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Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale Series

Daemongar

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Well, I'll ask: what is the comparison done to? That is, I am level 10, luck of 13, is there a difficulty associated with each spell? Or is each enemy caster given a level that the player must beat?
Each monster type has a range for their save value. A caster rolls a number in that range and that is the number the player has to beat.
Uh... this is you?!! The guy who reprogrammed the C64 images of BT2 to fix traps?! Please don't leave.

:hero:
 

drifting

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Yep. That's me. That turned out to be a pretty simple fix. Had to change two bytes in the disk image.
 

Daemongar

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Yep. That's me. That turned out to be a pretty simple fix. Had to change two bytes in the disk image.
Well, thanks. I always believed that the C64 image was the best version of The Bard's Tale series, and this fix cements it.

If you don't mind, there were a couple more questions about Bard's Tale that I always wondered about, so if you would oblige me I would appreciate it. You seem pretty familiar, so I'm going to throw this at you and if you feel like answering, great:

* One thing that drives everyone insane on the Bard's Tale series is the volume of encounters. I know there are fixed encounter squares, but what is the frequency upon entering a new square? Also, you can get encounters just standing there in the dungeon. How often does the game check?
* What is up with charges on Bard Horns? I swear the only way I can survive until level 7 is with a Fire Horn, and I've had them last only a few toots, and in other games they seem to last for half the game. Is every item with charges completely random?
* Was a shock to find out combat "to-hit" is bound to AC - is there more to it, or that about it.
 

octavius

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Daemongar, you are talking about BT1, right?
In BT3 things seem to work a bit differently.

Items that cast spells have their charges listed. The amount of charges they start with seem to be totally random.

THACO0 does not seem to be tied to AC anymore. One annoying thing is that characters with multiple attacks either hit or miss with all their attacks.

The godly Fire Horn has been rendered impotent, and the few times the monsters don't repell its attack it only deals a few points of damage. Would be interesting to know why, as spells usually work fine. The Bard is starting to get rather useless. Duo-Time was a life saver early in the game, but now I mostly use the Bard to play Sir Robin's Tune in combat to prevent monsters from summoning help.
 

drifting

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If you don't mind, there were a couple more questions about Bard's Tale that I always wondered about, so if you would oblige me I would appreciate it. You seem pretty familiar, so I'm going to throw this at you and if you feel like answering, great:

* One thing that drives everyone insane on the Bard's Tale series is the volume of encounters. I know there are fixed encounter squares, but what is the frequency upon entering a new square? Also, you can get encounters just standing there in the dungeon. How often does the game check?
* What is up with charges on Bard Horns? I swear the only way I can survive until level 7 is with a Fire Horn, and I've had them last only a few toots, and in other games they seem to last for half the game. Is every item with charges completely random?
* Was a shock to find out combat "to-hit" is bound to AC - is there more to it, or that about it.

1. There isn't a frequency upon entering a new square in a dungeon. What you have are fixed encounter squares and forced random encounter squares. The forced random encounter squares have a random chance of activating in BT2 and BT3 and the square is cleared after you have a battle. One of the bugs in the DOS version of the BT3 is that the square wasn't cleared after battle. With the shear number of those squares in BT3 you would have a battle just about every square and even when you turned on the square.

The random encounter check is done about once per second and there is a 1 in 128 chance of a random battle during the day and 1 in 64 at night.

2. In BT1 there is a 1 in 64 chance that the item will be used up with each use.

3. The AC is the base for "to-hit" in BT1 and BT2. There are bonuses and penalties but AC is the base.
 

Daemongar

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Daemongar, you are talking about BT1, right?
In BT3 things seem to work a bit differently.

Items that cast spells have their charges listed. The amount of charges they start with seem to be totally random.
Ok, thanks. I remember that from BT3 now, but in BT1 & 2, the charges weren't listed so my assumption was that they had a hidden random value of charges the player couldn't see. What I would do is "dupe" Fire Horns because they were still useful at later stages. BT1 wasn't a huge victim of HP bloat, just like earlier D&D.

