# [The Bards Tale] I, II, III - anyone play it?



## TheLe (Aug 3, 2007)

[imager]http://www.abandonia.com/games/930/download/images/games/Bards%20Tale%20II,%20The%20-%20The%20Destiny%20Knight4.png[/imager]Has anyone finished the original Bard's Tale I, II, or III?

I am trying to complete Bard's Tale I right now, but I am getting my butt handed to me.

I have 1 Warrior, 1 Paladin, 1 Hunter, 1 Bard, and 2 casters.

I _had_ a Monk rather than Hunter, but he was getting his butt whipped left and right, even though he had L0 AC. 

Right now I am trying to finish the game in Mangar's Dungeon, but it's rough. My entire party got STONED last night in the 3rd level -- took me 2 hours to scrape enough gold to de-stone and resurrect them. Sheesh!

On the other hand, I am looking very forward to finishing this so that I can get started on Bard's Tale II (where we have Archmage classes). And I've only played Bards Tale III for about an hour some 15 years ago.

~Le


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Aug 3, 2007)

Started off with BT3.  The problem was they kind of expected you to put a party into the game from BT1&2.  Otherwise you have to spend a ton of time grinding away to get to the level to go to the main quest.  So I spend weeks working my characters up, my monk got to the point where her hand strikes were like small nukes, only to still not be able to go to the main quest area and not die in the first encounter.  So I quit the game out of boredom.


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## Lockridge (Aug 3, 2007)

I played these many ago on my Commodore 64 and just a few years ago on my PC after downloading them in a format my PC could play.  I think these are lots of fun but the problems you are encountering are part of the design.

The game requires you to play repetitively in order to do things like gain power and resurrect.  If you try to move too fast by entering the dungeons when you aren't ready you will die.  To be honest, when I played a few years ago I used cheats (gasp!) to make the game play go by faster.  After all, I wanted the experience of playing the nostalgia games without the seemingly endless similar combats.  I remember being forced to remain in the main city taking on lower level enemies for a very long time before I could venture into a dungeon and last beyond a few minutes.

Your post makes me want to play again but I'm not sure I would without the cheats to save me time.  Reminds me why I stopped playing World of Warcraft.  It required you to spend time mindlessly increasing your skills.  I'm all for a realistic world but spending hours pounding a stone (oh, and searching for said stone) in order to increase my mining/smithing skills was just not fun especially when your free time is very limited.

Enjoy the games though!  Everyone who considers themselves a CRPG player should try them - they might find that these old games still hold a lot of fun (and sometimes more fun than some modern games.


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## Lockridge (Aug 3, 2007)

Flexor the Mighty! said:
			
		

> Started off with BT3.  The problem was they kind of expected you to put a party into the game from BT1&2.  Otherwise you have to spend a ton of time grinding away to get to the level to go to the main quest.  So I spend weeks working my characters up, my monk got to the point where her hand strikes were like small nukes, only to still not be able to go to the main quest area and not die in the first encounter.  So I quit the game out of boredom.




Actually, I played BT3 first as well several years ago.  What you describe sounds like my first time playing it.  It seemed to be a bug.

Maybe someone else could shine some light on it but my experience was that BT3 started you with a beginner dungeon.  When you enter you are low level.  When I finished the dungeon and went to the old wizard guy for my level he just gave us each 1 or 2 levels.

When I then went on to the main quest I was getting my butt kicked every time.  A friend however told me that when he completed the intro dungeon, the old wizard gave his party several dozen levels all at once.  I don't remember the levels but when you complete the intro dungeon you are at level 10(for sake of arguement).  His characters were put up to level 30? in one shot.

I played again from the beginning and then went up many levels at once just like my friend's.  I seem to recall that the only difference was that I had entered the old wizard's home with a monster in my party.  Perhaps this caused some sort of non-leveling bug.

