Solid combat mod. Players enjoyed the fall, being ambushed by sleeper agents (some invisible), and running down the big bad before he could escape (monks...). Turns out he was bound to an infernal contract and a couple high CR devils were at the command center.

Cool premise and magic item (Crystal Skull!). Be prepared for players to use all their downtime days to level up to 16 and trivialize the combat encounters as written; consider doubling or tripling the CR budget of each. Another thing to consider is that the puzzle's riddle makes sense when looking from the top down, but not from the perspective of someone walking through it.

A unique adventure. Definitely easy on the combat, but that's common in tier 4. Lots of good exploration and puzzles, so make sure the group likes that.

I am in the process of running all of DDAL09 as a campaign, so will be reviewing each adventure as I run them. For context, I have run 11 adventures in this campaign already, a homebrew one where the party needs to get out of Elturel with as many civilians as possible as the city is being sucked into hell, and then Baldur's Gate: Fall of Elturel, also on DM's Guild for a different group of adventurers, finally I have run DDAL09-01 through DDAL09-10.

What I liked: This felt like a solid "filler" adventure for the season arc. There are a lot of good foleplay opportunities and character moments, and setting the first half of ghe adventuee in the emporium is a strong way to ground it in the familiar before branching oit in exploration. the mustery folllows fhe three clue rule well and the combat is pretty fun, if simple. Dai Chen is a fun character to interact with as well.

What I didn't like: The Su Zhen Kang statblock is a little anemic and could do with some buffing up.

Honestly that ks my only real complaint, overall a great adventure.

Lots of fun RP and handouts. PCs enjoyed coming up with excuses to fool guards and quell suspicion. Last combat could use some bolstering; consider having the archmage stop by or swashbucklers breaching through the windows with a flash bang. Also would he nice if there was a handout for the special items players choose before boarding.

I am running an Adventurer’s League campaign through all of the DDAL09 adventures. It ran very well, though it can be very combat heavy if the players are inclined. I am only going to suggest three additions to this one. First, it needs a story award if they buy pets. Costs for upkeep, downtime to train, costs to make a familiar, etc. Second, it needs a story award if they enter into any infernal contract that doesn’t resolve at the end of the adventure. Frankly, every module in this series needs this. Third, the demonic scouting party would certainly take advantage of any combat at the keep for their own benefit. And fighting devils is more important than the mortals at the moment. This could potentially allow them to break off if combat becomes too intense.

I am running an Adventurer’s League campaign through all of the DDAL09 adventures. This is a challenging one to run without serious preparation and change to meet the skills of the group sitting at the table. It also was challenging to catch up with the 2024 rules changes from Season 9 rules. So I made several changes: • When dealing with Mahadi, he is still smarting from the players ‘resucing’ Fai Chen (DDAl09-11), so Fai tipped them off that the Archdevil helped him get out of his contract. So that was yet another reason for Mahadi to want Fai’s agents to attend- so he could watch. Like all these modules, they need an “infernal contract” story award that carries over to record whatever contracts were made. • Also, the money and downtime Fai wants is far too low. 2000 gold and 10 downtime days to help ‘redecorate’ his tent. I changed the description of it to show he was in the middle of redecorating, and couldn’t decide on a theme. This gave them another negotiating point, and gave them an opportunity to get back to Faerun on an ‘errand’ to do their bastion actions. • Previously, their bastion actions were costing them 1 soul coin for imp courier services • Similarly, I had Fai claim the magical tent from 09-11 for Dara. It’s just a cool throw away. But it also provides them a ‘storage’ point for their extra magical items they cannot bring along. Since there is an item in one of the previous modules which solves the problem with the hag nicely. I did allow them to permanently give up all of them (since items magically duplicate at end of adventures) but replace it with another one before the party.
• At the party, the “no spellcasting” requirement was rather nebulous in its enforcement. It didn’t say that the Dispel Magic entryway extended inside. So instead, I ruled that the acoustics of the grand hall allowed any person to hear what anyone was saying anywhere in the room if they concentrated. This opend up more options for different skills to be used rather than just the Charisma skills. I also established that the “in” and “out” hallways to the kitchens had less of this effect, allowing them the potential for 1 spell if they could unobtrusively stop the flow of servants for a few seconds.
• Lastly, as they developed their plans, I had every character roll a DC15 Insight check. Yes, it was high. But it allowed those who succeeded to have a ‘flashback’ moment. This allowed them to say “no, we thought of this” if something unforeseen came up during the execution of their plan. It went a long way to getting the players off of planning and onto doing.

Cool premise but lots of throwaway "bandit" encounters, including the last fight. I put a cage on the crab to give the mage 3/4 cover. Combat in the courtyard had a lightning tower that aims at the beginning of the round and fires at the end. The big bad was a voltron that threw spikey, exploding warforged (After the mod, players suggested the big bad reassembles at the end of each round. Would've been cool!) Be prepared for players to want to infiltrate Razorcrag instead of attacking headfirst.

Enjoyable RP when preparing defenses, plus the bonuses for success were well received by players. Fights needed bolstering, which I did by buffing attack bonuses and having the blade mage cast greater invisibility to sneak a spicy cone of cold. Players assassinated Lord Bucket themselves and the soldiers who witnessed turned a blind eye. Overall very fun mod and not much adjustment needed.

