I ran this module tonight and there are some major issues. I will not be running this again without some major tweaking. Issue #1-Maw demons: They have so few hit points ( even maxed out) and have such a low "to hit" that they are almost worthless at Tier3. As written, I could not possibly hit two of the characters in my party, even on a 20. Issue #2- "Why are we doing this": You start deep in the center of Chult with no explanation how you got there, no real reason for you to continue, no declaration of reward. The "quest giver" is a young red dragon. I made her start talking instead of attacking because my party would have killed her by accident, unless I "DM fudged" her hit points. Issue #3-The "boss fight" was a balor that supposedly needed to be severely weakened before fighting. No legendary or lair actions. I ran it without weakening the balor at all. The party killed it in less than 2 actions per character. I did not allow even a short rest during the mission. It is not that tough for Tier 3. Issue #4-Quasits. Five Quasits in bat form were the extra defenders for a lieutenant. The frightening presence DC 10 saving throw could not be failed by 4 of the 6 players even if they rolled a 1. It was a party that was well rounded. Rogue,Wizard,Life Cleric,Warlock, Paladin,and Trickery cleric/Rogue. Issue#5-(Spoiler)- There is no way to save the dragon's wyrmling (dragon's child). My party talked for 10 minutes about different methods of bringing it back. They decided against the high cost methods because "I think we can just kill the dragon if she attacks us" (They were correct). They tried Divine Intervention but it failed. I did not say anything during those 10 minutes. All in all, this module should be rated mid tier 2. As a DM, you will need to make reasons for the story to make it work.

This module has some interesting mechanical ideas, mixed in with entire seas of bad mechanics and storytelling.

The shadow demon fight, as an idea, is almost briliant. I hope this gets recycled and dropped into another adventure somewhere -- it'd be a great fight in a T2 group. A wonderful setpiece encounter that, with additional guidance on how to run it, would actually be fun.

The ambience in the balor lair is actually quite entertaining -- but the presence of the magic fire fountain as a counteracting catalyst needs to be highlighted a bit better. It's too easy to miss that it's flames can be used to create magical torches. Especially since the first room makes it clear it's possible to progress without magical light.

The fights are, bluntly, scaled to low T2 -- except where scaled to low T1. And there are too many of them to run in a reasonable time frame. You wind up rerolling initiative every other minute to start a new round of combats.

The entire dragon plotline was unecessary and confusing. It winds up making little or no sense -- how exactly did the dragon put it's lair inside the balor's without knowing the balor was there? My table wound up making a lot of jokes about 'teenage mothers', which was the only thing that made sense given it being a 'young' dragon, not an 'adult' dragon.

The balor fight... on the one hand, it's massively underpowered by being stripped of it's balor-ish abilities.

On the other hand, a party of melee characters wouldn't even scratch it's hide, since it can fly 30 feet out over the pit and just whip them into the pit one by one.

The idea is nice, with some great potential. Unfortunatly the module fails to capitalize on that potential. The LA secret mission is rather difficult, forcing players to chart hp of enemies. I would make it clear if you allow this - I have found that some people see it as metagaming. Second, the lieutenants and mini fights are close to irrlevant. A party with 2 heavy hitters can take down the LTs quite easily. Finally, if you don't have a caster for dispel magic, the traps and darkness can be rough. Also, the maps are not an accurate representation of the dungeon. I ended up just making my own.

There are a lot of clever little ideas packed into this adventure, but it belongs in tier 2. Average Tier 3 characters will find themselves bored by this one.

Assorted thoughts: A Balor is a tough fight but it isn't enough to give a T3 party much pause. Giving it a lot of debuffs for as the story progresses makes it a joke especially when it doesn't have legendary or lair actions (and no protection from Banish). This leads to an anticlimactic finish.

The environmental challenges getting there are easily overcome by flight, which is a common resource for T3 parties - again, would fit better in tier 2.

As others have stated, there was just too many encounters that aren't even in the realm of challenge for our tier 3 party. It would be much better to have fewer fights that are more of a challenge (along with the cool environmental ideas the author has).

Finally, it must be said that the magic item is a poor choice as it does not qualify for the feat that enhances its use.

