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I have now played and run this at high tier.

This scenario had loads of potential. An exotic location ripe for pathfinders to do what pathfinders do, plenty of places to explore and lots to do but it suffers from various issues:

1. The initial exploration section is too thin. There are nine separate sections the group must explore and pretty much a single check in each except for the one combat area with a trap which has a decent chance to outright kill level 1 PCs. I would much preferred to see fewer areas with more meat to them.

2. The research section, dear god the research section. It doesnt help that two thirds of it is actually pointless. The only interesting part is the mural and that is because there is some tension to it. Can you recover enough information before the thing collapses into ruin. The rest is just roll a bunch of dice until you die of boredom. This is largely driven by DCs whch are too high, a narrow range of skills and the fact there there is no time limit. It is literally roll a mass of dice until you eventually succeed. The damage on the cystal is irrelevant as each check takes an hour and so you can treat wounds and ignore it.

3. The combats are wildly varied. The outside encounter is a cakewalk unless the haunt randomly kills someone. The fungus, at high tier, can involve 9 monsters crawling on the ceiling shooting poisonous pods at people! The end encounter is well overtuned, especially at low tier. Overlevelled bosses are murderous in 2e. I downed 3 out of 5 PCs at the high tier, 23CP pushed me to using the elite enemy.

4. Lastly the set up. The idea is great, the timings are ridiculous. There is a suggestion in the GM thread that the PCs should complete their exploration in a day. It takes two hours to exploe each location, each research check takes an hour, this is pretty much impossible.

Overall this would have been a much better adventure if the research element had been tightened up so that the whole thing had some tension to it.

I have run and played this. I ennjoyed it a lot, there are plenty of interesting NPCs to get to know, some nice montage like scenes and some challenging combats. I got to swallow a couple of PCs whole! When I played this we had no-one with in combat healing making the final fight especially brutal and a close run thing.

Overll I really recommend this one, it was a lot of fun and wit Hobgoblins now an accessible race in PFS it provis a nice opener.

I have run and plyed this. It is full of flavour with an interesting setting, interesting encounters and a lot to do. I would have liked there to be more ways to learn about the villain.

This would have been 5 stars but there are some editing issues and issues with the maps. The first encounter set up is not well described and encounter two can involve far too many large but weak enemies in a confined space.

Overall though you should go an play this, preferably on a dark and stormy night, by candle light, with suitable background music.

I have played and run this, both times at high tier.

It is an enjoyable scenario which gives a good introduction to much of the weirdness of Numeria and is clearly laying the groundwork for future content.

There is overland travel, exploration and a decent amount of combat. You can avoid one comabt really very very easily. The DCs to avoid the first enconter are probably way too low. The second encounter has interesting terrain and hazards and party make up makes a big difference. When I played we had a lot of CP and therefore a lot of enemies but we also had a lot of area effect damage. When I ran it my group were mostly melee so they got a bit mauled but they had a lot of people capable of being disarmed.

The last encounter feels potentially very swingy, the bad guy can be very dangerous and the whole thing has a lot of movng parts.

So, I enjoyed the combat side of things and the setting and descriptions however there are some significant issues.

The entire travel mechanic simply does not work as presented. You cannot tell how long it will take to get to the destination until they actually arrive at the destination. The VC gives seriously misleading advice and the scenario recommends using a tactic (hustle) which is impossible to do at the levels involved.

Given the entire point of the adventure is to make it to the meeting on time this section needed much more careful review. As written it is virtually unusable.

I have now run this once at high tier. It makes for an interesting scenario but is in no way actually repeatable. If you are expecting something like Tome of Righteous Repose or even Lost on the Spirt Road you are going to be sorely disappointed.

As a standalone scenario and follow on to Star Crossed Voyages it works perfectly fine. I am not sure I would want to play it again after a high and low tier run through. This is a shame as it would not have been difficult to introduce genuine alternate elements to it. Given the society's actions are being actively opposed we could have had 3 or 4 different factions to choose from, each would intrduce a different complication or combat encounter.

Having said that my group did very much enjoy the first encounter, it was quite different to what we have seen so far this season, especially with five of the enemies on the board.

If I was rating this as a standalone scenario it would get a 4 but I am not. Rating it as a repeatable, frankly it fails to deliver.

I have now run and played this scenario. It is an entertaining romp through the countryside with a decent mix of skill, social and combat encounters in different environments.

There are a couple of issues. This has the potential to run long, especially if you allow the investigation portion to take up time after you have already run two separate events.

