I like your altering the end too gav. I personally thought Kovag Re was a poorly written adventure, but as the first one offered what can you say. [SPOILER ALERT]: My players totally ignored the caves altogether and instead flead the encampment, and ignored the trail (and the bully in the hill village) altogether, they never even went into the caves. Trying to come up with something, I had whatsisname who hired them go mad after he went into the caves, and all the soldiers who went in died save him, Bogdan and Juliana. I ran the adventure as written but my players said it was ridiculous and made huge assumptions, which is what I had felt when I first purchased it.
While The Coming of Hanuman also makes assumptions (in the end all pre-gen adventures do) it was a better-written pdf and the group actually played it as written. I haven't read the other adventures yet, aside from a cursory examination, but hope to get our group playing again soon, one group in Shadizar, so I'm about to start going over Vincent's adventures for the boxed set.