Octopus Overlords

I don't think you need perfect stats, but I will say when I rolled my party I forgot Dexterity ties into initiative, and I'm feeling the effects of having low Dex on my casters. I have to really rely on my AC bonuses to keep me from danger when fighting big groups as I usually have to survive most of a round before my mages get a chance to cast.

Still doing fine, but I would be stronger for sure if my mages had better Dex.

Redfive wrote: ↑Wed Aug 22, 2018 5:18 pm On second thought I'll pass (on rerolling).

I remembered this screenshot Cort PM'd me on Discord. I don't think a 2-3 extra AC points will matter given what I see here..

True. But bear in mind he is pretty close to the end of the game in that screenshot. AC does matter more in the early to mid-game. Once you really get rolling though, it probably doesn't matter.

ColdSteel wrote: ↑Wed Aug 22, 2018 5:25 pm Yeah, I spent a loooong time rolling up my characters and so they all had high DEX to start with (except for my paladin). Now at level 11 everyone is at 18 including my bard and most of the time I can wipe out all the nastiest mobs before they attack with his firehorn. With the mage spells and bard song lowering AC in addition to the low DEX bonuses they already have, it's rare they ever get hit even when attacked. I've been rolling through the catacombs so far.

My mages are also all at 18 INT now. They started with 16/17 on roll-up. You potentially get an extra spell point per level-up for every INT point over 14. And you want as many spell points as you can get.

When you say Mage, are you refering to Magicians? Or Conjurers?
Also, how do you remove a character from your party?

My Band of Bards party made it to level 2 with only the one death and zero uses of the Firehorn of Cheating. I only had to reload once as well when I was unable to run away from a group of 7 Barbarians. Toughest fights were the 6 gnomes (twice), 7 Dwarves, and 5 barbarians. Quad stacking the AC buff to AC's of -7's and -6's for the melee crew is game changing at level 1. Also, the Band attracts groupies like flies. 2 random fans have already joined them for a bit though they weren't good for much more than a distraction. Onward to level 3 and maybe a dip in the cellar!

stimpy wrote: ↑Wed Aug 22, 2018 6:50 pm

ColdSteel wrote: ↑Wed Aug 22, 2018 5:25 pm Yeah, I spent a loooong time rolling up my characters and so they all had high DEX to start with (except for my paladin). Now at level 11 everyone is at 18 including my bard and most of the time I can wipe out all the nastiest mobs before they attack with his firehorn. With the mage spells and bard song lowering AC in addition to the low DEX bonuses they already have, it's rare they ever get hit even when attacked. I've been rolling through the catacombs so far.

My mages are also all at 18 INT now. They started with 16/17 on roll-up. You potentially get an extra spell point per level-up for every INT point over 14. And you want as many spell points as you can get.

When you say Mage, are you refering to Magicians? Or Conjurers?
Also, how do you remove a character from your party?

All of them. Once a mage class hits level 13 and has access to 7th level spells you change their class to another mage class and this resets the XP to level. In that screenshot Red posted my monks and bard would have only been maybe 20th level. My mages at that point have been through 13 levels of Magician, Sorcerer, Wizard and Conjurer. So they were at least level 52. That's how they get all 18's easy.

You remove a party member at the adventurer guild.

Redfive wrote:

ColdSteel wrote: ↑Wed Aug 22, 2018 4:17 pm A critical stat for every character regardless of class is Dexterity. Every point beyond 14 lowers your AC by one. In addition, if your DEX is higher than the mobs, you get to attack first, which is huge because you can wipe them all out before they can even attack you.

I have 5-6 hours in now and it's going to be a struggle to not reroll after seeing this.

One option is to just remove the character with the lowest dex at the adventurers guild, and roll a replacement. No matter the class, stick him in the back and hit a dungeon level you can handle easily. Your newbie will leap through levels and soon be on par (or really close) with your other members. You could potentially replace all characters like that if you didn’t want to start over. I remember doing that quite a bit when I played the original.

Jumped in and bought this 2 days ago. I've only been playing for about 2 or 3 hours. I finally found the darker setting to make the minimap actually usable. I didn't see the "J"ournal command for quite awhile. It's the new automap feature. The white squares are the ones your party has not entered. Much easier than graph paper.

What memories! Great remake!

I played for a couple hours last night and made it to character level 6 with no deaths and down to level 2 of the Wine Cellar. I spent a lot of time poking around town, mapping it out, and checking houses. I use the Firehorn on any group of enemies with more than 4 in it just to speed things up.

I ran into a "Dark" room filled with toxic gas. I couldn't keep a torch, lamp, or Mage Light going in there and had to stumble around in the dark bumping into things until I found my way back out and could re-light a torch. Seeing I hadn't mapped a section, I had to go back in.

There must be varying degrees of poison, or maybe healing is based on 200g x Lvl? The priests wanted 1,200 gold per character to heal me. I coughed it up, for all six characters. Cleaned out my back account.

The next time we leveled, though, one of my casters learned how to cure poison - so no more of that nonsense for me.

