How 2E is going

We have played 2E now for two weeks and are enjoying ourselves.
Relearning THAC0 was not hard at all.
The changes I made have not shown any issues so far (though I powered down the free arcane missile mages gets to non-scaling 1-3 damage) and have been well received so far.
Since we only have three players, each one is controlling two PC’s. But since it’s 2E, it’s pretty easy to handle two. Hell they could each probably handle 6 on their own.

Our cast (if I remember correctly):
Dale - Aerol, a human ranger, and Stanley, a human paladin
Aaron - Arya (yeah I know), a halfling rogue, and Brandon a human cleric
Will – Grum, a dwarven fighter, De’Aire a half-elven fighter/mage/priest
I don’t expect this campaign to go too long, perhaps until my vacation in August. Afterwards we’ll move to something else.

So far we’ve just done some intro stuff to get ourselves re-familiarized with the game.
The first night included creating characters, a pair of hippogriffs, some zombies that were once a guard patrol (or bandits dressed as guards), some lovely stirges, and some guards that taxed the party but were actually bandits.
The second night included a fair amount of role-playing in the town of Winter’s Respite in which they received standard and simple quests that level 1 parties tend to get. Specifically help guards, protect the innocent, kill evil monsters, and contact a group of dwarves reported nearby. The party did contact the dwarves who had a run of bad luck while looking for, and finding, the iron mine they were camping near. The party agreed to help them in return for a set of dwarf-sized plate mail and to talk with Sir Broderick (the effective sheriff of the town since the last sheriff was run off for being corrupt).
The party fought some beetles and had to rest afterwards (fire beetles can hurt, and the water beetle never touched them with its 3d6 damage pincers).
When they went back in they smelled blood behind a stone door.
It wasn’t blood. It was rust. Rust cause by my favorite monster (and some skeletons that were mining iron ore for the rust monster).
The party’s first actions were to close the door, but the rust monster won initiative.
At first they were able to fight the monster solo, but the skeletons were able to re-open the door after a few rounds.
By the end of the fight two suits of splint mail, 2 javelins, and two swords were rusted away.
The back and forth of the fight was nice because it kept the challenge going even at level 1 (which is usually pretty boring in 1/2E).
The skeletons didn’t hit often until the armor was rusted away, then that PC was hurt pretty bad.
At least half the PC’s dropped once.
At the end of the night Grum, Brandon and Arya leveled.

These fights went fast.
Between low hit points, no combat grid, and no special powers, the combats lasted 5-15 minutes. The only one that was longer was the rust monster fight at 20 minutes, and that was because the rust monster was AC2 (think AC18 in 3E/4E) and the party had to use backup weapons.

It has been a refreshing change so far.
We’ve been rolling random encounters, making the “5 minute adventuring day” pointless.
And we’re having fun.
Maybe at level 7 something will change, but for now it’s all good.