Castle Ravenloft Guide
CONTENTS
Castle Ravenloft (CRL) dungeon you unlock after completion of the Ravenloft campaign. From Mod 21 onwards, it
will be included in the Advanced Dungeon Queue Category and you will need to be at least 25k IL to unlock it.
It is also wise to bring Scrolls of life & Health Stones along with you.
The dungeon consists mostly of three boss fights, there are very few trash mobs throughout.
The Sisters
Entering the Castle/Sisters of Ravenloft: This is the start of the dungeon you spawn outside the walls of Castle Ravenloft. You fight up the hill & over the bridge, go through the first gate to where the first boss fight starts.
The Sisters fight is a Tank/DPS check. You will ‘lose’ one of your party here as one person must take the Book that drops during this fight and distract two of the sisters firstly, and then one of the remaining sisters while the group of 4 battle the sister who is active
Book Mechanics
Typically, the person taking the book is the lowest DPS or a Support class. The book mechanic is pretty straightforward. Pick up the book when it drops and target one of the Sisters. On ps4, hold down R2 and a beam of light will shoot out of your hand, Xbox is the Right Bumper (RB) button, PC is Tab Key.
Keeping the button held down, pull the sisters away from the other members of your party simply by moving backwards away
from everyone else. Usually the Tank & DPS party of 4 will be on the right side of the screen (from the perspective of entering
from the the gate) so you would pull the remaining sisters to the opposite side.
You will receive AP gain and the book has a daily power, but it is hard to use because the sisters will drain your AP if you get too
close to them. You want to be moving as much as you can to avoid the red blood pools on the ground which will kill
you if you stand in it too long.
Fighting the Active Sister
The Sisters have three basic attacks. Tanks must keep an eye on a debuff mechanic she has. She will leap in the air and blow you
backwards if you aren’t blocking when the attack fires. If you get 10 stacks of this debuff she will One Shot you at this point. At the
10th stack when she leaps up through up your shield you will block her attack, and the stacks will be gone.
DPS: Try not to use the Bat Swarm combat power here as it makes it harder for the tank to see what the Sister is doing. It’s fine to use in the rest of the dungeon just not in the Sisters fight.
It is better to stand opposite the tank if you can and attack her down as quickly as possible. She has an attack where you will be
stunned and unable to attack for the duration. The Sister will say “Attack me if you dare” then she and another member
of the party will have Red chains around them. When the red chains appear, DO NOT ATTACK THE SISTER!
Any attacks while the chains are active will kill the people chained. Its best for the DPS to back off from the active Sister a little, while the
Tank remains in place and take her attacks till the chains disappear. The Chains will clear after a few seconds.
Occasionally, she will summon a Bat Swarm and you will see arrows on you. Run away from the group and take the damage.
If you stay with the group you will kill everyone. If you run away typically you take a small bit of damage, Negation or
Barkshield Armor Enchants will usually absorb this damage.
After killing the active Sister, she will spawn a portal in the middle of the battlefield. This portal is a straight DPS check.
Kill the portal as quickly as you can if you don’t in a set time you will perma-die. and have to restart. Killing/ closing the portal will
then activate the next sister, and you will repeat the above process again to activate the portal mechanics once more.
After the second Sister is dead, and the second Portal has been closed, simply kill the remaining third Sister.
Congratulations you are now ready to enter the Castle.
Inside Castle Ravenloft Castle
Run up the stairs and kill the first group of enemies. Typically, players avoid the next group enemies by hugging the wall
to the right (over the grass edging) and heading towards the door.
Inside the Castle, Strahd will welcome you and hope the ‘Sisters didn’t give you trouble’. Ignore him and run down the Hall.
You will see your next group of enemies and trash mobs, Kill those mobs.
Sometimes the Night Terror will spawn in this next room, kill him too. He is no more difficult than the Night Terror in Barovia.
There is an Executioner in the Hall leading to the Ballroom. The Executioner will pick one person who will get a red arrow
over there head. This player needs to stay away from the Executioner otherwise he will one shot them.
