Playing through the style="font-style: italic;">Phiarlan Carnival
is a blast. Once again, the developers at Turbine really maximize the
strengths of style="font-style: italic;">DDO,
traps and hirelings. You will find yourself burned to a crisp or
skewered like a fish from the various traps you’ll encounter.
The most fascinating traps are found in the second adventure,
Partycrashers, where you’ll infiltrate a huge gala by
sneaking through House Phiarlan’s Illusionarium. The first
half of the adventure is filled with illusions and illusionary traps
that will set your teeth on edge. A rogue would be extremely useful for
these quests. Sadly, I didn’t have a rogue with me, so I had
to bull my way through the traps.



I like to use href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/ddo/editorials/hirelings-fair-or-foul"
target="_blank">hirelings
as that I play at weird times and my friends might not be available to
play. Normally, I team up with my fellow writer Mattlow, but he was
unavailable. I missed hearing his bard play Free Bird while we
traveled, so I hired a cleric to keep my hit points up as my dwarf
fighter slaughtered all before him.

The adventure design is incredibly well done in this Adventure Pack.
Special mention has to be made for the Partycrashers and The Snitch
adventures. In Partycrashers, after you make your way through the
Illusionarium, you have the choice to sniff out Cabal members who are
in disguise at the gala. You can use actual skills (gasp!) such as Spot
or spells like True Seeing to pick them out. Dealing with the disguised
assassins makes the final fight easier for you. Going around and trying
to ferret out the assassins was a nice change of pace for an online
game. As for The Snitch, you spend the whole adventure chasing down a
Halfling through the sewers and then over the rooftops of Stormreach.
Every time you catch up to him, he uses a wand to summon some monsters
to fight for him while he scampers away. Naturally, he taunts you
throughout the entire chase.



There is a great deal of humor in this Adventure Pack and I found
myself laughing out loud quite a few times. Trying to convince the Hill
Giant, Brawnpits, to join a theater group was priceless.
You’ll find yourself slowing down to read all the dialogue.
The Halfling snitch that you’re chasing over the rooftops is
funny, but the bit where he summons a rust monster and exclaims
“What the heck is that?” as it slithers off and he
then summons other monsters was a gem.



The finest tribute I can say about playing these adventures was that I
never once looked at my experience bar. I was totally engrossed in the
adventures and was immersed in the storyline they were telling. Now,
isn’t that the reason why we love to play the game?



The only slightly negative thing I have to say is that the final fights
in the first three adventures are over rather quickly. However, the
final boss fight is extremely well done and goes through several
stages. While I would have preferred to have some more unique boss
fights, I can live with the current results.