TOPIC: Favorite and least favorite puzzles and combat

I liked most of the puzzles and combat. Only ones that were an issue were the following:

Mushrooms - Nobody could hear all of them!

Illithid - MUCH too hard to hit, even on normal mode and very slow combat DMs on both runs. Also the sound in that room was really low. Even people with great hearing couldn't hear the Illithid's speech.

The best rooms:

The Illusionary spider:

Our group had a few people jump out of their skins when the real spider showed up. What was really cool was being in the next room and suddenly hearing several high pitched screams of terror coming from the room we had just left.

The rogue and I looked at each other with understanding dawning about the same time and we just laughed!

Final room of Sable Combat:

Our Bard made all but one of his lore checks and he made the last room check. We found out that healing hurt the creature. Our pally still had his Phoenix and our Cleric still had her Cure Serious Wounds. Smacking the thing with 44 points of unavoidable damage was awesome!

I prefer the more "thinky" puzzles than dexterity puzzles. My favorite puzzle was the spider web one with words spelled on the top and bottom webs in Sable Gauntlet. Our biggest problem with this is the "J" looked like an "L" so we kept reading it as "elect". It wasn't till someone said "eject" that we actually stood IN the circle and had someone stepped out that we solved it. That was one of those last second solves that was very satisfying.

I really felt like the combat at the end of underdark was too hard for normal. I don't mind dying but with only getting 3 rounds of combat in and with party members getting 1-shotted it was a less than enjoyable experience.

Edit: Least favorite puzzle was the mushroom puzzle. The volume on the voices were WAY too low to hear what they were saying. We just threw our hands up in the air and ended up guessing. We got it right on the second guess but obviously no treasure.

Still a great time and great dungeon design once again!

Things I liked:
I appreciated that the puzzles, at least on the Underdark side, weren't as mechanically complex as last year. I remember having problems with the Zephyr bellows room and the glowing snake eggs from Viper's Pit wouldn't respond to the wand. Both those runs were on Sunday, so I'm sure the components were pretty much shot by then.

I also really liked the physical representations of the monsters, either as an actor or as puppet. The giant spider was fantastic.

Having the DM introduction in large text on the wall was also really helpful since it can be hard to hear with all the ambient noise and the DM's voice starting to go out.

Things I didn't like:
I wasn't so much of a fan of how the Drow assassian/spider egg room was set up. The table as difficult to get to since we could only approach from one side and couldn't really line up. Additionally, the table in last room of Sable combat faced away from the monster, so we weren't able to see it while we slid.

The speaking components, the talking mushrooms and the last monster of the Sable Gauntlet combat, were difficult to understand. It didn't matter so much for the monster, but the mushrooms were giving clues.

I have mixed feelings about having puzzle clues out in the waiting area. The GM was quick to mention that everything needed to solve the puzzle was in the room, but I feel the game shouldn't start till room one.

Neither here nor there:
My group for the 9:25 Underdark run was amazing. The majority of us had not met before and we were able to solve the puzzles with almost no problems. Yay for teamwork!

The final combat for the Sable Gauntlet was great from my perspective because I was the Dwarf Fighter and I ended the fight with a triple damage critical hit.

This! Blue and Teal? Isn't Teal == Blue? Every step of the spider egg puzzle we had to ask the DM which was which again. The lights probably sounded good on paper, but paint them (and the masks) next time.

Everything else was AWESOME! Especially the grub room. "Sooo... are these magic spiders? No? I stop fighting it and name it George." (Cloak of Skip Spider Room.)

My favorite was probably the blocks puzzle for sable puzzle side.
Least favorite would be the mushrooms. It was a bit tight to maneuver. No one in our group was able to understand the intro sound with the singing.

Graham Smallwood wrote: This! Blue and Teal? Isn't Teal == Blue? Every step of the spider egg puzzle we had to ask the DM which was which again. The lights probably sounded good on paper, but paint them (and the masks) next time.

Reminds me of the dungeon back in 2009(?) when you had to memorize the color of lights in the earlier rooms.

Only thing was that there was lots of argument about what color the light in each room was. And sometimes even the DM in that room didn't know what color the light actually was!

Our group was told they were not normal spiders so the cloak didn't do anything. Either way it was a throw away room by Sat night

joshua baessler wrote: I've heard a lot of players gripe about not getting treasure stamps for solving some of the puzzles in unorthodox ways (immunity to fire/boots of lava walking for the lava puzzle, taking a bite of every mushroom) or skipping straight to the solution. I actually appreciate the effort in making sure people are solving the puzzles and not just brute forcing their way through or relying on previous experience to go straight for the right answer. I thought that was pretty cool.

My group that did the lava floor had 2 members with lava walking boots. We both helped figure out the puzzle and guide people over, but were told that using the boots would make us ineligible for treasure.

