Bard's Tale was one of my favorite games for the c64. I spent many nights hiding in my little computer room playing that game and hoping my parents did not walk in to find me fighting a sorcorer or some other evil creature. My parents were anti Dungeons and Dragons and I would have been sent to church for a week straight if they would have found me. But anyway I want to know how long it took you to beat the game if you did, and what kept you going. I just started playing again last week and it is not only taking me back to my childhood but it is still a fun game to play.....

Yes it took up a lot of my time too. I originally had the tape version back in 1988, which whilst being slower than the disc, also came with a team editor. Read cheat mode here. If one of your characters found someone good (like a mithral helm for example), you could load said character up 5 times to transfer it to everyone else! Still, I only made it as far as level 2 of Mangar's tower doing that.

Several years later I get hold of the disc version. Together with some astute playing and maps from the internet, I actually managed to beat the game after a month or so. And then cheat so I could give Spectre Snares to everyone to use in BT2

Speaking of which... must get back to that. Was stuck in the second dungeon if I recall...
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Woah, great topic......

I made my first experiences with Bard's Tale III. I was so surprised about the game-concept and the rising of my heroes was a very fascinating thing. I have begun in september 1988 and finished around january 1989.....I remember many many evenings sitting before Bard's Tale III, and I was listening to the Queen-Album "A kind of magic" all this time. (Wanna know what I'm remembered now when I hear the song "one mission" ?? Brilhasti ap Tarj, lol)......

A friend of mine played Bard's Tale III, too, and he didn't believed me first when I told him that I'm fighting against Ninjas in Hiroshima, hehehe.

I'll never forget this time... it was so great!!

Would your gallant party choose to (f)ight or r(un).........

ohhh, I forgot to mention...

in dungeon were I had to fight against Brilhasti ap Tarj I found a "Stoneblade", a damn good weapon. I had to copy it to my friend, and it costed him some beers, hehehe

Hmm, I've never seen the tape version of BT1. Does anyone know where to download it?

I didn't have much chance to get into this game (BT 3) but it was fun for the time I had it. Unfortunately my friend got pissed off that I copied his character disk (He had captured(?) a black death to use in his party) and wiped my copy of bards tale disks. So much for that friendship

not sure why i replied because i've never played it
cue: astonished gasps, much admonishment etc etc...
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I never played I and II, but Bard's Tale 3 was was pretty great.... although it went on for FAR too long in my opinion, but the time I got to world 6, I was bored out of my skin and ran away from every encounter to save time. Mind you, I still didn't stop playing it til I completed it.

I discovered an odd cheat early on.. you create a new character and put him on your team, but don't go and visit the old man who gives you your experience levels until AFTER you've been and killed Brilhasti (not necessarily the first time you kill him.. after all, you can kill Brilhasti as many times as you like!). When you do then go back to the old man, he'll give that character enough experience to get to about level 40.

Needless to say, this was WAY higher than most of my characters at the time, so I destroyed them all and replaced them with level 40 clones of themselves. In fact, when I had trouble killing some mages on world 3 (I think they were shadow mages), I bred an entire party of level 40 rogues, hid them in the shadows, crept up to my foes, and critically hit them, killing them all in one round. Tee hee hee.

Stoneblades were the business! I wasn't aware that you could clone weapons with clever disk swapping, so I spent days wandering aimlessly around the first dungeon kitting my team out with them, and then I don't think I bothered to switch weapons with them right up to the end of the game. There was another Fighter weapon worth using (Shadelance, I think? which did an area effect cold spell) but you didn't have to equip it as your primary weapon so you could use both.

The music on the game was APPALLING (especially when your bard had a drum as his primary instrument), so providing your own alternative music was absolutely necessary... for me, tis The Pet Shop Boys which bring back the most vivid memories of BT3.

My mate always used to call Skara Brae Scarborough, which I still find pretty funny.

The other thing that used to make me laugh would be when you would meet:
A) 300 Skeletons (60' away)
B) 100 Skeletons (60' away)
C) A Skeleton (60' away)
D) 4 Skeletons (60' away)
... all in a 10'x10' room!!!!

Happy Days... I went on to play Wasteland (truly awesome), and then greatly enjoyed Captive on the Amiga, and haven't had the urge to play a single RPG since. Although, maybe I'll download BT1 and see what it's like.
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Bards tale 1 was the first rpg I really got into, I to had the tape version (didn't have a diskdrive at the time) and naturally I used the character editor to cheat a little by giving myself lots of money.

Since I got a bit tired of exploring the sewers I decided to save those for later and started tackling the much more interesting catacombs (I had read the password in a magazine) and the castle instead. I would explore a dungeon untill the entire party was dead which, in the begining, didn't take a long time for a somewhat lowlevel party in the catacombs (the survivors got tons of experience though so it didn't take to long before the party was at a more apropriate level). When everybody was dead you where returend to the guild but since you could still walk around with an all dead party it was just a matter of visiting the nearest temple and resurect everyone with my almighty pile of cash.

I still have all the maps i drew. Unfortunately I never did complete the game. I actually fired it up reasently but I couldn't remember what the save file was called (the game asks for the party file name and won't just load any file it finds).

Also I just won Bards tale 2 in an aution.

