TOPIC: Reviews and feedback

Did two runs, both with some friends who had very well-geared characters (lots of purple and blue tokens) who also loaned me and other party members spare gear.

Run 1: Zephyr puzzle-oriented, Thursday afternoon.

Room 1 (circuit puzzle): This was a fun and not too difficult puzzle. I wasn’t fond of the random push damage mid-room, but the puzzle itself was straightforward and obvious in what needed to be done. We decided to focus on joining one color first, calling out unique tile edge color combinations to look for to match up adjacent tiles, and gradually built up the entire board. We did have one or two people on the run who were actually colorblind and couldn’t tell the colors apart and who weren’t able to help much.

Air elemental fight room: Not much to say about this room. No costume or prop for the monster, just a slider board. We beat it without too much trouble.

Fuel pellet charging puzzle room: Interesting, but slightly frustrating puzzle. A lot of yelling back and forth on our team as we tried to figure out what to do and what combination of hoses and pillars to use. The first pellet was easy enough. Cool physical effect as the air pushed the glowing all through the hoses. The second was harder, we spent several minutes arguing over the right combination and barely finished it in time. Really glad that they had removed the third required ball by the time we did it.

Navigation orb puzzle room Kind of a cute puzzle. It was fun arranging the blocks and not hard to figure out which had which effect on the drone. There was a slight technical problem in that the drone couldn’t make it over the lip of the ring it was supposed to go in, and the DM had to move it by hand for us to win the puzzle.

Switch puzzle room: My least favorite puzzle. There didn’t seem to be any pattern, it was just a matter of trying switches at random until the lights came on. The lights weren’t all the same brightness, some were very dim and hard to tell if they were actually lit or not. We got all but one light to come on, and then spent several minutes meticulously trying the switches one at a time to see what they did to try and get it to turn on. It never did. I suspect it was broken, but the GM insisted it worked.

Gasifier puzzle: We kind of screwed ourselves over on this one, thinking that if we activated the gas flow before we had all the hoses hooked up properly we’d take damage from the gas. After all, there were introduced items that protected you from poison gas, so we were on the lookout for a puzzle trap that did poison gas damage. (Silly us, thinking that the GMs would ever allow an item to block trap damage!). We wasted a lot of time trying to look for clues for how to attach the hoses, trying to figure out patterns in the gears and rings on the machine or the locations of the holes. We did finally realize that the gas could be turned on safely and that the way to solve the puzzle was to just hook up the pipes and turn on the gas and then look for where the gas was leaking out, but by that time it was too late to figure out the solution.

Final room (Wyvern fight/piloting puzzle): Really cool concept here, with the three video screens and the control stations. I do think that the GMs might have been a bit overworked with two separate slider boards, it seemed that ours was only paying attention to one of the two boards. We failed this room, didn’t knock down the monsters attacking quickly enough. Felt a little frustrated that the attackers were basically auto-hitting us and our actual defensive items weren’t good for anything here.

Overall I thought the puzzles were a little weak. The circuit puzzle was fine, you could see what needed to be done right away, but taking push damage partway through was annoying. The other puzzles, especially the gasifier and the one with all the switches, felt like pure guessing games with insufficient clues to actually determine the correct answer without lots of trial and error.

Run 2. Viper’s Pit combat-oriented, Saturday afternoon.

Room 1: four obelisk puzzle: Kind of liked this puzzle. We figured out the four scrambled words early on, but were at a loss for which symbol to touch until we remembered that the GM had specifically pointed out that this was a temple to a snake god. Our Ranger touched the rubber ducky in the room and was cursed to only quack, but the GM ruled that the team Druid could still talk to her, and she pointed out that the eyes in the corners of the room were obviously snake eyes.

Snake guardian fight room: Pretty straightforward and easy fight for us. We all slid really well, not a single slider missed and we got several criticals. The snake was dead several times over by the end of the first round.

