNELS IN THE HILLS THE TOMBS GATE KEEPER'S TOWER SIRIADNE'S ENDSCRIPT SPOILER WITH OTHER GAME SCRIPTS BUGS/NUISANCES CHEATING VERSIONS/CREDITS ********************** INTRO I don't have a coherent one yet, and I haven't found a manual I have permission to quote from. So all I can say is, you're trying to rescue Ymros from Siriadne. You'll need to work through a few dungeons, find some special items, and whomp the guy. This walkthrough describes the puzzles. It doesn't really describe how to build a character, since I cheated my guys up to the max stats immediately. But building you characters up is not the main part of the game, as there are only a few critical fights. LOCATIONS(right and down of origin on my fortunecity map) Format for towns describes every shop in it--where one weapon is mentioned, it's the best you can buy there. Bars have no comments after them. TOWNS YMROS Green Hamlet (8, 3) Iron Blade (Mace) Rollo's Resthouse 17/night Hamlet Apothecary 85 to resurrect Kor's Smithy (Chain) Winsome Weapons (Battle axe) The Purple Rat General Goods (Lantern, 8) Arcania (23, 7) Potion Shoppe (all potions) Zor's Healing 105 to resurrect Cloud Nine 19/night Foaming Brew Magic Shoppe(iron staff, fight ring, ring of change) Best Healing 110 to resurrect Precious Plains (25, 21) Lucky Blade (Short Sword) Haystack 15/night Grainery[sic] Tinderbox (Lantern, 7) Spider Bay (34, 52) Erlock's Sail Healers of Jor 105 to resurrect Salty's Slumber 19/night Balik's Arena (train fighters, free) Woodhaven (50, 32) Dopey Dragon Sun and Moon 21/night Church of Ra 105 to resurrect Three Rings (Shield, Frost, Storm) Flickering Light (Lantern, 5) Gleon (90, 7) Blade Master (train fighters, free) Flashing Steel (2-handed sword) Hero's Pub Corbin's (Chain +1) Mithril Light (Sword +2) Terynor (96,21) Mystic Sky (magic staffs, metal/fire/wind/ice/spirit) College of sorcery (train wizards, free) Ares' Elixir (all potions) Enchanted Steel (sword +2) Xeor (wand of light, rod of might, rod of freedom) Soft Slumber 22/night Loven's Torches (Lantern, 8) Janthrin (113, 18) Grindstone (sword +1) Vadiguard's (scale +1) The Pheonix 31/night Prism (blue, red, platinum rods) Athe (66, 47) Sentinel 21/night Blacksmith (sword +2, plate--cheapest place in Ymros) Mermaid Healthy Herbs 65 to resurrect (again cheapest in Ymros) Myrquacid (113, 4) Mystic Shield (Plate +2 for 1500--cheap!) Jorlor's Healers 65 to resurrect (cheapest in Ymros) Valir's Academy (train fighters, free) The Rising Star (train wizards, free) The Beaker Adventurer's Inn 31/night ISLANDA Oceana (33, 22) Seaside Inn 35/night Ring Maker (shield ring, frost ring, storm ring, ring of change) Atlantis (8, 18) Healers 125 to resurrect Enchanted Armor (plate +2, very pricey) Red's Tavern Triton (52, 9) Wizard's Lab(holy symbol, elfin gem, eye of freedom, unholy symbol) Wizard's Library (train wizards, free) DUNGEONS YMROS Blackfort (22, 13) Lair of the Swamp King (54, 4) Edrin's Keep (65, 14) Tunnels (83, 33) Gate Keeper's Tower (114, 36) Second Gate (100, 2) Ralith's Castle/Siriadne's (93, 45) ISLANDA Murthin's Tomb (17, 4) Cercion's Tomb (8, 22) Vandiguard's Tomb (9, 35) Lothian's Tomb (56, 33) Eldron Greyhair's Tomb (32, 34) ITEMS The table below should describe every item completely. Each item has an unidentified name when you originally find it. It also has a cost(you can't sell weapons back, alas!) and the #2 column has a strength-to- wield(or, if it's a magic item, spell # which I haven't deciphered.) The #3 item has a magic charge quotient for combat items(i.e. extra damage or armor class,) and seems related to spell strength for other items, and the #4 item has base damage/protection for combat items and spell points contributed(which affect probability of success) for the potions, etc. ITEM NAME |UNIDENTIFIED |COST|#2 |#3 |#4 | ---------------+---------------+----+----+----+----+ Dagger |knife |2 |3 |0 |1 | Small axe |small axe |6 |4 |0 |2 | Short sword |small sword |15 |6 |0 |3 | Mace |spiked club |13 |6 |0 |4 | Morning