What level is Descent into Avernus?

Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus runs from level 1 to around level 13. It opens with a grounded arc in the city of Baldur's Gate before the party is plunged into Avernus, the first layer of the Nine Hells, for the bulk of the campaign.

How do you make Hell feel different from a normal dungeon?

Lean on the environment. Avernus is a scarred, burning warfront under a red sky, where the Blood War rages and the landscape itself is hostile. Use lava, ash storms, wrecked war machines and roaming devils as terrain and encounters, and keep moral pressure high through devils' bargains, so it feels like Hell rather than a red-tinted cave.

How do you start Descent into Avernus well?

Ground the party in Baldur's Gate first. The opening chapter establishes the city and the horror of Elturel's fall before the descent, and taking your time there gives the trip to Hell weight. A party that cares about Baldur's Gate and understands what happened to Elturel is far more invested when they follow it down.

Where can I get infernal and Hell battlemaps for D&D?

MakeMythic on Etsy sells an infernal hellscape battlemap pack with volcanic, demonic and burning-wasteland scenes, and the wider 250,000+ battlemap mega bundle covers Baldur's Gate streets, dungeons and planar landscapes for the whole campaign.

How to run Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus in Hell

Q: What are infernal war machines in Avernus?

Infernal war machines are the Mad Max-style vehicles the party designs, drives and upgrades to cross the wastes of Avernus. Machines like the Devil's Ride, the Tormentor and the Demon Grinder give the middle of the campaign its distinctive flavour, turning overland travel into vehicular combat across a hellish battlefield.

TL;DR: Descent into Avernus works when Hell feels like Hell. Ground the party in Baldur's Gate and the fall of Elturel first, then use Avernus's burning warfront, infernal war machines and constant devils' bargains to keep the middle distinct from any other dungeon crawl. Infernal battlemaps do a lot of the heavy lifting.

Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus takes a party from the gutters of a fantasy city to the front lines of the Blood War in the first layer of the Nine Hells. It’s a dramatic, tonally bold campaign, and one of the more searched for running advice, because the leap from city noir to hellscape is exactly where DMs want a steer. Here’s how to make both halves land.

Ground them in Baldur’s Gate first

The campaign opens in Baldur’s Gate, and it’s tempting to rush to the good stuff in Hell. Don’t. The opening arc exists to make the descent mean something.

Establish the city as a real place, grimy, corrupt, alive, and then deliver the horror of Elturel: an entire city, ripped from the world and dragged into Avernus. When the party understands what happened to Elturel and has walked the streets of Baldur’s Gate, the moment they follow the city down into Hell carries real weight. Skip the setup and Avernus is just a weird map; build it properly and the descent is a gut-drop.

Make Avernus feel like Hell

Once the party arrives, the whole job is making sure Avernus never feels like a reskinned dungeon. It’s a burning warfront under a bruised red sky, where the endless Blood War between devils and demons chews up the landscape.

Use the environment relentlessly. Lava flows and ash storms as terrain, wrecked war machines as cover and loot, roaming bands of devils and demons as random encounters, and a sky full of distant, apocalyptic battle. Keep the moral pressure on, too: Avernus runs on bargains, and every devil the party meets wants to trade something for their soul or their service. That constant temptation is what makes it Hell rather than just hot.

Infernal hellscape, volcano and demon D&D battlemaps for VTT and print

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Lean into the war machines

The signature mechanic of the middle campaign is the infernal war machine: a Mad Max-style vehicle the party salvages, drives and upgrades to cross the wastes. Machines like the Devil’s Ride, the Tormentor and the Demon Grinder are the campaign’s beating heart, and the more you lean into them, the better it plays.

Run vehicular chases and battles across the ash plains. Let the party bolt trophies and weapons onto their ride. Make fuel, soul coins in this economy, a resource they have to think about. The war machines turn “the party travels overland” into set-piece action, and they’re the thing players remember long after the campaign ends.

Keep the Blood War in the background

Avernus isn’t a static backdrop; it’s a battlefield in an eternal war. Keep that alive by having the war intrude: a legion marching past, a crashed demon the party can scavenge, a warlord who wants them for their next push. The Blood War gives Avernus its scale and its politics, and it’s a bottomless well of encounters and factions to complicate the party’s goals.

Put Hell on the table

Descent into Avernus is a campaign where the setting is half the appeal, which makes visuals matter more than usual. A burning wasteland, a volcanic fortress, a demon-infested ruin, these deserve to be seen, not just described.

The Infernal Hellscape Battlemaps (~~£20~~ £6) pack covers volcanic, demonic and burning-wasteland scenes built for exactly this, gridless and ready for Roll20 or Foundry. For the Baldur’s Gate half and everything in between, the 250,000+ RPG Battlemaps Mega Bundle (~~£30~~ £9) covers the city streets, dungeons and planar landscapes the campaign moves through, so you can show your players Hell instead of asking them to imagine it.