Puzzles are a staple of Dungeons & Dragons. But there aren’t many resources for illustrated puzzles. For years D&D didn’t even bother to put out any a book with puzzles. That all changed with the release of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything on November 17, 2020. Finally, WotC decided to bring us 13 illustrated puzzles. Thirteen puzzles is not a lot but it is by far the biggest volume WotC released in a single book to date.
If you want more illustrated puzzles you’ll have to look to sources outside of the official D&D material. And there are some great resources available. But how does third-party material stack up against the official D&D books in terms of quality? And how do they compare price-wise?
In our webshop, we have affiliate links to lots of third-party puzzles you can use with D&D. We believe they are on par with the official material in terms of design and artwork. But obviously, we’re biased so we won’t compare quality in this article. Judge for yourself which ones you like best.
A price comparison offers a more objective perspective. And that’s why we crunched the numbers for you.
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Illustrated Puzzle Book Prices for D&D Compared
Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything contains 192 pages. Only 21 of those pages contain puzzles which comes down to 10,9 percent of the entire book.
The price at the time of writing this article on Amazon for Tasha’s is 27,52 dollars. For a fair comparison, we only want to know the price of the part of the book that contains puzzles. So 10,9 percent of the full price is 3 dollars.
There are 13 puzzles in Tasha’s so the price of a single puzzle is 0.23 dollar which is very reasonable in our opinion.
So now we know the price of a single puzzle, how does it compare to third-party material?
The puzzles in our webshop are by DungeonVault. They also have a bundle, called the vault bundle. Only 1/3 of this bundle contains puzzles which comes down to 33,3 percent.
The price at the time of writing this article for the Vault Bundle is 29,99 dollars. Again, we only want to know the price of the part of the bundle that contains puzzles. So 33,3 percent of the full price is 10 dollars.
There are 271 puzzles in the bundle while I’m writing this so the price of a single puzzle is 0.037 dollar.
Our estimate:
Tasha’s = 0.23 dollar/puzzle
DungeonVault = 0.037 dollar/puzzle
Is it a Fair Comparison?
The quality of both products is comparable in our view and both puzzle designers are very experienced. With Tasha’s book each of the 13 puzzles has a different concept and with DungeonVault you get 11 packs, each with a different concept. So in terms of variety, they’re about the same.
But there are some more notable differences between the products to take into consideration.
The price per puzzle for D&D is a lot lower with DungeonVault than it is with Tasha’s. In fact, you get 6.2 times as many puzzles with DungeonVault for every dollar spent. And DungeonVault has several puzzle packs that give you the means to create even more puzzles easily. Obviously, we haven’t counted those. Also, their puzzles come as printable pdfs and pieces for virtual tabletops.
Tasha’s offers a fully illustrated physical book while DungeonVault is a digital download. While we prefer a nice-looking book that looks good in our collection, for puzzles it isn’t always practical because you’ll want to cut out puzzle pieces for your players to manipulate.
Printing your puzzles is an added cost we didn’t calculate but we haven’t calculated shipping cost for Tasha’s either.
Our conclusion is that the choice comes down to your personal preferences. If you prefer official material and 13 puzzles are enough for your game then we recommend Tasha’s.
If you wish to incorporate more puzzles into your game at a lower price then DungeonVault is our recommendation. Check out the complete collection on their website.
Dark Ulf is the founder and editor of DNDpuzzles.com. When not writing for DNDpuzzles he travels the multiverse and destroys demons with a crossbow in one hand and a crossword in the other.
We hope this site inspires you to put more puzzles into your D&D games.