The scenario also shows signs of Paizo ignoring their own rules, a common element of PF1 scenarios. We have people trecking through bogs/marsh and hiking through hills but apparently able to do so at full movement speed whilet also conducting exploration activities which would normally slow them to half speed. All of this is rather handwaved by the scenario which just uses the base moveemnt speed. Given the travel is a key bit it would have been nicer if the scenario actually reflected those difficulties and then either adjusted the distance to keep within timescales or adjusted the likely timescale to account for the slowness.

The conbat encounters were fine. When I ran it my group handled the first pretty easily, they arent very threatning. The second encounter serves as a reminder for people to buy ranged weapons and the third was the cloest I have come to a TPK in 2E yet. A low tier group survived just as they got very lucky. +14 to hit against level 3's and 4's is pretty brutal, especially with a bunch of durable enemies on top.

I played at the same table as Ascalpus. Before I prepped it I might have been similarly scathing. Having prepped it now to run tomorrow I am slightly less harsh. This scenario has a number of issues:

1. There is very little flavour of the Maze. Admittedly we didnt know much about it in 1E except for its appearance in Eyes but it doesnt really come across.

2. The progression through the gates is not terribly well explained and was vey confusing when I played it.

3. The potential encounter in the gate area is far too small, given you may well have multiple large opponents. This whole scenario smacks of an attempt to get us to buy the awful map packs. Please stop doing this. I dont know if your data is showing an uptick in their purchase but from personal experience I can say it is not inducing me or anyone I know to buy them. Mostly I run online so it is less of an issue, apart from having to stitch together way too many very annoying single tiles. If I ever ran this in person you can be sure I would be drawing something basic or picking a flip mat that was "close enough".

4. It haas a variety of editing errors, most noticeably in the note section which cannot make up its mind how may there should be.

5. It is missing key information on Eliza. Sure she isnt supposed to be involved as an active combatant but lots of creatures in this have area effect abilities which she will be caught by.

6. It has way too much combat, potentially 5 different combat encounters. You can technically avoid two of them but its not very liktley, at least for the first set of guardians. I wouldnt ever want to run this in a con slot.

I have thoroughly enjoyed both running and playing this. It has an enjoyable mix of exploration, investigation, social stuff with a bit of combat, some of which involves interesting terrain.

It is a very good example of how to create an interconnected set of social skill challenges which can be approached in a variety of different ways and which are quick and easy to resolve.

highly recommend this for everyone. Makes for a good introductory adventure to in order to show off how the system works to newbies.

I played this today and I have to rate this as one of my least favourite experiences with 2E to date. While the premise of the scenario is great and it has a lot of potential the execution is appallingly bad. Five combat encounters and a massively complex and convoluted skill challenge section in the middle which devolved into literal hours of dice rolling to limited apparent effect is very reminiscent of Out of Anarchy, one of the worst adventures of 1E.

My opinion may change once I have read it but this game took over 6 hours of my life and that was with a massively well prepared GM who had resources to track literally everything as efficiently as possible. Our GM ran it as well as it was possible to do and was as prepared as anyone I have ever seen and it was still an enormous awful slog.

I cannot conceive of every even trying to run this in a physical gaming slot.

@Hartan, our group was completely engaged, we had a lot of characters with relevant skills including two people who were expert in crafting and it was still a 6 hour+ slog. 5 combats in a 1-4 is entirely unnecessary especially when pairred with a huge and convoluted skill challenge with multiple branching paths. I would avoid this scenario at all costs.

I plyed this at the same table as Paul. I agree that this was a very enjoyable adventure, it highlighted an interesting new culture that I hadnt come across in PFS before. The combats could perhaps have been a bit more challenging, in the first the enemies suffered terribly from the terrain.

The middle skill challenge section was interesting and enjoyable and presented a moral dilemma for the group. I hope the reporting conditions ask about that as I would like to see the implications of which decision becomes canon. The Dance section needs handouts, make sure to prepare all of the Handouts!

The author suggested that the module does something which previous PFS modules do not. I havent read or run it yet but I didn't notice anything unique when we played.

Lastly, I highly recommend you play parts 1 and 2 back to back. They are very different scenarios but tht contrast really does make each part stand out with what it does.

I would give this 4.5|5 if I could.

So far I have only played this. I have yet to read or run it.

This is a brilliant scenario. Very thematic, fast paced and utterly terrifying. You should play this immediately after playing part 1. It is a very different change of pace from Part 1 but the contrast betwen the two is excellently done.

