Rank the Expansion Packs (1-10)

[axemania]

1 being your favorite, 10 your least favorite.

This is the order they were released in, not my personal rankings:

Menace of the Underdark
Shadowfell Conspiracy
Mists of Ravenloft
Masterminds of Sharn
Fables of the Feywild
Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
Isle of Dread
Vecna Unleashed
Magic of Myth Drannor
Chill of Ravenloft

I'm also interested in your reasons, so feel free to elaborate!


P.S. The "capcha" system, where you have to pick every image with a crosswalk, etc... is insufferable. Not just here but everywhere. It's not clear whether you're supposed to pick an image if it shows a small sliver of the requested object or not. And it makes you go through several iterations of the whole, annoying process. If the goal is to dissuade me from coming to this site, then I suppose it's very effective, because sometimes I give up. Life is too short to be shunted around by a computer program.

My personal rankings:

1. Isle of dread. Has a great vibe. Quests are fun and not too long. Plus, dinosaurs!!! That actually look half decent!!!
2. Masterminds of Sharn. Good EXP at a valuable level, great items, fun theme.
3. Mists of Ravenloft. Would be higher due to sheer convenience of doing the quests but I'm tired of Barovia after like a decade of Curse of Strahd being the only WOTC adventure for 5e that actually delivers on its promise. Also I always get lost in the castle.
4. Magic of Myth Drannor. Yes it's a lot of running around the wilderness but it's super pretty, the gear is awesome, the quests are fun (yes, even times long past, I like times long past), and the raid is fun. Would be higher if not for the skulls I always have trouble targeting that obliterate my HP.
5. Vecna Unleashed. Valuable EXP area if you're not super careful with plotting out your quests-at-level, quests are mostly good (screw that doggy escort quest tho), raid is fun. Good items too at least while leveling.
6. Fables of the Feywild. Only reason this isn't higher is that there's a lot of low level quests. But the quests are fun and don't have annoying mechanics, the landscape is pretty, and it's not too hard to navigate. Also, feytwisted chests are fun when they drop and the raid is fun.
7. Chill of Ravenloft. Love the story (You can't fix her, girly pop!), theme is fun even if the visuals get kinda bland on the landscape. Raid is cool even though I keep getting destroyed every group I try it with lol.
8. Saltmarsh. Takes a while to run to the quests, less of an overarching plot thread or cool theme. Not super valuable EXP wise while leveling, but decent in epics.
9. Menace of the Underdark. Too many annoying mechanics, Underdark is a PITA to navigate, king's forest is huge and not well-populated with monsters, epic only, doesn't get run as much these days, annoying flagging mechanics.
10. Shadowfell Conspiracy. I play it a lot, but I will never not be annoyed at the shadar-kai.

 

[Lazuli]

My list:

1. Menace. I love the quests, 3 wilderness, one raid. Big, well done, it was a proper xpack, the best at the moment. Epic destinies as a paid thing was the negative in that moment.
2. Ravenloft. Magnificent story, magnificent atmosphere, magnificent quests with variations in the replay, excellent raid with the only black point being that it started the trend of raids where trash has to be named so they can't be instantkilled, taking away a role from the casters.
3. IoD, Sharn, Fey. I rate them all roughly the same in terms of quests; they all have good quests and an interesting story. Sharn has 2 raids y back in its day, its equipment was groundbreaking. I find the IoD quests especially enjoyable. I love Fey raid, I find it very original with the songs thing.
4. MD, Chill. The quests are okay, but the rare loot is a major drawback. Additionally, the MD wilderness navigation for reaching the quests is terrible. Seriously, this questline needs better teleportation, and before doing the quests to the far east and west ends.
5. Shadowfell. I like the quests, but it doesn't have a raid, which makes me doubt whether it's expansion worthy.
6. Saltmarsh. I don't dislike the quests, but this is NOT an expansion, it's a big pack. God, Vale of Twilight is bigger than Saltmarsh. Quests are overturned on heroic, which is especially noticeable on hardcore
7. Vecna. I'm sorry, but I find this xpack awful. I don't like the quests, and it feels incredibly tedious. It doesn't have wilderness, and its raid is just a mini-raid. I never liked the mini-xpack scam, but this one in particular really stuck in my throat because its quests are extremely tedious (in my opinion). At least I like the Saltmarsh quests better.

