Citadel: Save Me From Myself

 

Props to the other bloggers who remember to take enough screenshots. I can go two hours before I realize I haven't captured anything, and when the game gets interesting, like a tough fight, I immediately focus on playing. Here's one where I accidentally discover the bartender is interactive. Maybe this is a lost party indicator?

           

Guest post by Quirkz: 

       

I ended the last entry looking at the hint guide, as it was the only source for information about experience and leveling. It's also the only source for weapon and armor statistics. The weapons list isn't huge, maybe 40 items, half of them available in the shop from the start. It also seems deeply redundant: two thirds of the items are non-magical and do either 1–6, 2–7, or 2–8 damage. There might be a couple of spoilers on the magic items side, but there are less than a dozen of those. On average, they do one whole point of extra damage, and maybe provide a tiny amount of magical protection. The body armor list is even more brief. It's weird that it's not in the regular manual, though you can see these stats in-game by identifying items. Not even the hint book has information about the other equipment, including helmets, gloves, shields, and accessories.

    
I'm down on the fourth level now. Here, the walls are filled with sconces, and in every sconce is a torch. I pull them all out until my inventory is overflowing, and then I throw the rest on the floor to help remind me to collect them later. While I'm messing with that, I'm brought into combat.

       
This one is a larger group with three monster types, including a couple of spiders. I know there's poison in the game because there's a level 8 "Cure Poison" spell, but these spiders don't seem to be poisonous. They are harder to hit and seem to do more damage, though. I get through the fight okay, with a couple of strategic maneuvers to pull back an ailing character for healing in the middle. There are two more bags of gold. Everyone is mostly healed, but I'm out of spells, so I return to town to stock up.

    
While in town, I offload half a dozen torches to the party stash. I remember that I picked up a dagger on the first floor and take a moment to investigate selling items at the shop. The manual notes a high mien characteristic helps with bargaining. Most of mine range from 6-10, but during my creation phase, I held onto one character whose mien ended up at 14. The rest of his stats were terrible so I'm not adventuring with him. He just hangs out in the tavern. Let's pretend he's the band manager. I named him Meanie, because I was plum out of creativity juice at the time.

   
As an experiment, I have Meanie and one of my low-mien characters approach the shop. It's quickly clear that mien doesn't affect the purchase price of anything. That dancing sword is 20,000 for both of them. But when it comes to selling, the ugly duckling is offered only 1 GP, while Meanie is offered 3 GP, which is equal to the purchase price of the dagger. That's a much better exchange ratio! I think I remember from my 1995 replay that if you have high enough mien, you can exploit an infinite money glitch, selling for more than the purchase price. For now, that's not an issue, but having a dedicated haggler is going to be valuable.

     

It pays to be charming. With high enough mien, you can sell bags of gold for more than their literal value.

       
Back underground, I find my first key on the floor, and shortly after that a locked door on which the key works. You can edit item names in this game so I change the label on the key to reference the floor. With the key, you have to select the character who is holding it, have the key in inventory (not a pocket), and then have them click the door. The icon does change to show the key in hand, but it's easy to forget and try with the wrong character first. Doors are weird in this game, too. They take up a full square on the map, but you automatically move into them when you open the door. I've already had to redo maps twice because I don't properly count that space.

     
On the other side of the door, I find a large talking head in one nook, which asks the riddle the Addict already documented. This gives me two separate stairs down from this floor, once I'm ready. Since this one was being gate-kept, I'll probably explore the other first as the more natural path. There's another door and a long hallway with free unlit torches in every square. A bonanza! Except that at the end of the hall there's a bend and a dead end. If this were Skyrim, you'd need to do something like light every torch on the hall to open a secret door. As I'm testing that theory, I drop my torch on the floor and find myself in darkness once again.

     

Speaking of darkness, I once stayed at a VRBO that had a little basket full of finger puppet characters. Most of them were normal, and then in the mix there was one labeled "Darkness." I can't fathom why, but I've been wondering about it for 10 years and I need more people to share my bemusement.

        

Here I discover how night vision works. The actively selected character controls the view screen. Thus far, I must have been keeping the humans active. But when I click on a hobbit, the murk brightens a little, and when I switch to a dwarf character it's only barely dim. Do I really need all these torches? 

        
Yes. Yes I do: Mostly in case of character loss, in case I only have humans left. But also because I'm not sure if they help me find things like hidden buttons and secret doors. I honestly don't know if there are many of those, but one of my three clear memories from 30 years ago is that there's at least one very important secret door.

     
I'm attacked again by monsters, another mixed group, this one with more spiders and some kind of worm, plus the crab-blobs.

     

Fighting a pair of executioners.

       

The difficulty ramps up steeply on the fifth floor. While exploring a small waffle grid, we see what looks like the imprismed queen, but turns out to be an illusion. We're attacked by three shirtless men wearing executioner hoods. Now that's a fashion choice. It's a tough fight, but we scrape through. Afterward, the reward is a chalice full of some kind of sticky liquid, plus a nearby sword. There are two floor pits in this area, and I don't remember exactly how they work, so I take a save and jump in one to see.