star |ball & chain |20 |7 |0 |5 | Broad sword |sword |30 |8 |0 |6 | Battle axe |huge axe |65 |10 |0 |7 | 2-hand sword |huge sword |100 |12 | 0 |8 | Mace +1 |spiked club |350 |6 |1 |4 | Sword +1 |huge sword |500 |8 |1 |6 | Axe +1 |huge axe |750 |10 |1 |7 | Sword +2 |huge sword |950 |8 |2 |6 | Cloth |robes |5 |1 |0 |1 | Leather |leather |15 |2 |0 |2 | Chain |chain mail |40 |3 |0 |3 | Scale |scale mail |200 |4 |0 |4 | Plate |suit/armor |400 |5 |0 |5 | Chain +1 |chain mail |700 |6 |1 |3 | Scale +1 |scale mail |1000|7 |1 |4 | Plate +1 |suit/armor |1500|8 |1 |5 | Plate +2 |suit/armor |2000|9 |2 |5 | Heal potion |blue vial |50 |24 |4 |100 | Speed potion |violet vial |70 |11 |7 |100 | Psn antidote |green vial |150 |26 |13 |100 | Str potion |red vial |50 |7 |7 |100 | Pyrotechnik |red vial |55 |31 |8 |100 | Liquid armor |metal vial |66 |28 |6 |100 | Shield ring |gold ring |800 |31 |12 |15 | Frost ring |icy ring |3900|15 |18 |11 | Storm ring |dark ring |5200|8 |10 |10 | Flight ring |light ring |3000|11 |7 |10 | Chain Ring |iron ring |4000|5 |10 |13 | Iron staff |metal staff |5850|4 |10 |12 | Staff of ice |big icicle |2000|13 |6 |8 | Crystl staff |glass stick |4350|9 |11 |8 | Fiery staff |column/fire |5880|2 |16 |8 | Staff/soul |dim staff |5600|24 |8 |9 | Wand of light |light wand |2600|33 |2 |7 | Rod of might |heavy rod |2500|7 |9 |11 | Rod/freedom |light rod |3000|21 |26 |15 | Blue rod |colored rod |4850|12 |14 |9 | Red rod |colored rod |7000|3 |15 |10 | Platinum rod |colored rod |8100|6 |23 |9 | Holy symbol |talisman |1600|99 |0 |12 | Elfin gem |glowing rock |5100|27 |12 |13 | Eye of fear |glass marble |1950|17 |7 |10 | Unholy symb. |talisman |8331|16 |20 |11 | Torch |wooden stick |2 |32 |0 |100 | Oil lantern |lantern |10 |33 |0 |100 | Key |iron key |0 |0 |0 |0 | Copper key |copper key |0 |0 |0 |0 | Silver key |silver key |0 |0 |0 |0 | Gold key |gold key |0 |0 |0 |0 | Royal seal |iron coin |0 |0 |0 |0 | King's head |bloody head |0 |0 |0 |0 | F-field key |crystal bar |0 |0 |0 |0 | Teleporter |paper dove |0 |22 |10 |50 | MONSTERS The chart below should be self-explanatory. SPD=speed/movement, HIT=hit points, ICO=the icon # that appears, EXP=experience divided among living party members, and MAGIC=magic points. There are some other traits in the data file for the monsters, but I don't know what they're for, so they weren't included. Gold received seems in my best guess to be a linear function of experience. However, sometimes there seems to be a multiplier, especially on Islanda. Please, however, forgive me if I patently refuse to run statistical tests to back myself up on this matter. | | | | |MAG| MONSTER NAME |SPD|HIT|ICO| EXP | IC| ----------------+---+---+---+-----+---+ Lvl 1 Fighter | 7| 8| 1| 33| 0| Lvl 1 Wizard | 7| 5| 3| 33| 5| Orc | 6| 2| 12| 38| 0| Spider | 8| 4| 13| 20| 0| Rat | 10| 4| 14| 15| 0| Bat | 10| 3| 15| 20| 0| Bugem | 7| 10| 11| 38| 0| Skeleton | 6| 7| 5| 32| 0| Skeleton Mage | 9| 25| 6| 117| 20| Cobra | 13| 5| 16| 30| 0| Hill Giant | 4| 28| 10| 86| 0| Evil Spirit | 15| 40| 7| 160| 15| Death Adder | 14| 10| 16| 70| 0| Lvl 2 Fighter | 9| 14| 1| 65| 0| Lvl 2 Wizard | 8| 10| 3| 60| 12| Lvl 3 Fighter | 10| 18| 1| 80| 0| Lvl 3 Wizard | 8| 14| 3| 75| 18| Zombie | 8| 12| 5| 50| 0| Edrin | 9| 40| 1| 135| 0| Cook | 8| 12| 1| 38| 0| Lvl 4 Fighter | 11| 25| 1| 120| 0| Lvl 4 Wizard | 9| 17| 3| 115| 24| Ghost | 11| 15| 7| 67| 8| Ghoul | 12| 32| 5| 145| 0| Goblin | 9| 18| 12| 80| 0| Spectre | 13| 37| 7| 186| 30| Kobold | 7| 7| 12| 20| 0| Hobgoblin | 9| 25| 12| 105| 0| Lvl 6 Fighter | 12| 32| 1| 129| 0| Lvl 5 Wizard | 9| 21| 3| 141| 35| Gargoyle | 13| 45| 9| 170| 5| Lvl 8 Fighter | 12| 36| 1| 160| 0| Lvl 8 Wizard | 12| 28| 3| 160| 40| Lvl 10 Fighter | 13| 42| 1| 175| 0| Lvl 10 Wizard | 13| 37| 3| 170| 45| Lvl 12 Fighter | 14| 48| 1| 200| 0| Lvl 13 Wizard | 13| 40| 3| 205| 50| Lvl 15 Fighter | 15| 55| 1| 225| 0| Lvl 16 Wizard | 14| 45| 3| 220| 55| Fire Elemental | 16| 70| 17| 266| 50| Metal Elemental | 18| 70| 18| 280| 50| Wind Elemental | 26| 60| 21| 245| 