I think this 2-video format, one giving an overview and the other jumping into more details of the adventure path, is excellent. It provides an initial taste of the adventure path, and in case someone wants to know more, the second video gets you set up and ready to tackle the books. Amazing stuff buddy and thank you for sharing your thoughts!
I ran this whole adventure, beginning to end and everyone absolutely loved it. I definitely understand these criticisms, as I felt like I needed to dial back some of the monster encounters just a tad. But my party was REALLY well composed. We had a Champion Paladin to block a lot of the incoming damage, Primal Sorcerer with healing (and occasional polymorph for some frontlining), Rogue as the main damage dealer, and a Bard for constant buffs and occasional soothe. There were so many ways to heal that I never really felt like there was a chance of TPK except in a very few instances. But I also recognize that this is not going to be everyone else's experience. For me, I laid more of the mystery of Breachill because one of my players became obsessed with the water tower plaza. So I put a statue of Lamont Breachton in there and made sure to emphasize the golden metallic irises of the eyes. So every time they came back to town there was more researching the town, and who this wizard was... I tried to lay another plot point with the Paladin's Dragonscale Shield, but he never caught on to the clue... That curiosity sustained her to keep coming back to this over and over. I revealed to her that Lamont Breachton devised this water tower plan and its schematics (which mirror the ring), and several other details that I made up to fit the backstory. Her character, the rogue, had a red string board going in her apartment in Breachill to try and figure it all out. And when it all clicked into place and she solved the mystery by getting that Scarlet Triad journal in book 5, she felt SO VINDICATED for spending all that time putting those pieces together. Seeding further details of the origin of the town really helps to pull this all together. Lastly a personal story. Perhaps the most amazing thing that my party did was when they were preparing to go into book six they took a huge amount of personal downtime to do some character development and the Paladin (of Apsu) went to the temple in Absalom and critted on a ritual to commune with a divine servant, so he spoke with Oregenus the Herald of Apsu, and when confronting the BBEG in book 6 summoned him in the trial scene. It was the most epic Ace Attorney stuff and everyone was losing their minds. Great stuff.
Agree. The mentions of themes in each book does help alot for ppl trying to grasp what the book focuses on, how gms prep it and can answer some non spoiler questions to their players. Then this video goes more into it for gms to know more on the adventure if it interests them or change things up.
I love the 2 video format...one somewhat spoiler free high level and all full of spoilers and detail. Please keep it up even after the core rules come out. :)
Only recently started GMing Pathfinder 2e and I'm loving this channel sooo much! I loved the rules videos but I'm even more excited about hearing your thoughts on the 2e Adventure Paths. Currently running Abomination Vault but now I'm hyped for the other APs.
Great addition to the last video! In regards to the issue with Dahak and Scarlet Triad, there is definitely a tie between the two, but a lot of it is background stuff that the players don’t tend to see. I think that there are ways of bringing that story to more to their attention, but that would definitely require some work on the GM’s part. Book 5 definitely brings Dahak back into the player’s attention as they go through the portal before being spit out into the next area. The one thing that definitely does get left behind is the mystery of Breachill, and it’s tie to the last book. Also, Gerhardt was one of my favorite villains. My players let him go in the end, though the chance of him getting out of the Mwangi alive are pretty slim. The champion shaved off his mustache, kept it through several books and finally named his favorite sword after him (tying the mustache to the cross-piece of the weapon, almost like a talisman. Thinking about giving it a special ability, or making it sentient because of that). Last note: highly recommend this for a group of 5 players, rather than 4. While it won’t fix anything outright, it will make some of those difficult encounters to be a little less of a threat without making any changes.
I like this format. These AP's are so enormous and sinking time and money into them without knowing if there any good is a big consideration especially if you're on a budget of time and or money. I feel you're tiptoeing with your critiques and would like to hear your honest heartfelt opinions. This is the internet, people are going to hate you not matter what you say. :)
Finally got around to watching this video when I could give it my full attention. Thanks for making it! It has a lot of good advice and pressure points to be aware of if one of my groups chooses to try it as we get more settled into the system.
I'm gonna LOVE this series, always up for some lore too 😅 You're awesome Dave! Don't worry about length, I'm sure we could all listen to you for hours 😆
As someone who has ran the entire AP I disagree with some of these points, mainly that Dahak is the main antagonist as he just isn't. He is the inciting incident of the AP and closer to a MacGuffin or a force of nature than a true villain. If you replaced Dahak with some ancient super weapon nothing really changes about the story. The Scarlet Triad are the main antagonists of the AP. The story doesn't take a backseat from Dahak from books 3-5 it reveals the main antagonists who were behind the events of book 1 and 2. The Triad funds both Voz in book 1 and the Cinderclaws in book 2. Book 3 is when they step out of the shadows and you fight them directly. Without getting into spoilers, the Triad are why Dahak is even a potential threat in the first place. As for balance issues I 100% agree, so much so that I wrote a 15 page guide on changes I would make to the AP if I were to run it again docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQ-FigXIa1pZHpahAcTHamm5IzOPriBW4lqbK1Ht40v9Qp26hCXySHGvl4moym2PxyovFiCw1wUD-T0/pub Now for the good news, from all the GMs I have talked to who have run the entire AP all agree that books 4-6 blow 1-3 out of the water. The locations are cooler, they have neat subsystems, the plot is better (and you actually learn about it rather than tidbits you learn in 1-3). Book 6 is still my favorite book of any AP so far and I have played through all of Extinction Curse, and over half of Abomination Vaults and Fists of the Ruby Phoenix as well as reading all of Stolen Fate (which seems to be a pretty good AP by the way.)
I think the problem is that Dahak is the first thing you see and is the source of all of your big questions. If the story *opened* about the scarlet triad, and if there was a picture of a scarlet triad member on the front cover of the first book and the campaign was called "Age of the scarlet Triad", and the premise was that we were all freedom fighters getting together to fight slavery above anything else I wouldn't mind so much. But as it stands, the first two books set up a dragon god and a dragon cult, the next 3 books are about something mostly unrelated (especially when you have no reason to believe they would be related until it's revealed very late), and then finally book 6 comes back to the dragon stuff. Looking back on it, of course, the vast majority of the campaign is really about the scarlet triad with a bit of evil-dragon-god at the start and the end, but the entire time I was playing I was thinking "where's dahak, when do we see more dahak, what has this got to do with dahak". Just kinda trying to get past the boring slaver stuff so we can get to the actual plot, which it turns out we wouldn't get to at all until a good real-life year later.
