Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director's Cut

[Gord]

For what it's worth, the latest patch seems to have helped a fair bit with performance. I'm more often at or close to solid 60 fps now at similar or better settings than before (High-ish).
Also the lighting has been overhauled in several areas, giving them more depth (and potentially making torches actually useful from time to time).
Human NPC models are still amateurish, though.

 

[felipepepe]

Intel does affect the mind spellz,which are very few,yet pretty useful and ones of the most powerful. One of them is a six squares cleaning! This shit he is writing about is a downright lie. You have two different companion wizards,one is made to be str build while the other is centred around int build. I don't mind spicy or butthurt reviews,but downright lying is a typical journo trait!

I checked this but it wasn't working, giving items that had huge INT boost to my mage didn't affect his Mind spells at all, only his channeling "shield".

Might be another glorious bug then, since I had A LOT of those, including one where my Fighter would instantly die from ANY attack after I got that "Always resist one-hit kills" skill.

Regardless, INT is definitely the dump stat.

 

[Sinatar]

Int doesn't affect mind damage, it only effects your channeling bar.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I'm with Fantadomat here, it certainly influenced mind damage in my game at least. If BT4 wasn't such a pain in the ass with load times I'd boot it up now and look at it again to confirm, but instead I'll do that in a bit. It works as a percentage (Or something) though rather than just flat increasing damage point-for-point. It's less noticeable on low-damage things like the free ping wizards get (Where a few points of INT may not even increase the damage), but on larger spells like mind jab you should get more visible impact per-point. I'd also agree it's pretty fucking useless though.

 

[fantadomat]

Intel does affect the mind spellz,which are very few,yet pretty useful and ones of the most powerful. One of them is a six squares cleaning! This shit he is writing about is a downright lie. You have two different companion wizards,one is made to be str build while the other is centred around int build. I don't mind spicy or butthurt reviews,but downright lying is a typical journo trait!

I checked this but it wasn't working, giving items that had huge INT boost to my mage didn't affect his Mind spells at all, only his channeling "shield".

Might be another glorious bug then, since I had A LOT of those, including one where my Fighter would instantly die from ANY attack after I got that "Always resist one-hit kills" skill.

Regardless, INT is definitely the dump stat.

Maybe it is a bug,i had a bug where the lady had -5 for no reason and was tanking my early game damage. At some point i died and respawned/reloaded and the bug was gone. Also it does affect damage and it is op late game. Just look at that video,it wipes the floor with a single spell:

I'd also agree it's pretty fucking useless though

It really depends on how you build you mage,i found that the first spell you get from the tart of the game is very useful with the channeller perk and the one that gives you a % to get a bonus spellpoint. You could use it to give a channeller's mark and trigger it a few times per round. Also the meditation three is pretty important. As shown in the video,you could do wipe in the first or second turn.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Yeah, I'm using the imp wizard and even though he was initially setup more for a musclewizard in reality I end up using him for his pings and levitation a hell of a lot. You can dish out an obscene amount of damage with the pings when you get the free refund perks and have the exploding damage thing from conjurer. It was shortly before you leave Skara Brae that my party basically took off and I was able to kill anything on hard difficulty, even red-con "Impossible" fights by abusing the fire horn and movement skills and the wizard ping. Even overleveled enemy paladins with a fuckton of armor (At the time) couldn't stand up to all that bullshit, and I could prop the tank up with bard buffs. The fire horn is so stupidly good there's basically no reason to use any other instrument, potentially the one that lets the fire shield stun opponents against bosses or something but even that I have yet to find a fight where it'd be worthwhile since nothing was so threatening the stuns would be THAT worth it.

 

[fantadomat]

I build the imp with str. His lighting spell that works on the two enemies in a line + the channelling is pretty useful. If you pump up his str he was doing around 30-40 raw damage from the spell and 20 per explosion. If you go for the two mages,you could see and explosive field and everyone dying at turn 1. His levitation trinket was very helpful for filling the gaps at my bomb field . Also giving him the vampiric dagger is a big plus,he could kill a weaken guy and thus charge his 3 spellpoint spell. It is also str dependant damage,it is great for channelling if there is someone left after the bombing.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I'll be fucking dipped. As it turns out everyone was right, just booted the game up and checked. INT increases mental damage done by wizards, but doesn't increase mental damage dealt by, for example, fighters which is boosted by STR as normal. So it's just inconsistent because BT4 is a topsy turvy game where no one gives a shit.
Here are the 3 examples I took, note the stats on the character sheets to see the difference in equipment. Example showing how INT and not STR is increasing mental damage for Crux, how STR and not INT is increasing mental damage for Dalgliesh, and how STR and not INT is increasing physical-spell damage for Crux because they just want to be fucking inconsistent and weird.

