Vanarhost’s Castle 2 – Champions of Norrath

This guide will walk you through the second level of Vanarhost’s Castle in Act II of Champions of Norrath.

1 – MANY MINI-BOSSES

Head around the corner from the starting point and you will run into one of several mini-bosses on this level. All look like the grim reaper and carry scythes and all can summon undead minions. They aren’t that hard, but do slow you down for a while. If you go ranged, you’ll drop a bunch of arrows, but if you go melee, you have to contend with the life tap attack they have that allows them to heal themselves by touching you. Probably the best situation to get into is when they summon a skeleton archer. You can lead the grim reaper out of the range of the archer and then take him on melee one on one. Then it’s just a matter of rythm. Block until he swings and then hit twice before blocking again. When he uses his special attack, just wait until he swings again to repeat the process.

2 – RELEASE THE HOUNDS

After you beat the second grim reaper, you’ll enter a room that has two side rooms. This is one of those places where the level designer thought that, to shake things up, instead of having a dozen skeletons just waiting for you in the room, he’d have them walk out of the side rooms to attack you. Anyway, deal with the skeletons from the first two side rooms, and then manually open the the other two so you can deal with the ones in there.

3 – TRAPDOOR

Continue through the rest of the level, taking out skeletons and grim reapers until you come to a save point. In the next room, you will get a cut scene of Vanarhost giving you a little speech before opening a trapdoor that causes you to fall down to the castle dungeons.

4 – HUNTING VANARHOST

When you get back upstairs, head in the only diretion available to you and go through the halls killing nosferatu, skeletons and grim reapers.

5 – “SECRET” AREA

Eventually, you’ll find a long hall to your right and notice a narrow passageway across from you on the mini-map with no entrance. This “secret” area can be opened by searching along the wall until you get the message “What’s This?”, just like the skeleton rooms earlier. When you’re finished, go down the long corridor.

6 – DEN OF INIQUITY

At the end of the hall, you’ll enter a room that looks like an opium den or something with all the pillows on the floor. There’s a save point, which is a pretty good indication that you’ll be fighting the boss soon.

7 – VANARHOST

Vanarhost is the lord of all the vampires you’ve been slaying, but he’s actually not that hard to fight if you exploit his programming. Walk out of the room and snipe at him until he walks into the other room. Run just far enough away that he decides to turn around and go back to where he was, then stand on the stairs and shoot him unitl he dies, or starts to walk back into the room you’re in, in which case, you’ll run away until he goes back into the first room and repeat the process. When you get his health to zero, he’ll collapse. Then, in a cut scene, he’ll get back up again and start giving you his resume. When he gets to the part about why you shouldn’t have made him mad like that, Sylea stabs him in the heart and he collapses again. She wishes you good luck in your future endeavors gives you the key to the prison on level one which you can access from the other room.