Ventured into the kobold caves last night for the first time, we even had a small level appropriate group. Overall it was a great experience, but we ran into a small problem.
Main Tent
The larger central tent (what I assume to be the main tent? We did not get around to going through all of them) had way too many spawns in it. I did not count them, but I would estimate there were over a dozen of hostile mobs (kobolds and weasels) crammed inside the small tent. This made it a little bit laggy, but what was worse was that we simply could not move a muscle due to the overkill of spawns. I was stuck right next to the door myself, unable to click it because a tiny kobold was blocking my path. I was lucky enough to have my bleeding stopped, but recovering did not help me because I still could not move anywhere.
The sheer number of them may also have been a little bit overkill challenge-wise, we had no useful AoE attacks at our level yet to take care of them. And without a shirt of treant, you quickly gain 5+ points of bleeding damage per round on top of all the other damage because of all the giant weasels. Luckily one of our partymembers managed to get out in time and ran to get help from a higher level in the Outskirts, without the help I doubt we would ever have been able to clear the tent.
Traps
There was a trapped chest inside the tent which struck me as a bit harsh. Someone forgot to check for traps and it dealt close to 20 damage, which is harsh for a level 2-4 dungeon, but would have been our damn own fault. The reason I think it is a little too harsh is that the damage had a pretty big AoE radius which covered a significant portion of the tent's interior. We made it out fine, but I can imagine that after the biggest fight in the dungeon a trap like that could instantly wipe an entire party, even my level 4 with 14 constitution only has a total of 30 hitpoints. I would hate seeing an entire party of level 2-3 players all instantly die because they have nobody with search skill or disable trap in the party.
Outside of that one trap, I was actually prepared to face a few more small traps. Spike traps, maybe tripwires that let out a bunch of small hostile vermin? (Rats, bats, spiders?)
Overall
All in all, I did really enjoy my time in this mini-dungeon. Outside of the main tent, the level of spawns and number of enemies felt just right. Challenging, but doable.
The cave went less deep than I expected, but the design and feel of the place really said kobolds. That they kept tamed animals in a pen was a nice unexpected touch.
The AI worked fine as well, one of the kobolds opened the beast pen as we engaged in combat, which was a logical turn of events that made for an intense encounter.
The risk versus reward was also appropriate, there were a few useful low level item drops, but I particularly liked how many of the kobolds had hoarded low value gems.
So it was really just the one tent that seemed overkill, the rest of the dungeon gave us a good run for our money. Hope this feedback is useful, keep up the good work.
