Bard’s Tale IV – Party Hard with the Bard

Pull up a chair and order a pint. I’d recommend beer, mead, or ale. Skip the spirits. They’re foul and will rot your gut. And whatever you do, don’t order the ginger ale unless you want the whole tavern laughing and picking fights with you.

Has the bard a beautiful voice? She can spin a lovely tale as well. Buy her a few pints and you will feel your own spirits lifting. Be careful though, she’s mean like a tiger once she gets drunk, well until she passes out.

The Bard’s Tale series is renown for its tavern tales and drinks and for its namesake class, the Bard. InXile Entertainment just sent out a backer update. David Rogers, Creative Director, reveals two of the six classes available to the Bard archetype. Paul Marzagalli, Public Relations, and Community Manager gives a backer update and release roadmap.

The Hard Drinking Brew Master

The bards of the original series needed to visit the Adventurer’s Guild periodically to have a drink to soothe their throats. Rogers explains that Caith is a big world, in The Bard’s Tale IV, with adventures extending far beyond the walls of Skara Brae. They didn’t want to force players to stop their adventures, travel all the way back to town, and pound beers every few fights for inspiration. They wanted to hold true to the history and intent of the class, so they brought the tavern to the brawl, so to speak. In The Bard’s Tale IV your Brew Master will drink as they fight to gain Spell Points which power their songs.

The Brew Master has several skills available as they progress like Mean Drunk, Town Drunk, and the capstone Brew Master. While these bards are alcohol-fueled there is a price and it’s like a double-shot of 151 with a dry beer chaser. As bards become drunk they gain power and can unleash powerful mental attacks. That is, until their Drunken stat overtakes their Intelligence stat and they pass out leaving their party to mop up both their enemies and the bard. A good bard will need to balance their hooch intake or risk being taken out of the action.

The Rabble Rouser

This class is described as the most aggressive of the Bards, emboldening their allies to perform great feats. The Rabble Rouser is the damage buff class. The first song the Rabble Rouser learns on their way to teenage stardom is the hit “Hot Crossed Buns”. They can enter a stance to provide party healing at the end of each round. They also have a song that reduces the cooldowns of all ally abilities which can let them launch those multiple times in a row.

The Next Archetype and a Fuzzy Launch Date

The next archetype reveal will be The Practitioner, a glass cannon. This archetype unleashes their arsenal using Spell Points instead of Opportunity which lets them do damage while leaving the latter for the rest of the party. The Practitioner has five classes. There is the Conjurer a master of AOE, the Magician, enemy-disrupting Sorcerer, and monster-summoning Wizard. If you master three of those four classes, you will unlock access to the Archmage.

Paul Marzagalli reveals more backer rewards are available including wallpapers showcasing game environments. He also asks for input on their physical album cover box and teases the game subtitle. He promises an alpha time soon, beta to follow, and hopefully a 2018 Q3 release. Head on over to their Kickstarter update page to read the full story and get all the class details.