The adventure collection Quests from the Infinite Staircase includes Beyond the Crystal Cave, a dungeon crawl that flips the genre on its head. While players should still expect to explore new environments and meet a variety of creatures, this adventure is sunny, characterized by mischief, inspired by Shakespeare, and full of noncombat encounters. Characters will learn that victory need not be sought at the end of a sword but through empathy, curiosity, and cunning.

If you’d like to save two young paramours whose love was too strong for their rival families’ anger, read more below!

Warning! This article contains minor spoilers for Beyond the Crystal Cave.

• Beyond the Crystal Cave Adventure Overview
• Monster of the Week: Barkburr
• Beyond the Crystal Cave Adventure Hooks
• What If the Real Treasure Was the Friends We Made Along the Way?

Beyond the Crystal Cave Adventure Overview

Character level: 6 – If the table is using story-based level advancement, players reach level 7 by the adventure’s conclusion.

Location: Largely in an enchanting garden in the Feywild.

Themes: Cleverness, Curiosity, Family, Love, Whimsy

Adventure Premise

Beyond the Crystal Cave tells a beautiful story of love, mortality, and dedication.

Years ago, a young couple disappeared near the town of Sybar, rumored to have fled the wrath of their rival families in search of a mythical paradise. Their families have since settled their dispute and are still hoping to find the missing couple—and hoping that the paramours will return home once they are informed that the feud has ended.

The party will travel through the Cave of Echoes, where wishes are granted and old magic flows. From there, players can enter a Domain of Delight in the Feywild called the Eternal Garden. As they explore and speak to NPCs, players can learn how the domain was created, and of the first couple to live in the garden many ages ago.

Talking It Out

Nearly all of the encounters in the Eternal Garden are nonviolent, though some of them are vaguely confrontational pranks, tricks, and sure, maybe a little light theft. Other obstacles to overcome include riddles, environmental puzzles, card games, the garden’s maze, and simply convincing suspicious Fey that you mean well. Some NPCs will even want to hear the party’s answers to philosophical questions like, "When is it okay to lie to someone you love?"

Most potential combat encounters in Beyond the Crystal Cave can be avoided or neutralized before anybody rolls Initiative. The party may run into a few harmful Fey or creatures with young who will attack if characters get too close to their offspring, but many of these can be calmed with a successful Animal Handling or Persuasion check.

Barbarians, Paladins, and other characters who prefer to solve problems with a sword may benefit from this exercise in restraint, cleverness, negotiation, and quick-thinking. Violence was not likely to get you very far in solving this mystery anyway; you can’t discover what the local Fey know if you kill them. But if that doesn’t motivate you to keep your sword sheathed unless necessary, remember that Domains of Delight are ruled over by an archfey. Gardens do need a gardener, after all…

Embrace Silliness

The Feywild is weird! In the Eternal Garden, the currents change direction at a whim. It’s always summer and many of the plants and animals can speak. The satyrs want to gossip, the leprechauns want to tell you a limerick, the badgers are preparing for a visit from their in-laws, and the unicorns fancy themselves philosophers.

You’ll get exhausted if you try to keep track of it all or understand even half of it, so I recommend you embrace it. Tell the chimera about that weird dream you had, and pay for information by sharing an embarrassing secret. Lean into the energy that this Domain of Delight has to offer.

Hi, Fey! How This Adventure Has Evolved

In the original 1983 publication of Beyond the Crystal Cave, a mage named Porpherio (now reimagined as Porphura) created, enchanted, and tended to a private garden with his wife, Caerwyn. Under their care, the garden became steeped in magic and monsters and many Fey creatures, and was patrolled by a godlike figure called The Green Man. This updated version of the adventure retains the original garden’s whimsy and magic, but places it in the Feywild as a Domain of Delight ruled over by the Gardener, an archfey. Traveling in this corner of the Feywild comes with its perks—it’s always summer, everything smells lovely, and the animals talk! But it also comes with risks. Will you remember your trip? Will years have passed by the time you return?

Monster of the Week: Barkburr

A barkburr is an aggressive Plant creature that turns its victims into trees. They defend their forest’s natural equilibrium and tenaciously pursue anything that disrupts it. Although most guardians of nature don’t fret over every snapped twig, barkburrs are easily agitated and will attack most adventurers that approach their trees.

The barkburr’s tactics are pretty straightforward: Attach itself to a target and inject its poison, turning the target into a tree instantaneously. Once the target has lignified (a word that I totally knew before discovering this monster), it can only be freed using Greater Restoration or another similar effect.

