Overview
This is a quick guide for anyone playing the Original Bard’s Tale 1, tales of the unknown that is included in The Bard’s Tale game. It will give you some basic starting hints and tips on playing that might speed along your process. Since there are plenty of manuals and maps about i won’t go into any FAQ stuff.
Contents
1) Character breakdown and mechanics
2) Creating characters and what to make
3) Items and what are useful
4) Where to go, and what to do
5) Catacombs and grinding
Character breakdown and mechanics
Since I had a very hard time finding this information i figure i will post it here, plus any future information when I find it.
Strength. Gives damage bonus on hit only with a 17 or 18. 17 = +1 damage, 18 = +2.
Intelligence. Gives bonus spell points with mages. Base spell points per level is 1-4 plus +1 per intelligence over 14. So intelligence on mages of 18 give 5-8 spell points per level up. For mages, intelligence then constitution are max priorities.
Dexterity gives bonus AC -1 point per stat over 14. 18 dexterity gives -4 AC bonus.
Luck is important for a little resists and Rogues hide ability, but Rogues are pretty useless in BT1 so just make up a rogue Hobbit later with max luck and train him up if you want to transfer him over to BT2 and especially BT3.
Armor class determines both chance to hit AND chance not to be hit. The lower your AC, the more you hit and the less you are hit. Weapon bonus’s do not count in chance to hit unless that weapon lowers your AC when equipted. A spectral mace that does +5 damage won’t add +5 to hit. If you want to hit more with your warriors, get your AC as low as possible.
Hunters critical chance seems to be 1 of 2 methods. Not sure which is the apple version that this game uses. Method 1 is random 1-32 number per level which tops off at 255 (100%). If you average about 18 per level up you should reach max critical chance about level 16-22ish. Give or take. The other method is 1-3%+ 1% per dex over 14 to max of 99. Which means you want your hunters with high dex from the start. Not exactly sure which method this apple game uses but I’d assume the first. (different systems use different methods). Either way, with a hunter with high dexterity you should get max criticals at level 20 or so, maybe sooner or later depending on RNG.
You don’t get any negative penalties for low stats. Thus a low constitution won’t give you low hps.
Hitpoints per level up are below. Constitution over 14 gives +1 hitpoints per stat per level up, so 18 constitution will give +4 hitpoints. A wizard with 18 constitution would get a max 1-8+4 = 5-12 hitpoints each level up.
conjurers and magicians 1-4 hps
monks, sorcerers, rogues, wizards 1-8 hps
warriors, paladins, hunters, bards 1-16 hps
Resists seem to be random 1-3% per level, where as paladins get 1-6%
Class’s get an initial bonus to hit enemies. Mages 0, bards and rogues +1, warriors +2, and monks +3.
Warriors, Paladins and Monks get multiple attacks as they gain higher levels. Hunters can only attack once, but have their critical chance, thus early on hunters are weaker on the offense due to only 1 attack until their critical chance gets higher, thus the reason I level up hunters later in the game.
Attack priority seems to be based on the number of battles you fight, maxing out with a characters at 63488. Monsters have their own set base and is compared to your own. Stats don’t seem to make any difference that I can find (having a higher dexterity for instance). To attack faster in combat, just fight more fights and your priority (or initiative which i call it) will rise per battle.
FEAR and CURS spells seem to be bugged, instead of reducing the enemy chances to hit, they increase it. Don’t ever use these spells. I believe each cast will increase the enemies chance to hit by 1 AC (treats your AC as being one higher), so with multiple castings you can watch weak enemies that can’t hit you suddenly go to hitting you almost every time. Someone must have put a +Ac instead of a -Ac in the game mechanics.
Creating characters and what to make
You get to choose a variety of class’s and races in this game to make up characters, there are plenty to chose from and you can make pretty much up what ever you want. That doesn’t mean they are all useful, in fact there are really only a few that are needed. You have a party of 6 characters, 3 up front to take the brunt of attacks, and 3 in the back for support.
1) Of the front line warriors, you have Warriors, Paladins, Hunters, and Monks. There isn’t any need to take any warrior type except Monks in bards tale 1. Monks have better AC, better attacks, and more usefulness than the other warriors and you should have 3 monks as your front 3 warriors. The reason? They have vastly better AC by far, they have more damaging attacks by far, have decent hitpoints, and don’t need a lot of gear so they can carry more loot out of dungeons. When your non-monks can get LOW AC with their gear you can start using them if you want.
