The Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession/Stone Prophet thread

[mondblut]

What always bothered me in this kind of games is all that loot and not one shop to sell it. I mean, why does the game keep showering you with dozens of plain swords and chainmails when you are already shining like a christmas tree after casting detect magic? You don't use them, you can't sell them, why are they there?

 

[V_K]

To weight pressure plates? :D
Don't know about Ravenlofts, but other Event Horizon/Dreamforge games were notorious about how fast weapons would break.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Mucking about in the Obelisk, I'm starting to get a much better feel for this game now.

# There is a bug in both Ravenloft games, Elves are supposed to spot illusionary walls and Dwarves are supposed to spot hidden buttons, but in the game it's the other way around. Not that I'm complaining, my Dwarf informing me about illusionary walls has proved to be the more useful feature of the two.

# Enemies in Ravenloft 1 came in three categories: Tough buggers (Zombie Golems, Pyre Elementals and Treants), dangerous buggers (every undead that drains levels, Darklings due to poison) and mere obstacles (everything else). In Ravenloft 2 there's a much greater diversity in the monsters due to one single reason: Ranged attacks! Only Strahd himself used ranged attacks in Ravenloft 1, in the sequel even the lowliest monsters can use ranged attacks that hurt everyone in your party!

# The biggest dick monsters I've come across in Ravenloft 2 so far are the Floating Death Heads in the Obelisk. They shoot lightning and fireballs, but the kicker is the lightning bolt they unleash when they die, so common sense dictates killing them at a distance and (try to) dodge the lightning bolt.

# So far Ravenloft 1 only has an advantage over the sequel in one field: It has a better selection of NPCs. Ravenloft 2 has no Mage NPCs, but instead it has an "exotic" collection of NPCs... though exotic doesn't equal better.

# If you thought managing NPCs in Ravenloft 1 was a bother, you're in for much worse in Ravenloft 2. Two NPCs are "Commoners" meaning they serve no purpose except to be escorted to certain locations, yet they take up a party slot. In addition two other NPCs only stick around until they've completed their respective tasks, leaving players only with a real choice of five NPCs to choose from.

# In the case of one of the temporary NPCs there's little to stop the player from pulling a Yoshimo and doing everything possible in the game before that One Task that removes them from the party, but maximizing the use of that particular NPC seems to involve too much meta-knowledge of the game for my tastes.

# One of the NPCs only appears in the patched version of the game (v1.1), so make sure you're playing that version before even starting the game. GOG's release is patched, so that's covered.

# The spell "Detect Pits" seems to have a range of absolutely fuck-all. I'll have to test further to see if it even works.

# The "Knock" spell actually works, I managed to open a door in the Neferti shrine with it.

# Ravenloft 2 has a new trick up its sleeve: Pusher squares. These squares push the party in a certain direction, and almost always push them in the way of a trap. The best way to handle these squares is to keep moving in the opposite direction, but that's not always the best option.

 

[rezaf]

# Enemies in Ravenloft 1 came in three categories: Tough buggers (Zombie Golems, Pyre Elementals and Treants), dangerous buggers (every undead that drains levels, Darklings due to poison) and mere obstacles (everything else). In Ravenloft 2 there's a much greater diversity in the monsters due to one single reason: Ranged attacks! Only Strahd himself used ranged attacks in Ravenloft 1, in the sequel even the lowliest monsters can use ranged attacks that hurt everyone in your party!

I dunno, even though Stone Prophet is for higher level chars than Strahd's Possession, enemies appear much weaker in general. Sure, there's ones with attacks harming everyone, but these attacks are fairly weak and only really dangerous to pure magic users or other chars with criminally low HP threshold.
I've yet to encounter enemies remotely as annoying (as in reload-incuring) as Zombie Golems or their likes.
And I think it's a good thing, too - Strahd's was only realistically survivable by cheesing it with the dagger of returning or similar means. Maybe the equivalent to blobber's square dancing would have been an option, but this is very annoying to pull off in D&D on ice. The slower pace and greatly reduced lethality in combat does Stone Prophet no disservice in my opinion.

# It seems that while Ravenlift 2 ditched the "spinner squares" that the prequel used, it has a new trick up its sleeve: Pusher squares. These squares push the party in a certain direction, and almost always push them in the way of a trap. The best way to handle these squares is to keep moving in the opposite direction, but that's not always the best option.

Just FYI, there still are a few spinner squares, but really only a few - at least one of which can be turned off to boot. They definately were more annoying in Strahd's.
As for the pushers ... do they even work "properly"? They're quite easy to "outrun", or so it seems to me.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Here's the thing which I noticed recently but forgot to mention: Ravenloft 2 isn't intended for higher level chars than Strahd's Possession.