Love this new format dude. I've been thinking of using book 1 standalone to give my players a stronghold to potentially stage an Isgeri rebellion. I think I really just want to see how war with Hellknights would work out 😇
I recently got this adventure series as a part of a Humble bundle purchase. I was reading through book 1 and wasn't all that sold on it. The dialog proposed by the authors was very cringy IMO, and some of the info that gets doled out to the players is delivered in very on the nose ways (e.g. an NPC basically spilling the beans about the Elven Doorways very loudly in an argument with another NPC while the party is trying to diffuse the situation.) It just struck me as very unnatural and hard to believe if I was a player in the game. I was wondering if I even wanted to consider running it until I watched your two videos on it. I am intrigued by the idea of stronghold management for the players while making a siege or probing attacks on the keep a more regular thing. Thanks for the detailed over view and suggestions for making it better! I think I just need to keep in mind that the adventure path is just an outline with a lot of recommendations rather than being a hard set script.
I didn't realize the Stronghold rebuild was suppose to be done over the remaining books as our group did it during Book 2. You hire NPC to work on building it and provide the gold to rebuild then go to the hex craw which is like 1-2 hex per day and to explore that whole map takes months. There as no limit on how much could be worked on just that you needed the NPC Foreman running the project so only limit is how many NPCs you made friends with to run each of the projects. Our group typically had like 5+ sections running at once. So after exploring every corner of the jungle enough time had passed to repair and upgrade the whole strong hold. I think it took us 2-3 months in-game time. It's sad to hear it doesn't pay off until book 6 as our party stopped at book 4 due to RL scheduling conflicts, group is excited about remaster and talking about getting back into it while I'm hoping we finishing the campaign but might end up starting different adventure. On the Difficulty of AoA I think it can depend on the party. Fall of Plaguestone our DM told us was a very deadly adventure, which we saw with the Act 1 Boss that nearly TPKed our party as we won the fight with 2 people in dying state and other 2 with single digit HP. However after that the rest of the fights we did extremely well and never got close to death again with DM saying we cake walked encounters that had TPKed previous groups when he ran it. For AoA it does feel fairly intense at times but no TPK or feeling that we might TPK. Party member's have gone down in combats which we know makes things get tense as party member did almost die ask was still getting hit with AoE so triggered dying state increase. We got some backup healing which we rarely need so if we got to the point where all that was spent then it would feel like TPK was on the table. In Book 1 it was caster near the end which had lots of AoE spells which just blasted the heck out of our party and some poor failed attempts. Pretty much any time we face mass AoE attacks it pushes the party. Our group has a champion which really helps negate a lot of the damage from melee so most fights that involve traditional slug fest are quite easy for us to deal with, while AoE brings about serious damage to the party and taxes our limited healing as the party is more about not getting or negating damage rather than healing it. Book 2 for the giant camp it has rules on which groups will help with existing fights. For my group it was fairly easy as we came in on the North side and unloaded lots of ranged attacks slowly weakening them as they ran at us across the giant open field. The golem fight you mention I don't recall from my game so must of not been a challenge for our party, though considering we only have 1 caster which is support and majority of damage was martial so the Anti-magic field probably went unnoticed by us. This could be one of those cases where party makeup really matters as some challenges like anti-magic will seriously cripple a caster heavy party but have little effect on martial heavy one. For Hex crawl we just did a sort of grid search where it was like we walk in this direction and the DM would tell use when we encountered something. We did the survival checks at the start but our parties skills were so high for the DC that it was trivial so we stopped rolling survival checks every hex. Book 3 the attack at the Balloon seller had a massive AoE which greatly weakened the whole party and then put down a wall which separated the party from one of our members and we thought he was gonna die as he went down with us bashing through the wall as quickly as possible since trying to walk around it would have taken too long to get in range for the heal. That was one of the times we thought we might lose someone. Of which there have been a few. Overall though I'd say a lot of the difficulty can come down to party composition and tactical choices. Like minor spoilers for Fall of Plaugestone there is fight in act 2 with a creature that has an AoE attack. Our DM told us most groups run into the room and charge it which results in a much harder fight as the creature can pretty much hit all party members on it's turn with it's AoE. However our group simply shot at it and kited it down the hallway after we saw it AoE on our 2 front line players. This ended up making the fight a lot more manageable as it couldn't use it's ability to full effect. PF2e is a lot more of a tactical game which causes a bit of a problem when it comes to balancing. If you use proper tactics you can make many encounters trivial. Where as if you rush in unprepared it's likely to end badly. Then combine that with the rock/paper/scissors nature of some encounters which might have a hard counter to your group, such as anti-magic, and the result is it can be tricky to make encounters suited for any group. One of the things that I don't think helps much in AoA though is several cases of combined encounters were it says that another group will join the fight if the players engage one group. These sorts of encounters easily push the encounter budget up into the Serious or Extreme range quickly. This isn't just the DM going, I think it would make sense for the other group hears/sees a fight so they want to join in, but rather it's actually mentioned in the room descriptions for several areas that this group joins the other group if combat starts.
I’m planning to run this AP soon, and I was thinking of just making the slavers the cultist. Not necessarily changing any of the encounters, but making it clear it’s the same threat throughout the campaign.
Overall: Thank you for doing this…not surprised even your “subjective” review was polished and balanced. Two video format works - maybe even a three video with/for Patreon for Q&A 1) I have been designing and developing products and managing their iterations for over twenty years. If feedback is not provided or desired, then the product will die. Even if you have not fully played grounding feedback like you did with where you are at is very valuable not just to GMs and players but to the designers. 2) look to organize it a bit thematically (not just pro and con), it will push you as a provider of feedback to think critically but also helps designers and potential users to contextualize it easier. It was a bit jumping around. This could be as simple as ranking or as more involved and honestly more preferred as themes (story, difficulty, continuity, diversity, player experience, setting, hooks, surprises, mechanics) where you do pro and con of these 3) use this as an oppy for you as GM to provide guidance of what you’d have liked to see more from your players or for them to think through. This is useful for players but also GMs as they can create hooks or reminders As a GM I have found paizo Adv largely too easy but altogether top stars. However, I’ve found space for creativity and building out parts that were more flat), I’m not sure if this is intentional by their team but I do like it not being so tight and stitched. Thank you for calling out spaces where a creative GM can help build or lean in. This helps in prep but also fun things like map redux or VTT module creativity Keep it up You are valued and appreciated
I homebrew the shit out of this AP XD In the first book, they had reasons and befriended Yoletcha, and the kobolds, and the goblins, and the bear, and the baby wargs, and they captured one of the emperor birds... After that I know we going to play a bit differently XD I wrote a lot of extra mini stories in to the jungle, so it won't feel that empty, and they already told me they want to capture and take home the mkole-membe...
