The combat in this epic can be brutal, especially for new players and particularly the final one. The first time I played this they did have the extra boons in that final combat, and it became a fight to wait out the clock to avoid a TPK; we'd given up on winning. With the boons and a more cohesive party the second time around, it was still quite challenging but far more doable. I would not recommend this epic for inexperienced players. That said, I did really enjoy it the second time around.

This was an incredible experience. I ran this as a single table of 5 players, but I really want to do it as part of an event in the future as well to get the table interactions.

Starting out things in Easthaven is a brilliant way to tie into the larger story of the hardcover, it's almost a 50/50 chance that party members who play the HC have been to Easthaven from Bryn Shander and know something about the troubles besetting the rest of the eastern ten towns. Reading through the towns we didn't visit (my table picked Caer Konig) it seemed like things are pretty well defined in terms of quests and there are plenty options for different player characters to help the towns.

In terms of additional guidance, I do wish there were some blurbs at the beginning and ending of the first two sections regarding what aid each town can provide something like "If you go to Caer Konig, they might supply some marksmen... Or they could reach out to their neighboring goliath tribes for aid" kind of thing. I had to read a couple times and reference the charts at the beginning of our session to be able to clarify to my table what their choices mean. The sub-quests are nice and fun though.

For part 3 I really like the way difficulty scales based on previous successes along with party strength. It provided for a lot of tension in the ramping up combat encounters, and the wandering Verbeeg was a fun addition as well. Overall it was a great time as a solo table experience and I want to try it again as a proper Epic.