Stage 1: Prelude: New Sorpigal Start & the +20 / NWC Power-Start
Approx. level 1-5 New Sorpigal Dragonsand Misty Islands
You begin as a fresh level-1 party in New Sorpigal, the game's starting town on its own island. Before doing any real fighting you will exploit two things the developers left wide open: a hidden rooftop teleporter that flings you to the Shrine of the Gods in distant Dragonsand for a permanent +20 to every statistic, and the New World Computing (NWC) dungeon behind it, which hands out gold, food, and starter gear. This stage's goals: grab the opening New Sorpigal quests, gather ~2,000 gold, hire a Gate Master for early travel, run the +20 shrine, loot the NWC dungeon, and Town Portal out to Mist so the real game can begin around level 5.
Buy bows, then talk to Potbello at the inn
Out of the gate, head to the weapon shop and buy a bow for every character (keep a melee weapon equipped too) — almost everything early dies to massed arrow fire before it can reach you. Then turn right into the Lonely Knight's Inn and talk to Andover Potbello about the letter for a small chunk of gold and experience; he also gives you the Candelabra quest (you will finish it later in the Abandoned Temple of Baa, so just bank the quest for now).
Loot the bridge crates and scrape together 2,000 gold
Turn right out of the main town gate and cross toward the bridge. Search the three crates on the east side of the river for items and gold, then sell the loot back in town. There is plenty of cash lying around the area — the goal is to bank roughly 2,000 gold for the Gate Master. Note the buoy/pot near the bridge and the abandoned temple releases monsters when clicked, so leave those alone for now.
Stuck for cash? If your party dies in New Sorpigal you can click the well next to the tavern for 100 gold; bank it, die again, and re-click for another 100 — a slow but reliable emergency trickle for a brand-new party.
The mainland around town is patrolled by Goblins, Goblin Shamans, and Goblin Kings (plus weak Apprentice/Journeyman Mages). Stand behind a wall or at maximum range and shoot them with bows while they can't reach you. They are individually weak (13–40 HP), though the Shaman and King occasionally lob a Fire Bolt, so don't bunch up in the open. Clearing them is worth it for early XP, gold, and quest progress; just avoid the offshore islands until you have bows up to skill.
✅ Clear
- Town Goblins / Goblin Shamans / Goblin Kings near the bridge (low HP, good early XP and gold; shoot from behind walls)
- Apprentice & Journeyman Mages on the mainland (almost no HP; free XP)
⏭ Skip
- The offshore islands' mage/goblin parties for now — come back with leveled bows once you're ~level 5 (per the GameFAQs play order)
Hire a Gate Master and grab the free Fly scroll
With ~2,000 gold in hand, find a Gate Master NPC (often near the main town gate — if none is offered, save and reload to reroll the available NPCs) and hire them for 2,000 gold. They cast Town Portal on demand, giving you long-distance travel many levels before any party member could cast it. (They take 20% of corpse loot, so dismiss them later once you have your own travel spells.)
Then go to the south wall of the bank and click the blank wall to receive a free Fly scroll — the developers left it there specifically to enable this power-start.
The Gate Master is the linchpin of the whole early game: for a flat 2,000 gold you get Town Portal on tap, letting you hop between New Sorpigal, Mist, and Free Haven to buy skills, collect quests, and bank gold long before you could cast it yourself. Keep them through the early town circuit, then dismiss them once your own caster learns Town Portal (they skim 20% of corpse loot, which adds up in dungeons).
While you're in town, sweep up every opening quest so they're ready to turn in later:
- Candelabra — from Potbello at the inn (finish in the Abandoned Temple of Baa).
- Spider Queen / Heart of the Spider Queen — from Buford T. Allman (Elements Guild). The heart drops from the Queen Spider in the Abandoned Temple.
- Angela — find Angela Dawson; Violet Dawson (Self Guild) gives the related quest.
- Goblinwatch Code — from Janice at the Town Hall; the scroll is inside the Goblinwatch keep.