About the History of Breachill I think it'd be a good idea to play up the glorifying of Lamond by the people of town, maybe have NPCs set up meetings under his statue (like when fixing the citadel) and things like that.
For that big open area in chapter 3 of adventure 2, the best approach I think is to flag up: you will need to set up diversions or the whole camp will descend on you - perhaps by setting fire to one or two outbuildings, a big ranged attack from one angle to lure defences that way while coming round the back etc.
For the Golem overpower, give the elite boggard swampseers unholy symbols of Dahak and allow a routine Religion or Arcana check to establish they are designed to offer protection against some kind of guard.
Agree - between adventures 3 - 4 have an attack on the citadel the PCs must fend off. Great if they get a tip off and have a few weeks to prepare defences.
Gehard return if the PCs kill him the first time - I decided straight away when I read that to bin it - if slain, Gehard doesn't;t have a twin brother - rather it him returning as an undead bent on revenge.
My group is just starting book three. My only regret so far is not scaling some encounter difficulty back. Tons of great moments otherwise. Here are our near-TPKs in book 2. Book 1 was fine for us. -At the mine, the PCs started with guerrilla tactics, but then they just dove straight into the pit with overconfidence. I practically had to stop one of them from jumping in the water with the hiding proteans after they cockily threw the head of the vrock into the pit. Of course, everything came crashing down after they were in the pit. 3/4 PCs and the Warg “animal” companion went down while trying to escape the pit. The surviving fourth PC flew to the mud pile, where the spiders came out and killed him that turn. We decided we’d prefer a survivor, so I let him use his hero point to re-do his turn and fly straight up inside. -The crocodile + guards at the fortress were dicey, but nobody hit dying 4. One player got eaten by the croc then crit failed a Fear save, so he was barely part of the fight. -The golem probably should have caused a death, but the party just reformed and then faced hear-death outside the fortress, so I just couldn’t keep beating them down. I let them drag/swim the unconscious PC through the swamp while boggard reinforcements cinematically took pot shots with rays of frost as they escaped. -Honorable mention to the Dahak door killing Harriet (the new animal companion), which was the last character in that room as they bypassed it through a wall… -Two PCs went down to the ritual room, and although I wish I could have turned it into a cool moment on my own, I had to work with the players to decide what to do. We were too exhausted to face more PC death and recruitment, and Belmazog was in the middle of her ritual anyway. We ended up engineering a capture and rescue situation, and the party trounced the Cinderclaws on their second attempt once they knew what was in that room. We’re having a blast, but I don’t want to seriously threaten them again until the quarry in book 3.
The fight with the golem was really harsh. I decided to go through it almost as it is (just used weak version of the golem), and didn't hesitate to add some folks from other room to bring spiciness to encounter. It was almost disaster for my players perspective :D They resources were low and golem's curse can be pretty nasty, so I decided to bring elves to help players. With this help they established kind of foothold in the keep entrance, so it was easier for them to move further.
Malevolence: The big bad, known by players from session one is Ioseff Xarvin... TWO FUCKING MINUTES LATER Me as gm defeated: ok... So he's Joseph Stalin now...
No worries! I wanted to just generally say that I agree with most of your assessments. Book 4 became leaps and bounds better for more interesting as far as roleplay and less brutal combats. My other group is just finishing Abomination Vaults and we are moving into Stolen Fates, so I'd love it if you do another video on your assessments of that story. Love your videos in general, keep it up!
This is the first campaign I ran with my new friends, two newbies, and one veteran. I had to play a DMPC to fill out the group. My original plan was to use a Hellknight you meet in book 1 but he didn't go with the party set-up so brought in a Cleric that meet them in Mwgani Expanse. In any case you make all good points, it is epic and as I have said before. This feel too over tuned. I ran a lot of 1st edition campaigns and the later ones really knew how to make mostly challenging encounters even at high levels. I think your right with a new system they really didn't have it down yet. So for anyone wanting to runt his. Do not be afraid to lessen some encounters. I scaled back several encounters. Tip. In book 4 when you fight the Magma dragon unless your party has the right spells to engage the dragon such as fly spells or ways to ground him. That is a particular dangerous encounter. I mean it is a dragon, but god damn....If you have a lot of up and personal Martial they are going to suffer there. What I did since sometimes we would have off weeks was I converted the Emerald Spire into a sub-dungeon in Breach hill myself that served as the Town Founders eventually Lab where he did his research. To feed them information about the towns past since it is important. What I also did with the Slaver group is made it more clear as your going along that they believe they are fighting against a Tyrant Dragon and the Destroyer with there plans. At least the leadership is, my players really wanted to question the Leader of the Scarlet Triad as he spat out such words of Hatred for dragons over all as they put him down and even used a talk to corpse spell to try. Overall as long as you know you should scale back. I would give this module a good recommendation, it's mostly well connected I think with the plots, a great world hopping adventure with an epic conclusion.
Also some highlights from my campaign to share- Book 1- The adopting of the Wargs and Kobolds. The wargs were especially cute since one player drew the baby wargs as cute puppy version and the Champion made one of the Wargs as her divine mount. Book 2- When he mentioned the golem he forgot to mention the fact that also outside is a giant croc that you have to sneak past or defeat to get through the front door of the Cult's main base. What my party did was trick the Golem to the edge of the entryway. One of them used there nature skill to attract the giant croc as the DMPC Cleric who was stacking Athletics pushed the Golem into the water so the Croc would attack him, not to mention it was a clay golem if I remember right and so he was sinking. Book 3- In a surprising turn one of the Newbies picked Kintargo as there home town. So that really added a lot and was just a happy coincidence. Book 4- That Magma dragon fight pulled everything out of my players. From the Dragon Instinct Barbarian transforming into a dragon to wrestle the creature down to the ground. To the Cleric creating a wall to trap the Dragon in an area where he couldn't fly, to the rogues dmg and the Champions reaction preventing damage helping us all through that. That was a moment that made everyone sweat. Book 5- The infiltration was a great highlight of all the parties skills and abilities. Really felt like they were getting into the grove. Book 6- …. I am both proud and sad this happened. Not to give too much away, but there's a fire proof wizard you have to fight, and the Champion basically had him boxed in. So his thought was to jump into the nearby lava to cast spells from since as I said immune to fire damage. She couldn't get him there!... Except in the previous book they found a demi-lich and had taken it's eyes... One of the eyes she had cast a powerful ice spell... She argued with her use Magic device feat and training if she could focus the ice to more affect the lava around him, to basically cool the lava quickly and encase him in hard once molten rock...I told her to roll something and she crit it... Soooo.... encased wizard who honestly couldn't use manipulative actions anymore. Good way to win honestly.
