Yet, this isn’t really that bad for a first adventure. The party stumbles across the adventure local starving and dehydrated because their caravan go lost in the desert. The beginning of B4 is dubious, the hook is miserable.
The better elements of the adventure are its excellent traps and a certain spirit worth emulating. Indeed, these weak gestures, and the typical poor monster placement of products from its era, are B4’s biggest flaws. Some might find this enough to stop reading, B4 is no sandbox, it’s a dungeon adventure that makes some weak gestures at a sandbox in the end. While Lost city is labeled B4, it’s a tighter and less sprawling adventure then B1(search for the unknown) or B2(Keep on the Borderlands), yet without the narrow focus of B3 (Silver Princess). The Art is kinda great as well - the giant headed bald guy keeps appearing It seeks to encourage, even requires, a great deal of imagination and dungeon building by the GM, and while I think this is a noble intent for an introductory product, it is a weakness in a published dungeon when one is looking for either a drop in location or something to fill out specifics, such as traps and set encounters (the reasons I use published modules). There is something pleasant about B4 because of its origin, as it’s clearly written with youthful players in mind (the glossary for exciting dungeon terms like “niche” for example ), and ultimately, while B4 has many troubles, there’s an endearing spirit to the adventure that makes it worth reading. A classic module of the golden age of D&D, Written by Moldvay in 1982 for Red Book (it says so itself) Basic D&D.