Fanglewood

This module is well made and worth to play, it's really funny! :)

Well worth a playthrough. Maybe the story sometimes felt a little bit forced. Like how did the drow really fit into the narrative? And it leaves some questions unanswered, like why is everyone after this package to begin with? Still a very good and solid mod. I liked this one a lot.

Love the gameplay! I jumped not a few times from a few of the jumpscares (i.e. running back to the rest camp while low on health and being suddenly surprised by a gang of bugbears that appeared by the entrance). I love the feeling of foreboding as I went through many of the dungeons (I was pretty creeped out, and felt constantly in danger, which is a proof of some excellent area design). I also very much enjoyed the exploration aspect, and the amount of subtle visual clues that really made each dungeon come alive (and gave you a hint of what was going to f*** you up further down the line). Awesome job.  10/10.

The only thing that might be improved is the optimization for the Dementia Mansion levels - particularly floor 1 and basement.

My frame rate dropped very low, and I was walking with a stutterstep trying to fight enemies that seemed to teleport toward me. Since there was no other area in the module that seemed to do that, dropping the texture/graphics quality didn't help, and I have a relatively new computer (2014 build), I wonder if it is maybe a matter of either the limits of the game engine or maxing out the amount of content that can appear in an area. Let me know if you have ever heard about this issue before. I'm hoping that things will get better once I pass the basement level.

Well made and bug free. I particularly enjoyed the Underdark areas. Very creative.

Crafting could be improved as the ingredients you get don't make for many options. The things you can make you will mostly have purchased or found before you are able to craft them.  

Solid module, very good ending.

Incredible area design, love it!

By far and away the best game-play module I've played.  Superbly thought out, and challenging, combat- really requiring tactical thought.  Puzzles that feel naturally part of the exploration, rather than an artificial chore.  Excellent area design.  Well balanced economy and levelling.  

The plot is deliberately a tongue in cheek mcguffin to hold together a series of interesting ideas, yet it is better put thought out than most modules.

Fantastic module!  Played it as a Drow Ranger and had a blast. Well balanced fights - some where really hard and you had to really work your tactics on the battlefield. Loved it!

Gonna play Murders in Dunlop now - think it is the same creator. Thank you so much for this wonderful adventure.

Following with my personal crusade of replaying great modules that I didn't vote the first time I tested them... 

Great module! Story is pretty decent actually, for one that is there for the purpose of guiding the adventure along instead of being a main focus. Quite difficult, didn't help that I was playing a rather gimmicky wizard character. Loved the area designs and music choices,

Only complains I have are some obscure secrets item/door locations (took me forever to find the mansion's basement trap door), no multi-classing for henchmen and terrain issues which got me party members stuck many times.

It's a shame I had to give this a star, it deserves lower than that. The contrived storyline and poor english I could tolerate, somewhat, the lack of any interesting characters or interactions made it a little more difficult to bear but I figured I'd stick with it since I went to the effort of downloading it. But the design of the encounters is so piss-poor that I made an account for the sole purpose of reviewing this piece of garbage. Rest spots may as well be nonexistent, meaning you either don't use any casters or you find yourself backtracking through multiple zones just to find one campfire to restock your spellbook every couple of encounters, and it's by no means uncommon to be forced into an incredibly difficult fight with none available whatsoever, leaving your half-dead, spell-less party to try and take down a boss that would be a challenge at full strength.

If you start at level 1, or worse pick any class with a level adjustment, you cannot succeed. Experience is highly limited and though I've heard you should be able to reach level 8 by the end of the campaign, I had to give myself upwards of 20000 xp to even reach 7 by the end. The final boss is simply impossible, I eventually leveled my party up to 10 just to try and deal with it, and even with my fighter buffed to hell, 160 hp, 25 AC, spell resistance, saves, etc. he still dies within the first 2 rounds, every single time. I eventually just used dm_god on my whole party and even then it was a slog to beat them.

I'm not sure in what world the author thought this trash was fit to be released, but it must be more fantastical than the forgotten realms.

Just hit level 3 with a human rogue/ranger archer. Game looks amazing so far, fights are tough but doable and as someone said there's a feeling of danger wherever you go.

Finished it! Got to lvl 10 at the end, what a fantastic campaign! Tough battles, PnP feel, reasonable loot, great areas, good use of skills and BUG FREE!!! I am giving this a 9/10 only because of lack of companion interaction. Highly recommended!

great story and atmosphere. i enjoyed it very much. ty

This campaign has exceeded my expectations in many regards and my desire to give feedback has finally passed the threshold set by having to create an account.

I consider player feedback important, because I rely myself to a high degree on feedback from other players when selecting modules to download. For me, player feedback takes precedence over the author’s advertizing intro, unless that intro indicates content that meets my subjective early-rejection criteria, such as unfinished, evil-only or SOZ-like overland map.

In order to get a rating, a campaign/module needs first to be downloaded. But second it needs to be played! Of the 20+ modules that I have downloaded (starting around 2 years ago), I have only played 8 of them, my choices being this time heavily influenced by player feedback.

Finally, here is my feedback for this campaign:

Reached Level 9 as Rogue 1 / Fighter 8.

*   Playing motivation: very good
This is for me the main criterion for rating a campaign/module. And this one has kept me interested at all times in advancing and wanting to see what comes next. Yet I would like to protest at this point against the use of a certain kind of monster in the last two areas, which I find anywhere between pure anti-entertainment and directly infuriating. Luckily I was able to overcome my temporary urge to quit, but those things really don’t fit in!

