Castle of Dreams Optional Dungeon - Grandia Walkthrough
The Castle of Dreams is the second optional dungeon that you can come across in the Zil Desert. It's also the easier of the two dungeons, although not by that much. Castle of Dreams is found in Southern Zil Desert aka the second half of the dungeon. Normally players will run through to this dungeon first and complete it then backtrack to Soldier's Graveyard. The Lightning Sword item from this dungeon makes a big difference for Justin.
Note: The Castle of Dreams along with every other Optional Dungeon becomes permanently unavailable after major story events at J Base. After you return from Alent there is a short window to do these before you can't anymore.
Finding the Castle of Dreams can be a bit annoying since the entrance blends in with the surrounding rocks. Our landmark will be the area with the overhead dungeon camera and the Cactusman jumping around from rock to rock playing his guitar. When you use the overhead camera it'll force your perspective to have north (the red part of the compass) at the top. From here we need to go northwest up the sand ledge, if you follow this path it leads directly to the entrance (pictured below).
Just to alleviate confusion too, there's two paths that you can see that go northwest, we want the one that goes more west than north. Additionally, the correct path actually has 'two' different paths within it, one that goes up a ledge and one that dead ends. You need to go up the ledge to reach the dungeon entrance. Just follow the path straight to the corner and look for the entrance below.
I've included a list below of the items that I strongly recommend you get from this location, unlike with Soldier's Graveyard the good loot is scattered all around this place so you have to explore every room for items. The best item (Lightning Sword) comes from beating the dungeon's boss.
Items of Interest
Lightning Sword: This is the second best sword in the game. You get this for beating the boss of this dungeon.
Bloody Knife: Third best knife in the game. Balcony corner in the Foyer.
Binding Whip: Second best whip in the game. Found in the Study.
Gauntlets: A very good hand slot for a melee fighter. They're found in the cemetery.
Mana Egg: Self-explanatory. It's found in the Dining Room.
Castle of Dreams Walkthrough
When you first enter the Castle of Dreams you'll find a lady standing next to the entrance, you must speak with her multiple times otherwise you won't be able to enter the dungeon. If you were like me and you did Soldier's Graveyard first, this dungeon comes as a nice refresher. It's very small and easy to navigate.
Instead of giving you a walkthrough of the dungeon as a whole, I am going to break it down room by room. From the entrance with the save/recovery station you can enter basically any room of this dungeon so the order is entirely up to you.
Foyer (Entrance Screen): This is the main room which connects to a bunch of others. On the 2F balcony you'll find a Blood Knife.
Knight's Room: There's some gold in here and annoying encounters.
Library: Salamander enemies which are strong to most damage types, I used Wind to beat them. Also a chest with the Death Mask item.
Dining Hall: There's a couple of gold spawns you can pick up here but the main thing we want is the Mana Egg hidden under the table on the left hand side of the room. There is also a hole that leads to the Rooftop in this room, but we can't do anything from this route.
Study: Two gold spawns and a Binding Whip which is hidden by the save/recover spot. Search on the ground where you can't see near the fallen bookcase and you will find this item. If you search the cabinet near the save point you'll find a staircase which leads to the Rooftop.
Small Room: Some gold but nothing else of note.
Cemetery: You can find some gold as well as Dark Armor and Gauntlets in this location.
Rooftop/Lord's Chamber: This is where the boss of the dungeon is found. You can get here two ways, either through the Dining Hall or through the Study. The only route that will take you to the boss though is through the Study.
When you're done exploring the dungeon and ready to fight the boss head over to the Study. Just north of the save/recover point you will find a dresser which you can open up to make a route through (pictured below). Once you're in the Lord's Chamber talk with the girl here to begin the boss encounter.
Go through the dresser in the study to reach the final boss of this dungeon
The boss of this dungeon is Lord's Ghost and it's actually a pretty tough fight. I had to do the encounter two times because I wasn't expecting how much damage he did the first time around. You will have 3 targets for this fight and all of them will hit your group with AoE damage, this means our best strategy is going to be repeatedly interrupting all of the targets to prevent them from attacking us.
Our reward for beating the boss is a Lightning Sword, it's the second best sword in the game and we're only 1/4 through Disc 2! Once you've got this sword and fully explored the entire place - you can head back to Zil Desert and continue with the game.
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