Snake eggs puzzle room: We solved this puzzle on the first try. Didn’t even realize that the gong would reset it until someone tried the gong after the puzzle was solved. We figured out the pattern first based on the clue and the location of the golden door egg, not realizing that the pattern of the lights was important other than noticing that it changed every time an egg was selected. The main problem was getting the eggs to trigger, at first I thought you had to actually tap the egg with the wand until the room GM told us we only needed to wave it over them. The magnetic sensors in the eggs were really uneven, some activated unevenly and some really didn’t want to trigger. Fortunately we managed to avoid double-tapping any of them.

Skeleton/sarcophagus fight room: Neat concept! We figured out after the first batch of skeletons that we had to hit the sarcophagus, but it was a challenging target. The way the room was laid out made it hard to get people lined up and then out of the way efficiently, and the slider board being right up against the wall made aiming for the sarcophagus physically difficult.

Sand puzzle room: I loved this room, it’s my new all-time favorite puzzle. We were able to figure out fairly quickly what to do, but were still pleasantly surprised when the actual blood effect was projected on the sand. No problem getting our symbols to register, we made sure to make clearly defined trenches for the blood to pool in and the GM accepted all of them. Very nicely done, this is the kind of puzzle I like to see.

Medusa fight room: I liked this fight, even though I’m not a fan of one-shot save-or-die attacks. The costume was impressive, once I could finally look at it safely, and the woman playing Medusa did a great job teasing and trying to get the party members to look at her. We had some really great slides, in the first round of combat our two heaviest-hitters both scored critical hits, and that alone was enough to defeat her even without everyone else’s attacks. Only had two party members get turned to stone, and we had enough stone-to-flesh scrolls to restore them.

Final room: the big boss monster fight: Most of the people in our group had one of the Ioun Stones that protected from poison or let you go without breathing, and the room GM allowed either of those to protect against the poison gas damage, so only a few people were getting hit by the AoE. After a few rounds our Druid managed to do something to negate the poison gas attacks (not sure what). He got killed in the next round, but the rest of us then managed to take out the lizard guy. Then the giant snake monster appeared, and damn that thing was impressive. Tough fight, but we got it down, our Barbarian dealing the final blow.

I enjoyed Viper’s Pit a lot more than Zephyr. There were three fights with costumed actors doing good jobs in their roles, and none of the puzzles had the feel of trying to blindly guess the right answer. The last two fights were potentially very harsh to the unprepared however. We succeeded mostly due to having really good gear on several party members, as well as certain protective items (Ioun Stones versus poison and the like) on most of the rest of the party. Even so we barely finished the last room in time. I can see how it would be an unreasonably difficult TPK for most groups.

Here's my thoughts on the puzzle runs, both on normal:

Zephyr:

1st room: Fuel cells
Great puzzle, and a lot of fun.

2nd room: Wind elemental
Simple enough.


3rd room: Charging fuel cells
This was a great idea for a puzzle, but it took way too long to do the second phase. We never completed the second half.


4th room: rolling orb puzzle
Great puzzle. A little trial and error got us through this one.


5th room: giant orb/switches
This one took way too long, and there was no real explanation we could figure out, especially since half the lights were burned out, and switches went in all directions. It was entirely a shotgun blast approach to pass this one. Too hard for normal, fo sho.


6th room: air flow room
This one was fine i suppose, but we had too many hard-headed and exasperated people for this one. Too many people moving too many pipes at the same time to solve it.


7th room: Bridge/wyvern battle
I was on the combat side, and luckily there was an armory for us to use and fire arrows. Otherwise, we would have been screwed. A nice battle sequence, great effects, but a better description of the room would have helped to allow us to make a better decision to split the party.

On the whole, we found the entire run here to be frustrating.




Viper's Pit - 10:39am Sunday

Our training rep/DM - Awesome. That guy needs a raise. He was informative for the new players, had a great sense of humor, and was really excited, even on Sunday.