       
There's an animation of falling to the next floor. I take minimal damage, which seems nice, and even sweeter are the four 100-gold piece bags sitting at my feet. Problem is, I've got a locked door to my back and in front of me there's a prowling monster that is either a feisty squirrel or a dragon. With only one direction to go, we step into a fight and are immediately slaughtered by what I'm assuming were not squirrels. It's my first full-party death. I'm sent back to the tavern but all my heroes are either totally gone or left behind in the dungeon—I'm not sure which, but I won't find out because I reload instead.
      

The first but far from the last.

       

I backtrack and then take the stairs behind where the talking head used to be. This dumps me into a perfectly symmetrical 3 x 3 room with doors in the middle of each side. I take a few steps before I realize I don't have a compass and could get turned around here easily. The answer comes to me in a minute, which is to drop a used torch on the floor by the entrance door. While I'm trying to do that I'm attacked by a pack of 6 Tasmanian devils. They hit me more often and seem a little harder to hit, but I get through with some healing. Then as I try to high-tail it out of there, I'm attacked by a second group and moitalized, as the Looney Tunes say.

      
This is when I realize I've been making a mistake with the save files. If you launch the game from the main app, it runs off the main save file, but when you restore a game by launching from a backup file, the game then continues writing to that backup file. To be fair, the manual warns you that this is how it works and tells you to immediately back up again if you restore from one of these files, but my instincts are all wrong and I keep forgetting to do it. For me, saving in an old blobber like this is for towns. You don't want to trap yourself in a walking dead scenario. Save files are supposed to be re-usable, and only a madman (or a mad god) would save immediately after restoring.

       

Enough treasure to make a gamer forget to save first, even when it's an obvious trap.

        

In this case, I'd also saved just before hitting this floor, so I lose a little progress and have to redo the fight with the executioners, but it's not a big deal until I get sloppy and my lead fighter dies. I've just tainted all three of my rolling save files, so I suck it up, roll up six new fighters to get one with more than 5 hit points, and dive back in.

       
The next time through that square room, I don't see any Tasmanian devils at all, but I do find a stairwell up to a different part of the previous level. Thinking this will be safer, I start exploring, mapping a large and twisting room uneventfully. In the back of the room I detect a gleam of treasure, what looks like a full set of armor. I rush to grab it but am jumped by a trio comprising a sorceress, an executioner, and a minotaur. The minotaur is very tough, seeming to get twice as many attacks as everyone else. We only barely win the fight, but it's worth a ton of XP—over 400. One more fight and a couple of my base class characters will go up a level. 

      

The game's first very difficult battle.

      

On the way back, we pass through the square room and get eaten by those Tasmanian devils. Four dead. Might as well reload. I'd saved just before the trio, so I try again for the treasure, but this time the odds go badly and the minotaur kills two of my characters in the opening round and eventually the whole party falls. I reload again, don't see the trio in the room with the treasure anymore and think maybe I can just grab the loot and run, but they jump me a third time, killing me swiftly again. At this point I realize I've just done the same thing with the save files I had 30 minutes before. When I finally locate a good save file, it's my starting party, from before I had entered the dungeon even once.

     

Sigh. 

      

I'm starting to see why Chet quit this one. I also don't understand why I'm not saving right. I have plenty of space and zero reason not to save before risky moves, other than it feels wrong. Starting over is rough, but at least I have some maps.

     
I've also learned a couple of things. One, mien is a little erratic when it comes to sales prices. I considered selling the sticky chalice, and was offered 2,000 GP. A nice haul, but I wasn't sure if this was a valuable item, so I declined. When I checked later the same character was only offered 1,400 GP. Then on successive inquiries it bounced between 1,600 and 1,800, before giving me an all-time high of 2,040. I said yes, and when I looked in the shop I could buy it back for 2,000. Honestly, it's a little weird and annoying that I would need to try to sell items a handful of times, take down the best price, and then maybe keep trying for a while to get or beat it.

      
I also was reminded that when a character dies, you can't move or do anything while the dead characters are "unsupported." In the party window, you need to drag the icon of a dead character onto that of a living character, to indicate who's carrying whom. Also, whenever you select a dead character, the screen goes black, because you're seeing what they're seeing. Every time this happens, I think the game has crashed or we've all died before I remember to click back.

      
I decide to ditch my magus, who hasn't been very effective as a fighter, has only 5 HP, and will require 50% more XP to level up in the long run. I don't need two magicians without spellbooks. I make a second pure fighter instead, DV, this one with 8 HP, so I have a stronger front line. If or when I find a second spellbook, I'll consider swapping him out.

     
As frustrating as it feels to lose progress, it only takes me 15 minutes to get back to the same spot I was in before. More of the time is spent mapping and dealing with unfamiliar territory. Once you know what you're doing, it's easy to repeat.
         

My map of Level 5.

