My players meta-game too much [5e Dwimmermount]

Table talk included banter about my last blog post, specifically the rival adventuring parties they might cross paths with and the fact that Melissia was, in fact, probably not a woman trapped behind a magical door. Last week they were really keen on freeing Melissia from the room she was trapped in, but this week they couldn't care less. So Melissia is now somebody else, and that somebody else is now Melissia. This means Melissia is going to starve to death if they don't get her out of that room, and fuck it, she's the daughter of a powerful noble and wizard, so there's probably good rep and rewards to be earned from rescuing her. And the somebody else will be far less helpful to them when they finally do encounter her. Or him.

My players who insist on using player knowledge for their character's actions will now simply have to ask themselves: Is Patrick lying on his blog? Maybe. But there's only one way to be sure.

So, what happened this session?
Bik and his entourage of minotaurs in the throne room were taken down. The players won initiative and got judicious use out of Stinking Cloud and Fireball, and Bik was dead within 3 rounds despite his virtual immunity to poison (this was imparted from a magical item he was wearing, see below).

While the fight was going on, the minotaurs in the dining hall heard the battle, grabbed their axes, and proceeded to rush in, but by the time they started coming into the room the dust was settling and Tsetsig had started casting Animate Dead on Bik's corpse. The second combat took about the same amount of time (7 rounds), but the minotaurs all died tried to rush into the room.

The ratkin that were accompanying the party, Krishka and Puzz, were severely injured and much healing was spent making sure they survived while Horatius went around the room and made sure all of the minotaurs were dead. And then an accounting of Bik and his treasure was performed:

A chest of the mundane held everything, it was only after they dumped out the contents that they saw everything for what it truly was.
A scroll of Knock
A scroll of Speak With Plants.
A wand of magic missiles (per the DMG).
A bag of holding (per the DMG, except this bag has a 1% chance of summoning a spectre every time it's opened) currently holding the corpses of three ratkin - Tsetsig removed two of the corpses but held onto the third (for animating later).
Everice (an ice cube that never melts)
Spike of woodland suicide (the players got a huge kick out of this one)
Amulet of Hope (when worn, shines like a candle, the light will point into the direction of the closest non-portal exit)
1908 silver
1 gold devouring coin (will devour gold coins when placed with them - Ilona wants to spend this at a bank)
Bik's silver crown (worth some gold)
Bik's battle axe (does extra +2 damage, requires attunement)
Bik's bracelet (+2 AC, requires attunement)
Bik's leather belt of Kythirean annhilation (damage resistance to poison, inflict double damage against plants, protection from plants - plant attacks have disadvantage, requires attunement)
Weirdstone (gives advantage on wizard/sorcerer spellcasting rolls, if either dice roll a 1 the wizard/sorceror suffers a mutation, requires attunement)

I outsourced half of this hoard from Goblin Punch because Arnold's ideas appeal to my gaming sensibilities. I've been using his ideas for other parts of the dungeon already so it would be fair to say that if you've been reading his blog for the last year then you could possibly see where some of my inspiration for changing Dwimmermount has come from.

The characters retreated to the cloning chamber to rest. Ilona placed all of her coins into the Chest of the Mundane and some of the magic items were divvied amongst the characters.

Horatius got cloned.

Since I established that the ratkin had been using the cloning chamber to replicate food for themselves (there are four chicken and a single sheep in the cloning chamber) I gave Krishka a relatively good ability to operate the machine. Still, she only succeeded on one of three rolls.

Horatius'es clone came out opposite gender and with a very different personality than his own. He's impulsive and adventurous, and she's careful and cautious. For now, she's a follower, but Horatia is also only a 1st-level Fighter which means could be easily killed by many of the things living on these lower levels.

We ended the session with Horatius exiting the cloning chamber only to be confronted by four rust monsters trying to sniff their way in. (I kept forgetting to roll for random encounters so I decided to just have one and rolled up the rust monsters randomly.)