The purpose of this page is to document information and tricks for the game Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse.

Some battles take long, even on Very Easy difficulty. A detour to the supernatural items shop in Bandar al-Sadat will be worthwhile since you can buy Sunfire Moonshards for 1200gold at 10 uses each. Each use will pretty much obliterate all nearby enemies at once. This can be much better than using sword swings to cover only a small area of effect.

It has not been tested yet if it is worthwhile to pay a visit to the Weapons Master in Bandar al-Sadat in order to learn about the advanced sword moves.

Purchasing or collecting potions of super strength is also worthwhile. It doubles your power for a short time, therefore shortening battles by half.

When the game considers you to be in battle, you can not talk to NPCs, pick up items, open chests or doors. It is therefore favorable to either avoid battles when possible or to kill enemies off quickly. The game considers you to be in battle when enemies are actively chasing you.

On the Island Shibaz, inside the cave, you are supposed to step on six different runes to proceed. You receive 350 exp per rune.

One rune is hidden underneath a bridge that can be moved back and forth to reveal and hide the rune. It is possible to repeatedly activate this rune by hiding and revealing it. You will receive 350 exp for each time you clear it this way.

You are normally supposed to go over the bridge since it is scripted to be set on fire by an enemy and there is no other way out. When activating the glitched rune again, the enemy will go to set the bridge on fire again. During this time, you cannot move the bridge. It follows this script until all the six needed runes are cleared, at that point it will ignore the bridge forever and the glitch can then be repeated very fast to net as much experience points as you want.

On lower difficulty settings, it is sufficient to clear the glitched rune until you can proceed through the barrier. On higher difficulty settings, since battles take longer, it is viable to keep doing the glitch to gain more exp (thus leveling up for more power).

During the normal course of the game, the player is supposed to visit the capital city Bandar al-Sadat and enter the palace. In the palace, you are to have an audience with the Caliph to visit your family. A guard inside the New dungeon where your family is located would take you to where your father is captured. You can walk around in the New Dungeon freely and copper machines or guards would not mind you. This part of the game is not required to advance the plot and therefore you can skip it, but doing so will cause a little problem later.

You have to make a 2nd visit to your father later on, and you can leave through the New Dungeon's normal exit by bribing the guard. If you skipped the 1st visit, then he will not only give you the option to be bribed but since the scripted event where he takes you to your father was never triggered, it will be triggered during the 2nd visit instead. During that cutscene a copper machine would inevitably spot you and cause a game-over.

You can go back through the Old Dungeon where you came from. Skipping the 1st visit saves enough time for this to be worthwhile.

Inside the Shibaz Library, there are two possible ways to learn about the name of the "Island of the Genie Lords" (Jaza'ir Jiza).

1) There is an empty chest where you put a mirror that the sorcerer from Zaratan Tower gave you. The hermit will eventually come and when you talk to him, you can find out about the island's name by choosing the dialogue option "inspecting him rudely".

2) There is a secret passage where you can go through. In the hidden area, there is a vase and behind it is a scroll that reveals the island's name. This option is much faster than the other one.

Two fractions:

On the island of Al-Katraz, there are two fractions fighting each other. The main objective is to get each fraction's key in order to open a room and meditate inside. Each fraction's leader will drop the key when killed, but the keys are also alternatively hidden in the top left and top right parts of the town inside a respective fire.

You can bring peace between both fractions by talking to one leader and then the other one. You can also side with one fraction and kill the other one. You can also kill both fractions.

In TAS, it depends on the difficulty setting which strategy is the best. If killing the leaders takes long, the detour to the fireplaces may be faster. On Very Easy the leaders die easily though.

In RTA, fighting may take a while. It is considered to be the best strategy to get the key from the top left fire (which is only a small detour) and meditate on the left in peace, but kill the right side's troops - not getting the key from the top right fire (detour is too long) but from the leader's death instead.

Inside the dungeon:

In the dungeon, your brother is held captive. There will be a pirate captain that you have to fight. You can bypass the fight although the captain and his men will chase after you and block your way. Skipping the fight is viable in TAS if it can be done without losing much time from being bodyblocked. Once you free him, your brother may also be bodyblocked by the enemies.

When freeing your brother, give him a small Health Potion, otherwise he will walk very slowly. Note that your brother will decline big Health Potions. You actually need a small one.

When you push or pull an object and enemies interact with you, you can get displaced. Wall collisions will still work normally for the rock as well as for your character - so this can't be used to enter walls.

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By placing a rock next to an iron door, facing the other direction and attempting to push, you can clip through the door. Unfortunately, this trick is not useful so far, because you cannot clip back the way you came in.