 

[Cadaulus]

1	Isle of Dread	I was a fan of the PnP Isle of Dread so I expected a lot from this. Overall, it's a good slayer zone, good loot, (still) tough quests. The purple names in the slayer zone were a nice add, the raid added a completely new mechanic and I always run this at Legendary and still farm bones for crafting some items.
2	Mists of Ravenloft	SSGs first, it's great. I honestly don't like the changes they later made that altered quests (Amber!) Always run the slayers and all quests at Legendary for saga and reaper. Raids are good, loot is fairly obsolete but some things are still usable.
3	Masterminds of Sharn	Always run at legendary for saga & reaper, both raids are great and loot is still good at heroic and legendary.
4	Magic of Myth Drannor	A lot of people grief this pack but I think it was well done. The raid is challenging and loot is good, though nearly impossible to get. The design and story to me are great (the voice actors in this are +++), I'll take any of these over Vecna Unleashed quests in a heartbeat.
5	Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh	The only reason this ranks mid for me is no raid. It's a small area, decent quests, and you can zerg a Legendary run if you really need to. Will run in heroics if I need to. Loot and sets are still useful at endgame and tell me who doesn't love the ease of the Saltmarsh public area?!
6	Chill of Ravenloft	I wanted to like this, back to Ravenloft! But the design aspects seemed so lackluster when you look at the scope of things like MD, it's easy to get lost in the slayer zone because everything looks the same. Some of the quests are terribly long and the loot is nearly impossible to collect. The raid and the story are good but it doesn't pass on all aspects.
7	Fables of the Feywild	I run this in Heroics on occasion but mostly at Legendary for reaper. Loot is good, raids are ok.
8	Menace of the Underdark	I run this every life in Epics for the saga XP, but it seemed unfinished towards the last saga quests (demonweb). Raid is annoying, but ok. Overall story was good, Belly is still one of my favorite quests.
9	Vecna Unleashed	This pack seemed disconnected, severely lacking design and looks (compared to MD, IoD, etc) The story and purposed were unfocused. Raid is good, loot is a serviceable option at endgame
10	Shadowfell Conspiracy	This pack seemed shoehorned a bit, lacked depth, the Storm Horns looks amazing and the quests there still worth running for high XP. Pretty sure this was the last Turbine hurrah, it showed.

 

[Tharikk]

1. Mists of Ravenloft
2. Menace of the Underdark
3. Magic of Myth Drannor
4. Shadowfell Conspiracy

I'm a Forgotten Realms Fan

5. Fables of the Feywild
6. Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
7. Masterminds of Sharn

 

[justin credible]

1. Chill of Ravenloft
2. Fables of the Feywild
3. Isle of Dread
4. Magic of Myth Drannor
5. Masterminds of Sharn
6. Menace of the Underdark
7. Mists of Ravenloft
8. Shadowfell Conspiracy
9. Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
10. Vecna Unleashed
my reasoning is that's alphabetical order

 

[Mononitro]

1.IOD, Sharn (My favorites): Good quest design; IoD have a good saga xp and Sharn have excellent sagas xp; Quests can be completed quickly, even solo; Quests with good XP/min and fair; The missions are straightforward and the puzzles are simple; You don't waste your XP Potion time; The Items are good for leveling; Wild (Only IoD): it is fun, the quests aren't that far apart from each other, teleports in good and strategic locations, you don't waste as much time on your XP potion; and IoD and Sharn are good for R10 runs. Both are excellent to repeat throughout your TR's life; IoD can have some good endgame items for casters and Sharn endgame items are outdated/bad. You don't need to complete the raid to change or upgrade your items, it is really good

2.Ravenloft: Good XP/min and fair ; Good quest design; Quests can be completed quickly, even solo; Excellent saga XP; Quests are straightforward; Excellent Slayer ( epic levels); You don't waste your XP potion time running to the quests; Good items for leveling; Good for R10 runs; Good raids for tank, healer and DPS; excellent to repeat throughout your TR's life; Bad endgame items

3. Feywild: Good XP/min and fair; Good quest design; Most of quest can be completed quickly solo; Quests straightforward; Bad saga XP; You can waste some of your XP potion running to the quests, no teleport to quests (or close to them); Slayers is not that good for epic levels; Raids are really fun to tank and heal; Excellent items for leveling; Good for R10 runs; Good to repeat throughout your TR's life; Endgame items are outdated/bad

6.Chill: Good XP/min and fair; Good quest design; Quest can be completed quickly solo; Quests straightforward and puzzles are simple; Long/Very Long quests are doable and repeatable; Excellent saga XP; You don't waste much of your XP Potion's duration running to missions, no teleport; Good items for leveling; Can be exhausting to go through the whole saga both heroic and/or R10 runs; Excellent end game items; Rare system is really bad. You don't need to complete the raid to change or upgrade your items, it is really good

