The Ring of Guidance is a secret quest originally from Van Helsing 2 and also included in the Final Cut version. It is a lot more involved than most of the other secret content in the games and can lead to some confusion. The following guide will explain how the quest works, what needs to be done, where to go, etc.
The Quest Outline gives a basic explanation of what the quest is about with as little spoilers as possible. Then comes a complete step-by-step walkthrough, in case you run into any trouble. (Please note that the screenshots are only meant as guidelines. I cheated like crazy to get them without having to play through half of the game :P ) After that there will be some technical information you may or may not be interested in, mostly for people who are sure they did everything correctly but still not getting their due reward. Last but not least, I'll list the differences of the quest between Van Hesling 2 and Final Cut for completeness' sake.

• Buy the Ring of Guidance.
  
• Equip the ring and deal enough damage to unlock the messages on the ring.
  
• Follow the instructions on the ring. There are five lines, two of which specify locations and three specify tasks. You need to do all three tasks but the order is not relevant.
  
• If you did all three tasks, a frog statue will become clickable at the location of the last task, which will open a portal to a secret location on the map.
  
• Profit.

In Chapter 4, you are sent by Prisoner Seven to the Thunderhead Mountains to find Perun. On your way you will run into a giant merchant in the Giantwoods, named Mr. Bellow Smash Jr. He mostly sells useless stuff (quest items from earlier parts of the game) but there's one item of particular interest in his shop: the Ring of Guidance. It doesn't really actually look like much at first: a leveled Epic ring, boosting your base stats but has no enchantments and you'll probably have something much better at this point. What it does have though is five unlockable enchants. Well, sort of...



The five enchantments on the ring can be unlocked by dealing enough damage while the ring is equipped (100000, 150000, 220000, 300000, 500000 for the five lines respectively) but they turn out not to be enchantments at all, but rather some criptic messages. This part is important because the game is scripted so the following steps won't work until you unlock the corresponding line on the ring. For example, if you only have two lines unlocked, droping the ring near the altar in the Testing Facility won't do anything which might lead to some confusion later on. Anyway, it shouldn't really be a problem to rack up enough damage before you get to the part the first hint is pointing to, but in case you do need more "practice", it could be a good idea to check out Adventure mode! ;)

• Touch the Idol on the Crystal Workshop

The first step is easy: find the Curious Idol at the start of the Crystal Workshop map and click on it (there won't be any visible effect but the statue won't be clickable anymore, it won't even give a tooltip). This is the area Prisoner Seven sends you to investigate the Chimera in Chapter 5.

• Walk to the altar in the Testing Facility.

The second step was pretty straightforward in Van Helsing 2 but could be confusing in Final Cut because there are actually two maps called Testing Facility in this version. The one we need right now is the first one. While doing the quest Beginning of the End, you will be passing through the Merchant District. There's an optional area available from there.


Once inside, you will fight some ratfolk and their masters but more importantly you will find an altar with a pair of gloves on it. You can take the gloves if you like but even more importantly, this is the altar the ring speaks of.

• Throw this ring to the ground; then take it back.

Now that we found the correct Testing Facility and altar, we only need to drop the ring out of our inventory close to the altar then pick it up again.

• Find the wraiths in the Wormwood Chasm.

Moving on with the story to the next quest, Off the beaten track, will bring us to Wormwood Chasm where you will fight an endless onslaught of spiders. You will also run into several groups of Wights. Not to be confused with Wraiths! There's a church with a graveyard to the south-east, that's NOT the group we are looking for. There's a burnt down house to the north-west, it's NOT the one either. The group you are looking for is in the north-western part of the map, to the north-east of the Spotted Leviathan boss and to the north of one of the Hex Poles. But your main clue should be that they are called Wraith Leader and Wraith Minions instead of Weight, Weight Veteran and Weight Summoner.

• Kill the wraiths but spare the leader.

