Ravenloft: Strahd's Gesticulations

 

What is he doing with his right hand?

         

Last session, the party began its assault on Strahd's domain, hoping to find the last of the items necessary to wormhole out of this hellscape with Trimia's Catalogue. We explored the Larders of Ill Omen (basement) and the parts of the main floor accessible from the front door.

   

We begin this session moving up from the basement into a section of the main floor that's cut off from the others. We open the door and immediately run into a zombie golem, easily the toughest enemy we've faced so far. It slaughters us (full-party death) within a few seconds of meeting it. It does the same in a couple of reloads.

   

Finally, with every buffing spell we can think of in effect ("Aid," "Shield," "Invisibility to Undead," "Prayer," "Blur") and a couple of blasts of a Wand of Fireballs the moment it appears, we manage to kill it before it kills us. The rest of this small area has nothing but stairs going up to the third floor.

 

A zombie golem ruins our day. I can't really interpret this enemy's image. It looks like he's wearing a dog on his back.

       

The fight illustrates the problem with combat in this game: it's too fast to be tactical. If you want to cast a spell against an enemy, you basically have to prepare it ahead of time. Once the enemy is in melee range, there's no time to be clicking around the inventory screens and spellbooks—no time, even, to swallow a potion or cast a healing spell on an ally. Again, I lament that the developers didn't pioneer the real-time/turn-based toggle that we saw in Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven (1998).

     

What is a zombie golem, anyway? A stone golem is made of stone; an iron golem is made of iron. A zombie golem is made of . . . zombies? Is it undead? ("Invisibility to Undead" didn't seem to work, if that's any clue.) In any event, the only thing it was guarding was a stairway up to the third floor.

   

We head back to the basement and try a second stairway to an unexplored part of the main floor. There are lightning bolts bouncing up and down a long corridor here, and I find that we can avoid them if we walk in the precise middle of the corridor. There are four buttons on the wall. I don't know what three of them do, but the fourth opens a nearby wall and disgorges two more zombie golems. To fight these guys, I have to exploit pathfinding a bit and hide behind a table.

       

Not the first time, won't be the last.

        

The room in which the zombie golems were waiting has no items and no exits, but I soon find an illusory wall, which takes me to an empty cell with a Blood Key. This is the second key I've found this session.

   

I take a stairway to the third level, called the Court of the Count. The area is swarming with doom guards, who are easy. After killing them, I head down a corridor and find, on the other side of some spinners, a bunch of potions, arrows, and a suit of magic chain mail. An adjacent chamber has three Oils of Fiery Burning. 

   

By this point, I'm testing every wall for illusory doors, which is a good thing because this level is full of them. A couple are behind skeletons embedded in the walls. Other encounters:

    

• A gargoyle guards a door. The door opens to a bedroom occupied by two vampires. 

      

Vampires in this game can be appropriately terrifying.

        

• A large throne room with several gargoyles. The throne faces a blank wall which has a secret door in it.

• A room with four doses of Keoghtom's Ointment.

• A library. One of the documents on the floor is labeled "Strahd's Notes." In them, Strahd complains about Azalin, the Lord of Darkon, a lich which has somehow appeared in his land. An assassin sneaked into Azalin's fortress and stole two items of power that she used to escape this dimension. The objects later returned about the time that we arrived. The note also indicates that the Vistani have been feeding information to Strahd, including information about our arrival. The "items of power" probably refer to the items that we need to use Trimia's Catalogue. Strahd seems to want them for himself so he can escape. There are also several mage scrolls in here.

       

Strahd really needs someone to help him clean up.

          

• Wandering down a corridor triggers a cutscene in which we look over the town of Barovia from a high balcony. 

       

I didn't know Strahd's fortress was so elevated.

         

Then we're on Level 4, "Rooms of Weeping," where we encounter more doom guards, another lightning bolt hallway, and yet another zombie golem, which takes me three or four reloads to kill. There's a long hallway of statues and a bedroom with another vampire. There's a dining room with what might be a wedding cake on the table, plus some interesting portraits on the walls, one showing what might be a family, one showing a man and bride, only the man's face is monstrous or something. Again, the graphic quality is maddeningly not quite there, but we're entering an era in which visuals alone can contribute to the narrative.