THACO0 does not seem to be tied to AC anymore. One annoying thing is that characters with multiple attacks either hit or miss with all their attacks.
Suppose that speeds up combat but has to be frustrating. The only good thing is that eventually most folks will have the option to equip weapons that either kill or don't, or provide other bonuses.

The godly Fire Horn has been rendered impotent, and the few times the monsters don't repell its attack it only deals a few points of damage. Would be interesting to know why, as spells usually work fine. The Bard is starting to get rather useless. Duo-Time was a life saver early in the game, but now I mostly use the Bard to play Sir Robin's Tune in combat to prevent monsters from summoning help.
That kind of boggled me too. My entire strategy for BT1 was run from any combat where the Fire Horn wouldn't get me lots of xps. In BT3, enemies save way too often (but I think even in Unterbrae, they have Frost Horns already, so I think if you fight around in there, you'll eventually have one or two.

Think the Bard has some ok weapons coming up, but for me, the bard was pretty much there to buff AC early in the game, and provide HP regen in combat later in the game. Since the bard can carry around wineskins in BT3, I would always have the AC buff on and use that every round in combat when my AC's aren't maxed. In later game, I would use the HP regen song every combat round, as the effects stack.

I think that very late in the game, he gets some songs that actually do damage so he doesn't suck *as* bad, but he holds his own compared to something like Warriors. They can do lots of damage, but it only affects one opponent. A lot of the creatures in BT3 need crits to kill (well, have 9999 hps each.)
 

Daemongar

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If you don't mind, there were a couple more questions about Bard's Tale that I always wondered about, so if you would oblige me I would appreciate it. You seem pretty familiar, so I'm going to throw this at you and if you feel like answering, great:

* One thing that drives everyone insane on the Bard's Tale series is the volume of encounters. I know there are fixed encounter squares, but what is the frequency upon entering a new square? Also, you can get encounters just standing there in the dungeon. How often does the game check?
* What is up with charges on Bard Horns? I swear the only way I can survive until level 7 is with a Fire Horn, and I've had them last only a few toots, and in other games they seem to last for half the game. Is every item with charges completely random?
* Was a shock to find out combat "to-hit" is bound to AC - is there more to it, or that about it.

1. There isn't a frequency upon entering a new square in a dungeon. What you have are fixed encounter squares and forced random encounter squares. The forced random encounter squares have a random chance of activating in BT2 and BT3 and the square is cleared after you have a battle. One of the bugs in the DOS version of the BT3 is that the square wasn't cleared after battle. With the shear number of those squares in BT3 you would have a battle just about every square and even when you turned on the square.

The random encounter check is done about once per second and there is a 1 in 128 chance of a random battle during the day and 1 in 64 at night.
Thanks! Now, you may have hung up your cloak and retired from the BT modding biz, but what would be easier to do: change the timer to check every 2 seconds, or change the chance to 1 in 256 / 1 in 128? My gut tells me the that changing the chance to 1/256 would be simpler, as everything else they did in BT was 2 bits, or 4 bits or 8 bits, or whatever.
2. In BT1 there is a 1 in 64 chance that the item will be used up with each use.
Ok, this explains why duped horns didn't have the same # of charges, and why sometimes I would use up 3 horns in 10 minutes... Suppose the only fix for this would be to make the check always return "failed" for used up but on the list of BT grievances, this is pretty low (and may unbalance the overall strength of some items.)

3. The AC is the base for "to-hit" in BT1 and BT2. There are bonuses and penalties but AC is the base.
Odd that they would do this this way when they could have based it off of something like STR which may make more sense (but then mages would hit more often than anyone, I suppose. Maybe they made it AC so that front-line fighter classes would always hit more often, and it would scale with level?)