1st room: Pillars
Great puzzle.

2nd room: Snake guardians
I'm not sure if there was a way to avoid combat, but worked fine.

3rd room: Eggs
This one wasn't bad, but we didn't know if there was a way to reset this puzzle to restart. I suspect it was the hanging gong, but we never tried it. Our room DM (Sunday, 10:39) told us not to break the eggs, but only said that when we attempted to turn them or when we figured we actually had to whack the eggs with the wand. He was never clear as to what we shouldn't do to not damage the props, because everything else prior was turning things.

4th room: symbol hallway
WAY too hard. There needed to be a clue to allow us a direction to go with this one. We hopped Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade style across the tiles until we started using the rope. We figured out how to drag the rope across appropriately, but had no idea the rope spelled out letters.

5th room: Blood-letting/sand
Great puzzle. Very creative and easy to do. It still held to the theme of the run, and made everyone smile. We also put a rubber duck in water before moving on...

6th room: Gorgon
Great makeup and a fun room.

7th room: Portal
Great room, and we had figured out early on to remember the symbols and terms, and only took us a couple of tries to remedy it. Great puzzle with a nice effect.

This run was fun, but all of the Eldritch damage was a bit much. No one could have negated a drop, which was a bummer. Had the damage types varied, it would have felt like the armor/gear mattered more.

I had A BLAST this year! No much to add to all the great compliments and suggestions, but.... I will anyway.

Overall, we enjoyed Viper much more than Zephyr. We didn't see any monsters for the air elemental or orb/drone, and the construct didnt' move at all. At the end of the dungeon, we had to explain to some newbs that usually you actually SEE the monsters you fight.

Viper more than made up for that! The gorgon was amazing. Only one member of our party was turned to stone. The previous day, I had been playing a bard, but for this run, I was a fighter, and left all my scrolls (including a stone to flesh) back in the car. HOWEVER, buried deep in the Token Fanny Pack of Not-At-All-Dorkishness.... I discovered... another Stone to Flesh scroll that had come from my wife's free tokens at the beginning of the adventure. Yes, the Token Fanny Pack of Stylish-Utilitarianism saved our Rogue's life...

The Viper sand puzzle was one of my favorite things ever. That was amazing.

I loved the last Viper room, and the amazing animatronic, but we ended up winning the room right at the buzzer. What happened? Did we find the dwarves? What's up the drow -- I only saw her for a second because I was sliding, and then helping another party member with spell choices.

Can't wait for 2015!

Doug

The Drow said: "The Dwarves you sold us brought them here" (or something very close to that. I guess we will be hunting Drow next year

It seems like the electrical puzzles were popular enough when they worked, but way too frustrating when they didn't. On a gnome ship they fit the theme, but I'm not sure the glitz is worth the frustration. I'm hoping next year's puzzles are more like the pillars and less like the shop-vac powered ones.

In Zephyr 2, one of the orbs kept getting stuck partway into the last pillar due to some flaw or loosening construction or something, but if you loosened the tube a little and poked the ball with your finger it continued its journey. It's very frustrating when the puzzle physically prevents you from implementing the solution.

Chip Bowles wrote: The Drow said: "The Dwarves you sold us brought them here" (or something very close to that. I guess we will be hunting Drow next year

Thanks! Before we started, I filled in all the new players about the storyline, but at the end, I was so excited about surviving, that it was about an hour before I realized that I had no idea what happened.

First up let me start by saying I had a blast this year. I would rate the overall experience an A. The dungeons looked great, the volunteers and NPCs were as always amazing, and as much as I wasn’t expecting it. I think the smaller space suited the event better.


Flight of the Zephyr, Thursday evening.

Room 1 (door puzzle): Rank[A+]:I liked this room, it looked great, the audio queues made us chuckle, and the Hawk kin NPCs were awesome. I also really enjoyed the literal puzzle. It was nice to walk into a room, know what to do, and spend the time doing it rather than trying to figure out what the trick was.

