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For context, I had started playing in this adventure, expecting to have finished it before running it as a GM. Sadly, delays in one game made it last more weeks than my game, so I finished GMing Pale Mountain while still playing it. As such, I tried to not influence the direction of the party, and just be the dumb Paladin doing what the party told me to do. I think it was helpful observing someone else run the adventure, and see how they did things differently.
The party I played with was a more traditional group: I was the Paladin, with a Rogue, Wizard, and Alchemist. I often paired up with the Rogue to give her flanking and protect her with Retributive Strike. Even though the Rogue kept meeting creature immune to precision damage (which she wasn't happy about), she dealt a surprising amount of damage with her magic weapon. Because the party was a bit more frail, I was often in the front-line, acting as literal cover for the other players as they advance or hide behind me. All of the others were great at ranged attacks, meaning I didn't have threats pinging at me outside of my melee reach. The Alchemist was very versatile: sharing healing duties with me, offensive energy with the Wizard, and skirmish attacking with the Rogue.
Compared to the group I GMed for, who had a lot more niche specialists. The Ranger was the only real ranged attacker, as shown by how hosed they were by the Manticore's 40 ft. range attacks. Likewise, the Barbarian was the only worthwhile melee attacker, the Druid was a healbot whose most important actions were always in-between combats, and the Sorcerer was the source of 90% of the party's interesting thinking-outside-of-the-box options. Running the monsters against this group, I felt that focusing fire on the PC who was most vital to success would leave the other 3 PCs with nothing worthwhile to do. The party I played with, if one PC fell, another one could step in and finish the job. It was a good contrast between different styles for party composition.
One thing both of them did well was destroying the Mummies: both parties used Burning Hands on them!
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Both of us forced some encounters to be interacted with, and let other encounters we felt were too difficult be avoided. For me, I forced the Manticore encounter both going to the Tomb and coming back, but let the players avoid the Elemental rooms, and just keep fiddling in C4. My GM had the Manticore ask for tribute from the Tomb instead of attacking, but didn't let us 'brute force' Room C4, so we had to fight all four of the elementals. I found the Elementals to be tough but beatable; and given our group composition, was glad that we didn't have to handle the Manticore. My party gladly gave up the non-essential treasure we found to let the Manticore be appeased.
Both parties managed to get the Countdown Clock and leave the Tomb before the Heralds arrived. Neither group were interested in staying and fighting, whether they were driven to return the MacGuffin or just didn't want to fight a bunch of warriors with a tough reputation. The party I played with just barely got away, but constantly pushed themselves. We had serious talks about whether to rest or soldier on, even when people were out of prepared spells and alchemy. It gave me a good insight into how my players felt in the other game. *I* knew how long it would take the Night Heralds to get there, but they didn't. They couldn't know if this was a module that gave players a fair shake of beating them there, or if they were meant to get there too late for story purposes. The party I GMed for was so efficient, that time restraints never mattered.
For the group I played with, it felt like we were getting battered to our last spell and HP every day, and we had only one day's distance between the Heralds and ourselves. I feel that my group did a lot better in combat than the group I GMed for. We got through every combat intact, and even when we were running low on HP, we managed with judicious use of healing and positioning. For the group I GMed for, they felt more imperiled than this group, even though they probably had more HP spread across the group. For all their success, they believed they were always close to losing; for all my group's struggles and how close we got to losing, we soldiered on and didn't complain about the hard knocks.
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One thing both groups had in common was avoiding the Gnoll camp. Well, tried to avoid. The party planned to sneak past them instead of going around, which wasn't an option for my clunky Paladin, but we did it anyways, and it worked out in the end. I got a lot of chances to play up 'compassionate Lawful Good' in this module. At one point, the GM said I could easily push a boulder on some gnolls beneath me; instead, I announced myself and drove them back to their camp alive by impugning their prowess as warriors. Later, when I cornered the last Gnoll who was badly burnt and whining, I told the GM I would non-lethally bash it with my shield, and let it wake up the next day.
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As a shield ally, I got the 'pleasure' of trying to understand how Shields work back when it was still unclear. The GM was very lenient, using the approach Paizo eventually accepted as proper. Having an Oil of Mending was very useful in maintaining my Shield. Paladins being so MAD, it was too hard to be good enough at Crafting to maintain them myself, and it was awkward always asking the Alchemist to do it, since those checks took a long time in-game. There was one time with the Mummies I actually used Shield Block without getting a Dent. That was a highlight!
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Having seen this first as a player, then as a GM, then back as a player, I've come to appreciate the experience. 4th-level definitely has its own feel: the magic available is extremely limited, but is there, unlike 1st level. Things like Ladder Tokens still feel special (and are useful). Both groups worked hard to beat the clock (my group drove the camels to fatigue, and the other group used "Phantom Steed" to travel faster), but the module played very differently when two groups with different play styles came at it.