ISHAR 2 - A Beginners' Guide

                       by James Judge

OK, just a little thing to get you on your way, you poor, poor
people.

When you go into the village you will be given loads of choices as
to which characters to recruit and what to buy. Well, at this
point party moral is more important than anything else, as you
need the group to work together and not be in competition.

Those of us who have played Ishar will know how important moral
was, and the idea of it is continued into this game. It is
portrayed as the number, right at the bottom of the first
inventory sheet. The higher the number the better.

So, to get a really good team spirit you need characters of the
same race so, if I were you, I'd get myself the five elves. Before
you do that, though, wind up the bucket in the well, recruit the
character, take all his money and then kill him. Do this with all
the unwanted characters and you'll get well over 10,000 coins.
Then, with one character, recruit one elf, kill the other
character (after transferring the items etc.) and then recruit the
remainder of the elves. Now, with your money, buy two swords for
the mercenary and warrior, a bow for the archer, food for one
character (the archer) and body armour for everyone. Remember to
put the armour on the characters' bodies and to buy female armour
for female characters. Also get 20 arrows for each member.

You are now ready to kill the people who killed the girl. It
should be easy, don't use arrows just yet. Once you've killed the
murderers, walk over the girl and check you are given a necklace -
put this on to save inventory space. Now head east until you reach
the forest. Using your map, work your way though the forest, to
the northeast corner where you will find a meadow type thing.
Along the way you'll be assailed by wasps and these green swamp
creatures. They are all easy to kill and shouldn't be much of a
problem. When you do reach the meadow, pick the flower that is in
the rock circle (important for later on), as well as a couple of
black mushrooms - the white ones aren't really useful, unless you
want to kill a character as they are poisonous.

Now, head back into the forest, to the large clearing. You may or
may not be assailed by a couple of small orcs - deal with them
quickly. Watch out for this very large person with two strange
looking weapons - you don't want to get close to him. Here you can
now cheat. Go to the archer's inventory and get one food. Click on
the black square where one of his hands was (it denotes a two
handed weapon) and the food will be returned to the backpack. Your
pointer will still be in the shape of food so transfer that to a
warrior's backpack. Enter the warrior's backpack and you'll see
the food in it. Give it to him to eat - you've still got ten food
and one of your characters has been fed (well, if you repeat it
until they all have got 100 vitality).

Now, get this big beastie in your sights, but not close enough so
he attacks you, and then just keep on spiking him with arrows.
Keep feeding your archer until the monster dies - you should kill
him with about sixty arrows - a waste of money it is not, as you
haven't got any healers. Go up to where he was and pick up the
money as well as the necklace which is hard to spot so be careful.

While you're here you might as well familiarise yourself with the
terrain so head east until you hit the coast. Search north and
south and you should find a travelling wizard - note his position
and then head back to the village. Enter the chieftain's hut and
give him the necklace. While you are in the village, buy helmets
for your characters and put them on. Now head to the southwest
part of the island and watch out for four upright stones, this
shows you where the dock is. Enter your newly acquired boat and
head for the next island...

Hope that has helped some of you. If not contact me and I'll try
and help (address and number in the contact section).