58| Ice Elemental | 12| 80| 19| 268| 55| Spirit Elemental| 23| 65| 20| 280| 80| Fire Demon | 14| 60| 9| 235| 40| Ice Demon | 13| 60| 9| 245| 30| Demon Lord | 16| 86| 9| 290| 50| Devil | 16| 85| 9| 290| 88| Wraith | 15| 55| 9| 230| 50| Devir | 10| 26| 6| 120| 0| Baby Dragon | 9| 5| 22| 110| 0| Small Dragon | 11| 25| 22| 110| 0| Large Dragon | 13| 50| 22| 185| 15| Great Dragon | 16| 80| 22| 286| 30| Titan | 15| 90| 10| 290| 0| Ogre | 8| 35| 10| 125| 0| Warrior King | 17| 70| 1| 255| 0| Arch Mage | 15| 40| 3| 250| 65| Pit Viper | 14| 17| 16| 125| 0| Rattlesnake | 9| 8| 16| 45| 0| Giant Spider | 8| 18| 13| 40| 0| Giant Snake | 14| 40| 16| 133| 0| Mountain Giant | 9| 55| 10| 175| 0| Shambling Mound | 6| 33| 8| 118| 0| Guard | 10| 16| 1| 95| 0| Swamp King | 12| 45| 1| 160| 10| Orc | 9| 18| 12| 99| 0| Murthin | 12| 40| 5| 180| 23| Cercion | 13| 45| 5| 182| 0| Vandiguard | 11| 43| 5| 195| 0| Lothian | 12| 37| 6| 180| 45| Siriadne ! | 17| 85| 12| 5000| 88| R A L I T H | 18| 82| 5| 500| 0| Dark Raven | 20| 52| 15| 206| 0| MAPS Most of the dungeons in this game are pretty easy to figure out. There are only three branchings, or there is a secret door that is revealed in the taverns. MAP FOR THE HILLS The < and > indicate that the map cycles. s=secret doors 1,2,3 = statues. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx^xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx< > xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxsxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxx xx s xxxxxxx xx xxxx x s xx xxxx xxx xxx xx xxxx s xxxxxx 1xxx2xxx3xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx MAP FOR THE TELEPORTERS IN THE GATE KEEPER'S TOWER Key: ! is where you want to get to. CAPITAL LETTERS indicate teleporters. LOWER CASE indicate where teleporters go, i.e. A goes to a. A . indicates squares you can go to. NOTE: the "a" square is also the "m" square. The transporters are numbered/lettered in the order I saw them, pretty much. ! . R.. ..s l . i .L . ..k.. . . . h t..M . H c..T S . F . n.....d I..f..J G . r... . . ... K o...Q p.A.. N . ... . .... . B D e . a.. . q j g . C . . ..... ^ b..E O P And as a time-saving bonus: Upper left = Spider Bay Upper right = Gleon Lower left = Myrquacid(i.e. the "distant isle." Lower right = Back to entrance MAP FOR JUST PAST THE GATEKEEPER This probably isn't necessary, but I might as well...^ leads outside, x leads back to Green Hamlet, v leads to the island of fire and Ralith's Castle. FvF F F ....!.^ ..... . ..F.!..... ... x MAP FOR LOTHIAN'S TOMB Most tombs have no maze at all, but Lothian's has invisible blocks. It's easy enough to work through it by trial and error, but here is a map just in case. Get from the ^ to the !. ^ !.x...x....x.x. ...x....x...x. .x...xx.x.x.x. xx........x... ...x..xx....x. TAVERN TALK (BY CITY) Greenhaven: You hear that a priest has been kidnapped and is being held prisoner in Blackfort by Devir the Destroyer. Blackfort was built in the forest southeast of the river by Galin the Good, but taken over by Devir. Arcania: A muscular dwarf with big, beady eyes says he was attacked by Shamblers, horrible swamp monsters made by performing ancient magical rituals on dead swamp matter molded into human form..." Precious Plains: A woman from east of the mountains says that she has been terrorized by Edrin, a powerful friend of Siriadne's. She overheard two men saying there is a secret passage in the corridor on the second level Spider Bay: The Arena is fine if you are a fighter, but a wizard need go to Terynor for his training. Terinor is nestled in the mountains far to the northeast and is rich in magical items. Woodhaven: The gate leading into Siriadne's fortress is magically bound and cannot be opened. Gleon: A greying old wizard sitting by the fire is talking about magical staves. He says there are five kinds, one for each of the 5 elements of Fire, Metal, Wind, Ice, and Spirit. They are rare and powerful artifacts indeed... Terynor: You hear a whisper from behind you: 'A band of