I also had the cassette version of Bard's Tale I, and I loved it to death!! I must have played it for about 13 months before I completed it. I didn't know any of these sneaky cheats for it either!!! I never found it anything less than hugely enjoyable, even when you were just watching the fight messages scroll up the screen!! My favourite experience builder was in (I think) Kylearan's tower, where you encountered A) 99 Berserkers, B) 99 Berserkers, C) 99 Berserkers and D) 99 Red Balloons. Oops, sorry, make that 99 Berserkers!! It was great because I has a Red Dragon in my party, and he would wipe most of them out with a fiery blast. It took forever though, so I would usually listen to Yngwie Malmsteen's "Trilogy" album while I was waiting, followed by his "Rising Force" album. Sometimes the fight lasted so long I could even listen to three full albums while I waited!! It was always worth it though, for the hefty experience points. I've never found an RPG that I enjoyed quite as much (although Wasteland came pretty close....).

Actually, it's not strictly true that I never played another RPG, since I got quite into EverQuest for a while.... although I never really liked the game, I only played it cos all my mates were into it
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Downloaded Bards Tale 1 today... finding it very tough going. Level 1 characters get slaughtered wholesale just about anywhere they go. A lil information might help if anyone knows these things:

How do you save your characters with their equipment?
How do you unequip items so you can trade and sell them?

and most importantly

Where is the bloody review board?
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1) You can only save when back in the Adventurers' Guild (where you start).

2) The only command is to unequip all items (yeah I know), which is done by pressing 0 when on the items screen.

3) Review Board eh? Don't have the map? It's on Trumpet street. Turn left out of the Adventurers Guild, go up to the top, turn left, go to the corner, turn left, and it's the fourth building on the left I think. One after the Pub if I recall correctly.
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actually its the 2nd building on the left. Next to the Inn.
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Check out http://www.bardstale.com for maps and stuff.

I remember playing this one with some friends. After hours of this, I stated that I could change the characters. So with that in mind, I whipped out Disk 9, Side 2: Fast Hack'Em v4.1.

This is the only version I have that had the sector editor. I used it change values in the saved file and would have to load the program up each change to see what happened.. After a while, we figured out all the important stuff, giving ourselves the best armour and hit points and what have you.

Then we romped an unstoppable romp!
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Gah! Bards Tale 1 appears to be impossible without cheating... at least, starting with a party of level 1 characters it does. Its only a matter of time until you run into 8 Barbarians or 7 Mad Dogs. Even 7 Hobbits or 4 Skeletons can kill a party member. You can never run away from an encounter which you know will kill you; where's the skill in that?

Its easy enough to turn your computer off when you lose a party member and reload, but it's monumentally tedious since you need to save your party after every encounter. The plus side of doing this is that the guardian statue seems to respawn every time you reboot, and that's worth reasonable xp... but frankly, that's cheating too, aint it?

Healing your party is JUST ABOUT within your means at level 1, provided you don't fancy buying any new equipment. After much experimentation, I came up with a 'cheat':
1) Engage party attack
2) Play bard song which gives all members +1 hp
3) Stop attack
4) Enter pub and let bard drink
5) Repeat
but again, it's very tedious to do. I've tried having 3 Bards as my front line since they can heal themselves without all that key feckling, but they still drop dead in front of a decent group of monsters, so healing after the event ain't so useful anyway.

I figure I'll have a go with the default party if I can find a version to download which includes them. Maybe with a few more hp and a few healing spells Skara Brae won't be quite so deadly. I mean, people LIVE there... how do they get to the SHOPS???? :)
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No it isn't impossible. Best thing I found to do was transfer the Fire Horn (and give backups also) from El Cid in the default party to your created Bard. Then he can whip it out and blow it to destroy one group of any monster in town. Just make sure you also give him a seperate instrument to play as this wears the Horn out prematurely...
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Well, the Fire Horn is a bit wicked, innit?

Provided your Bard had a high dexterity, you can pretty much guarantee destroying any group of creatures in the streets of Skara Brae. In fact, its SO good, it almost feels like cheating, except when you discover

a) it runs out and
b) the local shop (for local people) only has about 3 for sale.

By the time they all ran out, however, my party all managed to get up to about level 4 or 5, so they have enough HP to survive a sustained attack, and more importantly, my mage has some healing spells.

Off to the wine cellars for me.
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The only thing that bothered me was you almost have to have a rogue but they dont help you in battle much at all. I am playing BT1 and my rogue is a level 6 and other than disarming a trap here and there he is worthless. He never even hides in the shadows and backstabs anyone.
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Why do you have to have a Rogue? Can't you just cast TRZP (trap zap) at everything?
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Jesus! I spent days playing Bards Tale III & didn't even get off the first level. I got as far as that Brilhisti thing, did hundreds of hit points of damage on it & still got wiped out. I think it kept summoning loads of hard demons or something. Good laugh at the time, but can't imagine putting in the hours these days.

Jesus! I spent days playing Bards Tale III & didn't even get off the first level. I got as far as that Brilhisti thing, did hundreds of hit points of damage on it & still got wiped out. I think it kept summoning loads of hard demons or something. Good laugh at the time, but can't imagine putting in the hours these days.

"Kylearan's tower, where you encountered A) 99 Berserkers, B) 99 Berserkers, C) 99 Berserkers and D) 99 Red Balloons. Oops, sorry, make that 99 Berserkers!!"

I remember that, I remember I had the cooridinates and would teleport there every time I got the chance.

I remember I had a character disk from a friend, I had a magician and 2 Wizards with over 400 hit poits. I believe they had been hacked some way.. It's been a long long time since I've played on the C=64 but I still remember some of the 4 digit codes for the spels. CAEY comes to mind, what a cool game.

Getting on quite nicely with Bard's Tale I, but I can't figure out how to speed up the text scrolling speed, and having to constantly fiddle with my emulator speed is starting to annoy me. I've looked around on the net for a keymap, but can't seem to find one. Can anyone help me?
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