• Relenteless (Raid) : This raid have really bad mechanic. The Grab/Stun is really annoying if you are healer or tank, because the time is too short for someone save you and Break Enchantment have a short distance to cast and save allies. Melee DPS have to stop to damage boss sometimes, while ranged/casters can full time DPS. The Mist mechanic was cool, but they removed it, you could cast Obscurate Mist (for example) near boss, when the boss spin it did not hit melee/tank. Good point: some items are good and the time to ress is very low (almost zero)

7. Shadowfell, Menance: have good xp for epic levels; good saga xp; items are not good.

8.Saltmarsh: Skippable pack ;Bad XP/min; Bad quest design, mosters are too strong for level 3~5; Some items can be good for leveling; No raid; Bad slayer; Bad endgame items; Bad Heroic saga xp; Good Legendary Saga Reward; Not good for R10 run, but some quests is really good to learn how to do R10 solo.
8. Vecna: Skippable pack; Good XP/min and fair; Some quest have bad design; 1 quest is really boring (Bark and Blade), it is like a walk-simulator, not that straighforward; Leveling items are not worth; Some legendary items can be good; Can be exhausting to go through the whole saga both heroic and/or R10 runs

• Fire over Morgrave(Raid): This raid have good mechanics; It is fun to tank and heal; Raid items are bad; It is a quick raid, good for Fates

10. Myth Drannor(My Worst Pack): Most of quests have a good XP/min and fair; Most of quest have a good design; Most of quests are straightforward; You going to waste your Potion XP duration running to quests; The quests are very far apart, and the teleport doesn't help; Most quests can be completed quickly solo; It's really exhausting to go through the whole saga both heroic and/or R10 runs; Excellent Heroic XP saga and Legendary Reward; Rare system is really bad; Good items for leveling and endgame items; After that pack, I started wondering if it's worth buying the new expansions or waiting. Worst mechanic is that you need to complete the raid to upgrade or change the items, it is really bad and annoying, specially for me, because I like to test different builds and classes.

• This pack have 2 Long quests and 2 Very Long quests: 3 of them have really bad design (The Zulkir's Plan, Times Long Past, The Key to the Mythal), they are really boring, the XP are unfair, they were not designed to be repeatable. The Key to the Mythal is the worst quest of this game, for me.
• Threats Old and New (Raid): Tanking this raid is a real boring. It is very punishing for first-timers or characters with few past lives. There is only one Shrine, so casters need to manage their spell points carefully. The raid is punishing for casters and healers because there are oozes that drain spell points. If someone decides not to follow the plan, the raid can become very frustrating and it can take a long time to complete. The items are excellent.

This list is based on my experience and what I enjoy doing in the game. I like to test different builds and classes, so I need all Heroic, Epic and Legendary content.

 

[dejvid]

1. Special Tier: MotU - for the sheer quantity alone, but also for what it represents and what made it a proper expansion. not only did we get a prelude questchain, but said chain also ended with a proper cinematic teasing the expansion. and then we were sent on an adventure into new lands! 5 levels, 15 quests, 1 raid, 3 wilderness zones, 1 proper new city, 1 new class, epic destinies introduced, 3 challenges (each having 2 variations, so 6 in total). and the new city eveningstar was then also properly used for future quests and even events! this whole thing truly felt like a proper expansion.

well, almost everything afterwards felt more like just an amalgamation of questpacks than a proper expansion...

1. Mists of Ravenloft and Sharn - two all-around very good questpackbundle additions to the game. ravenloft is exceptionally well done, and sharn has its very own charm.
2. Saltmarsh - its just solid. lovely setting, great wilderness, nothing really offensive about it.
3. Shadowfell - yes. i enjoy the setting, it feels "complete" in terms of an actual story across both wilderness' and quests, and it gave us the iconic system. has both one of the very best quests to this day, as well as one of the abolute worst.
4. IoD - fantastic setting, dinos! did not really enjoy the wilderness, and my biggest gripe is how it all starts setting up vecna as the bad guy, only to end in him not beeing the final one. also, the fact that the "main story" is just a third of the overal questpackbundles is irritating.
5. feywild. the music drags this whole experience for me down, and it irks me that its that way. has some good quests, but.. and i am going to catch some flack for this now... but neverwinter online did feywild better... before they revamped it, ugh...
6. vecna - i bought it... but have not played it yet...
7. myth drannor, and chill of ravenloft - not bought. the rare loot debates have demoralized me from investing in those with actual money. thats also why demogorgon will probably be a skip as well.

