Everything practical we’ve learned the hard way, in one place. Read before travelling.
Surviving Barovia
- You must eat and drink here, or you suffer for it. A person needs about eight pints of water a day; our skins hold four. Carry two, or befriend an artificer.
- Drew can conjure ten gallons of water a day, plus a bedroll, candle, tinderbox, or simple tools — they vanish after a rest, but so does thirst.
- Do not forage. The plants and mushrooms are alien — nothing we recognise as food. Exactly one mushroom is known safe, and Granny taught it to us.
- Rations: Granny’s pies are 1 gp each, two days’ food, keep sixteen days — and are absolutely off the menu (see the watch-list on Quests & Threads). Bildrath sells honest rations at dishonest prices.
- No healing potions for sale in this land. For love nor gold. Guard the ones you have.
- Wolves: drop one and the rest run. Dire wolves come with them. Pelts sell in Vallaki.
- The lights that cry “help me” are not people. Do not follow.
- Indoors by twilight. The whole village does it. The village is right.
- Ravens are good luck. Be nice to ravens.
- Strangers will be charmed. If a companion suddenly declares a total stranger to be the best of men — believe the one who cast the spell that says otherwise, not your own warm feelings. This has happened to us. To all of us at once.
Table rules (the campaign’s house rulings)
- Daylight (the spell) produces light, not sunlight — no effect on creatures that fear the sun.
- Remove Curse is weaker here than you’d expect. It still does something, but may not lift what you hope.
- Ammunition is tracked. Count your bolts and arrows.
- NPCs matter, and some will lie or hold things back. Foreshadowing is fair; you won’t be cheaply tricked.
Prices we’ve seen
Blood on the Vine tavern (Village of Barovia):
Bildrath’s Mercantile — marked prices below; the “outsider special” is ×4 unless someone with a honeyed tongue negotiates (Sirius got us to a quarter of marked):
Coin: the currency bears Strahd’s face. A gold piece is a lot of money here — a pie at 1 gp is “dear,” and we rather overpaid for our first one, since the tavern feeds dogs free.