I am running all of these as DDAL in series, to give the players a campaign feel. This module was a challenge to run for a number of reasons, and I made several changes to meet the challenge level of a hard party with 2024 rulesets.

1. I defined the entire area in the pit as partical cover out to 20', and total cover beyond that. Limited the ranged attackers and flyers.
2. The sword wraiths were willing to grab a character & leap to their deaths. Made it far more deadly with the new grappling rules.
3. Since the hellwasps stat block wasn't included, I made a mistake and read it as poison and paralysis, not paralysis due to poison. I suggest this change be made as well. Otherwise, hellwasps couldn't feed on devils, which doesn't makes sense ecologically.
4. I raised the DC of the swamp to 16 for the exhaustion. But, using Water Walking to to walk across the mud reduces it to 14, and drinking 1 waterskin full of water per hour reduces it to 12. Which then makes the imp encounter VERY useful.
5. They took a short rest, but had to make another exahustion save from sitting in the heat. If they had used Tiny Hut, they would have avoided it.
6. I should have made it abundantly clear that the Ice Devil was playing to the crowd, and the dragon was completely obsessed. It was difficult for my players to figure out how to challenge properly.
7. There should be a a consequence if they have the story award from the other modules - I sugget Disadvantage on Persuasion rolls but Advantage on Intimidation rolls with the devils in the crowd.

If the players wear the outer pieces of warforged raiders to sneak in, they should be derided as vicious psychopaths by other warforged when exposed. Of course I think of this 3 hours after the session.

Actual review: Great little infiltration sandbox with interesting NPCs! Only nitpick is that all the warforged stat blocks are bags of hitpoints with basic attacks. Throwing a caster or skirmisher in there would do wonders. The next mod 09 has some good ones.

This mod commits several sins of adventure design:

1. Intense railroading and using pregens in the initial flashback act. Should PCs be allowed to escape with the crystal skull with clever play? Who knows what the consequences of that will be on future mods. And players want to play their characters, not a bunch of nerfed rogues.

2. A creepy romantic scene where PCs discreetly feed a stalker information during the first date with their quarry. Romance is already uncomfortable in an adventurers league setting, and this encounter doubles down on that.

3. PvP. As written it's only two players fighting while the rest watch, making for a snooze-worthy final encounter for most of the table.

The table had a good time laughing at these oddities, and the setting, roleplay opportunities and encounter design are otherwise engaging, but I half believe the author was trolling with this one.

Some tips:

1. Get through the flashback asap, perhaps by having the displacer beasts not detect the players until they try to run through their little lair. Also figure out how the big bad bypasses the trap with her guards suddenly (the mod just has her appear with an army suddenly).

2. Don't give the players the stalker's notes as this makes the encounter too easy. Maybe have the stalker wonder aloud about this information before the date.

3. Split the players into two groups and have them all fight each other, or do a free for all.

I am in the process of running all of DDAL09 as a campaign, so will be reviewing each adventure as I run them. For context, I have run 10 adventures in this campaign already, a homebrew one where the party needs to get out of Elturel with as many civilians as possible as the city is being sucked into hell, and then Baldur's Gate: Fall of Elturel, also on DM's Guild for a different group of adventurers, finally I have run DDAL09-01 through DDAL09-09.

What I liked:

The idea of the adventure is interesting, the retrieval of a Silver Dragon ally from a devil in a swamp filled crater is a neat adventure! Descending into the swamp is an interesting series of encounters.

What I didn't like:

The execution isn't great. A random encounter table that doesn't do much, the two add on quests aren't interesting, and the actual problem to solve (Is the devil cheating) is both too easy and not interesting. I ended up changing a lot here.I made the swamp a small hexcrawl with 9 encounters to explore to get to the cave. I also changed the nature of the Dragonchess match, the devil in my adventure was the one that was legitimately winning. And toying with the Silver Dragon in hopes of corrupting them, the goal being to make the silver dragon cheat out of desparation and forfeight his soul. The party was then able to solve that issue by talking to the dragon and convincing them of the trap, breaking the contract, or playing in their place. This helped clear things up a lot.

Overall, this is not a great adventure to just run as is!

Love it! A great seafarring adventure to introduce players into the red wizard storyline.

The part of traveling through the sea is great, as it actually makes traveling interesting with assignign tasks, naming the ship, and fighting servants of Uberlee in storm. Also gives a lot of background information about Umberlee and Selune to flesh out the setting.

The island part is also great, having players losing item after short rest is an genius idea! Along with the shadowy figure and weird Tiefling, definitely made my players feels paranoid and hoping to find Zehira and get out of this island ASAP.

Very fun adventure to introduce Xanathar and his prized goldfish. Bonus objective of assassinating goldfish is defintely worth doing, it could be a very cathartic moment if your players have being getting trouble from Xanathar's guild in the past two adventures from this triology. Confronting Xanathar can also be an enjoyable experience with player utilizing his weakness - again, the goldfish.

The only thing this module lacks is a grand finale. Players were kinda expecting going to the fable tower soon after getting through all these trouble retieving the key, but unfortunately that won't happen until they get to T4 I think?