 

[felipepepe]

Amazing... It really feels like they had a decent concept for a game, made a few areas like Mangars Tower, then fired everyone and left the underpaid intern to do the rest of the game and make sure everything works.

 

[theSavant]

Damn.. that is some real fucked up shit they should have mentioned somewhere, i.e. in the manual, instead of writing useless shit like
"Strength : Affects the amount of damage done by most attacks" ... what is "most attacks" you fucking fucks?
"Intelligence : This will also make some spells more powerful" ... what "some spells" you fucking fucks?


They could have written what Multi-headed Cow has found out. That would have been helpful. So let's sum it up once again:
All kinds of Mental damage is increased by INT for Practitioners, but by STR for Fighters
All kinds of Physical Damage is increased by STR for both Practitioners and Fighters

I hope I got that right...
- But what about Bards and Rogues? Are they "equal" to Fighters in that case?
- And what about "True Damage"? Based on which stats does this increase?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Just checked and mental damage is increased by STR for rogues.
I didn't have any mental damage available to my bard, however I did have a bard song that dealt true damage (And it does sort of count as spell what with using mana rather than an opportunity) which was indeed influenced by STR rather than INT. So as far as I can tell without hauling my ass back to down to roll up mercs just to check every single skill in the game, only wizards ever possibly gain damage from INT and even then it's only on a few of their spells/skills, 3 or so.

 

[Themadcow]

You've got to admire the fact that even the basic stats have been turned into a puzzle.

Looking forward to when my physical collectors box arrives in the form of an IKEA flat pack.

 

[Zombra]

From felipepepe's review it sounds as if stats aren't that important anyway since you get a ton of ult powers halfway through the game. When I finally play I'm planning my usual method of "just equip whatever sounds cool and hope it all works out".

 

[Darth Roxor]

"just equip whatever sounds cool and hope it all works out".

joke's on you

there's nothing cool to equip

 

[MicoSelva]

"just equip whatever sounds cool and hope it all works out".

joke's on you

there's nothing cool to equip

And if you do find something cool, you won't have the pre-requisite ability to equip it anyway...

 

[fantadomat]

Amazing... It really feels like they had a decent concept for a game, made a few areas like Mangars Tower, then fired everyone and left the underpaid intern to do the rest of the game and make sure everything works.

Yeah,the game could have bee good and fun,i would even dare say that the first half of it is. I would say that the best part is the undercity level/hub. It have everything i want,dark atmosphere,non-linear level design with a free flowing feel to it,a bunch of blocked paths with interesting things in them,decent amount of side quests and dungeons.

 

[MicoSelva]

The BT Trilogy remake is great (tho much easier than the original) and it's a true remake—the engine is apparently made from scratch, and they've basically attempted to unify BT1-3 in terms of mechanics (for example, they added range to combat in BT1, added the hide ability to rogues, and fixed the hunter's critical ability bug). My only worry is that they never get around to actually releasing BT 2&3, or that they end up releasing them at the last minute full of bugs and we never hear from them again.

According to what Brian Fargo said during co-optional podcast on last Tuesday, part 2 should be released any day now, and the third one before the end of the year.

EDIT: that was last Tuesday, my bad.

 

[newtmonkey]

Well, patch 3 completely killed performance for me. I went from 25-45 on nearly all ultra settings, to 15(!!!!)-45 on all high settings. The game is basically unplayable now haha.

 

[Heretic]

It seems the firefighting patches will continue for awhile at least as even this third one is still just all over the place without much of a central thrust beyond still trying to get tech fundamentals in order---this game needed far more than an additional month, more like another quarter or two at barest minimum to approach cohesiveness even before getting down to actual value and quality.

They are so far in the hole it must be all but impossible to even entertain the sort of notions that led to the WL2 DC despite the likes of that probably being their only hope to give this a second shot at life as even the console releases in the near'ish future would get torn apart at this rate without even a real chance at a semi-ironic following compared to the last time BT ventured to those parts.

Bro, you need an editor.

 

[newtmonkey]

Okay, tried deleting and reinstalling the game, and I even made sure to delete all ini files etc to get "default" settings. Sacred Grove never ran very well, but I was getting minimum 25 fps on all ULTRA except shadows on HIGH. Now I get 10 (!!!!!)-25 on the same settings as Patch 2, 15-45 on all HIGH, and (LOLZ) 18-45 on all LOW.

Increasing FOV INCREASES FPS now for some reason.

