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I gm'ed this in high-tier after the recent adjustment to one of the encounters. The combat remained challenging though. The players seemed engaged in the storyline and excited to find out more about the missing Pharaoh and the Osirionologists. One criticism or note that I have is that this scenario can be pretty lengthy to run. I was running it in person at a tabletop cafe, and I was scrambling to get the scenario done within 5 hours so we didn't get kicked out at closing time. Partly though, that's because with 6 players, and the corresponding enemy adjustments, combat can turn into a pretty lengthy affair. That being said, I thought some cool breadcrumbs were laid for future explorations. Hopefully, we get some art for the two new Pathfinder agents that were introduced.

I played this scenario online during PaizoCon 2021 and had an absolute blast. The adventure gave my group a little bit of everything-investigation, combat, skill challenges, and starship combat. My envoy really excelled during the starship combat being able to broadside really helped balance the encounter in my opinion. The NPCs both old and new were interesting and I can't wait to see what happens to a particularly important person's whose fate is left up in the air. In short, this is one of my favorite scenarios of season 3 and I would heartily recommend it to anybody interested in high level play.

If you are going to build a scenario around testing out new starship toys, why not make them good ones? All of the options presented are less optimal than the standard ones, and the ship you are asked to test is laughably inferior to the drake for combat purposes.

I don't know if starships combats are supposed to take multiple hours to resolve but in about half of the starship combats I have played, the GM has had to handwave them for time. That percentage goes close to 100 when the PCs aren't allowed to use the drake. I do not understand why it has taken the designers so long to figure out that whatever this is, it doesn't work in society play. It's not fun, most people are stuck taking the same minimally impactful action each round, and it takes forever.

My group made the mistake of choosing the pegasus for the starship quest in the high tier...the GM called it after 2 hours. I'm not sure why the pegasus is even an option. The starship combats all seem to assume people take the drake. The other quests were inoffensive enough but not exactly memorable. I think my favorite part of the scenario was

Scenarios with

are not fun. They drag out combat forever. They are not challenging. They are just annoying. You either have the weapons/classes to fight them or you don't. I hate gimmick fights and this is gimmick fighting at its finest. Please do not put these creatures in a scenario unless you give the PCs the ability to deal with the creatures in the scenario.

That being said, the setting and NPCs are interesting. I like the concept of a prison planet.

I enjoyed the story for this Quest. I like the idea of low level Pathfinders being employed on what is essentially a fetch question to track down some books for a mundane task like securing land rights for a new lodge. However, the quest itself was almost painfully formulaic in its structure. Go to 1 place, make a skill check. Go to another place, make another skill check. Go to the last place, fight a combat. There just didn't feel like there was much meat on the bones. That being said, it wasn't bad. The fight was more challenging than your typical quest at least if the GM

Overall, a decent adventure.

This scenario was a nice callback/follow up to The Devil We Know scenarios from 1st Edition. I thought the skill checks during the investigation section were pretty organically implemented. I also liked the different options you were given for completing the investigation/infiltration. Choices are good! I thought the last boss was pretty challenging at times but I'm sure that will vary from group to group.

Overall, it was a fun, self-contained scenario with a satisfying conclusion.

This scenario gives the PCs very little chance of success with either skill checks or combat. The first enemies the PCs face have a very good chance of taking over half the PCs completely out of the combat in the first round, which is what happened to my group. I had thought/hoped that Paizo was moving away from save or die spells but apparently that's only for adventurers. Enemies still get to 1 shot you. The skill DCs are similarly ludicrously high and are very narrowly focused. In Starfinder, there is a well-known operative tax. If you want to succeed, your best chance is to bring as many operatives as possible. In Pathfinder, there now appears to be a rogue tax. This adventure is not fun and it seems designed to not allow PCs to play. If the scenario designers think it is fun to sit around, wasting hours of your day, while your character is not allowed to participate in either combat or skill challenges, they are mistaken. It's very disappointing because I really enjoyed Star-Crossed Voyages and this is just a huge let down.

I liked everything about this scenario with the exception of the last boss. I do not think fights that require specific spells or classes belong in a game with so many classes to choose from. In this fight, you either have a way of dealing with

or you don't. If you do, which means you have either than the last boss is manageable/borderline easy. If you don't, the last boss is undefeatable. He'll just pick you off and half the party doesn't get to play. That's not fun encounter design in my opinion. There's no forewarning about it either. No characterization or build up for the last boss at all. You just walk into a room and you're dead in a couple rounds. I still have no idea what he was doing or why he was doing it.

I played this tonight with a pretty varied group. 2 fighters (of which I was one), 1 rogue, 1 monk, 1 champion, and 1 divine sorceror. We played in the high tier. I was the only person with expert crafting and boy did we need it. I saw somebody posted a negative review because it took 6 hours to complete. I think the biggest problem people will experience is not lack of GM preparation, although that will happen, but group apathy. Too many people turn their brains off when it is not their turn to roll dice. This scenario requires people to focus, pay attention to the mechanics, and think about what they want to do, and how best to use the skills each PC brings to the group. In my opinion, that's awesome and deserves a 5-star rating. I would recommend playing with a smaller group if possible. Again, if people run into problems, it is most likely because they are either not paying attention or because they don't want to give into the system. I think you minimize that chance by playing with a smaller group.

Whoever decided to put

into this scenario should probably not be allowed to write scenarios in the future. Pregens have no way of dealing with them. This is an introduction for new players. TPKing them is not the way to get them interested in the system. The pregens likewise have few options for dealing with the final encounter. The GM that ran the game for me at GenCon just basically handwaived half of the last encounter. Not a good start at all.

I played this as a level 3 envoy, with a second envoy, an exocortex mechanic and a mystic. The last fight lasted an hour and 15 minutes, during which time the PCs did approximately 20 damage to the boss. Nobody could hit him, two of us were knocked unconscious by lightning bolt spam, and the others just danced around waiting for the GMs bots to kill the boss. Not a very fun scenario to say the least. Afterwards, the GM told me the scenario put the exact same boss in both tiers. Just poorly designed in my opinion.

I played on low tier with a level 3 operative, a level 4 technomancer, myself a level 5 solarian, and pregen Keskodai. I do not want to spoil this for people who like this sort of thing but I do not like this sort of thing. There's no way a non-GM would infer the rules of the main gimmick of the scenario and once you do know the rules there is no challenge. In my opinion, a scenario, if it is based on a gimmick, should give the players a chance to learn the gimmick before killing them, which is not the case here.

Review in spoilers.

I really enjoyed about 90% of this adventure. The starship combat was good, I liked the hobgoblin background stuff, the doors making you sick was neat. However, the last boss is really difficult for 4 level 1 one characters, especially if they do not have fire or acid damage. Might be nice if the adventure telegraphed in some way that those damage types would be necessary for the exploration of the ruins.