Thank you for your honest feedback on the first three boooks :) I think this adventure gets too much flaak. Almost every AP i've run from Paizo I've had to tweak to work.
Re: The mine, the module does mention that it's made up of multiple parties that don't get along with one another, and so aren't very well coordinated, they'll often let them fend for themselves, but not necessarily? IIRC, it's not super clear under what conditions they'll consider an attack on one party to be an attack on all of them though.
I like the video and agree with a lot of what you said but when you talked about book 2 chapter 3 that was very unfair because the problem here was you not the book. The book mentions that this camp is made out of many different factions and that they are split and divided, that they will not help each other and may even want the others dead. It even has sections on each encounter for an explanation on why they won't help any other room or why if they do the combats won't stack (like the demon that does attack the PCs on any fight but any other enemies flee from said demon if it shows up). Age of Ashes really has big problems but it all gets lessened because you've shown that you didn't read/pay attention to the adventure so I feel like I need to doubt everything you say. But even still, good video.
I've run Age of Ashes until book 4 without a single TPK like most people who ran It complained so much about encounter balance. It was me and my players first playtrhough of Pathfinder 2e and the first game I ran seriosly following the rules as written as possible. I've been having more trouble with encounter ballance today running a converted version of Crimson Throne than I ever had with Age of Ashes. My biggest concern that made me give up on the Adventure is exacly as you commented in the video about the Story. It was simply a drag to prepare sessions. I've read all the books multiple times and trying to remember the plot and the NPC motivations and It was simply too boring. The book was written In an awful prolific way and I felt like I was studying for a School Test about a period in History I simply hated. It was no fun at all. Book 2 was the only one in the 6 that was actually good to read and play trought. The whole thing with the Ekujae and the Jaguar Festival: awesome. (Sorry if I wronged some names, I've Played the Portuguese translation) The thing about getting into the Cult of Embers and realizing that Dahak was the BBEG of the campaing and all the plot about him simply vanishing for 3 entire books was really awful. The Scarlet Triad seemed like some cartoon villains that kept getting their plans ruined by the PCs that wore allways conviently sent to where their operations were. But the worst part to me was the NPCs. To be honest I've never ran a Pathfinder AP before. Most of my prior experience as a GM was homebrew world and adventures. But now running Crimson Throne and putting it in comparison; Age of Ashes NPC not only were kinda forgetable in their writing and presentation, but Paizo's author's Certified that they were forgotten since they have no relevance to the plot in the following books of the Adventure. Nketia, Warbal, the Anadi Girl, Alak Stagram... the list goes on. None of them Matter to the plot as soon as their role is fullfiled. Certainly a GM can put as much of their own input into those characters to make them Memorable, but the books don't give much support to what they would be doing in the next part of the Adventure. My Players love my version of Warbal so much they even asked me tu put her in our other adventures. Compare them to Characters like Vencarlo, Trinia and Sabina from Crimson Throne: Not only they're very memorable character with crucial importance to the plot, but all the Books give support abou what they are doing in each part of the adventure. I'm at the end ob Seven Days to the Grave and I can't wait ot present Laori Vaus to my players. When I was running Age of Ashes I simply wanted the Adventure do get to Level 20, kill Dahak and end it.
I finished running this not quite a year ago after 2.5 years of mostly weekly play. It's a mixed experience at best. 6th module was pretty weak in my opinion. Map quality was very low, presentation and editing was little better. Designers were still learning the system so I won't count encounter balance against them, I though overall it was pretty well balanced though I know most thought that it was too strong
The golem is not overpowered. My players defeated it fairly easily by backing out to the water which it has a big weakness to. It dissolved into the swamp after chasing the party around for a while
Yeah looking back at it I really hated the plot issue. Spent a good year and a half of real-time waiting for the plot, assuming we'd get back to what we thought the campaign was actually about. And we didn't til book 6! A big part of it is that 1) The scarlet triad is really really boring, and 2) As a player, you have absolutely no idea of the significance of it or why you should care until you're right up at the end.
Surprised you didn't mention how silly it is that these jungle elves who have been keeping themselves trained for the return of a god of destruction expect you to play patty-cake to earn their trust (only barely hyperbole). If there's two things I noted in discourse with this campaign that people talk about a lot, it's either changing that whole first bit of Book 2 or throwing it out entirely and just have it all be role-playing. The other is changing the system for repairing the Citadel. Like how for some reason you need to clean ALL of it, and you can't begin construction in one part while there's a hole remaining in a completely different part etc. The not-so-secret third is to try to tie the story back to Dahak in some way. Whether it be signs of other cults worshipping him in the places you visit, having him torment the PCs in dreams given they're literally living/sleeping above his prison. Or to have potential allies they make from Book 2 show up, and keep the thought of him present.
30:00 Ah yes, this was another weird part of Book 2. Strange how they never, ever gave any thought on what to do if the players actually take a liking to the guy and want to recruit his aid! A missed opportunity really, given the entire campaign supposedly is meant as an introduction to the setting. My players haven't gotten to Book 2 yet, but what I did was embrace the Twin thing. Gerhard is the slightly less reasonable one, and had set off on his own for the savage jungles. His brother followed to try and bring him back, though came with a much larger team including his own family. Easy enough to have the players meet them at the hex that's meant to be the first encounter with Gerhard, or just fill in one of the many EMPTY (seriously? so many empty hexes in a hexcrawl?) hexes with their camp. Provides another potential place to rest safely, more allies for them to make in general, and just overall is a better approach than "lol colonialism"
I think this 2-video format, one giving an overview and the other jumping into more details of the adventure path, is excellent. It provides an initial taste of the adventure path, and in case someone wants to know more, the second video gets you set up and ready to tackle the books. Amazing stuff buddy and thank you for sharing your thoughts!
I agree, I think the 2-video format works well.
Agree.
Totally agree
I ran this whole adventure, beginning to end and everyone absolutely loved it. I definitely understand these criticisms, as I felt like I needed to dial back some of the monster encounters just a tad. But my party was REALLY well composed. We had a Champion Paladin to block a lot of the incoming damage, Primal Sorcerer with healing (and occasional polymorph for some frontlining), Rogue as the main damage dealer, and a Bard for constant buffs and occasional soothe. There were so many ways to heal that I never really felt like there was a chance of TPK except in a very few instances. But I also recognize that this is not going to be everyone else's experience.