     

What do you think is on the right figure's head?

             

A large study in the center of the level is full of gargoyles. On the floor is a letter from Strahd to the leader of the Vistani, the gypsy woman who told us she couldn't read our fortunes without a missing tarot card. She apparently sent information about us to Strahd. I wonder if I can confront her after we get out of here. There's yet another scroll of "Raise Dead" in here. If I had played the way the game intended, my two lead characters would both have constitutions of 4.

      

Someone's not getting a tarot card back.

        

A button opens a secret area with a keyhole that none of our keys fit. That doesn't change even when I find a Silver Tower Key in a hidden area east of the study. It's guarded by yet another zombie golem, and this one kills me so many times in a row that when I finally kill him with only one character dead (Quill), for the first time in the game, I accept the constitution loss and "Raise" him. 

    

We take the only stairway up to the next floor, labeled "Main and Secondary Towers." The "level" consists of a single room with a keyhole in the middle of an axe. The Ravenloft Tower Key opens it. A stairway leads up from here, but the automap continues to show us on the same "level." It does this for each small tower level, even though we ascend four times.

  

There are doom guards, lightning bolts shooting from the walls, illusory walls, a button that opens a wall, and some dude called an "inquisitor" who sounds like he ought to be hard, but dies before I can get a screenshot. The inquisitor turns out to have been torturing a prisoner hanging from chains in this tower. One of the dialogue options suggests that he's meant to join our party as an NPC; I groan at the idea of giving up either Mischa or Glorianna. Fortunately, he says that he'll find his way out on his own. He tells us to seek Bray Martikova, a member of his "brotherhood," show him a feather, speak of the "Nest," and answer his challenge with: "TIGANESS, ILKE ELUCE-A-KEEN." As I leave, he turns into a raven and flies off.

     

What does he have under his arm?!

          

Before I leave the castle, I decide to go back to the study on the Rooms of Weeping level and re-verify that none of my keys open the lock. It's a good thing I do, because I had overlooked one of them. The Blood Bat Key that I found on some previous level opens a wall, on the other side of which I find Madame Ruth's missing Tarokka card.

      

In case the player is too thick.

          

A stairway from here goes down into the Dungeons, which I guess are different from the Larders of Ill Omen. The whole interface changes to an ebony color as we enter.

       

A plaque in the dungeons.

            

The Dungeons have two major sections. On the west side, we have a bunch of small, locked cells, some with zombies inside. Zombies are easy.

      

A zombie is freed from a dungeon cell.

        

The right side has a bunch of large crypts. This area is swarming with zombie golems who, as we've seen, are not easy. There are maybe eight of them, and I don't want to turn every battle into a lengthy session of resting, buffing, and reloading, so I mostly kill them with tricks. They have trouble fitting through crypt doors for some reason, so jumping into an empty crypt and shooting them from within seems to work. A couple of the crypts have vampires, but they're only hard if they manage to level-drain the characters, and I keep "Negative Plane Protection" active for such situations.

       

Shooting a zombie golem that I've trapped behind a chair.

         

In this area, Somers and Quill hit Level 9 and Glorianna hits Level 10. Glorianna's leveling is being wasted because she doesn't have any Level 5 spells. There are only two of them in the game, "Cone of Cold" and "Hold Monster," and I haven't found a scroll with either. Somers got her first Level 1 cleric spell. Somehow, I thought that when she got cleric spells, she'd be able to use cleric scrolls, but this is not the case. I also thought that when Quill hit Level 9 as a ranger, he'd get a mage spell, and that also is not the case.

        

A single Level 1 spell! Strahd is doomed.

      

The large crypt area has lightning bolts bouncing around for no reason, plus a puzzle by which we have to find a couple of obscure buttons to open a central crypt, which teleports us to the entrance to a long hallway stretching off to the south. The hallway passes several alcoves as it leads to a large chamber with a sarcophagus in the middle and a throne on the far side.

      

One of those buttons.

      

At once, Strahd is before us, baring his vampire fangs. No guises this time. "You have caused me trouble, more trouble than you are worth, and I shall crush you now—simply crush you." He gloats that he possesses Lord Dhelt's amulet. The party, about six steps behind, basically says, "Hey, aren't you the same person as Vladislav, who accompanied us in those caverns?" Strahd insults us some more and attacks.

