DilemmaEnder
Thelanis Player
So there are the Objective Facts: One of the Largest Wilderness Area in the game (I believe only Barovia is bigger). Goes to 9,000 kills. 20 Explore Points, 20 Rares including 2 of which are Purple Named Rares that hit hard though they do not guarantee a weapon from the suite like the IoD versions. 13 Quests = 9 in the story chains + 4 "Walk ups" that make up the Saga. The "town" area is set up like a square fort with a wooden stake palisade surrounding it. It contains everything you would want in a Town except a guild ship teleport - though it is only 1 portal away from Gatekeepers Grove which now contains said teleport.
Then there are the subjective observations: The Wilderness is amazing! Diverse regions that work together to make you really feel like you are wandering the dead husk of a once living elven city. From the road layouts and signposts to the buildings and landscapes, it feels like being inside a real fantasy adventure. The atmosphere rivals that of Ravenloft in this game - though not themed for gothic fantasy, more corrupted/lost high elvendom that needs to be reclaimed. The quests tell a cohesive storyline that is interesting and lends itself to tying the past to the present - though most of the focus is the present. Even the walk ups work to fill you in on the flavor of the area. As a Forgotten Realms D&D 3-3.5 nerd, I loved this! It feels like going for a stroll through the world I imagined 20+ years ago.
Lastly, there is the my overall play experience: I took the time to write down the quests in their proper order so I could do my first play through with appropriate sniffing of flowers. It was worth it! I wish they did a better job of pointing you in the correct direction using the names of the quests, but alas they are named based on what is happening within them, not based on their placement with the overall story. And you can play them in any order if you want to. So if you walk up to the last chain quest and enter, you will have everything you need to complete the quest although you haven't actually gotten it all from the earlier quests. Lip service only. Though that is probably for the better for replay reasons and grouping with others starting half way through a saga or what not. My first playthrough was Legendary R1 with guildies and it took us about 4 hours to sniff the flowers and figure stuff out. My second playthrough was R1 with guildies and we did not go in story order, we went to the closest door each time. It took us 3 hours without flower sniffing. Then I did it on R6 with friends and we took our time to show/teach each other things we noticed that they had not figured out yet. It took us 6 hours! Then I did it one more time on R1 with speed in mind, not quite zerging. It took us 2.75 hours. I believe that once an optimal path is determined and there are 2 people that know the quests well, the saga will take about 2.25-2.5 hours to complete. Compared to the other sagas - it is long. IoD is usually about 1.8-2 hours in my guild, Feywild is 2 hours, Saltmarsh is 1.5, Ravenloft is 2, Sharn is 1.75, Cogs is .75, Vecna is 2. I think that some of this could be mitigated by better teleports to quests after completing one time. And some of it will be just quest knowledge. But it is long.
Overall Conclusion: I love it! Though there are 2 quests I immediately did not like upon doing them the first time. I am getting used to them and with familiarity comes confidence and some acceptance. The "Worst" one is becoming "OK" and the second worst one still confuses me due to the mapping, you get to do the end fight within like 5 mins of the start but then must go through another 10 mins of questing to get the completion even though you have looted the chest! The rest of the quests are now easy peezy! The 2 Purple Names are a sack of HP and 1 of them is downright dangerous. Both have 2.5-4.5 million HP. Fun! They do need to make it so that the weapons drop from them every time at least. I recommend the X-Pac.
Then there are the subjective observations: The Wilderness is amazing! Diverse regions that work together to make you really feel like you are wandering the dead husk of a once living elven city. From the road layouts and signposts to the buildings and landscapes, it feels like being inside a real fantasy adventure. The atmosphere rivals that of Ravenloft in this game - though not themed for gothic fantasy, more corrupted/lost high elvendom that needs to be reclaimed. The quests tell a cohesive storyline that is interesting and lends itself to tying the past to the present - though most of the focus is the present. Even the walk ups work to fill you in on the flavor of the area. As a Forgotten Realms D&D 3-3.5 nerd, I loved this! It feels like going for a stroll through the world I imagined 20+ years ago.
Lastly, there is the my overall play experience: I took the time to write down the quests in their proper order so I could do my first play through with appropriate sniffing of flowers. It was worth it! I wish they did a better job of pointing you in the correct direction using the names of the quests, but alas they are named based on what is happening within them, not based on their placement with the overall story. And you can play them in any order if you want to. So if you walk up to the last chain quest and enter, you will have everything you need to complete the quest although you haven't actually gotten it all from the earlier quests. Lip service only. Though that is probably for the better for replay reasons and grouping with others starting half way through a saga or what not. My first playthrough was Legendary R1 with guildies and it took us about 4 hours to sniff the flowers and figure stuff out. My second playthrough was R1 with guildies and we did not go in story order, we went to the closest door each time. It took us 3 hours without flower sniffing. Then I did it on R6 with friends and we took our time to show/teach each other things we noticed that they had not figured out yet. It took us 6 hours! Then I did it one more time on R1 with speed in mind, not quite zerging. It took us 2.75 hours. I believe that once an optimal path is determined and there are 2 people that know the quests well, the saga will take about 2.25-2.5 hours to complete. Compared to the other sagas - it is long. IoD is usually about 1.8-2 hours in my guild, Feywild is 2 hours, Saltmarsh is 1.5, Ravenloft is 2, Sharn is 1.75, Cogs is .75, Vecna is 2. I think that some of this could be mitigated by better teleports to quests after completing one time. And some of it will be just quest knowledge. But it is long.
Overall Conclusion: I love it! Though there are 2 quests I immediately did not like upon doing them the first time. I am getting used to them and with familiarity comes confidence and some acceptance. The "Worst" one is becoming "OK" and the second worst one still confuses me due to the mapping, you get to do the end fight within like 5 mins of the start but then must go through another 10 mins of questing to get the completion even though you have looted the chest! The rest of the quests are now easy peezy! The 2 Purple Names are a sack of HP and 1 of them is downright dangerous. Both have 2.5-4.5 million HP. Fun! They do need to make it so that the weapons drop from them every time at least. I recommend the X-Pac.
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