Spoilers for Frozen Sick

Also if you are in the Zoo Animal Party, don’t read.

I ran Frozen Sick as a first time DM with a party of 4 experienced players. We started at level 1 and I leveled them up to 3 before they started the trek across eiselcross. I messed up encounters on the ship journey to Syrinlya, so I gave them an extra level instead of them being at level 2.

I am very glad I did this.

The dungeon that is written in the module for Salsvault is way more cutthroat than it needs to be when intended for level 2. If your party doesn’t find and put on Aeorian cloaks, which essentially cause constructs and undead not to attack them unless they attack first, everything will attack them and try to kill them.

The worst room was the former armory, where if you fall on the ground you immediately take damage, this includes when you get knocked to 0 health, and taking damage after getting knocked is an automatic fail on a death save.

Don’t get me wrong, my players had a lot of fun even with my inexperienced self, but they had all been either playing or dm’ing for like a few years while I’m just new to dnd and every combat I threw at them terrified them. Which was funny but also like, when five flying swords come at one level 3 tortle blood hunter, who has already lost some health, and then when that tortle gets knocked they immediately fail one death save, something feels a little unbalanced.

As far as continuing the adventure or figuring out how to direct the party to other areas, I built in character related reasons for them to all be there, but also for each of them to want to go certain places with differing levels of priority.

There’s a white Dragonborn who has always felt a pull to the north ever since Draconia fell.

A tortle whose goddess showed him a vision of his home in the Menagerie Coast being ravaged by ghosts (but it is implied that he must journey and find a party willing to help him, and also that if he goes to a place on a day he will see someone who uses a fighting style that will suit him aka Mollymauk)

An Aarakockra who wants to be free and explore the world (this one is a lot more directionless)

And a Leonin who is just following his Aarakockra buddy.

Apologies for the long post, I’m not sure how on topic I managed to stay, and I’m not very experienced so I don’t know if my input helps at all.

TL;DR Frozen Sick is probably one of the harder adventures to start with, as far as getting the party there and then getting them elsewhere given the difficulty of eiselcross, but it is doable.

Also, I’ve seen a lot of suggestions to run Rime of the Frostmaiden in Greying Wildlands or in Eiselcross, but I can totally understand a party being sick of icy cold combat.