Death lurks in the darkness! The deepest levels of the Abomination Vaults contain massive caverns and a relic left behind by one of the Outer Gods. The heroes must negotiate the ruthless politics of insular drow, vampiric urdefhans, and stranger creatures for the tools they need to vanquish Belcorra Haruvex. Yet even as the heroes grow nearer, the undead sorcerer's power increases, and the heroes must put her to rest before she claims the full might of her malevolent patron.
“Eyes of Empty Death” is a Pathfinder adventure for four 8th-level characters. This adventure concludes the Abomination Vaults Adventure Path, a three-part monthly campaign in which the heroes explore a sprawling megadungeon to stop an ancient evil from renewing her monstrous vengeance. This adventure also includes an expanded look at ghosts in Golarion, an examination of the Outer God Nhimbaloth, and powerful new rules and monsters!
Each monthly full-color softcover Pathfinder Adventure Path volume contains an in-depth adventure scenario, stats for several new monsters, and support articles meant to give Game Masters additional material to expand their campaign. Pathfinder Adventure Path volumes use the Open Game License and work with both the Pathfinder RPG and the world's oldest fantasy RPG.
ISBN-13: 978-1-64078-316-4
The Abomination Vaults Adventure Path is sanctioned for use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. The rules for running this Adventure and Chronicle sheet are available as a free download (983 kb PDF).
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
Basics- Time to end this! Eyes of Empty Death is the finale of the Abomination Vaults adventure path. You’re DEEP underground and it's now time to deal with the evils that are rising to destroy Absalom. What horrors are this far underground?
Mechanics or Crunch- This is another solid Paizo adventure. Overall, the mechanics worked well and things felt balanced. There are a few things that I feel need a slightly better explanation like how some elements work during the final fight. But, those you can hand wave easily enough. It might not be perfect, but it worked well enough. 4.5/5
Theme or Fluff- This was a fun story overall with extra interesting bits of world lore. The story had new characters and twists with a crazy ending that the players enjoyed. There HAS to be a load bearing boss at the end, because I’ve played enough classic Nintendo games to know it must be. However, all those things just add to the charm of this one. 5/5
Execution- PDF? Yep. Hyperlinked? Yes! Solid Art? Yep. Good layout? Yes. It’s a book by Paizo, so I was never in doubt of the quality. For 20 bucks as a PDF, you get a lot of nice toys, art, layout, and a solid extra book of maps that you can change levels and elements on. Overall, this is all the things I wanted from a modern book! 5/5
Summary- This was a solid conclusion to the adventure path, and while well done, if you like it will entirely depend on if you want a dungeon crawl. The levels are only semi connected and it's a lot of random between them, but that’s the fun of a dungeon crawl. You do random stuff and have fun. I thought it was a well done version of that. So, if you want a nine level dungeon crawl, here you go! 97%
Having now completed Abomination Vaults, I have to say it's a nearly perfect execution of a big dungeon adventure.
!!!SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
The dungeon levels are varied, but make sense together, there's a lot of variety in how you can play out rooms, but it would support a kick the door fight the monster style romp too (though that's not how we played it).
Shout-out again to Otari for being the perfect town to support and inspire the heroes of an adventure like this.
The final volume itself was full of more great encounters, and excellent Darklands themes and locations. And the way the final encounter played out was memorable and exciting.
Delighted to have played and completed this AP. Couldn't recommend enough.
Given the high bar set by the first two books of this AP, I’ve been anxious about whether the third book would stand up by comparison. As it turns out, I needn’t have worried — the third book is just as well done as the first two, and leads the AP to a fitting conclusion.
This book of the AP shares many of the strengths of the first two. It continues the pattern of providing “environmental cues” for each level, feels organic, has gorgeous art and maps, and plenty of appropriately creepy scenes for GMs who like that sort of thing to lean into.
But let me highlight some of the particular strengths of this book. For one, this book does a great job of recreating the feel of an old-school open sandbox. For example, it throws in some encounters that the party is clearly supposed to run from or avoid — like a classic sandbox, the party shouldn’t be expecting to be able to kill absolutely everything they run into. And it offers a lot of different routes for the party to pursue — like an old school sandbox, there’s way more content here than one should expect the party to go through — giving the party real choice about what areas to explore and which to bypass.
Another particular strength of this book is that it shifts the difficulty level to a more manageable level than the previous APs. There are a lot more “Low” difficulty encounters. There are a lot more encounters with lots of lower level enemies that give spellcasters an opportunity to shine. And the high difficulty encounters are generally paired with foreshadowing, environmental features, or timing which make these encounters more manageable.
Finally, this book cranks up the pressure on the PCs a bit, time-wise, and really shines a spotlight on the main antagonist in a way that prevents them from just being an end boss who the party never interacts with until the final fight. (I’ll avoid saying more to keep this review relatively spoiler free.)
All in all, an excellent conclusion to a masterful dungeon crawl.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
andreww wrote:
I am currently prepping this and I just got to the Blood Mage. Its Cantrips are listed as being level 8, is this a typo?
(Considering this is a lvl 8 creature with 4th level being the highest level spell they have... yes, most certainly a typo. These attack cantrips would be quite something at that level.)
I am currently prepping this and I just got to the Blood Mage. Its Cantrips are listed as being level 8, is this a typo?
Cantrips are always hightened to the level of your highest spell slot as a caster. Or to the highest spell level you would have if you were a caster. So If you are a 15 lvl fighter with a cantrip, that cantrip is at 8th level.
While this is true for PCs here we are dealing with a monster from the Bestiary section which dont always follow the same rules.
The Blood Mage is a level 8 monster with 4th level spells maximum. However, its cantrips are listed as being 8th level. It looks like someone took the cantrip level as being equal to the monster level but as monsters dont follow the same rules as players it isnt clear.
Something else I realized: Besides lack of continue the campaign article, this is also first AP that doesn't have "What if PCs fail?" paragraph.
Though to be fair, I think you can make a guess based on abilities of Gauntlight in itself x'D But yeah still bit sad about that, its fun to have "what a horrible failure" moments when reading what would happen if pcs lose at final boss fight
There is no PDF option available on the fancy adventure path page that lists all the books on one page. I had to click learn more and come here to buy the PDF. Not a big deal but just a slight oversight :).
There is no PDF option available on the fancy adventure path page that lists all the books on one page. I had to click learn more and come here to buy the PDF. Not a big deal but just a slight oversight :).