rebels that despises the evil Siriadne has taken refuge in the hills to the southwest' Janthrin: NONE Athe: A gnomish wizard is talking about elementals: unnatural, magical beings summoned by great wizards. They are five: one for each element. The Fire elemental is a being of pure fire, the Spirit elemental is mystical and feared. Myrquacid: An ancient looking elvin wizard in the corner beckons you. He tells you in a shaky voice the second word in the name of the Ancient spell: 'Reveli' Oceana: Years ago Islanda was ruled by the evil Moonglow family. Because of them the land is still terrorized by evil monsters. Eldron Greyhair ended thier reign and still holds a great treasure for adventurers on a worthy mission. Atlantis: * Coming soon * From the makers of The Shard of Spring ... an adventure set in the midst of a greater evil... Triton: NONE WALKTHROUGH This walkthrough is short enough that it can be presented in list format without getting too long. One thing I like about this game is how close you can get to the end without actually solving any puzzles. BLACKFORT ---You start off going south. There's a key if you take the east passage and take the first door you see. It'll allow you to go east. ---There's a priest held captive by the cul-de-sac that circles around the pool(the east door on the north.) You'll have to fight a hill giant, who won't be too tough. It's not immediately necessary to rescue him, but it is important for near the end of the game. ---In the southeast corner, a scrap of parchment indicates where you can find Devir. ---[spoiler below] ---The secret door is two south and one east of the door to the key room. ---Fight Devir and get an important item, the Royal Seal. It will help you explore the basement in Edrin's Keep, which isn't necessary for the game, but it's fun. LAIR OF THE SWAMP KING ---Explore a bit. Make sure you can beat the Shambling Mounds with relative ease. There's a pool to the west that will heal your characters. ---To the east, there are some clues. One tells of a secret door. ---Enter the secret door, win the fight, and get the king's head. It'll come in handy later. EDRIN'S KEEP ---First, you'll need to find the copper key. ---It's just north and east of the entry, in a small room behind a 2x3 room. ---You might want to pay attention to what the fighters have to say. It will come in useful. ---You'll need to go downstairs. If you don't have the royal seal, take a look above to see where to get it. ---You can use the copper key as follows--when the passage behind the door branches off to the left, follow it and go north at the first opportunity. ---Bingo, the silver key! Search around a bit to find what it unlocks... ---...right, the first door on the RIGHT. Hmm, now where's that gold key for the gold door? ---If you were a barfly you'd know. ---At one of the bars, you are told that there's a secret passage to the east of the corridor. It is in fact three south of the right turn-off. Once you've found the gold key, you can defeat Edrin. He leaves plate mail, which probably isn't too terribly useful. TUNNELS IN THE HILLS ---These aren't necessary since you are just looking for information here, which can be found later in this walkthrough. ---Note that the entry passage wraps every nine squares. Well, there's a bit more to this dungeon than that. You might guess that there's a secret door, and you'd be right. ---The secret door happens to be four east and three south of the exit. For your reward you get to find another secret door. ---And so forth. Spoiler below. ---4 S, 4 W, 2 S, 4 W, 3 N, W leads you to the main room. ---You need a special item for the statues to talk to you. ---Go kill the swamp king if you haven't. ---Take note of what the statues have to say. One of them says something very important. ---This isn't necessary for the game, but it's fun. THE TOMBS ---These are not strictly critical for solving the game as their main benefit is information, but they're neat and sort of flesh out the whole