        

Back on the fifth floor, I enter a cycle of grim deaths. Six times in a row, I earn enough XP from fights for most of my characters to level up, but then die trying to exit the dungeon. I really don't want to save after every single fight, but I'm clearly still not saving often enough. Part of the problem is the difficulty level ramping up here. My characters have made literally zero tangible progress. They're all still level 1. One of my clerics has an armor class of 8 because the shop still hasn't restocked with armor, and he only has a helm and shield. There have been no weapon upgrades and barely any gold. Meanwhile, opponents are showing up in groups of 4-8, often of multiple types, many of them tougher than the early monsters. Some of the strongest, like minotaurs and mummies, attack twice per turn, and usually hit both times. That's only 2 HP per round, but when your fighters have 8 HP and a Haelan generally only heals 2-3, fights are deadly. This game was clearly influenced by Wizardry, The Bard's Tale, or the like, where merely reaching second level is designed to be a tremendous accomplishment.

      
On the fifth floor, the map has really opened up, and I have multiple unexplored paths, including what seems to be most of a 28 x 28 grid (this game works with the "worm tunnels" model, with a solid square of rock surrounding the explorable space) plus multiple up and down stairwells. I keep trying different paths and make good progress on the map, even if my characters aren't getting any benefit. I find so many torches that my party stash in town actually fills up, and I stop collecting them. I have burned through exactly two so far. I don't know why I'm being so paranoid.

     
It becomes clear some areas have fixed combats, but there are also a decent number of random encounters. This implies there isn't a fixed limit on XP or gold in the game. I've seen at least a dozen different types of monsters, though as far as I can tell all attacks so far are physical. I still don't have monster names and all combat gives is hit/miss sounds; there's no way to tell how much HP they have or how much damage I'm doing. Some combats drop multiple weapons, a few drop gold sacks in amounts varying from 50 to 200. 

      

Four game hours from now, I will find this combat message window and be forced to retract my complaints. Instead, I'll complain that this window covers too much of the screen.

    

Because I'm feeling stuck, I keep trying different paths, seeing if maybe there's an easier zone I've been missing. In one case, I try dropping down a different floor pit to the sixth floor. I'm rewarded with some armor and a magic dagger called Sting. Since I'm not immediately devoured by dragons, I go in search of a stairwell and get pretty far before running into a fight with a couple of what looks like a combination Venus flytraps and hydras. I survive and get 400 GP and 500 XP. Good stuff, if only I can get out. There's a long, bending tunnel, another pair of flytraps that knock everyone down to a 1 or 2 HP and use up my healing spells. There's a sign on the wall with a worrying message, "Once fallen you must rise again or forever join my evil reign," which does not bode well because I don't have the level 3 "Levitate" spell, but for now I continue. I find a room with some pits and more flytraps that lurk in the corner but don't come after me. I enter a very large room that has a "Templus" something sign overhead. It appears to be mostly empty, but there's an altar at the back. I don't mess with it for now. But there's also no way out.

       

Not an encouraging sign when you don't know how to levitate.

         

I backtrack and take my chances with the path left open to me: falling down another pit. One character dies, but the rest surprisingly survive. I've earned so much XP my characters should be nearly to level 3, and I've got more gold than I've ever seen, so I don't want to give up yet. I come to a dead end at the locked door to the elevator shaft. Shoot. But when I turn around there's a key ring on the wall. I take it and confirm this is the key to the elevator. Excellent! Except when I unlock the grate I'm staring at an empty pit. The elevator is up on level 2, and there doesn't seem to be a way to call it. Crud. Figuring I'm doomed, I jump down the elevator shaft, which prompts scenes of falling several floors and provides a unique death message. I'm back to where I started. 

    

[Ed. Quirkz may object to my using this as a breaking point, but I couldn't otherwise find a natural one in this area. Suffice to say that things start to look up from here.] 

   

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

Next entry in this series 

 09/22/2026

Revisiting: Citadel: Adventure of the Crystal Keep (1989)

 

       

Well, I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this so quickly, especially after the series of guest entries that we just had over the summer, but as usual, the first month of the new semester has left me exhausted and buried. Fortunately, commenter Quirkz has provided some material to tide us over: A completion of Citadel: Adventure of the Crystal Keep (1989), a Wizardry-inspired game for the Macintosh that I "tried" over eight years ago. I got frustrated, probably too quickly, with various interface elements and a combat system I couldn't quite figure out. When I "throw" a game like this, I appreciate it when commenters urge me onward, but I appreciate it even more when they step in and help.

    

Guest Post by Quirkz:  

      

I've been hoping I wouldn't have to do this for eight years, but I've talked myself into it. Back in 2018, The Addict started playing Citadel: Adventure of the Crystal Keep, and my excitement rose. This is one of the relatively few CRPGs from the 90s that I already knew well, and unlike most of them, had even played through to the end.

      
I was a Mac user in the 90s with a limited teenager's budget. Other than The Bard's Tale and the Gold Box series, games were mostly glimpsed over the shoulder of a friend at his house, or only existed as tantalizing writeups in Dragon Magazine. Dungeons of Doom made a brief appearance in a computer lab, passed around on a floppy, but disappeared again as fast as you could guzzle a swirly potion. Funnily enough, for 20 years I forgot that game even existed, until this blog unearthed old memories and helped explain why Roguelikes had felt so weirdly familiar even though I thought I'd never played one.

    
That's one of my favorite things about this blog: all the material that it unearths, sometimes in the most unlikely places.
       

