Ravenloft: Strahd's Confession

You're so vain, you probably think this game is about you.

         

Grinding has proven unnecessary in this game, at least so far, but I start this session doing a fair bit of it anyway, just so I can get my new cleric, Mischa, up to Level 5. I start with ghouls in the Cemetery, but it turns out they only deliver 44 experience points each, so I'd have to kill 100 of them. (Vampires are worth more but apparently do not respawn.) Darklings in town and werewolves in the Wooded Area West of Barovia are worth 105 each, but they're actually dangerous and also somewhat limited in number. From an efficiency standpoint, I think the best option is zombies on the Old Svalich Road North. They're worth 68 points each and there are a lot of them in a small area. More important, they have no status effects when they strike.

   

Once Mischa is Level 5, I head for the crypt with the banshee. It takes some fumbling, but I figure it out. There are two statues flanking the entrance to the crypt, and when I use the pouches of Unusual Gold Dust on them, I awaken the female spirits within them. They speak of a brave elven warrior, slain unjustly by "a prince of our land" (Strahd?), entombed below the crypt. Their sister—the banshee—guards the entrance, but their blessing will allow us to pass. Sure enough, when we enter the crypt, the banshee is gone. Stairs head downward beyond the point that she guarded.

       

My first idea, to throw the dust on the banshee, ended more quickly and hilariously than this.

          

We head down and find ourselves in the Elven Warrior's Crypt, Lower Level 1, which of course suggests that there will be multiple levels. I thought this was going to be a quick lark. We start exploring corridors decorated with statues and tapestries. 

   

We meet the ghost of the titular Elven Warrior in the second chamber. He relates that the prince who slew him was not Strahd, but his own brother. Both brothers loved the same woman (the banished banshee), who the brother also killed. To free their spirits and allow them to go to Avernaith, I will need to find a locket in the hallways below.

       

It was nice of someone to decorate the place.

         

Encounters in this dungeon:

   

• Werebats and wights. The werebats pose no real danger, but the wights can level-drain, so I start using "Negative Plane Protection" scrolls and spells. It turns out that they a) only protect one character for b) one hit. Easier to just stay back, which isn't so hard since the wights seem to have trouble with doors. Still, I end up reloading a lot in this area. The wights sound like elephants.

      

Freaky but easy. Like your mom.

       

• A room full of arrows for some reason. I'd rather have my back characters do nothing than spend time picking them up after each battle. Fortunately, my back characters have returnable throwing weapons.

     

A special screenshot for my OCD readers.

        

• A room full of shields and spears, including two Javelins of Lightning. I'll save those for some future boss battle that will definitely come at some point and make itself crystal clear when it does. 

• A lightning bolt trap. Maybe a thief would have identified and disarmed it.

• Mage scrolls with "Wizard Eye" and "True Seeing."

• A spinner.

• Multiple piles of bones, each of which I feel compelled to try the Rod of Rebirth on.

• I like the paintings and tapestries, but the artists in this place seriously need some new ideas. Everything is either a ship confronting a sea monster, an evergreen tree, or a king in robes carrying a staff.

    

Nice of the developers to take a position on Maine politics.

       

• On the floor of a corridor, in a pouch, I find a Ring of Free Action.

• We encounter something called a "pyre elemental." It repeatedly kills my first two characters. The game has no "Resist Fire" spell. I kill it by shooting it at a distance with a Wand of Frost. Mischa hits Level 6. There are more of them later, and Somers, Quill, and Glorianna all hit Level 8 at about the same time.

           

I like to think I'm not shooting a "Fireball" at him.

          

The large level falls into a pattern. There are four locked doors in one section. Hidden buttons around the level open the doors in succession. Each door has a teleporter behind it that takes the party to a new section of the level, where they must find the button to open the next teleporter before finding the teleporter out of the hidden area. Each "return" teleporter dumps the party in the corridor with the lightning bolt trap, where they must hie out of the way before the bolt fires.

      

This is a big dungeon.

