Basically, Healer's is closed, Zombies will drain my life, I can't wait til sunrise or BY will kill me, and I have no saves before dark.
I was going to get the mandrake root for BY and didn't realize I needed the unguent first. So I stupidly saved my game as soon as it was midnight, and now I'm stuck. Is there anything I can do?
I've even tried stooping to the level of cheats, but apparently the "razzle dazzle root beer" cheat doesn't work on this version? I'm probably doing it wrong though.

Man, I´m playing the game at the exact point and I think you are damned... Have you tried wait until morning without sleeping?

IIRC if your health is high enough and/or you have some healing potions to replenish it you can dash in and out quickly enough to avoid keeling over, but if neither of those are the case then you'll need to go back to an earlier save.

(And if you don't have an earlier save, now you know one of the basic rules of adventure games: always keep your old saves instead of using a single slot!)

If you're going to try the above, then can you climb? If yes, and if you don't have healing potions, you can get them from Zara. She's open all night and you can climb into town near the archery target, IIRC. But you'll have to be quick so you don't lose your chance to grab the root.

Run everywhere. Also, quickly save your game every time you enter a scene near the cemetary and use two or or three different save slots as you try to dash in and out to get the root. That way you can keep entering the scene over and over until you (hopefully) find there is no one haunting it. I think if you come up from the bottom you'll enter the graveyard closest to the mandrake root.

I think I pulled this off once years ago, but I don't remember for certain. Good luck!

If you are playing the text parser version, it is possible to grab the root and leave without getting killed by the ghosts if you are quick enough, at least I recall doing that the first time I played the original, but I don't think this feat can be done in the point and click remake.

But remember Al Lowe's immortal words of wisdom regarding old adventure games:
Save early, save often.
To which I'd also add: And save on different slots

In a game like Quest For Glory, at the start of each day, save your game, like "Day one, Day two, Day three..." so whenever you screw up you don't have to restart everything.

I came to the same problem, its possible to grab the root even without running or health potions, if you time it right watch the ghosts and note their patterns and you can carefully work your way around them and grab the root no problem, I had to do this on my first play-through where if the ghosts touched me I died immediately however I finally managed to get the root and win the game

If you're playing the VGA game, you're doomed. You will have to load a save from before it became nighttime.

Dead ends. They are the bane of Sierra games.

And Quest for Glory has fewer dead ends than most Sierra games.

This is true.

The weirdest thing I've seen, though, is people actually defending the existence of dead ends - even complaining that modern games don't have them anymore.

It boggles my mind - what leads someone to actually believing that these things are a good thing?

That's a good question. That is one that I'd like to know the answer to.

When exactly is midnight in this game. I'm at the point where I have to get the mandrake root.

It will say "it's the middle of the night" when you check the time, and you will also get the message "You are getting tired" the moment it hits midnight.

Thank you