So I was squirming with anticipation when Chet picked up a game I hadn't played since the summer of 1995. I had approximately three coherent memories remaining, and couldn't wait to see it all brought back. Then he bounced off it, hard, just a little way in. I'd been hoping he'd circle back to it, gunning for revenge, but as the years passed and I kept wanting to see it in print, I concluded that it's my nostalgia begging to be humored, so here I am.

     
Citadel was a splurge—some internship money put to good use on a rare Mac-friendly game from the catalog. It shipped with the cluebook, and I definitely used it then, but I'm going to try to limit it on the replay.

     
In 2026, I'm emulating it on Mini vMac, with a Mac II system ROM running Mac OS version 6. A warning for anyone tempted to play: the game seems to have problems now with many emulator combinations, including visual bugs in OS 7 or later, and more bugs and crashing when I tried any full-color Mac emulators. I've had some other people tell me that they didn't experience these problems, but they've been consistent for me. I know they didn't occur on real hardware: I played the game originally on a full-color Mac LC II back in the day. In fact, my first reaction upon launching the game was immense dismay that it was only in black and white. The ad would have been in full color, with no screenshots (one doesn't need to wonder why) and it wasn't even clear in 1995 that this was a 6-year-old game. It did at least have animation and some sound effects. I'd been burned on black-and-white ports before (The Bard's Tale) and would be again (the Mac version of Wizardry). Many of the ports were either just that old, or they were written for maximum backward compatibility.

      

The menu town in Citadel.

      

Launching the game now, I find the interface painfully small and unintuitive. I have to second Chet's statement that all this used to feel normal, but today the tiny, low-res window with too many pop-ups to fit on one screen is a real mess. I spend my first 10 minutes of game time just trying to figure out how to view characters. You get some details on one screen, different values on others, and the menu town with eight different locations will send you clicking back and forth in a daze just trying to get a list of your party's classes or hit points.

     
I'm going to assume that everyone will backtrack to read Chet's starter articles on the game, so I'll gloss over most of the early stuff. [Ed. I read over my first entry on Citadel. I don't usually laugh at my own writing, but that one cracked me up.] I slowly build a party, which in great ancient tradition means rolling up a handful of flops for every one I keep. The process is slowed because the manual leaves some mysterious gaps. Races, for instance, exist in the game, but all the manual says is elves and hobbits have "Far Sight" (what is that?), dwarfs and gnomes have excellent night vision, and hobbits have okay night vision. Nothing about stats or classes, so it's unclear whether the default RPG tropes apply whether the choice is meaningless. It offers neuter characters who are supposed to be better spellcasters, but it's not stated how. The manual is also contradictory about the stats themselves, citing wisdom in some places and knowledge in others and also conflating coordination and agility.
   

A very rare case in which I rolled up a character who could be anything they want when they grow up.

        
Once you've finalized your class, you're allowed to train for one to four years. This is supposed to boost your primary stats, with more years offering a higher boost, but I've seen mixed results. Sometimes three years only raises one stat point. Sometimes another stat goes down. Also, most characters can't afford more than a year anyway. The game will actually let you overspend here, but then you end up with a character who starts off in debt. 

      

Note that poor Siobhan here has -10 GP. You can't buy much gear with negative gold.

        

One last gripe and then I'll move on. After minutes building up the ideal character, the one thing the game doesn't show you is the character's hit points. You have to leave the nursery, go to the tavern, drag the character into the party box, and then either double-click him individually or leave the tavern and go somewhere else like the hostel before you can see the HP. Invariably, the ones with the best stats will have 3-4 HP, which seems like a death sentence, so you have to throw them away and start over. In 50 or so tries, most characters had 6 HP or under, even fighters, even with very high health. I've only made one 8 so far. Chet has a screenshot with a level 1 character with 11 HP, and that feels astronomical to me. 

       

I have to admit, while I'm not inclined to cheese out extra funds by making dozens of throwaway characters just to steal their starting cash, by the point I get through this generation marathon and find yet again I've made six new useless characters all with 3-5 HP, it kind of feels like the game owes me a little.

     
Once you have your party, you shop. Here you find that the shop doesn't have enough gear to go around at first, even if you do have the funds. There aren't enough suits of armor; there's only one pair of gloves; and if you've got a couple of wizards and a thief, you might not even have enough knives. There is some aspirational gear on hand: one suit of plate for 400 gold pieces and a magic "dancing" sword for 20,000 that you'll be drooling over for a long while. The nice thing about the shop is it does restock over time.

      

The shop.

      

As you distribute gear to characters, the game could be more intelligent. It attempts to put things into the right places, but it makes some inexplicable choices. Each character has one hand devoted to wielding weapons, and one free hand for holding another item (such as a torch, but it could be anything). Some other gear can be worn, like armor, and accessories, but also weirdly some weapons. Gear that's not wearable has to stay in hand or be put in a pocket. Conveniently, there are backpacks which provide several pockets, and most armor has one or two, plus that free hand. But it does mean you can't hand two torches to one person. They'll take one, and then you have to juggle the other one through the stash or rearrange windows to drag from one place straight into a pocket elsewhere.