A warrior type character (not a monk) needs almost a full inventory of gear to be useful. weapon/shield/helm/armor/ring/gloves/cloak, etc. leaving few spots for items, plus they won’t even get close to a monks AC even with all that gear on, nor will they do the damage of a monk. So why even use them. A Hunter at least has the special ability for a critical death strike, but in bards tale 1 that isn’t as useful as a monk because monsters won’t be that strong in this first game. The monk will kill foes just as easy due to increased damage, plus have more AC compared to the hunter. Only use 3 monks. In later games (bards tale 2 and 3) you will be switching over to Hunters instead of Monks maybe, because you have much higher hitpoint foes that won’t die as easy, and the Hunters death strike works better in most cases, but those are other games. You can develop your Hunters later.
So, now you have 3 monks you need, how to make them. Dwarf Monks are the race of choice, you can get starting 18 strength, 18 endurance, and 15 dexterity right at the start. Since you level up stats as you level up, eventually you will have 18 in all stats anway, but you want to get good stats at creation so you will be stronger early, which is when the game is hard. Make sure you have at least 18 strength and endurance to start, and good dex and hitpoints. I always have my monks with 18/18, at least 14 dexterity, and 25+ hitpoints. As you level up your monks with max endurance can gain 12 hitpoints max per level up, i always try and get them at least 10 hitpoints per level. Get them every AC reducing item you can, and that and their natural AC will make them perfect front line tanks. Can’t be hit, and do major damage to enemies. They can wear bracers, shield rings, gloves, and a shield to help more. When you hit LOW AC start storing gear on a storage character so your monks will have more inventory to carry loot out of dungeons.
Now that you have your 3 monks up front, what to pick for your 3 support. Rogues are useless in this game, the only benefit they have are traps and your mages can do that, so ignore Rogues completely. Bards are versitile and fun, but basically useless in this game also as a major character. Everything your Bard can do, your Mages can do better. Ignore Bards as a major party member. That leaves yep! mages. They are your main damage dealers in the game, and they do it well. Mages don’t really need AC, they are only hit by breath or spells so AC really means nothing, plus they can’t wear much anyway so you might have them with robes or bracers, a shield staff and shield ring, etc. Even those aren’t really needed.
Gnome mages are the mage of choice since they can get 18 intelligence to start. Focus on getting the max intelligence and good dexerity and constitution on a starting character. I would try for max intelligence and dex that you can get (I think 15 dex for gnomes). Your mages level up super fast so you’ll max stats very easy. Mages can change professions at level 13, which you will do in order to get all the mage class spells and abilities, plus greatly increase your health and spell points to the point you’ll probably bypass your monk in hitpoints.
There are 4 mage class’s. You can start off as conjurers or magicians, and later switch to sorcerers and wizards. Again, at level 13 when you learn all the spells of that class, switch to another class. The 3 mages you want i note below on what to start at, and what to finish.
1) Conjurer to Sorcerer to Wizard to Magician
2) Conjurer to Sorcerer to Wizard to Magician
3) Magician to Sorcerer to Wizard to Conjurer
As for hitpoints and spell points, I believe with 18 intelligence you can get a maximum of 8 spell points per level up with all mage class’s. Conjurers and magicians level up 8 hps max per level up, and sorcerers and wizards are better 12 hps per level up. So if you want you can try to get better level ups as you go, reloading on bad ones. Your choice. I usually try for 6 spell points per level up (hey, you are mages you know) and with conjurers/magicians 3 hps minimum, and 9 hps minimum with sorcerers/wizards. But spell points is the major factor with mages. More spell points = more major butt kicking. By the time i usually finish the 2nd dungeon area (catacombs) my mages are archmages with 250-300 hps and 300+ spell points, plenty enough to waste any foes in the game.
Ok! you are ready to go, 3 monks up front, 3 mages in the back, ready to tear up the town! I always like to develop 3 hunters, and the other class’s later if i plan on transfering over to bards tale 2 and 3.
Items and what are useful
The hardest part of the game is starting off, since foes are set per area, it is always harder when starting a new area or dungeon than finishing. If you are following my idea of keeping your main party as 3 monks and 3 mages, that means most items you find you can just sell because you won’t need them. I personally make up backup characters for use in later games (bards tale 2 and 3) so i keep them also outfitted with top gear for later.
You don’t need gear for mages. That is something you can get later when you find it, but spending money on your mage gear is worthless since they only get hit by breath weapons and spells, which armor, etc doesn’t affect. It doesn’t cost much to outfit them in robes or a staff, etc so just get those items when you find them.