Kill him before he gets to the arrowed person.
After the Executioner is dead, enter the ballroom.
The Ballroom
Second Boss: The Arcolith
To start, you will hear Strahd talk about a party and enemies will spawn. Kill them. It’s easier sometimes if you have a Wizard in your party.
The Wizards' Ice Attacks will take care of them pretty fast. If you don’t have a Wizard available, just do your best with your normal rotation.
Now it’s time for the second boss, The Arcolith. This boss is almost a straight Tank check. There is a DPS check in addition
as you must kill him as quickly as you can, but this is really a check on how good the tank is.
The Tank must stand in front of the boss and take all his attacks without blocking, except one where he puts his sword
behind him and then does an underhand swing which needs to be blocked. This boss has several main attacks. He does an IBS style
overhand swing, a slightly different overhand swing, and a sweep attack. The Tank needs to take all of these attacks without flinching.
Healers must focus on the Tanks HP and keep it high otherwise everyone is dead. The boss will start to glow red at some point and
when he does this, he will follow it with a spin attack. He is invincible while he’s spinning. Tank will pull him to one of the pillars you
see around the room, and he will knock the pillar over and be stunned.
DPS should at all times, be behind and a little to the side of the boss so his underhanded throw mechanic doesn’t catch them
and toss them around. The Healer can stand wherever they choose, but should really focus almost exclusively on the keeping the
Tank alive in this fight. If you get to the point where all four pillars are knocked over you will have to wipe and start again.
When the boss is about to spin there will be red blood pools on the floor. Avoid the pools as they will kill you VERY quickly. After the
boss is stunned it will go away fairly quickly. After he is dead, head up to the next floor of the Castle.
Castle Halls Windows/Werewolf Attacks
Climbing the tower is pretty simple as all the enemies here are Trash mobs, so kill them all. You will come to a Hall that
has a closed door and you will have to kill everything in the hall before the doors open.
This door leads to the Chapel and there is a special mechanic here. After killing everything in the hall, be aware of an Executioner here.
The same mechanics apply as the one you encountered earlier.
Two 'Suits of Armor' will bow to your party and then open the doors to the chapel. The Chapel will be cloaked in darkness and
when the Chapel doors open, it will release a lot of bats.
RUN!!!!
You must run to the front of the chapel and hit the altar which will release the Sunshine and kill all the Vampires in the room.
Typically a Warlock or a Barbarian have the best shot of getting there quickly without dying.
After the room is cleansed it’s time for the werewolf attack. They will jump through the windows in waves and you will just kill them….
Castle Stairs - Obtaining the Sunsword
Head up the stairs, where you will face more of the Trash Mobs. Strahd will be taunting you as you go. Ignore Strahd and kill
everything else you see. After the Library room you will cross a bridge and have a cut scene with one of the Sisters of Ravenloft.
She will drop the Sunsword.
The sword will speak to your party. Typically a DPS will take the sword permanently, but there are other roles that can take this
dependant on your group members previous experience in this Dungeon. More on the sword later....
The next part allows you a little time to learn how to use Sunsword. Kill the mobs and Strahd will have had enough of you and invite
you to meet him in his tower. Head up the stairs into the Tower
Tower Heights & Strahd
To get ready for this fight, before you enter the boss room, you will need to have everyone pick up and then drop the Sunsword one by one.
All five players need to pick up and drop the sword and must stand close together when doing this. The sword gives you a buff and
once the buff wears off, you will find everyone starts to die in great numbers. Once everyone has the buff, it’s time to kill Strahd.
The mechanics of this fight can be quite challenging. The Healer will need a chances throughout the fight to regain Divinity/Soul Sparks (Performance - Bard M21) so you may have to use health potions so make sure you have a lot.
Going into the room go to the right or left near the wall, near a candelabra (on the floor) as a group and stand with your backs
against the wall. Stay together as much as possible!!