 

[Frieling Slyhand]

Top tier based mostly on how much I enjoy the quests:
1. Mists of Ravenloft. There are no quests that I don’t like. The wilderness is great for slayers and the teleports are great for leveling. Teo goid raids. The ambiance. It’s got it all. I still use tge gear at lvl 10.

2. Sharn. There are only a couple quests I dread—Just Business really. Cogs are ok for slayers and quests are have direct teleports; Cog wuests are easy to get to once you learn route. Teo raids. I still use gear at 15. Not as crazy about story setting as RL.

3. MoTU. I love this chain and saga for epic leveling. There are no bad or overly hard/slow wuests. The multiple sagas is sweet. Only one raid and it is buggy drops it down and the gear sucks. But quests are such good exp for leveling! Ambiance and story are class D&D.

Second tier: I like these but I generally don’t run them while leveling unless I get in a group because it feels slow.

4. Feywild. It’s good but there are some quests that can be a pain. The wilderness is ok but slayer count is smaller. No direct teleports. I do like Dryad raid. Hunt makes two raids. Ambiance and story are too ridiculous for my taste. I still use gear at lvl 5.

5. IOD. I don’t run this unless I find a group—just feels slow. The ambiance and Dino’s are amazing. Wilderness isn’t used for slayers though and to use teleports you have to do quests first—annoying gatekeeping ssg. The end game gear was the best for its time and loved crafting system best. Only one raid. The fact that the basic expansion without goodies is still the most expensive makes no sense.
If wilderness had been designed to work for slayers and if teleports worked immediately and one more raid, this could have rivaled Mists.

6. Saltmarsh makes good tier because the quests and saga can be run pretty fast with only one annoyingly slow quest. No teleports but quests are all reasonably close and even though slayer count is small it’s not a bad slayer zone. The gear is great for epic and not hard to upgrade. Ambiance and stories fit perfectly with the classic module. No raid does suck. If this had two raids it would be top tier.

Bad tier.

7. Chill. They nailed the ambiance and setting and story. But I don’t really enjoy running these quests and I don’t run saga while leveling unless there’s a group. There is only one raid. Wilderness zone is not densely populated enough for slayers. No teleports. Gear is uninspiring and the crafting mat grind is too much. Rares.

8. Shadow fell. I actually like most of the quests! Lack of raids. Wilderness is not good for slayers. Paid teleports!!?? Bad gear.

9. Vecna. I dread this saga while leveling and avoid it without a group. Several long and boring g wuests like the fig walk. One raid that is boring. No wilderness at all. Ambiance and setting is pretty meh. Gear is ok though.

10. Myth Drannor. Wilderness is huge and empty and bad for slayers. No teleports. Unless you do quests first. Rares killed my interest and enjoyment and I now dread this saga and quests. I thought tge raid was good but only one.

 

[Lagin]

Each has thier own design elements designed by different devs. So "ranking" them is a personal preference.
Story immursion goes to RL.
Quest design prob Vecna
Graphical is a toss-up w/ IoD & RL & FW.
This is not a fair ask, Older "Adventure Packs" offer things newer content doesn't have. Shavarath w/ ToD is a classic example
IMO DDO has already *peaked* in design. With stringent reins on development costs makes that point even more relevant.

 

[Grim]

Playing mostly Heroics and either play solo or with my multi-box team, I go for the very subjective "Fun for me" vibe. Raids, end game and grouping is not important to me. I like playing different builds and different mixes of box teams as I go through the PL hamster wheel. I tend to like the current xpac as it is the one I have done the least and there are still surprises. But if I put that aside to rank the xpacs in order of the fun I've had playing through them over and over, it would look like this:
S Tier - Ravenloft, IoD
A Tier - Saltmarsh, Sharn, Chill, Myth
B Tier - MotU, Shadowfell,
C Tier - Vecna, Feywild
D Tier -

Vecna and Feywild are not my favorites, but they are not D Tier bad.
I think all of the xpacs are done well and are fun, but if we were to start rating adventure packs, I think I could find a few D Tiers and strait up fails.