For me, I laid more of the mystery of Breachill because one of my players became obsessed with the water tower plaza. So I put a statue of Lamont Breachton in there and made sure to emphasize the golden metallic irises of the eyes. So every time they came back to town there was more researching the town, and who this wizard was... I tried to lay another plot point with the Paladin's Dragonscale Shield, but he never caught on to the clue... That curiosity sustained her to keep coming back to this over and over. I revealed to her that Lamont Breachton devised this water tower plan and its schematics (which mirror the ring), and several other details that I made up to fit the backstory. Her character, the rogue, had a red string board going in her apartment in Breachill to try and figure it all out. And when it all clicked into place and she solved the mystery by getting that Scarlet Triad journal in book 5, she felt SO VINDICATED for spending all that time putting those pieces together. Seeding further details of the origin of the town really helps to pull this all together.
Lastly a personal story.
Perhaps the most amazing thing that my party did was when they were preparing to go into book six they took a huge amount of personal downtime to do some character development and the Paladin (of Apsu) went to the temple in Absalom and critted on a ritual to commune with a divine servant, so he spoke with Oregenus the Herald of Apsu, and when confronting the BBEG in book 6 summoned him in the trial scene. It was the most epic Ace Attorney stuff and everyone was losing their minds. Great stuff.
Late to the party- but this was a great read. Thanks for sharing your insight and solutions.
Dave, I love the idea of a series of GM centric videos about pf2e APs. Are you starting a new playlist?
Yes! The new Pathfinder Adventures playlist should be visible now.
this is the stuff that the first video was missing. the two part format is great
Agreed
Agree. The mentions of themes in each book does help alot for ppl trying to grasp what the book focuses on, how gms prep it and can answer some non spoiler questions to their players. Then this video goes more into it for gms to know more on the adventure if it interests them or change things up.
I love the 2 video format...one somewhat spoiler free high level and all full of spoilers and detail. Please keep it up even after the core rules come out. :)
Only recently started GMing Pathfinder 2e and I'm loving this channel sooo much! I loved the rules videos but I'm even more excited about hearing your thoughts on the 2e Adventure Paths. Currently running Abomination Vault but now I'm hyped for the other APs.
Great addition to the last video!
In regards to the issue with Dahak and Scarlet Triad, there is definitely a tie between the two, but a lot of it is background stuff that the players don’t tend to see. I think that there are ways of bringing that story to more to their attention, but that would definitely require some work on the GM’s part.
Book 5 definitely brings Dahak back into the player’s attention as they go through the portal before being spit out into the next area.
The one thing that definitely does get left behind is the mystery of Breachill, and it’s tie to the last book.
Also, Gerhardt was one of my favorite villains. My players let him go in the end, though the chance of him getting out of the Mwangi alive are pretty slim. The champion shaved off his mustache, kept it through several books and finally named his favorite sword after him (tying the mustache to the cross-piece of the weapon, almost like a talisman. Thinking about giving it a special ability, or making it sentient because of that).
Last note: highly recommend this for a group of 5 players, rather than 4. While it won’t fix anything outright, it will make some of those difficult encounters to be a little less of a threat without making any changes.
so jealous of the neo-zeong! Also great videos, I'm planning to start running Age of Ashes with my group soon!
I like this format. These AP's are so enormous and sinking time and money into them without knowing if there any good is a big consideration especially if you're on a budget of time and or money. I feel you're tiptoeing with your critiques and would like to hear your honest heartfelt opinions. This is the internet, people are going to hate you not matter what you say. :)
I very much appreciate the spoiler though and conversation. That's exactly what/how I expect to use these.
Finally got around to watching this video when I could give it my full attention. Thanks for making it! It has a lot of good advice and pressure points to be aware of if one of my groups chooses to try it as we get more settled into the system.
Thank you for making all these informative videos!
I'm gonna LOVE this series, always up for some lore too 😅
You're awesome Dave! Don't worry about length, I'm sure we could all listen to you for hours 😆
As someone who has ran the entire AP I disagree with some of these points, mainly that Dahak is the main antagonist as he just isn't. He is the inciting incident of the AP and closer to a MacGuffin or a force of nature than a true villain. If you replaced Dahak with some ancient super weapon nothing really changes about the story. The Scarlet Triad are the main antagonists of the AP. The story doesn't take a backseat from Dahak from books 3-5 it reveals the main antagonists who were behind the events of book 1 and 2. The Triad funds both Voz in book 1 and the Cinderclaws in book 2. Book 3 is when they step out of the shadows and you fight them directly. Without getting into spoilers, the Triad are why Dahak is even a potential threat in the first place.
As for balance issues I 100% agree, so much so that I wrote a 15 page guide on changes I would make to the AP if I were to run it again docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQ-FigXIa1pZHpahAcTHamm5IzOPriBW4lqbK1Ht40v9Qp26hCXySHGvl4moym2PxyovFiCw1wUD-T0/pub
Now for the good news, from all the GMs I have talked to who have run the entire AP all agree that books 4-6 blow 1-3 out of the water. The locations are cooler, they have neat subsystems, the plot is better (and you actually learn about it rather than tidbits you learn in 1-3). Book 6 is still my favorite book of any AP so far and I have played through all of Extinction Curse, and over half of Abomination Vaults and Fists of the Ruby Phoenix as well as reading all of Stolen Fate (which seems to be a pretty good AP by the way.)
I think the problem is that Dahak is the first thing you see and is the source of all of your big questions. If the story *opened* about the scarlet triad, and if there was a picture of a scarlet triad member on the front cover of the first book and the campaign was called "Age of the scarlet Triad", and the premise was that we were all freedom fighters getting together to fight slavery above anything else I wouldn't mind so much. But as it stands, the first two books set up a dragon god and a dragon cult, the next 3 books are about something mostly unrelated (especially when you have no reason to believe they would be related until it's revealed very late), and then finally book 6 comes back to the dragon stuff.
Looking back on it, of course, the vast majority of the campaign is really about the scarlet triad with a bit of evil-dragon-god at the start and the end, but the entire time I was playing I was thinking "where's dahak, when do we see more dahak, what has this got to do with dahak". Just kinda trying to get past the boring slaver stuff so we can get to the actual plot, which it turns out we wouldn't get to at all until a good real-life year later.
Great video! Love hearing your thoughts. And the 2-video format is perfect. Thanks!!
