TOPIC: Favorite and least favorite puzzles and combat

Our party hasn't failed a puzzle in a long time so I probably have to say I liked the spider web letter room in Sable combat the most, just for that reason.

We moved up to hardcore for the first time this year, so I really enjoyed the mind flayer combat at the end of UD Combat for its challenge.

While it didn't impact us, I am going to have to go slightly against the grain and say if a party can complete a treasure room in any way that is legal, they should get the stamp.
If you don't want something solved a certain way, you should specify that at the beginning. To give a party tokens that by default make a puzzle easy, that is the games issue, not the players. We use what we are given.

joshua baessler wrote:

Ross Crabtree wrote:
I've heard a lot of players gripe about not getting treasure stamps for solving some of the puzzles in unorthodox ways (immunity to fire/boots of lava walking for the lava puzzle, taking a bite of every mushroom) or skipping straight to the solution. I actually appreciate the effort in making sure people are solving the puzzles and not just brute forcing their way through or relying on previous experience to go straight for the right answer. I thought that was pretty cool.

We actually had our coach explain it was changed on Treasure stamps this year to keep people from nerfing through a room.

Depending on your run's difficulty level would determine and attempts to complete the room/puzzle.

Way he explained;

Normal 3 attempted failures resulted in no treasure.
Hardcore 2 attempted failures resulted in no treasure.
Nightmare 1 attempted failure resulted in no treasure.

It was done so in rooms with the mushrooms for example, you couldn't just take a bite of each, "Nerf the room" and get the treasure stamp. You were forced to try and solve the puzzle to get the stamp.

Rebeg wrote: We actually had our coach explain it was changed on Treasure stamps this year to keep people from nerfing through a room.

Depending on your run's difficulty level would determine and attempts to complete the room/puzzle.

Way he explained;

Normal 3 attempted failures resulted in no treasure.
Hardcore 2 attempted failures resulted in no treasure.
Nightmare 1 attempted failure resulted in no treasure.

It was done so in rooms with the mushrooms for example, you couldn't just take a bite of each, "Nerf the room" and get the treasure stamp. You were forced to try and solve the puzzle to get the stamp.

That is very helpful to know.

All of my runs were with Troubadours so we Treasure Found every treasure. Thus, I didn't pay much attention to the new treasure stamp rules....

We had some great puzzles on both sides, but the consistency of DM's seemed to be especially bad this year.

The final spider puzzle on Under dark Puzzle was awesome. We ran Saturday night and had, in my opinion, the best DM ever. Whoever was in room 7 of Under dark puzzle Saturday night, I salute you sir.

We ran Sable combat on hardcore with a group of 8. It was definitely tough, but I liked the difficulty. That drow assassin was an awesome actress, Saturday night again, and a hard fight. Getting pulled into the hot tub time machine in the last room was an anticlimactic way to die though.

My biggest complaint was that depending on what side you ran (puzzle or combat) you didn't get the full story and we were confused. We ran Under dark puzzle and when we went into our Sable run we were very confused as to why we were prisoners. Should have had another mind flayer to help with that transition.

One final thing. To whoever was the male drow NPC you were the best NPC I have ever seen in 10 years of True Dungeon. Fabulous job!

My problem with the lava puzzle is that there is not enough information, even with the clues, to be able to solve it without some error or luck.

1) Does the puzzle reset over time? If so, how much time?
2) Do those who bypass the puzzle by swimming through the lava increase the count?

And of course:


I had been loaned a Charm of Avarice, so the loss of a single treasure stamp wasn't that bad for me. For my friends who did two puzzle runs on Normal, one for each of the adventures, they barely got any tokens at all.

My problem with the lava puzzle is that there is not enough information, even with the clues, to be able to solve it without some error or luck.

1) Does the puzzle reset over time? If so, how much time?
2) Do those who bypass the puzzle by swimming through the lava increase the count?

This is the exact issue our Hardcore group had with this puzzle. As far as we could tell, there weren't sufficient clues to determine what this puzzle was even about without some amount of trial and error to get going.