    
After distributing the gear, I had to go in and tweak everybody because the game had decided to do things like hold a sword in the offhand, wield the chain mail as a weapon, and wear the shield and helm. One character was wielding their backpack. This is a game you have to watch. It can also be very finicky about where and how you can unwield one thing, sometimes refusing to let you unwield until you've disposed of an item, or sometimes unwielding only to auto-wield some other poor choice. Luckily, I learned how to juggle in high school. 

 

The chain mail actually comes with a damage rating (0-2), but it would be better if it didn't. Then again, this game will allow you to literally throw the gauntlet at an opponent.

        

It's nearly time to enter the dungeon, but first clerics (and knights and shamans; the knight is a prestige class fighter who has cleric spells, while the shaman is a prestige class cleric who can use fighter weapons; that makes them nearly identical but the knight will end up with fewer spells while the shaman will have less HP) need to meditate to memorize spells. 

     
The cleric spell system is a little unintuitive at first glance, but it basically boils down to the Dungeon Master-style rune system with some extra steps. There are four runes: earth, air, fire, water. The cleric first meditates to generate tiles of these runes, which takes 1-4 hours, respectively. You then assemble the tiles into words, which you quickly memorize as spells. You can build up a repository of the tiles in advance, for quick in-dungeon memorization. The manual warns you not to risk spending time in the dungeon generating the tiles or memorizing wizard spells, at risk of being attacked. Only one cleric can meditate upon tiles at a time, which feels wasteful from a time management perspective, though I'm fairly sure there's no real deadline in the game. (Weirdly, it gives your character age down to the number of days old you are, another detail that seems unnecessary but also prompts some worry about time passing.) The manual gives you a list of low-level spells and the rune-words for the first few levels of them. Some spells are unique to either wizards or clerics, but some spells can be learned by either class.

     

Mediate, then assemble, then memorize. Bottom, top, middle. Your natural reading order.

     

For now, I just memorize several of the same spell: Earth-Air spells "Haelan," this game's version of "Cure Light Wounds." It affects a single target and theoretically ranges about 1-6 HP but seems to frequently just do 2. Both the cleric and the shaman are able to memorize four apiece before the symbols gray out, which indicates they're at capacity.

    
Wizards and magi need spellbooks before they can memorize spells. Hopefully, I find one (or two, since I have a wizard and a magus) soon. They can cast spells from scrolls, but I only received one or two at character creation, and the cheapest ones in the shop are 500 for a "Haelan" and go up to 8,000 for some bigger spells.

   
Finally, into the dungeon! First, you're prompted for a code from the code wheel. There's a PDF available online. It's not super convenient, but it works.

      

The dungeon view.

      

When the door opens, you're standing in a small room, well lit by torches on each side. I try to move with WASD and find W prompts "open what door?" I'll repeat this every time I enter the dungeon for a while. You can move with the arrows or the mouse. I prefer keyboard. It's nice that most or all of the other commands are available as keys, but I probably won't memorize them.

        
I monkey around with the controls a bit. I remember you can take torches from the sconces, but apparently not the ones at the entrance. I take a few steps away and am quickly immersed in darkness. I go back and light a torch, and basically if/until I discover a light spell, I will be perpetually paranoid about them from here on out. How long do they last? Will I notice when it runs low? You can only light one torch from another lit torch, so if you let it lapse, you're out of luck. I bought a few. I find a few more around the corner in sconces. These come out readily. But it won't ever be enough to satisfy.

      
I try to drop a lit torch back in a sconce because you can't have two separate character inventories open at once, and this is the only way to pass the torch, as it were. I miss the sconce, drop the torch on the ground, and am immediately blanketed in darkness. Crud.

    
As I try to recover, I am transported to a new screen. Combat! Skeletons have found me, but only a couple. The combat system could be a little confusing but I remember the basics. It's a real-time, free-movement, 2D depiction of the area. Click and drag to move, until a line appears showing you're close enough to target an enemy. Repeat to move other characters in or out of range. There are a couple of different combat stances, but mostly you'll use the default melee attack. Your characters and the mobs take turns attacking each other on some invisible timer which is both frustratingly slow when you're waiting for your next turn, but then too fast if you need to make adjustments. There are a couple of hits and a couple of misses, and the fight is over soon with only minor injuries.

 

The combat interface can toggle a melee range guide, but it's never really necessary. It only makes things look busy.

      

Afterwards, most of my characters get some experience; a few do not. It will take a while to figure out that they need to either physically attack once (even if they miss) or cast a spell to get a share of the experience. Testing indicates that all characters get the same experience, and those who don't participate simply miss out—the fighters will not benefit and get more experience points if the spellcasters sit out.

      
On the ground are a couple of bags of gold, worth 10 gold pieces each, that I drag to my inventory. Newly claimed prize money comes with inconveniences both to your inventory slots and your encumbrance. Back at town, I'll be able to deposit the money bags, and then it becomes a weightless bank credit.
    

I find my way back to the light, get another torch out, and begin exploring again. The level is fairly small, one big room and two short arms. One leads to a locked grate with what looks like a pit or well behind it. I know already this is actually an elevator which spans all the floors, though for now most of them are locked. I also know this is technically the second level, because that elevator can take you up one more.
      
