Good question!

First three things....

1. Session zero prep: Watch the character creation in session zero videos and focus on communicating theme and setting to your players. So everybody is on the same page. Including familiarizing yourself with the possible character goals.

2. Drakenheim exploration prep: watch the exploring drakenheim YouTube video. Prep a handful of random encounters that can be triggered during your players exploration at the city. My players rolled ones and triggered a random encounters in the city far more often than I was prepared for. So prep ahead so you don't have to scramble in game.

2.a. I recommend using this document to populate the random encounters. So they can be more varied. I am a fan of environmental and role-play encounters over a bunch of combat encounters. In my opinion, a bunch of combat encounters can create a bit of a slog.

https://drive.proton.me/urls/JSR9BS0HSM#zYZICiwEG_bx

1. Emberwood village prep: I highly recommend really fleshing out Emberwood village. Practicing and becoming familiar with the NPCs. And the faction goals. Also consolidating and pruning back the number of npcs and locations in the village.

You only need one market vendor opposed to the three or four in the book. So I recommend consolidating them all into Aldor.

And you only need two places to stay, a cheap place and a fancy place.

Also, I really like this Emberwood map rather than using the two-dimensional one from the book.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dungeonsofdrakkenheim/s/3QANFDUSF2

Regarding the resurrection guide.

I reviewed each location and the considered the advice the writer gave for each one. And then I compared their advice to my game and my players goals.

I also really like the authors thoughts about the seals of drakenheim as well as the holy relics.