         

Eventually, we find a key, which unlocks the door to the next level. The lower level is equally as large as the upper one and very maze-like. We meet more pyre elementals, and for undead, the game introduces specters. They level-drain just as quickly as wights and are utterly unimpressed at my attempts to turn them. I start keeping "Prayer" and "Aid" going as I travel. "Negative Plane Protection" doesn't seem worth memorizing given how short a time it lasts. 

      

Somehow, this is the best shot I got of a specter. Look, from now on, there are no more "spectres" or "sceptres" on my blog, regardless of how the game spells things.

         

I do my best to actually use items as we move forward, including wands, potions, scrolls, and Oils of Fiery Burning. I think it's time to admit that I'm never going to use all these "Raise Dead" scrolls, though. I can't imagine a scenario in which I'd rather lose a point of constitution than reload an earlier save. I also have a lot of "Cure Disease" scrolls, and I'm waiting for something to cause disease.

        

This level requires finding a bunch of these buttons.

        

Moving on:

   

• A room has a Wand of Fireballs and a suit of Elven Chainmail. Glorianna remarks that even mages could wear the chainmail—except that she can't.

     

Is your name Willis? 'Cause I have to ask you . . .

        

• Mischa hits Level 7 against another pyre elemental. This has been a good session for him. 

• Fireballs shoot down some corridors. 

• In a nook, I find my first magic shield along with a magic battle axe.

• In another nook, a Bag of Holding with eight slots, all filled with stones. I note that you can put other containers in it, but I'm a bit afraid to do that.

• More spinners. They're particularly annoying in this game because if you travel a single inch beyond the spinner, you have to turn around and enter it again. You have to notice immediately when you've spun, stop, and then back up to continue going the original direction. I'm never a huge fan of spinners, but I definitely like them more in tiled games. 

         

There's no way to show a spinner, so here's a nice shot of a statue.

        

The goal on this level is to open a series of doors, each with a button hidden somewhere in the dungeon. I get all but one of them on the first pass, then have to run around for about an hour hunting down the last one. The succession of doors ends in a large room with the elven warrior's signet ring.

     

Back on the first level, the warrior gratefully accepts the artifact: "You have freed not only my tortured soul, but that of the groaning spirit and her sisters. We go to Avernaith, that place of beauty away from all but elves." He leaves behind an ancient elven sword, platemail, shield, helm, and crown. The last item is clearly the second item I need to use Trimia's Catalogue and escape this place.

        

All right, lyricists: get to work.

        

While I was fiddling with my inventory at some point during this session, I noticed that almost all my scrolls are called "Scroll of Whatever," but a few of them are called "Special Scroll of Whatever." I note that the game won't actually let me use them. I come to suspect that these are the spells needed to cure the werewolf over in the Wooded Area West of Barovia. Once I'm in the sunlight again, I head over there to test the theory.

     

Quill tries to be polite about it.

      

There are three Special Scrolls: "Atonement," "Cure Disease," and "Remove Curse." If the order matters, then I'm lucky enough to get it on the first try. The werewolf melts back into a human. He's happy to be normal again, but he remembers his victims as a werewolf. "I must make amends. I must help those families I have cruelly torn." (This immediately reminds me of the Jack Handey quote: "It's sad when a family is torn apart by something as simple as a pack of wild dogs.") He gives me a key to his house in Barovia, where he says a questionable "reward" will be waiting: "Many of my victims' belongings are there."

         

Will your story shine like a light, or end in a field?

         

Ugh. There are a million houses in Barovia, and I don't remember which ones had locked doors. I should have been using annotations. I sigh, head back to Barovia, and find the house in about twenty minutes. His room of blood treasure does have a lot of stuff, including a halberd, seven sling bullets, an adamantite plate helmet, a dagger, a cloak, a spear, a shield, two Potions of Extra Healing, a quiver, Keoghtom's Ointment, a suit of chainmail, Gauntlets of Dexterity (they just add +1), and a Ring of Regeneration. 

    

As we enter the room, Somers the Paladin complains: "There is nothing here worth defiling our good natures over. How can we confiscate the objects of the slain, of innocents sent to their deaths by a werewolf?" But Somers the Paladin disagrees: "What's done is done. Lord Dhelt's Amulet is our goal, retrieving it the greater good. To use what we can from these supplies is only common sense."

