Eep. I can't think of anything you could do, man. Maybe see if there's an auto-save that's a little earlier?
Sierra games are bad this way, so it's best to just make 100 saves, even if you don't use most of them. I'm a fan of Lucasarts because this isn't an issue in their games.

Nope, there isn't, that's one of the several things in the game that can block your progress permanently. However it's very easy to restart the game and redo the part, if you know what to do you can basically speedrun the game in a very short amount of time like most adventure games.

Bummer. Well thanks for the input. I have to decide whether or not I want to spend time replaying it or if I should just watch a play through on YouTube or something.

Replay it. The game isn't so long that replaying it is necessarily painful. Sure, you'll have to grind up again, but eh. It honestly doesn't take that long, especially if you break it up over time.

Keep multiple saves at various points so you always have a save to go back to. That way, you won't have to deal with issues like this ever again.

But seriously, replay it. You'll get an export file that you can take to the second game, which will give you an export file that you can take to the third game, and so forth. This experience isn't really the same when watching a youtube video series.

Don't give up. There are plenty of options in front of you other than watching a Let's Play. Unlike other Sierra games, Quest for Glory is special in that you can replay the game with a different character class, and even if you've already played all three classes, you can always replay it with an hybrid class, like a mage with thief skills, a thief with mage skills, or optimally, a fighter with a sword and shield but also the skills from both the mage and thief classes (except Climbing), although I wholeheartedly suggest you finish the game once or twice with single character classes before attempting that because the three classes hybrid is a notorious jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none (early in the game you will suck at fighting, suck at sneaking, and suck at casting spells, not to mention all the money you will have to grind to buy all the tools needed to get decent.)

If you went with a fighter for you first playthrough, I can guarantee you will have even more fun as a thief or a mage because these two classes have more interesting sidequests and more interesting ways to tackle problems in the first two games. If you went for a thief on your first playthrough, go for a mage on your second, if you went for a mage on your first, go for a thief on your second. And If you're not too far from the end with your first character, you could always keep that savegame and, once you figure out how to solve all the remaining puzzles with your second character, you can always reload your first character and try to rush to the ending before Baba Yaga's curse times out.

But yeah, with old adventure games, especially Sierra's adventure games, remember to always save early and often and on different slots. With Quest For Glory I always found it preferable to have two or three save games that you overwrite all the time, but also have backup savegames made at the beginning of the day ("Morning Day 1", "Morning Day 2", etc.) that way, if you miss a timed event, you can always rewind to witness it, and even if you screw up badly, worse case scenario you will have to replay a day or two. And you have twenty game slots, don't be afraid to use them all.

Yeah, like everyone says, it's really short, and you can always try another class if you want to something new when starting anew. But it's worth it to try it out again with the same class because trust me, if you pump all the points into the fighting capabilities for your class, you'll do it really quickly!

Thanks for the encouragement to just start over. It took about an hour and a half to get to where I was and managed to complete it about an hour later. Now onto Part 2!

Don't give up! You can still win by glitching out of the Brigand Leader's room and ending the game quickly. It's cheaty, though. :D

I never realized QFG1 had so many dead ends. Usually the "Quest For Glory" games are well-designed to have very few, if any, dead ends. I'm glad you gave the game a 2nd chance.

The 2nd game has 2 dead ends you could run into that I know of, but they are easily avoided. All you have to do is go EVERYWHERE after completing a major task; you never know who might have a reward for you. Also be sure to build up your skills. If you're a fighter, it's especially important to work on your dodge skill when you train with Uhura. There is a fighter task where you can get stuck if your dodge skill is too low.

After the 2nd game, you probably won't run into any more dead ends.

You don't need the sapphire pin, nor do you need to join EOF, in order to win the game, actually.

If your communication skill is high enough, and you mention a certain relative of his, the friend that you meet will gladly help you. And the EOF is just for the points and the chance to be more worthy of being a paladin.

Oh, that's interesting. It seems there are quite a few things in "Quest For Glory" that I never discovered because I never worked on communication. It's a more useful skill than I thought.

It's true that you don't have to join the EOF at all. However, once you're initiating for EOF and after you've broken the chains, there's no going back. So if your dodge skill is too low at that point, you're screwed. You'll be stuck there and the only thing you'll be able to do is exhaust yourself to death. So be careful not to save the game after typing "Break Chains," or at least use a different save file if you do.

Actually, I recall that if you let the sword guy hit you to "death", they just kick you out instead of killing you.

Actually, you can type "escape" and you get sent back to the hallway. Or, if you have magic, just try to cast something. You don't get the points, but you don't die.

Zak McCraken, Maniac Mansion, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. (The last one was especially bad, because I can't leave Germany unless I know how to fly a plane, I can't fly a plane unless I read the manual in the Archives at the start of the game, and there are countless books there and that's not something you would know to look for at the time)

But then again, if you want to present a loophole, those were made before the company's name was changed to Lucasarts.