*   Story: good
For me, the story has to be just good enough to keep me going; I don’t expect to save the world or to be the child of some deity in each campaign, yet I appreciate a story to be not-fully-predictable, to offer some intriguing elements and to unfold at a pace that keeps my motivation over the break-out threshold. And the story behind this campaign, as simple as it may appear, has delivered to me in each of these points.

There was even some freedom in the order of solving the side quests, giving the campaign a degree of non-linearity. And the side quests were quite fitting with the main story, and quite challenging for the levels at which they were planned to be solved (at least for hard-core difficulty).

I appreciate the absence of pointless random encounters: battles generally occurred in places where you would expect resistance, against well-selected monsters (except those “things” mentioned above!). Though it is possible to have random encounters at area transit, but the chance for them to occur seems to be very low, and they can be easily avoided if saving just before transiting.

Companion interaction is for me just optional filler: if it’s there, fine; otherwise just equip them, level them up carefully and enjoy their contribution in combat! In this campaign, the companions just present themselves briefly; fine with me, with no negative influence on campaign rating. Yet I would like to observe that the outfit chosen (and enforced, since added clothing does not show!) by the author for the female companions may not be so suitable for adventurers that are supposed to crawl through dirt and mud…

Regarding the strict telling of the story (in writing), I cannot say much about the “drowish” text, but a careful proof-reader could certainly improve the English text in some places…

*   Area design: excellent
This is where this campaign really shines: moving through such marvelous and atmosphere-rich areas is really inspiring and surely contributes to the motivation level! And here I would also like to praise the custom content creators that the author duly mentions in the “Credits” section of his intro: their artwork has surely made it easier for the author to make his areas look so great.

As already observed in an earlier post, I have also experienced performance issues in the mansion basement (not in the first level though), and also in the mine area. Nevertheless, the levels were still well-playable, but less-so that big “skull” area, where moving around was very jerky (I always use the WASD keys for moving). Yet I will not let these issues influence my area design rating.

*   Technical correctness: very good
Here I mean the things that the author has in hand, and not engine-related issues. Everything has worked as expected, except one XP cow that I have accidentally stumbled upon in the mansion area (300 XP on each click), which I don’t believe to be intentional.


Slight spoiler…
Another minor issue: while I have re-found ALL my items in those crates, there was only roughly 20% of my gold there!
End slight spoiler.

Lastly, a minor cosmetic issue with the Journal: before entering that last elevator, there are still a handful of journal entries; while they DO clear themselves, I never get the chance to verify the Journal if choosing to end the game when that option is offered; I had to reload and pick the other option to verify that the Journal was really clear.

Under the line, my rating of 10 is not a straight, but a subjectively-weighted average of the category ratings. So thank you alupinu for this wonderful campaign!
 

There is an Unofficial patch for this mod. It fixes some very minor issues. See the download and details here:

https://forum.neverwintervault.org/t/fanglewood-mod/3254?u=travus 

thank you Travus for the patch, I encountered no bugs.  All quests completed and closed properly (except for the magic armor quest because I didnt find the purple diamond, darn it!)

Excellent mod, a right proper challenge on hardcore mode.  I played a ranger and picked up the cleric and the druid.  I needed all my strategy and tactics to make it, and I had a ton of fun doing it.  I thought the limited rest areas idea worked very well, it really added to the survival atmosphere. 

Truly a hidden gem and definitely goes  on my replay list.  well done author!

Well, this module is definitely worth playing for everyone i'd say. About what that guy who lost his gruntles said, the question is: did he play alone or by hiring the companions? Becouse i always play alone when i can, unless there's some *incredibly* interesting characters, and yeah, alone this module is much more difficult, let's just say that when (SPOILERS i suppose) you get to fight lot of kuo toas with scrapped equipment i had to manually raise my level or i simply couldn't do it. But i guess, with companions it shouldn't be *that* hard?

Sure, the fact that you have to rest where is defined by the dm and not where you choose (as in that *thing* called solasta) it's quite unnerving, but i guess that making something like pathfinder kingmaker with the option to build camp wherever you want could be quite difficult to make, i don't know. Even that way is a little more realistic than in the standard campaign where you kneel five seconds and you're done lol.

What could be improved is surely the companions, it seems like he made 5 or6 randomly generated dudes and thrown them there. I'd have made maybe 2 or 3 but developed them a little more. But again, i usually work alone, so i say this just for the sake of it.

Honestly i don't know which setting is settled this module, (if it's grayhawk i'm not an expert so i don't recognize it) but this could have been a perfect ravenloft adventure, i mean, modules like misery stone could seem even a little forced in their horror traits, this one instead, has a lot of -let us say- horror parts, and they feel totally natural, not forced in any how.

Sure the ending could seem a little silly, that's for sure. I'd have add (SPOILERS, AGAIN) your character chasing the 'halfling' for strangle him after discover what was inside the yellow packet. (dragon or not).

Anyway, that's great work.

I started with a level 1 human monk, finished at level 10 (could have reached level 10 if I had chosen another reward after delivering the yellow package).

Very nice story (and more original than "we need you to save the world"), very nicea areas, some items very well hidden, various companions to choose from so any class or race could be played: I'll definitely play it again some time with a different character.

The only bug I found is that the goose chase in the mansion area can end before being even started, if you throw a fireball to clean the undead and destroy the chest containing the first clue. But apart from the XP and magic item you won't get, it has no effect on the main quest.

All in all, this campaign is worth playing!