This is a playtest review. We played through this adventure in two five hour session. Half of the players used the pregen characters, the other two created their own.
LIKED: The swinomancer was not very dangerous but visually very impressive. Players mentioned him again and again.
The atmosphere was interesting with sad music being played by the grigs. I started playing The Black Rider by Tom Waits in the background when we reached that point.
Not all encounters are necessary. Players can easily avoid some encounters if they they feel that they have to conserve their resources.
The pregen characters all have something useful against the predominant creature type without being obviously optimized. That makes the entire thing very organic.
DISLIKED: This adventure features no rest and no getting back of spells. That was bad news for the sorceror. The newbie player had created a sorceror without a wand of magic missile. Ouch!
The last foe has SR but I ignored it. The last foe also has Freedom of Movement and our barbarian was specialized in grappling. I ignored that, too. It really depends on well the party has been doing until now.
The nymph encounter was bad. I gave a hint about people clawing at the eyes and groaning with pleasure, asked for initiative rolls, the bard NPC won, failed his save, and turned blind. Ouch! A suggested solution in the book would have been great.
BOTH: One of my players said that if I hadn’t told them after the first session that they needed to disrupt n events to get the last foe to appear, he wouldn’t have known what to do. Another player said, however, that even though he did not know the exact number, he knew exactly what to do.
One player felt that the foes were incredibly tough with all the extra damage they were causing and their poisons, but another player felt that those made interesting encounters.
A rule to cut down a tents would have been nice.