Just want to discuss Eve of Ruin and everyone's thoughts on it. I've recently been getting into the running the source books from D&D and finding lots of content on how people "remix" or completely change them. This book was honestly one of my most hyped releases, I can't express my excitement. The lead up promotional material left me with questions, and now I've read the book on early access, and I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts. 

I would like to say, real people worked on this book. So let's be respectful, and kind, as well as honest with our thoughts and words.  

I pre-ordered the digital only, so still waiting for the 21st to read it, but I am interested to know what the early release ppl think of it.

@OP, you said it was one of your most hyped releases. Did it live up to the hype? What do you feel about the book?

First of all, I was a little disappointed that our only interaction with Vecna is at the very end. I was hoping to really get to delve deep into the mythos of Vecna and have the final fight feel like a strong narrative end.  Instead it felt more like a Kas book. The story is a fetch quest, with a plot twist, and then fight a god, who is conveniently de-powered to an Archlich. There's some great idea's and many cool legendary characters, but you don't meet 70% of them or only briefly, or not even their real versions. 

I loved the idea of Kas being a key figure in this book, but it seemed strange that his sword is absent. Sure we can add it in if we like, but how is this not a key part in defeating Vecna? 

It feels like this should have been a search for Godkiller (Like a new stat'd sword of Kas) artefacts and the final battle should have been powered by the Gods themselves to stop Vecna from attain his goal. 

There are clear nods to Stranger Things, like the conversion of his past self to being blonde and white, rather than bronze skinned and brown curly haired. I can see why this was done, but feels like "strange" move, if you'll pardon the pun. Vecna should inspire media, not be changed to suit it, like Marvel does with their comics, which doesn't usually go to well. 

The dungeons themselves have some really cool ideas (DEVIL CASINO!!!!!!) and for the most part I really liked. That being said, I still need to really need to go through them with a fine tooth comb. I'd like to say I wasn't really looking for things to hate or criticise, but reading the book certain things really stood out to me.

For instance, I'm running Shadow of the Dragon Queen, set in Dragonlance, so like any crazy person I read the whole series and I've nearly finished the Twin Trilogy. There's a glaring disregard for the source material, in both source books. It would have been an easy fix to say, the worlds been invaded by monsters that aren't from Krynn (Because Mulitverse). My assumption is they are streamlining all their content, and opening up options rather than restrictions, which I also understand.  

All in all, I wouldn't run this adventure as it currently stands. I'd have to completely rework it so characters actually meet Lolth, (actual) Acererak and Vecna earlier and have the chance to fight them and survive. The mutliverse hopping would be finding Godkiller weapons across all space and time, and have them making deals with Devils, Demons and Gods who are all threatened by Vecna's plans. The book is good inspiration, but a lot of work to make satisfying. 

I have more thoughts, but I want to hear others! What do you think? Did you agree, do you disagree? 

Honestly it felt Kas in the end was somehow more interesting mastermind then Vecna and realy deserved promotion for BBEG. I wouldn't be angry if wotc rebuild whole story around Kas and just throw Vecna away from adventure

Kas sabotaging trio from inside and slowly learning their goals, taking hands on artifacts on rest of trio with their consent ... all while those party trying to reach him and wondering where the hell Kas actually is - would at least be funny imo.

Some goals like putting hand on actually small on global scale city Neverwinter is not understandable to me, why you need story around deathouse when there is one specific temple where Vecna have statues (or statue i kind of forget cos)

whole adventure feel like some try to get money from generic nostalgia trip, rather than well crafted story, mcguffin pretty irrelevant in the end, victory over vecna is just temporary since we don't kill or imprison him just give him plane or whatever ticket to Oerth, literally all party do is slap on wrist if we go on adventure as written

Also there is actually not enough vecna and specifically his minions with most of time is just travelling to get rod.

Yeah with changes it could be good but it could be said about every adventure, if judge as written - i'm not impressed, a lot of art is good though

Long story short, the book is way overpriced, and poorly written. It's got some nice enemies, some cute puzzles, and a few stand out moments but it isn't enough to be considered a full adventure.

The major hurdle that this book needed to clear was the expectations for a high level adventure. There aren't many high level adventures out there, so it stands to reason that a new adventure leading to level 20 was bound to be desired or desirable. It's certainly an uphill battle because of how wacky 5e is in terms of making adventurers nothing short of Demi-Gods by level 20. The natural question then is how one appropriately challenges said adventurers. It's that very hurdle that I'm not 100% sure the book clears. Vecna's Stat block for example is so weak as to be almost anti-climatic. So much so that my first edit would be to construct a solid way to vanquish Vecna once and for all. Make it a massive sacrifice, or really costly in one way or another.

