The D&D Essentials Kit
Hello folks, and welcome back to D3. Today I want to talk to you about the DnD Essentials Kit that I finally got my hands on because Target had been sold out
The kit is currently exclusively available from Target, but will be available other places in September. Link for Target and Amazon preorder at the bottom of the post.
The box contains a campaign called “The Dragon of Icespire Peak,” an assassin’s set of dice, rulebook, premade characters, a map, a DM screen, and magical items. All in all, I really found the kit to be great for starting players, possibly even better than the starter kit.
My good friend, Chris was in town, and I just so happened to get him an Essentials kit for his birthday, so we sat down to try out the new 2-player mechanic, he was the DM and I was the player.
I created my own character as well as using two sidekick characters. The character I used was a paladin. Since I was the Warrior of my group, I created a Spellcaster and an Expert as my Sidekicks. I chose Donnabella to be my healer and Talon to be my Archer.
The mechanics of using the Sidekicks is pretty simple. The rulebook quite literally tells you what they are wearing, what spells and cantrips they know, all of their stats, and their modifiers. It was a little difficult to roleplay all 3 of them, so my Paladin took over as doing most of the talking.
Anyways we head into the town named Phandalin and sought out the job board since it was still early in the day. There were 3 quests posted on the board for us. We chose to accept all. Unfortunately, we only had the time to complete 2 of them before our session came to an end. Below are the 2 quests we completed.
SPOILER ALERT! BEYOND THIS POINT ARE SOME STORY SPOILERS FOR THESE TWO QUESTS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
We began with the quest to Umbrage Hill. As we approached the tower Adabra was in, my first big surprise of the game was waiting. As we got near the party notices something beating on Adabra’s door. The something turns out to be a manticore. Talon seeing a chance to get a bit of gold in his pockets takes a shot at the manticore and misses. It seemed our heroes were in grave danger. However, my paladin stepped in with honeyed words and a nat 20 deception check that we only meant to get his attention. The manticore spoke to us and told us that it was fleeing the dragon on the peak. He said that he meant to eat Adabra or us. I asked the manticore if we could perhaps come to an accord. A great persuasion check and a deal were struck. We would get him a pig and he would not eat us or the lady. The manticore agreed to meet us later and we spoke to Adabra. Try as we might she wouldn’t return to the town. We went back to town to collect our reward. We then purchased a pig took it to the meeting spot. We agreed that the village would feed the manticore, 1 pig every 3 days. If they don’t, it may end badly for them, but hey, that’s a later problem.
We then headed out to the Dwarven Excavation site. We met the dwarves there who asked us to help them explore the ruins. We still had a decent amount of daylight so we figured why not? Plus we got a rare item for it. Anyways, there was some exploration, some trap doors, a spot of jelly on the floor, and some loots. We lost track of time and were then forced to spend the night. We barricaded ourselves in and slept well. The next morning we departed for the town. On the way out we snuck up on some orcs. They left a sentry behind as the main group headed out. as acted as a distraction as Talon let loose hell on the unsuspecting orc. We left his body in the cave and made it back to town.
We played for about 3 hours and reached level 3. I had a really good time and so did Chris. I look forward to a chance to play the whole campaign with a group. However, I think the 2-player rules work really well. I look forward to using the same mechanics on my starter kit to see if the rules work as well with the Lost Mines campaign.
I think this is an absolutely great addition to your Dungeons and Dragons collection whether you are brand new or a veteran. I have only one complaint about the box set. It was so minor to me, that I almost didn’t mention it. The DM screen included in the box is stunning, but also flimsy. Other than that, this thing is awesome.
Thank you for your time folks, and I hope you enjoyed this post. If you did, drop us a like and follow us for all of our latest content. If you have the Essentials Kit, let us know your thoughts in the comments. As promised links below.
Originally published at Dungeons, Delves, and Dice.