I've got a Paladin, Warrior, Monk, Bard, Conjurer, and Magician. I think all of my primary stats are 18's for each character, and the fighters up front all have Constitutions of 18. It didn't take long to roll up characters with 18/17 in primaries and Con once I knew that was really all that mattered.

Paingod wrote:I played for a couple hours last night and made it to character level 6 with no deaths and down to level 2 of the Wine Cellar.

Level 6 and no deaths?! You’re not doing it right.

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Aug 23, 2018 7:44 am

Paingod wrote:I played for a couple hours last night and made it to character level 6 with no deaths and down to level 2 of the Wine Cellar.

Level 6 and no deaths?! You’re not doing it right.

I spent the first five levels wandering around town. I keep the Bardic "Healing" song up as I travel, so everyone gets 1hp back after a fight. I don't hesitate to blow on the Fire Horn if there's a group of nasty bigger than 4. Everyone's wearing the best gear I can find, and my casters have all the spells they can learn for their level. The biggest danger we were in was leaving the Wine Cellar after getting everyone poisoned. My Bard opened a supposedly safe chest and caught a blade for 30 damage, bringing her to 12 health.

I just need to say that this game is going to be my savior on the 36 hour (72 hour roundtrip) train ride I'm taking in a few weeks.
It runs great on my laptop and I won't need an internet connection.

I wish they would port it to iOS. Would be perfect on an iPad.

Paingod wrote: ↑Thu Aug 23, 2018 7:49 am I keep the Bardic "Healing" song up as I travel, so everyone gets 1hp back after a fight.

Unless they just changed it, only the bard heals outside of combat with the healing song up. During combat, everyone heals one point per combat round.

Just fought the battle in Harkyn's Castle last night against the army of like 400 berserkers... that took a while.

ColdSteel wrote: ↑Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:07 am

Paingod wrote: ↑Thu Aug 23, 2018 7:49 am I keep the Bardic "Healing" song up as I travel, so everyone gets 1hp back after a fight.

Unless they just changed it, only the bard heals outside of combat with the healing song up. During combat, everyone heals one point per combat round.

I think it works both ways? If used in combat, you get healing per turn - but if initiated outside combat, you get healing at the end of the fight - plus - the Bard gets healed periodically. I've had it on for my travels and haven't had a huge need to heal. Maybe it's healing at the end of each turn in battle, too? I need to watch it more closely. I could be wrong. I just like "healing" and ran with it.

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Aug 23, 2018 7:44 am

Paingod wrote:I played for a couple hours last night and made it to character level 6 with no deaths and down to level 2 of the Wine Cellar.

Level 6 and no deaths?! You’re not doing it right.

Paingod wrote:I use the Firehorn on any group of enemies with more than 4 in it just to speed things up.

Easy mode

Yup.

After having half my party die to 6 Barbarians I couldn't run away from at level 1, I figured I was okay with exploiting the game a little. I started over, rolled better, and use the Fire Horn to keep things easy.

Paingod wrote: ↑Thu Aug 23, 2018 11:26 am

ColdSteel wrote: ↑Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:07 am

Paingod wrote: ↑Thu Aug 23, 2018 7:49 am I keep the Bardic "Healing" song up as I travel, so everyone gets 1hp back after a fight.

Unless they just changed it, only the bard heals outside of combat with the healing song up. During combat, everyone heals one point per combat round.

I think it works both ways? If used in combat, you get healing per turn - but if initiated outside combat, you get healing at the end of the fight - plus - the Bard gets healed periodically. I've had it on for my travels and haven't had a huge need to heal. Maybe it's healing at the end of each turn in battle, too? I need to watch it more closely. I could be wrong. I just like "healing" and ran with it.

When playing a song outside of combat it becomes a "permanent" boost until the song runs out (10 hoursish game time iirc but may vary by song). So when you start combat that song is playing already. You can sing another song and it will "stack" on top of that one but it ends after combat is over. The permanent one just keeps going. It can be the same song(and same Bard) as well, which is how my 4 Bard party can quintuple stack the AC song in the first round to achieve -7+ AC's at lvl 2 fully kitted with best AC gear at the shop.

In regards to the HP regen song it only heals the Bard outside of combat (similar to magic regen) and than +1 per round for everyone while in combat. I am not sure if it scales with level but I would hope so. Also, not sure if it stacks so I could achieve +6 per round but I will experiment.

I am still testing the stack-ability of all the songs. I believe I can stack the AC buff indefinitely. IE I could have 1 perm going and then add 4 more every round until everyone loses their voices. I just hit level 3 with my party so I should try this tonight. Eventually, I'll have to start stacking other buffs to make up for diminishing returns on 4 bards trying to hurt things physically. I am curious what a 5 count damage buff can do...stay tuned.

Sepiche wrote: ↑Thu Aug 23, 2018 11:21 am Just fought the battle in Harkyn's Castle last night against the army of like 400 berserkers... that took a while.

In case you were not aware holding the space bar will speed up combat

Cortilian wrote: ↑Thu Aug 23, 2018 3:55 pm

Sepiche wrote: ↑Thu Aug 23, 2018 11:21 am Just fought the battle in Harkyn's Castle last night against the army of like 400 berserkers... that took a while.

