Really fun adventure to run, and due to it's gimmick quite easy to slot in to existing campaigns. Had to adapt one of the puzzles since it depends on specific words and I'm running my games in another language, but most of the rooms worked well as written. Players enjoyed it and it was a great addition to our Waterdeep Dragon Heist campaign.

The "1 square = 5 feet" writing on the map spoils it a bit, especially the ungridded version.

Summary: After an extremly railroady opening the adventure present an interesting premise and a series of varied encounters in a spooky and gloomy setting. It fumbles slightly with a major plot point, then presents a satisfying ending. Don't be fooled into trying to treat this as a one-shot, it's way too long for that.

I've got mixed feelings about this adventure, but overall I rate it as above average. Spoiler warning, as I will be mentioning some specific plot points below. This will be a collection of random thoughts I have about the adventure, but I hope they might be useful for someone considering buying it.

I really like the premise of the adventure. The idea of a fallen paladin trying to create a Domain of Dread to trap his nemesis, and having the said nemesis trick the party into helping them, is quite interesting and I will definietly use this concept in a future campaign.

My most disliked part of the adventure is the opening. It creates a setup, with a big choice the players can make, most likely results in an overwhelming combat and presents a set of difficult ability checks - only to invalidate all of it and make it all meaningless, the players have no real choice an everything they do will have the same outcome. If the goal is to force players into a situation, the in my opinion the opening scene should just be narration - don't make the players spend time in comdat with vampires and dread knights just to snap your fingers and make it all disappear. The opening boils down to "players make a saving throw, if they suceed then they are captured, if they fail they are captured and take damage. But that damage is invalidated seconds later, so it's just rolling a bunch of dice for nothing, seems like the whole reason is to trick the party into thinking the messed up and ended up dead.

The "quest giver" is interesting and I think they could be easilly worked into getting the party to accept her request without the whole time reversal shennenigans. There's also a random dragon NPC that can throw a bunch of exposition at the party and is in no way explained in the adventure. Seems like a really weird addition that's not followed on later.

The random encounters in the forest are nicely varied, although at least one of them references critical failures, which are not a 5e mechanic. I wish the friendly NPCs were a bit more fleshed out in their goals, seems they serve just to point the party to their destination. I think they can easilly be worked into a more interesting altenative to the main story of "find the spider lair to progress".

The phase spider lair is the 2nd piece of adventure that I disliked. How does Claugiyliamatar know the spiders are able to locate the keep? Why doesn't she know where the keep is, considering she's been there before? Why does the spider queen let the party kill all her children, then give them the information they seek, just to attack them? This part of the adventure made very little sense compared to the rest. I also wish it mentioned the tactics used by spiders - phase spiders can be extremly deadly if played right, especially ruled by a highly intelligent queen. If the party have no way of seeing the ethereal plane they could be getting ambushed all the time. Especially for newer DMs so guidence on how to properly use the spidewrs and tone the difficulty up or down would be a great addition to this segment.

The keep is a cool location, although another example of the party fighting their way to a conversation. This is the 2nd big location in a row where the party is expected to proceed througha series of fights untill they get someone anwser their questions at the end.

The aftermaths are one of the high points of the adventure - there's several outcomes that will have a noticeable impact on the world and the party.

The production value of the adventure is impressive for its price. It's close to 60 pages long, contains maps and art. All the monsters are linked to dndbeyond, including the homebrew variants, which makes it very easy to use. I really appriciate the effort that went into putting it together, compared to many other adventure's I've read.

Overall: 3.5/ 5

I really like it - the additional beasts that you can wildshape into at the end were a really nice addition.

The cover really doesn't do this one justice. It's one of the best herbalism supplements I've seen. Not overcomplicated to the point of being overwhelming, but extensive enough to bring some interesting variety to your game. Offers both flavor and mechanics and will be useful in a wide range of adventures. Formating is clear, and everything seems balanced, at least on first glance. 5/5 would buy again.

I've found this collection of items uneven. Quite a few of the items use the mechanic of "spend you inspiration to activate this item" which makes them useless if you don't use the optional inspiration rule, and even if you do the power level of those items will vary wildly depending on how easilly the DM hands out inspiration. the other commonly used mechanic is "use your proficiency bonus to scale the item" which I'm also not a fan of - I like items that grow and evolve with the character, but this scaling felt weird. There's also an optional rule that makes magic items more difficult to attune to - probably nice if you want a low-magic campaigns, but I found it weird in a supplement introducing additional magic items. There are a couple items here that I found interesting, and the table at the beggining is nice, but overall I didn;t find this collection particularly useful.

I quite liked this set of items. It's a mix of small trinkets that are a nice way of adding extra flavor to your game, some useful items the party would love to have, and a couple that would serve mostly as a setup for an adventure (like a potion that will make even an elf sleep for several years).