Frickin' hard!

Discussions and help for Bard's Tale III: The Thief of Fate
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Horpner
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Post by Horpner »

OK, I went back to the drawing board and restored my unhacked party, who were back at level 11. I've added another mage to the party, and decided to go without crummy special members.

My newfound commitment to not cheating has already paid off! I found a shadowshiv on the first level of UnterBrae! Now my rogue never fails to hide in shadows. Unfortunately, he still can't hit very well. But things are sort of looking up!
Death and drek? WTF?
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Horpner
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Post by Horpner »

I've got to retract most of my whinging from this thread. My problem was being accustomed to the pacing of the last half of Bards' Tale 2. Though I thought it was impossible, my party did eventually become strong enough to tackle the monsters on the third level of UnterBrae. The designers might have helped the pacing by including a few fixed encounters to function as limiters. Its' too bad BT3 doesn't have them.

There was a four-part key to this success:

1. I absolutely needed a third spell-caster instead of a special member.

2. I needed to use my bard's music more aggressively in combat. The effects aren't super strong, but when used all the time, they have cumulative effect. Bards song 4, in particular, if applied every single combat, really saved spell-points. On the third level, Sir Robin's Tune was very useful against monsters like the Killernefast who like to call for help.

3. My sorcerers needed to get to roughly level 11 so that their spells were slightly more effective.

4. Cranking up Vice to 200% speed made everything run a lot smoother. This game really taxes the power of the C64.

Hunting in level 3 yielded better items than the previous dungeon levels. The mage staffs and pure* items will have the most dramatic impact on the final battle with Brilhasti.

I found an excellent walk-through online that suggests that the PREC spell is indeed the key to defeating Brilhasti. Since my sorcerers just hit level 13, I'm now ready to face him. I think. I now have multiple REST spells per round, and slightly better equipment, and I hope it makes the difference.

Finally, it really didn't take nearly as long as I'd feared to scare up 400,000 xp. It helped to have all the "treasure chests" mapped out, but when I knew where to go to get attacked, each circuit of level three yielded around 40,000 xp, and took only about fifteen minutes.
Death and drek? WTF?
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Horpner
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Post by Horpner »

Hah! I've killed Brilhasti ap Tarj fair and square. I will offer that FEAR and FRFO spells sped things up considerably (after the Dark Guards were dead), since my rogue stopped missing after those spells were applied.

EDIT: FEAR and FRFO did nothing. Further trials revealed that OGST was the real winner for my rogues hit-rate.

The combination of PREC, DEST, and REST provides a strong chance of survival.


But there's no happy ending yet. The old fart in the Review Board offers me no reward. I don't know why, but my suspicion is that he might have stopped offering me this quest when I walked in with a high-level summoned creature. Cheating tips suggest that summoned creatures can trick him into multiply-rewarding the prize, so it makes sense that one of them might break the system in the other direction. The summoned creatures that I suspect are the Frost Giant and the Molten Man, as those are the two I recall that I might have had in my party when he suddenly started exhorting me to got to Arboria instead of into the Catacombs. If I'm right, this seems particularly cruel, since the creatures came from random figurine drops.

Anyone have any tips or procedures that might fix this?
Last edited by Horpner on Sat Feb 28, 2009 12:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Darendor
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Post by Darendor »

What level are the members of your party?
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Horpner
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Post by Horpner »

My characters are currently level 14, with only 720,000 xp to their names.
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Post by Horpner »

OK, I've proven my theory about the summoned monster breaking the Brilhasti quest. If a Molten Man is in the party, you can enter with a brand new character and the Old Man will give you the Arboria quest, effectively locking you out of the reward for defeating Brilhasti.

Now I have to figure out to fix it.
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Darendor
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Post by Darendor »

Horpner wrote:My characters are currently level 14, with only 720,000 xp to their names.
I think you're SOL if they're level 13 or higher.
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Post by Horpner »

I really hope that level 13 isn't the limit, because I'm incredulous of the ability of a level 12 party to defeat Brilhasti. Anybody care to try?

Some studying of memory dumps shows that $fe72 probably contains the quest-tracking flag (for the first character at least). It starts as 0000, and changes to 0002 after you meet the Old Man for the first time and he first gives you the Brilhasti quest. After I visit him with a Molten Man, it changes to 8003. Probably if I enter the Review Board with this flag set to 0003 I get the reward.

Testing reveals I may have to set the flag for every member of the party. Setting it just for the first character causes him to give me the Arboria quest, but not the Brilhasti reward. This is going to take more work to solve.
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Post by Darendor »

Horpner wrote:I really hope that level 13 isn't the limit, because I'm incredulous of the ability of a level 12 party to defeat Brilhasti. Anybody care to try?

Some studying of memory dumps shows that $fe72 probably contains the quest-tracking flag (for the first character at least). It starts as 0000, and changes to 0002 after you meet the Old Man for the first time and he first gives you the Brilhasti quest. After I visit him with a Molten Man, it changes to 8003. Probably if I enter the Review Board with this flag set to 0003 I get the reward.

Testing reveals I may have to set the flag for every member of the party. Setting it just for the first character causes him to give me the Arboria quest, but not the Brilhasti reward. This is going to take more work to solve.
When you're not too busy I could use your help elsewhere, by the by.

I am fairly certain the starter dungeon is meant to level characters up to 13. So I suspect that once all characters gets X experience or more the game doesn't reward the party for killing Brilhasti ap Tarj.
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Post by Horpner »

Phew!

