Panludia
COMMUNITY INTEGRATION
Castlevania: Lords of ShadowArchipelago randomizer mod
Revisit Gabriel's journey in a different order. Other worlds deliver level access, relics and combat upgrades while you send checks from stages, collectibles and skill purchases.
Maintained by Haywire32
- Reviewed build
- 0.7.4
- OS
- Windows
- Last reviewed
- 9 Oct 2026
- Installation
- Manual installation
How the game changes
- The World covers 46 base-game level completions and 101 persistent collectibles. All 31 paid skill purchases are checks by default; optional trials add another 46. Story ability grants become received items, rather than extra checks.
- Individual Level Access items open stages. Ten ordinary levels are available at the default start, and completing 25 unlocks The Final Fight. Both counts are configurable; defeating the final boss is the goal.
- Entering a level is distinct from completing it. Separate rules cover collectibles, completion and trials. World Map colours show available checks and completed stages, but do not budget the XP needed for skill purchases.
- Relics, Combat Cross upgrades, magic, gems and Focus Scroll are shuffled. Progressive Daggers, Holy Water and Fairies combine unlocks and capacity upgrades. Starting and Early Magic options control access to the two medallions.
- Skill purchases use normal XP prices and prerequisite purchases. Buying a check and receiving the usable move are separate actions. Reward previews are enabled by default; the menu distinguishes bought checks from owned moves.
- Twenty-five XP packages supply 65,000 XP in total, including two early local 3,000-XP packages when skill checks are enabled. Refills restore owned magic and subweapons. Buying all skills costs 107,475 XP, so the complete shop route also relies on XP earned in the game.
- Magic Drain and Poison traps are optional and disabled by default. Poison uses the game effect with its expiry and cure. Gem rewards come in pairs without trials and individually when trials are enabled.
- Optional minor-enemy randomization uses a seed-specific plan and additional packaged enemy data. It is experimental and disabled by default. The client offers a local opt-out with a game restart.
Before you start
- Release 0.7.4 is published without a prerelease flag and its notes identify an Archipelago 0.6.8 compatibility fix. The integration still contains experimental features; the stable release label is not a guarantee of runtime reliability.
- Use Steam Ultimate Edition on Windows. The World declares minimum Archipelago 0.6.7. Install the matching los.apworld and copy the contents of the release's Game Folder into the game directory, including bin/dinput8.dll and the complete bin/APEnemy directory. The older instruction to copy only the DLL is incomplete for this archive.
- For a NEW seed, close the game, back up Castlevania.profile, disable Steam Cloud and move the old profile out of the active save directory. Leave Castlevania.cfg untouched. The game profile is not automatically bound to the AP seed or slot.
- For a SAME-RUN upgrade, preserve the profile, room and YAML; do not delete the save to upgrade. Close both game and client before replacing the matching release files. Newly added options and logic changes require a newly generated seed; compatibility of every older seed with 0.7.4 was not tested here.
- Connect the Lords of Shadow Client to the room before launching through Steam. Keep the client and room available while playing, and retain the local reward ledger and skill-purchase journals when diagnosing a problem.
- An interrupted or uncertain XP purchase pauses the skill shop rather than charging again automatically. Preserve its journal for diagnosis. Ordinary XP/refill grants use a separate ledger and retain a partial-application risk if the game or client stops between granting and recording a reward.
- The APEnemy package includes binary script chunks, generated enemy definitions and an archive view. A complete licence/redistribution-permission record was not found in the reviewed material. This is an evidence gap, not a conclusion that distribution is unlawful.
- Start without experimental enemy randomization. If enabled and the loader cannot prepare a level, progression synchronization can pause until the setup is corrected or the feature is disabled locally and the game restarted.
- Reverie and Resurrection DLC levels remain disabled. DeathLink is not implemented. Map check colours are present in this version; they do not prove that every encounter or route was tested.
- The distributed APWorld contains readable Python and Lua, but the public source tag contains only a README and no native DLL source. Native compatibility and a complete campaign were not independently verified.