Highly recommended, more like this please even if I was convinced we would TPK. Spoiler alert, we survived, just, mostly I think through having a generous GM. Bring your A Game, avoid doing this with one of those 6 player groups mostly composed of low tier people pushed into high tier due to CP silliness. We had 6 of us with four level 6's, a 4 and a 3.

It does look like it needs a fair bit of prep.

Having prepped and run this now I have to amend my review. this sceario is as lethal as any of the most dangerous PF1 scenarios. I would put this at the level of Sealed Gate or Bonekeep, especially for a group just creasting into high tier. Given 2E gives you far fewer tools to handle exceptionally dangerous missions this is a TPK waiting to happen in the hands of a GM who wants to push things in that direction.

Please stop using the 1E indset that you must have an over levelled big bad. 1E needed that becaus action economy would generally pull you through. That is much less impactful in 2E where you may barely be able to affect the overlevelled creature you are fighting. A level 8 boss in a 3-6 is just asking for trouble.

This is probably the worst 2E scenario out there. The fact that 6 player PFS groups comprising mostly level 1 and 2 characters are forced into playing high tier is simply a recipe for disaster.

The fact that this is also repeatable just compounds the problem. It should be re-edited and rereleased.

I played this last night with a Goblin PC and thoroughly enjoyed it. We had a great GM who really brought the various NPCs to light. I was a little dubious about the initial scene but it n=worked out well and the primary combats seemed to be sufficiently challenging at high tier.

Probably one of the best 1-5 scenarios Paizo has produced, loads of the fun and the best opening scene bar none.

I played this at tier 17-18, hard mode, with 5 players. I ran it at tier 17-18, four player adjust, no hard mode. I am due to run it again a couple of times in the next month.

Thhis is an excellent scenario and a great ending to the 1e campaign bringing the Pathfinders back to protect its home. I highly recommend playing it, along with Part 1, you will not be disappointed.

For GM's, this adventure contains many high level enemies with various different class levels. It needs a lot of prep to get the most out of it and there are a few editing errors. I strongly reocmmend taking plenty of time to prepare it and checking out the GM thread on the forums. There are a lot of complicated moving parts to the opposition here which is appropriate given the level but it does mean you need to take the time to prep it properly.

I played this at high tier, base four players which was a bit of a concern. We had five level 2's and a level 1 so were pushed into tier 3-4 by the new ACP system.

Overall we did pretty well. We brought a good team (2 rangers, a druid, others with crafting) and made a good success of the travel and investigative portion. Wild Empathy was actually useful although I am not sure if that was the GM adlibbing or provided for by the scenario.

I would have liked to see some specific benefit inclued for having relevant skill feats. They are hard enough to get much benefit from normally in PF2 as they tend to be quite niche, it would be nice of authors to explicitly account for them. Given the nature of the scenario I would expect things like forager or survey wildlife to at least provide a small benefit.

Overall I enjoyed playing this and would be happy to see more of its kind, it certainly plays to the explore element.

I have not yet run or played this but I am in the middle of prepping it and I find that I cannot agree with the first review in pretty much anything.

The three parts of this each bring something different to the tabe. Part 1 ooks like an excellent dungeon crawl filled with suitable levels of terror and mayhem. Part 2 is more freeform, investigation the goings on in a very atmospheric location while Part 3 brings a suitably dramatic conclusion to the whole thing.

The entire module is packed full of interesting new lore on a group that hasnt receved that much attention in the past. The art style is a bit different to other modules but that is hardly a bad thing, just different.

Overall I really rate this module and I am looking for ward to unleashing it on my players.

I have run this once so far and am due to run it several more times over the next few weeks including two PbP games. This is a great start to the (hopeful) resolution of the Torch storyline. The location is suitably atmospheric and dangerous, the combats look challenging but nothing a suitably well prepared high level party should not be able to handle, the hard mode adjustments add some interesting twists and the reveal at the end sets up Part 2 very nicely.

I have two potential niggles which make this a 4 star rather than 5 star review.

1. There are a number of mechanical issues with two of the combats which could have been caught in editing. Its difficult to keep everything straight when you are putting together three different tiers of high level opponents but some information is missing or incorrect. Hopefully these will be dealt with soon enough.

2. There is a lot of combat in this one. On its own that isnt necessarily a bad thing but expect this one to take a long time. One encounter is optional and potentially bypassable even if you run it but otherwise people need to bring their A game to get through this in a regular 4-5 hour slot. I would not want to run this at a convention and I really wonder just what people running it at Gencon will do.

