After I did everything I thought I could de in King’s Quest V – which wasn’t very much – I consulted the hint guide. That didn’t prove very useful, but I did learn that I had to throw a boot from the desert at a cat chasing a mouse or rat. I already learned that in this game certain things only occur after you get your hands on the right item to deal with the situation, so it was clear to me that I first had to go out in the desert to get a boot. I mapped out the desert and indeed found a boot, that I promptly threw at the cat to save the mouse or rat. Maybe he could help me get out of the cellar once I got thrown in there, and he could help me a bit, but not enough to escape.

So I needed to do more in the desert. At the temple I hid from some bandits. If I wanted to get into the temple, I needed the scepter from the bandits, or something just like it. After much mapping out more desert and dying of thirst many times, I found some tents. But nothing much else. The hint book wasn’t very helpful, but the internet was. Turns out that I was at the right place at the tents, but the bandits there only show up after you watched them at the temple. And I was apparently playing from an earlier save, so the bandits weren’t there (yet). After that, it took a few more tries to get what I needed. You need to be careful to step around the sleeping bandits, or else you die, and rightly so. Then you need to not get greedy and get all the gold from the temple, or else you die. And lastly, you need to be careful and notice the coin besides the old bottle, or else you cannot proceed any further, and you… wander around until eternity.

Now I got the coin so I can get the medallion, with which I can withstand the witch’s spell. Then I used the bottle on the witch to get rid of her. Inside her shack was a key to a heart, a spinning wheel and after much more searching, some emerald, which I used on the ground together with some honey to capture and elf. He helped me escape from the forest and gave me a pair of shoes. And that’s where I’m at right now. I only needed help two times to get this far! Yeah!