Random remaining inaccuracies in Legacy Mode

[Adventure Square]

- Various equipment is usable by the wrong characters classes in at least Bard's Tale 1.
- Chest disarming incorrectly is unavailable to non-rogues
- Chest disarming UI rework is obviously inconsistent, but increases chance of error. In the original system, the choices were (T)rap Zap, and (D)isarm. Now they are (5) Disarm and (6) trap zap. The latter are far, far easier to miskey. Overall competency at touch typing numbers is far lower. This could be reduced by moving my rogue to the front of the party, though miskey would still exist, it would not result in an unintended action. However, a rogue leading the party doesn't sound like a good idea.
- Exposed (and variable) hunter skill
- Wrong initial stat ranges (generally N-1, mimicing the amiga bugs)
- Vastly too much gold
- Still no differentiation between forward and forward-open-door. (necessary for disabled automap!)
- Traveller's Tune still double-strength.

I assume the gold is intentional, but this is called Legacy Mode, right? Gold is a bit broken in the Bard's Tale 1/2/3 design, where it's generally only relevant towards the start (and in 3, barely even that), but by pumping it up it's kind of never relevant. This isn't really an improvement, at least not for Legacy Mode.

This is less of a problem in the plain remaster, because you can stuff a very large number of gold pieces into identifying items at Roscoe's. Legacy (rightly) lacks this gold sink, so money should probably be returned to closer to BT1 levels. The ability to grind large enemy counts in Legacy is also a factor. I began BT2 with close to 3 million gold. At original game levels, gold also piled up, but it was a realistic cushion against a string of party wipes for a while. Exploring Mangar could easily be money negative due to level drains and stonings unless you knew what to run away from.

Minor:
- In many prompts to select a character, choosing one from the character list doesn't work, though sometimes it does.
- Sanctuary Score incorrectly shows mystic shield icon
- When attacking, only groups A and B are listed. C and D are not displayed. In Non-Legacy mode this might be a deliberate choice (though I would argue it is poor one, just grey out C and D, or things out of range). In Legacy Mode, it is inaccurate.
- The lighting remains too dim to see walls accurately 3-4 tiles away, rendering GRRE pretty useless. This is pretty bad in no-automap, because some dungeons are built to rely on mapping at a distance.

Annoyances:
- During character creation, it's natural to type the character name incorrectly into the portrait filter, which results in the wrong portrait an confusion when asked for the name "again". Avoidable with some kind of YES THIS PORTRAIT action located right by the filter entry.

[Adventure Square]

- The "first quest" to find the review board is mostly removed, as the building is obvious while walking past it.
- Apport Arcane / APAR to Mangar 3 and within Mangar 3 works, which is weird because the game skull indicator says it doesn't. Maybe a code logic bug?
- BT2+ Monster party members cannot be saved at the Adventurer's Guild (or renamed etc.)

Minor:

- The Skara Brae map has a variety of alterations.
- The Destiny Knight outside map has a very large number of alterations. The most obvious is the lack of wrapping, but good deal of the layout was changed as well. (Though automap bizarrely behaves as if it does map around.)
- The portrait for the Princess in the Dark Domain is a human .

Arguable:
- In the Apple II and C64 originals, quitting the game outside the review board (ie,powering off) would result in a loss of the money you were carrying with you. This was the primary reason that Banks were useful in Bard's Tale 2. This meant that "just reload" had consequences. It also led to me storing most of my money on a character called MONEYBAGS who would never leave the Adventurer's Guild. This "feature" did not reach most ports, probably because ensuring a game won't crash is outside your control on MS DOS, AmigaDOS.

Theoretically such behavior could find a home as an iron man flag of sorts, but is sort of inconsequential without other changes.

Uncertain:
- Many stacks of Gimps up to and over 100 on Mangar 5. I don't remember ever encountering a Gimp in the original game, and certainly not this many. Maybe I'm just exploring more, but I suspect this is inconsistent.

[Madpuppet]

Garths shop is split into item categories.

Is what you are looking for solved by having an option that splits the player inventory into item categories also... that way you'd be changing between items that are next to each other, and it would be obvious what alternative items you can switch between.

If so, it might be something we could do in a future patch.

