Game 555: Castle of the Winds: Part Two - Lifthransir's Bane (1992)

 

       

Castle of the Winds: Part Two - Lifthransir's Bane

SaadaSoft (developer); Epic MegaGames (publisher, as shareware)

Released 1992 for Windows 3 

Date Started: 13 July 2025

Date Ended: 16 July 2025

Total Hours: 12

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5) but user-definable
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)  

         

Well, Part Two was mechanically very much the same as Part One, but I enjoyed the plot, and there were some notable equipment upgrades.

     

Part Two allows you to create a new character or import one from the first part. New characters start at Level 7 with 1,880 experience points, which is one level less (and about half the experience) as my imported character. More important, my imported character came in with over 90,000 copper pieces and a full set of equipment. A new character has only 75,000 copper pieces and must purchase everything anew.

       

The sequel offers similar gameplay to the original.

       

The game begins with a long message indicating that the Amulet of Kings has teleported the character to a small city with a keep and a Temple of Odin. To the north are "the massive ruins of the Castle of the Winds." The message recommends that the player stop and speak to the jarl before heading to the castle, but an attempt to enter the keep has the character stopped by a "burly guard" who refuses to believe the character's story or to let him pass. "[The jarl is] busy enough trying to handle creatures that sneak out and kidnap peasants. Do something about them and maybe he'll talk to you."

             

The opening moments.

        

The nearby town has a lane with five stores on each side. There are two armor shops, two weapon shops, two magic shops, two general stores, and two scroll-and-potion shops. South of the keep is the Temple of Odin. West of the keep is a bank. There's a sage (who identifies equipment) north of the keep, but it's hard to imagine a player who gets to this point without "Identify" in his spellbook already. North of the sage are a few rows of huts; the player can't do anything with them. The road to the castle stretches north from the huts, and along the way is a junk shop that will buy anything, even cursed or broken items. 

               

Wandering the streets of the new city.

      

There are no enemies in the town or on the castle screen to the north. The first floor ("Level 0") of the castle has a fixed layout. In the throne room is the corpse of the character's grandfather, King Lifthransir. (Like all the proper names in the game, "Lifthransir" comes from Norse mythology. A man and a woman, Lifthrasir and Lif, are foretold to survive Ragnarok and to repopulate the world.) As the character approaches, the ancient king's ghost speaks and lays out the backstory: One day during his reign, the trickster god Loki showed up and offered him a helm that would give the king control over wind and storms. What Loki didn't mention is that the helm was stolen from Thor's treasure room, and that Surtur, "the demon Lord of Fiery Muspelheim," wanted the helm for himself. Thus, shortly after Lifthransir accepted the artifact, the kingdom was invaded by hill, stone, frost, and fire giants. "They came, led by their kings, and with them came devils from Muspelheim. Even now they roam the lower depths."

          

Finally entering the titular castle.

       

The kingdom tried to hold out, but it was hopeless. Lifthransir's subjects made their last stand in the throne room, and Surtur himself "slew [the king] with his sword of fire, took the helm, and doomed [him] to roam Midgard as a spirit for as long as he remained!" But as he died, Lifthransir declared that one of his descendants would return and banish the fire giant and his allies. He suggests there's a time limit to this task, but if so, it's unspecific.

     

Meeting grandpa.

       

The dungeon below the throne room level is 25 levels, randomly-generated. As with the first game, but unlike Moria and Angband, the levels persist in memory after you leave, so you can fully explore and clear them. I did discover that if you go up or down the stairs by hitting SHIFT-parentheses instead of SHIFT-angle brackets, you'll get a new random level. I don't see a particular reason to do that in this game, but the mechanic is there.

       

As I explored, I almost immediately fell into the familiar pattern that characterized the final hours of Part One—indeed, that characterize Moria (1983), Angband (1992), and every other variant in this line, including the later Diablo (1997). I explored until my backpack was full, cast "Rune of Return," identified and sold all my stuff, checked the shops for new items that I might want, healed, and cast "Rune of Return" again to go to the lowest dungeon level explored so far. I did this about once per dungeon level, sometimes twice. Moria offered scrolls of return, of course, but the game mechanics required a bit more strategy than this. The player couldn't memorize the spell, for one thing; he had to hunt for scrolls, and sometimes there weren't enough. Even then, various calamities could befall him in the dungeon that might destroy his scrolls. Those don't exist in Castle. With "Rune of Return" as a learned spell, costing very little to cast, there's no reason not to use it for regular healing and mana restoration. You can just warp out to a safe space, rest, then warp back. 

      

Getting surrounded like this is a bad idea.

