The West Marches of Solasta (1-20)
In the spirit of the “West Marches” style of play popularized by the Alexandrian and Matt Colville, the campaign is a total sandbox, with each location being a self-contained adventure. The scope is on the scale of a DLC, with 30+ hours of gameplay if you complete all of it. It is a module most focused on the combat and exploration pillars of gameplay, designed to truly test your skill as a 5e player. In the manner of an old-school hexcrawl, it has an array of bite-sized locations and dungeons sprinkled throughout a wild, desolate land. The lore is given in sparse but evocative vignettes, and the game uses writing to create a mood. Every region has at least one dungeon to discover, and almost every magic item in Solasta can be discovered somewhere within the game. The party chooses the difficulty of their adventure by how far they stray from the hub city, Sanctuary. In the center of the map you will find low-level content, but around the periphery, great challenges wait.
This campaign makes full use of high-level play, and revels in giving you new goals where most campaigns stop. Once you will reach level 20, and you will finally have the mettle to take on the epic dungeons: the harrowing battle gauntlets of the Temple of Ordeals, the castle of an ancient gold dragon, the citadel of the god Sorr-Tarr, a great temple of the four elements, and the jungle fortress of the goblinoid knights of Maglubiyet. There are many attribute-increasing book rewards in the endgame to encourage epic-level play; you won’t run out of things to do at end level–on the contrary, that’s when the real trials begin! You can “win” at any time and export your characters by exiting through an archway in the main hub city.
Another note is that Unfinished Business is highly recommended if you’re going to play this mod. This is because UB lets you advance to level 20 and use a few crazy-powerful level 9 spells. This is indispensable because this module will contain some encounters where you face vast throngs of foes.
6 player parties are fully supported. If you have trouble finding the 6-player exit, hold down the alt button and look for a doorway. However, the campaign is balanced for 4 players, ultimately, so if you play a 6 person party, the campaign will be far easier. If you would like to preserve the challenge to some extent, I recommend changing the XP gain to 67% in UB to mimic a 6-way XP split as opposed to the default 4-way split. You will still have ample XP to reach level 20.
The module will require you to preserve your resources. Every time you enter a new area, the entrance will be locked until you find a long-rest campfire. Be sure to save frequently, preferably BEFORE you enter any new zone, because once you’re in, there’s often no going back until you go forward. If you have trouble with this dimension of the difficulty, talk to the “easy moder” in the graveyard Sanctuary. You can also recruit NPC companions from the Monster Slayer’s Guild in Sanctuary, and you will unlock more companions the more monsters you kill.
Tips for playing
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>EVERY SINGLE SKILL will be useful when making your character. There are skill challenges for all the skills that aren’t directly related to play. The main skills used in skill challenges are: athletics, acrobatics, animal handling, deception, history, intimidation, investigation, nature, sleight of hand, performance, persuasion, and religion. The most common skills challenges are for Athletics and Investigation.
>SAVE BEFORE ENTERING EACH ZONE. Almost every new zone you enter requires you to find a long-rest campfire before you can backtrack. This means you might get locked into an unbeatable challenge if you don’t save often enough.
>If you are getting TPK’ed a lot, start moving around in cautious mode. Scouting is a very good idea. Otherwise you may pull monsters from far away.
>AOE is pretty much a hard requirement to survive. Some of the battles involve lots of enemies.
Rough Level requirements of content
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Tier 1 (Levels 1-3)
-Royal Preserves
-Eastern Steppe
-Gakbolg Swamp
-Wildmaze, Deep 1
Tier 2 (Levels 4-9)
-Mortgard (Megadungeon lv 3-16)
-The Direwood
-Bleakhaven
-Western Steppe
-Aarlad Woods
-Poolplglup Swamp
Tier 3 (Levels 10-12)
-White Dragon Baruvex
-Tower of Khaal
-Northern Ornon Rainforest
-Southern Ornon Rainforest
Tier 4 (Levels 13-16)
-Black Dragon Odalrang
-Tower of Kra
-Fralorne Steppe
-Hrorlad Craglands
Tier 5 (Levels 17-19)
-Green Dragon Oghrigaal
-Tower of Oros
-Forsaken City
Tier 6 (Level 20)
-Gold Dragon Ur
-Glowing Pit
-Citadel of Sorr-Tarr
-Temple of Ordeals
-Ghulagarh Fortress
-Elemental Temple
Bug notes:
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Bug 1:
If you are having trouble with the mod not appearing in your custom campaigns list when you run Solasta, you must download the Unfinished Business mod and update it to the latest version. Google “Solasta Unfinished Business” and check out the Nexus page for it.
Bug 2:
If you are seeing activators on the map that you can’t click on (that is, the luminous yellow boxes that appear when you press alt), quicksave and reload to fix this issue.
Required DLC:
These DLC should be installed in order to use this item.
Solasta: Crown of the Magister - Lost Valley
Solasta: Crown of the Magister - Palace of Ice
