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DDAL05-09 Durlag's Tomb (5e)Click to magnify

DDAL05-09 Durlag's Tomb (5e)

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East of Beregost, nestled in the outskirts of the Wood of Sharp Teeth, Durlag’s Tower has intrigued and yet stymied adventurers for decades. Stuffed full of mechanical traps and arcane wards, and rumored to be inhabited by fiends, very few have managed to extract any REAL treasure from the former home of Durlag Trollkiller.

However, a powerful item in the ancient fight against the giants is said to be housed there, and the cloud giant Baron Rajiram has committed significant resources toward recovering it. After a pleasant tea in her garden, SEER calls upon you to beat him there and put a stop to his efforts!

Part of 2 of 2.

A 4-Hour Adventure for 11th—16th Level Characters

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Reviews (31)
Discussions (12)
Customer avatar
Fergus H March 10, 2020 1:50 pm UTC
PURCHASER
This module is a fun followup to Durlag's Tower, with interesting puzzles and good combat, but it really, really (really!) needs an edit. It's full of typos, some of the room descriptions are wrong (magma on sublevel 1?), and it suffers from a lack of effective descriptive text for players AND explanation text for the DM, especially with regards to some of the puzzles.

There are a number of weird red herrings as well, for example: why in Sublevel 1, is there a huge circular inscription (which to encircle the statues, needs to be nearly the size of the room) that translates to "Take only what is necessary. Some gifts must be given freely and can never be taken", when there is nothing in the room that can be taken? No treasure, no objects, nothing. It's a bit of a mess,

I had to rewrite a lot, and I also found I had to re-draw the maps, as they were missing key features on most levels. So I'm giving what should be a four-star adventure two stars, because it was clearly a rush...See more
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Meagan W January 13, 2019 10:47 pm UTC
PURCHASER
After much confusion and executive decisions on my part regarding the puzzles, I thought this was fun. My players had fun as well. Once I had the puzzles clear in my head, I was good to go. So much so, that I am planning on adding some of the elements from this module into my campaign.

It certainly could use another round of editing and clarification from the author and editing team, however.
Customer avatar
michael S August 30, 2018 3:46 pm UTC
PURCHASER
It was a fun run other than the end was a bit to ez with some builds
Customer avatar
Kent F W April 16, 2018 4:52 am UTC
PURCHASER
first of all, i must admit that i did not run this adventure as i had intended. after second reading, i decided it was too unclear to run confidently, and would be frustrating to both run and play. too many aspects of the puzzles remained uncertain from the descriptions, and the solutions to them seemed obtuse. i often had to refer to the maps to figure out if what the author was referring to was correct or in error (magma listed in sublevel 1, for instance), and even then i wasn't certain i could trust the maps because important puzzle elements were not indicated on them.

i will say it looked as though there were the potential moments for interesting and fun setpiece encounters, but i can imagine my group would have been aggravated by the general arbitrary nature of the puzzles and taken aback by some of the more severe punishments for certain spellcasting within the tomb. for a certain playstyle, this adventure might hold value, and would perhaps follow-up nicely with its previous module "durlag's...See more
Customer avatar
nhan V February 23, 2018 5:34 am UTC
As a player for this mod I can appreciate the usage of lava terrain against the players as a deterrent as well as a hiding spot for the devils. There was more than one way to bypass some of the puzzles as well which was very interesting to figure out.
Customer avatar
Matthew W January 14, 2018 8:52 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Unlike Durlag's Tower, his tomb tests your noodle and fighting prowess with equal frequency. Successfully navigating the Tomb will require you to think quickly and be flexible in your tactics. An advance to the next room is not a given.

The second room challenge is a memorable one for many reasons. A party might point to a common spell being able to simplify this encounter. I'd argue it doesn't solve the problem - so you have to hurry and try other ideas. Moreover, many common combat spells will assure you have a bad day.

The party of friends I DMed for are veterans and made a lot of good decisions in the third room. I regret I wasn't able to grapple with the foes that add an extra challenge to a simple task. Party ingenuity saved their bacon after I gave them all harrowing experience. Always feed the fear of the character who is most careful or least prepared. Careful consideration is not your friend with this challenge.