[Edit] Settings might be fucked up. Dunno how to even explain it. You might need to change the settings then restart to really see any change in FPS. On top of that, the ORDER that you set things seems to also make a difference. It's completely bizarre. I started switching settings randomly to see which would give me any fps boost at all (answer: none), then at one point switching from HIGH to ULTRA actually INCREASED FPS. I have no idea what this game is doing now. It's trolling me.

[Edit 2] WTF now it's back to 15 fps in Sacred Grove on HIGH. LOL fuck this game. Guess I'd better wait for Patch 4 now.

 

[theSavant]

Man, this is discouraging to read, especially with my shitcomputer. I hoped for 2-3fps more, but any fps less is death. If I had known that, I had downloaded Version 2 instead. But now it's too late, because download for Version 3 is already at 2/3 and it takes half a day on my connection...

 

[gruntar]

Unrelated to today's patch: excellent supporting post for BT4's save system by Themadcow:

Old man: "Beware adventurers - many have tested this dungeon but most do not return..."

Party: "Nah, we'll be OK"

Old man: "You don't understand! There are Dragons and Wights! There are creatures who will touch you and it'll make you withered... like me! Oh, and it'll cost you a ton to get healed"

Party: "Yawn"

Party: "Hold on... they'll touch you? Yuck. You have issues"

Old man: "FOOLS! If you are lucky enough to find even one ancient treasure then flee to safety before your bones are crushed by the next Ogre you see!!!"

Party: "Not if we hit F5 every few steps"

Old Man: "WTF is this F5 you speak of?"

Party: "Get with it old dude. Danger is for losers. We have kids and stuff - our time is just MEGA precious and having to worry about death is a bummer. F5 means we don't have to worry about anything really."

Old Man: "So, you just want a loose story and block puzzles?"

Party: "Basically"

Old Man: " Get off my lawn!"

I don't want to get involved with the original thread but I wanted you to know I read and enjoyed this post very much.

How about treating me like a big boy and letting decide for myself how I want to play and save? It shouldn't be devs business if I want to save every five seconds, every hour or play ironman mode. The way they implemented saves in this game seems to be yet another way to artificially increase played time.

 

[newtmonkey]

Save everywhere would be preferable, but as long as you don't consume the save totems, you'll have 2-3 nearby at nearly any time if you're feeling cautious and want to save after accomplishing something. Maybe it gets worse later on, but there was literally only one time in the game so far in 20 hours that I had to really backtrack much at all to save the game. You can also quit the game and it will save your position (from what I can tell these saves are never overwritten/deleted).

[Edit] I posted a topic about the degraded performance on the Steam forum, and the mod moved my topic into the "Patch 3 makes everything look awesome!!!!!!" topic. Maybe he was trying to put everything in a single topic, but why that one instead of the general "patch 3 released" topic.

On top of that, the mod just dropped the posts from the topic I started somewhat randomly throughout the "PATCH 3 IS AWESOME XDXDXD" topic, and so now the last two messages are:

Me: "Performance is worse, restarting randomly improves or degrades it, it's basically unplayable now. I guess I'll wait til developers finally fix the game a month from now, and try again."

Dev: "Nice to hear. Thank you!"

 

[BEvers]

This is rather poetic:

 

[Bohr]

The problem with the gear puzzle at the Blood of the Kings Quest stays with me, in the German language the simple drive Cog is still called simple cog (Einfaches Zahnrad) and I still can not do simple drive cogs (because these are in the simple cogs stacked) in the gear puzzle. I suppose I have to start a new game again.

The trader Kianz is still unresponsive from a certain game progress. (after completion of The Destiny Wall Quest).

Basically, the third patch has done absolutely nothing, I'm stuck because of the gear puzzle in the blood of the kings Quest in a plot stopper.

There are several simple cogs and drive cogs. The cogs for Einarr's courtyard can be found around that area. I believe you can still use the other cogs you picked on previous adventures but you need the right "type" of cogs. Please let me know if you need more assistance. I think the translation could be off vs functionality. We made sure that a fix went in to make sure localization worked with our different cogs.

One of my Steam friends reported that the simple cogs and simple drive cogs look different in English, but in the German language, all cogs look like simple cogs. Either there are no simple drive cogs in the German language or the simple drive Cog and simple cogs have the same name in German (simple cog and simple drive cog hot simple cog = einfaches Zahnrad). Maybe the developers should check if the simple cog and simple drive cog have the same item name in non english languages. that would explain why the puzzles in german language show the simple cog instead of the simple drive cog.

Can't quite recall seeing another game where localisation issues could cause gamebreaking problems like this