Into the Dark (DDAL08-07) is the first of the Tier 2 adventures of Season 8 of the D&D Adventurers League. In it, Artor Morlin, the Vampire Lord of Waterdeep, recruits the characters to remove a vampire nest in Undermountain. It’s very definitely aimed at characters that have played the first Tier 1 trilogy of this season, but it works with other characters as well.

This adventure displays a commendable range of experiences; with role-playing, exploration and combat featured. Most of the role-playing exists in the bonus objectives, and the adventure works far better with them included. However, you still get the sense of the plot if they’re not included, so kudos for a structure that works!

The goal of this adventure is to clear the path to the vampire lair rather than confront the vampires directly; the next adventure is meant to detail the lair. The basic form of the adventure finds the adventures descending a shaft, overcoming traps and monsters to do so, before having to defeat a poseur who wants to be a vampire and his pet bone golem. There are two additional objectives: In the first, the characters investigate the history of the mine, aided by an old druid. In the other, the characters help a kobold preserve an ancient dwarven settlement. There’s a lot of interesting material here.

There is, however, a major problem underlying the adventure: Throughout, the characters are meant to be hunting a group of vampires called the Undertakers (who are meant to be poseurs and not vampires at all; at least that’s what Durnan has heard and what the adventure tells the DM). Unfortunately, the Undertakers fail to appear in the next two adventures of the trilogy! There’s a lot of set-up here for material that doesn’t appear later. This lack is something the DDAL editors should have realised; alas, no such diligence occurred.

The formatting of the adventure provides additional challenges: the shaft contains two ways down (a lift and a ramp), and monsters and traps that apply to each method of descending. These are presented in two scenes, implying that only one can apply, but it’s ridiculously easy to have both happening at once. The description of the skeletons in the lift section says they attack creatures using the lift or the shaft! This would be far better presented as one scene.

The information in both bonus objectives is tremendously hard to parse and understand; I want better summaries! I feel like I’m a prospector sifting for gold – there’s a huge amount of irrelevant material to wade through before reaching the purpose of each scene. Some of the writing presumes you know material covered later in the adventure; it doesn’t just state what you should do.

Allegedly, this adventure is for APL 5. The final encounter may give the lie to that, as the bone golem (a modified stone golem) is immune to non-magical weapons and is CR 8 (while the unmodified statistics in the Monster Manual describe it as CR 10). If you’ve got a group of mostly martial characters without magic weapons – something that is quite likely – then it’s impossible to defeat without the DM modifying it to make it easier. A potential solution exists in one of the bonus objectives, although this partly contradicts information given in finale, and it’s by no means assured the players can discover the solution in any case.

As an aside, I dislike it when a Tier 2 or higher adventure has any APL but the standard for that tier (8, in this case); it increases the difficulty for scaling it.

What does work about the adventure is the setting. The concept of a mine inhabited by the remnants of an old dwarven clan is brought to life by the monsters, the background material, and the bonus quests. Although the encounters are occasionally hard to parse, much of the material is of high quality. There’s also information about the Undertakers and the boss of this adventure that works very well and is a delight to read; it’s a pity that it’s at odds with what occurs later in the trilogy.

Overall, this is an adventure that can entertain the players and DM, although I recommend using both bonus objectives to flesh out the content. Problems with its difficulty, presentation, and links to later adventures prevent me from recommending it wholeheartedly.