There's only one choice left: take the stairs down to the next level. Like the first one, this level is also not large, just a big room with three arms, but visibility only goes out a few squares so it's hard to tell at a glance.

     
I notice a monster in the distance, looking like another skeleton. I'd given my thief a bow so I attempt some long-distance combat. This requires opening the inventory, toggling the wield from the melee weapon to the bow, and then finding a "shoot" button which lets you aim and fire an arrow. It makes a little noise but I can't even tell if it's a hit, or what amount of damage might be done.

      
The monsters close on us and melee combat begins. This time there are both skeletons and some other thing that might be a dark crab or an ooze or slime with arms. I can't find a way to identify monsters and won't find the right window for about another six hours. I get a couple of people into position and then spend half the fight trying to figure out how to toggle the thief back from the bow to a sword. Then the second half of the fight, I struggle finding a way to cast spells. The solution to both is moving the character out of combat range, which activates grayed-out parts of the menu for inventory and spells. With "Haelan," you cast it and then click on the recipient to target them from a distance.

      
The fight takes a little longer but goes well. Only my wizard fails to get any experience. There's a real Catch-22 here, where if you can't fight, barely have any hit points, and don't yet have spells, you can't level up to improve your abilities or hit points. I assume this will even out later, especially with mass damage spells.

     
I collect a few more torches and a knife and return for a round of healing and spell memorization.
     

In the words of Jim Morrison, "You cannot petition the guild with PRAYER!"

       

There is no way to directly see a character's experience. This seems like a poor choice. I eventually realize you can check your progress by going to the hostel, and then from the Town menu select "Petition Guild." I don't know why that's hidden. At this point, I realize the game manual doesn't say anything about levels, either. Only the hint book has a table (1,600 XP and 450 gold to get to Level 2 for regular classes; 2,400 XP and 900 gold to level up prestige classes). So far I have earned . . . 20 gold. This may take a while.

    

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

Next entry in this series 

09/19/2026 

Ravenloft: Strahd's Invitation

"We would be honored if you would join us."

       

Chasing a burglar who stole a holy symbol, Somers the Paladin (who I've been calling "Summer" this entire time; I forgot what I named her) and Quill the Ranger have been transported to a strange alternate dimension, full of gloom and fog, ruled by a shadowy figure named Strahd. They have explored a dangerous forest and a desolate town, picking up fighter and fighter/mage/thief companions along the way. They have solved one quest but have not made much progress learning where they are or why they're here. A Vistani gypsy has offered to sell a potion that will let them pass back through the fog, but he wants 15 gold pieces for it, and currency doesn't seem to be a thing in this game.

   

We begin this session by returning to the Old Svalich Road South. We abandoned exploration last time. I turn on "step movement" for a while, which has the party move in discrete tiles and turn at 90-degree angles, just like the original Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder. I don't care for it here. Enemies dance all around the party and seem to be able to hide in the diagonals. Also, the numberpad is extremely sensitive and often ends up registering multiple moves when I only intend one. I could maybe deal with that by lowering the cycles, but that causes other issues. I return to continuous movement.

   

It turns out that we almost explored the entire map last time, so the only thing we discover in this new excursion is a couple of bandits and a massive, locked gate at the southern end of the road.

       

I appreciate the elucidation, but this is an RPG. We're all expecting locked doors with no explanation.

          

Soon, we're back in Barovia, which I mistakenly thought we had finished exploring last time. I soon find a few new encounters:

    

• In addition to the exit to the Cemetery, there's a second northern exit to the Old Svalich Road North.
• In Barovia's northwest corner is a large circle of stones. I don't know what it's for.
• A northwestern exit leads to the aptly-named Wooded Area West of Barovia.

   

But the main thing I didn't do last time was visit the Burgomaster, who lives in a huge, richly-furnished manor surrounded by walls in the northwest quarter of the city. Somers expresses disgust as we enter. "What gives such a man the right to flaunt finery in a poor town?" Quill later disagrees: "When I am ready to change careers, 'tis a burgomaster I shall become."

       

My question is: where did he even get the finery? I didn't meet a single tailor, artist, architect, or furniture maker.

          

It's hard to remember any first-person game with more graphic detail than this one. There was some discussion in a previous thread about the graphical quality of Ravenloft in comparison to Eye of the Beholder and other first-person games. To me, it's no contest. Ravenloft might look worse on a pixel basis, but it manages to achieve a much deeper sense of immersion. Its environments are hand-crafted, not just textures. The manor is furnished with tables, wall hangings, lamps, vases, bookshelves, pedestals, candelabras, decorative suits of armor, and other features that create a much deeper sense of immersion than we've seen before. They help to bring life to the sorts of rooms you would expect a manor to have: entry hall, dining room, pantry, study, bedroom.

     

An obvious dining room.

            

The unfortunate thing is that none of its features are interactive. They can't even hold objects; anything that the party can pick up is strewn across the floor. Thus, something like Ultima Underworld still wins the immersion award. It had less stuff, but what it had felt more real. Still, I appreciate that we're almost there. A few improvements to graphics and sound are all we need to feel like we're really inhabiting the world. It's exciting.