- Sharry — also from the Town Hall (Frank Fairchild); she's rescued from the Shadow Guild much later.
None of these are completed this stage — you're just opening them. (The Chime of Harmony quest is not available yet — the Town Hall only offers it after you've solved the Goblinwatch combination, which happens in Stage 3.) Also note Hejaz Mawsil at the Buccaneer's Lair buys Cobra Eggs for about 300 gold each, handy once you clear the temple.
Fly to the Buccaneer's Lair rooftop → teleport to Dragonsand
Find the Buccaneer's Lair near the center of town. Use the Fly scroll to land on the northern wing of its rooftop / steeple, positioning yourself so you face south (don't fly too high — the tower shoots fireballs at high flyers). Save your game. Press Enter to drop into turn-based mode, then click the wall/steeple to the south. You will be teleported across the world to a tiny island just outside the Shrine of the Gods in Dragonsand.
The island is ringed by ~30–40 dragons that will one-shot a level-1 character — so you arrive in turn-based mode. Immediately exit turn mode, sprint into the temple, and tuck into the left-hand alcove against the wall where the dragons can't hit you, then re-enter turn-based mode. If anyone took a hit, reload and try the run again. Once safe, have every character touch the Shrine of the Gods for a permanent +20 to every statistic. This single shrine turns a level-1 party into something that hits hard, carries far more, and (after a heal) has hugely inflated hit and spell points for the rest of the run.
Everything outside the shrine in Dragonsand is wildly out of your league at level 1. The Red / Blue / Gold Dragons (880–1,300 HP), the elemental Fire / Lightning / Thunder Lizards, and the poison-breathing Wyrms all hit for double-digit dice of damage and are largely immune to their own element (Gold Dragons are even magic-immune). Touch the shrine, click the next wall to reach the NWC dungeon, and never engage anything here this stage — it's a stage-11/14 zone (Tomb of Varn, the obelisk cache).
✅ Clear
⏭ Skip
- Red/Blue/Gold Dragons (880–1,300 HP, element-immune, Gold ones are magic-immune and KO in one hit) — run, never fight
- Fire/Lightning/Thunder Lizards (immune to their own element) — dodge
- Wyrms / Giant / Great Wyrms (poison-immune, 400–700 HP) — avoid; they're a late-game payday
From inside the shrine, turn to face the northwest wall and click it to drop into the developers' joke dungeon — a two-level office stuffed with starter gear, food, and gold. It's rated very easy; only a couple of Goblins / Goblin Shamans / a Goblin King on the east side pose any threat, and there are harmless NWC staff and peasants walking around.
- Don't grab the loose gold yet. From the start, go through the eastern door, take the first door on the right, continue straight through two more doors, then in the big room take the left door to reach a chest.
- The chest gives 500 gold per click — keep clicking until you're over ~10,000 gold, then collect the loose gold around the rooms.
- Click every white box / cabinet for items; the bottle box is an effectively endless item dispenser, but the cloak box (Phantom Cloaks) is limited — it stops dispensing after 4 cloaks. The pantry/food cabinet hands out food on roughly every other click — though it also briefly drunks or poisons the character, so just keep clicking to stockpile hundreds of food. Basic weapons and armor (often including a spellbook for your caster) litter the rooms.
- Do not attack the wandering NPCs — hit one and they all turn hostile, and killing them tanks your reputation.
When you've stripped both levels, have the Gate Master cast Town Portal to Mist to start the early town circuit. You should leave with +20 stats, ~10k gold, hundreds of food, and a pile of starter gear — usually still within the first few in-game days.
The NWC chest is the single biggest early gold source in the game: 500 gold per click, which the walkthrough has you click up to ~10,000 gold in a single run. In version 1.0 you could farm it indefinitely by setting a Lloyd's Beacon at the chest and another at a bank and looping between them. Combined with the endless bottle/cloak boxes and the food pantry, you can leave the dungeon with ~10k gold, hundreds of food, and a bag of free gear — enough to buy guild memberships and the Learning skill the moment you reach Mist. (See the patch note below: the repeatable behavior is version-dependent.)