world. ---In fact, you don't even need to visit the four bad guys. You just have to give Edrin the correct answer. The item you get isn't *NECESSARY* for solving the game, but it doesn't hurt. ---Murthin, Cercion, and Vandiguard have normal tombs--nothing fancy. Just go in and fight them. ---There's a maze of invisible barriers in the tomb to get to Lothian, which would be troublesome if it weren't so small. ---A quick way to get through it is to go, from the square below the exit, 3S 2W 2N 2W N 3W S 2W N 2W S 2W N W gets you to the door of Lothian's burial chamber. ---There's a shortcut to Edrin's from Oceanus. Where it looks like two islands join, you CAN walk across them. Save yourself the grief. ---Answer Edrin with MURTHIN, CERCION, VANDIGUARD, and LOTHIAN. He'll give you a storm ring. He'll politely tell you to get going if you try to double-dip :). GATE KEEPER'S TOWER ---There are a bunch of teleporters in this one. Map very carefully. ---C'mon, give it a try before I reveal a total spoiler!!! ---Okay, I'll trust you :) ---Well, here's an opportunity for you to check my work :P ---Hit the first teleporter. EEN to 2nd, NNN, WWWN, SSS, EENNN gets you to the room with four teleporters. ---You can save the game before entering one, and I won't tell on you. ---Well, it's the lower left one you want to get to the distant isle. ---Be sure to stop in at the town before entering the dungeon! SIRIADNE'S ---This is the dungeon west of Myrquacid. You'll want to go through the north gate, and you'll see you're on the island of fire. Enter the castle(not much else to do...) ---Gee, it looks pretty peaceful. A forest, a statue, and a gate. Not the worst place to be stuck in if you saved your game and don't know how to progress(and WARNING: you WILL get stuck if you're not sure what to do next. Although you can disband your party, of course.) ---"Hey! What's going on with the gate?" It can only be moved by magical means. Not a magical item, either. ---You must get the two words of the ancient spell for this to work. ---One is found in the hills. ---The other is found in a town. ---Myrquacid. ---Time to hang out at the tavern which, like all the others in the game, is nice and non-alcoholic. Is this a Social Statement on the part of the authors? ---Total spoiler below: ---"DAZA REVELI" just south of the gate will open it. Now for the main part of Siriadne's castle. ---There is only one real fork, although the passages wind a lot. You'll want to go east first. ---Search the side rooms. In one you'll find something about a word of command. Once you do, go back and go north. ---There are a lot of fights, but eventually you'll seem to pass through a wall(where having read about the word of command comes in handy) and you'll want to wind up with the Forcefield Key(the crystal bar when unidentified.) Past the wall there are two fights--a bunch of undead, then Ralith himself for the key. ---Then go back and go the other way. If you feel a need to get out, the paper dove/raven you defeat casts a teleport spell. ---You'll have to defeat one of each elemental on the way. They are, in order, metal, fire, wind, ice and spirit. ---When it seems you're stuck, there should be a place with four gems to touch--blue, blue, red and green. ---Remember the fighters' song from Edrin's keep(the one they sing even after you've killed them?) ---The color pattern will help you. ---Blue, blue, red, green. Poof, you're on your way... ---Have the little chinwag with Siriadne. Then, YOU WIN! Enjoy the ending. ENDSCRIPT SPOILER WITH OTHER GAME SCRIPTS ******ENDSCRIPT****** A cool breeze blows through the huge arched windows of the tower room. On an ivory pedestal lies the object of your quest: a knife-shaped piece of green crystal. As you hold the shard and look out over the landscape of Ymros, it looks beautiful and peaceful; more peaceful than it has looked in a very long time. You watch as a graceful dove flys up from the balcony below up into the blue sky. As you turn to go back into the room, you see a black bird out of the corner of your eye, moving swiftly upward. As you re-enter the room, an old man who you recognize is standing near the dead body of Siriadne. His face shows a mixture of serenity andcontentment. He speaks: 'The True springtime shall now return to Ymros because of what you have done today.' 