PS. Wasn't there going to be an old-school remake/sequel of Bard's Tale?  Not the mass market one that was released a few years ago but one that looked very similar to the old games.  I had downloaded a demo for it but its gone now and I don't remember the name of it.


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## TheLe (Aug 3, 2007)

Lockridge said:
			
		

> Your post makes me want to play again but I'm not sure I would without the cheats to save me time.  Reminds me why I stopped playing World of Warcraft.  It required you to spend time mindlessly increasing your skills.  I'm all for a realistic world but spending hours pounding a stone (oh, and searching for said stone) in order to increase my mining/smithing skills was just not fun especially when your free time is very limited.




It's actually a fun and mindless game. I get online and use the walkthroughs quite a bit, so puzzle solving isn't a problem for me. My problem is when I ran into "99 Berserkers". My God that was painful (I just eeked by with only of my party members dying).

The PC version also came with the "Z" key, which gave you a free stone golem to help your early level party.



`Le


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## Lockridge (Aug 3, 2007)

TheLe said:
			
		

> It's actually a fun and mindless game. I get online and use the walkthroughs quite a bit, so puzzle solving isn't a problem for me. My problem is when I ran into "99 Berserkers". My God that was painful (I just eeked by with only of my party members dying).
> `Le




99 Berserkers!!!!!!  I don't recall running into that much of anything.  My memory may be foggy but that sounds like a system maximum.  My paranoid mind is starting to wonder if you might have an "altered" version of the game.  Like I said though - its been a while.  I would think the system would just give you less numbers of a stronger enemy.


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## dshai527 (Aug 3, 2007)

99 Berserkers is nothing, wait until you get to the endfight in BTIII. If more than just your thief survives it will be a miracle. I played each game and started a new party for each and never felt bored. These rate, at least for me, as three of the best games ever made, thought 2 is my favorite. BT2 is the most fun the first time you play it as most of the game is centered around finding the Dream Spell (at least that is what I think it is called) and once "you" know it "you" know it so later parties don't have to adventure for it, they can just cast it when they hit level. Ah great times.


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## kyloss (Aug 3, 2007)

The 99 berserkers is in one room and it is best avoided. I had the original many years ago and the clue book for it was entertaing to read, it was written as a diary of a previous adventure group that had failed at the very end. and it mentions that room as a specific spot to avoid.
very very fun game.
And remember Roscoe is your friend and the mad good if i remember is Mangar or something like that. oh and an old trick, if you start a bard song right before you get a drink for your bard its like getting an extra song for free.


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## TheLe (Aug 3, 2007)

kyloss said:
			
		

> The 99 berserkers is in one room and it is best avoided. I had the original many years ago and the clue book for it was entertaing to read, it was written as a diary of a previous adventure group that had failed at the very end. and it mentions that room as a specific spot to avoid.
> very very fun game.
> And remember Roscoe is your friend and the mad good if i remember is Mangar or something like that. oh and an old trick, if you start a bard song right before you get a drink for your bard its like getting an extra song for free.




Yeah, the 99 Berserkers is in the game, inside of Harkyn's Castle. It was actually "Legions of Baron Harkyn [4x99 Berserker]"

It was ugly.

I don't have any problems with Bard Songs because my bard is wielding the BARDSWORD, which allows for unlimited Bard Songs. However, that is an excellent tip for starting parties.

`Le


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## Grog (Aug 3, 2007)

I remember it being extremely difficult to recover hit points (were there healing spells? I can't remember) and spell points in these games, and that kind of annoyed me. Also, it was completely pointless to have a warrior in the party, because once a hunter got to a high enough level, they had a 99% chance to get a critical hit on every attack, and a critical hit was an instant kill. So it was a little irritating discovering that I'd wasted so much time leveling up my warrior when I should have just made two hunters instead.

I did like the puzzle-solving aspect of the game, though. I remember working with my friends to solve the puzzles in Arborea in BT3. Good times.


