The Bard's Tale: Loose ends

 

Before attempting Kylearan's Tower, I wanted to try try some earlier, optional challenges, and to do this, I assembled a new power team meant for flexibility and single-fight endurance. Magic Mike and Houdini stay home; they're too low-level. Grub the hunter lacks in armor class. P-Tux the rogue just hasn't been useful at all in this game.

Challenge 1 - The Master Sorcerer

Conrad breaks him in half before he can finish his summon!

Behind him, a clue room is accessible through a secret door.

More secret doors in his antechamber lead to corridors of more doors, an encounter of 49 perfectly harmless wights, and his treasure chamber, guarded by a dragon.

It's just a single grey dragon. We can take it.

 

Our prize is $180, some singed beard hairs, and the satisfaction of completing another map.

A Stairs up B Message C Combat D Trap E Soul Sucker F Stasis chamber G Spinner H Master Sorcerer I Stairs down J Wights K Grey Dragon

Monster XP Orcs 100 Skeletons 110 Wolves 256 Jade Monks 256 Half-Orcs 256 Zombies 512 Swordsmen 512 Magicians 512-1536 Conjurors 512-1536 Sorcerers 768-1536 Wizards 768-1536 Werewolves 1024 Black Widows 1024 Assassins 1024 Samurai 1024 Statues 1024 Ogres 1024 Wights 1024 Bladesmen 1280 Goblin Lords 1280 Master Thieves 1280 Ninjas 1536 Stone Giants 1792 Dopplegangers 1792 Spinners 1792 Scarlet Monks 1792 Stone Elementals 2048 Jackalweres 2048 Ogre Magi 2048 Blue Dragons 2048 Grey Dragon 3072 Master Sorcerer 3328 Soul Sucker 3584

 

Challenge 2 - The Jabberwock

I had defeated Harkyn's Jabberwock before with luck, but lost a rematch without it. Could my power party best it this time?

Yep.

I might have just been lucky that it didn't breathe, but I'll take it. And another crystal sword.

Challenge 3 - Mandar Guards

The slave quarters on Harkyn's confusing second floor is guarded by eight powerful guards. With Scribe's magic, my frontline's collective AC is as low as it can register.

 

This one takes several rounds, and even with this AC we suffer a few mighty blows, but eventually fell them all. Viila's Mind Fist and Scribe's Deathstrike do most of the killing; I am convinced that damage to monsters is an all-or-nothing affair in The Bard's Tale and that non-lethal blows don't actually do anything, and most of our physical strikes miss anyway.

There is absolutely nothing in the room they were guarding.

Challenge 4 - The 400 Berserkers

They look disrobed to me.

 

It's 396 berserkers, to be precise. Last time, having this many of them just wasn't survivable, but how does my party fare now?

My first try was a partial failure. Viila and Scribe would kill 66% of them in the first round with dual Mind Blast spells, but not before they landed enough hits to kill Ahab.

But then I tried it again with music. And surprise - that old AC-lowering mainstay Traveller's Tune really helps here! Our AC might not look like it can get any lower, but it can.

Turbo mode helps too.

The reward here is a handsome 59,733XP per character and a chunk of gold that I don't care about. But to be honest, I actually expected a lot more. There might be some experience capping going on here. Fighting the undead megastacks in the catacombs is probably more efficient.

 

The experience is worth a few levels; Conrad reaches level 14; Viila and Scribe reach sorcerer level 13, giving them access to the Wind Giant summon spell, and I put them on the Wizard path, where they immediately gain the powerful Repel Dead spell. This is a daunting path; though; a wizard needs 20,000XP just to reach level 2! So we go down to the catacombs again, along with the underleveled Magic Mike and Houdini, to use our newfound magic and do exactly that.