After 2 and half years I finally finished chapter 3 of storm king thunder

[Rafaelfras]

And now I want to share my experience with you guys.

My God what a trip.
This last weekend we finally met Harshnag and went for The Eye of the Allfather. Our session ended with the airship coming for us with Flight of the Valkyries as background.

I am happy that we finally finished chapter 3 and will deep dive in the campaign until it's end. And now I want to share my experience so far.

I am the main DM of this table and we finished Princes of the Apocalypse already. Since is the same group I have to calibrate SKT for higher levels.
I did chapter 2 on golden fields (as is appropriate for PoTA ending) and from there went to chapter 3 where we did:
The adventure "Against Giants " where another party member DMed and I could play. And that took almost an year.

Then I took back the DM seat and we did kraken gamble, got the teleportation network and hints about dragons from moonglean tower. My players choose a path that led then to waterdeep where they triggered a sidequest from one of the PCs background: A heavily inspired Star Wars (prequels because it's funny) inspired adventure within a city where Palatine is a evil advisor for a vain King (PC father) with a Darth Vader as brother (Star Wars has lot of medieval stuff and music my players had a blast when Palatine made his cue).

From there we fled to a magic school from my wizard's background, that school is a legacy on my home forgotten realms setting from one of the players from our 3.0 days. I asked that player to broaden the school as it was his idea and legacy.
He made a 16 page adventure that took us last year, with a trial for my wizard, an antimagic organization deep inside the school subterranean and a tournament.
In there I mixed some things from SKT, like one of the dragons we were looking for, the good Cloud Giants and finally after we saved the school the divination professor told us to find Harshnag, we scryed and teleported to him and finally finished chapter 3

What a journey. Looking back I am very happy that I manage to bring everything on track and the whole campaign didn't got lost in all of this.
SKT is really different from other campaigns I've DMed
If anyone is struggling on chapter 3, has wild stories from it or simply want to share experiences from campaigns the went a little sideways, I am happy to hear about.

[NaughtyTiger]

After 2 attempts at playing and one as DM, I never made it through. i am jealous.

[Rafaelfras]

After 2 attempts at playing and one as DM, I never made it through. i am jealous.

Reddit helped, on it. It's always useful to see how others approach. I discovered Kraken's Gamble in there.
Most of my "chapter 3", if you think about it, was custom made, but kraken gamble helps A LOT, and making some random encounters (dig site, cloud castle, and the other ones involving giants) not so random also helps keep the plot alive on the PCs mind.
In my case having another player dming "Against Giants" fleshed out a lot about the giants, but they thought they had solved the problem at the end of it.
I had to tell then using the archimage from Moon Glean Tower "you had solved A giant problem, not THE giant problem"
But I see why is easy to lose the track on that chapter

[Sparky McDibben]

This is fortuitously timed - the Alexandrian is doing a remix of the material, so I look forward to seeing how his adjustments gel with your concerns.

[Rafaelfras]

This is fortuitously timed - the Alexandrian is doing a remix of the material, so I look forward to seeing how his adjustments gel with your concerns.
Nice to know
I intend to finish the campaign this year, chapter 4 onward is pretty straight forward, so let's see how it goes