You will usually stay with your back to the wall for most of the fight. One person will need to go to the middle of
the room where Strahd is, and attack him in order for him to start the last fight. If you have a ranged player in your group, this can be done without running into the centre of the room. Strahd however, will pull you to the centre and then shove you back to the wall.
The player holding the Sunsword, will lose it at first, it will say he’s been cursed, but the Sword can be picked up again from the centre of the room. This is the start of the boss fight!
Strahd Boss Fight
Strahd himself has only a few attacks, but the rest of the mechanics are frustrating. The room will get dark and you will see
candles on the floor. These candles are going to explode. There are places around the room that are without candles but
if you aren’t quick enough, it’s hard to get to them all before taking damage.
Typically people will simply stay grouped up and take the damage. Healers and Tanks will do there best to heal/shield you through it. Ideal Healing powers for this would be Cleric: Hallowed Ground/ Warlock: Pillar of Power, basically anything with a shield or
AOE Heals effect. Strahd will laugh and use a sword attack while the candles are exploding.
You will be able to see the sword attacks as they appear as red X’s, these X's can be dodged if you are quick enough. At some point Strahd will pick up one of your party and start to drain their health “kill him” before he does.
He will then take one of your party to the basement.
Basement
Run in a circle away from the Doppelgangers. These doppelgangers are copies of your party players above you & will have the
same damage output as the real players in your group. They will use basic attacks against you but try to keep away as much
as you can. There are Executioners down here also. If they get close to you, they will one shot you.
Strahd will also stun you occasionally. Keep running until the party above is done with their mechanics and you are teleported back.
Upper Party
After one person is taken to the basement, it’s the remaining 4 players job to run in a circle around the room and kill the doppelgangers.
You will see them in front of you and then in a circle around the room. While you are doing this the candles will be exploding
and Strahd will be using his sword attack. He may also use bats at this point (he will say ‘Feast my Pets’). If you have bats around you,
run away from your group. After you’ve killed all four doppelgangers, the player in charge of the Sunsword will run to the middle and
pick up the Sunsword once more and then come back to the group. The Tank and the other 3 players then pick a spot again
and put your backs to the wall.
Now it’s time to beat Strahd down for a bit. Strahd will use sword attacks, bats and push mechanics in this fight.
Typically you want him always facing the tank, but he will sometimes aggro the person with the Sunsword.
The Tank should keep threat on Strahd as much as possible. The player with the Sunsword needs to try and keep there back
to the wall as much as they can, the Tank also. The reason for this is that the Sunsword needs to have a charge, similar to
Action Points. You’ll see the charge on the screen on the right. It needs to be full or nearly full at the end of the fight.
If Strahd does a push mechanic where you are tossed across the room the sword will lose charge. It will also lose charge if the
person with the sword is attacked to much, or it’s been cursed. Everyone will perma-die if the sword is not at full charge by the
end so keep the swords charge in mind as you fight Strahd. After you beat him for a bit he’ll pull you to the middle of the room,
the sword will be cursed and the candle and so on mechanics will start again. Repeat this until Strahd is at around 10% health.
Sunsword Mechanics
At the end of the fight Strahd will get mad at pull all of you to the centre of the room. Huddle close to the person who is carrying
the Sword. Strahd will taunt you for a second and the Sunsword will say “Now Raise me to the Heavens”; Count to 2
before doing the next action, (although if you just pop it when he says ‘Heavens’ it should be fine too at full charge).
To “Raise (him) to the heavens” you want to use the Swords Daily Power. This is the same as using any of your daily powers The power
will create a circle/Shield around you and your group. Strahd will do devastating sword attacks and then an explosion.
If you lose the Circle Shield, Strahd will one shot you and you will have to start over.
Strahd will then do an explosion attack and you and your team will fall back through the floor.
Now just DPS Strahd down.(The sword will give you encouragement.)
You have now beaten the dungeon! Congratulations!!!
©: Original Guide Written by Rasheta Sedai for NWN. Updated by NWN 2021
