D&D 5E What published adventure after the Starter Set?

I own the 5th edition Starter Set, and think it is quite well done as an introduction to the edition. So I was wondering what people recommend to play after that. Is there a published adventure that fits well in terms of level required, geographical location, and general theme? The only other published adventure I own is Curse of Strahd, which does fit with level, but changes the genre to more gothic horror. And my players already know the general story from having played a Ravenloft adventure in a previous edition. So how do the other WotC 5E adventures fit together with the Starter Set?

Out of the abyss, not sure how it fits into the base set. I just know that it does.


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Princes of the Apocalypse was written for level 3+ but includes a mini-adventure for level 1 & 2 to get them 'up to speed.' Plus it takes place not far away from Phandelin.

I'm planning on leading directly into Out of the Abyss as my group finishes up the starter set. I've customized the starter adventure quite a bit and included some foreshadowing, but for our campaign the final dungeon in the starter set will transition directly into the first chapter of OOTA.

Tyranny of Dragons (2 adventures) connects to the dragon cultists in LMoP. Other than that i haven't heard good arguments for following up with that.

OotA is, from what I've read, most well written in the part you'll skip if you go from LMoP.

SKT has potential to tie in better with LMoP than with itself (although I really like level 1-5 in SKT). Depending on your group of players it might suffer from a theme largely going on in the background and no clear main quest. Level 6 is long and is focused on exploring the North.

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This thread has been discussed before with many of these same answers. Also, there are several adventures on DMsGuild that relate to after Phandalin or use the region with areas such as Leilon and Southcrypt. These are not official Wizards though, so you may need to modify a bit for your game.

I'm actually dealing with that situation right now.

The PCs have completed all the "by the book" parts of LMoP and are just now finishing up several things that I have added as part of their character backgrounds and things that they have caused themselves. My plan is to simply run the Tyranny of Dragons books and rather than starting the adventure in Greenest, moving it over to Leilon.

Of course since they are level 7 (getting close to 8) I'm going to have to up the CR of the encounters, but that shouldn't be too hard.

Tobold said:

Is there a published adventure that fits well in terms of level required, geographical location, and general theme?

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Many of the published adventures have been deliberately designed so that you can move from the Starter Set into them.

With the Tyranny of Dragons story, you can skip the first few chapters and jump into Hoard of the Dragon Queen at the Carnath Roadhouse, which is aimed at 5th level PCs and is located in the Mere of Dead Men, not far from Phandalin.

Princes of the Apocalypse takes place to the east of Phandalin and includes story hooks to get Starter Set characters into the Dessarin Valley. The main plot does start at level 3, but you can just let them have a slightly easy time at the start.

Out of the Abyss is a bit more difficult to transition into. The first part is all about escaping the Underdark, and goes from levels 1-7. The PCs start as prisoners of the drow. I think it would be difficult to convince your players that their 5th level Starter Set characters got automatically captured by drow and taken to a prison some distance from Phandalin with no chance of escape on the way. The second part of the adventure starts at 8th level and involves going back into the Underdark to fight the demon lords. You could ostensibly give your players a few levels' worth of adventuring in the Phandalin area before sending them to see King Bruenor in Gauntlgrym (just north of Phandalin) at level 8.

Curse of Strahd includes story hooks to get players from the Sword Coast (via Daggerford, which is some way south of Phandalin, but you could easily rework that intro) into Barovia. 5th level PCs would have an easy time at first, but there's nothing wrong with that really.

Storm King's Thunder has a levels 1-5 intro adventure, but the real meat starts at 5th level. There are three starting points, one of which is quite close to Phandalin: Triboar. You could just give them some reason to go there and then kick things off when they get into town.

As pukunui points out, most of the 5E adventures can pick up where the starter set leaves off with minimal effort. So the more important question is which (if any) would you enjoy running and your players enjoy going through? Each has a rather different feel and certain problems. I'd suggest checking them out carefully before picking one. I'd also suggest simply asking your players what kind of adventure they'd like to move on to.

I found transitioning to HotDQ to be quite easy. I just moved Onthar Frume to Leilon and had the PCs meet him there and then head on into the Mere. We're almost done with Rise of Tiamat - right behind [MENTION=54629]pukunui[/MENTION] I think however I'm going to splice in the second half of SKT instead of a couple of weaker chapters from RoT. If the players are up for it we'all then venture into the second half of OotA as a high level 15-20 adventure that might go well or be a spectacular failure...