      

Maybe she's possessed.

             

This is the kind of thing I was just talking about in the comments. Clearly, the game is just selecting the speakers at random; otherwise, Somers wouldn't be arguing with herself. It would have been nice if these types of outbursts were tied to the characters' classes or alignments. The first one makes sense coming from the lawful good Somers; the second may have made more sense from a more chaotic or neutral character. You could imagine an evil character being even more mercenary, although I don't think the game has any.

     

It's an authentically good roleplaying choice, whether to use powerful items like the Gauntlets of Dexterity and Ring of Regeneration despite their grisly origins—although it raises a key question: in a blobber, who are you really "role-playing?" I keep the items, less because I'm convinced it's the right decision and more because I haven't saved the game since before I cured the werewolf. But if Somers had made a stronger argument and not immediately contradicted herself, I probably would have kept her happy. 

    

I can't think of anything to do at this point except head for Ravenloft, I head up the Old Svalich Road North and unlock the gate. A cutscene shows our arrival at the castle. No key is necessary to enter the building itself.

      

"Particularly since you've been here before and met him."

      

We're back on the main floor of Castle Ravenloft. The first door we open disgorges a huge pack of doom guards. Backing up from them, we accidentally leave the castle and have to watch the cutscene again as we re-enter.

      

We're greeted by Strahd's minions.

       

The doom guards turn out not to be very hard, though they're worth a solid 500 experience points. Amidst growls of some nearby monsters, we move into the main hall, where we've already been. The dining room in which Strahd greeted us last time is empty, though there's a nice portrait of him on the wall. On the other side of the room, between two griffon tapestries, is a portrait of what looks like a man and a woman. It's too bad that the graphics can't quite show more detail.

      

When you get to my last paragraph, remember this shot.

         

An illusory wall in the dining room leads to a hallway with more doom guards and a gargoyle who dies so quickly that I don't get a screenshot. The hallway ends at stairs going both up and down. Instead of continuing to follow the right wall and go immediately upstairs, I decide to take this castle one floor at a time. I'm going to need to break this entry while still in the Castle, and it will get confusing if I'm all over the place.

       

A difficult decision.

         

Continuing to move counter-clockwise around the floor, I find:

   

• A lightning trap. It's right on the other side of the secret door from the dining room. I don't know how I missed it on the way through. Again, I'm curious if a thief helps with these traps.

• Another set of up/down stairways in the main hall.

• A long hallway with more doom guards. Mischa hits Level 8. 

• In an enormous chapel with numerous benches, we find a book on the floor. It is titled I, Strahd. In it, Strahd describes how his brother, Sergei, was destined to be a priest but fell in love with a peasant girl named Tatyana. Strahd scorned his brother's choice, then fell in love with the girl himself the moment that he saw her. "From that moment on, my brother became no more than a cold obstacle to me, and Tatyana became my life." Honest of him. I wouldn't have left that book on the floor. 

       

Strahd says that he "fell in love," but all he can say about the girl is her physical appearance. Gross.

        

• Two side rooms, perhaps a vestries, have more doom guards and gargoyles. Each has a stairway up.

       

Got a screenshot this time.

        

• An illusory wall on the north end of the chapel leads to a small closet with a mage scroll of "True Seeing" and two cleric scrolls of "Cure Serious Wounds."

   

At this point, I cannot find any other paths from the Main Floor, although the misshapen automap suggests otherwise. I've rubbed along every wall looking for illusory doors and visually inspected them for buttons.

          

The automap at the end of this session.

       

For my next move, I decide to go down first, heading for the stairway behind the dining room. It takes me to the Larders of Ill Omen. The "larders" part is justified by the numerous barrels and boxes on the level, the "ill omen" part by the numerous undead that I meet. There are two vampires, both of which I manage to kill without taking any level drains. The other undead are wights and . . . skeletons. Seriously? Skeletons haven't been an issue in at least four character levels. I mow down scads of them.

           

I don't know why I'm wasting a "Fireball" on them.

         

I don't find a single item on the level except for a scroll of "Raise Dead," which is the last thing I need. I do, however, find two stairways up to unexplored areas on the Main Floor. 