I created a Level 5/5 Fighter/Cleric and a Level 6 Mage in Ravenloft 1... and Ravenloft 2 gives me exactly the same levels!

In fact, the Ravenloft 2 manual states that importing a higher-level party increases the difficulty of the game by adding Hit Points to the monsters (which is unverified).

But for a good laugh, try creating new characters in Ravenloft 2. Not only will you get a brand-new cinematic involving a gypsy wagon, but then you'll get a voiced commentary from a badly-accented gypsy about your choices.

"Ah! Ze sign of a mahn!" - When I pick a Male gender.

There are more faces to choose from, including those of the NPCs from Ravenloft 1, plus a few new ones which are just .

So... with the exception of the bonus of having the Mage spells all pre-learned, the Potion of Strength exploit and the Ring of Wizardry... why exactly should anyone play Ravenloft 1 with the intent of transferring over to Ravenloft 2?

Seriously.

 

[rezaf]

So, that's what became of the bullies in third grade who'd wave their fists and go like ...

smells like graveyard

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Just finished three dungeons: The Temple of Harvest, the Temple of Set and the Burial Catacombs. You'll need to bounce between the three places in order to finish them all.

But first, some notes about the Obelisk. To reach here you must first complete the Shrine Of Neferti, the dungeon at the bottom of the well. At the end you should have a Helm of Telepathy and two Eyes of Neferti. Take these to the blind woman you met at the start of the game and you'll have a much more meaningful conversation with her, ending with her joining up to lead you to the Obelisk. Somewhere in your travels you should have found a Map of Har'akiri, on which there should be an obelisk visible. Go out in the desert about North-Northeast of the village and you should eventually find it. Once there, the blind woman will leave your party.

# The Obelisk is three floors of filler combat and basic puzzle solving. Think of the Elven Tombs from Ravenloft 1 only without all the level draining.

# You'll be fighting Manscorpions, Floating Death Heads and Minotaurs. The Manscorpions can poison you, the Floating Death Heads are cunts and the Minotaurs can hit really hard, but otherwise this is nothing a savescumming party shouldn't overcome.

# They're a great source of XP though, so expect to gain several levels mucking about in here.

# The goal is to find 8 chests (!) that each contains a partial parchment. Once you have all four of each set, use one of the fragments like a weapon and you'll be able to read the entire prophecy.

# If you've played Veil of Darkness then you'll know this as Instructions On How To Beat The Game, though this is much more cryptic than the prophecy in VoD.

# Another thing to keep a look out for are Seal Fragments. Again, four fragments that create two seals in total. You can combine seals to restore the seal and save inventory space. IIRC there are two of them in the Obelisk. (No, I'm not talking about the animal or the singer.)

# Try to get absolutely everywhere on each floor, and in order to do so you'll need to fall down some pits.

Once you've cleared the obelisk dungeon, the next step is to finish off the three dungeons I mentioned earlier. First, the Temple of Harvest.

# The upper floor has harmless enemies, and not-so-harmless Gas Zones (they'll be marked with green squares on the automap). Standing in them without protection zaps your Hit Points and poisons the party.

# One of those Zones has the Mask of Hathor, which is the easiest way to complete one of the coolest side quests of the game.

# Namely, speaking with Sanfarr the cat. This is easily the highpoint of playing the Ravenloft games for me, as this (far too short) conversation goes a long way towards capturing how a cat would express himself to humans.

# It's fairly easy to complete 85% of the first level during the first visit, so smack those Sand Mephits around, cover as much ground as possible and find and talk to the priest.

Next up: the Temple of Set.

# Max out Neutralize Poison if you haven't already, only a handful of enemies here don't poison your party.

# STAY AWAY FROM ALL PITS! You'll end up in a bad place, against a foe you can't beat.

# Feel free to talk to the creepy priestess by the entrance. She'll bugger off once you start exploring the temple proper, but I think she'll pop up again later.

# You'll need either Detect Invisible or True Seeing here in order to catch everything, there are a LOT of illusionary walls and hidden buttons here.

# Dire Nagas are worth mucho XP, so hunt down every last one of them to watch your XP levels soar!

# Hidden buttons can often be spotted by overly bright rocks and stones on the walls. If you think it looks like a hidden button, click on it.

# The goal for this first visit here is to reach the floor above and find an Everfilling Urn or whatever it was called. To do that you need to get at least one of those Serpent Idol keys, and give it to the right Door Snake on the ground floor. Keep looking for those keys to feed those Door Snakes until you find it.

# On the top floor there's a Helm of True Seeing, which is an awesome piece of treasure to have. Never adventure without it!

# Once you have the urn, go back to the Temple of Harvest and talk to the priest while holding the urn. Don't let the dialogue choice fool you!

