Comprehensive Guide to D&D Dungeon Survival? I'm Not So Sure!!

Into the Unknown was marketed as the dungeon survival handbook. It has a lot of interesting information, I'm just not sure it is terribly useful.
I almost feel like this book captures the real problem with D&D 4e. The game was great, but they created a lot of content that had such a narrow audience, there was no way they would be successful.
This book has great stuff if you are one that loves to build complete backstories for your characters. But for the rest of us...I just don't know.
Let's take a look at every single page and see what makes this D&D 4e adventure special. I will give my opinions along the way and you can decide if you think this is a module you would like to play.
If you want a PDF of Into the Unknown, you can get it from DriveThruRPG... www.drivethrur...
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[@Trenell83]

If we go by the product releases, then going off what you said being unfinished my guess is this was to be a set of three. This one Into the Unknown Dungeon, Into the Unknown Wilderness and Finally Into the Unknown City. The reason I say this is those were the box set of maps that was released with the essential sets. Themes were introduced in Dark Sun Campaign which is my favorite book along with the Creature Catalog I suggest those two to go over if going through more 4th edition D&D books. I also think themes were a third layer for character creation it might have been inspiration for backgrounds for 5e having mini abilities. Also if we're not doing campaigns then might I suggest Player's Handbook 3? I like the story they came up in there about how Psionics came to appear to the world.

[@MrNetWraith]

Honestly, if you want to talk about psionics-in-4e lore, then Psionic Power should be your recommendation there. The PHB 3 gives us some lore, but Psionic Power was the second of the X Power series after Primal Power to have a new "lore-centric" focus, so it has some absolutely awesome lore relating to the psionics classes, how psionics is perceived, what philosophies psionicists feel towards the use of their powers, theories as to where psionics originated...

[@nicklarocco4178]

I love the random tables. That was the only thing I really missed in 4e. There just weren't enough fun random tables. It's not a bad book, but it definitely seems like they already knew 4e was on its way out when they published it and sort of phoned in some aspects.

[@clarkside4493]

Regarding dungeons, I love the 4th edition DMG's random dungeon tables. They're fairly easy to use at the table, should your party go off the rails.

[@mattdahm4289]

Thanks Greybeard!

[@MrNetWraith]

This was one of the only 4e books I didn't obtain on first print, largely because I never knew it existed. When I got it, though, I was incredibly grateful to have it, mostly because of the absolutely awesome rules for kobold, goblin and svirfneblin PCs. I've never seen any of these races be so fun, flavorful and interesting to play in any edition before or since, with only Pathfinder coming close for kobolds and goblins.

[@RobLi123]

I got this book specifically for Iron Resurgences, best healing utility ever.

[@seanhardner5842]

Interesting book. Not much in there for me though. I agree about the old dungeons section not being necessary but that’s because I have & played all the AD&D modules. I was DM for Ravenloft. Played White Plume & have died in Tomb twice.

[@tigriscallidus4477]

Somehow a strange book with its focus, but I think its great that there were also some themes etc. published in a book form and not just in the Dragons Magazine. Maybe a "best of Dragon Magazine" would have been better, but its not bad content (like some adventures).

[@Xplora213]

It’s kinda weird seeing these books, which could really just be a few Dragon magazine articles. So many 3.5e etc books are just bolt on prestige classes or extra races etc. this is quite different to the splats from 2e which fundamentally changed the game with each book. Fighters and crafting were changed forever. Magic was changed. Priests were fleshed out entirely. Thieves guilds became so much useful stuff for stronghold staffing. These things just didn’t happen with the later stuff.

[@igwilly6592]

Ok, I have to disagree with you on this one. I loved the book, especially the "reviewing old dungeon" part, many of which I didn't know about. I think the reason that this book's focus is all over the place is because it (or the whole series) was a "farewell" thing to 4e. Even the mechanical design was 100% "classic" 4e - instead of Essentials 4e, which was the focus, in whole or in part, of most books by that time. The only part I'm on the fence about is the scrolls of power thing. Good idea, but did we need to bring Wish back? I mean, I don't think that we've ever been satisfied about that spell. Ever. It *is* weird to bring it back in the demise of the edition. But other than that, this book was very nice for me ^^

[@Parker8752]

My main issue with this book is that if I want to run a dungeon crawl, 4e isn't the game I'm going to do it with. Dungeon crawls rely on logistics and attrition, in addition to clever use of spells and items to either avoid combat or to skew it so heavily in the party's favour that combat itself is largely just a formality, in a way that 4e just isn't designed around. I might run an adventure that takes place in a dungeon, but there is a difference. Honestly, 3.5 is the last edition to really support dungeon crawling as a style of play.