Room2(The Charging room): Rank[A-]:Another good room, really enjoyed this puzzle. The latex pipes were an issue for one of our players but the overall room design was solid. Again it was nice to hit a room and spend the time solving it. The visual effect of the glowing ball moving through the pipes was unexpected and wonderful and it was great to have the NPC moving with us. My only complaint about the room was that even on subsequent runs where we knew the methodology it was hard to do three iterations of the charging action (nightmare) in the time allotted.

Room3(Living tornado): Rank:Not much to say about this room, basic combat, no costumed monster. I was sad to see our NPC go and a little bummed there was no animatronics or falling gimmick to the combat. The new vacformed walls were really cool but this room just felt like it hit a flat note after how interactive the first two were.

Room4Puzzle(Navigation orb): Rank[A]: This was another fun puzzle, I didn’t notice the GM with the orb control at first so I was really surprised when the orb behaved intelligently. It wasn’t a hard puzzle but for just a second the way that little orb moved gave me a real sense of wonder and that’s a hard thing to do these days. All in all this room gets high marks.
Room4Combat(Navigation orb): Rank[A-]: Cool combat room, loved the shields mechanic, very fresh. Wish we could have seen the orb a little more but it was still a really enjoyable combat room. A- only because the puzz version was a little more interactive but this was darn close in terms of fun.

Room5Puzzle(One million Switches): Rank[D]: Wow, I did not like this room at all. The puzzle was brutal and seemingly random. I’m not sure if the machine was working right or if the DM knew how to solve it assuming it was. We all spent the full twelve minutes wondering if we were missing something that would tell us how to approach this one. It seemed like someone put a lot of work into the prop only to realize half way they were in over their head, then just gave up closed the door and stuck it in a room hoping for the best. Some groups likely hit on the solution right away but it seemed like if they did it would have been based more on chance then solving the riddle. Basically we felt lost in the room, and left feeling unsatisfied.

Room5Combat(Golem): Rank[A]: This was a great fight, awesome monster, cool callback with the golem, and a neat mechanic to discover with damage resistances. This was the definition of how to do a basic combat room right.

Room6(Yet more pipes): Rank[C-]: Another low point, more latex pipes, and frequent delays built into the puzzle. At least we had some idea of what we were meant to be doing with this one but it was a bit like herding cats with everyone touching stuff, and some of our team insisting the vacuum powering the rig smelt like it might be about to catch fire. The biggest problem I had with the design was the 20 second delays between air bursts. Making people pause frequently like that in a 12 minute room was just tortures especially when the GM told us the room only had a 20% success rate and that it was a treasure stamp. It might just have been its proximity to the switch room but again it felt like here’s the thing we built for some reason, everyone gather around and get frustrated.
Room7(Flying the ship): Rank[A-]: Loved this room, the design, the look, everything really came together and saved the run IMO. Only criticism being the GM didn’t tell folks what they were volunteering for so we had to shuffle some folks around when combat started. Other than that it was a really fun visually stimulating room that gave the combat a really unique twist. And I have to say our GM JW made the run for us. He was super high energy and knowledgeable. Get him back next year if you can.

Overall: Rank[B+]: This dungeon started and finished strong, it just sagged in the middle with some brutal puzzles. Still an overall positive run that showed a lot of the quality and ambition I’ve come to expect from TD.


Viper’s Pit, Puzzle Thursday evening, Combat Saturday Evening.


Room1(Word Obelisk): Rank: Fun puzzle to get us started, wasn’t a fan of the spread our push damage. Felt like we we solved it and were still punished, but over all a fun room if a little straight forward.

Room2(Snake combat): Rank[C+]: Wondered if there was anyway point to the dark heart clue. It seemed like no matter who bowed they were just bitten, which really felt like a fake out intended to cause pointless damage. If there was no “correct” way to start the fight why even go through the motions of wasting time by making us bow, still good fake out, I wasn’t expecting a combat room and the snakes were cool.