# With that good deed done the temple will now have a green floor, and you'll have a key to a lock you may have found. But in the room you're standing in are now Air Spores on the floor. Pick up four of them and save them for later.

# Unlocking the door you can now open reveals a lower floor beneath the temple. Let's have a look and see what has survived down there "undisturbed for centuries"...

Temple of Harvest Underground

# The giant beetles I can understand having survived down here for centuries, but not the big-ass cats. Those cats are MEAN, they can hit several members of your party at once, including rear-rankers!

# The beetles leave behind glands or something. Anyone know what they're for?

# The goal here is to open the sequence of doors in the middle that ask for animal statues. The first door you open is the one asking for the Feline Statue, which you should have if you've done a fair bit of exploring and picked up Everything Not Nailed Down.

# Sadly I can't remember where exactly I found the Feline Statue, but if it isn't in the Shrine of Neferti then it's in the Obelisk. (Failing that it's in the Temple of Set.)

# This section is mostly a straightforward affair of "open door, smash monsters, collect loot"-kinda thing, until you come to the last two doors.

# During this section you'll find a Special Scroll of Retirement, a scroll containing a sphinx riddle, and a Coffer of Ra. These items are IMPORTANT, so take them with you! (READ the sphinx riddle!)

# Once you open the Vulture door you'll run into a problem, the whole area beyond it is a Gas Zone, meaning limited visuals and constant poison damage. Not cool. The trick here are the Air Spores. Rest and save before entering the Gas Zone, then feed an Air Spore to each party member. Don't take too long in this section, as their protection expires.

# Use the automap to navigate around, kill the Shadows, grab the Scorpion Statue and find a talking statue. Once it's finished talking, use the Coffer of Ra on it like a weapon to gain a Seal fragment. (This is mentioned in the prophecy.)

# I don't recall there being anything super-important behind the Scorpion door, but there's some cool stuff there so you might as well clear it out. Just remember that it's also a Gas Zone, so either clear out both rooms in one go or grab another set of Air Spores before tackling this room.

# If you've filled out the map then you're done here, teleport out and head Northeast. Far Northeast. Until it changes maps. You'll probably follow a cliff that's to the North to do this.

# If you're in the right place you should be in a large canyon with a Sphinx on the far East side and some ruins heading west from it. Try to enter the Sphinx and it'll tell you to bugger off. Answer its riddle and it'll open the way, but there's no need to enter just yet.

# Now head straight West from the Sphinx. You'll probably run into a Desert Troll or two that won't stay dead after you've killed them. The trick is to injure them at least once with a fire- or acid-based attack, then they'll stay dead once killed.

# Among the ruins you should see an injured troll. This is the infamous Troll NPC that many think makes Ravenloft 2 such a cool game. As awesome as he appears, the truth is that he kinda sucks. Plus he can possibly börk your game. Troll Guy has maxed-out Strength, two in-built weapons with Reach and regenerates rapidly unless he's been injured by fire or acid, in which case you'll need to burn a Heal spell on him to fix that (which you need to do anyway once you find him) So he would have been great at the start of the game, but except for the upcoming Buried Tomb he's pretty much useless now.

# That's because his arms don't count as magic weapons, so he can't hurt any monster that requires a magical weapon, like HALF OF THE MONSTERS IN THE GAME!

# Also he's capped at Level 7, he won't gain any more (Fighter) levels. What you see is what you get.

# But by far the worst thing about him is the inventory. He looks really mean on the inventory screen, but he can only wear one particular item and has 4 less inventory slots than other characters.

# Unfortunately the game is (possibly) broken in regards to those four missing inventory slots. According to the Readme file (a.k.a. patch notes) If you dumped another NPC to take on Troll Guy, and he had a full inventory of items, the items in those four inventory slots are erased from the game. Ouch.

# SAVE before taking on Troll Guy. Just in case.

# If you have the Wemic Fighter in your party when you meet Troll Guy, you get a special piece of dialogue. It's nice for fluff, but except for giving you a clue where the Wemic (and Troll) Armor are, it's kinda useless.

# Troll Guy's unique wearable equipment is the Troll Armor you get from clearing out the Burial Catacombs up ahead. Besides being an AWESOME-looking piece of gear, it does nothing but lower Troll Guy's AC to -1.

# But yeah, advance North through the canyon and kill every troll you come across. Eventually you'll see an ominous-looking face jutting from the cliffside. Guess what you're gonna go with it? Go on in!

The Burial Catacombs

# In terms of level design this dungeon is at least more interesting than every dungeon that's come before. It's 3 floors, 2 of which are easily accessible. But the top floor requires special tools... namely, flight!