     

A study. There's a scroll on the floor.

       

Though well-detailed, the manor is mostly empty of anything interesting. We find a couple of scrolls and potions. In a library, we find a writ ordering death for anyone who claims that Lord Strahd von Zarovich is involved in necromancy, that he killed his brother, and that a woman named Tatyana once plunged to her death trying to escape him.

       

These things seem awfully specific.

         

The Burgomaster is in a den with a roaring fire and a few comfortable chairs. One of them is occupied by a lounging woman, to whom we speak first. She's an attractive elf mage, consulting a book and sipping a drink called tuika. She says she's grown bored of the Burgomaster's attention and offers to join the party. We accept, though over the Burgomaster's protestations ("there are other books, magical volumes I haven't yet displayed before you!"). We say goodbye to "Jill of all trades" Velika.

   

Our new companion is Glorianna of Sithicus, a neutral good Level 5 mage. She inherits all of Velika's carried stuff, but since she has a quarterstaff (which allows attacking from the rear rank), I decide that I'm done with retrieving missile items. Her starting spell selection isn't great: no "Improved Identify," no "Fireball" (despite two Level 3 slots). Still, I'm sure we'll get there.

        

Just what the party was lacking: a 1980s aerobics instructor.

     

On to the Burgomaster. He welcomes us in the name of Lord Strahd, his master. When we ask about Strahd, he says, "Your interest in the great one is matched by his interest in you." He hands us an invitation and refuses to answer any more questions, saying only (ominously): "If I cannot persuade you, he will compel you to go."

      

I'm curious if Strahd ever really "compels" the party to go.

       

I figure we're going to have to walk there along the Old Svalich Road North, but he says that a carriage is waiting to take us to Castle Ravenloft. We demur long enough to rest and memorize spells, then accept the invitation.

   

A cut scene tells us how a horse-drawn carriage conveys us through the night to the castle. A cinematic shows us crossing a drawbridge.

        

I wonder who does the carriage manufacturing around here.

         

"Everything will be fine; we're guests, after all," Somers says as we arrive. "Yet  there is in this air something which brings sweat to the palms." I'd love to believe this is her "Detect Evil" ability activating, but I suspect every party gets this dialogue. We find ourselves in the castle's entry hall, full of armor, tapestries, paintings, and a (probably) red carpet.  

   

No sooner than we have opened a door than another cut scene takes over. Lord Strahd von Zarovich (which turns out to have the accent on the second syllable, not the first) greets us in front of a dining room table. He presents himself as an articulate and debonair lord, with no signs that he's a chaotic evil vampire. I suppose it's not possible to go into this game ignorant of his true nature, but it would have been more fun if he hadn't been shown on the game box in vampiric form.

                

He  looks like George Hamilton crossed with Laurence Olivier.

        

Strahd's speech is long, adequately but not brilliantly voice-acted. "No road leads out of this mist-bound universe," he warns. "The land entraps many; its ruler is no exception." He claims to have therefore devoted his life to the entrapped people. His latest pursuit involves the study of dimensional gateways (I thought there was no way out?). He says there is a portal in the caverns west of Barovia, near the Ivlis River, and he'd like us to investigate. The party dines with him and takes his carriage back to Barovia. I was rather hoping that we'd get to explore more of the castle.

   

I assume the way to the caverns is through the western exit, so naturally I take the northern one. It is indeed the same road that we took by carriage, and it takes us back to Strahd's castle, although its gates are shut and locked. Other than a bunch of worgs and the experience points they convey, we don't find anything in this area.

    

One does not simply walk into Ravenloft.

       

Back in Barovia, I'm just about to head to the Wooded Area when I remember that the Vistani offered to lead us to his camp if we were willing to be blindfolded. We talk to him again and agree. He warns us it will take a day or so to reach the location. Blindfolded, I think it would take a day or so to even get out of the city.

      

An inviting scene.

       

He leads us to a circle of wagons surrounding a fire. "Madam Eva awaits," the game tells us, as if we've heard of her before. A cut scene draws us into her wagon. All we learn, however, is that her tarroka deck is short one card, stolen by another gypsy, perhaps at Strahd's behest. A few seconds later, we're back at the tavern in Barovia.

        

What's he going to do with one card?

       

The Wooded Area West of Barovia is the last place left to us, so that's where we go. Well, first I go back to the Old Svalich Road South, as I have come to regret expelling Velika instead of Fhalken. Unfortunately, I can't find Velika where I originally picked her up. Thus, west it is.

   

The Wooded Area is full of skeletal bats and werewolves, neither of which is terribly difficult. I feel like combats in this game have been relatively easy in general, facilitated by the relative ease of finding a place to rest and fully heal. I'm not even sure why this works given that my paladin cannot cast cleric spells yet. I thought D&D rules were that absent spellcasting, characters could only heal one hit point per 24-hour period. Nevertheless, about nine hours seems to be enough to get everyone back to full health.

      

Spooky, scary.