Room3(Green eggs room): Rank[A+]:This was a really fun one with a cool effect. Loved the way the wand worked. It was a little finiky but a clever use of magnets to be sure. The wall clue may have been a little too easy in terms of telling us what to do. I heard at one point the GMs were instructed to make the rogue open the box before letting people start because the room had to high a success rate. We had some new folks with us the second run we were on who wanted to try it so I just messed up the box so they could get going. The room looked great though, and I’m not sure if it was intentional or not but you could see the shadow of the final boss on the wall and it was really ominous. A great touch if planned, and a great room in terms of setting atmosphere.

Room4Combat(Skeleton): Rank[A]: Another great combat room, fresh twists and a neat gimmick. Not much to say but really fun over all, and kudos to everyone who wore one of those skeleton suits. They looks great but I bet they were hot.

Room4Puzzle(Floor puzzle): Rank[C-]: I felt like this room may have been missing a sign or a description of some sort. We didn’t really have any idea of what to do, tried a few things at random, took some push and moved on. Still don’t know what we were supposed to do so can’t really comment on it beyond that.

Room5(Sand Room): Rank[A+++]: AKA the coolest room ever. Wow, just wow. You guys really raised the bar on this one. I hadn’t even considered something like that would be possible let alone that it could be used to such great effect in the dungeon. Only problem was the sand was kind of spilling everywhere and making the floor slippery, but that was addressed with mats. Cant weight to see what else you guys can come up with leveraging motion controls.

Room6(Medusa): Rank[A-]: Great combat, loved the little snake obstacles that got scattered on the board. That was really clever, and the actress playing medusa knocked it out of the park trying to get people to look at her.

Room7Puzzle(The portal): Rank[A]: Great final room for puzzle, loved the illiteration, loved the portal, loved the sense of completeness it brought to the story. It’s a pity this room got slightly overshadowed by the combat finally because it was brilliantly atmospheric.

Room7Combat(The Snake god): Rank[A+]: Wow, talk about ending strong. This room was a brutal combat and an epic finish. There was story, there was a twist, there was a freaking SECOND FORM to the end boss. I can’t say enough good things about this room. I would have honestly paid $50 just to play it. The difficulty of the combat may have been dialed a little high for normal from what I heard but that’s a separate issue from the room itself. Wow this fight made even the dracolich look old hat and one dimensional. The only bad thing here was that the epilog was moved to the XP room, but honestly that’s like complaining that you don’t like the color of the paper your winning loto ticket was printed on.

Overall: Rank[A+]: This dungeon was hands down one of the best looking and most fun I’ve played since I started TD.

In terms of things that need improvement, the more ambitious TD gets in terms of technology the more we need to make sure we can rely on that technology, but honestly some tech issues aside this year was amazing and I can’t wait to do it all again.

I'm going to reply again, copying the text from somebody who remembers the details better than I do:

Flight of the Zephyr

Room 1 (door puzzle): Score 8/10: I liked the puzzle and the twist that you had to have the pieces on the table to see them. Having the DM that followed us to the next few rooms was really cool.

Room 2 (The Charging room): Score 7/10: I first did this on the Golden Ticket run and we were supposed to have three balls which was next to impossible IMO. Later I went through and the third ball was covered up and getting the two balls through was challenging but fun. Visually I liked watching the energy run through the pipes.

Room 3 (Living tornado): Score 7/10: I liked that the target was hard to hit, very thematic. I do think we could have had some wind blowing or something in the room.

Room 4 Puzzle (Navigation orb): Score 8/10: The puzzle was cool and I initially didn't notice anybody controlling the ball so that was fun. With two runs through this room I eventually had to ask the DM after we solved it to really understand the interactions between the four special shapes.