# Once again, keep falling down any pits you may come across as they'll lead to new areas.

# In addition to more trolls and shadows, there's a new enemy type here: The Grave Elemental. That's the pile of dirt brofisting rezaf in the screenshot in the previous post. They're tough and hit hard, but besides needing magical weapons to be hit, they're not that much of a bother. Still, try to avoid fighting more than 1 at a time.

# In here is both a Mage Scroll of Fly, and a couple Potions of Flight. Both of these are ways to reach the upper floor, so hang on to at least one of them.

# Failing that, the Wemic's "Jump" ability also works if you have him in your party.

# To reach the upper floor, go back outside and either enable Fly (see above methods) or have the Wemic take you up there. Aim for one of the eyes and you'll enter (half of) the upper floor.

# The Troll chieftain is on the upper floor and he's guarding a Golden key that's needed to reach his loot stash (on the ground floor). This stash has both the Troll and Wemic armors, so if you have those two NPCs with you there's a reason to do all this.

# Speaking of NPCs, one can be found in here, Glorianthia the Undead Paladin. She offers to join you if you intend on killing a mummy named Senmet, so why not?

# And where is this Senmet mummy? Remember that pit in the Temple of Set I told you not to fall down? Go back and fall down it.

# Down here is a large room, a winding passageway and an exit back up through the temple dungeons. Somewhere along the way you'll encounter a mummy. He groans a lot, hits like a jackhammer, can't really miss him. Beat the tar out of him and he'll just pop right back up afterwards, so how to kill him?

# Remember the Scroll of Retirement from the Temple of Harvest? Once Senmet is a pile of dust on the ground, use the scroll. Senmet will stay down this time, and Glorianthia will leave your party. Fortunately that arrogant Ranger/Cleric guy is hanging around just outside the temple, so it's not a long walk to find a replacment NPC.

# Rest up, gear up, save up and head for the Sphinx.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Just finished the Sphinx. Pretty much another filler dungeon, but it had a few interesting things.

# The enemies here are some kind of griffon and mimics. The mimics are interesting because they all start as a piece of scenery, but click on it and its true form is revealed. Its only notable ability is that if it it hits you, you're stuck in place for a few seconds... a different form of paralysis, one can say.

# The battle music while playing the griffons sounds like something out of a jRPG than a Egyptian-style horror RPG.

# Likewise, the Mimic SFX give off the impression that they're aliens from another world. Truly bizarre.

# There are Gas Zones in here, but no reason to enter a single one of them.

# The final NPC of the game is also in here, a Werejackal Cleric that's gone insane from being locked up alone in the Sphinx for centuries (it's as if the griffons and mimics aren't real to him). I chose to leave him there.

# First floor has lots of exposition crammed in, but frankly I barely bothered reading them. There's a map in among all those documents, so at least take that with you.

# Second floor is even more filler: Ring around the teleporties, find animal statues for doors, find all the secret buttons on a floor FILLED with the secret button textures, and a couple of tight spots where you're put into fights while in the path of fireball spitters.

# The goal is to get a Golden Whistle, though for what purpose I simply don't know.

And in the last point above lies the chief problem with Ravenloft 2, and where Ravenloft 1 scores two important advantages:

1: The antagonist is antagonizing. In Ravenloft 1 your antagonist is not only introduced early, he introduces himself, invites you over for a cuppa and then even joins your party for a spell! So there's a gravitas behind it when everyone in Barovia wails and gnashes their teeth about how Strahd is responsible for all the horrors in the land, and it often seems that his presence is actually felt while playing.

By comparison the antagonist in Ravenloft 2, Antique Potty, isn't present at all for what seems for two-thirds of the game, possibly even more. Everyone in Har'akir wails and gnashes their teeth at him and the horrors he's responsible for, yet he's a complete no-show. You visit dungeon after dungeon that together hold the key towards a possible confrontation with the lord of the land, yet they're all abandoned halls that haven't been touched in centuries. Unlike Strahd, he just doesn't give a shit.

2: The plot. While both games focus on the player confronting the Big Bad on their home turf, escaping their realms and living to be the bitch-boys of Lord Dhelt, the games go about this quite differently.

Ravenloft 1 shows that Strahd has a goal of his own, and that he is not afraid to help potential threats if it means achieving his own goals. Furthermore, the goal of the player is made clear; a means of escape is presented early on (Trimia's Catalogue), and how to achieve it (activate it by finding five MacGuffins), so there's a constant course laid out for the player right up 'till the end.