              

We find the entrance to the caves on the far western wall. The masked woman from the tavern, Irmgarde, waits next to it. She mentioned that she was trying to find a way out of here, and apparently she's heard of the dimensional portal within. We suggest once again that she join us, and this time she accepts. We send Fhalken back home. I guess it's a good thing we didn't waste time having Velika rejoin us.

         

I'm not sure what she means by her first line.

        

Irmgarde is a Level 6 neutral good half-elf cleric. With her and Glorianna, I feel like I have a complete party. Thus, when I discover a chaotic neutral human mage named Ryszard brewing potions in a nearby building, I decline to let him join us even though he's one level higher than Glorianna.

        

I'm not sure I want a party member who's mad with anything.

       

We enter the caverns. There's a spinning portal-looking thing right in the main entrance, and at first I think that's the portal we've been sent to find. It turns out it's just a barrier that we have to dissolve by pressing the Seal of Entrance that Strahd gave us to a plaque on the wall.

      

This seemed too easy at first.

       

On the other side, blocking the corridor, we meet a fighter named Vladislav who says he "shares our goals" and offers to join the party. "You will come to know me as a man of constant resolution." He elaborates that he is also seeking a portal to "a kingdom known as Elturel," which the Burgomaster worries thieves might try to use. That's where we're from! I don't like his attitude, and I like my current party composition, but the bastard is literally blocking the way forward and won't budge. As I soon discover, I can't take him, then drop him, because he returns to the place I found him. I thus reluctantly have to get rid of Glorianna temporarily. She says she'll go to the tavern.

      

He looks a bit like Strahd. Is it Strahd? Did everyone know that except me?

Vladislav is a Level 7 chaotic neutral half-elf male fighter. He comes with platemail, which I give to Quill. I have to arm him with a quarterstaff so that he'll be able to do some good from the rear rank. I soon find a halberd to replace it with.

   

It takes me about three hours to get through the caves. I have a block shortly after I start exploring because in order to make progress, I have to open some barriers by pulling ropes on the walls. The problem is—and here my colorblindness might be screwing me again—I can't really see the ropes against the backgrounds. I only find the first one because, having hit nothing but dead ends, I end up both clicking and trying to walk through every wall.

      

Does that look like a pull rope to you?

       

There are ultimately four keys scattered about, all needed to open a series of those spinning barriers. There are also teleporters, illusory walls, and spinners aplenty, plus a couple of corridors where lightning bolts and fireballs come shooting at the party. One of them kills Irmgarde at one point, and Quill remarks that without her, we have no hope of entering the portal in the caverns. I didn't realize she was that key.

         

A lightning bolt is about to kill us. One of those barriers spins to our left.

        

The floors are so scattered with scrolls, potions, wands, and weapons that my inventory is soon bursting. I start using things just to clear some space.

     

An Oil of Fiery Burning damages a bone golem.

      

The level is swarming with skeletons, punctuated by the occasional bone golem. The skeletons are trivial; the bone golems are deadly. I keep dying at their hands, reloading, and then killing them at a distance with Oils of Fiery Burning. "Turn Undead" turns out to be a single-enemy spell, though it refreshes quickly. It completely kills the enemy when it works. All the characters hit Level 7 in the caverns.

     

Somers takes a mace to the face.

      

We find a mage's scroll at one point. It's written from the perspective of someone trying to escape from Ravenloft, convinced that there are portals that can be opened with various rituals (including killing a wereraven beneath a full moon). It ends by wondering: "Lifting the cures of Alabain, acquiring Trimia's Catalogue of Outer Plane Artifacts, finding the date of the Great Alignment of Southern Stars, which of these holds the most promise?" 

      

There was this weird pile of clerics' gear in one cavern. None of it was magical.

       

We find the portal in the southwestern part of the level, behind a couple of secret doors. We walk into it. I don't understand what happens, but we find ourselves back in the Wooded Area with Irmgarde and Vladislav both gone, their stuff piled on the ground in front of us. Neither are back at the entrance. Did they jack our portal? If not, why did we not all appear in the same place?

      

Confronting the portal.

     

In any event, I'm glad to be out of the caverns. I have not enjoyed this game's approach to dungeons nearly as much as its approach to other areas. The dungeons have been too cramped and confusing. I did forget until the end of this session that the player can write annotations on the automap, though, which might have made the place easier to navigate.

     

This was a big map.

       

We head back to town and go to the Burgomaster's to enlist Glorianna again. He tells us that she's gone to the tavern, where we find her and convince her to re-join us. With no more cleric, at least for now, we go to the house of Tatian the fighter and ask her to join. She's only Level 4, so I hope not to have to keep her for long. We then return to the forest to pick up the various items. I just realized typing this that we could have enlisted Ryszard instead. Maybe I'll do that when the next session begins.

     

Is she any relation to the Tatyana who plunged to her death?

       

While in the Wooded Area, I happen to notice a cave I missed during my initial explorations. So I may pop in there next before . . . I don't know . . . returning to Strahd? Oh! I forgot to tell you that I found a Church Vestibule Key in the caverns, so that's a potential path forward. What do you think: Should I spend some time in the next entry comparing what this game has shown us to the original model, or should I save that for the end?

           

Time so far: 11 hours 

09/18/2026