I was quite excited to run this module while I was reading it as the potential for the sense of dread that could be instilled in players was very high and ultimately it felt like it delivered. The notion of Frostclaw hunting the party and picking them off, one by one, is great and using some NPCs (which could be run as uncooperative & non-friendly horror movie fodder). Since I ran this back when DDAL10-02 was delayed, I chose to make it a two-parter (a rare thing), but I knew there was a good amount of enjoyment that could be pulled from it. There's borderline too much in here for a single session, but that's never truly a bad thing as there's elements that can be cleanly cut out to make room if time is needed (owl fight, some of the side areas before the Netherese door, etc.).

Starting with an action sequence as players scatter to rescue survivors (instead of a dry combat) is a great kickoff to set the tone that the environment is as much your enemy as the things lurking in the snow. My players followed it up by nearly suffocating in quicksnow, again highlighting that fighting isn't the skill you need to focus on in Icewind Dale. When they make it to the cave, it became fun trying to find ways to make them dislike their NPC allies with the warrior being a jerk, the rogue pickpocketing their stuff, and the scholar being creepily obsessed with Netherese necromancy. The blankness of the NPCs are probably my only complaint; I read some discussion here and really liked the idea to use them as open vessels for "allies from back home," but I don't remember that intent ever being stated in the module itself. It's a great idea, one that I wish I had thought of before I ran it.

The ending sequence was fun, but I found even capped at Level 2, Frostclaw was melted down damage-wise quite quickly by the players and really had to find ways to pad out the the fight further. One of my players was also a little bummed that there was no way to truly kill Frostclaw and, while it makes sense why, there were probably enough tools here that resurrection into a more powerful entity could have been an option for the owlbear.

Overall, a lot of great work was put into this and it's a perfect tone-setter for Season 10. There's going to be some work on the DM's shoulders to sift this down to the core of what you want to run, but it's certainly worth the exercise as, especially compared to other AL modules, my criticisms above are very minor and don't get in the way of a great (1 or 2) session(s).

This adventure was a fairly pleasant tonal shift away from the dread-filled story preceeding it. For time reasons, I did reduce/modify some of the content though I'm always glad to have too much content instead of too little. Overall, this was a fairly straightforward adventure with a little silliness, some decent political/cultural roleplay, one very interesting combat and one less exciting combat. I did find myself needing to do a significant amount of NPC roleplay/exposition which did take more time away from the players than I would have liked, but there is a lot to go over when it comes to explaining life for the Thuunlakalaga clan.

Our group did not run a full chase to catch Honey, but we did enjoy the character moments prior to that while they struggled to milk the goats - throwing random pictures of goats at players in Roll20 helped add some good laughs. Maybe a little silly, but it was a nice very brief reprieve from much of the doom/gloom of Season 10 and it's in the DMs hands to decide how much of that levity is desired for each group.

Instead of multiple combats, I chose largely instead to focus on a single combat on the river, though none of the players fell through the ice which I found to be a unique combat addition, one player actually decided to remove himself from combat to jump in and save Kaskur (which I wasn't expecting). The final combat I modified heavily simply because I felt my players have had their fill fighting wolves/wildlife lately and the river combat was more unique by comparison; instead it became a "wolf army" kind of chase sequence out of the grove back towards the river and that worked out quite well.

I would have enjoyed more time roleplaying with Clod or exploring the Grove, but time did get away from us with a lot of the roleplaying with Kaskur & Old Goat.

All-in-all, there's a lot to work with here for a module that does a lot of heavy lifting for establishing the setting. The need for setting the stage and the Tier 1 nature of the module prevents it from being exceptional, but it was largely well-organized, easy enough on the DM, and had plenty of enjoyable and interesting elements scattered throughout it to make it a very worthwhile adventure for us.