Ravenloft 2 stumbles about for the longest part. No clear path is defined, no trail of breadcrumbs ends in the player's goal being revealed, but after wandering through several dungeons for no reason snippets of information start to appear that form a vague outline of an escape plan; a means of escape may exist beyond the Wall of Ra, but to even cross it the player must lower the wall somehow. Someone controls it and that controller must be, at the worst, distracted from doing so. But how to reach the controller, and how to distract him? I'm guessing I'm 66% done with the game by now and I have almost no idea what I'm doing.

But yeah, a few more points in closing:

# My Mage has reached Level 14... and it's as if he's broken the game's level cap. He gained no new spell slots, but at least he gained the +1 Hit Point for gaining a level.

# The Knock spell scroll can be found at the end of the Sphinx dungeon, which leads me to believe that Ravenloft 2 can be seriously broken by this spell. I haven't tried it on doors requiring keys, but doors that open by pushing buttons or walking on pressure plates yield to the Knock spell. Something for speedrunners to keep in mind.

# The last thing I did before ending my current session was to play a lute to a ghost out in the desert. Much to my surprise the ghost sang a tune that's actually quite good. This not only gave me huge Stonekeep vibes, but also shows that Ravenloft 2 is a game that's full of surprises.

Next stop, a lone statue to the East.

 

[V_K]

Plot? In a blobber?? What are you talking about!

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Played a short stint in the Royal Burial Hall, which becomes available by first attaching the big-ass chain (found in the Temple of Harvest IIRC) to the lone statue far to the East, then just walking close enough once you've heard the ghost's song.

Yawn. Just another generic filler dungeon. You'll be fighting Doom Guards, Grave Elementals and Shadows down here.

# Doom Guards are Dick Monsters in the way that they shoot a weak fireball at you when they die.

# One thing I noticed about the Shadows is how familiar they looked. Then it hit me: Remember when I talked about how creepy the jeweller's ghost looked like in Ravenloft 1, especially the animation when he reaches out to possess you? Well, that's the graphics used for the Shadow! Clearly someone else than I thought it looked neat and was worthy of more use.

But now I have a question: Is there anyone reading this at the moment that is playing Ravenloft 1, or has access to saves somewhat early in the game? I need something tested.

 

[mondblut]

The mummy is sleeping, and has been for centuries. Technically he is responsible for everything, but stopped giving a fuck forever ago. Unlike Strahd who is totally obsessed with banging his dream bitch and escaping the place.

Always wondered what happens at the Burial Hall if you kept being asshole throughout the game. I remember you swindled that dying man and his starving family of their supplies, a good start...

 

[rezaf]

But now I have a question: Is there anyone reading this at the moment that is playing Ravenloft 1, or has access to saves somewhat early in the game? I need something tested.

I still have a save from all the way back when I had gotten Velika (or whatever she was called) killed - that was fairly early on, as I got her resurrected as soon as possible. What do you need tested?

As for Stone Prophet - you're putting up quite some speed there for someone who has no time this month.
I think you've gotten ahead of me by now.

I gotta say that I do like having the troll, but sure, the lack of magic weapons, no rings and no leveling severly hampers him. He sure dishes out some decent damage though.
The smaller inventory bothered me much less as I just pack him with boxes and fill these up as we go.
However, the pacing issues you mentioned mean I'm always carrying around loads and loads of junk - the game surely loves to cut things up into a gazillion pieces and then has you carrying around all the individual parts in your limited inventory.
Go find 4 pieces of this scroll and 4 pieces of that scroll, and 4 pieces of that seal and 4 pieces of this seal, and don't forget carrying around these ten animal figurines, those couple of dozen keys, that coffer, this whistle, that chain, this lute ....
Oh, and don't you forget all the teleport keys, mkay?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

But now I have a question: Is there anyone reading this at the moment that is playing Ravenloft 1, or has access to saves somewhat early in the game? I need something tested.

I still have a save from all the way back when I had gotten Velika (or whatever she was called) killed - that was fairly early on, as I got her resurrected as soon as possible. What do you need tested?

Play the game until you get the Rod of Rebirth from the Ghoul Lord.
Go to the Old Church, resurrect Mischa the Cleric and have him join the party.
Then go upstairs and talk to the Old Priest that was trapped in the mirror.
Check for any new dialog options.

If I'm right, something very interesting will come out of this.

As for Stone Prophet - you're putting up quite some speed there for someone who has no time this month.

I had incoming work plus other obligations what should have eaten up most of the month, but fortunately the work got delayed by a few weeks. The obligations are still there though, and they'll eat up all my time starting next week until late in the month. With luck I'll at least manage to play Ravenloft 2 through, and then leave the reviews/analysis for later.

 

[mondblut]

By the way, with a tiny bit of hex editing you could import NPCs from Strahd's Possession to Stone Prophet. Just a single byte that tells whether the character is PC or NPC. Can't be bothered to look which one, but I used to take Vladislav along for the Har'Akir ride by accident many years ago.