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## trancejeremy (Aug 3, 2007)

I was a big fan of them when  I was a kid.  My best friend at the time had an Apple II, but I had a C-64, and he had all these cool RPGs (Ultima and Wizardry most notably). The Bard's Tale was really the first really good RPG.

Anyway, I actually finished them all.  I beat the first on my own, but used hint books for the other 2. Just a matter of patience and mapping.


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## ephemeron (Aug 4, 2007)

TheLe said:
			
		

> Yeah, the 99 Berserkers is in the game, inside of Harkyn's Castle. It was actually "Legions of Baron Harkyn [4x99 Berserker]"
> 
> It was ugly.



I remember (with disturbing clarity) using the 396 Berserkers as an XP factory.  Once your front-rank fighters are tough enough to not get killed in one round, it's easy.  Tell the front rank to attack, the bard to use his Fire Horn on one set of 99 Berserkers, one spellcaster to cast REST, and the other spellcaster (or two -- I usually went with a third spellcaster instead of a thief-type) to cast MIBL, then go and have dinner.  Come back, repeat the same orders, find something else to do while the C64 churns through the second round.  Two or three rounds was usually enough.


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## Deuce Traveler (Aug 5, 2007)

I remember that I really had to rely on the Bard's _horn of blasting_, or whatever his magic item was called, to stand a chance in the first part of the game.


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## darkseraphim (Aug 6, 2007)

I used to play these all the time in the 80s.

The Harkyn Legions, if I remember correctly, were supposed to be bypassed by some disguises you find on the castle's ground level.  Running into them was supposed to be punishment.

I used to farm them by having 3 L0's in front defending, and 3 casters in the back casting Mind Blast (I believe)?  Some spell that hit all monsters.  Watching 396 x 3 combat messages scroll by was amusing.  Nice levels though.


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## Keldryn (Aug 7, 2007)

Bard's Tale III was one of the first games that I had for my C64, back in 1989.  It was the first computer RPG that I'd played (unless you include NES games like Dragon Warrior/Quest), and I loved it.  

However, there is no way that I could tolerate playing it today.  The sheer tedium and repetitiveness would drive me insane.  Everything was repetitive.  Repetitive combat, repetitive graphics, repetitive palette-swapped monsters, repetitive mapping... ugh.  I can't imagine having fun with that type of game anymore.

They were great games for their time, but I eventually came to the conclusion that these type of RPGs don't really require any skill whatsoever, and are basically exercises in patience.  Classics, yes, but not timeless.


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## Mrikendor (Aug 8, 2007)

TheLe said:
			
		

> [imager]http://www.abandonia.com/games/930/download/images/games/Bards%20Tale%20II,%20The%20-%20The%20Destiny%20Knight4.png[/imager]Has anyone finished the original Bard's Tale I, II, or III?
> 
> I am trying to complete Bard's Tale I right now, but I am getting my butt handed to me.
> 
> ...




I played BTII 20 years ago this summer. Had a blast but never finished it. It was sharing time with Ultima IV on my Commodore 64. Ultima IV won out, but BTII was a lot of fun. Maybe I'll see if I can dig up a PC version so I can finally finish it.


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## TheLe (Aug 9, 2007)

Once again, I got my ass royally handed to me in Mangar's Tower last night. I think I may drop my Hunter in favor of another Warrior or Paladin. Monster spells are hammering me badly, and the Hunter has far fewer hit points than the others, and worse AC due to armor restrictions.

`Le


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## Wulf Ratbane (Aug 9, 2007)

darkseraphim said:
			
		

> I used to farm them by having 3 L0's in front defending, and 3 casters in the back casting Mind Blast (I believe)?  Some spell that hit all monsters.  Watching 396 x 3 combat messages scroll by was amusing.  Nice levels though.




I remember almost nothing about these games _except_ MIBL, MIBL, MIBL.

Man, I demolished everything with that spell.

Hunter sounds familiar, too. Pretty sure I had a decent Hunter in my group.