Lastly, while I appreciate the range of opposition used some of them do make running this in face to face games a bit tricky. GM preparation is required.

I have run this multiple times and played it twice, once at high tier hard mode, once regular (yes I used a replay for it). It is a great end module for a great series but it does have some issues.

1. The high and low tier versions are pretty much entirely different scenarios in terms of difficulty and sheer lethality.

2. The high tier version of this will run long, very long. Four mandatory encounters and an optional is simply too much. While most will probably say the second encounter is the longest I have had the first run longer due to the nature of the enemies at high tier and the terrain. Used to their best effect they are exceptionally time consuming and dangerous. I have seen this scenario run at over 7 hours in a convention slot and still not have time for the final encounter.

3. The hard mode adjustments seem to create a genuine sense of danger although the first is negated with one of the commonest mid to high level buff spells going.

4. Sevenfingers himself was a bit of a disappointment. Throughout the first three parts he has been built up as this dangerous, powerful, probably now a Lich wizard pirate. In the end he turns out to actually be a dangerous melee beast with hardly any magic at all. Quite disappointing even if he is very dangerous. For that alone I cannot give it 5 stars, he doesnt live up to the hype.

5. As an example of the different tiers being different scenarios the DCs on Sempets sepcial abilities at high tier seem massively out of scale, even for level 10 and 11 characters.

Overall I really do recommend this but make sure you give it enough time. I wouldnt run this in a time limited con or game day slot. I did manage to frighten a paladin to death which was a first.

I played tis at Gencon and thoroughly enjoyed it. I would largely agree with the first review and would say that by the end I had grown so irritated by the primary NPC that I switched to appearing to give a damn rather than actually trying to help, despite it being at a significantly lower modifier to succeed.

Having prepped the scenario to run next week it reads as a very american piece of writing, with lots of discussion of therapy. I almost expected him to come with an emotional support animal. Run well I think this can be quite a powerful scenario, run poorly I can see it being quite insensitive for people who have gone through genuine traumas.

While I played it at a con I probably wouldn't recommend running it in a con slot.

I played this at Gencon at high tier, I have run it at high tier and I am due to run it again shotly.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this scenario. It has a nice, open, sandboxy investigation phase at the start supported by some excellent GM handouts followed by a straight forward dungeon crawl.

It isn't perfect, there are some issues with the mechanics here and there (no sneak attacking with splash weapons), and I would be careful when running it at low tier not to randomly murder uunfortunate people, but overall this is a very fun scenario.

It does have quite a lot of moving parts behind the scenes for the GM so it needs a good amount of prep and I wouldn't recommend doing it cold uder any circumstances. Overall most characters will find lots of different things to do but, as with most PFS scenarios, I would bring someone who can contribute to more than just face smashing.

I have played this at high tier and prepped it to run shortly. It is an excellent scenario, packed full of Lovecraftian flavour and lore, very spooky and bizarre. I highly recommend playing it with a Dark Archive character.

It is also however quite complicated and there are some editing issues. This is another Season 9 which really benefits from extensive preparation from the GM. Players should also bring their A game as it could be quite challenging in parts.

This would have been a 5* review if not for some of the editing issues. The reuse of multiple status conditions in encounters is also becoming a bit of a tired season 9 staple.

I played this at the weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it. We had an interesting mix of investigation, social stuff and combat which was appropriately challenging. We played high tier with 5 of us and while we completed what we needed sadly I lost my animal companion. His sacrifice will not be forgotten.

I always think a good metric of how good an adventure was is how much it pushes me to want to run it. It went right near the top of my list.

I played this tonight and thoroughly enjoyed it. Seems to be packed full of flavour for Sovereign Court. We just eeked into full on high tier which, as a level 9, left me feeling more than a little nervous. A very lucky burst of radiance at the end pretty much guaranteed us victory fortunately.

I will leave a more detailed review once I have run it. It definitely went right up to the top of the list of scenarios I want to run.

I have run and played this now several times. Overall I think it is a good addition to the evergreen stable. It is similar to Tome but with a variation on the starting investigation portion which can soak up too much time unless you keep the players well on track. It is easy for them to want to go off exploring all the leads when it is just an excuse to get them to the actual adventure portion.

The different paths you can take are varied, with a good mix of different types of opposition. While you can pick randomly I strongly suggest not doing that and choosing something more suitable for your group instead. It is significantly less spikey than Tome (which has some very over tuned encounters) but can still offer plenty of challenge.