Descent into Avernus Review — Give the Party a Reason to Save Elturel
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus combines a troubled city opening, the fall of Elturel, an infernal wasteland, and a campaign about Zariel. It covers levels one through thirteen and includes a substantial Baldur’s Gate gazetteer, diabolical deals, and infernal war machines. Its strongest contents are the imagery and mechanics of Avernus. Its weakest part is getting the characters from the opening investigation to a convincing reason to save another city.
Baldur’s Gate is substantial, but not the whole campaign
The opening chapter moves through places such as the Elfsong Tavern, the Dungeon of the Dead Three, the Low Lantern, and Vanthampur Villa. It introduces criminal and political trouble before the characters reach the campaign’s infernal setting.
The separate gazetteer gives Baldur’s Gate neighborhoods, institutions, dangers, and character connections. That is useful material for a city campaign even outside this adventure.
The tension is that the main story then leaves much of that setting behind. A reader attracted by the title’s city name may expect Baldur’s Gate to remain the center of play, while the book’s most distinctive adventure content happens elsewhere. The city material adds value, but its prominence can give the wrong impression of the campaign’s emphasis.
The early dungeons can also be severe for low-level characters. This is not a gentle tutorial simply because it begins at first level.
Elturel supplies the central crisis
The fallen city makes the consequences of infernal power visible through its inhabitants, ruined safety, and desperate circumstances. High Hall and the Grand Cemetery provide important locations before the party moves deeper into Avernus.
This is a strong premise. Saving a community provides more concrete stakes than a general instruction to oppose evil. It becomes less effective if the characters have spent the opening forming attachments only to Baldur’s Gate and do not understand why Elturel should be their responsibility.
That is the book’s biggest story weakness. It supplies events that move the campaign forward, but the emotional bridge is thinner than the scale of the rescue mission requires. A DM should understand that transition before building characters exclusively around the opening city.
Avernus has a memorable identity
Fort Knucklebone, warlords, dangerous landmarks, fiendish powers, and the quest surrounding Zariel’s sword create a distinctive wasteland. The landscape’s instability and supernatural rules reinforce that this is not simply a desert with more demons.
Lulu gives the campaign a recurring companion connected to its central history. That can make the infernal journey more personal and provide a contrast with its brutality. The risk is allowing a companion’s guidance to carry too much of the party’s decision-making. The book needs the players to feel they are choosing a response to the crisis, not merely accompanying someone who already knows the important story.
The individual locations are some of the best ingredients here. Several are easy to imagine becoming the center of a memorable session. Their connections are less strong than their concepts.
The quest paths can feel like errands
The Avernus chapter supplies routes through different contacts and destinations. Their chain of requests gives the DM a way to continue the search, but can produce a repeated pattern of traveling to one figure only to be sent to another.
That is a pacing issue rather than a shortage of content. The map contains plenty of interesting places. The problem is that information and progress can feel delayed by a succession of required exchanges.
I would recommend the book more strongly to a DM willing to reorganize those connections than to someone expecting its route to create momentum automatically. Its setting offers freedom of imagination, while the written quest structure can feel surprisingly narrow.
Deals and war machines are valuable additions
The diabolical-deals appendix develops infernal contracts and the benefits fiends can offer. It makes temptation part of the game rather than only a line in a devil’s description.
Infernal war machines receive statistics and rules, with variations and chase support. They provide a distinct form of travel and combat suited to the wasteland. Their fuel and infernal context also connect the spectacle to the setting’s moral pressure.
These systems are a meaningful reason to use the book beyond its main campaign. They still require the group to enjoy bargaining, dark consequences, and vehicle procedures. They are focused tools, not necessary additions to every D&D game.
B3’s verdict
Avernus is an imaginative, uneven campaign. Its fallen city, infernal locations, deals, and war machines offer excellent material. Its opening difficulty, motivation gap, and chains of errands make the complete story less polished than the premise. Buy it for a group interested in that particular infernal adventure, and expect to strengthen the connections between its best locations. Its original 2014-era mechanics also deserve review when used with revised core rules.