So I bought Feywild, Sharn, and Saltmarsh with Turbine Points because they were on sale and I had 6500 TP lying around from reincarnating over the years. I figured the loot from Feywild looked good, especially that crown of butterflies, and I also figured that more level 5-6 content can't hurt.

But holy shit, this might be the worst adventure pack in the game. I say might because Turbine has come out with some real stinkers over the past 10 years: Lost Gatekeepers, Keep on the Borderlands, Soul Splitter, Disciples of Rage, Tethyamar, Slave Lords, Devil's Gambit, Trial of the Archons, and especially ToEE. But I still think Fail-wild has a case for the worst of them all.

For one thing, WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO QUICK TRAVEL? Ravenloft had instant teleports to dungeons... and that wilderness is actually somewhat enjoyable to explore. On the other hand, Feywild is one of the most boring wilderness areas in the game, being needlessly large with too many dead spots. Why did Turbine decide to nix the idea of quick travel? What a fucking slap in the face. Cocksuckers.

But that's only the beginning of my woes. Feywild is thoroughly horrendous. The quests themselves are unbelievably bad

Endless Revels: The premise of this quest doesn't even make any sense. Satyrs are having an endless party in Cascading Springs Cottage. Okay, so why can't we just kill them, like in any normal quest? There aren't that many - it's certainly fewer Satyrs infesting the place than monsters you actually DO kill - and you have to fight them as part of the endfight anyway. So what fucking gives? Why can't I kill them from the start? As another gripe, killing the Satyrs doesn't even end the fight, which makes no sense, given that driving away the Satyrs was the FUCKING GOAL OF THE QUEST. No, instead, you need to replace the sign, AND kill the Satyrs. What a load of bullshit. Oh yeah, and this is the first of many quest in the Fail-wild which is needlessly large

Witch Hunt: FUCK. THIS. QUEST. This has a strong case for worst quest in the game. It's another quest which is pointlessly large, taking place on a wide open expanse where you need to locate a specific item that could be located ANYWHERE. Killing the hag herself is a tedious chore because of her invincibility frames. And if she wanders away, your map doesn't even show her dot... even if it showed where she spawned to begin with. What a load of horseshit

Make Believe: Admittedly not that bad, but it's not very fun either. Way too much walking around and going from point A to point B. Very Tower of Frost-esque

Frosty Reception: Godawful. Fucking godawful. Why is it that every fucking quest in this godforsaken adventure pack has sprawling hallways with absolutely NOTHING going on in them? This quest took me 20 minutes of walking back and forth to complete, and my final kill count was something like 60. It's like Turbine intentionally designed the hallways and rooms in this quest to be as aggravating as possible. Fuck this quest.

Wake Me Up Inside: Hahahaha wow, so clever with a dumb Evanescence reference, amirite? No seriously, fuck this quest too. Just like Witch Hunt, it takes place in a wide open expanse. At least this one's objectives are in predetermined locations, but it's still a needlessly large map. And it looks like Turbine still hasn't gotten the memo that players don't enjoy having to wait around for dumb cutscenes to happen. On a related note, the voiceovers seem REALLY out of sync with what's actually happening on your screen. Voiceovers also persist after you recall. How annoying. The only positive thing I can say about this quest is that it doesn't require a lengthy walk through the boring ass Failwild wilderness area

Legend of the Lost Locket and Combatting Corruption: Unironically the best designed quests in this pack. It's simple hack-n-slash drudgery through uninspired scenery. Not exactly great quests, but it's far better from the festering dungheap that is the rest of this pack

Immortality Lessons: Another candidate for "worst quest in the game," which seemingly combines every problem that Failwild has. Pointlessly large hallways and rooms. RNG-dependence for the giant's table. Pointless mechanics (in this case, the fiddle - what is it even accomplishing besides making your quest take longer?). Too many monsters to kill. Unskippable cutscenes. An absurd power creep hat which remains BiS for all melee characters for the entire heroic game. As another thing, there's no indication that those vines are supposed to be climbable; I had to look up a YouTube video to see where to go, since I got lost even after exploring the entire dungeon 4 times.

Oh, and of course, all the OP loot in this pack has to be farmed from end chests. Because god forbid Turbine use a sensible loot mechanic like 3rd completion end rewards.

God, I'm not looking forward to finishing the rest of these, but I'm operating on the "sunk costs fallacy" at this point. This was not worth 2k TP, even on sale.

Fuck Fail-wild. This feels like one of those packs I'll farm out once for the loot and then never touch again, saga bonuses notwithstanding. It's hard to believe just how bad this pack is. I'm so glad I stopped spending money on DDO many years ago.

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My vote's still for that float around on hover rocks looking for crap in the sharn pack.

noamineo wrote on Jul 1^st, 2022 at 2:09pm:

The Faithful Departed gets my vote

Tower of Frost is up there as annoying as shit

bob the builder wrote on Jul 1^st, 2022 at 3:45pm:


"Just learn it" doesn't make the quest suck any less. I know Let Sleeping Dust Lie like the back of my hand. Its still shit.

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I think if we truly want to get to the bottom of this we have to set the bar a little higher for what truly constitutes a "shit quest".

No more of this "just learn it" attitude. I can do Coal blindfolded, its still a shit quest. No "it has bad XP". XP or quest rewards have nothing to do with what does and doesn't make a quest shitty.

