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As long as folks are giving feedback on the use of subsystems in Adventure Paths... I'd love to hear about more recent examples. ...

If the use of those (research, influence, chases, infiltrations, etc.) are still pain points... I'd love to hear about why they are, ESPECIALLY if they're still pain points...

I can regale you with the experiences my table has had with the subsystems. For reference I am currently running Agents of Edgewatch (soon ending, we've just hit lvl20) and Sky King's Tomb (half-way through it). I have also played through the first 3 books of Blood Lords and am currently a player in Season of Ghosts, closing in on the end of book 3.

Me and my group have gotten quite familiar with the basic Victory Points system, as well as the Influence and Research subsystems. (And Rituals as well, if we count those as a subsystem). It's to the point that I or the other GM can just go "This is an influence/research/victory point encounter" and our group knows what to do. We've encountered two paint points with these systems.

The first pain is with influence, where we find that we can blow through the influence statblocks of our enemies within a couple of rounds of influence. This is of course roll dependant, but for most of the APs we tend to be able to max out every influenceable character well within the pre-written time limit given by the adventure.

The second paint point comes with rituals, and it is that it is super easy to make them impossible to pass. Since rituals must have the correct number of secondary casters, and the secondary casters must crit succeed to give a +2 circumstance bonus but need only fail to incure -4 circumstance penalty, it becomes very easy to make the ritual impossible to pass. It's even worse if anyone critical fail, at which point rituals decrease their degree of success by one. This is "fine" when rituals is just an optional thing we do to resurrect our party members, gain undead minions, or some other downtime like activity that isn't crucial to the adventure's progression. But...

On the other hand Research encounters seems to go over pretty well. In the adventures I have played through every research encounter has had a "ticking clock" attached to their research encounters ensuring that we can't just spend forever getting max Research Points. But also makes sure you only need to hit the low thresholds in order to continue the adventure. So no real complaints here.

But now for the two systems that we really struggle with: Chases and especially Infiltrations.

To take chases first, the problem isn't that we don't understand the rules, but more that we find the rules to be... dumb? So the chases are basically just regular Victory Points system, except you are trying to catch up to someone who is overcoming obstacles automatically ahead of you. The problem we find is the immersion breaking of having to have every PC having to roll to overcome every obstacle. Or to be more precise, the fact that the group as a whole need to overcome the obstacle's VP threshold or else we can't progress. If our acrobatic monk leaps onto the market stall roofs and acrobatics checks themselves over the crowd blocking their path, then surely the monk should be able to proceed regardless of if the wizard at the back gets lost in the mass of people, right? But the chase rules says no, the monk has to wait for their party to catch up before they can proceed. This tend to break our immersion and has lead to a lot of frustration with the chase rules at my table.

The main subsystem we struggle with however, is infiltrations! We. Don't. Understand. Infiltrations.
By that I mean, we've read the rules for infiltrations, we sorta understand how they are suppose to work in theory. But none of the infiltrations we've encountered whilst playing through the APs have really... operated in the way that the GM Core subsystem describes...

After finally getting my hands on War of Immortals and reading through the lore, there was a bit in the update on Garund that caught my eye. Appearently there is a pool that gives those who bathes in its waters glimpses of memories from those whom Gorum has killed. And one of those who bathed there was a pirate captain whom says they saw the memories of a long-dead Pirate demigod, and conversely learned of the location of a great treasure. The rub is that the treasure lies somewhere amongst other planes and not on Golarion.

This plot hook speaks to me immensely, and now I really want an AP about a interplanar treasure hunt utilizing pirate ships and racing to get the treasure before anyone else can. I feel like this adventure will tick so many boxes for me. Pirates, planes, sea-creatures. Heck yeah!

Sorry for taking a few days, was very busy these last few days. But for what I've done with the relics in my game is I've added one relic - The Skyweave Prototypes from the Lost Dwarven Treasures section.

Skyweave Prototype
Aspects metal
Forming the Bond The PCs are given the shield by the Stonefist clan.
Advancing the Bond Find and recover the remaining Skyweave Prototypes.
Minor Gifts Absorb Injury, Enhancing Circuitry, Scrap Shot
Major Gifts Precious Anodization, Spirit Blink

The first item they got was the Skyweave Prototype Shield, which is a reinforced steel shield made out of Skymetal. After much research I figured out that Skymetal is most likely Djeezet, so I made it that. I introduced an NPC from the Lost Omens: Highhelm book—Skogg Bloodhammer, the owner of the Cracked Anvil Brewery, which served as the PCs main meeting spot and drinking hole. I noticed that in the description he is always polishing a shield, so I made him be the one currently in possession of the Shield and had him grant it to the PCs after they helped him out at the end of book 1. Advancing the bond will be "as simple" as finding the remaining pieces little by little.

As for the existing relics I was going to change Kalmaug's Journal to function like a staff instead of a Grimoire, but then the player whom was playing an Oracle retired the character and rolled up a wizard, so I kept the journal as is.

Book 2 introduces 2 more relics for a total of six. So the base adventure does account for for there being bigger parties. That being said I agree that the relics may not fit the party in such a way that they all fit.

I'm heading out right now, so I can't give you a full write up on what I've done for my party of 6 PCs, but I'll see if I can't write about this tomorrow. But for the most part I looked at the "Lost Dwarven Treasures" section for inspiration.

What level do the players start out in this AP? 1? 11? Something else?

Didn't see anything about it in the Player's Guide.

The PG says they players are some kind of "dignitaries," so I'm guessing higher than 1st?