Later official patches and the GrayFace patch corrected several dungeon chest and artifact glitches — artifacts no longer spawn in inaccessible chests and chest-duplication exploits are fixed. Practically: the NWC "click the chest forever for 10,000 gold" trick was a version-1.0 behavior; on patched installs the repeatable-chest dupe may not stack the same way. You'll still get a generous one-time haul plus the endless food/item boxes, so the power-start is intact either way — just don't count on infinite gold from a single chest on a modern install.
⚙ Patch note: several dungeon chest/artifact bugs are fixed (e.g., Warlord's Fortress, Agar's Laboratory). Artifacts no longer generate in inaccessible chests, and chest-duplication glitches are corrected — if an old guide tells you to dupe items here, that no longer works on the patch.
When the Gate Master drops you in Mist, visit the temple to heal — with your inflated +20 stats this fills out your now-huge hit and spell point pools. Then buy the cheap Learning skill for everyone as soon as you can (it boosts all future XP), pick up guild memberships (especially the elemental and clerical magic guilds), and grab the Bow skill for anyone missing it at the Duelist's Edge. Keep your reputation out of the red — donate at the temple if a stray NPC kill or theft dropped it. The detailed Mist/Free Haven shopping and the Cavalier promotion are handled in Stage 2.
The Goblinwatch keep sits just south of New Sorpigal and holds the Goblinwatch Code scroll for the Town Hall. It's rated very easy, but the recommended play order has you come back around level 5 after the Mist/Free Haven circuit, with leveled bows, and clear it together with the Abandoned Temple of Baa. Pick up the quest now; do the dungeon in Stage 3.
Note the entrance to Gharik's Forge on a blackened island off New Sorpigal. It is rated very hard: fire monsters, and Warlocks that cast Insanity nearly every turn. Worse, its inner Gharik's Lab door needs Gharik's Key, which you don't get until you clear the Silver Helm Outpost in the Misty Islands (Stage 7). The Hourglass of Time inside is part of Lord Newton's council quest. Skip it entirely for now — it's cleared in Stage 11.
Two minor version-1.0-era tricks worth knowing while you're here:
- Area reset for re-loot: after fully clearing the New Sorpigal map (kill and pick up every body, islands included), pushing the buoy north of the Abandoned Temple blows the volcano; leave and return and all monsters and chests respawn. (Verified in v1.0, fixed in v1.1.)
- Horseshoe / skill-point trick: with your gold safely in the bank, repeatedly killing your own party lets you collect extra horseshoes in New Sorpigal — each horseshoe is +2 skill points to one character, best fed to SP-hungry mages.
These are exploits the designers worked to patch out; they're listed for completeness, not required for the route.
✅ Clear
- New Sorpigal town Goblins / Goblin Shamans / Goblin Kings (13–40 HP) — bow them from behind walls for early XP and gold
- Apprentice & Journeyman Mages on the mainland (red mages have the fewest HP in the game) — free XP
- NWC dungeon east-side Goblins (a couple only) — easy loot run
⏭ Skip
- ALL of Dragonsand: Red/Blue/Gold Dragons (880–1,300 HP, element-immune; Gold = magic-immune, one-shot), Fire/Lightning/Thunder Lizards (self-element immune), and Wyrms (poison-immune) — run to the shrine, never fight
- Wandering NWC staff/peasants — hitting one aggros all of them and tanks reputation
- The offshore New Sorpigal island parties — return ~level 5 with leveled bows (Stage 3), not now
- New World Computing (NWC) Dungeon — now
- Goblinwatch — later (Stage 3, ~level 5 after the outside loop)
- Gharik's Forge — later (Stage 11; needs Fly + Gharik's Lab key from the Silver Helm Outpost)