Portobello’s Campaign Challenge Review: Strange Things At Burrow Dawn Inn

We conclude our set of event map reviews with the last challenge of Portobello’s campaign, “Strange Things At Burrow Dawn Inn”. In case you missed it, here are the ones of Trial of Traps, Artificer’s Workshop and A Rock Falls.

Strange Things Map
Strange Things Map

Following a classic suspense arc, “Strange Things At Burrow Dawn Inn” should be a grand final, a map worthy of bringing the event to the finish line. Unfortunately the fourth event map heavily falls short of this expectation.

Strange Things Beholder
Strange Things Beholder

It’s almost like the worst map concludes the event, but it admittedly suffers from the greatness of it’s brothers and sisters. Those were filled with new mechanics, annoying and fun elements as well as great designs. Strange Things however has none of that. It’s hard to single out something specific, but the combination of the reused Burrow Dawn Inn, a trivial two-minute defense sequence, fighting bosses from other maps and the lack of something innovative is simply not the stuff that makes highlights.

Strange Things Drizzt
Strange Things Drizzt

I assume the boss fight against Drizzt could be troubling for a low-level party judged by the amount of damage I took, but considering what the other maps have to offer, nobody should be playing Strange Things anyway. The two additional Accreditations don’t make up for the extended length of the map and the grand prize has been tied to the Artificer’s Workshop.

Strange Things Eye Beam
Strange Things Eye Beam

Consequently I had trouble even getting into the map and had to settle for a premade that I compiled over 20 minutes or so. And the first run would be the last one as well although I initially wanted to play the map multiple times to get a better feel and insight. Didn’t happen and I’m not really sorry. I also heard the map could bug while following Flabbergast’s Green Eye. Apparently the drow enemies would fail to spawn, making progress impossible.

Although it doesn’t really change the fact that the overall map design and creativity of the event has been absolutely extraordinary, it’s unfortunate that of all things the last map is not as well done as the others.

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