I was able to overcome the Molten Man bug I discovered earlier in this thread, and procure my reward for defeating Dilhasti ap Do.

I had to reset each my character's "quest" flags back to 00 02, and then defeat him one more time. Lucky for me, I'd saved a snapshot from the first time I managed to kill all the Dark Guards without losing any party members. I loaded that snapshot, and then performed the following commands in the Vice monitor (Alt-M):

>3e72 00 02
>3ef2 00 02
>3f72 00 02
>3ff2 00 02
>bf72 00 02
>bff2 00 02
>1ff2 00 02

After defeating Foolnasty the Fart, I was teleported to the entrance to the review board (as usual). Inspecting memory contents, I saw that each characters "quest flag" had been set to 00 03, as I had guessed it would.

You may be able to get this quest reward at any time by using those commands (using 00 03 instead of 00 02), but note that it will clear all the quest flags. I know that the Old Man is smart enough not to give the reward to a lone first-level bard with 0 xp, though, so maybe it doesn't work unless you really kill Brilhoggy ass Tard. Moreover, I don't see the point of the "cheat" posted here and other places that allows you to get the reward more than once--it doesn't appear to be a cumulative reward.

The Old Man gave me the Arboria quest blather, and then when he waved his hand to rejuvenate all spell points, the following things were bequeathed to me:

My non-spell-casters each had their XP set to 9,000,000. This is enough to get my paladin, warrior, bard and rogue to level 35.

My three spell-casters had their HP set to 375, and their SP set to 350. They were made 13th level archmages (with 0 XP!), and were granted all the conjurer, magician, sorcerer and wizard spells. Curiously, I was granted only up to level 2 archmage spells, and had to buy the remainder. That skinflint! Each attribute that was below 20 was raised to 20.

I've happily converted one of them to a Chronomancer.

Incidentally, the official manual for this game is in error. It states:
Archmage Spells
Archmages are the wise ones who have learned at least all the spells for
three of the previous mage classes. This gives the Archmage the ability to
pick and choose from a huge batch of spells.
and
Archmage: Archmages must have mastered all the spells of any three
magic classes. With this hefty experience requirement, Archmages are
undoubtedly the most auspicious among those who cast spells for a living.
This is not true. I was offered the chance to switch to archmage after mastering all the spells of only conjurer and sorcerer.

Further:
Chronomancer: Chronomancers are the travel experts of the magic users. Before becoming one, a magic user must master all the spells of any three mage classes.
This is also not true. I was offered the chance to switch to Chronomancer after master all the spells of magician and just three levels of sorcerer spells.

Strange, but I suppose the rules were altered after the manual went to print.
Last edited by Horpner on Fri Feb 27, 2009 10:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Horpner »

One more thing before I move on from this thread.

I must give a mea culpa to the game engine of The Bard's Tale. In my comments about Bard's Tale 2 I was convinced that the game couldn't provide a challenging boss battle. Grillpasty fat Lard has proven that theory incorrect. Not only is the battle difficult, but you have to master some interesting techniques and combinations in order to win.

That's pretty cool!
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Post by Darendor »

Well done on taking out the nasty beneath Skara Brae. Now it's off to some far land for you...
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Post by ckdamascus »

Brilhasti gave me much trouble when I was a kid. Now was my time for revenge.

I never realized how good DEST was (or perhaps I had forgotten). I didn't realize OGST helps the hit rate. Your research in these matters helped me tremendously.

I made fresh characters since the stat limit from the earlier imported chars seemed really rough.

I accidentally beat him using my "level 13" team and "level 7" sorcs. But this is no good, since it makes sure you get level 7 archmages. If I am going to get the Penalty of less hitpoints (less levels to gain), I want to at least have MAMA.

So I power levelled to level 13 sorcs, then beat him again first try.

My party?

2x Pals
1x Rogue
1x Bard
2 Magicians, now 2 Sorcs (they did not learn Conj)
1 Conj.

I just casted DEST from each archmage in the first round (I would let them advance into it). They would sometimes resist. Then I would throw in DEST, REST. OGST on the rogue with shadowshiv, so he can keep hiding in shadows.

I would just DEST the Greater Demons that came out. I don't think I ran out of magic points to need the use harmonic gems. I don't think PREC is necessary.

Fairly easy but I could not have done it without your help. Feels good to get revenge on him. :)
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Post by wefuntw »

Horpner wrote:Even assuming I can find a Shadowshiv, my rogue hit rate is really bad; he has I think only three critical hits in his whole career. Part of this is that the battles are really small in BT3--usually less than four monsters to kill, so if he spends a round hiding, there's nothing left for him to kill.

Thanks for the practical advice. Trawling the net for hints on how to do this without cheating has so far been fruitless. I couldnt do it with cheating. Actually, I did transfer in your megaparty and held a lynching. But I'm still keen to do this the straight way, if possible. It really looks like they expect you to make level 20 or so before it can be solved.

The other worrysome thing is that the Old Man in the Review Board stopped asking me to kill Brilhaste way back when I hit level 5. I hope that doesn't mean I'm ineligible for the big reward.

Which platform were you playing? it's not so hard on PC version.
I started a raw party, leveled my mages to illusionists and get MIBL,
it could defeat the boss. Sure leveling took a while, a little painful.
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