An okay adventure, overall. I'll break up the review into pros/cons, and then by each Part.

Pros: PUZZLES, and awesome rewards for spellcaster classes, particularly wizards. Cons: Almost too-high DCs, some spells needed for ease-of-access/adequate puzzel solution are unavailable until tier 2, non-helpfully worded clues a la Castlevania II style, NO rewards for non-casters, the only 2 (likely) fights are underwhelming and back-to-back, and the DT activity at the end is awkwardly worded as to be very confusing.

Part 1- Quick, simple set of puzzles here. Although, there isn't much of anything to go on nor is there much consequence for the PCs failing their checks. Without consequences, these may as well not even be here.

Part 2- The Mystra Shrine is confusing- each other one has a challenge and reward associated with it, but this one does not. Not including the gargoyle fight (which isn't likely to happen), there are 6 total encounters on this level, each of which requires significant explanation. This bogs this section down quit a bit. There is also TONS of otherwise interesting info here that AL players, who typically don't write anything down beyond who pays them and how much at the end, probably won't care about.

Part 3- VERY confusing clues. I had to rewrite one of them to make more sense, and I also added that each clue is shown as written in the color lettering that matched the element "saying" that clue. It helped marginally. The lab could have been a fun encounter, but being right next to the end encounter forced it to be less so. The final fight doesn't have much more going for it. There is only 1 interesting ability in the fight, the life drain, b ut the Wight's paltry +4 modifier to hit means that he will only do so 45-55% of the time. With that low of a hit rate, the only interesting element to the fight becomes useless.

Conclusion- The weird wording of the Downtime activity... Harpers can spend 5 DT to copy texts to fulfill their faction assignment, and 5 more DT to learn a spell of 3rd level or lower from PotA. Then, ANY character may spend 10 DT to copy 1 spell from EEPC that they can cast. In other words, with the faction assignment, DT Activity, Magic Item Reward (wand of Webs), and a found Spellbook, a Wizard member of the Harpers is in loot heaven here- nearly everyone else draws a short straw.

The puzzles pose an interesting challenge to the players, but I found them feeling repetitive. I did appreciate the amount of lore present, specifically concerning magic and how it affected people, I thought that was interesting for the players. I also think the downtime activity is fun, as those spells can be hard to come by.

Recommend Purchase: Yes. XP Range: 450-600

The Season 5 Hardcover (Storm King's Thunder) is an amazing sandbox that spans the entire northwest Swordcoast. Unlike seasons 1-3 these storyline modules actually occur in the same area and mesh well with the hardcover. This is the first season to include the digial certificate for permanent magic items.

Before running any Season 5 module, you should download the following content from DMSGUILD and read it fully:

• Season 5 Narrative: Parnast, Stagwick, & Beregost Sadly this was released only AFTER the season was over :(

• A Guide to the Factions of Faerun Lots of Faction stuff in Season 5, so your players should be engaged with the Faction they've chosen.

An ok puzzle module, that suffered severely from lack of proofreading and understanding how D&D mechanics work. It has ok ideas and a... kinda forgettable story to be honest with you, but it just falls flat from the amount of errors that would have been easily noticable on an additional read-through.

Fun to run, but needed some tweaking.

I have very limited time to run games, so I enforce the time limit when I run modules. This is one of the few games other DMs have told me rarely, if ever, goes over the two hour mark. This module was both fun to play and to run. It has a nice balance of puzzles (with included handouts) and a fight or three. There are several traps, but they become a bit obvious once characters know what to look for. Before you run this game, you may want to tweak the elemental puzzles on the second floor. The version of this game I purchased seemed to have the riddles mixed up or at least not follow the same format from the room before (does the riddle refer to the room the party is in or the door they are facing).

There is also some confusion on the rewards for this game. I know some of the exp and downtime issues were errata-ed, but there is still reference to Princes of the Apocalypse when it is probably meant to refer to Elemental Evil Players' Guide. With a little help from other DMs and common sense it is clear what the reward should be, but it would be nice if this was fixed in the previous errata.

This module is an obvious sequel to 5-6, and if you have the time the two can be ran as one seamless game.

Chelimber's Descent is a good little dungeon crawl. There are monsters, traps and puzzles. The challenge is for the players to pay enough attention to key pieces of information. When I played it, I wasn't in the mood for unravelling clues from poetry and that hurt my character. Essentially the Chelimber dyptich is an optional side quest during a night Parnast story arc. It has its place and woulkd probably work best as a double header with part 1.

A nice 'change of pace' adventure that doesn't rely on the PCs being powerful combat-monsters to succeed. To the contrary, a party of optimized combat characters who tend to ignore puzzles and traps are going to have difficulty with this module, as the challenge it presents is one they're not the best suited to tackle.

And that's fine! Different modules should be able to challenge different types of players, and an adventure that makes your best puzzle-solving player (who perhaps has a bit more knowledge of the Forgotten Realms from earlier editions than is usually strictly useful in the current edition) feel like the session MVP is good and to be encouraged in the Organized Play campaign.

