Rise of Tiamat - Hedge maze

[Lycanhero]

I'm a new Dm with all new players and we are running our first campaign through Tyranny of Dragons.

At the moment my players are in the hedge maze of Xonthal's Tower and at the last sundial they are stumped on what to do.
They went trough all 6 rooms as written in the book and some own created puzzle rooms and they are just choosing paths at the sundial even knowing that it probably will be wrong.

Should I make an NPC or a room that gives them a hint at the sundial? or should I just continue making puzzle rooms/recycle old rooms?

Thank you all in advance for the feedback :)

[DwarfDM]

Give them an insight check. And make it easier After every time the choose a wrong route.

[Zippee]

Somehow my group managed to eventually plough through this almost by accident - took a while though! I don't think they ever actually understood the puzzle.

The last choice at the sundial is an odd one, especially if you've had to rebuff/dishearten any previous hedge-cutting attempts.

Esentially you need to point hem towards each solution being a bifurcation of the last - with all paths shown, there's only one bifurcation left.

But yes give them some insight and if they still fumble just pick the brightest character and tell them. the maze is a challenge and can be fun if played/run right (which is a challenge in itself) but an endless loop isn't any fun. put them out of their misery and just tell them the answer, pretend it's insight or get them to use divine inspiration or whatever fluff you want to disguise it but don't just let them flounder forever.

[Urukubarr]

employ the godlike powers gifted to the DM by your fellow player. change stuff, edit, modify, etc. there was quite a bit I didn't like about Hotdq and Rot (as many can confirm online) I ended up interjecting a lot of ideas and layout from red hand of doom (3.5 adventure) as they both feature similar themes and the idea that an actual cult army is starting to role out ahead of Tiamat adds even more urgency, and I converted a lot of the chapters / encounters so they could be dealt with at any given time, this let me drop in multiple hooks at a time and further led to the urgency of lots to take care of and not enough time and after the build up of Hotdq really made it feel like stuff was about to go down. (also tried to include character backstory points when possible)

I personally also split the end battle to be more like red hand of doom / return of the king, were after all this running around and faction management the cult army was rallying to attack an important city and everyone was gathering there for the war (the brindol fight from RhoD, and minus tirith from RotK) after that and a major loss in resources and manpower on both sides we have the final push against Tiamat.

As for the Hedge Maze

things like what the book described are tricky and I once again re did a lot of it because I like much clearer progress goals and instant "oh okay so we know that was wrong" I incorporated features from other actual games I have played over the years. the cloister of trials from FFX, and the confusing forest you need the dog for in Brave Fencer Musashi.
-I had a base zone that was the entrance of the Hedge, this was their main travel point and tended to be free from harassment.
-I Converted some of the larger Hedge sections (and added in a few of my own) to have multiple exits / paths through them (a north, east, south, west, etc.) no matter how you came or went south ALWAYS led back to the base entrance of the hedge (this let them reset if they thought they went the wrong way or get back to the start when they got a "sphere". it also removed a "tumbler option" from this puzzles lock.
-I then converted and added some of the smaller maze sections to be encounters or light puzzles that led between the larger Hedge zones or the critical zones (where I put "spheres")
-the Tower was actually easy to reach but required a number of "spheres" to open (I did 3, as the rule of 3's tends to work well)
-I then converted the dials to actually be in the larger sections and altered them to hint at paths through the maze to various "sphere" locations.

after all this was done the rest was easy, the smaller maze sections acted as tumblers and moving through the larger maze in specific sequences ended up concluding in one of the sphere locations. (example being east, east, west, Sphere!) the sundials were used to hint at figuring out the next way they had to go or letting them know they messed up by it resetting, at that point they could exit and head south to reset BUT even in failure the learned a way not to go and the following attempt was all the more easy. this essentially set it up in such a way that they probably could just brute force there way through the maze given time, I didn't make the random encounters difficult but something that would indeed were them down over time.

anyway it sounds like your mostly through it but I hope that helps at all! XD