'Your names shall be remembered as long as men exist to sing of you'. He makes some mysterious motions and everything begins to swirl about you. His voice speaks to you out of the dizziness 'Evil is personified in the form of dragons, but borne in the hearts of men...' ******IN THE TOMBS****** The Tomb of Murthin (the mad). Fancy inscription reads 'This tree represents the life that you gave us'. Graffiti reads 'Nothing without a heart can live. This tree is the only thing in this tomb that was ever truly alive' The tomb of Cercion. Inscription reads 'For a man who loved the sea and died by it'. Scratchings read 'That makes us proud we drown him in it' The Tomb of Vandiguard. Inscription reads 'May these eternal fires always burn in your memory'. Second scrawled inscription reads 'and may you burn in Hell for as long...' The Tomb of Lothian. Plaque reads 'Your life was a maze of reality and illusion'. Second plaque reads 'May you be lost forever...' BUGS/NUISANCES Your maximum food is 255 and if you buy more you'll just get your cash ripped off. Max stats are also 255. The game never tells you when an item in your inventory helps you; the disk just loads. For instance, at the gold door, it says "a locked gold door" but if you have the gold key the disk loads and you pass the square. After you've won a fight, you sometimes still get the description scene. For instance, beating the singing fighters in Edrin's Keep doesn't stop you from hearing them afterwards anyways. Getting 256 hit points causes the program to break. CHEATING I don't know if I fully recommend cheating. It gets rid of tedious combat, but if you want the "whole package" cheating will ruin that--and to be honest, the puzzles aren't the most terribly complex. But here goes(assuming you know a little about hex and have a hex editor:) This relies on general editing strategies. Create five characters. Band them together. Say one is called BIPH. Let's say his stats are 6, 7, 8, 10, and 13. Then search the file for BIPH as a string, or 0x42 0x49 0x50 0x48 hexadecimal. Some games have the highest byte flipped, meaning you have to search for 0xc2 0xc9 0xd0 0xc8(add 0x80 to all of them....) The characters' info being 32 bytes long, you should see the name, then a list of bytes 06 07 08 0a 0d for Biph's stats. Change them to 250 if you want. That's what I did. If you want to rake in the hit points, there will be numbers after that--there should be two equal. Change the first two you find like that. If Biph is a spell caster then the next two bytes should be equal(one is max, one is current) so if you change them, BAMMO! Biph's got spell points. Note: if you train Biph, he loses these super-stats. The bytes for Biph's skills are set to either 0 or 1 so you can tinker with them if you want. I don't think you'll need to. As for gold, you might want to wait until you've got over 256. Then search for that number in hex. For instance, if you have 2867 gold, then 2869 = 2816 + 48 + 5 = a35. So you will want to search for the hex number 0a35, commonly expressed as 35 0a(the byte-pairs are FLIPPED.) As for provisions, just cheat with gold and buy them. ********************** VERSIONS/CREDITS Version 1.0.0 11/26/2000 submitted to GameFAQs.com after solving this at 4 AM or so 11/25/2000. Some of this was also written at an ungodly early morning hour which may explain some of the jokes. ftp.apple.asimov.net for having the Apple disk images. www.theunderdogs.org for having the manual, which helped me. druadic@cs.com(members.xoom.com/druadic) for the original Shard of Spring maps from Quest for Clues, which despite a few silly typos helped me no end. Questions/comments to schultza@earthlink.net.