       

"The comfort of laughter fades as my impatience grows" is my new catch phrase.

           

He immediately starts launching fireballs at the party—a constant stream of them that show no signs of adhering to the normal rules about spells-per-level. To avoid them, we dodge behind pillars, of which there are many in the room, then leap out and start swinging. Within seconds, he folds his cloak around himself, teleports to another part of the room, and resumes his barrage of fireballs. In the few seconds that we had in melee range, Quill was busted down a couple of levels.

   

He ultimately kills us all. We reload and try again, but he seems impervious to spells, and our melee attacks never do more than 1 damage. After about half a dozen reloads, I come to the conclusion that we're here too early. Clearly, we're meant to follow up with Bray Martikova and maybe even the Vistani.

        

I  just don't understand why he's blue.

       

I reload my latest save, from before we triggered the encounter with Strahd, only to find that it's in the hallway on the way to Strahd's crypt, and the door has closed and locked behind us. I can find no switches or illusory doors. "Knock" does not work.

   

My normal modus operandi is to save Game A only when the party is completely safe, usually in town. Game B is my "working save" during exploration. Only somehow in all the reloading in Strahd's chamber, I managed to accidentally save both the A and B slots, not to mention the autosave slot, on the wrong side of the door. My earliest save from before that is . . . in the Elven Warrior's Crypt. The first level of the Elven Warrior's Crypt. 

     

Look, whatever you're going to say, I already know. I need a better save system. I need to back up my saves. It's ridiculous that I haven't found a solution to problems like this after 16 years. This is amateur nonsense. I know, okay?

       

Lots of text, so here's a room from earlier that I thought looked cool.

        

Anyway, I experiment with hex-editing and manage to get the party position changed so that we're on the right side of the door. I think it's a little unfair that the game lets you wander into the final battle like this before you're ready.

   

Having found nothing else, we leave the castle and head back towards Barovia. We now have all the items we need to use Trimia's Catalogue except for Dhelt's holy symbol.  

     

Even though we're not feeling charitable towards the Vistani fortuneteller, I'm curious what happens if we return to her and hand over her lost card. The answer is: the option to visit the Vistani camp is no longer among the dialogue options when talking to the Vistani in the tavern.

     

I have no idea where to find Bray Martikova, so it's with a bit of luck that I happen to talk to the tavernkeeper (who is right next to the Vistani) and see the option to use the NEST keyword. We exchange our passwords, and he tells me to go to a warehouse in the southeast part of town. There, we'll find a contact. "They will know who you are and they will escort you to yet another party, someone more able to offer our thanks."

       

I would have just walked up and said, "NEST." Glorianna had to create a whole backstory.

      

I find the warehouse in the southeast and discover three suspicious-looking characters awaiting me. I'm not the only one who thinks they're suspicious: my characters say, "[Bray] told us nothing about a band of brigands." The leader takes exception to the characterization and demands that we swallow a sleeping potion so he can take us to a secret place. ("'Tis more certain than a blindfold.")

    

I think the two flanking guys literally use the same sprite as "brigands."

          
With no choice available, we agree. We awaken in a room with a giant raven in front of us and the "brigand" leader in the background. The great raven introduces himself as Pyoor Twohundredsummers (does he have to update this name every year?) and says he'll hear us out because of the wereraven we rescued from Strahd's tower. He has a lot to say:

   

• Count Strahd von Zarovich used to be a noble warrior. He freed the land from a tyrant named Dorian. Later, he became a vampire lord and turned evil. 

• To defeat Strahd, we'll need the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind. The artifact was crafted when Strahd was still a mortal.

• Pyoor doesn't know where the Holy Symbol is, but he gives us a key and a "special reading device." He says the key will open a door in the "cursed church." In it, we'll find three manuscripts that tell the location of the holy symbol. We'll need the reading device to read the scrolls.   

       

The raven lord fills us in on Strahd.

       

The human senses danger and tells Pyoor that they need to leave. Pyoor agrees and tells us that if we're able to defeat the enemies closing in on this place, we'll have proven our worthiness.

