The Best Friends Forever / Donum Vitae / Pieces of You trilogy is probably my favorite series of CCCs. I've run the trilogy twice now and it's going to be my go-to for dedicated multi-week groups from now on.

• Best Friends Forever has produced some of the best roleplay moments I've ever witnessed in Adventurers League thanks to the cutest, most adorable NPC on the planet, Abby von Finklestein.
• Once players are fully emotionally invested due to the events of Best Friends forever, they're really motivated in Donum Vitae so they really set their minds to the task at hand. Donum Vitae is also notable for being very puzzle-heavy and combat-light, which is an interesting experience for players.
• Pieces of You ... again, features some great RP moments. The two groups I ran it for went in entirely different directions based on their RP and the choices their characters made, and it was really, really fun to watch the players do their thing.

I feel like I'm parroting a lot of the previous reviews, but that just goes to show how all the negative feedback on Season 8 has been ignored. But here I go anyway: one star, and this is why.

Experience Checkpoints – All in all, not a terrible idea. It allows players to be rewarded with experience for things that are not combat-oriented (which is a good thing). But I already think the old modules did a good job of rewarding players for this (by giving players x amount of XP for helping a certain NPC instead of fighting them, for instance). An unfortunate side effect of this is that newbie players will come away from their first two-hour module with absolutely nothing to show for it other than abstract points, without even leveling up, something that has already turned off newbies with a potential interest in AL.

Treasure Checkpoints – I have mixed feelings on this. I think players should still feel rewarded when they finish a module and find an item, and treasure points are too abstract to provide that sense of accomplishment.

This system also pretty much guarantees that we are going to see less of the unpopular magic items. Why would you waste your points on a driftglobe or a ring of jumping when you could save up for a bag of holding instead? There could have been a compromise between the two systems – you could have allowed one person to take the item, and given everyone else in the party treasure points and the ability to purchase. This gets rid of “item sniping” by virtue of magic item count and it allows flavorful and not-so-combat-useful items to continue existing in the game.

Trading Items – If the point of this system was to make AL more accessible and easier to get into, then I can say that you failed miserably when you added the new restrictions to trading. One now needs to cross-reference the DMG (which players shouldn’t NEED to have) with the ALPG and the ALCC just to figure out if an item is tradable with another.

Problematic Items – I feel bad for a lot of people who lost some of their items. There are a few who’ve grown attached to their sentient sun swords and shield guardians and consider them companions. Gold – The single worst change in all of Season 8. Clerics can’t cast revivify, wizards can’t copy spells, paladins and fighters can’t afford plate armor. Parties of valiant adventurers will slay dragons, venture into demilich’s lairs, and come away with… nothing… to show for their efforts but a promissory note that says you’ll get gold when you level up and The Satisfaction of a Job Well Done™.

I also have to give a special mention to how poorly these chages were implemented and rolled out. There was less than two weeks between the "final" version of the new rules and the start of Season 8, and still, there were so many typos, errors, and ambiguities in the released documents. People had to check Twitter and two closed Facebook groups for clarifications and announcements. There were even huge changes to the ALCC after the season had already started that sent a lot of people scrambling. Total mess.

Like all T4 adventures that I've run so far, this needs to be adjusted depending on the power levels of the adventurers. But I appreciate the fact that it is already pretty dangerous, as written. I appreciate the amount of thought that went into the Thayan wizards' preparations in the final combat encounter (even though, with the power level of some of the T4s that I've had to DM, the mages in other modules already need to have that level of insane preparation just to present any sort of challenge for the adventurers). It's a module that really needs to present a challenge to the adventurers that play it, and the module does give you all the tools you need to present that challenge.

My main criticism: I feel like having caps for sale trivializes one of the challenges of this module somewhat. Any spells that allow the players to breathe water can be dispelled by the many monsters who can cast dispel magic at will. Caps of water breathing, on the other hand, can't be dispelled, and if you have a party with fewer players, everyone can get one. And it's non-attunement, so players will not need to sacrifice their precious attunement slots for survival.

That aside, it's an interesting module to run: underwater combat, new Tome of Foes monsters, and the open-ended way the final part is written means it could go so many different ways when you run it multiple times. (And because of the item, people WILL want to play through this one again, many times.)

This is exhausting to run. First of all, the scale of the maps is a headache. The up to 40-foot square scale of the maps makes it so difficult to run when you have a table with a limited amount of space. Perhaps it's easier if you run it online where you can scroll and zoom in and zoom out to your heart's content, but trying to fit the immense scale of the place on grids or dungeon tiles is impossible. When your have to limit your scale to 30 feet, and the average creature or character can only move 30 feet, it really makes positioning miniatures on the board or determining the range of spells confusing.Second, the HP calculations in the final encounter, with the shield guardian-esque damage sharing, makes tracking HP a big headache. I had to delegate the task of tracking HP to a co-DM, otherwise it would have significantly slowed down the pace of the game.

Speaking of pace, this ran almost two hours over schedule, even though I added none of the optional encounters and the players diplomatically bypassed the first two Thayan encounters. This is something to consider if you're playing somewhere where you have a limited time slot, or in a place that has a closing time.

I have a few observations on how to effectively run this game as a challenge, as someone who has both DMed and played in it. In general, this module is designed so that it's the environment that kills you, not the monsters. To that end, here are a few notes:

If you have a sufficiently powerful party that has a high-level paladin in it, asking the players for CON saves against exhaustion, as you do in the Land of Ash and Smoke, is an almost trivial exercise. You are empowered as a DM, so the DC of that particular save can probably be bumped up to something higher to give players an actual chance at failing it.

By design, it does more damage to grapple players and dump them into pools of hot water or lava than it does to attack them directly - and you, the DM, should be taking advantage of this tactic - since grapples are checks, not saves, and it's much easier for a DM's monster to win a grapple contest than it is to hit against some of the impossibly high ACs I've seen on T4 characters.

The module contains a good mix of combat, RP opportunities, and puzzles. The puzzles provide a good alternative challenge for parties that normally roll through combat challenges without much difficulty. One criticism I have is that the part with the "corrupted emotions" is confusing to run. The module says that this segment doesn't require initiative, but surely when you've banished a corrupted emotion from one party member, the rest of the party can attack it in initiative order? I've run this part differently the two times I DMed this module, and it was always confusing for both me and the players.The final boss of this module is a fantastic challenge, though. The lich is slightly frail in terms of HP, but a force to be reckoned with. If you play him smart (which you should, he's a lich) you could have a majority of the party both stunned and paralyzed.