The next room requires you answer puzzles and consider...See more
Customer avatar
Jude F November 25, 2017 7:59 pm UTC
I've run Durlag's Tower and Durlag's Tomb. The Nalfeshnee and chain devils in the first module provided a fantastic encounter for the party. The party was unimpressed by the fact that the rooms and puzzles in the second module seemed to be "copy/paste" versions of previous rooms with only minor variations. The three horned devils proved to be more than a problem to the party as well, particularly to a fighter with a potion of flying named Steve Irwin. He grappled two of the horned devils, who both managed to incapacitate the fighter. Upon being knocked out in midair, he was dropped to his untimely demise in the magma. However, after the party sold his band of war elephants and personal ship, the ZSS Stingray (Zhentarim Ship), he was able to afford being resurrected. This 4/5 adventure was made into a 5/5, simply through role-playing.
Customer avatar
Jordan B August 08, 2017 8:03 pm UTC
The first time I played this module I was completely confused and didn't understand a lot of the puzzles. The firespirits room completely confused me, and if I rolled 1 less on a con save I would have had to retire my character. Now that I have run the module, I have come to gain a lot of respect for the module. It is incredibly fun, doesn't feel like a dungeon crawl, has a great magic item, and all these complaints people have with the module should be taken up with their DM. The teleportation mechanic is explained by Hsing in the quest-giving section of the module... if your DM decides to give you that information.

I will say though, as amazing as the combat and puzzles for this module are, clearly the author did not proofread the Module. DMs, get your pen highlighter and white-out because this module has so many typos, redundancies, information from one floor is put onto another floor, and the Firespirits puzzle is extremely vague and requires DM interpretation.

I recommend it, just...See more
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Customer avatar
Anders D May 23, 2020 7:35 am UTC
PURCHASER
This part of your review is important: "The teleportation mechanic is explained by Hsing in the quest-giving section of the module... if your DM decides to give you that information."

The quest-giving section of the module on page 7 contains no hint at all about this mechanic among the text segments with information that the DM is supposed to let Hsing present to the players. Quite the opposite: when the teleport scroll is given, and explicitly claimed to work from a certain location, there is a missed opportunity to tell the players "this special scroll works, from this shielded place... other magic might not" or words to that effect.

The Reflection mechanic is mentioned prominently, but many players might not consider a move from one spot to another within line-of-sight within a room as relevant to reflection.

The text about "contain the spirits of great dwarf warriors and clerics" is not about containment against player movement.
...See more
Customer avatar
Andrew P May 18, 2017 6:25 pm UTC
As a player:

Module works well when played after tower but by itself leaves a hook to be desired. It has an interesting way to deal with high level spellcaster which I think is a nice way to let the martial classes shine a bit more. Reward is intriguing and different. One of my favorite 5 modules. 5/5
Customer avatar
Eric V April 07, 2017 10:56 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I played in this yesterday and was looking forward to a more puzzle-centric dungeon. Unfortunately, I have to say this is the most UNfun AL adventure I've ever played in. Two encounters in, my character cast a core spell to wizards (Misty Step) and was forced to make CON save with no explanation what it was for. Had I known, I could have used a portent die to alter the results before the roll, but I didn't and ended up with a nat 1. POOF, the DM says I'm in the City of Brass. So, yeah, had no way of getting back without taking a long rest to prepare new spells.

So, long story short, if you like pissing off your players and telling them to go pack sand for no good reason after only 1 hour of a 4 hour session, avoid this module.
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Customer avatar
Alan P April 08, 2017 11:11 am UTC
Your DM failed you here. While I'm sorry you had a bad experience, perhaps ask the DM to review the module more thoroughly in the future? There is plenty of information about why this happened.
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Customer avatar
Curtis G April 08, 2017 2:45 pm UTC
I have to agree with Alan on this one. I have DMed and played this one and I find it to be extremely fun....and there are multiple battles and several great puzzles....a uncommon balance of intellectual and strength based challenges.

And actually pretty well written. There was only one room that I had trouble with at first until I really figured out what was going on.
Customer avatar
Charles F February 24, 2017 10:09 pm UTC
I ran this for my AL. Really fun, classic dungeon.

Things to keep in mind:
-For HUGE fun, keep in mind that any time any player uses teleportation magic, they have to roll a con save, and if they fail too bad, they get transported to whatever plane of existence the DM prefers :) May be too punishing, or may be VERY fun if done right :) My players loved the surprise when this happened, since none of their characters understood the magic wards on the stone.
-The alcohol trap is a little confusing, so read it a few times and use your imagination to communicate it clearly to players.
-The final battle is extremely tough and fun!
-When players have got the treasure and beat/otherwise evaded the boss monsters, I had the dwarves of Mithril hall also burst in and argue with the Lord's Alliance agent for posession of the ancient texts. Players had a ton of fun doing negotiations.
Customer avatar
Curtis G January 09, 2017 2:26 pm UTC
I haven't had a chance to run this one yet....next week...but I do notice a typo on the cert "this weapon and gain advantage ongain advantage on one Charisma" .... looks like there are some duplicate words that didn't get edited out.
Reply
Customer avatar
Travis W January 09, 2017 4:01 pm UTC
Yeah, we're working on getting that taken care of.
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Mithral seller
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This title was added to our catalog on January 03, 2017.