Review of Vault of the Fiends

In previous posts, I've analysed the setting and characters of the Dungeoneer set Vault of Fiends. In this post, I review the vault for its game play.

Vault of Fiends is a brutal dungeon crawl that focuses on negative effects and deadly monsters. Your job in Vault of Fiends is to avoid all the things trying to kill you long enough for you to find the few spare treasure and boons that power up your player character. I haven't actually counted the card types in this deck, but I'm convinced there are twice as many Peril cards than Glory cards. This dungeon is deadly, and when it's not deadly it's spiteful and warps you or the room you're in, or rotates the room, or tries to burn you or drown you.

Mechanical rooms and rooms with mechanics

The spirit of this Dungeoneer set is maybe best represented by rooms like Flooded Chamber, Turning Chamber, Armory, and Fiery Chasm. Flooded Chamter and Fiery Chasm both require your to overcome a Threat when you enter, and deal 1 wound on failure. In other words, the dungeon punishes you for utilising the core mechanic of exploration. The Armory is similar, although it offers you the benefit of a free action to don armour, and the Threat is only triggered when you take it up on the offer.

What's intriguing about this dungeon is that many of these rooms can be deactivated either through a Quest or by taking an action in the Black Cyst room. There's a good amount of "unreasonable" threats in this set, but if you play your cards right, you can nevertheless find the loophole that nullifies or mitigates the fallout. And often that's what you have to do, because this set doesn't give you a lot of positive effects to work with. There are turns when I've ended up with nothing but Peril cards in my hand, or 2 Quests that don't grant a level gain as a reward. There's the sense in the Vault of Feinds that you don't have a whole lot to work with, and instead you have to take what you get and work around it.

Even many of the boons and treasure you find feel like workarounds. The Boots of Planting and Boots of Stability ward away plane shifts, Hiding in Shadows lets you hide from monsters, all of which is a huge help when a negative effect is directed at you, but they're by definition reactions to a threat.

Might and magic

That's not to say you're always on the back foot in Vault of Fiends. In my most recent game, Shara Quickblade had a +4 to melee at level 2 because she'd accomplished an Artifact Quest and equipped a boon. Malfvius, the Drakan Sentinel, is able to pay Glory to defeat monsters. The player characters are, or can become, powerful. In fact, I felt like there was a real battle between the forces of mundance melee and magic in this set more than in any other. I felt like I was able to power-up my character in either might or magic, and never quite found a way to master both. Obviously this is often the case, and it's influenced by the character you're playing, but the boons and trasures are hard to come by in this set, so you end up specialising in whatever you happen to find. You take what you can get, and make the most of it.

Deadly dungeon

In my most recent game, Shara Quickblade won and Maluvius fell to the eveil mastermind Ramalith. I think a total of 4 Quests, between Shara and Maluvius, were completed and not one of them granted recovery of health (and only one granted a level-up.) It's by no means an impossible dungeon, but it is a resolutely deadly one. You will come to hate Ramalith, either the card or the character, or both. Not since Cholizar have I felt such vitriol for a Dungeoneer villain. This dungeon hates you, because Ramalith hates you. And that's fair play, because you're going to learn to hate Ramalith (and his horrible creations) too. And that makes this an extremely satisfying dungeon crawl, especially when you're up for a healthy dose of punishment.