All combat and some minor editing mistakes keep this from being a five star module. Seer needs to mention her Jade Dagger at the begining infor dump. The Puzzle has some minor problem which you can pencil out the "Beard" part and the solution makes sense. I changed the Bitter Root part to a social encounter.

Sketchy, short, occasionally internally inconsistent. Virtually no art. The maps were truly pathetic. The final puzzle has no internal logic or reasoning when it would have been easy to write in some clues or or other fun methods other than "try this combination, get shocked, try again". A fun premise and a few good ideas.

The setup can really mislead the players. They're told the mission is to get into the tower and retrieve the MacGuffin in this four-hour, but several hours later they still haven't even gotten the doors open. This made my players a bit confused and frustrated.

Challenging series of combat encounters and interesting monster choice makes this a great side adventure or stand alone AL session.

The exploration of the grounds and building while looking for clues to get in was pretty well set up. The ambush spiced up this section as well. The issue that I had is with the invisible chest that contains most of the reward for this adventure.

The final fight was fun, but turned pretty quickly. This is a situation where action economy is going to turn towards the players very quickly. Giving the Staff to K'Nap was an odd choice. He's so squishy and his to-hit modifiers are so low that it's not really plausible for him to try to stun a PC with it (as his tactics direct). The best thing to have him do is just use the powers of the staff to throw some lightning around.

I had fun running this, but it went long. The party ended up getting themselves into one extremely long running fight (we were in initiative for more than 20 rounds). The assassins sniped them while they were fighting the Tanarukks and, instead of letting them go (to come back and strike again), the Zhentarim characters chased them / tried to chase them because of their secret mission. One wild shaped into an Earth Elemental and so was able to keep up (sadly, the Assassin stat block does not have cunning action, which made it harder on them). That said, the assassins were very effective at hurting the party through this chase. On the other hand, the chain devils were not. The burrowed Earth Elemental noticed them and warned the party. One of them tried approaching, encountered the animated chains, and the rest picked them off from beyond reach.

The final fight was fun, but turned pretty quickly. I had to close the front gate for it, or again half the party would have run to extreme range and sniped. The fiends came close to downing the biggest threats, but ultimately a Sharpshooter Crossbow Expert with Action Surge is a real problem if you can't take it down before its turn. I felt like giving the Staff to K'Nap was an awkward choice, too. He's so squishy and his to-hit modifiers are so low that it's not really plausible for him to try to stun a PC with it (as his tactics direct). In fact, the only reason he got to do much at all was that the PCs didn't bother with the gentle tap it took to kill him because they (accurately) recognized the other fiends as the actual threat.

One complaint: Without a Lord's Alliance character, it's hard to do the section with Bitter-root in a satisfying way. The party recognized her insanity and caster Greater Restoration, but there's just plain no way to get a handle on the whole possession angle without a Lord's Alliance character so I felt like that section was weak (and it was weird to thread an explanation for SEER to give them afterwards).

Also, as others have said, unless the party has some way to see invisibility and some reason to use it, there's a chunk of this module and its rewards that just don't happen. I don't think that's a great design choice. It'd be nice if there were some clue or something (though it wouldn't have helped my party, none of whom had See Invisibility or True Sight prepared).

A fun mod, well worth running

It's fun, engaging, and entertaining. No two runs are likely to be identical, right down to the possibility of a high-capability rogue (or other clever player shenanigans) short-circuiting half the adventure. It does have a few editorial issues that DMs need to be aware of and address. It's not explained in the mod, but the DMG guidance on traps is added because DMs are expected to ad-lib additional traps as needed and appropriate.

Probably it's biggest flaw -- and the fact that this is actually it's biggest flaw is a pretty good sign of quality! -- is that a pair of assassins are given a set of scrolls. Scrolls that, firstly, they cannot possibly use as they are not spellcasters, and secondly that -- in the case of the Silence spell -- does not actually do them any good, since it's locked to the place it's cast on, and not mobile.

Enjoyable Mod. The combat was varied, and suitably challenging to the point where there was a concious decision to give up on the secret mission for fear of death. A good challenge, and the story award for those who lied was a nice twist.

Good: Fun Challenging Combat Great Roleplaying Opportunities Bad: Alot of content for 4 hour mod DM Tips: Prep to avoid wasting too much time.

This was a greatly fun module to run through. It was suprisingly challenging for the players and had a nice mix of dice rolling and combat challenges.

Definetly some interesting mechanics to the traps and bad guys. Thematically it seems a bit off for Giants but I havent run the full gauntlet of the SKT modules to finish this storyline. That being said, a bit confused on the storyline on why the Giant Lord has a demon army....

This module has some really interesting mechanics with some of the terrain that will encourage caution among characters as they explore this dwarven structure and learn about a hero of old. Several opportunities for puzzles, a choice of items depending on certain outcomes, and more of Seer's minty tea.

Very fun to run, but at times can be a little hard fro players. But the players enjoyes this all the way through

It was a fun challange for the players and not such a pain to prep for the DM. Some of the NPC's were a bit cliche but it can be pulled off to rave reviews, other times it has fallen flat for me. Not too much to tweek so a fun time to be had! -DM Ace

One of the most enjoyable modules from the SKT season of AL play, this is the first half of what is really an 8-hour (or longer) module, finishing up with DDAL-05-09, Durlag's Tomb. Of the two, this is my favorite, and it gives players not only combat to deal with, some of which can prove to be quite harrying and deadly, but exploration and social interaction. Some of the social encounters can bypass combat, which is always refreshing to see in AL play, for those of us who enjoy a good fight, but also like to save those who need saving.

An interesting note, I expereinced this module as both a player and a DM. I ran the module first, and played it a few weeks later with a DM who had not played it before. The experiences were very similar, which can often NOT be the case with AL modules. To me, this speaks volumes to how the author managed to clarify points, leading to a similar experience between tables.

The end is a bit of an awkward cliffhanger, as the module breaks to move on to the next module, as it often the case with storylines that are designed for 8-hour play, but are forced into two 4-hour packages. In the end, it was a satisfying game, however, and I always recommend this module and its follow up to DMs looking for something to run.