TOPIC: Our True Dungeon experience

We did both as combat runs, but Underdark was on Hardcore and Sable was on Normal.

We run with friends and there was only 1 ticket we didn't have which was for Underdark. A newbie had it and yeah our friend talked him into running hardcore. I hope he had fun...he was quiet and by room 4 we were all realizing our mistake in running hardcore.

We also had a young man who was the kid of a friend of ours who was running his first dungeon. Yeah, I know two newbies and we still did hardcore. LOL What were we thinking?

Then the other problem for my husband and I was that, I built us (Ranger and Cleric) for a normal run. You see we just moved to Seattle, and so I just took a limited number of tokens to Gen Con. <sighes while shaking head> We weren't the only ones who hadn't built for hardcore. What were we thinking?

Underdark Combat Hardcore:
We were successful in 2 rooms...oh wait...it was 3 rooms...I forgot one...we did better than I thought. One was the elevator, but we took damage. No worries, our druid and myself the cleric healed us up.

The other successful rooms were 5 and the talking mushroom room.

As for DMs, I really only had a problem with the combat mushroom DM. He was standing next to a mushroom which made it hard for us to get to him. Then our Rogue (who he was targeting every single time) tripped on his way to tell me he needed healing (which I knew) and hit the mushroom. Down it came. Pretty much after that the DM was done with us even though our rogue took himself out of combat to hold the mushroom up. I realize this was partly our fault, but also it was the design of the room. Don't put the DM who needs to talk to spell casters next to anything fragile.

Otherwise, I like to thank the DM in room 5 who A.) Answered my question as to what room we were in. I usually don't ask, but I told him we were realizing our mistake on hardcore and the druid and I were about out of healing. B.) He encouraged me on and told us we were doing great for hardcore. We defeated our first monster in room 5.

I would also like to thank the DM in the talking mushroom room. I do not hear well which I told them early on. I would "listen" at my mushroom and then ask what it said. I was trying to explain to our group what to do while figuring out the puzzle. The newbie guy understood and started at the other end. Well, towards the end I was puzzling it out and the DM said "And that means?" So I tried the right one. The DM was great especially once I explained our mistake on hardcore.

The last room was a TPK. The DM told us that if we had ran normal (what a lot of DMs said) we would have been successful.

Sable Combat Normal:
We were prepared and destroyed every room. Not literally. We also had all experienced people and our bard was back.

With our paladin and bard, the spider illusion was ferreted out in like the 1st 30 secs or less. We had no issues. Great spider though! I hate spiders!

The transfer ball room was great. We worked together as one with one person directing everyone else. It took 3 tries. An initial drop in the first, the second we lowered too early, and success on the 3rd.

The only room I did not get was the room where things attached to us. We got that we needed to use torches to get them off, but several of us saw the slider board and got frustrated with the DM "wasting our time" with speeches. We lined up and got them off us in order and "What? No combat? We're done?" Echo'd through the room. Healed up and waited for the next room. Apologies from us were in full force to the DM for rushing him. LOL

Overall:
We had fun and in retrospect didn't do nearly as bad on hardcore as we thought. A tweak to our builds and having a bard plus all experienced people should help with that.

Things I would like to have improved:
1.) More light in the coaches room. We had trouble reading tokens in certain seats.
2.) Way more light in the training room. This year it seemed unusually dark.
3.) In the training room, make sure the DMs know to leave memorizers alone who obviously know their job. I have to say the DMs this year in the training room were way better than the past on this. Just a reminder.

Otherwise, thank you to all the volunteers and to True Dungeon for putting together another fun year. Our group looks forward to this each year and enjoys the time we spend gaming together.

What new story arc will we start next year? What devious traps will True Dungeon have for us next year? I for one can't wait to find out. Thank you!