Cardinal Quest

Cardinal Quest is an arcade-style dungeon-crawler inspired by 1980s classics such as Gauntlet, Red-Box D&D and Golden Axe: Choose your champion and begin your quest to slay the Evil Minotaur!

Cardinal Quest, also referred to as Cardinal Quest 1 for clarification, is the game that inspired this wikia's subject. Created by Ido Yehieli and inspired by classic games such as Gauntlet and D&D, Cardinal Quest itself is a dungeon-crawler with aspects of hack-and-slash and roguelike.

The player character is one of the few survivors of the town of Hallemot, destroyed by the evil Asterion and his army years ago. Now older and stronger, the player character descends into the labyrinth to slay the minotaur king and avenge his hometown.

While Cardinal Quest 2 takes after this game, including many (but not all) of the monsters, skills, equipment, items and overall design, there are also many notable changes between versions. For comparison, this page will list general aspects of the original.

Level Layout[]

The game is comprised of a single dungeon spanning 8 floors. There are no traps or obstacles besides doors, hallways and enemies. Monsters become more dangerous the deeper the player goes, with the final floor housing the most dangerous enemy type in the game: Minotaur Lieutenants.

To access the next floor the player will have to find the stairs; once found, the player can press "Enter" or "Space" to leave the current floor, but cannot backtrack to the previous floor. The next floor may drop the player next to dangerous enemies, and leaving a floor does not recover HP, so it's suggested to prepare beforehand.

The dungeon changes color the deeper the player goes. Blue being the first and easiest floors, followed by green, then yellow, and finally red being the last and hardest. Music also changes, the final floor playing the final boss music of CQ2.

Classes[]

There are three playable classes:

Fighter: A mighty warrior of unparalled strenght and vigor, honorable in battle, high master of hack-and-slash melee. The best choice for new players.
Thief: A cunning and agile rogue whose one moral credo is this: Always get out alive. The most challenging character - use his speed and skills to avoid taking damage.
Wizard: A wise sage, knower of secrets, worker of miracles, master of the arcane arts, maker of satisfactory mixed drinks. Can casts spells rapidly - Use his mystic powers as often as possible.

All classes start with different equipment, stats, and one skill of choice.

Stats[]

There are six different stats that affect progression and combat:

Health: Hit points.
Attack: Increases your chance to hit with wielded weapons.
Defense: Gives you a chance to resist physical damage.
Speed: How fast you can run and act compared to enemies.
Spirit: You Spirit is the rate at which almost all spells recharge.
Vitality: The increase in maximum hit points you gain when you level up.

Added to these is Damage, exclusive to weapons, which determines how much damage a weapon does.

Also, only Health increases upon level up, the amount determined by the Vitality stat.

Spells and Skills[]

There are no skill trees for classes and no points to increase stats. Instead, every class begins the game with one specific skill and other skills can be found strewn around the dungeon. There is no limit to which skills can be used besides the class' effectiveness with them.

Fighter always starts with Berserk.
Thief always starts with Shadow Walk (acts like Shadow Mastery).
Wizard always starts with Fireball.

The initial skills can be found again inside the dungeon.

Also, more than one skill can be set in the skills slot for use, allowing combos of the same.

Items, Inventory and Gold[]

The inventory is notably different from CQ2. Equipment is collected and stored in the inventory so the player can switch weapons and armor anytime; only when an equip's quality is inferior to the one currently used it's discarded and sold for gold. Skills are also stored in the inventory for switching. If a player doesn't want a skill or equip they can drag its icon to the "Destroy" option to discard it for gold.

However, gold doesn't have any funcion in this game. There are no options to spend it and no final score it can affect. Gold is purely cosmetic.

Enchanted equipment can be found in the dungeon. The deeper the floor the better the enchantment, determined by color (blue, green or yellow). A title (like "Mystical" or "Wondrous") determines that a weapon is enchanted and how much, but doesn't determine which stats it increases.

Besides skills and armor there are also consumable items. These have their own slot and don't ocuppy the inventory. There are five kinds of consumables, but no limit on how many of said kind can be carried.

Elixir of Tiger Strike: 3+ attack, 2x damage multiplier.
Elixir of Elephant Strike: +6 defense.
Coca-leaf Coctail: +6 speed.
Mana Potion: Recharges all skills.
Healing Potion: Recovers all HP.

Notes[]

Despite his status as the main antagonist, you never get to fight Asterion. He doesn't spawn on the final floor, and the ending text describes him as escaping once the player kills all the monsters there.
There is no final score.
There are no female options for classes, neither are skin-color change options.