Barkburr Combat Tactics

Use the barkburr to inspire fear in the party. Even in a world where dragons can roast you alive, the threat of being transfigured into bark would be uniquely terrifying. To avoid the risk of accidentally turning half of the party into trees, you may want to focus on one target—preferably one with high Constitution saving throws or one who has disrupted the forest—and consistently keep that character under the threat of petrification.

Once attached, the barkburr will not be easy to remove. With 52 Hit Points, most level 6 characters will not be able to destroy the creature in one turn, so the party will have to work together to quickly kill a barkburr before it has the chance to inject more poison. Stronger party members may be able to rip the barkburr out (ouch?) with a DC 13 Athletics check, so if you don’t think you can manage to kill the barkburr before it injects your friend with lignifying poison, try to just yank it out! In an adventure full of social encounters, combat with a barkburr can sharply heighten the tension.

Beyond the Crystal Cave Adventure Hooks

If you need a little help driving the party toward adventure, Quests from the Infinite Staircase has got you covered:

Nafas the Noble Genie

Quests from the Infinite Staircase introduces the noble genie and optional group patron Nafas, who resides in a dimension called the Infinite Staircase that players can use as a starting point for these adventures.

Nafas hears the wish of the two families in Sybar who miss their loved ones. Their hearts call out to the universe, begging for someone to find the lost couple and bring them home. Nafas, touched by their plea, instructs the adventurers to aid the broken-hearted families.

Missing Friends

Hey, I get it—some characters won’t want to go on an adventure because a genie told them to. I personally would take any opportunity to befriend a primordial spirit of cosmic power (you guys know djinni can use Create Food and Water to make wine, right?), but if that doesn’t appeal to your players, there are other ways to hook them into the adventure.

After several rescue parties have failed to find the missing lovers, perhaps someone close to them has decided to look for themselves. Player characters might belong to one of the formerly feuding families, or could have been friends with the couple when they disappeared. This option isn’t limited to one player, either—the entire party could all play old friends or siblings of Juliana or Orlando.

Fey Friends

This next hook doesn't come from Quests from the Infinite Staircase, but if player characters aren’t motivated solely by the 5,000 GP reward, perhaps they have a special connection to the Feywild. A character with ties to Fey creatures may want to search for the missing couple as part of their studies, as a favor to their archfey patron, or as part of their Paladin oath. Players should consider whether their character has visited the Feywild often, has never visited but is well-read on the realm’s dangers, or is entirely new to this field of study.

What If The Real Treasure Was The Friends We Made Along The Way?

What kind of treasure can players expect to find in Beyond the Crystal Cave? Well, whether you’re doing it for the clout, for the genie Nafas, or because you believe in true love and doing what’s right, you will be receiving 5,000 GP from Sybarate’s governor for completing the mission.

The party can also find a small handful of magic items and quite a bit of gold and gems. As with any dungeon crawl (even unconventional ones in an enchanted garden), much of this treasure can be spotted with a sharp eye and stolen with a deft hand. But unlike most dungeon crawls, the majority of these magic items are held by local Fey who might be persuaded to trade with or help the party. Instead of fighting or stealing, players may have more luck simply making friends.

Most of the garden’s denizens have a high opinion of couples in love and would be hesitant to give away information about Juliana and Orlando. But the adventure encourages learning information via conversation rather than intimidation or combat, and you want your players to have fun meeting wacky NPCs. To that end, I recommend rewarding shrewd roleplay, cunning social maneuvers, fun tricks, or even just hitting it off with an NPC by giving gifts to the party.

Leprechauns might be grateful for a challenging riddle, satyrs might give a potion as thanks for telling an excellent joke, or dryads could bestow a gift if the party teaches them a new card game.

Preorder Quests from the Infinite Staircase Today!

In just a few short weeks, the door to the Infinite Staircase will open. Jump into some of D&D’s most beloved adventures and see what all the fuss was about—or bask in nostalgia as you relive stories you haven’t seen in years. Preorder your physical and/or digital copy of Quests from the Infinite Staircase from the D&D Beyond marketplace today!

Damen Cook (@damen_joseph) is a lifelong fantasy reader, writer, and gamer. If he woke up tomorrow in Faerûn, he would bolt through the nearest fey crossing and drink from every stream and eat fruit from every tree in the Feywild until he found that sweet, sweet wild magic.