In case you were not aware holding the space bar will speed up combat

hehe Yeah, I did figure that out. Still took a while even then.

Back when I played Bard's Tale on C-64 I had tons of gold. I'd load up all six characters and 'pool' the gold to one character. Then save the character to disk. Then shut the computer off. When you reboot and restart the game, now you have one wealthy character and five less wealthy. Pool the gold to one of the five and repeat the procedure. Repeat the procedure for all the characters, until you have pooled gold to all of them. Then start pooling gold to the first character again. In no time you'll have more gold than you can spend.

Can you do that in these reboots?

The gold and items are now 'global' - no more pooling, so it won't work, but there is way way more gold this time around (unless they tweaked it with the patch).

I played it on my trusty Apple //c, and this game helped nudge me towards my career in software engineering. I used a hex editor, without knowing what hexadecimal even was, to make small tweaks to my saved characters. Over and over again, trial and error, tweak the save (on secondary backed up floppies of course, so I didn't hurt my real characters), load the game, and see what happens: crashes, never loads, odd text in weird spots, etc. Ah, to have that much free time on my hands these days. I eventually got all of my characters the best items in the game and essentially infinite hit points and gold.

Sepiche wrote: ↑Mon Aug 20, 2018 11:04 am

Zarathud wrote: ↑Mon Aug 20, 2018 10:59 am

I was having lots of money issues early on, but once I started running the catacombs money really started pouring in (to be quickly spent teaching my mages more spells). I mentioned it up thread, but those rooms in the catacombs with like 50 - 60 skeletons are bank. At around level 12 with the bard +AC song running I was able to dodge all the attacks they made in the first round before my AOEs landed to finish them all off.

This is where I am now. 1st level of the catacombs is on full farm while I stock up for learning spells.

Keys for The Bard's Tale IV are being distributed starting today, and the game goes live on 18 September at 0800 Pacific.

Max Peck wrote: ↑Fri Sep 14, 2018 5:49 pm Keys for The Bard's Tale IV are being distributed starting today, and the game goes live on 18 September at 0800 Pacific.

I thought I had chosen a Steam key already, but when I checked, it still showed no choice made. So I had to reopen my KS survey and make the selection. Maybe I did it for the BT trilogy but not the main game. In any event, I should have my key soon before the game unlocks.

I'm quite stoked to play this. Got my key, but can't do anything with it!

Probably my first KIckstarter backed game where I have extremely high expectations. Hope that's not going to bite me when I actually play next week.

At worst, I am having a blast playing the remastered originals...can't wait for Bard's Tale II!

Still haven't got mine

IceBear wrote:Still haven't got mine

Did you redo the survey? I swore I had already chosen Steam months ago, but as soon as I went back and redid the survey, I got the email within several hours.

I did on Friday. Likewise it didn't say Steam originally but I changed it to Steam on Friday. Been afraid to redo it again thinking it might change my placement in the queue

IceBear wrote:I did on Friday. Likewise it didn't say Steam originally but I changed it to Steam on Friday. Been afraid to redo it again thinking it might change my placement in the queue

I wouldn’t worry about order. It doesn’t unlock for several days.

Yeah...not really worried. Just would like seeing that I have my key so I know for sure that things will be hassle free. I assume that I'll get my key by Tuesday but would like confirmation

Well apparently there were quite a few people that didn't get their keys even though it shows that their choice is locked. They had to contact inXile to get a key; I have done so and will let you know

The turn-around on getting my Steam key was just a matter of a few minutes. The only potential hitch for me is that the key is for the Standard Edition, but I backed the Kickstarter at the level corresponding to the Ultimate Edition. It'll be an unnecessary PITA if I have to manage all the additional stuff from individual download links instead of having it bundled under the Steam install. I guess I'll just have to wait and see how things shake out once the download is actually available.

I suspect it'll be one key for the standard game and each extra will be its own download/key.

Still no key for me and considering most people say their key came quickly it looks like something went wrong with mine. Still no feedback from inxile

I had reached out to inXile via twitter a couple of hours ago. They just got back to me and once I confirmed that I had tried their workaround (several times) they just sent me a key so it's now in my Steam library.

Sweet

Dream big or go home.


Apparently he doesn't know how to hashtag though. #TwitterFail

Max Peck wrote:Dream big or go home.


Apparently he doesn't know how to hashtag though. #TwitterFail

What the what?! Would that include Fallouts 1 and 2, or did that IP go to Bethesda as well? That would be amazing.

Yeah, Bethesda owns all the original Fallout IP.

Max Peck wrote:Yeah, Bethesda owns all the original Fallout IP.

Ah, OK. In that case, not so ‘OMFG!!!1!’ then.

So what are we talking about, Castles 1 and 2 (remember the second one fondly), Stonekeep? Battle Chess? (Loved that, too)

I guess when I think ‘Interplay’, my mind immediately goes to the bronze spinning globe and that awesome fanfare that preceded FO1 and 2