In sum, I don't recommend this adventure without significant editing/replacement of combats.

I encourage the author to continue writing at a lower tier and/or to do more playtesting as this doesn't feel like it was written by someone who is familiar in Adventurer's League.

I've played this and have prepped to run it. My thoughts...

The overland trek to get there was a little tedious and soaked a good amount of game time. It seems like the module really got started upon arrival at the ruins.

After just having run a table of L6 chars that breezed through Hrakhamar, the firenewt warriors/warlocks and the salamanders felt very underpowered for a T3 adventure. It was a little grindy to get through when I played the module - though they were thematically appropriate.

When playing through this, our table was conflicted about sanctifying the altar - primarily on whether to do it immediately or after clearing the lower levels. I wish there was more time pressure here to help move the story along.

Our table also ended up banishing the lieutenants / boss (and the magic item). This broke storyline a bit and some DM jiggery had to happen. It completely took the challenge out of the module and we had a table of disappointed players after we were informed about the banished magic item.

That said, I really enjoyed the storyline - especially the ghosts playing a factor in the boss battle. I also liked the healing mechanic from eating corpses and the glyph shadows. They added a fun spin on encounters. The ambiance in this module is fantastic and helps the world come alive. I think this could be dramatically fun to run/play with a little tweaking.

My DMing suggestions:

• Let the players see the anxious dragon as planned, but delay the discussion until the ruins, skipping the combat entirely.
• Handwave the overland combat and beef up the combat in the upper ruins.
• Add more wizard backstory to the upper ruins (ie: a ghostly "help me obi wan kenobi").
• Put a time mechanic on the dragonnapping. (ie: for the lunar ritual tonight)
• Use the wild magic influence to disrupt banishment spells.

The author says, "If a v1.1 of this adventure is released, these are changes I would make."

• The banishment issue is the biggest one. Here's my fix; the Pit of Krahharu is so steeped in abyssal power that it counts as part of the Abyss, and the demons are considered on their home plane when targeted by banishment.
• The trip to the wilderness varies in fun from group to group. If it's not fun, skip it.
• The firenewt warlocks act as if possessed; have shadow demons pop out of the firenewt warlocks when they die.
• While within the pit itself, Immilors disembodied voice could taunt the PCs as they bump off his lieutenants, building up the balor's command of his domain

This is not a good mod. I have run it three times so far and below are my observations:

First, the story is not only inconsistent, but bizarrely so from DDAL 07-09. At the end of 07-09 the characters learn that a group of adversaries are in the Land of Ash and Fire trying to summon a thing. Then, in DDAL 07-10, the characters are in the Land of Ash and Fire to stop that group of adversaries from making a deal with a completely different thing that was already summoned by a completely different group of people. As a storyline goes, it’s fine, but it makes no sense in the context of DDAL 07-09.

The encounters are just a boring, slogging, grind. There's an encounter where your group of APL 13 characters squares off against six CR 1/4 creatures. There are numerous other encounters where the enemy is comprised of CR 1 and CR 2 monsters. The mini bosses are CR 8, CR 6, and CR 4 respectively. If that sounds at least a little challenging that's because I haven't told you yet that's three separate fights. Taken together maybe it's at least something, but as individual fights it's just boring.

There are nine fights like this, where you don't face a single creature above APL 8, usually the creatures are much lower level (there's one APL 8 creature in the mod). Then there's the APL 10 creature, which will join you to fight against the one semi challenging enemy in the whole mod, the end boss. But, there are four chances to reduce the end boss's abilities, making the fight a complete joke. But even at full strength it's not a good fight for an APL 13 party. The action economy of the boss, who has no backup of any sort, just isn't enough to challenge a party. It’s one of those creatures whose CR doesn't properly convey the challenge, as it has two single target attacks a turn for about 30 damage a pop. It's not nothing, but it's just not enough to threaten a party of level 13 characters.

This is not a good mod. I've run it three times and the nicest thing anyone has said about it is it gave them extra time for lunch before the next slot. It harkens back to the worst mods of season 4. By all means, buy it for completeness. But this is the worst DDAL mod to come out in quite a long time.