Key areas are:

• Stupid failure mechanics
• Terrible size mechanics(just being big doesn't make it bad, it needs to be big and include a mechanic that makes the bigness shit)
• Jumping puzzles(no game with collision detection this shitty should have jumping puzzles)
• Poor mechanics that interact with long-standing bugs
• Over-all retarded design

Let's start the nominations. My short list would be:
*Let Sleeping Dust Lie(hits about 4 of my points above)
*Jut Business(seriously fuck that quest)
*The Curse and the Captive Crustacean

Get gud?

Gunga wrote on Jul 1^st, 2022 at 4:39pm:


no u

You're losing me more with each subsequent post.

If you actually go around running quests which give you 0 loot and exp, then you are obviously not playing the game like >99.99% of everyone else who still plays this game. Which is fine - whatever makes you happy - but I don't personally play MMOs just so I can waste time getting no progress done, and I doubt most others do either.

The reason I brought up Restless is because that's an extreme example. I like the quests, but I don't love them enough to run them every life. Does that mean I think of DDO like a job? No, that's ridiculous. One of the most ridiculous things anyone's ever said about me on this forum.

I play DDO to have fun. Obviously. For me, having fun = trying new builds and progressing my character. It's NOT fun if I'm wasting 30 minutes on a badly designed quest which gives me almost nothing. The grind from 1-20 is already fairly long anyway. I don't need to prolong it further with shitty, unnecessarily long quests like Feywild.

You'd probably find that I'm actually a lot more casual than most people who still play the game. Most people who are on the TR/RR hamsterwheel are using sovereign pots and never play many of the quests I do. I don't usually use exp pots, and I run Sorrowdusk/Tangleroot every life because I still enjoy them. I occasionally run some Threnal quests at level, or other odd jobs like Korromar and Keeper's Santuary. Most people don't do that because these quests are seen as bad exp. But I like the quests enough that I still run them. Is that "treating the game like a job?" Obviously not. In fact, it's because I like these quests that I wish they gave more exp, and I see it as a design failure that they're not very rewarding right now.

My main point is that quest rewards should be balanced with some semblance of fairness. You can't just dismiss exp and say it doesn't matter, because that shit DOES matter. Nobody will run a quest if it gives Druid's Deep-caliber EXP. You can fellate yourself about how great a quest is all you want, but the fact is DDO is a RPG, and in RPGs, rewards do matter. Are they the most important thing? Obviously not, but nevertheless, it's a large factor of why certain quests are run, and certain quests are not. So yes, exp IS a part of the conversation, whether you like it or not.

Faithful Departed really isn't that bad at all. The Venerated have plenty of HP, to the point that the only way to kill them is to go out of your way and target them. I've run that quest a dozen times and not failed it once. Sleeping Dust is a LOT worse and vastly easier to fail... ahhh, but you see, it actually gives good exp, so people ignore that. See what I mean?

Also, WPM = beautiful? Really? It's a dank cave with some of that dumb platforming you were complaining about earlier. I don't see how you could possibly like it. That whole pack is awful, really.

Justanotherlurker wrote on Jul 1^st, 2022 at 2:25pm:

Faithful Retarded is WAY easier these days.

Guard Duty is harder than Faithful Departed. The quest really isn't bad at all, unless you're, again, going out of your way to kill the Venerated.

noamineo wrote on Jul 1^st, 2022 at 7:15pm:


No, that's precisely WHY exp/rewards DO matter for the discussion. All things being equal, a shitty quest with good exp is objectively better-designed/more worth running than a shitty quest with bad exp.

Anyway, i finished the other Failwild quests and yeah the pack sucks

Thornwright: Inoffensively easy quest. I don't love it, but if every quest in the pack were like this one, I would not mind this pack. No quick travel is still annoying, but I could deal with it if all the quests were brainless hack-n-slash stuff instead of the typical bullshittery that Failwild throws at you

Icemount Curse: Yet another needlessly large quest which takes like 15 minutes of walking back and forth to accomplish, and only ~60 kills throughout the damn thing. Puzzle is pretty retarded; after I solved it, I tried to pick up a Mysterious Remnant on the board and accidentally misclicked, which resulted in monsters + traps spawning, which killed me instantly. Dumb how a puzzle can kill you even AFTER it's solved, but that's just modern DDO for you

Needle in a Fey Stack: Another terribly designed quest. Does Turbine have a fetish for open landscape map design? Feels like the entire fucking pack was built around that philosophy. If you're melee, then this quest is even more tedious because of the absurd run speed of the boss after you open the chest. Then, you're subjected to a mind-numbingly stupid game of tag/hide and seek. What a load of garbage

Quid Pro Quo: I actually liked the Griffon part. I actually liked the villagers part. But then you get to the bandit caves, and the quest starts to do the typical Failwild thing of environments which are too large for their own good. I spent half the quest duration doing this part, and I was literally walking in circles (look at the map design: it's a circle). Overall, a below average quest

Knight who cried Windmill: Quite possibly the best quest in the entire pack. It's a simple boss fight with no bullshit. And the gimmick is actually decently executed. It's like something you'd expect in a Zelda game.

Overall I give the pack a D. Only thing which salvages it is the loot. As far as exp is concerned, there are so many other level 5-6 things to do, that Failwild feels superfluous. Pretty sure running TBC on Reaper -> Elite gets you better exp/min and is far more enjoyable than any shit in the Failwild. So yeah, I'd probably give it an F if not for the loot. Thoroughly horrible pack. Just farm it once for the gear and then forget about it forever.

noamineo wrote on Jul 1^st, 2022 at 4:12pm:

i never said "Just Learn it" for Let Sleeping Dust Lie.
that quest is shit.

I was talking about two specific quests the OP bitched about. both are very quick once you know it.

You all suck at games. Strake should kick you.