Game #229: The Bard’s Tale – Part V: Mangar’s Tower of Death

Mangar’s evil demesne can only be reached by a secret stairwell from deep within the sewers.

It’s red walls ooze evil and displays pictures of skulls which move and leer at you. It is five levels of death, filled with powerful guardians, deadly traps, magically darkened areas, and teleport squares which are a puzzle to solve in and of themselves.

I finally beat Bard’s Tale I !! It took me 51 hours to do so. I spent a lot of time, probably 4-6 of those hours, grinding away on the first three levels of Mangar’s Tower. There are quite a few deadly encounters and it is best to take your time with each of the first two levels until traversing them feels fairly easy. This will take much time but will make the painstaking mapping of the third level likely to be more successful. I found myself quite often entering the tower, facing a few deadly encounters, and then retreating back into Skara Brae to heal, visit the review board to level up and acquire spells, and to sell items. I did this repeatedly. This is the very essence of “grinding”.

There were not any special items to find on the first level of Mangar’s Tower. The first level was necessary to prepare you for what lies ahead in the upper levels.

The second level had even deadlier encounters but in addition to these deadly guardians there were many devastating traps and anti-magic squares which caused all your active spells to fizzle out. The saving grace for my party was that by this point in the game you’ve acquired some powerful items which mimic some of the most often used spells. A dayblade and Ybarra’s Shield were necessary magic items which aided me in completing my quest. The Fire Horn was a valuable magical instrument for the Bard. The silver circle is a necessary special item that you need to find on this level. If your party did not acquire the silver triangle, square, and circle, you will not be able to reach Mangar’s secret lair on the fifth level of the tower.

The third level of Mangar’s Tower was maddening to map. Almost the entire level is enshrouded in magical darkness.

There are phrases littered all about this level. You ultimately have to answer a riddle on this level: “Speak the seven of the One God, in Sequence, and seek the lost stars.” It took me four hours and several restarts to map out this entire level and find all of the clues. Once you answer the riddle, only then are you told that a magical stairway has opened to go to the next level. Except, I didn’t know where it was located. So even though I had the level completely mapped out, I had to save my progress and then search the entire level again. So tough.

The fourth level did not have as many encounters or magically blacked out areas to deal with, however the entire level was a puzzle. I was completely stumped until I teleported to a square which turned all walls into doors and all doors into walls. It was only then that I was able to find the stairway to the last level of this dastardly tower. There are a pair of sleeping dragons which you encounter on this level. You can beat the dragons, but they use up a lot of your necessary resources. I found that if the Bard is playing traveling music while you’re walking by the sleeping pair, they remain asleep.

The fifth level of the tower was dastardly. Mangar’s treasure trove is on this level and is guarded by two powerful black dragons. You’ll also need the silver square, triangle, and circle to grant you passage into Mangar’s secret lair.

The encounter with Mangar and his evil minions is the deadliest you’ll experience in the game. It is immensely difficult to win out.

The Demon Lords can breathe fire that easily deals 154 points of damage or they can choose to turn you to stone. The Vampire Lords are equally deadly and can slay you with only one blow. Both the Demon Lords and Mangar can summon fiends to do their bidding: more demons, or wights, or stone giants. The summoning is anathema to your success because it prevents you from advancing upon Mangar and keeps him 50 feet away from battle. This was an earlier attempt to rush to find Mangar’s secret lair and defeat him quickly. I was utterly destroyed in about three seconds.

This leads me now to the interesting aspect of this game. While the Bard is absolutely necessary to advance the game forward and thus win out – you’ll discover this for yourself in Harkyn’s Castle – the main focus of the game is placed upon the spellcasters. There are 64 different spells and three types of spellcasters: the conjuror, the magician, and then the wizard. You can only change classes to that of a wizard after you’ve obtained some levels as either a conjuror or magician. The ‘aha!’ experience that I had and found out late in the game, is that you want your spellcasters to keep changing classes. Master all of the conjuror spells, then the wizard spells, and then go back and master the third spellcasting class. When you’re exploring Mangar’s Tower, if you change classes, the encounters net you so many experience points, you’ll find that with each foray into the tower you gain multiple levels very quickly. With each level gained, you obtain more hit points, and more spell points!!!! By the time I was ready to face Mangar again, both of my spellcasters now had almost 250 hit points, and they each had about 250-300 spell points! This made my two spellcasters the most powerful characters in my party of six. The game is greatly unbalanced that way. The monk is also an extremely powerful character. When I was mapping out the catacombs early in the game, I realized how useless the Thief class was, dropped my thief from the party, and created a Monk. Each time your Monk gains a level – his armor class lowers by one. By the time I was ready for the final showdown with Mangar, my monk had an Armor Class of -22 and was killing Greater Demons with one blow!

Ultimately, I was finally able to defeat Mangar and his evil minions!

This is the statistical makeup of the party that finally was able to vanquish the evil reign of Magar. Note the inflated stats on both spellcasters. If I chose to play this again, I’d love to challenge myself with a party made up of two monks, a bard, and three spellcasters. Note the armor class of the monk.

It was nice to get back into the saddle again. I had a long hiatus from the blog this year due to work and I am appreciative for the time I have found to return to something I love. I have been adding games to the site’s game database again and The Bard’s Tale is the first game that I’ve completed here in 2025. It took me 51 hours to complete the game so you can already see the amount of time required to beat these games now compare to those games which have come before it. The early Moria being the exception. I greatly enjoyed the remaster. The improved graphics, sounds, music, for me, made what was already a good game even better. I found that by the time I was midway through Harkyn’s Castle, the addiction to the grinding and level advancement was becoming real. This game is deadly. It is very difficult to remain alive, and the mapping is extremely difficult. Probably the most difficult game to date. If you’re an individual who does not like “grinding”, you’ll hate this game. This early dungeon crawler featured it all, early advanced graphics much superior to it’s Wizardry competitor. It had music, sound effects, the semblance of a story, numerous different foes, 64 different spells, five different dungeons and 16 different dungeon levels in totality. Skara Brae was like a dungeon level itself as you explored it’s environs. The numerous magical items with different functions, and the diverse classes you had to choose from with all of the accompanying strengths and weaknesses, really made this a standout game in 1985. It is no wonder that it is talked about so much and spawned three different sequels as well as a Bard’s Tale Construction Set.

Next up on my docket is Phantasie which was also produced in 1985. Until next time…..