The first section says that the PCs start at level 3.

But I digress, getting back to WoW and communication issues, I did notice it was kinda weird that campaign overview explains ancient history with Ghorus and such, but doesn't really explain any of the current and upcoming events of the campaign in detail besides the book summaries themselves.

I second this. The most disappointing thing for me when reading WoW as it was releasing was not knowing what the entire outline of the adventure was going to look like from book 1. I feel like Paizo has in the past been better at explaining up front the central conflict of the AP and what each subsequent book will cover. But in WoW we just got "Here is some backstory about Ghorus, and here is the back cover text we wrote on the store page... It was really not helpful in figuring out what was going on or where the adventure was headed.

The second main complaint I got is that I feel like the pre-marketing was setting the adventure up for a "Civilization vs Nature" theme with the whole "For once, the wilderness is your ally instead of a hazard to be overcome" thing. But instead the adventure ended up being "Fey/Nature civil war" which was not what I bought in for. Of course, this could have been a misinterpretation of the marketing on my part.

I'm running Skull and Shackles right now, and a Skull and Shackles 2e Remaster Remaster with Plunder and Peril bonus content would be significantly fun.

I would love either a updated PF2e version of Skull and Shackles or an entirely new high seas adventure for PF2e.

Sorry, but this gnome is just BUGGIN' me.

Looking through Book 2 and like... she's a guide to what should be a fairly well known location in the Darklands. And... that's it. And why isn't she at all connected to the original expedition to her destroyed home earlier in the book?

Like, you could just hire someone to take you there. So... what's the reason that she in particular is important?

Yeah, Jirelga's irrelevancy (and the handwaving of dealing with the prison warden) is bugging me as well. So inspired some stuff I read online (I forget if it was here or on reddit) I've made her extremely paranoid, jittery, and vengeful against the worm. She wants to find Zogototaru and kill her. So she isn't going to leave once they reach the Court of Ether but instead stick around as an ally of sorts for the party. I also dropped the whole prison thing and just had Jirelga be a prisoner in the Gremlin room of the bakery.

One of the PCs has involvement with forgery and artifact dealing. I think what I'll do to tie in Jirelga is have her sell some relic - maybe something that 'fell' off the worm??? which our intrepid PC comes across and it's got some hints to Felgunn / Targick [still thinking if I should go for it being a 'relic' or just a powerless item]. That would then help with Targick pointing out the need to find her in Part 3. BUT... I dunno.

Seems kinda weak. What do you guys think?

Since I wanted to introduce the relics all a bit earlier, I made it so she had the "relic seed" of the Avernal Cape in the form of a scale belonging to Zogototaru. The relic seed will at the moment just give the fire resistance if you spend an action raising it, but it gives the PCs an indication that there will be a worm relic. Which I think is important as one of the PCs is a Created Fleshwarp who is trying to ascend into Cave Wormhood. So since everyone else has gotten relics so far I wanted to make sure they know "Yours will come as well, young worm." Jirelga and the PC have had... interesting interactions so far. The PC admires Jirelga's grit in surviving being swallowed by Zogototaru and keeps calling her "The one blessed by the worm!" and Jirelga deep down just wants to kill the abomination that reminds her of her home's destruction. But guided by the shard they now travel to the Court of Ether to find the Cave Worm.

Elemental planes. I know they don't do six book APs anymore, but I had this dump idea of having a six-book AP where each book focuses on one of the elemental planes. But even within a shorter 3-book AP I'd like some elemental plane shenanigans.

I'd also like an aquatic adventure of some kind. Be it high seas (something like Treasure Island perhaps?), or a underwater merfolk adventure, or maybe something with the Elemental Plane of water. I don't really care which setting it is in, but an excuse to pull out all the cool water monsters is something I crave.

My only concern though is whether the item is Foundry-compatible for 2e remaster. Does anyone know how that works, carrying over items made for Foundry 2e adventure work for a Foundry 2e remastered adventure?

AFAIK Foundry doesn't really separate Legacy and Remaster in any meaningful way. They took out a lot of the overlapping classes / spells / feats and stuff, but those are all available in a module called "PF2e Legacy" which you can install if you want to use say, the old Wizard schools. But all the old items and monsters should just be in the compendium by base. And I can confirm that the

Yeah, the whole Gala Champion thing confused me a lot to upon reading it. I like the concept of it, but the actual mechanics of the overall scoring is very poorly explained and the book can't seem to agree with itself it is suppose to be a team thing or an individual thing.

Thank you for this write up! This is actually perfect for me to slot into our current investigation in my campaign of Edgewatch. We're at the tail end of book 3 and my players are chasing down the bomb threat posed by Franca Laurentz. As written I am suppose to give them downtime to just prepare for the Irorium being bombed, but my players like being proactive and wants to find Franca and the bomb before she gets a chance to detonate it at the Irorium. This might work perfect as a place for them to ultimately be lead to and deal with in their chase for the bomb!

Good catch! I hadn't really noticed this discrepancy myself. The Foundry module doesn't actually list their levels in the encounter text like in the book does, but looking at the pdf I can see that you are indeed correct.
I had found it a bit strange that there was going to be an encounter against 3 Redcaps on mounts as a solitary redcap has instilled the fear of Pharasma into my players in a previous campaign, but I hadn't actually looked much harder at it.

I will probably just slap the weak template on them as well (or not, depends on what the math turns out to be for 6 PCs).

The Smuggler's Den encounters' listed balance are all for a party of 4 5th-leve PCs.