I'm creating a party to check out some things, thanks for all the answers. Don't know if I'll be able to go through BT1 - 3 at this point in my life, but who knows.
 

drifting

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Thanks! Now, you may have hung up your cloak and retired from the BT modding biz, but what would be easier to do: change the timer to check every 2 seconds, or change the chance to 1 in 256 / 1 in 128? My gut tells me the that changing the chance to 1/256 would be simpler, as everything else they did in BT was 2 bits, or 4 bits or 8 bits, or whatever.
The simplest thing to do would be to change the chance to 1 in 256/1 in 128. It just involves changing a bitmask from 0x7f to 0xff.
 

drifting

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Did any of the Bards Tale games have an option for Roland MT-32 music?
Bard's Tale III supports the Roland MT-32. If you delete THIEF.CFG and then start the game it will have you select your video and sound configuration.
 

octavius

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Haven't had much time for playing BT3 lately, but finally reached Brilhasti and killed him on first try. CRPG Addict gave up after 30 tries, then spent a day grinding, and then needed another 15 tries. :smug:
I had found a Mage Figurine and summoned One-Eyed Angra on the square right before facing Brilhasti, and I also had earlier found a Dragonwand. Especially the Dragonwand was a huge help against those Dark Guards, doing significantly more damage than any of my spells or Instruments, but they still managed to kill half my party. Brilhasti himself showed little signs of brilliance, casting spells that didn't reach the party. So it was easy for my thief to sneak up on him and kill him.

All in all the beginner dungeon was much weaker than the one in BT2, and I could in fact not remember one single thing of it since I completed it 20+ years ago. I think it was right after defeating Brilhasti that I quit on my first attempt at BT3.

BTW, I noticed something weird. I had one character go Magician 3 -> Conjurer 7, and when trying to Class Change the only option was Sorcerer. However my other mage went Conjurer 7 -> Magician 7 and could also choose Chronomancer (and Wizard IIRC), so the manual is wrong about the reqs to change to Chronomancer; it says you need all spell levels in three mage classes.
Fortunately I changed one of my guys to Chronomancer before facing Brilhasti, so instead of going from Archmage to lvl 1 Chronomancer with 0 XP, he is now a lvl 36 Chronomancer with 444 HP and 479 SP, while my lvl 11 Archmage's numbers are 375 and 350.
 
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octavius

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After UnterBrae Arboria is a walk in the park so far.
But I have a sinking feeling that it won't last long...

So far I've discovered only three things in BT3 that is an incline compared to BT1-2:

1. Random encounters not calculated in real time is the most obvious one.

2. The concept of elemental weaknesses and resistances makes combat a notch more tactical.

3. The Rogue's new and improved powers. Being able to critically hit he's no longer useless, but in fact highly useful. I guess DW Bradley copied it in Wiz 5 later that year, which should be an improvement over Wiz 1-4.
 
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octavius

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As I'm playing BT3 I compare notes with CRPG Addict's playthrough. Judging by the screenshots on his blog he must have done a tremendous amount of needless grinding.

His party at Valerian's Tower in Arboria:
thief_008.png

My own party in Valerian's Tower:
BSuU4dQ.png


Either he's grinded a friggin' 20+ levels, or he's cheated by reaping the reward for killing Brilhasti several times.
Either way it's rather pointless, since Arboria is easy compared to UnterBrae.
For his own sake I hope he cheated (or that I'm missing something obvious like a way to temporarily boost levels). I shudder at the thought of the time it takes to grind all those levels...


EDIT: Turned out he spent a whole week just grinding. And in the same blog entry he complains about the game's endless combat. :roll::lol:

BTW, I mistyped my Rogue's name. It was supposed to be Bimbo Baggins.
 
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Daemongar

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There were something you could do in other Bard's Tales which may be able to help you level a little bit. I am not sure about your version, but in the C64 versions you would get XPs for illusions. Some caster types would cast Wind Dragon or whatever and you could cast DIBL and get full xps for fighting a dragon. Not sure if this is the way it was supposed to be or not. I would find a group of those casters, and just defend every round. Eventually, you'd have some crazy xps. The only problem was the 65535 xp cap in the C64 Bard's Tales.

