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Was my first time playing, and really looking at the new rules. I'd largely ignored it until now. So there was a lot of learning going on. Party was a Cleric of Desna (me), Wizard, Rogue, Bard, and Ranger.
Lady Vord’s
She offered us a free +1 sword or something, which caused everyone to in the group to look around and ask who uses that? The Rogue ended up taking it. We asked a few questions, then went off getting supplies. There was a lot of effort spent trying to figure out how much a camel could carry, how much feed they would need, and how much that cost. But we did get a keg of ale so we could have ale and fill the keg with water in case it became hard to find. (Also, Create Water was absurdly over nerfed, especially now that it's a limited resource.)
Hyaenas
The knockdown/drag thing was really cool and really made us react to deal with. We then ended up using survival to get some meat off them and cooking it to enjoy with the ale. One of our camels almost died, as when the Hyenas couldn't attack me (Sanctuary was up) they turned on it instead.
ankhrav
We saw the mound far enough out, and recognized what it was. So we simply went around and skipped this.
Gnoll camp
My Cleric had Perform, an expert instrument, and Impressive Performance. So, we dealt with this encounter by having me break cover and start playing music. With a well timed good roll, that actually worked and got them to be open to negotiation. Our Wizard (who spoke their language) then diplomacy'd safe passage in exchange for some meat.
We had been saving rations by using Foraging with Survival while travelling, so we had extras. We pointed out those had dried meat in them, and then levitated several days worth over. Then while they were eating, we had one person jump across the river with a rope and used that to help get everyone else across. This was possibly my favorite encounter because the solution was so out of left field and yet fit the characters we had perfectly.
Mountain Climb
Nobody was particularly good at Athletics and I was untrained and with the Gnome STR penalty, so that really wasn't great. We did make it up with only one person falling, but it was really up to the dice and it didn't feel like we had much say in the outcome. One fun part about this was the Cleric was deeply concerned about his musical instrument and wanted to give it to a better climber for safekeeping... and that's the person who fell. Oops! (It was fine.)
Manticore
Heal is really good. That was my takeaway here. Little else I did really made a difference, and Cantrip attacks in particular felt like using a pea shooter. But Heal was huge. And we needed a lot of it. There was also confusion about how initiative works with stealth.
The Wizard got immobilized by a spine here (after immobilizing the Manticore with Entangle) and it proved really hard to fix that because, again, Athletics, which we aren't very good at. Having a spine going through your leg seems like something Medicine should be useful on, but nope.
Acid Arrow did absolutely tons of damage here. That persistent damage is crazy good, which made my Cantrips feel even weaker in comparison (two actions to do less than the persistent damage was doing is just lame). We wanted to rest, but this wasn't a good spot.
Gnolls at the dead end.
Wizard kept the manticore spine we pulled out of her leg when we did finally manage to free her. Used that to convince them the Manticore was dead and we were able to get past this diplomatically.
Entrance trap.
Discussion on if the Rogue should open it. Rogue didn't want to. Cleric opened it out of impatience because we had already been playing for 4 hours. Cleric got critical hit and sent from full HP to dying 2 instantly. A potion later, Cleric declared he was never going in front ever again.
Rested.
Water/Earth Elemental
Got tossed into the water. Oh hey, Athletics again! Getting out proved so difficult that after 4 rounds I just gave up and stayed in the water. The damage that water elemental was putting out was huge and I really did very little in this fight aside from swim and Heal.
Rested again, because that single fight had wiped out most of our spell slots and the combat combined with the post-combat HP recovery wiped out all my channeled healing in a single encounter. So we were done.
Also, Detect Magic is just lame now. Magical sonar that doesn't even give you a direction is just pointlessly annoying.
Locking Device.
We had 2 gems. Party did some stuff to get past the other part. I honestly don't know what, I was tired now that we're in hour 5 and had no skills that could contribute so I zoned out.
Mummy room.
Between AoE channel and the Wizard loving fire, this was easy. Cleric did get diseased, but given the nature of the playtest it likely won't matter.
We rescued the Djinn, who opened the path to the tomb for us. In there a mirror did something to the Wizard, but I forget what because now we're at 6 hours and I'm exhausted.
I do remember there was a Scimitar as the big loot, and we again looked around and went "does the Rogue want that?" She did not, so it will just be sold I guess. Loot wise, there wasn't really anything in here for people who weren't interested in melee weapons, which was 80% of our party.
I enjoyed the module overall, especially the parts where we had room to be creative in solving encounters. But offensively I felt really useless when out of second level spells compared to everyone else, while Healing was just hugely powerful, and I wasn't even specialized in it.
I like healing, so that worked out fine for me. It ran too long for my liking, but I think that had a lot to do with unfamilarity with the system, some confusing wording, and having to constantly flip around hundreds of pages in a PDF to figure out how things work, which is really clunky.