Room 4 Combat (Navigation orb): Score 8/10: Force field mechanic was really cool, I liked this type of thing that we saw this year. wasn't initially clear that we we were supposed to land on the force field until the DM told us.

Room 5 Puzzle (One million Switches): Score 5/10: I still have no idea what we were supposed to do here. On the GT run we were told that the outer ring had to all be lit up and then the inner ring had to light up in order without the outer lights turning off. We never figured it out. On a later run they told us we just had to get all of the lights to turn on which was easier, but some of them were hard to see, and we never figured out the puzzle, just randomly tried switches (but we did figure out that each station controlled its own outer light and somebody else's inner light, except your outer light had to be on in order for your inner light to turn on).

Room 5 Combat (Golem): Score 7/10: Great DM but I don't remember anything specifically interesting about this combat.

Room 6 (Yet more pipes): Score 4/10: Way too hard or buggy or something. First time through we wasted half of our time before even turning on the air. Next two times through I "cheated" and flipped on the switch before anybody could stop me. We didn't solve it any of the three times.

Room 7 (Flying the ship): Score 10/10: Videos were great, and I loved the idea of splitting into the two teams. I don't know what the guys were doing in the back of the room but I did like shooting the Wyverns!


Into the Viper’s Pit


Room 1 (Word Obelisk): Score 8/10: This was a great classic TD puzzle room that was challenging but not too hard. I didn't realize we could rotate the obelisks at first though!

Room 2 (Snake combat): Score 7/10: I liked the fact that it seemed like a puzzle room and then switched to combat.

Room 3 (Green eggs room): Score 8/10: This was a great puzzle. We didn't solve it the first time through; we didn't know the gong reset it, so we just kept trying to solve it randomly. We also tried to make them all purple instead of green. The second time through the DM told us the gong reset it (or was it a player who had been through before?). We had to reset it a few times because the wand was twitchy and we lost track of which ones had been properly toggled.

Room 4 Combat (Skeleton): Score 10/10: Incredibly awesome. I liked the little puzzle as part of combat (we had our Bard figure it out). I liked the challenge of hitting the box in the back corner. I liked the NPCs, although with such heavy masks I never know what to do (ignore them, talk to them, etc).

Room 4 Puzzle (Floor puzzle): Score ??/10: We never even got close to figuring out what to do (I never even saw a rope...). So I can't rate it, except it is probably too hard, however it might be a cool puzzle if I knew what it was.

Room 5 (Sand Room): Score 10/10: Really cool room, I'm guessing they used some custom software hooked up to Kinect? The first time through this room the sand was sculpted into high and low spots and the colors matched so I assumed the DM had arranged the sand to match the projection. But then I moved the sand and freaked out as the "water" moved. The next time through (well, this time was a combat run) the sand was basically flat so the effect wasn't as neat when walking in, nor was it obvious you could get down to a blue layer.

Room 6 (Medusa): Score 9/10: Cool combat, but I do feel bad trying to avoid eye contact with the NPC.

Room 7 Puzzle (The portal): Score 6/10: We had absolutely no chance of solving this one as we had not remembered any of the symbols on the way there, much to our dismay!

Room 7 Combat (The Snake god): Score 9/10: Really cool animatronics, fun combat, great final room!

Kirk Bauer wrote: Room 3 (Living tornado): Score 7/10: [snip] I do think we could have had some wind blowing or something in the room.

There was a fan blowing air into the room. But because fans are rather mono-directional, unless you were standing in the right spot with nobody/nothing blocking it, you wouldn't feel it.

Druegar wrote:

Kirk Bauer wrote: Room 3 (Living tornado): Score 7/10: [snip] I do think we could have had some wind blowing or something in the room.

There was a fan blowing air into the room. But because fans are rather mono-directional, unless you were standing in the right spot with nobody/nothing blocking it, you wouldn't feel it.

We also had a problem with the fans falling and breaking at least twice. When they were on and working, the curtains would blow into the room.