I know the Amiga version of BT2 doesn't give xps for illusions, but just don't remember if BT3 does. Not sure which version is correct on this - if it was a bug on some or by design.
 

octavius

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I'm not a fan of using such tactics myself, although I seem to recall something about a spell making illusions real and thus giving XP.
Anyways, Arboria is not that hard, so I don't really see the need for grinding.
I could understand grinding before facing Brilhasti, though, since Unterbrae was relatively much harder than Arboria.

All in all I'm actually quite enjoying the game so far. My Rogue got a Shadowshiv early, my Archmage has a Conjurstaff (still need a good staff for my Chronomancer) and my Paladin's got a Stoneblade, and I have more than enough Harmonic Gems so far.

I'm not sure if the increased drop rate for Harmonic Gems + monsters' special attacks in the patched (or working Apple version) is harder than the bugged DOS and Amiga versions with no special attacks and very few gems. I think UnterBrae was harder with the patched version at least, since I recall it all being very dull when I played the Amiga version.
 

Luzur

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Nope, you cant play the summon/illusion trick for Bard's Tale 3 as you did in Bard's Tale 2. Summoned creatures are worth about 100 EXP each (atleast i think they where, somewhere around that number), illusionary or not.

But you get XP for monsters that is summoned to join the enemy group.
 

Lord Azlan

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Which version of BT3 are you guys using - I played C64 or Amiga versions - better than the crappy 2-colour version enclosed with the new Bards Tale.

Would really like to give this one another go.
 

octavius

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Which version of BT3 are you guys using - I played C64 or Amiga versions - better than the crappy 2-colour version enclosed with the new Bards Tale.

Would really like to give this one another go.

If you think the Amiga version of BT3 was better than the Apple version then you have not been paying attention.
Both the Amiga and DOS versions have critical bugs, and it's criminal that they were released in that state (where the hell were the play testers?). Fortunately there is an unoffical patch for the DOS version, which probablt makes the DOS version the best choice.
 

octavius

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Oh dear, nearly had my first party death in the Festering Pit. My Paladin had been withered and I forgot to make him young again before the next encounter. Next encounter was against Undead Avians casting Oscon's Haltfoe which suddenly worked against the party thanks to my paladin's low stats. Combined with Shade Leopards which have a critical hit ability it was a close call.
I like it when the game forces me to be alert.
 

octavius

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And then Arboria was done. One world down, six to go...
Nobody mentioned bad dude's Heart was needed, so I overlooked it when I collected his Head. Fortunately the corpse was still in the Festering Pit when I APAR'ed back.

The game started to feel like torture at the end of Arboria, and I even found myself using the Flee option.
The game reminds me somewhat of Wiz 7, in that it's huge and the encounters tend to be samey, despite BT3's encounters being totally random mixes of monsters. But at least Wiz 7 vastness was filled with things; BT3 is just moving and fighting every time you fucking turn around, and there's nothing interesting in the dungeons except the objects and big bad dude you are seeking. BT1 and BT2 at least had some fixed encounters that were interesting.

But I will make an effort to complete this game.
 

Daemongar

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Well, the next zone is Gelidia which I really liked. It is a keep and they divide it into towers. There are some puzzles, and they add some story at this stage. Doesn't do much to reduce the combat fatigue, but this zone has some things to look forward to: some tough set encounters, some puzzles, and more backstory. It also has more of what you don't like, but just try to make it through this one.
 

octavius

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I guess DW Bradley copied it in Wiz 5 later that year, which should be an improvement over Wiz 1-4.

I believe Crooked Bee can explain why it is impossible to improve on the design of Wizardry 4.

I meant the combat system should be an improvement. Possibly the character system too. But the rest? That remains to be seen, hopefully later this year.
 

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