Dungeons & Dragons Essentials Kit

TL;DR: Great quests in the book, especially for beginners, easily adaptable to other adventures, but does require some pre-existing knowledge of D&D, and a commitment to spend time fleshing out what's given to you.A lot of this might be due to my own negligence, but I was hoping this adventure would be a little more out-of-the-box. This was my first interaction ever with D&D, and it was a little overwhelming. I had to do a lot more research and preparation for it than I intended (which I love, but wasn't clear to me beforehand) and is the only thing that threw me off.The stuff that comes in this set is great, with a good rulebook to learn the basic rules and start playing, the adventure book (which will need fine-tuning from the DM), and all the handouts you would use during the adventure (love!). A big selling point of this particular adventure for me was that it could be run with just one player, which is definitely doable, and this set helps with that. It's easily scalable for more players too, which makes it more fun.For any first-time adventurers, I recommend either having played a game or two of D&D before, or going over the free "Mines of Phandelver" adventure on the DND Beyond website to get a better feel on how to run a campaign, then explore this set. The free adventure is more out-of-the-box playable, and lets you get a better grasp on how D&D works. Both are set in the same location (Sword Coast, specifically around Phandalin) and in roughly the same time period, so one adventure can lead nicely into the next, and the free adventure will give some necessary practice before going ice dragon hunting.The adventures/quests themselves are very nice, and can be adapted to fit any playstyle, both as a story or as standalone outings, with the book giving good introductions to the world, and some basic information on how to run encounters at each location (but as noted a few times now, the DM will need to have some experience already, as a lot of it needs to be adapted for the specific playstyle of their own game).The way I used this set was to expand on the "Mines of Phandelver" adventure with my friends, to give a more structured feel towards adventuring (as the quests in Icespire are very much sandboxy) and I think this works really well.Overall, I do recommend this adventuring set, as the physical items are super cool and the adventures inside the box are really fun, just be wary that it's something you'll need to put some work into before being able to play.

The dunguons and dragons essentials set is probably the best introduction to the dunguons and dragon world. It consists of some dice,a map (double sided), many blank character sheets, a prewritten adventure as well as a rulebook and cards for items, people and quests.The adventure is pretty good. It's not like other prewritten adventures, it has more choices as it consists of picking quests to do, with each quest being in a different place on the map. The adventure book also has a couple of monster stats at the back of the adventure book.The rulebook is also good. Not thick like the extra books that you can buy but it has all the information that you need at the start.The essentials set also consists of card, which are useful. There are cards explaining certain rules, like being grappled or suffocating, there's some initiative cards (the way of turns in a battle), there's some cards on some sidekicks. These can be used when there's only two people playing (one player and a dunguen master). However it is much more fun to play the game with 3 or more people. There's also cards on quests, these give you the name of the quest and some information on them. The cards are useful as it's a lot better to give something physically rather than telling them and then they'll have to write it down somewhere or remember it somehow.There are also a lot of blank character sheets.For someone who's only starting the game, it's a lot better to get pre made characters, this can be done by finding them on the Internet. I made my characters using dnd beyond, it's an app and it's useful for creating characters (give you a step by step guide) or getting information about Spells or tracking what happens at each level up. Other than the blank character sheets it's all perfect.Overall, in mu opinion, the essentials set is a lot better than the starter set, for someone who wants to start playing, I heavily recommend spending that extra bit of money to get something worth your while. You'll also have to learn some of the basic rules and know how the game works. It's a great start to start off a new hobby.