I am unsure if I will do these again next year. This was my first gencon and while my overall experience was positive I'm unsure of spending 44 dollars a run is worth it when some things seemed too inconsistent.


Zephyrs Run Combat based (Played druid)
Group was mostly newbies with a few who had done TD last year.

Room 1: Great starter puzzle to get people into the flow of things. We solved this quickly which was good so we had more time to get to know one another.

Room 2: Took us forever just to figure out what to do. By the time we got the first ball done the group argued about the correct combination and time was up. The DM said nothing to help us even get started which was why we took too long. An obscure riddle on the wall and only 12 minutes makes for a frustrating room two.

Room 3: Ok first introduction into combat. Simple straight forward. I did some minor heals and a few combat spells.

Room 4: Another combat we worked together to solve well.

Room 5: Frustrating combat, spells were ineffective and no one had lightning it seemed. No one slid well. Not a bad encounter, just not something inexperienced players would probably be able to do.

Room 6: Da fa? The whole thing was broken, pipes that worked one time stopped working a second, no idea what we were really trying to do until the end and then people kept moving pipes which caused the chain to be broken. At this point I was getting frustrated with the puzzle solving skills of our group because I was yelling into a brick wall on to NOT MOVE ESTABLISHED PIPES!!

Room 7: This is where this adventure failed for me. Put people in the back and up front. Ok great, 2 of the 3 people at my table had NO RANGED WEAPONS!!! Um...where is our ranged, oh yeah on the back consoles. Great..Maybe it would have been nice to know ranged people up front. We failed miserable as I'm throwing 2 -4 dmg poison orbs..Yeah that will work.

Overall, meh experience..

Vipers Pit Puzzle (Played ranger)
Group was two complete newbies, quite a few experienced players.
But we got there 20 minutes ahead of time and had a limited amount of classes to choose from. Which we were not equipped well for at all.

Room 1: Once I figured out you could spell touch the rest fell into place. We aced this one.

Room 2: Snake combat, we killed it in two rounds. I scored a critical with my gun and finished it off. The experienced players made it way more complicated that it needed to be though at first.

Room 3: Green eggs room, the clue from the rogues chest had us complete this in no time. It almost seemed too easy?

Room 4: This one made no sense. We failed about half way through, the DMs narratives only confused us more.

Room 5: The knife sand room, ugh, The DM kept making comments that through us off. I know we did it right the first time but he said "The blood overflows the symbol". Huh what? Then we started doing the symbols in random order which didn't work. Nothing made sense until the second time we tried the first symbol again, mind you EXACTLY like the first time the dm said we got it right. Uh ok, ran out of time.

Room 6: Medusa combat, hard, but we survived, unfortunately this is where I got irritated with the "experienced players". They all healed one another and left the rest of us to fend for ourselves. The bard died to non healing, and there was somehow no stone to flesh scroll left for the monk. even though I saw a few in the druids hand. This was probably my favorite room though because of the actor. She kept whispering into my ear, hey good looking, wanna date?

Room 7: We solved it because we all remembered the symbols. But I was annoyed that it seemed to clique to me with this group. I tried to offer help but was overwhelmed by the experienced group. It just felt like I was an looking into a glass room with the rave going on and I'm not invited. Over all I had an OK time, but not enough to want to spend 44 dollar again next year.

The inconsistencies of the DMs and sometimes completely obscure solutions made this a bit of a wash for me. I had an decent time, just not a 44 dollar good time. Next year I'll spend the 88$ on something tangible I can take home or do more less costly events. The True dungeon experience is something I can say I was a great lifetime experience, but hard to make me want to keep coming back.

I commend all those who put in the work to make this happen. I'm sure this is great to a lot of people, but for me it just didn't do enough to make a repeat customer.

I would like to second someone's comment that having an NPC/dm from the first room on Zephyr follow the players into the next room was unexpected and fun. Great idea!