Your monks are your front line fighters so you want them in the best gear you can find. Eventually their AC will be low enough you won’t have to worry about them getting hit much, but early on while building up they are vulnerable, so prepare them. They can only wear a few items to start. Leather gloves, Leather armor, shield. Get them those 3 items and upgrade when you find better stuff. Later you can sub bracers (AC6) for the leather armor, mithril shield, maybe find a shield ring to help. As they level up their natural AC drops per level, so very soon they will hit LOW (-10+) AC.
NOTE: AC progress’s below -10 but isn’t shown, so keep boosting AC when possible it helps even though you can’t see it. The game just stops showing you at -10 and has the LOW value. It still progresses.
Since your mages will be able to cast every spell in the game, there isn’t any need to keep hold of most items you loot. Lightwands, instruments, dayblades, magic armor or weapons your adventurers don’t need, firehorns, etc all can be sold. Your mages will do more damage than any piddling firehorn on a bard will do, they can light, armor, levitate, and every other spell eventually so just sell off all the junk. Usually when you hit the 2nd dungeon area (catacombs) you are making more money killing foes than selling loot so doesn’t matter after that point. torches and lamps = worthless, sell them. basic gear worthless, sell them, sell sell sell. Once your adventure guild storage characters are outfitted also, everything you find will be sell items, you’ll have millions of gold, and that mithril platemail is just junk to sell at that point.
Where to go, and what to do
Ok, your ready to start playing the game. You have your party of 3 monks and 3 mages and have to adventure out into the world.
1) Starting out. The Adventure guild is your main area, this is where you save and change characters. To save your characters all you do is enter the adventure guild and remove them from the party, thus automatically saving them. Make sure to do this often in case the game locks up, you run into problems (everyone dies, etc). It only takes a second to enter, remove characters, add them back in, and return to playing.
The area around your adventure guild is where you will start leveling up. The first few levels of leveling up is the hardest part of the game. You are weak, and the set foes in the area can overwelm you. There are plenty of maps of the town skara brae on the internet, look at them so y ou can see where you are going. Early on, this east side of town will be your main area that you need to learn. The shop north of the guild, the temple south of the guild and north and west around the corner is the review board where you level up and learn spells.
Your first 1-5 levels or so is just surviving enough to level up. Since you are low level you won’t do much damage, your monks will be hit often, and you’ll do a lot of healing. Your main goal is to get to level 5 which will make surviving much easier. Early on run from large groups of foes. If you run into 3 kobolds good, if you run into 7 barbarians? run like heck. You don’t want to tackle groups until your mages hit level 3 and get their WAST and STFL group damaging spells. At that point its much easier. Save your characters often so you don’t lose progress much by dying. YOU DO NOT WANT TO DIE. Resurecting your characters at the temple takes A LOT of money, its much cheaper to keep them healed than to rez a dead character, money is tight at the start. Stay near the south temple and heal up after every fight if needed, you won’t be sorry.
If you need extra gold starting off you can use the temporary character trick. All new characters have like 250 gold, so go to the guild, make up 5 temp characters, enter the town with 1 regular and your 5 temps, transfer all gold to your regular character, re-enter and remove, delete the temps, remake the temps and repeat. This will keep you with a steady supply of gold if you need it to keep your 3 monks healed all the time at the temple. If you don’t die you should be fine.
Once you hit levels 3-5, your characters should be good enough to not worry about dying in town. Make sure to level them up at the review board, get your new spells for your mages and its time to tackle the first dungeon area, the sewers. To get to them you need to head south past the temple, fight the samurai guard south, and just to the left is the Scarlet Bard Inn.
[link]this site is great to view much of the game info, maps, etc so use it. To get to the sewers, enter the inn, (O)rder a drink, and pick (W)ine. This will send you down to the wine cellar. The actualy first level the wine cellar is useless so you want to look and learn how to get to the stairs to the north so you can head down to the sewers.
Sewers level 1. Now that you are in the sewers you can start dungeon grinding. What is this? This is hitting a few monster spots, returning to the stairs, going up and back down which resets the monsters and repeating until your health or spell points are low. In the first level of the sewers you’ll have 2 initial spots. Heading west then north you’ll find a red door with your first set monster spawn behind it, some spiders i think. In this same room is another door in the back, enter and fight. This is your first grinding spot. Return to the stairs, go up, back down, and repeat. This is close and easy to do. When you need to exit the dungeon just go up and back to the wine cellar entrance. When you level up some and are confortable, its time for level 2.