     

A scan of the map reveals that we're in some place called the Greater Catacombs Beneath Barovia. Two doors lead from the room. We choose one and begin exploring what turns out to be a very large, twisty map.

    

I think this is the largest dungeon in the game so far.

       

Encounters:

   

• Revenants. I think this is the first time they've appeared. They can paralyze characters, which happens quite a bit. I find a couple of "Cure Paralysis" scrolls to counteract it, and of course Mischa can memorize the spell.

      

A new type of undead.

        

• On the floor, we find a Barovian coin. Somers pipes up that maybe we'll find enough to buy that potion from the Vistani. I continue to find them throughout the level, fifteen in total, and of course the damned things don't stack, so I'm constantly fighting for inventory space.

     

First of all: there. Second, I'm not sure I agree with your premise.

       

• Wraiths. These guys can level-drain.

     

A couple of them guard a keyhole.

      

• A spinner.

• Fireballs shooting down corridors for no reason. This is getting old. Coincidentally, forcing the player to dodge random, inexplicable fireballs is something that this game has in common with Pagan.

     

Is there a never-ending fuel source in there? Why don't these fireballs cause permanent damage to the opposite walls?

       

• Hellhounds, not quite as hard as the last time I encountered them. 

• Two magic rings: A Ring of Protection and another Ring of Fire Resistance. With two rings and two Potions of Fire Resistance, I'll have a better chance against Strahd.

• Mischa hits Level 9 against some hellhounds. Now I don't need to carry scrolls of "Raise Dead," since Mischa can cast it. 

• In a corner, a regular sword and a Shield of Lightning Protection. It has a +1 enchantment, too, making it as good as my existing magic shields. 

    

A series of keyed doors, buttons, and illusory walls open the ways from section to section, where I continue to collect keys. I have to backtrack a number of times to search for buttons or illusory doors. It takes a while. When I'm done, I have 14 coins. The Vistani wanted 15. It strikes me that it's more likely that I missed a coin than the fifteenth coin is found somewhere else. So I have to loop through the entire level again, studying the automap for little dots, finally finding the last coin in a central room.

   

The exit from the caverns is a ladder in the northeast corner, with a final spinner just in front of it. We emerge from a trap door into a house in the center of Barovia. I haven't been here before, so the external doors must have been locked. A man and woman sitting in the room where we emerge have nothing to say. 

   

We return to the tavern and buy the potion from the Vistani. I'm confused about why we need it given that our current plan seems to be to defeat Strahd, get Dhelt's holy symbol, and use it along with Trimia's Catalogue to teleport out of this place. But I'm curious what will happen if I swallow the potion and enter the fog, so I head back to the Svalich Woods and give it a try. A cutscene shows us passing through the fog and arriving in a new place, labeled the Undead Forest on the automap. The party is instantly killed by treants.

     

Pushing through the mists.

        

So I'll save the potion for later. In the meantime, some miscellaneous notes:

    

• A "Detect Magic" spell that I cast very early in the game has never worn off, or else I have some object that casts it constantly.

• I made the mistake of casting "Cause Light Wounds" early in this session. For some reason, I thought it was a missile spell. Instead, it causes the cleric's hands to glow. I kept waiting for it to wear off, which it never did, making Mischa's left hand useless for most of the session and stopping him from using his throwing axe. Later, I realized that all I had to do was to have him attack once, either by moving him to the front rank or waiting until we were outdoors, and the spell would have disappeared.

• I noted the two Old Svalich Roads, where I did some extensive grinding, are now empty of enemies. I also checked out the Cemetery Grounds and found only a couple of stray wights where they'd been plentiful before. I assumed that enemies respawned indefinitely, but now I wonder if there isn't a cap, and they stop appearing once it's reached.  

       

Somers's commentary is apt. I had forgotten about that door.

         

I really expected to win this session; I thought my second visit to Strahd's castle would be my last. It looks like I have to go back to the Old Church now, and perhaps at some point to the Undead Forest before I'm able to confront Strahd again. I'm still enjoying the game, but my "upcoming" list hasn't budged for two months.

   

Time stamp: 32 hours 

    

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10/26/2026