      

Lots of miscellaneous notes:

 

• "Light" makes a big difference. I wish I'd had it from the beginning. I like when in-game spells make a difference for the player, not just the characters.

• "Wizard Eye" is supposed to let the party scout around without moving the party. In practice, it just shoots forward for a few steps and then dissipates.

• I wish someone would tell me what "Knock" is in this game for. And lockpicks.

• While I'm on things that don't work, I'm not sure "Turn Undead" really does anything in this game. I haven't been able to get anything meaningful to happen with it since the caves west of Barovia, and I'm not sure it really did anything even there. 

• I would give a lot to know what these things are supposed to be. You can't see it in the screenshot, but they wiggle. 

      

At least they're just cosmetic.

       

• All of my characters wear helmets, but the book says they don't do anything. The ancient elven helm does modify armor class by -1, but it's the only one so far that does. 

• No comment on the holy symbols? Can I just toss them? They do nothing if I click on them. 

• This late in the game, I noticed that hitting the SPACE bar changes the nature of the interface, allowing the player to move the party exclusively with the mouse. Moving the mouse right and left moves the party rather than moving the cursor across the screen. Moving forward and backwards does the same to the party. It's a cute bit of programming, but I find it awkward, and you have to exit the interface any time you want to go into inventory.

• The game has a quick save option (S) and a quick load (SHIFT-R). They usually work great, but about one time out of five, the game decides that you can go screw yourself and doesn't save. Twice, I've had the whole system break, with both commands unresponsive until I quit and reloaded. This is one of the earliest games I can remember with a quicksave option, maybe even the first, but it would be nice if it worked.  

• I'm going to have more to say about this at the end, but I really miss epic battles. I'm not sure that they're even possible in this engine, since battle happens so fast that the player doesn't have time to finesse the tactics. Ravenloft would work great in Might and Magic VI's engine, with the ability to pause the game and go into turn-based mode. 

         

Character standings at the end of this session.

       

Let's do a character/equipment check-in:

    

• Somers is a lawful good Level 8 human paladin. She wields a Paladin's Sword +3 and a magic shield (unidentified). She wears ancient elven plate mail, an adamantite chain helm, Gauntlets of Dexterity, a Ring of Protection, and a Ring of Regeneration. Her armor class is -6.

• Quill is a chaotic good Level 8 half-elf ranger. He has an ancient elven sword and an ancient elven shield, and he wears magic chain mail (unidentified), an ancient elven plate helm, a Ring of Free Action, and a Ring of Protection. His armor class is -5.

• Mischa is a neutral good Level 8 human cleric. He carries an Axe of Hurling and a regular shield, but as I was writing this, I decided the regular shield was silly, tossed it, and decided to start putting usable items in his left hand. He wears a suit of regular plate mail, an adamantite plate helm, and a Ring of Fire Resistance.

• Glorianna is a neutral good Level 9 elf mage. She's got a Dagger of Throwing in her right hand and either a wand or scroll in her left. She wears a cloak +2, a bronze plate helm, and a Ring of Wizardry.

      

Their collective inventory is an overflowing mess, and I have got to start using more magic items.

            

My mother wouldn't have understood this, but I still would have been embarrassed to show it to her.

         

As I wrap up, I want to say that in a game that has done well with creating a sense of atmosphere, Ravenloft is particularly remarkable. It feels like a real place, with identifiable rooms and a sensible layout. The art department went to the next level here, introducing some images not found in other parts of the game. The combinations of furnishings, paintings, tapestries, candelabra, sconces, boarded-over stained-glass windows, etchings, and cobwebs make Ravenloft a joy to explore. At the same time, it's a little frustrating because it's 1994, and the graphics are not quite there. Worse, the sound problems that I mentioned in my first entry (.wav files that have only one volume and no subtlety) both slightly enhance the mood and slightly ruin it. I don't often call for remakes, but I would love seeing a modern take on this setting.

    

I have to say, this was a tough session to end. I wish I could just keep playing this instead of going back to Pagan.

   

Time so far: 25 hours 

    

****

    

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10/28/2026