Without giving any spoilers, all I can say is make sure you bring your pots of healing!
The party almost ended up in a TPK in the very first encounter! OK...ok...so we (the party) were playing with our dice of ineffable doom while the GM was playing with his Blessed Dice of DM Doom!
Played this at PaizoCon with a party of five 1st level PCs. Despite being, shall we say, "caught up" in some trees for nearly the entire last encounter, I had a blast with my barbarian. Could be really tough at first level without at least one heavy hitter and one arcanist in the group. Awesome scenario for the ranger/druid types!
Played this at Paizo con on Saturday. The party had a cleric, wizard, rogue, fighter and monk. It was a slow grind. The swarms were hard to beat and the final villain battle took so long I was almost ready to fall on my sword. But I was playing the wizard so I had no sword.
You want a ranger or druid in your party for this one. And yes you want a healer or potions too. I will DM this for my home group and see how it plays with a different party.
I like the storyline and the encounters seem balanced. We did triumph in the end, but the players were exhausted from endless rounds of try and fail.
I ran this once for my home group, and then twice at PaizoCon. Each group played through quite differently. All had a challenging time, with some near TPKs (particularly for the smaller home group).
I'd avoid running this with fewer than 4 players (but the 3 person group *did* succeed).
Very exciting, and I had a lot of fun role-playing the NPC's from the introduction forward.
I just played through this at Mace (it was actually my first Society game) and I have to say it was a lot of fun. I actually played up to the 4-5 tier, so my poor little sorc spent a lot of time hiding, but the module seemed very well designed, especially in regards to making sure that all types of characters were useful.
Thanks for the kind words, Jhasper (and others) - I'm the author...
Hey Steven, you're the only Pathfinder contributor missing a biography on the PathfinderWiki! A google search for your name comes up with a lot of stuff that I don't think is about you. Email me at this screenname at gmail dot com and we'll get you set up.