    

The other aspect that makes the game a bit too easy is a spell, which I found within two or three levels, to fully heal the character. It obviates most of the other spells, makes intelligence the most important attribute, and completely changes the nature of combat. Now you can just whack away, watching your hit points, fully heal when they get too low, and keep whacking away. These two spells together make dungeon exploration incredibly rote.

          

The game offers lots of new gear.

        

And yet I still had fun upgrading the character. Part Two introduces some equipment not found in Part One, including utility belts that greatly expand the number of active items you can carry, Packs of Holding, Gauntlets of Slaying, Boots of Speed, Elven Chain Mail, elixirs that resist elements, and—best of all—potions that permanently increase attributes. I also learned something that I didn't realize in the previous game: not all "enchanted" items are equal. You have to right-click on them to see the nature of the enchantment. One set of Bracers of Defense might "increase the armor value," but another set might "strongly increase the armor value." There's even a "very strongly." Weapon enchantments can increase accuracy or damage or both, or increase attributes. Armor enchantments might include resistances to elements in addition to AC boosts. Between stuff I found in the dungeon and the rotating inventories of the shops, I was constantly getting upgrades.

       

My endgame inventory. Note the different enchantments on my bastard sword.

       

The one negative aspect of all of this is that if you want anything, you don't need to worry about paying for it. I ended the game with 1.6 million copper pieces after buying anything I wanted whenever I wanted it. I could have made it more challenging by relying exclusively on found money instead of selling unwanted equipment, I guess.

       

Monsters are naturally harder as you go down. You meet dragons of various types and colors, starting with young dragons on early levels and progressing to ancient ones on later levels. There are demons who can summon other demons, giants, vampires and other high-level undead, elementals of all types, and necromancers. So many of them (in addition to traps) are capable of attribute-draining attacks that I got in the habit of simply chugging attribute-restoring potions whenever I found them, plus visiting the Temple of Odin to pay for restoration services on every visit to the town.

      

I have three attributes to restore from that last visit.

     

Once I had the "Heal" spell, only high-level dragons gave me much trouble. They have a fun breath animation, and some of those breaths were capable of wiping away all my hit points in one attack if I didn't have any resistance. Thus, an exception to using almost all of my spell points for "Heal" was to cast resistance spells against the appropriate element when I saw those dragons coming. I got a little use out of mass-damage spells like "Fireball" and "Ball Lightning" when enemies clustered together. 

       

That breath animation.

        

All that remains is to tell you the story beats:

    

• On Level, I heard someone "screaming for help." (Or so the game said; the sequel has no more sound than its predecessor.) I found a woman tied to an altar in a room full of ogres. She thanked me for rescuing her. She said she was a simple farmer who had been kidnapped to sacrifice to Surtur, and she warned me that Surtur is immune to fire but vulnerable to the lightning bolts that Thor uses.

      

Well, well, what's happening in here?

         

• After this rescue, the jarl was willing to see me. He gave me 100 gold pieces, or 10,000 copper pieces, a laughably small sum given what I already had. Later, I visited him again, and he gave me some Gauntlets of Slaying and told me the depth of the dungeon (25 levels).

       

I'm not going to post all the long text screens, but the game is more verbose than my summaries suggest.

    

• On Level 6, I met a wolf-man in charge of a pack of wolves. On Level 8, a bear pack. On Level 12, a wizard leads some manticores. These were all brief encounters, but they at least had some context.

• The giants and their kings were found in special rooms on Levels 16 (hill giants), 18 (stone giants), 20 (fire giants), and 22 (storm giants). Each king has a mocking message when you first engage him and then a death message in which he expresses confidence that he'll be avenged by Surtur.

        

The hill giant king's welcome message.

Entering the stone giant king's lair.

The frost giant king's death message.

        

I don't know whether it's necessary to defeat all of these fixed encounters on the way down. I suspect not. It's easy to miss some of them because of the game's love of trap doors, although I insisted on working my way back up to finish each previous level whenever I encountered them. I stuck resolutely to the pattern of exploration and return even when it became clear that I could probably win by just heading directly for the endgame.

   

I made it to Character Level 13. I got to 11 through experience alone, then immediately quaffed two Potions of Gain Level I had been saving for the occasion. I don't know what the level maximum is, but to make it to the 245,720 experience points required for Level 14 would require days of grinding. 

       

Hitting my max level.

         

Surtur is in a throne room on Level 25, surrounded by demons, giants, dragons, and other minions. It took me a while to clear them out. When I first struck Surtur, he responded with a monologue in which he claimed credit for killing my father, grandfather, and godparents and expressed confidence he would do the same to me. "I still have the legions of Muspelheim and Niflheim at my command!" Yes, he's capable of gating in demons as one of his attacks, although this isn't too dangerous if you can trap him in a hallway.

     

I used "Ball Lightning" here, just for fun.