[Adventure Square]

- Spell point regeneration, Spellpoint drain, hit point regenaration and hit point drain are all not faithful. In the original games, both drain effects activated upon entering the location, and did not activate continuously (or at least not quickly enough to notice). Spell point and hit point regeneration activated on the periodic tick which was maybe every 20 seconds or so? In this game, all of these effects activate every 2 to 3 seconds, which means the recharge square are vastly stronger, and if you can run through the drain quickly enough, they don't do anything at all! This is pretty obviously wrong in places like the Graphnar Lord in the Maze of Dread. The whole long corridor of spell drain takes off less than 100 points, making it essentially meaningless. Similarly, the drain corridor on Oscon 4 costs a mere 105 spellpoints. To put this in perspective I walked all the way in, faught Oscon using triple casts of Mangar's Mallet, then walked out through the drain *again*,and continued to explore the level, continuing to clear fights with Mangar's Mallet casts.
- Probably due to the same saving throw inaccuracies affecting traps, Mage Maelstrom is far more effective here than in the original game. It seems to work essentially every time in Dargoth 2 & 3.
- The original games had a subtle "step taken" noise, and a 'hit a wall' noise. Together they let you notice situations like stepping into a teleporter, if you were paying attention. You'd get a stutter for the step noise. In this game, USUALLY stepping in a teleporter is no problem, because the heads-up map just vanishes, making it crazy obvious. However, when in darkness, there's essentially no indicator. This is mostly just annoying because hitting scry site after taking a single step doesn't allow you to place the teleport target on the automap. In automap-off it would be kinda bad.
- Malevolence squares did not seem to exist in the original, though perhaps they just did get clearly communicated.
- Various special effects illuminate the darkness with second sight (which is kind of cool, but definitely inaccurate.)
- Some special effects illuminate through walls in darkness (???) Stand facing a wall in darkness with malevolence on the opposite side. It's definitely not accurate to the original experience, and probably not intended.
- I don't remember stats going to 20 in BT2. Is this correct?

- "fixed" encounter locations without fixed encounters did not actually trigger immediately. That is, the squares that are just supposed to have a fight that leaves a chest would take a moment or two (sometimes surprisingly long) to trigger. I suspect they were on some timer to check. The net result was that running down a hallway of "fixed" encounters would get a handful. In this game, _ALL_ of them trigger, which is fairly tedious.

- Although the idea of the delivery of the "arrows" in the Destiny Stone makes sense, due to how games have changed. It's easy to miss some. Probably a "do you want to proceed" should be added of some kind, similar to snare 6.

- Save Anywhere in the ports that supported it in Bard's Tale 2 supported saving in Death Snares, while the remaster does not.

- The outside maps in Bard's Tale 3 are substantially altered.

- In Bard's Tale 3, the size of dungeon floors was not immediately obvious, even with the incluided automap, and was a part of discovery. In this game, the placement within the floor and approximate size are immediately obvious on the automap screen. Since in Barfd's Tale 1&2 , all dungeons are 22x22 this is essentially a non-change there.

I remember Festering Place 2 as requiring the use of phase door to proceed, Will have to check. Certainly it did not have false walls you can just walk through.


Positive:

- Some typos in the text of Bard's Tale III have been removed.

MadPuPPeT: That's only a partial solve. If I have ten weapons (common), the same problem can occur.

[Adventure Square]

And on a different note:

Things I wish were not consistent.

- The Sage's hint for the Destiny Stone. This is just babble. I can only assume it is left over from an earlier design.
- In the Grey Crypt You sell your steel past dawn and drift... No idea what this means. If it's an oblique hint to the exit word or the snare, I can't see it
- In the Oscon snare: the required order of the RPS is not super hard to guess,but isn't hinted anywhere. At least the game should suggest they need to be in another order instead of suggesting you simply don't have them.
- The Bezwark came, the axeman fell, the key was dropped within the well. appears to mean nothing at all and reference nothing. IRKM DESMET DAEM and SAMEN NHOTIG etc are red herrings too but they self-correct

[Adventure Square]

- Oscon 3 is severely broken in all modes, making it easier to skip the main puzzle than even find the puzzle.
- The unnecessary Harmonic Staff further destroys the spell point balance.

[kaypy]

Originally posted by Adventure Square:

- In the Grey Crypt You sell your steel past dawn and drift... No idea what this means. If it's an oblique hint to the exit word or the snare, I can't see it

This was one of the hints for the sphinx. Of course, the current version just pretty much tells you the answer outright instead of making you figure it out...

[Adventure Square]

Originally posted by kaypy:

Originally posted by Adventure Square:

- In the Grey Crypt You sell your steel past dawn and drift... No idea what this means. If it's an oblique hint to the exit word or the snare, I can't see it

This was one of the hints for the sphinx. Of course, the current version just pretty much tells you the answer outright instead of making you figure it out...

Weird, even knowing the answer, I can't see how this hints towards it.

The other hint, "Past days of wisdom's early reign, past years of fire, wrath, and pain, a passage down you've yet to gain" seems a moderately direct pointer. The one you reference seems more like they forgot to update it after they made other changes.