It was time to head back to Castle Hillstone and this time do some proper exploring around. In the past, I’ve spoken with the bishop there. This castle in the past had led me onto a bit of a chase from getting the castle keys to completing different arenas.

I walked up to the gates of the castle, and they let me in like I owned the place. Somewhere within its walls should be the king. I’m hoping he has some kind of quest for me to do. If nothing else perhaps I can gain other hints about where else to look for improvements for my group.

For the moment I avoided the way that had no entry above its doorway and ended up taking a right instead. This led me into a square room with a room title in the middle I could not find any false walk to gain entry into.

I then headed further down south through a single door. This led me into a hallway shaped like a T with 10 doors to choose from including the one I already had been through. Some of these doors had labels on them and some of them did not.

At this point, I had been rather excited by not running into guards any longer and having to fight them. I was hoping since I had a castle key perhaps the guards would be leaving me alone from now on. That ended up not being how things would work. As I’d later discover and had to fight further guards. For the moment at least they were quite low on my thoughts of things I’d be dealing with.

I ended up taking the door that said, “Grand Hall.” hoping perhaps that was where I could find the king. It was quite a grand hall indeed. It had everything except the king let alone a throne. The further south I went the larger the piles of creatures I had to fight off. It was almost like I could not move more than two tiles in any direction in this room without entering into combat.

At one-point things became so dire I attempted to rest to allow my party to recover. I was already down to one of my clerics and things were not looking so great for the others as well. I attempted to keep moving around the room hoping to make my way back to the doorway so I could make some kind of escape. It turns out I had pressed my luck too much and would end up having to spam escape with the last two remaining characters I had alive.

We barely made it out of Castle Hillstone alive. Things, however, were about to get a lot worse. All my casters were dead, so I had to walk back through the lands looking for a town anywhere in hopes of making it to a temple to pay to have my group revived.

There was just one single tile left between me and the town. I walked forward and hit a nasty encounter. I tried to escape. That, however, will not work since when escaping it puts you on that exact tile in front of the town putting me in an endless loop of battle that we could not escape alive out of.

All progression was lost. This time I went back through the same side of the castle as the time before. Still avoiding the side that stated I was not to enter it. This time, however, I decided to avoid the grand hall and checked some of the other rooms.

One of them leads me around the perimeter of the castle. It turns out this castle’s guards were still willing to go after me. They were just not in the inner part of the castle. The four corners of this castle ended up being guard towers and I took out many of them before doing some backtracking.

I then ended up finding a doorway that said it was the zoo. There was a long hallway going further than I could see. On either side of that hallway were cubbies that had different creatures to fight.

While the fights started easily. The further I went down that hallway the more difficult the fights became. Till yet again I found myself in a battle I barely escaped from. Three of my party ended up getting killed

At least this time I still had a quick way to portal just outside of a town and make it inside. I paid some heavy fees to the temple, but we were back up on our feet. I then ported back to the castle and decided I’d be leaving the zoo section alone.

I ended up finding some stairs leading down into a dungeon below the castle. With how much trouble I was having above I decided best to save that dungeon for another day. I simply lacked the courage with the amount of trouble I was already having to go check it out.

I then found the king. He went by the name Lord Slayer, but he was not that interested in anything I had to offer. At least his court jester, whom I kept bumping into as I explored the castle, ended up being more entertaining than he was.

I even found a room filled with castle treasure. However, each time I searched I seemed to have come up empty. I don’t know if this was some kind of trick or like many things, I was missing something important to take something of value.

Further exploration of the castle revealed that Lord Slayer was holding some prisoners. Like prisoners, I’ve found while randomly exploring other castles. These two claimed they were being wrongly held. I could also invite them into my group if I had a room at the nearest inn.

I was rather thrilled at just finding more people I could hire to fill out my group. The ranger I’ve been using for a while now I’ve not been so thrilled about. While casters can have their troubles it seems most other classes can’t keep up with them. I also did not have any more space in my group for a melee, so it had to be a ranged class.

I’d later go to the inn and discover I had rescued a dark mage. While I lacked any gear to give him right away, I took him around to some local shops and bought anything he could wear. It will take a little while to get him up in levels. I however welcome having my third sorcerer now in my party.

Final Thoughts

While I was hoping to get some upgrades out of this castle. Like other times anything that dropped my characters could not wear. I was also hoping to get some kind of grand quest from the king yet another dead end. At least I was able to swap out one of my group members for a class that I consider to be far more powerful. In the long run that should make quite a huge difference.

Other Content

*Might And Magic 2 | First Cave

*Might And Magic 2 | An Adventure Starts

*Might And Magic 2 | Game Changer

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Might And Magic II.