      

He disappears a couple of times during the battle, like Minax in Ultima II, and you have to go hunting him down in some remote part of the level. When he finally dies, he has a villain's speech as a portal takes him to Hel. He leaves the Helm of Storms behind. I didn't have any problem killing him. I just had to cast "Heal" a lot. I might have restored my mana once with a potion.

           

There you are, you rascal.

        

The Helm of Storms makes the character simultaneously resistant to fire, cold, and lightning plus keeps "Detect Monsters" active. Unfortunately, "Rune of Return" doesn't work with the helm in the character's possession, so I had to walk up 25 flights of stairs. It's good that I had taken the time to fully explore each level.

    

Upon my return to the surface, I visited the jarl first. He congratulated me on my victory, knelt before me (apparently, the king of the Castle of the Winds outranks the jarl of the town), and reminded me to take the helm to my grandfather's ghost so that the helm could be returned to Thor.

       

That's too bad. I was looking forward to meeting him.

        

King Lifthransir said that not only was I king ("by deed and bloodright"), but Thor had visited and said that it was fine if I kept the helm. I took the throne and the game was over. I was a little disappointed to see that my leaderboard position was determined entirely by experience points and that my 1.6 million copper pieces did nothing for me.

   

I'm not sure I need to offer a full GIMLET or even change it from Part One. I thought the sequel had slightly better equipment, but it was balanced against a lower challenge. I also thought Part Two was a bit too long. I got bored by the end, longed for the more complex mechanics of Moria, and reached a conclusion that was a bit different from last time: While I would still prefer to replay Castle to taking another trip through Moria, that's entirely because Castle has an endgame achievable within a reasonable time frame. Mechanically, I would pick Moria. So I think the higher score for Moria makes sense. I give Lifthransir's Bane a 35.

        

I'm going to be awfully alone in this huge castle.

       

Since we covered the developer's history and future in the last entry, there's not much else to discuss here. Both parts of the game get a lot of love online, perhaps a bit more than they deserve. It's a fun game, and it hits my "recommended" threshold, but I think its place in the hearts of gamers has more to do with timing than quality. It rode the crest of the Windows, Internet, and shareware explosions and was more accessible than the ASCII roguelikes that preceded it. I have faith we'll find better graphical roguelikes in the future, however.

    

****

      

I just wanted to offer an aside here because I have nowhere else to talk about this stuff. I called Castle a bit boring and repetitive, and it was, but it would have been more so if I hadn't been listening to a book at the same time. That book was Stephen King's The Outsider (2018). I have a complicated relationship with Stephen King. I've always enjoyed his books, but after investing years and multiple re-reads in The Dark Tower series, I felt deeply betrayed by the last book (The Dark Tower, 2004) that I kept away from him for 20 years. Okay, that wasn't absolute. I read 11/22/63 (2011) because I kept hearing how good it was (and I agreed), and I gave Under the Dome (2009) a try because I liked the concept, but I thought it had a horrible ending. It's not an original observation that King can be awful with endings, and it's not helped by his insouciant insistence that he simply "finds" the story and has no control over where it goes.

   

Mid last year, I decided to give him another try. I started at random with Joyland (2013), which I knew nothing about. I began the book during a morning commute and was listening when I got home on my evening commute. At some point, I realized I was sitting in my driveway, refusing to get out of the car and go inside, because I was riveted by the book—and at this point in the story, absolutely nothing had happened except a teenager from New Hampshire had gone down to North Carolina to apply for a job at an amusement park. He managed to make it riveting with the quality of language alone, the evocation of scene, the establishment of character, the realism of dialogue. I've always thought King was a good writer, of course, but I don't think it ever hit me how good until I was delaying dinner to hear about the day-to-day operations of a fairground.

      

I've since listened to Doctor Sleep (2013), the entire Bill Hodges trilogy, Revival (2014), Blaze (2007), and Duma Key (2008). It strikes me that somewhere along the line, King finally got good at plotting an ending. So far, Dome seems to me the only recent book for which he had a good idea and couldn't make it work. Don't get me wrong—Revival has a horrible, horrible ending. It's perhaps the most horrific horror novel I've ever read. It has ideas that nobody, particularly those in the second half of their lives, should have implanted in their heads. But it's horrible for its content, not its plotting.

 

I am now hopelessly ensorcelled by The Outsider. (Please, no spoilers, even if you know the ending and find it deliciously ironic that I have just claimed that "King finally got good at plotting an ending.") I have no idea which way it's going. I don't even know whether it's going to turn supernatural or not. I keep looking for excuses to do errands so I can listen to it. So hats off to Stephen King, who is having an amazing "late period" and will always be oddly paired in my memory with Castle of the Winds.