One recommended tweak: instead of 'resistance 3' and 'resistance 5', which aren't strictly meaningful Fifth Edition D&D expressions of resistance, use 'gains resistance against the next source of that damage type' and 'gains resistance against that damage type for the remainder of the adventure'. This will retain the flavor of the methods of gaining these resistances, as well as be a better expression of those resistances in 5E terms.

This adventure is made to be part 2 after DDAL 05-06 Beneath the Fetid Chelimber, but can also be played as a standalone. A fun module for adventurers that enjoy using mind over might as they expore this great wizard's tower. As a DM, my first reading of it took a while to comprehend how to guide the party, but the second time went much better. I recommend encouraging your players to keep some quick notes to keep the pace fast and watch their eyes light up when they solve them.

As a continuation on Beneath the Fetid Chelimber this is a great story. Running it on it's own however.. It's kind of meh. It's hard to determine how much time it is going to take since the group only has to open 1 door on the first floor and kill some stuff on the second one.. Players tend to think there is more then there really is so start collecting all the trappen stones, start putting stuff into the elemental walls and offer into the bowls (Which gives you 3 or 5 resistance...??)

For me the story is kind of lack luster on it's own and you really need a party who likes puzzles but knows when to just walk away since some rooms don't need you to do anything and reward you by walking away. The final fight is quite a tough one for a level 1 party and i adjusted it so the skeletons would move later and storm the hallway the characters were in. Once there the wight started to hack away at the skeletons to make it's way to the party since 1 freaking life drain from the wight can insta kill player's.

This was my second adventure ever DMing. Unlike the previous adventure that was straightfoward, this one was more about puzzles and problem solving. Half of the first floor existed only to give the players a glimpse of the next, but did have any immediate rewards for solving the it. The rest of the room was fine and gave the opportunities for the players to experience the unknown. Unfortunately, players who didn't know how to respond to rooms kept triggering traps. On the second floor, the wording of the trap was confusing to understand as my players found a contradication between the player handout and my reading of the rooms. The final fight wasn't great even when I challenged the party of six to a very strong encounter. The monsters attack bonus and AC are too low. The two wights couldn't touch characters with high ACs. Additionally, the hallways to the final fight allowed support characters to buff the front characters with zero threats. I recommend having the rooms either magically trapped shut during final combat or threats coming from both sides of the halls to surround the characters. As is, I don't recommend this for new DMs. This adventure may be for more experienced DMs.

The second part of the first 2 part adventure for this season. This leans a lot on the exploration and puzzle aspect of D&D, and is basically a dungeon crawl. I won't recommend it if your players crave for social interaction, because those are few and far in-between in this adventure. The puzzles (of which there are a lot) range from easy, clever, to somewhat difficult. In my experience it also runs significantly longer than 2 hours, and the party will need some reliable way of findig traps and secret doors and opening them.

This adventure being the logical continuation of DDAL05-06, it features some interesting concepts that I have already written about in the review of that adventure.

I did not like the idea of passive checks applying to any check because if a character wants to know something he should explicitly tell what he wants to remember of.

I personally knew that some characters misuse the Arcana skill and they often try to use the skill instead of detect magic. Personally I would never allow Arcana check to reveal something magical becaue this neglects use of detect magic spell. Arcana is more about knowing; it's a theoretical magic, not empyrical.

However, I did like the variety of riddles presented in the adventure. This adventure really makes the characters think of their further progress, and a banal "Onward to victory" tactics is not sufficient enough to overcome the challenges.

Chelimber's Descent is better than most give it credit. If you are looking for a way into Princes of the Apocolypse, this is it. You can introduce the princes in the library, the traps give the players a solid introduction to the elements and the allies and enemies of the elements. As for some reviews the adventure is on rails and is a great puzzle solver. If you are looking for a 2 hour adventure to get your feet wet and are unsure if you want the players to make the choice throw in some books on Red Larch and let them decide. A great way to get the players to think with thier heads instead of just murder hoboing the entire area.

Chelimber's Decent was very exciting to run for low level characters. So many new players are focused on random encounters and combat and this adventure gives a welcome change to that.

This adventure focuses on exploration and puzzles with a small social component that caused my players to think more critically than previous adventures. It was exciting to force them into ROLE playing instead of attack ROLLing their way through every adventure. The adventure stayed on-time and had a lot of environmental background to paint a beautiful picture of the inside of the tower.

Only gripe: any combat encounters are in very close quarters... you know...because youre inside a wizard's tower. With a larger party it made a properly scaled encounter very crowded.

Overall, this was an okay dungeon crawl adventure that took my group way longer than the suggested time. Although the first floor had some interesting lore about the various Forgotten Realms gods of magic, the elemental wall puzzle grinded the adventure to a halt. The clues were frustrating, even when the PCs remembered the hymns from upstairs. The spellbook trap is amusing, but could easily kill off a low-level party if they aren't smart about it.