It seemed like the way the room was designed, the DM would announce that "So and so is the X-th person to cross!" And that was part of the clues to the puzzle. But by the time you realize that what the DM is saying is relevant, you've already failed.

And the Rogue box clue wasn't useful at all for getting you moving in the right direction.

Harlax wrote: As a coach, I always give the trainers a heads up when I have a lot of new players in a group.

Maybe I'll put that info on the party card in the future. # of first time players or something like that.

That's a great idea as a permanent (official) addition to the party card.

Lady wrote: One final thing. To whoever was the male drow NPC you were the best NPC I have ever seen in 10 years of True Dungeon. Fabulous job!

Can I ask which dungeon? There was more than one ~

Favorite puzzle was the Spider web puzzle. It was cool putting the full sentence together from top and bottom.

Lava puzzle was a cool idea, but I agree that some sort of initial nudge toward ordinal words was needed *or* the treasure should not have been lost through trial and error. Having both ruined the fun a bit.

Disliked the 6th room combat in sable where we all died. Monster went first and we all took 9 damage from a spider sac exploding. We did not think to attack the sacs right away, so our spellcasters died after 1 round when the second sac exploded for 9 more damage. Mass damage to the party needs to be very tightly controlled in True Dungeon and I felt this was excessive.

Also didn't like the number of color lights in the final Underdark puzzle room with the eggs. Made it tough to differentiate the eggs and slowed things down for the DM to validate solutions.

Oh, also the bug room wasn't particularly fun. Especially because we tried Soundburst to clear them out and we all took 8 damage. The spell says it does damage to "all monsters" not "all creatures in an area". I always believed the magic caused it to effect monsters only and we weren't in danger from it. While I'm okay with the bugs being immune to avoid the easy solution, allowing us to waste the spell and eat the damage without any warning is frustrating and silly.

-Scot

Least favorite was the bug room on Sable Combat (the one where everyone had to wear egg sacs or spiders and burn them off). What was the point of this room? There was no combat, at least when we did it, despite it being a room that should have been a Combat room. Can't really call it a puzzle either since there was nothing to really figure out. I also didn't like how they didn't allow any player abilities to help with this. Resistance or immunity to poison/disease didn't help, resistance to fire didn't prevent the damage, can't use any other source of fire other than the torches (like a tindertwig, bracers of fire, or burning hands) to burn the bugs out. Why do we even have these abilities and items if they don't do anything?

I can't really label any room as my favorite as none of them were outstandingly great. The room with the drow lady and the eggs sacs was fun, we had a good actress on our run. The giant spider puppet was impressive. Nothing really wowed my like the sand puzzle from last year though.

Favorite puzzle was the letter forming exit. Everyone in the group participated and contributed to the solution, resulting in smiling faces all around.

Favorite combat were the illusion/ethereal spider surprise and the fire snake.

Least favorite was the grub/spider room, seemed un-intuitive (The torches on the wall were all not functioning) and the magic fire rules seemed contrived.

The colored light puzzle seemed too difficult to score quickly, perhaps 2 DM’s would have made it flow better.

My favorite from this year... The giant spiders. I also liked the mushrooms. I know everyone is poo pooing the talking mushrooms but I liked the the whole look and feel and aspect of the mushroom room..The spider web with the letters was just kind of meh for me. The salamander lava thingy had potential but was kind of meh..It seemed half detailed for me. I liked the lava effect..Worked well in my opinion but the Salamander thingy looked unfinished. It was obviously couch foam.. I am a stickler for detail..minute detail..My favorite from last year was the Sand table room in Viper. That was epic. My least favorite from last year was the big glass christmas light orb with the switches in Zephyr.. Looked like a bad 80's disco. The switches did not function right and it did not seem to really fit with the rest of the steampunk story theme. My favorite all time puzzle is the Anvil puzzle. That just had a great sound and feel. It was what hooked me in the first place. The rest is history:)