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## CarlZog (Aug 21, 2007)

Last year, while cleaning an old box of papers I found my graph paper maps from BT2. A couple friends and I were obsessed with this game for several months in around 1989. Played on a C64.  At the time, we had no idea how far along we were, but after finding the maps I looked up a walkthrough online and discovered that we'd barely started!

The only thing that even got as far as we did was our discovery that by swapping out the floppies (save disk and the play disk) and the saved characters in the right way, we could duplicate magic items. We equipped ourselves with nearly a dozen cold blast wands, as I recall. And still got our butts kicked!   



Carl


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## TheLe (Aug 23, 2007)

CarlZog said:
			
		

> Last year, while cleaning an old box of papers I found my graph paper maps from BT2. A couple friends and I were obsessed with this game for several months in around 1989. Played on a C64.  At the time, we had no idea how far along we were, but after finding the maps I looked up a walkthrough online and discovered that we'd barely started!
> 
> The only thing that even got as far as we did was our discovery that by swapping out the floppies (save disk and the play disk) and the saved characters in the right way, we could duplicate magic items. We equipped ourselves with nearly a dozen cold blast wands, as I recall. And still got our butts kicked!
> 
> Carl




It's pretty easy to duplicate stuff now. Once I find the blade that causes stoning, I am soooo gonna dupe it!

`Le


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## Imp (Aug 25, 2007)

Ooh Bard's Tale.  I only finished III.  I wiped out Trajan pretty easy – don't remember losing anybody.

I dunno how your monk is dying – monks are crazy strong in that game.  But then BT I seemed a lot harder at the start than II or III the last time I tried running it through an emulator.



> A friend however told me that when he completed the intro dungeon, the old wizard gave his party several dozen levels all at once. I don't remember the levels but when you complete the intro dungeon you are at level 10(for sake of arguement). His characters were put up to level 30? in one shot.



This is indeed how it worked.


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## TheLe (Jun 7, 2008)

So I finally got to the top level of MANGAR'S TOWER, which is the pretty much the end of the game.

I get to the last main door. The following three items grants me access to the other side of the door: the SILVER CIRCLE, SILVER TRIANLE, and SILVER SQUARE.

Too bad I only had the SILVER CIRCLE...

AUUUGGGHHH!!!!

Two ours of crawling WASTED....

Worst of all, I *have* the Silver Triangle and Square, just not in my party -- they are in the inventory of my spare character, back at the adventurer's guild...

AUUGGGHHH!!!!

~Le


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## The Sigil (Jun 8, 2008)

Oh, jeez, the Bard's Tale... I was just chatting it up with someone about it the other day.

Played it way back on my MSDOS box when I was in grade school.  And BT II.  And BT III.  Full disclosure: I used the Cluebooks.

Tips and tricks not in the cluebooks (warnng: spoilers!):

1. In BT1, you want to start with 2 mages and they should progress as follows:
Mage 1: Conjurer to level 13, Sorcerer to level 13, Wizard to level 13, Magician
Mage 2: Magician to level 13, Sorcerer to level 13, Wizard to level 13, Conjurer

2. 



Spoiler



A Bardsword lets your bard sing without getting thirsty.  The Bard's "dodge" song stacks during combat.  Once you find a bardsword, take advantage - your bard should sing to lower AC every round until everyone is at LO.



3. Once your two mages are "Archmages" (know all spells), your frontline dudes should be at LO armor class.  At this point, make a third mage and 



Spoiler



go to the 396 berserkers repeatedly to level him.



4. Wind Dragon is the best pet.  Really.



Spoiler



5. Soul Mace (or Spectres, like King Aildrek) - one hit drains you of a level.  Go to a temple and pay to have your dude restored.  If you're clever, you note that when restored, you have enough XP to level AGAIN.  Go to the review board and level up.  You are now one level higher than when you started.  If you have a soul mace and do intraparty attacks, this gets very ridiculous very quickly.