You could try importing Menzoberranzan save, too. Chances are, it will work.

 

[rezaf]

Why bother, though?
These games are pitifully easy as it stands, mostly because you can savescumm to your hearts content and/or you can rest-spam and thus always be at max-health and have all your spells.
Personally, I didn't use the Potion of Giant Strength trick when importing characters from Strahd's possession either.

However, I just endered the dungeon with the Stone Golems, and these guys are just too tough and magic resistant to be going at them with a single front liner. So I ditched the troll, picked up the wemic, handed him the scimitar of speed, the vistani dagger, bracers of stone giant strength, a ring of protection and his wemic armor. He's totally killing it. His blows strike harder than the trolls and you can hardly click fast enough to fire them as they recharge almost instantly. He's half the level of my paladin (8 vs 15) but totally leaves him in the dust in terms of damage output. With the good ring of protection, he still has -5 armor class, despite dual wielding. I should rename him chuck norris.

@UC: Hmm. I'm not sure I want to play AGAIN until I reach the Ghoul Lord. That's quite some ways to go, iirc. At least not from that very early save. I'll double check whether I have a save that isn't SO far from that point.

 

[rezaf]

Hah! You won't pass me by after all - just finished. Had to watch the outro on youtube as trying to load it crashes my game, but I guess it matters little at that point.
I'll post some closing impressions later.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Currently it's my Mage who's doing the most damage, and she's a rear-ranker with a Staff of Thunder or Lightning or something similar, a wonderful Mage weapon (and I've found 3 such Staffs so far).

I'll try the Ravenloft 1 thing myself then, shouldn't be that much of a problem to get to that point.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Played until I had enough, which didn't take long considering I entered the Temple of Ra. Pyre Elementals are the undisputed winners for Most Dickish Enemy in Ravenloft. They're immune to fire-based attacks, throw fireballs, throw one final fireball upon dying, and then keep setting tiles on fire, meaning I take damage by standing on them.

The busybody work in this game is through the roof:

Collect the 4 fragments of the first prophecy scroll.
Collect the 4 fragments of the second prophecy scroll.
Collect the 4 fragments of the seal of the hierophant.
Collect the 4 fragments of the seal of Ankhtepot.
Collect the 8 tears of Ra.
Collect the 8 or so teleport stones.
Collect over a dozen different items for the main plot to plod on.

Ravenloft 2 is about 2-3 dungeons too long, but I must be close to the end.

 

[rezaf]

Played until I had enough, which didn't take long considering I entered the Temple of Ra. Pyre Elementals are the undisputed winners for Most Dickish Enemy in Ravenloft. They're immune to fire-based attacks, throw fireballs, throw one final fireball upon dying, and then keep setting tiles on fire, meaning I take damage by standing on them.

Thankfully, the Pyre Elementals are fairly suspectible to lightning damage. I could memorize 10 3rd level spells at that point, which gets you a fair way before having to re-rest - and you can kill several pyre-elementals at once with one casting.

Funny, how useless most higher level mage spells are in these games.
Ice Storm only affects a small area in front of you and cannot be "launched". Cone of Cold, 2 levels ahead as 5th level spell, always turned out to be an underwhelming performer. I tried Cloudkill, Death and Disintegrate (6th level spells) a couple of times, but they had no effect at all.
Contrary to that, Lighting Bolt is like the perfect spell in those long corridors, it has no limit to it's effectiveness, one time I even lined up such a huge array of enemies (I think it was Doomguards) that their combined counterattacks released upon death ended up killing my mage (I think it was eight or so enemies). The downside that made me almost never use this spell in the Goldbox games - that it bounced off walls and could hit your own guys - isn't modelled in this game, so what's there not to like?

 

[mondblut]

I tried Cloudkill, Death and Disintegrate (6th level spells) a couple of times, but they had no effect at all.

I don't think there is any game where save or die spells have any effect. The shit you want to cast them on always has high saves or is straight away immune, so why would anybody waste a precious high level spell slot/lots of mana and a turn/opportunity on doing something that has like 5% chance of working? Only direct damage is real.

(ok, Cloudkill can be somewhat useful to clear rooms of low-level chaff, but I'd still swap it for additional fireball instead)

 

[Grauken]

Death effect spells are somewhat useful in W7 late game to get rid of pesky large groups where you can target many groups at once instead of mowing them down round by round

 

[Unkillable Cat]

That's great, but we're talking about the Ravenloft games here, and whereas each game handles "Save vs Death or die!"-spells differently, it's pointless to bring up other RPGs unless it's Menzoberrenzan.

I have used both Disintegrate and Death spell to some effect (meaning things died) but using Death Spell against Undead seems kinda redundant.