Love this new format dude. I've been thinking of using book 1 standalone to give my players a stronghold to potentially stage an Isgeri rebellion. I think I really just want to see how war with Hellknights would work out 😇
I recently got this adventure series as a part of a Humble bundle purchase. I was reading through book 1 and wasn't all that sold on it. The dialog proposed by the authors was very cringy IMO, and some of the info that gets doled out to the players is delivered in very on the nose ways (e.g. an NPC basically spilling the beans about the Elven Doorways very loudly in an argument with another NPC while the party is trying to diffuse the situation.) It just struck me as very unnatural and hard to believe if I was a player in the game. I was wondering if I even wanted to consider running it until I watched your two videos on it.
I am intrigued by the idea of stronghold management for the players while making a siege or probing attacks on the keep a more regular thing.
Thanks for the detailed over view and suggestions for making it better! I think I just need to keep in mind that the adventure path is just an outline with a lot of recommendations rather than being a hard set script.
I didn't realize the Stronghold rebuild was suppose to be done over the remaining books as our group did it during Book 2. You hire NPC to work on building it and provide the gold to rebuild then go to the hex craw which is like 1-2 hex per day and to explore that whole map takes months. There as no limit on how much could be worked on just that you needed the NPC Foreman running the project so only limit is how many NPCs you made friends with to run each of the projects.
Our group typically had like 5+ sections running at once. So after exploring every corner of the jungle enough time had passed to repair and upgrade the whole strong hold. I think it took us 2-3 months in-game time. It's sad to hear it doesn't pay off until book 6 as our party stopped at book 4 due to RL scheduling conflicts, group is excited about remaster and talking about getting back into it while I'm hoping we finishing the campaign but might end up starting different adventure.
On the Difficulty of AoA I think it can depend on the party. Fall of Plaguestone our DM told us was a very deadly adventure, which we saw with the Act 1 Boss that nearly TPKed our party as we won the fight with 2 people in dying state and other 2 with single digit HP. However after that the rest of the fights we did extremely well and never got close to death again with DM saying we cake walked encounters that had TPKed previous groups when he ran it.
For AoA it does feel fairly intense at times but no TPK or feeling that we might TPK. Party member's have gone down in combats which we know makes things get tense as party member did almost die ask was still getting hit with AoE so triggered dying state increase. We got some backup healing which we rarely need so if we got to the point where all that was spent then it would feel like TPK was on the table.
In Book 1 it was caster near the end which had lots of AoE spells which just blasted the heck out of our party and some poor failed attempts. Pretty much any time we face mass AoE attacks it pushes the party. Our group has a champion which really helps negate a lot of the damage from melee so most fights that involve traditional slug fest are quite easy for us to deal with, while AoE brings about serious damage to the party and taxes our limited healing as the party is more about not getting or negating damage rather than healing it.
Book 2 for the giant camp it has rules on which groups will help with existing fights. For my group it was fairly easy as we came in on the North side and unloaded lots of ranged attacks slowly weakening them as they ran at us across the giant open field. The golem fight you mention I don't recall from my game so must of not been a challenge for our party, though considering we only have 1 caster which is support and majority of damage was martial so the Anti-magic field probably went unnoticed by us. This could be one of those cases where party makeup really matters as some challenges like anti-magic will seriously cripple a caster heavy party but have little effect on martial heavy one.
For Hex crawl we just did a sort of grid search where it was like we walk in this direction and the DM would tell use when we encountered something. We did the survival checks at the start but our parties skills were so high for the DC that it was trivial so we stopped rolling survival checks every hex.
Book 3 the attack at the Balloon seller had a massive AoE which greatly weakened the whole party and then put down a wall which separated the party from one of our members and we thought he was gonna die as he went down with us bashing through the wall as quickly as possible since trying to walk around it would have taken too long to get in range for the heal. That was one of the times we thought we might lose someone. Of which there have been a few.
Overall though I'd say a lot of the difficulty can come down to party composition and tactical choices. Like minor spoilers for Fall of Plaugestone there is fight in act 2 with a creature that has an AoE attack. Our DM told us most groups run into the room and charge it which results in a much harder fight as the creature can pretty much hit all party members on it's turn with it's AoE. However our group simply shot at it and kited it down the hallway after we saw it AoE on our 2 front line players. This ended up making the fight a lot more manageable as it couldn't use it's ability to full effect.
PF2e is a lot more of a tactical game which causes a bit of a problem when it comes to balancing. If you use proper tactics you can make many encounters trivial. Where as if you rush in unprepared it's likely to end badly. Then combine that with the rock/paper/scissors nature of some encounters which might have a hard counter to your group, such as anti-magic, and the result is it can be tricky to make encounters suited for any group.
One of the things that I don't think helps much in AoA though is several cases of combined encounters were it says that another group will join the fight if the players engage one group. These sorts of encounters easily push the encounter budget up into the Serious or Extreme range quickly. This isn't just the DM going, I think it would make sense for the other group hears/sees a fight so they want to join in, but rather it's actually mentioned in the room descriptions for several areas that this group joins the other group if combat starts.
I’m planning to run this AP soon, and I was thinking of just making the slavers the cultist. Not necessarily changing any of the encounters, but making it clear it’s the same threat throughout the campaign.
Overall: Thank you for doing this…not surprised even your “subjective” review was polished and balanced. Two video format works - maybe even a three video with/for Patreon for Q&A
1) I have been designing and developing products and managing their iterations for over twenty years. If feedback is not provided or desired, then the product will die. Even if you have not fully played grounding feedback like you did with where you are at is very valuable not just to GMs and players but to the designers.
2) look to organize it a bit thematically (not just pro and con), it will push you as a provider of feedback to think critically but also helps designers and potential users to contextualize it easier. It was a bit jumping around. This could be as simple as ranking or as more involved and honestly more preferred as themes (story, difficulty, continuity, diversity, player experience, setting, hooks, surprises, mechanics) where you do pro and con of these
3) use this as an oppy for you as GM to provide guidance of what you’d have liked to see more from your players or for them to think through. This is useful for players but also GMs as they can create hooks or reminders
As a GM I have found paizo Adv largely too easy but altogether top stars. However, I’ve found space for creativity and building out parts that were more flat), I’m not sure if this is intentional by their team but I do like it not being so tight and stitched. Thank you for calling out spaces where a creative GM can help build or lean in. This helps in prep but also fun things like map redux or VTT module creativity
Keep it up
You are valued and appreciated
I homebrew the shit out of this AP XD
In the first book, they had reasons and befriended Yoletcha, and the kobolds, and the goblins, and the bear, and the baby wargs, and they captured one of the emperor birds...
After that I know we going to play a bit differently XD
I wrote a lot of extra mini stories in to the jungle, so it won't feel that empty, and they already told me they want to capture and take home the mkole-membe...
