The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate

The Bard's Tale
The Bard's Tale	1987
The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight	1988
The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate	1990
The Bard's Tale Construction Set	1991
The Bard's Tale (2005)	2005
The Mage's Tale	2017
The Bard's Tale Trilogy	2018
The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep	2018
The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut	2019

The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate is a singleplayer first-person RPG game in the The Bard's Tale series.

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail

The DOS version of the game is not available digitally. Digital versions of The Bard's Tale (2005) include emulated Apple IIgs versions of The Bard's Tale, The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight, and The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate.

Characters can be imported from The Bard's Tale (*.TPW) and The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight (*.TW).

Parties cannot be imported from previous games; to recreate a party, import each member individually.

Import characters^[1]

Go to the Camp (either when starting the game or during an existing saved game).
Choose Transfer characters.
Choose the game to transfer from.
Type the full path including a final backslash (for DOSBox this will be relative to the mounted drive - see MOUNT).
If you are transferring from the first two games, you will be asked whether the character's sex is meant to be Male or Female (these games did not have the option of choosing a character's sex during character creation).
Exit back to the Camp menu and choose Add a member to add the converted characters.

System	Location
DOS	<path-to-game>\THIEF.CFG

System	Location
DOS	<path-to-game>\SAVE.GAM <path-to-game>\PARTIES.INF <path-to-game>\THIEVES.INF

Files are stored on a save floppy (when running from floppy) or in the installation folder (when running from the hard drive).

SAVE.GAM contains the current saved game.

PARTIES.INF contains party data.

THIEVES.INF contains character data. A character is only updated when that character is removed from the party at the Camp.^[2]

Graphics feature	State	Notes
Widescreen resolution		320x200 only.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed		For DOSBox toggle with `Alt`+`↵ Enter` (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Borderless fullscreen windowed		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)		For DOSBox use an unofficial build (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
60 FPS and 120+ FPS

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping		For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity		For DOSBox set in the DOSBox configuration file.
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support		For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds).

Controller types

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles		All speech is text-based.
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost		For DOSBox change the `priority` background value in the DOSBox configuration file.
Royalty free audio

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
DOS video modes	CGA, EGA, MCGA, Tandy, PCjr