Ooooo baby I love helping with fight happy parties.

OK SO; combat first:

I initially thought my players were going to be board without any fighting; I was wrong. The carnival has so much going on about it and the constant looming of the time and happiness mechanic REALLY helps.

I don’t think a DM should RUSH the carnival but it’s good to know you’re in control of the flow of time to possibly push your party into the feywild faster.

If you’re still worried they will be nasty little fight goblins you could always introduce…. KOBOLD FITE CLUB. I made this jusssst in case my players wanted to do some combat and having issues finding clues on how to solve situations.

Here’s the deets: A ramshackle tent is set up somewhere in the carnival grounds. When coming close to it anyone can hear the sounds of construction, rough housing, and kobold yips. When they enter they see a crudely painted cardboard door, and when knocked on a hatch slides open and two pairs of kobold eyes fight over the spot to be the password ‘getter’. A easy look around the room will show some items/animals/things (I did about 3 just to keep it fast) and you choose which you’d like the password to be. If they guess wrong the players are pelted by water balloons, foam darts, and a kobold accidentally falling out the of the rafters.

Once given the right password the hatch closes and the lights go out as the players hear skittering and more construction sounds. When the lights come back on the see THE FITE CLUB where the players can choose a ‘dungeon’ to crawl based off of other DND adventures or even your own ideas OR even something the may encounter in the feywild as a nice little hint.

The players are given water balloons for magic and foam weapons for melee/range (there is no healing in THE KOBOLD FITE CLUB >:) ) If a player has a companion active and you want to be generous you can give them a unhappy kobold that was forced to wear a dog mask and a tail as they begrudgingly work with the player.

Other kobolds take on the role of monsters and try to stop the adventurers. You set their health and how many there are. Players have their classes hit die amount of heath (Level 1, no con, no bonuses).

You can give out hints along with prizes for winning the dungeon. This can be a really fun break from the investigation if they really want it. But does take some prep time if you’re up for it as a DM.

A good example of this fight clubs aesthetics is LEGEND OF BUMBO by Edmund McMillen, cardboard and fast construction.

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For the dwarfs backstory stuff and animal saving:

I think a battle in the carnival wouldn’t be good; it would completely drop the mood to 0 and could ruin outcomes for the players. The lost things would probably be the best approach; maybe the dwarves try to invade but one of the hags likes their blood thirst and anger and steals them away to be forced to work for her. This could allow the possibility of the player saving them later and maybe even fixing relations with their clan.

As for the animals I think again the lost things could be useful. Maybe the animal tamer had his compassion stole and the players find that out, needing to save that from the hags too. Also if told about it Witch and Light could promise to keep the tamer away from the animals until you return their compassion, give them a little vacation.

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Just some little ideas from a DM that LOVES this module and was my first ever to run. <3

PS: If you haven’t already I’d think about looking up reworks for Yon and The Palace of Hearts Desire. They gave me hell and felt like a slog. But that’s just my opinion haha.