About the History of Breachill I think it'd be a good idea to play up the glorifying of Lamond by the people of town, maybe have NPCs set up meetings under his statue (like when fixing the citadel) and things like that.
For that big open area in chapter 3 of adventure 2, the best approach I think is to flag up: you will need to set up diversions or the whole camp will descend on you - perhaps by setting fire to one or two outbuildings, a big ranged attack from one angle to lure defences that way while coming round the back etc.
For the Golem overpower, give the elite boggard swampseers unholy symbols of Dahak and allow a routine Religion or Arcana check to establish they are designed to offer protection against some kind of guard.
I like the third (Kintargo) adventure as it adds variety - it is easy enough for the GM to sprinkle in thematic elements of Dahak along the way.
Agree - between adventures 3 - 4 have an attack on the citadel the PCs must fend off. Great if they get a tip off and have a few weeks to prepare defences.
Gehard return if the PCs kill him the first time - I decided straight away when I read that to bin it - if slain, Gehard doesn't;t have a twin brother - rather it him returning as an undead bent on revenge.
My group is just starting book three. My only regret so far is not scaling some encounter difficulty back. Tons of great moments otherwise.
Here are our near-TPKs in book 2. Book 1 was fine for us.
-At the mine, the PCs started with guerrilla tactics, but then they just dove straight into the pit with overconfidence. I practically had to stop one of them from jumping in the water with the hiding proteans after they cockily threw the head of the vrock into the pit. Of course, everything came crashing down after they were in the pit. 3/4 PCs and the Warg “animal” companion went down while trying to escape the pit. The surviving fourth PC flew to the mud pile, where the spiders came out and killed him that turn. We decided we’d prefer a survivor, so I let him use his hero point to re-do his turn and fly straight up inside.
-The crocodile + guards at the fortress were dicey, but nobody hit dying 4. One player got eaten by the croc then crit failed a Fear save, so he was barely part of the fight.
-The golem probably should have caused a death, but the party just reformed and then faced hear-death outside the fortress, so I just couldn’t keep beating them down. I let them drag/swim the unconscious PC through the swamp while boggard reinforcements cinematically took pot shots with rays of frost as they escaped.
-Honorable mention to the Dahak door killing Harriet (the new animal companion), which was the last character in that room as they bypassed it through a wall…
-Two PCs went down to the ritual room, and although I wish I could have turned it into a cool moment on my own, I had to work with the players to decide what to do. We were too exhausted to face more PC death and recruitment, and Belmazog was in the middle of her ritual anyway. We ended up engineering a capture and rescue situation, and the party trounced the Cinderclaws on their second attempt once they knew what was in that room.
We’re having a blast, but I don’t want to seriously threaten them again until the quarry in book 3.
The fight with the golem was really harsh. I decided to go through it almost as it is (just used weak version of the golem), and didn't hesitate to add some folks from other room to bring spiciness to encounter. It was almost disaster for my players perspective :D They resources were low and golem's curse can be pretty nasty, so I decided to bring elves to help players. With this help they established kind of foothold in the keep entrance, so it was easier for them to move further.
For future GMs: be prepared for Citadel Altarein to be called Citadel All-Terrain by your players.
Malevolence:
The big bad, known by players from session one is Ioseff Xarvin...
TWO
FUCKING
MINUTES
LATER
Me as gm defeated: ok... So he's Joseph Stalin now...
Please tell me you have an update on this. We are halfway through Book 4 and would love to hear your thoughts how your table did
Unfortunately, we decided to move away from this AP. Instead of running Age of Ashes Book 4, we ran Stolen Fates Book 1 and are having a better time.
No worries! I wanted to just generally say that I agree with most of your assessments. Book 4 became leaps and bounds better for more interesting as far as roleplay and less brutal combats.
My other group is just finishing Abomination Vaults and we are moving into Stolen Fates, so I'd love it if you do another video on your assessments of that story.
Love your videos in general, keep it up!
This is the first campaign I ran with my new friends, two newbies, and one veteran. I had to play a DMPC to fill out the group. My original plan was to use a Hellknight you meet in book 1 but he didn't go with the party set-up so brought in a Cleric that meet them in Mwgani Expanse.
In any case you make all good points, it is epic and as I have said before. This feel too over tuned. I ran a lot of 1st edition campaigns and the later ones really knew how to make mostly challenging encounters even at high levels. I think your right with a new system they really didn't have it down yet. So for anyone wanting to runt his. Do not be afraid to lessen some encounters. I scaled back several encounters.
Tip. In book 4 when you fight the Magma dragon unless your party has the right spells to engage the dragon such as fly spells or ways to ground him. That is a particular dangerous encounter. I mean it is a dragon, but god damn....If you have a lot of up and personal Martial they are going to suffer there.
What I did since sometimes we would have off weeks was I converted the Emerald Spire into a sub-dungeon in Breach hill myself that served as the Town Founders eventually Lab where he did his research. To feed them information about the towns past since it is important.
What I also did with the Slaver group is made it more clear as your going along that they believe they are fighting against a Tyrant Dragon and the Destroyer with there plans. At least the leadership is, my players really wanted to question the Leader of the Scarlet Triad as he spat out such words of Hatred for dragons over all as they put him down and even used a talk to corpse spell to try.
Overall as long as you know you should scale back. I would give this module a good recommendation, it's mostly well connected I think with the plots, a great world hopping adventure with an epic conclusion.
Also some highlights from my campaign to share-
Book 1- The adopting of the Wargs and Kobolds. The wargs were especially cute since one player drew the baby wargs as cute puppy version and the Champion made one of the Wargs as her divine mount.
Book 2- When he mentioned the golem he forgot to mention the fact that also outside is a giant croc that you have to sneak past or defeat to get through the front door of the Cult's main base. What my party did was trick the Golem to the edge of the entryway. One of them used there nature skill to attract the giant croc as the DMPC Cleric who was stacking Athletics pushed the Golem into the water so the Croc would attack him, not to mention it was a clay golem if I remember right and so he was sinking.
Book 3- In a surprising turn one of the Newbies picked Kintargo as there home town. So that really added a lot and was just a happy coincidence.
Book 4- That Magma dragon fight pulled everything out of my players. From the Dragon Instinct Barbarian transforming into a dragon to wrestle the creature down to the ground. To the Cleric creating a wall to trap the Dragon in an area where he couldn't fly, to the rogues dmg and the Champions reaction preventing damage helping us all through that. That was a moment that made everyone sweat.
Book 5- The infiltration was a great highlight of all the parties skills and abilities. Really felt like they were getting into the grove.
