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Our party barbarian asked me to post that we managed to reach 4th level in Rappan Athuk and defeat the boss room in the Mouth of Doom with no deaths. It was a near thing several times and my poor poor eidolon is still ruined.
That certainly redefined being in the bowels of a dungeon!
Altogether, I would say that RA is a very challenging module for low level play and people should expect deaths. There are several death traps in the early stages and the random encounters are outrageously powerful.
I would give the following advice:
1.) run often and fast.
2.) think outside the box.
Mechanically, it functions as a difficult adventure because of several design approaches:
1.) Near total embargo of purchasable goods.
2.) At level CR+4 to CR+8 encounters sprinkled in on each level.
3.) Lack of grindable areas.
Good stuff.
I'm going to be playing Rappan Athuk with a party of three people soon, hopefully. Starting at 4th level. I'll be playing a homebrewed undead race (basically recreating ghouls using the race builder, lacking paralysis and disease) antipaladin. Does that sound like something that might have a decent chance in Athuk?
LOL, my players are actually looking forward to (glorious) deaths. We have had one for each level so far (none at level 3...yet).
Ethereal, if you get all of the undead immunities, you will be very well off.
Gauss, my party is divided on this. I am of the mind that the greatest accomplishment in RA is zero permanent deaths, which I have been told is impossible.
A couple other players are ready for the first croaking.
My gaming group is going to have the Kenny award at the end of Rappan Athuk. The player who had the most (legitimate!) deaths will win something although we haven't decided what the award will be yet.
Each legitimate death is recorded in the Obituary at the back of Rappan Athuk.
Our party was doing pretty well up until 8th level (only three deaths, but we did start at 4th level which I imagined helped a LOT) and then we had a random encounter with an adult red dragon when we came back out of the dungeon to sell some loot.... three dead party members later it decided it had enough fun and flew away. The campaign's been a blast so far, and it's crazy monty haul in some places which kind of makes up for the near TPK since money is not an issue for us (I think we're sitting at around 15th level WBL currently thanks to a ring of telekinesis and a couple other big dollar items).