On another note, I completed Ravenloft 2, and like rezaf I came across the bug that the outro didn't play. I would like to say that GOG has work to do about optimizing Ravenloft 2, but honestly I'm so fed up with the game I don't even want to think about it anymore. For anyone interested, here's the outro on YouTube (which features the funky song during the credits):



Final XP for my Mage was Level 16 with about 2.4 million XP, meaning that the total XP gained in Ravenloft 2 is about 2 million. But as I said before neither game anticipates a spellcasting class getting access to 7th-level spells, and when they do the game stops giving out spell slots, even when it should. That's a rather large bug.

One note when dealing with Antique Potty: He has an Anti-Magic field, meaning all your fancy spells (and items) are dispelled in his presence. Boo!

I may churn out reviews for both games over the weekend and try out my Mischa theory, but after that I think I'm pretty much done here.

 

[RPK]

Music and overall mood.

that's my biggest takeaway too. Like others, i've tried to replay Strahd's possession a few times and got bogged down just a few hours in. it's mostly the sound and feel it managed to evoke at the time i remember so fondly.

 

[rezaf]

Here's my final takeaway:

Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession

TLDR: Is is still worth playing? No, probably not. 5/10.

RL1 is a somewhat weird game. Running AD&D 2nd Edition on a classic vampire theme (when vampires were still distinguished gentlemen with grey sideburns) is a somewhat novel proposition, and the game tries to make at least some use of this scenario, but - in my opinion - ultimately with little success.
As UC explained earlier, the main protagonist gets some decent disposition, but in the end, the story isn't exactly deep in this one, and I found parts of it often weirdly at odds with other parts. Oft criticised, one strength of the Forgotten Realms setting is that it's a very ordinary medieval fantasy environment in it's root, and this allows it to count on many players already being aware of many setpieces (what's an orc? Is a leather armor or a chainmail better protection? what will a fireball spell do? etc.).
For those players with such beforehand knowledge, FR mostly behaves as they'd expect.
This was one of the things that bothered me a bit with RL1, especially now when I replayed it. Like with a classic fantasy setting, I have certain expectations from a classic vampire story setting, and these expectations are sometimes at odds with how a lot of run-of-the-mill fantasy stuff is still there.
Sometimes it's small things I can't put my finger on, but by and large, I think the first Vampire the Masquerade game did a much better job of intermixing medieval fantasy and vampires. As for tackling more traditional vampire expectations, I find Dreamforge themselves did a better job just a year earlier with Veil of Darkness.
Anyways, as I wrote earlier, it was quite novel in 1994 to fully voice your game, and this naturally put tight limits on the amount of dialogue the game could have - MP3 compression wasn't a thing yet and the game had to fit on a single CD-ROM with 650ish megabytes of capacity.
RL1 sounds a lot more amateurish than it's sequel, but even so, some voice actors do a decent job and none is as cringeworthy as what you might find in a russian game released yesterday on steam.
Totally untypical for AD&D, the specifics of how many HPs you have, what your THAC0 or Armor Class is or what level you are plays a secondary role. Very very faintly foreshadowing Planescape Torment, the game cared less about pushing the typical RPG buttons and more about telling it's story.
Unfortunately, some rather questionable decisions were made in this area. The game loves to annoy it's players, early on it's easy to get killed and a long ways until resurrection is available. Throughout the game, there are many monsters which can easily drain you, which is just a pointless pain in the behind. Restoration means are not usually available and constantly recasting protection spells is nothing but repetive. Things like that don't exactly make the game a joy to play.
Since the story is rather thin to begin with, the game contains tons and tons of filler material, you track and backtrack through dungeon after dungeon, with classical blobber things like hidden buttons, invisible walls, pits and buttons to close them, locks for which you have to find the right keys (or vice versa), constantly fighting enemies which can only be defeated by savescumming, rest-spamming and/or exploiting loopholes - in RL1 this is mostly the Dagger of Returning.
As long as you're willing to engage in these methods, the game is not very hard at all. Unfortunately, this also makes the game a little bit of a chore to play most of the time.
If you were to try to play in a more legit way, I'd imagine it to be even more annoying, as you'd be forced to engage in a lot of repetiveness.
The engine itself doesn't make matters easier - navigating this games blobber-environments in real-time 3D is what UC so fittingly described as "D&D on ice".
You eventually get used to it a little bit, but it remains annoying right through to the end.
Combat is too fast paced for AD&D mechanics to properly work - just imagine playing Baldur's Gate without being able to ever pause. Picking the right spell to cast or refilling the quiver of your back-ranker is usually a liability you can ill afford. So you spam melee attacks and offensive spells until the enemy is dead or somebody from you party dies - reloading an earlier save in the latter case.
While there are some differences between dungeons, ultimately everything kinda blurs together and the game drags on and on until you finally get to kill Strahd in a rather underwhelming finale. In between, you got to lead some conversations (some of which are ok, but none actually good or even great), watch some horrible low poly 3D videos which could still look totally fine if they were handpainted 2D animations (but this was in the early days where every game HAD to have some 3D rendered crap in it) and in the end are kinda glad it's over.
From todays point of view, the game just does not have a lot going for it, even if somebody was to remaster it, there'd be a great deal of work to do to even produce a reasonably good game. It's possible, but would require many, many changes.
At least you get to import your characters to RL2 - you lose everything in their inventory, but keep level, experience and everything equipped on person.