6. Make sure to visit the room 1 N of Mangar before you kill him.  



Spoiler



The Spectre Snare is the best item in the game - a weapon that reduces your AC by 8, critically hits automatically (death blow) and can be "used" to capture any enemy in the game and put him in your party in your NPC slot (Mangar, perhaps?  Don't bother - the Demon Lords and their stone ability are cooler).



7. Against super-deadly foes, have two mages firing off MIBL every round.  The third Mage should fire off a REST every round (to fix stoning, keep HP high, etc.).  You DO have 3 mages toward the endgame, right?

I'll have to think back for the tricks I used for BT II and III, but there ya go.


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## Orius (Jun 8, 2008)

I have a NES port of the first Bard's Tale, but unfortunately from what I can tell, a lot of stuff was stripped out and simplified in it.  There are missing spells, only two casters which don't change classes (and I think they lumped the spells from the original classes under the two), and a lot of the magic items don't have the powers they do in the original game.  And there's no room with 99 99 99 99 Berserkers, there is a room with three group of 9 enemies each, but thhat's hardly the same thing.  It's not a bad game though, but the NES port of Wizardry is a lot better.


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## Vigilance (Jun 8, 2008)

Where can you get these in a format that will play on a modern PC?


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## TheLe (Jun 10, 2008)

The Sigil said:
			
		

> You DO have 3 mages toward the endgame, right?




Actually, I do not. I use Warrior/Paladin/Hunter on the front lines, and then a Bard in the 4th slot, and then 2 casters in the back.

Now that I think about it, I don't have much use for the bard...

Hmmm...

~Le


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## Andre (Jun 10, 2008)

Vigilance said:
			
		

> Where can you get these in a format that will play on a modern PC?




Ebay is your best bet to find the original games. 

As for playing them on a modern PC, just download DosBox (or one of it's variants). I haven't found a DOS game yet that it can't handle.


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## TheAuldGrump (Jun 11, 2008)

Did you remember to roll the sample characters for their way above average starting equipment?

The Auld Grump


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## Mercule (Jun 11, 2008)

ephemeron said:
			
		

> I remember (with disturbing clarity) using the 396 Berserkers as an XP factory.  Once your front-rank fighters are tough enough to not get killed in one round, it's easy.  Tell the front rank to attack, the bard to use his Fire Horn on one set of 99 Berserkers, one spellcaster to cast REST, and the other spellcaster (or two -- I usually went with a third spellcaster instead of a thief-type) to cast MIBL, then go and have dinner.  Come back, repeat the same orders, find something else to do while the C64 churns through the second round.  Two or three rounds was usually enough.



Pretty much exactly my recollection.  I also remember pretty much having to use it because there was some scary stuff after that.

I remember the old dude in BT3 who handed out levels, too.


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## Bront (Jun 12, 2008)

kyloss said:
			
		

> The 99 berserkers is in one room and it is best avoided. I had the original many years ago and the clue book for it was entertaing to read, it was written as a diary of a previous adventure group that had failed at the very end. and it mentions that room as a specific spot to avoid.
> very very fun game.
> And remember Roscoe is your friend and the mad good if i remember is Mangar or something like that. oh and an old trick, if you start a bard song right before you get a drink for your bard its like getting an extra song for free.



The clue books were a great read, even without the game.  They wrote them like someone telling the story, which was cool.

I remember several versions had various bugs.

The Amiga version of BT1 had a bug where ONLY warriors and monks got multiple attacks as they leveled up, so your paladins never got any.

In versions where they all got multiple attacks, often the Warrior was useless, as the Paladin could do the same amount of damage but had other advantages (I don't remember the classes well enough though, just that Warriors were useless).

There's a dungeon in BT2 that is nearly imposable, since the room is darkened and has spinners in EVERY location, so you have to simply wander around till you find the ladder, but you're more likely to leave the room first.


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