Sewers level 2. This is more complicated since you have to move to the stairs down to level 2. You’ll fight a few set encounters on the way so you’ll get used to it. From the stairs at level 1 (look at maps you see the path). Go W-S-W-S-3W-4S-2W-3S-W. This actually takes you from the west side of the map to the east, since the maps fold over. On the map you are at 9,21. Head north through 4 doors and some set encounters, including Black widow spiders which can poison you (use FLRE spell to cure) but give great experience. Once through the door W-3S-W and enter the door into darkness. Go 2W-2N and you’ll find the stairs down to level 2. Almost there. Go down
Now the 2nd grinding area isn’t far away either. From the stairs at level 2 follow the passage curving around and you’ll see a door to the east. Enter to fight a fixed encounter with Black Widow spiders, 7 I think. Hit them with everything you can, you’ll be curing poison a lot also since they poison but they give great experience. When done exit and head north and east to a 2nd door with random fixed encounter. These are your 2 grinding spots. Head back to the stairs, up, down, repeat.
Finally when bored with that area, its time to head down to the 3rd and final level of the sewers. From the spider door go S-E-E and cast PHDO (phase door) on the south wall which takes you right to a hole that leads to level 3. Cast LEVI (levitate) on yourself and go down (D) or up (E) to get down to level 3. Level 3 is just a huge bunch of doors to run through and fight random encounters, both north and south and west. You should get a few better item drops from here also. Since its easy to get to from level 2, just farm this area until your bored. You’ll be going to the 2nd dungeon area soon the Catacombs which has much better loot and experience so don’t spend a lot of time on level 3 of the sewers. When finished, heal up, learn spells and its time for the catacombs!
Catacombs and grinding
Now you are familiar with going into dungeons (sewers) its time to hit the 2nd dungeon area, and your main experience place. Head to the center of town and enter the mad gods temple. Speak to the priests and say “TARJAN” to enter. For fun, you can say the name of the ancient enemy of TARJAN instead, BURGER, and the priests will summon an invincible army to kill you. If you have the APAR teleport spell you can skip the 1st and 2nd levels of the dungeon and head down to the main 3rd level grinding spot, but that depends on the AC of your front line troops (you really want -9 or LOW) on your monks. If you are strong enough use APAR at the entrance, 8N-11E-1D and go to level 3.
1) Catacombs level 1. When you enter the catacombs you can start grinding enemies just to the east. If you go east you can find 2 doors to the north (1 has a random encounter) and 5 doors to the east nearby. Hit those spawn spots, return to the stairs, re-enter and repeat. You might start to see a few different items drop to help your party, and new creatures.
2) Catacombs level 2. Going to the stairs and down, you’ll go down the passage and enter a big square area with doors all around the circular hallway. DO NOT enter the door to the very northeast its a 1 way door, just a hassle. You can go around the long hallway entering the doors and fighting random spawn if you wish. Again head to the stairs and up/down and repeat until bored.
3) Catacombs level 3. AH, finally. The 3rd level of the catacombs are your main grinding spot for experience in the game, even when you get into the higher level dungeons. You cannot teleport or phase door in the 3rd level but its easy to teleport to the stairs on level 2 and head down. The 2 main spawn spots are nearby anyway so its easy to grind this area.
The first spot is the hallway just 1 east and south. You’ll fight a random encounter entering the hallway but try and RUN past it if possible, it just slows up your grinding. Now down the hallway the 2nd door on the left is the first spawn room which contains 69 WIGHTS worth 11776 exp. If you can cast REDE (undead) spell by now, use it with all mages it only costs 4 sp. If not use what ever your strongest group spells are. Your front liners might get OLD status, but it isn’t important (just remember you are easier to hit if OLD). You’ll cure OLD at the temples on the way out, don’t let it interfere with your grinding.
The 2nd spot is the hallway south and west. The hallway south of the stairs doesn’t hold anything so head to the one just west of it. Enter and the first door on the left holds your 2nd spawn spot, with fixed 36 GHOULS giving 13842 exp. Exit, head to stairs, up/down, repeat. These 2 spots will give you a quick 25k experience every rotation and aren’t very hard, are fast to do, and you can get some item drops that you might need. Even later in the game this is probably the easiest fastest way to level up new characters.
On your map these 2 rooms are at 4N-13E (wights) and 3N-9E (ghouls). You’ll come back to this level to get the “EYE” from the witchking when your ready to move onto the 4th and 5th dungeons, but isn’t needed for the 3rd dungeon so ignore the “EYE” for now.