I basically just ended up using this more as a guideline to a campaign. Skipped some parts, used some as is, and used and edited some others.

In my experience HotDQ requires you to fill in a lot of gaps, so it was just easier for me to almost just do my own thing altogether. Still using the general frame and some encounters from the book, but making my own story from that.

A lot is left to be desired from this adventure, a lot of work on the DM is required to keep chapters of this adventure moving forward and meaningful to the overarching plot and players. Not enough tools are given to the DM to flesh out the Cult of the Dragon grunts and lower ranked. This adventure was developed in the early development days of 5e and its clear from the many mistakes in references, statistics and particularly the overpowered traps and lack of monster diversity (contrary to the listing).

It starts with a bang, which I thought was good and the end of the adventure can be pretty good, but there's a severe lack of 'Dragon' in the middle - there's a subplot involving one that clearly was left on the cutting room floor. The Cult loses a lot of its oomph after the earlier chapters.

The re-release of this adventure has solved some of these issues. I would recommend that instead.