Ravenloft: Stone Prophet

TLDR: Is is still worth playing? Kinda. If you're into egyptian themed stuff and aren't too critical of it's weaknesses. 6-7/10.

In a strange twist of fate, RL2 puts the very same characters that just got trapped into a vampire counts little fiefdom into a undead pharaohs desert kingdom, once again surrounded by an impassable barrier. Guess Sonny & Cher's "I got you babe" should've been in the intro.
In terms of how the world feels, there's a steep contrast between RL1 and RL2, and coming from RL1 it feels kinda strange early on, one more reason to just skip the first game. Controls and gameplay have been changed a little, the 3D engine is a little less wonky and combat mechanics have been tweaked to make things a little less frantic.
Thematically, it's a whole new ballgame, and I really liked the egyptian theme, but disregarding the intro video tying it all together, the game doesn't feel like a continuation of the same characters stories at all.
The graphics are improved and don't look quite so grainy, speech quality is a few notches better, and the game clearly tried to learn at least a little from the mistakes of the previous title. For example, I don't think there's any enemy herein that will drain levels from you. The Dagger of Returning has been nerfed and thus you'll actually engage in combat more often, or make heavy use of your mage. In case you brought one, because there's none to be found in RL2 as an NPC and the game is much, much harder without one. The designers can't quite let the habit of annoying their players die and included many enemies which will poison you (earlier in the game) or have post-death attacks that will hit you after their demise (lategame). Luckily, the game is very generous with healing items, including the ointments that cure poison.
The game puts up commendable effort to make itself finishable to any kind of character, though I imagine it's version of an ironman mode would be to go in without a cleric that can create water. One of the games innovations is a thirst mechanic - having a cleric with the aformentioned spell makes it a non-issue, but otherwise you'd be forced to carry around enough water to survive your hours of resting. Even if there's tons of water lying around in most places, this would prove to be quite a logistical challenge.
The story is much more fleshed out than that of RL1, but you're expected to put it's pieces together by reading scrolls scattered through the world and following the odd conversation (this is still a 1 CD game and all conversations are still fully voiced, so there are not many more than in the first game).
If you fail to do that, you might feel a bit lost - like what UC described - but otherwise it's one further step towards a PS:T'ish game.
The game makes good use of it's scenario in other ways as well, bringing in unique characters (amongst your NPC choices are a Wemic - think lion-man -, a Sand Troll, a undead Paladin and a werecreature), unique items (Khopesh swords, special egyptian themed magic items, helmets, armors and shields) and levels (temple, sphinx, obelisk, oasis ... the game has got you covered). In some areas, the game was clearly running up on engine limitations - for example a proper journaly would have been much more reasonable instead of collecting pages of paper which clog up your inventory - but some commendable effort was expended.
The game makes some interesting design decisions, being quite a bit more "open world" than it's predecessor - you can visit many locations in whatever order you please, however in the end, chosing the wrong order will require frequent backtracking to retrieve important items from different dungeons. If you didn't read all scrolls and stuff closely or were unable to catch some of the clues, it's sometimes not clear where you have to head next. You can also get into at least one hopeless battle, though the teleportation system means you can escape from whatever predicament you maneuver yourself into.
In the end, however, as the prequel, there are too many samey filler dungeons filled to the brim with pointless busywork, which is the main fact that you'll likely be glad when it's over in the end. I sure was.

Mostly by virtue of Stone Prophet, it's been a fun trip down memory lane, but not one anybody should feel compelled to undertake.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Thanks for your thoughts. I'll post mine later, but in general there's not much of a difference between them.

What disappoints me the most though about the two Ravenloft games is the "idea" behind the campaign setting (a dark, gothic realm filled with all the bog-standard fantasy horror creatures) but the Ravenloft games barely even begin to touch on the depth of possibilities here. Meanwhile an adventure game (with some combat elements) called Veil of Darkness does a much better job of conveying a Ravenloft-esque setting and environment then any of the official Ravenloft games combined.