This adventure loses some of the momentum of the previous arc because they're setting up something new; and if you're not familiar with where things are heading, the new direction from survival horror/mystery to more of a cosmic scale can be jaring. It doesn't help that there's a large chunk in the middle of the module that is a pretty boring WoW-style fetch quest. There are still some enjoyable moments, however.

It was a fun adventure! The encounters with the Ice Trolls then Mammoth and the Winter Wolves was a standout, nail biting experience especially with the auras.

The gathering of herbs felt like skippable filler, The module hit 5 hours with a group that was average per APL guidance due to the travel and gathering mechanics. I think in this case, while the Apothecary and Chwinga were fun, they weren't adding to the adventure, I'd rather just have this module be all about navigating the combat encounters, and tighten it up so the Exploration Pillar helps with navigating the threats in part 4, and the social pillar provides more alternate ways to avoid combat if needed.

The Vampire Kobolds felt like HP sponges rather than threats, especiallyl after the threat of the Ice Trolls and the Mammoth/Winter Wolves. And the fact that you end up long resting several times while Prook recovers means that the part wasn't particularly resource stressed by the module. They just took a while to clear out enemies.

An adjustment I would make would be to just let Prook have a couple levels of exhaustion that can be cured normally (skipping the tea part) and only allow short rests (maybe due to the Blizzard in Icewind Dale) to push the party further.

Overview Written by the Gold Ennie Award winning AL author of Stygia Untamed, Electrum best seller A Dragon's Breath, and DC Battle winner A Wolf's Whisper, this adventure has some fun and enjoyable moments that we've all come to enjoy from this writer. Our table of five players had fun, were suitably challenged with different types of encounters, and got to use a wide variety of skills.

How did it run? The structure of the story delivered by this adventure is pretty nice, and the character of Tree-Eye gets involved. I found the lair based mechanics awkward to use in the first encounter. I gave Tree-Eye a key role in the second section of the adventure. i don't much like the weather based challenges as they are a bit over-used in Season 10, and so I focussed on the social encounter aspects that are part of this second section. The third section is interesting, while for the last section I used the dragon encounter because dragons are fun to use.

My Impressions? I felt the text was a bit awkward at times, and the lair mechanics really need to be clarified in the first encounter. The use of acid in the lair doesn't make sense. The gather quest components are not necessarily going to work well exactly as written, and so it's better to combine them into the shop/chwinga combination and make the most of these two social encounters with the aid of Tree-Eye. This avoids this section from becoming tedious.

Overall The design of this adventure makes for a very fun experience for the players, with some shortcomings in the details of the mechanics, and in the writing style. The DM should focus on making this adventure as fun as possible, as the next one in this storyline is quite serious. With this in mind, the players should be able to enjoy the adventure as much as the others by this writer. I would have given this five stars, but I've notched this down to four stars due to the aspects noted.