Fortress of the Ogre Lord--stair room and Xenloth

[Jalapenotrellis]

My group just finished this quest. They went right--toward Xenloth. I chose to give him 3 body points like Festral had instead of 1 (lol? he has 10 spells, but 1 body point, and only 3 fimir that don't activate in the room ahead of him?). I also chose to activate the room with the fimir and open his door as one big room, albeit with a door. He still got 1 mind blast off, didn't kill the barbarian with it (knocked him down to 1 mind point from 3). Then he still died since whoever attacked him got 3 skulls in at once he didn't defend against.

Then, they proceed to the stair tile room. I interpreted this confusing map as "there is a back door into the throne room, with a falling block trap you can disarm (or trigger, then disarm, as the UK rules let you do). The map is unclear as to whether that back door leads to the stair room or if you would have to go the other way around the board to reach the exit. Or, is it is just a dead end 2-square hallway with a falling block trap that could block someone in for 1 turn until they disarm the block trap (which you can do in UK rules for this expansion)?

I figured it would be tactically smart to have the Ogre Lord and an Ogre Warrior next to each other at that secret door because it would avoid weird 1 hit kills against, say, the Chieftain, via variable body points (which I don't understand why people don't like this mechanic...it worked fine for me). Well, they kill the Ogre Lord fairly quickly with spells and good rolls, then just decided to skip the other 60% of the board and run out. They already got 2100 gold from the chest room, no need to get like 450 from the throne room. And they were right.

I expected this quest to be maybe a 6-7 on a scale of 10 for difficulty, and it ended up being like a 3. I graded Festral / Pit of Chaos an 8 out of 10 mostly because if Festral looks at you with 8 attack dice you die.

In reading the beginning of Wizards of Morcar, it seems like they don't expect you to be able to kill him. You avoid Festral, complete the quest, then run out. But my players still killed Festral, and I wasn't really going that easy on them. They just got lucky splitting the party and whittling down some chaos warriors and having Mind Blast not kill anyone due to a Potion of Restoration and then bee-lining it to Festral to gang up on him, even with some good chaos warrior blockage (I think I have that down at this point, how to maximize the life of your spell caster by blocking access with his meat shields).

Anyhow. I think the interpretation of it being a 2-square secret area with a falling block trap makes the quest a full clear; the other way makes it a quick, easy quest if you go right at the beginning. I didn't think through this before playing it, so figured I'd post in case others want one or the other way.

Edit: one more thing--the door in the center room takes up two squares. That also was unclear on the map.