Killing the Wraith Minions shouldn't be too hard but sparing the Wraith Leader might be a bit tricky, depending on your class and build. Also note that this is the only task out of the three that you can actually fail by killing the Leader! You wouldn't want that, after all this trouble!
First of all, you should tell Katarina to sit this one out because you have very limited control on who she will target. (You could set her to Assist or Survive but it's safest if she doesn't interfere at all.) You should also try to avoid using area of effect skills. Constructors will be at a major disadvantage here, since you also have little control over your minions you depend so much upon. You should consider switching off the Gun Platform, although the Triangulator skill might help focus on the right targets and its absence will definitely hurt your damage output. Try the safest route first and summon more minions if it's not enough.



Once the Wraith Minions are dead, the Wraith Leader will turn neutral and if you did the other two tasks earlier, the grumpy frog statue will become clickable. Clicking on the frog will open a portal behind it, which will bring you to a secret location with a few more enemies, two houses and a domovoy corpse with tons of money, two epics and a few other items on it. This is another point of confusion for veterans since in the old game, the portal opened right away.

As I mentioned before, there's a point where you can fail this quest: killing the Wraith Leader will make the quest unsolvable. There's no (legitimate) way of avoiding this but you can at least check if you already screwed things up by using the QuestGetStage console command. You can bring up the in-game chat by pressing Enter and then typing in the following:


The chat will then show the current stage the quest is in.
0 - This is the default stage when the quest hasn't started yet. Buying the ring will move the quest to stage 5.
5 - This is the main stage. You have the quest and can attempt to solve the riddle. See below.
10 - This is the completion stage. If the quest is in this stage, the portal will already be open on the Wormwood Chasm map.
15 - This is the stage when you have killed the Wraith Leader. If you are at this stage, you won't be able to complete the quest.

If you are at stage 5, you can also check how many of the three tasks you have completed. Bring up the chat and type in the following:


This will show you the variables used by the quest to check how you are doing. If you have done at least one of the tasks, there will be a line like Ring_command_done: x where x is either 1, 2 or 3 and shows how many tasks you've done. If you have unlocked the fourth message, there will also be a line like wraith_minion_remaining: x where x should be somewhere between 0 and 4, indicating how many of the four Wraith Minions are still present. (They won't respawn with Respawn Enemies.)

With these tools, you should be able to check what you need to do.

• If you are at stage 0, then buy the ring to get started.
  
• If you are at stage 5 and Ring_command_done is lower than 3, then try to redo the three tasks. The Crystal Workshop and the Wraiths are easy to check but there's no visual indication whether the Testing Facility altar worked, so just try doing it again. Then you can recheck the variables.
  
• If you are at stage 5, Ring_command_done is lower than 3 and wraith_minion_remaining is greater than 0, then you will need to hunt down the Wraith Minions without killing the Wraith Leader.
  
• If you are at stage 5 and Ring_command_done is 3 then you need to click the frog statue where the now docile Wraith Leader is.
  
• If you are at stage 10 then the portals will be open and you can go claim your reward.
  
• If you are at stage 15, then you have murdered the Wraith Leader and can forget about completing the quest. Maybe next time!

There are a few differences between the two versions. Some are only cosmetic, really, while others might cause some confusion if you are already familiar with Van Helsing 2 and expect the same behaviour in Final Cut.

• The Ring of Guidance had a Level 35 requirement in Van Helsing 2 so the questline was only available in the Veteran Campaign and also the thresholds to unlock the messages were way higher since the game used higher numbers for HP and damage.
  
• In Van Helsing 2 completing the three tasks automatically opened the portal to the secret part of the map while in Final Cut, you need to do an additional step of clicking on the frog statue near the Wraith Leader. This might cause some confusion for veterans of the old game unless they happen to hover over the statue. Video game logic I guess :)
  
• The exact reward was reworked. For example, in the old game, you only got one guaranteed epic along with some minor loot while in Final Cut you recieve 2 Epics, 6 Essences, 3 Rares and 11 huge stacks of gold! What a hoard!
  
• In Van Helsing 2 there was only one map called Testing Facility and even tough it was an optional area, there could be no mistake as to where you need to drop the ring. In Final Cut, there are two maps named as such and you could interpret the word altar any way you want, ending up droping the ring at the wrong place.

I hope this guide will help anyone who got stuck with this quest. It is mysterious, sometimes confusing, as it is intended to be! :)