I do love the idea of a good plane hopping adventure that allows player characters to explore and almost get a taster of the lore in each different setting that 5e has to offer. It's a really lovely idea that I think serves as a fun way to open doors to those who might not have considered a setting previously. Ebberon for example has always seemed to me a little 'out there' and not for me. The section in Vecna has me seriously reconsidering and I've borrowed a copy of Ebberon to read through. So at the very least could be a clever marketing gimick.

Ultimately though this adventure collapses into a giant fetch quest. You're looking for seven pieces of a rod. Wow! That rod must have great power then eh? Except there is a major problem that the writers just seem to miss. If the party manage to uncover the secret...

 ...why should the party want or need to chase down the remaining parts of the Rod of Seven Parts? The book itself makes clear that the party could just skip the vast majority of the adventure's content. That cannot be considered anything more than stunningly bad writing. Especially, when the rod isn't all that essential to the final showdown. The party get the Chime of Exile real early on which means most of the book falls under the category of filler or busy work. 

At this point then, what could we have had instead?

Well, we could have had a social encounter to track down a retired party of adventurers who stopped one of Vecna's plans before...social discovery and deduction of the places and areas he likes to occupy. We could have had a chapter dedicated to the discovery of the secrets of lichdom...What is a phylactery? Why is it important? How does one destroy it? We could have had a chase section where the party either need to protect a particular artefact that Vecna needs to complete his scheme...or a chase as they try to recover the artefact from him or one of his minions. We could have had an entire chapter dedicated to exploring Neverwither Castle and tracking down what is wrong with Lord Neverember...better yet an entire seige where Vecna's undead minions are attempting to kidnap Lord Neverember. 

Utlimately, this to my mind is the problem. Sloppy, unimaginative writing. The entire thing feels very phoned in and poorly thought through. My guess is that the team behind it hoped that it would feel like an epic romp across the cosmos where the stakes are the very fabric of reality. Instead...it comes across largely as one giant fetch quest with a pretty underwhelming final encounter. Maybe I'm cynical, but I preordered it and desperately hoped it was going to be a fantastic book. We sorely need high level adventures that aren't just meat grinders...this isn't it though. This is a pretty poor turn out from WotC. There are certainly moments of fun and joy in the adventure, but there's nowhere near enough to justify the exorbitant cost of the book.

My best advice for people considering this is to strip the adventure for parts. Take some of the ideas and concepts, but I don't think I would ever run it as written. It's a bit like Phandelver and below in that way. Phandelver has a massive disconnect between the original LMoP adventure and the tacked on illithid stuff. In my play of that, I decided to have Nezznar actually controlled by an Intellect Devourer, littering more clues to the encroachment of illithids throughout the adventure. Like all the recent stuff, the core idea and theme seems amazing...but it fizzles out so quickly when one can see what the team actually produced. It's a massive shame because clearly people will have worked hard on it as well as being something sorely lacking in the 5e catalogue of adventures - high level official adventures.

The Lambent Zenith’s map is missing numbers corresponding to given text! I’m not the best in mental spatial rotation so I got lost where they were talking about while reading that chapter. 

Quote from Ash84 >>

I pre-ordered the digital only, so still waiting for the 21st to read it, but I am interested to know what the early release ppl think of it.

@OP, you said it was one of your most hyped releases. Did it live up to the hype? What do you feel about the book?

I have a post on this thread, but my main feelings are disappointment. It's a lot of cool idea's for sure, I think it suffers from being a level 20 adventure and it doesn't do itself any favours. I believe epic level adventures should feel epic, and this is a swing, but unfortunately a miss for me. There's lots of redeeming qualities, but when i sit down to do a Vecna campaign with my group, I will be doing a lot changes to this book. 

I have read through about half of the book. It's honestly disappointing, the editing is bad, I've seen spelling errors in it and there are confusing points. Like in the Ebberon bit, you have to retrieve an item that is in possession by a group of wanders, who have a conflict with another group. Has a whole bit in there about how to solve the conflict, but no mention of how your PCs obtain the item. Just where it is, so the DM has to come up with how or why this group will provide the item. An item they consider sacred.

I like the overall idea of the book, there is some good stuff in there but feel like a lot of the encounters the PCs are just going to walk through due to the high level of the adventure. Like, in the death house there is a mimic encounter.. a single mimic for a party of level 14 PCs. That mimic isn't getting a turn, so what's the point?

So this book is going to require a lot of heavy lifting to run, especially with an experienced party that know the mechanics well. I am preparing to run it for a group and I am having to do a lot of writing for it but that's the game we play. 

Also, not that there's anything wrong with it but it seems that every single NPC that is new to this adventure is female. Its quite refreshing to see so much representation/equality in this adventure but I just know Im going to be correcting "she, she's a she, not a he" every session hahaha