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When expelled from your hometown Zaratan in order to clear your family name, it is actually possible to re-enter the town by walking at the right side of the entrance, but only as long as the map is not reloaded - otherwise the guards will be placed inside the entrance blocking the way. When re-entering, everyone will still be standing in their spots. Some can be walked through, and most people that can be talked to will tell you to look in the western desert for survivors (which is what they would tell you when the Caliph was still missing).

When fighting water elementals on the ship, and killing the last one, then saving the game right before the game tells you "Congratulations! You killed every enemy", some or all objects on the ship may become defunct. You may or may not be able to walk under deck or talk to the captain anymore, the latter rendering the game unwinnable.

This glitch may work under other circumstances, but it has not been tested.

When first visiting your ship, go above deck, then below deck, and then above deck again. Doing so will allow you to use the boat even though you have not sailed anywhere yet. It will ask if you want to use the boat to go to "isle is 0", and going there will take you to your hometown Zaratan, in the top-left corner. You will be stuck out of bounds.

When sailing to another town and encountering water elementals, after killing all of them, it is possible to walk under deck since an invisible wall would be removed after the fight - (the wall would remain in the pirate and zombie ship fights). Coming back on deck would then make it so the trigger for the boat would be loaded, so you can row to shore despite the ship trip not being finished yet. When you were sailing to a particular city, then you will row to shore of that city. When returning to the ship and talking to the captain, he will resume the ship trip and sail to the same particular city again - at which point everything would be back to normal.

If you do this glitch while sailing to Bandar, the capital city, and walk up the city at least until the first fountain, another glitch will occur: Talking to the captain will now dematerialize and rematerialize your character for seemingly no reason. After this, using the boat or going under deck will resume the ship trip. But you cannot ever talk to the captain again since it would now always dematerialize and rematerialize you, rendering the game unwinnable.

In v1.0, it is possible to use the boat without having to go below deck. This means you can escape the ship during sea fights (the pirate and zombie ones, too). When returning, the enemies will still be there and you cannot kill them since the game doesn't let you draw your sword or use projectile weapons. The captain still insists you kill all the enemies, so the game is effectively unwinnable if you do this. Otherwise the glitch behaves the same between v1.0 and v1.1.

There are two known ways to trigger this glitch.

1) At the end of the tutorial, when you are teleported out, save & reload.

2) In Zaratan Tower, when stepping on a teleporter that makes you turn into blue particles, save & reload.

This will cause your character to become glitched. You can attempt to swing your sword, but there will not actually be a hitbox/graphic for it and you cannot use projectiles. Therefore, you cannot kill any enemies while glitched. You may also be unable to process past certain points, such as when the game requires you to use switches because you are apparently stuck in your current facing direction (i.e. cannot use a left switch when facing upwards). The only currently known way to turn back is to dematerialize and rematerialize with the animation that scrambles your character's pixels.

Saving & reloading causes timed events to be prolonged. One example of this occuring is when talking to the mermaid. By saving & reloading repeatedly while walking way, it is possible to postpone the dialogue with the mermaid and thus bypass the trigger that makes the screen become bright again.

It is possible this has uses elsewhere, but it has not been tested.

There is a Weapons Master shop in Zaratan and in Bandar. It is possible to make the sword trainer leave the shop and keep attacking you by following these steps:

1) Start a sparring match.

2) Try to leave. The sword trainer asks if you want to stop, say "no". This causes both the trainer and you to go to certain spots in the room.

3) When you reach your spot, walk over to the trainer's spot to keep him from reaching it.

4) Attack the trainer.

If done correctly, you can now leave the shop without being asked if you want to stop sparring. The trainer will follow you all around the map.

Effects:

The trainer will keep attacking you even throughout cutscenes. In some cutscenes, this causes you to regain control; the cutscenes will not play out, thus possibly rendering the game unwinnable.

In Bandar, it is possible to bypass the guard who blocks the left and the right side of the city, respectively, thus allowing you to explore those parts freely.

The weapons in your inventory are sorted from weakest to strongest. If you select a strong weapon such as the Lightning moonshard and collect more weapons, this will push your selection further and further, until it goes out of bounds. Pressing "right" will allow you to select entries further ahead. However, the game will still only use the weapon nearest to your selection. Therefore this trick is not useful.

Note that moonshard items are quite limited, even the ones in the shop in Bandar can be exhausted. You will need almost all moonshard items you can get throughout the game to perform this glitch.

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In the Shibaz cave, when saving & reloading while mounting your carpet, your movement speed will be reduced to a minimum. It seems you cannot revert this effect.

The possible effects of this bug have not been tested much yet.

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On v1.0, during certain walking cutscenes, characters may get stuck in walls due to bad pathing or due to NPCs walking too fast. This especially occurs when cycles are set too high; these instances are fixed in v1.1.

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