Book 6- …. I am both proud and sad this happened. Not to give too much away, but there's a fire proof wizard you have to fight, and the Champion basically had him boxed in. So his thought was to jump into the nearby lava to cast spells from since as I said immune to fire damage. She couldn't get him there!... Except in the previous book they found a demi-lich and had taken it's eyes... One of the eyes she had cast a powerful ice spell... She argued with her use Magic device feat and training if she could focus the ice to more affect the lava around him, to basically cool the lava quickly and encase him in hard once molten rock...I told her to roll something and she crit it... Soooo.... encased wizard who honestly couldn't use manipulative actions anymore. Good way to win honestly.
Thank you for your honest feedback on the first three boooks :) I think this adventure gets too much flaak. Almost every AP i've run from Paizo I've had to tweak to work.
Re: The mine, the module does mention that it's made up of multiple parties that don't get along with one another, and so aren't very well coordinated, they'll often let them fend for themselves, but not necessarily? IIRC, it's not super clear under what conditions they'll consider an attack on one party to be an attack on all of them though.
Hahaha, no way they used the "identical twin brother" card
I like the video and agree with a lot of what you said but when you talked about book 2 chapter 3 that was very unfair because the problem here was you not the book. The book mentions that this camp is made out of many different factions and that they are split and divided, that they will not help each other and may even want the others dead. It even has sections on each encounter for an explanation on why they won't help any other room or why if they do the combats won't stack (like the demon that does attack the PCs on any fight but any other enemies flee from said demon if it shows up). Age of Ashes really has big problems but it all gets lessened because you've shown that you didn't read/pay attention to the adventure so I feel like I need to doubt everything you say. But even still, good video.
I think the big problem is that the players have no reason to assume that.
Follow up seems to be slightly more in depth than the original :D
I've run Age of Ashes until book 4 without a single TPK like most people who ran It complained so much about encounter balance. It was me and my players first playtrhough of Pathfinder 2e and the first game I ran seriosly following the rules as written as possible. I've been having more trouble with encounter ballance today running a converted version of Crimson Throne than I ever had with Age of Ashes.
My biggest concern that made me give up on the Adventure is exacly as you commented in the video about the Story. It was simply a drag to prepare sessions. I've read all the books multiple times and trying to remember the plot and the NPC motivations and It was simply too boring. The book was written In an awful prolific way and I felt like I was studying for a School Test about a period in History I simply hated. It was no fun at all.
Book 2 was the only one in the 6 that was actually good to read and play trought. The whole thing with the Ekujae and the Jaguar Festival: awesome. (Sorry if I wronged some names, I've Played the Portuguese translation)
The thing about getting into the Cult of Embers and realizing that Dahak was the BBEG of the campaing and all the plot about him simply vanishing for 3 entire books was really awful. The Scarlet Triad seemed like some cartoon villains that kept getting their plans ruined by the PCs that wore allways conviently sent to where their operations were.
But the worst part to me was the NPCs. To be honest I've never ran a Pathfinder AP before. Most of my prior experience as a GM was homebrew world and adventures. But now running Crimson Throne and putting it in comparison; Age of Ashes NPC not only were kinda forgetable in their writing and presentation, but Paizo's author's Certified that they were forgotten since they have no relevance to the plot in the following books of the Adventure. Nketia, Warbal, the Anadi Girl, Alak Stagram... the list goes on. None of them Matter to the plot as soon as their role is fullfiled.
Certainly a GM can put as much of their own input into those characters to make them Memorable, but the books don't give much support to what they would be doing in the next part of the Adventure. My Players love my version of Warbal so much they even asked me tu put her in our other adventures.
Compare them to Characters like Vencarlo, Trinia and Sabina from Crimson Throne: Not only they're very memorable character with crucial importance to the plot, but all the Books give support abou what they are doing in each part of the adventure. I'm at the end ob Seven Days to the Grave and I can't wait ot present Laori Vaus to my players. When I was running Age of Ashes I simply wanted the Adventure do get to Level 20, kill Dahak and end it.
I finished running this not quite a year ago after 2.5 years of mostly weekly play. It's a mixed experience at best. 6th module was pretty weak in my opinion. Map quality was very low, presentation and editing was little better. Designers were still learning the system so I won't count encounter balance against them, I though overall it was pretty well balanced though I know most thought that it was too strong
The golem is not overpowered. My players defeated it fairly easily by backing out to the water which it has a big weakness to. It dissolved into the swamp after chasing the party around for a while
Yeah looking back at it I really hated the plot issue. Spent a good year and a half of real-time waiting for the plot, assuming we'd get back to what we thought the campaign was actually about. And we didn't til book 6!
A big part of it is that 1) The scarlet triad is really really boring, and 2) As a player, you have absolutely no idea of the significance of it or why you should care until you're right up at the end.
Really feels like books 3, 4 and 5 were just out of a completely different campaign.
Seems to me that your players should be making recall knowledge checks, especially when facing a tough enemy for the first time.
Can this adventure path be ran with only the remaster books?
Agree with you, book 3 in Kintargo is trash. I don't care about Ravounel, Cheliax should take it over in a new AP.
Surprised you didn't mention how silly it is that these jungle elves who have been keeping themselves trained for the return of a god of destruction expect you to play patty-cake to earn their trust (only barely hyperbole). If there's two things I noted in discourse with this campaign that people talk about a lot, it's either changing that whole first bit of Book 2 or throwing it out entirely and just have it all be role-playing. The other is changing the system for repairing the Citadel. Like how for some reason you need to clean ALL of it, and you can't begin construction in one part while there's a hole remaining in a completely different part etc.
The not-so-secret third is to try to tie the story back to Dahak in some way. Whether it be signs of other cults worshipping him in the places you visit, having him torment the PCs in dreams given they're literally living/sleeping above his prison. Or to have potential allies they make from Book 2 show up, and keep the thought of him present.
30:00 Ah yes, this was another weird part of Book 2. Strange how they never, ever gave any thought on what to do if the players actually take a liking to the guy and want to recruit his aid! A missed opportunity really, given the entire campaign supposedly is meant as an introduction to the setting.
My players haven't gotten to Book 2 yet, but what I did was embrace the Twin thing. Gerhard is the slightly less reasonable one, and had set off on his own for the savage jungles. His brother followed to try and bring him back, though came with a much larger team including his own family. Easy enough to have the players meet them at the hex that's meant to be the first encounter with Gerhard, or just fill in one of the many EMPTY (seriously? so many empty hexes in a hexcrawl?) hexes with their camp.
Provides another potential place to rest safely, more allies for them to make in general, and just overall is a better approach than "lol colonialism"