Posted March 04, 2019
I decided earlier today to play around a bit with a hex editor and hack a copy of my Bard's Tale 1 save. Here are some of the things I was able to do:
* Class change. Casters retain their spells, but fighter-types with spells can't cast them. Archmage, Chronomancer, and Geomancer can be accessed in BT1 this way.
* Interestingly enough, if you load a save where a character's XP is below the minimum required for their current level, it gets increased to the minimum. (This is probably done because of a patch that increased non-legacy XP requirements at high level; it also helps in the case of a legacy XP BT2->BT3 transfer, where fighter-types would otherwise end up with not enough XP for their level.
* Learning level 1 spells in your new class costs 0 gold. Archmage, Chronomancer, and Geomancer spells can be learned in BT1. This includes the spells to warp you to and from Arboria, though (I assume) there's no place to use the spell in BT1 or BT2.
* I was able to hack bard songs as well (they're stored as a bitfield). This gives me access to the BT2 and BT3 bard songs in BT1. Yes, this includes Kiel's Overture, and allows me to roast 396 Berserkers with that bard song. (If you're worried about game balance, the only thing that's obviously unbalanced is playing Kiel's Overture during combat, and even that is fair if you're in BT2's last dungeon because the enemies have so many HP.)
* Brigaround Ballad, a bard song that is normally only available in BT3 if you choose the legacy bard songs option, can be hacked onto your bard in the other games. The song functions properly, using its BT3 tune, but it works exactly like a certain BT1 song from a game mechanics standpoint. Unfortunately, there appears to be no way to get the BT3 versions of the songs it shares with BT2 without enabling legacy mode.
* If I can figure out how to hack spells, I want to hack the Dreamspell (from BT2) into one of the other games and attempt to cast it outside of combat; if I understand how things work correctly, this spell should attempt to teleport me to one of the BT2 dungeons. Could this be used to teleport between games without transferring characters, or will the game misbehave?
* When the game encounters invalid data (like if the character's class variable is bigger than the value corresponding to Geomenacer), the game will appear to hang, but pressing F10 will still open the menu, allowing you to open another save (or the same one, modified by another process).
* Class change. Casters retain their spells, but fighter-types with spells can't cast them. Archmage, Chronomancer, and Geomancer can be accessed in BT1 this way.
* Interestingly enough, if you load a save where a character's XP is below the minimum required for their current level, it gets increased to the minimum. (This is probably done because of a patch that increased non-legacy XP requirements at high level; it also helps in the case of a legacy XP BT2->BT3 transfer, where fighter-types would otherwise end up with not enough XP for their level.
* Learning level 1 spells in your new class costs 0 gold. Archmage, Chronomancer, and Geomancer spells can be learned in BT1. This includes the spells to warp you to and from Arboria, though (I assume) there's no place to use the spell in BT1 or BT2.
* I was able to hack bard songs as well (they're stored as a bitfield). This gives me access to the BT2 and BT3 bard songs in BT1. Yes, this includes Kiel's Overture, and allows me to roast 396 Berserkers with that bard song. (If you're worried about game balance, the only thing that's obviously unbalanced is playing Kiel's Overture during combat, and even that is fair if you're in BT2's last dungeon because the enemies have so many HP.)
* Brigaround Ballad, a bard song that is normally only available in BT3 if you choose the legacy bard songs option, can be hacked onto your bard in the other games. The song functions properly, using its BT3 tune, but it works exactly like a certain BT1 song from a game mechanics standpoint. Unfortunately, there appears to be no way to get the BT3 versions of the songs it shares with BT2 without enabling legacy mode.
* If I can figure out how to hack spells, I want to hack the Dreamspell (from BT2) into one of the other games and attempt to cast it outside of combat; if I understand how things work correctly, this spell should attempt to teleport me to one of the BT2 dungeons. Could this be used to teleport between games without transferring characters, or will the game misbehave?
* When the game encounters invalid data (like if the character's class variable is bigger than the value corresponding to Geomenacer), the game will appear to hang, but pressing F10 will still open the menu, allowing you to open another save (or the same one, modified by another process).