Then some people messed up a number of times causing us to lose access to the treasure anyway, so we sauntered across the lava.

I can understand wanting to incentivize people to participate in the puzzles, but it seems a bit at odds with having such a detriment to getting 'lucky' with the item drops. Why bother equipping items that might help us 'solve' puzzles if we can't actually use them?

In the end it didn't harm the experience (we all had a blast), but it was sort of confusing that the items we got were more detrimental (until treasure was off the table entirely) than helpful, at least in that case.

We failed the mushroom puzzle (they spoke infrequently enough that by the time we were on the right track we were out of time, and there was some confusion as people couldn't understand words), and then blew the spider table entirely.

Brokkr wrote: Things I didn't like:
I wasn't so much of a fan of how the Drow assassian/spider egg room was set up. The table as difficult to get to since we could only approach from one side and couldn't really line up. Additionally, the table in last room of Sable combat faced away from the monster, so we weren't able to see it while we slid.

What did you think of the main part and effect of the puzzle though on the Drow assasin /Spider Egg table room? My favorite from last year was the sand room table where you cut your hand and it had that great projection from above on the sand. Do you think anything compares to that this year? The Giant Spiders were great of course.I liked the mushrooms, personally. The dungeon seemed a bit better detailed last year. Some things seemed a bit barren and needing something this year in my opinion. The mushrooms were fun but I Can't put my finger on it that something was missing. The elevator concept was cool. I really enjoyed the experience and will of course be back.

Forar wrote: My group that did the lava floor had 2 members with lava walking boots. We both helped figure out the puzzle and guide people over, but were told that using the boots would make us ineligible for treasure.

Then some people messed up a number of times causing us to lose access to the treasure anyway, so we sauntered across the lava.

I think some of the DM's misunderstood the DM notes.

On Friday morning (around 9:40-ish) I did a Sable Combat run. In the first room, the Drow NPC/DM would not let me use my Libram of Looting, saying that if I (the Rogue) took the clue it would make me ineligible for treasure.

I had already done the run (and room) before and even already knew the clue. In fact, I had said aloud the clue for the room to the rest of the party, before I even did the Rogue box. But after completing the Rogue box, I wanted to let the players who had not done the room the chance to read the exact clue. And then the DM was telling me that I was now ineligible for the Rogue box treasure (despite the Libram)!

I did both runs on combat and Underdark as a puzzle as well as combat.

We didn't figure out the lava room until the last second and were then all like DOH! But I am still beyond thrilled that we did get it even if by then we had lost the stamp. The logic on the puzzle was sound, and I really liked it.

The talking mushrooms were frustrating for me. I couldn't understand the majority of their speeches and we solved it more by guessing I think. (but my hearing is not the best from 20 years of working around/with heavy equipment).

I also had a difficult time telling the colors apart... but we did manage to solve the final puzzle for Underdark.

I was ok with all the combats. The spider illusion room was neat! And I was alright with the crazy mind flayer blinking around as well (though it was a little frustrating). I will admit to not liking combats that "kill" you by removing you from play, but that's a personal preference.

I liked the elevator and ball transfer puzzles a lot. Both were simple and involved teamwork.

My absolute favorite puzzle was the spider web room. My group didn't get the first time through, and the second we managed to get going in the right direction but not quite there. Third time was a charm for this one! I also heard of players who would rez the guy in the web for a hint! Which I felt was a super creative way to go about it.

Incognito wrote:

Forar wrote: My group that did the lava floor had 2 members with lava walking boots. We both helped figure out the puzzle and guide people over, but were told that using the boots would make us ineligible for treasure.

Then some people messed up a number of times causing us to lose access to the treasure anyway, so we sauntered across the lava.

I think some of the DM's misunderstood the DM notes.

On Friday morning (around 9:40-ish) I did a Sable Combat run. In the first room, the Drow NPC/DM would not let me use my Libram of Looting, saying that if I (the Rogue) took the clue it would make me ineligible for treasure.

I had already done the run (and room) before and even already knew the clue. In fact, I had said aloud the clue for the room to the rest of the party, before I even did the Rogue box. But after completing the Rogue box, I wanted to let the players who had not done the room the chance to read the exact clue. And then the DM was telling me that I was now ineligible for the Rogue box treasure (despite the Libram)!

I'm curious, how did you handle that, knowing that you were definitely within the rules to have both?

I had a situation where the exact opposite happened with the Rogue box - on room 7 of the Underdark puzzle I failed my first (and only, mind you! ) Rogue box, even using Ektdar's Tinkering Tool. I showed my Masterwork Thieves Tools and the DM said "Hold on a sec, I'll show you where the middle is again" while he was trying to watch the rest of the group to see if they touched a spider. I let him know that I had to do the whole thing from start to finish on the 2nd try. He ended up giving me the treasure after my success just for being honest.