 

[Cadaulus]

For poops and chuckles I ran the post through gemini (up to this point) to try and aggregate the rankings. Take it as you see fit:

Summary Aggregate List (1 to 10)​

If you were to average the community's definitive 1-10 list based on these discussions, it shapes up roughly like this:

1. Mists of Ravenloft
2. Masterminds of Sharn
3. Isle of Dread
4. Fables of the Feywild
5. Menace of the Underdark
6. Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
7. Vecna Unleashed
8. Magic of Myth Drannor
9. Chill of Ravenloft
10. Shadowfell Conspiracy

 

[Gruben]

1. Masterminds of Sharn -> great story, easilly attainable gear, set bonuses were fun and not overly punitive, items in saga end reward enjoyable raids for endgame
2. Chill of Ravenloft -> great story cool art style fun new giants and dragons to fight, raid is fun for ranged toons and pushed me to quit playing casters after a decade
3.Fables of the Feywild -> enjoyed the storylines and the art style, end game raid was super fun and quests had a unique vibe
4. Mists of Ravenloft -> flame skulls and wisps suck but othewise good story, mostly undead which are my friends so thats why it falls down the order
5. Isle of Dread ->hp bloat on mobs in slayer zone is criminal really like this pack but the raid is so bad i hate this pack
6. Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh -> nebula fragment RNG pissed me off had pugs pulling them nearly every saga i ran but i never saw one, by the time you could buy them in future updates the gear had already progressed past this system so doubly bad feeling.
7. Vecna Unleashed -> quests are organized like a child's room in the public area feels like a mess to navigate both in and out of quests
8. Magic of Myth Drannor ->massive and empty feeling wilderness have fallen asleep running from quest to quest before. rare loot is so rare you probably shouldnt include it in any planned gearset because you simply wont beable to get the item in a reasonable amount of time.
9. Shadowfell Conspiracy -> too many mobs, quests too long, the supply line quest is miserable waiting for 3 minutes for nothing. some are annoying to solo.
10. Menace of the Underdark -> this pack used to be mid now its by far my least favorite because devs removed the kings forest slayer infinite portal from being easily found. low exp/min quests throughout the entire quest line i prefer to do slayer with my time.

 

[kmoustakas]

I do believe if you were around for an expansion's release, you'd have a much different oppinion of it.

For example, shadowfail to a new player is just a quick saga + good xp now. They never had it as their 'new expansion the entire game is different that's all there is to run now'.

Again, I feel very much as if the expansions after ravenloft feel more like big (or average!) packs rather than expansions. You don't even have to have/run the expansions to tr/etr, you can totally ignore them. You couldn't ignore menace or shadowfail or ravenloft which made the former worse due to their infinite bugs and problems with the systems they introduced and the latter so much better than anything that was available before that. (Remember ravenloft gear was up to +20 at the time!)

 

[after human]

S: IoD
A: MotU, Ravenloft
B: Sharn
C: Feywild, Chill
D: MD
F: VU, Saltmarsh, Shadowfell


here are the top tier

1. Isle of Dread: the most fun content in the game, super polished and an excellent raid. this should be the standard for SSG moving forward
2. Menace of the Underdark: classic of classics. fundamentally changed the game forever. remnant of a past long gone when DDO was huge.
3. Mists of Ravenloft: i never run this, but i can't deny the content is extremely polished and they went above and beyond for this


here begins OK content

4. Masterminds of Sharn: the sheer quantity of interesting content here was great. however, here we start with imperfections. namely the main town missing the mark, and some of the quests being unbearably annoying (e.g. just business, best laid plans)
5. Chill: great story, very cool ambiance and different vibe than other content in the game. but it's such a small expansion, and the raid was lazy
6. Feywild: fun content, memorable wilderness zone (although nothing to do), with great gear and a OK-ish raid. it's fine.

here begins trash content

7. Myth Drannor: makes me sad because they clearly went above and beyond with the visuals and the music, but it was ultimately ruined by just being boring content, taking forever to run, boring wilderness, abysmal loot drops, and the worst raid ever. it's a shame that MD flopped, it had great potential.
8. Vecna Unleashed: the only effort put into VU was the guy who designed the Balor. everyone else phoned it in. quantity over quality.
9. Saltmarsh: I would only run this if I'm feeling masochistic
10. Shadowfell: terrible performance, quests look like ****, super tedious to run, and just overall bad content.

 

[SecretPhiarlanMan]

1 Menace
2 IOD
3 Ravenloft
4 Vecna Unleashed
5 Saltmarsh
6 Sharn
7 Feywild
8 Shadowfell
9 MD
10 Lamordia

In terms of why, it's due to the perceived amount of effort to create the expansion, and how much fun I've had in each one.

 

[Lazuli]

I do believe if you were around for an expansion's release, you'd have a much different oppinion of it.

For example, shadowfail to a new player is just a quick saga + good xp now. They never had it as their 'new expansion the entire game is different that's all there is to run now'.

Again, I feel very much as if the expansions after ravenloft feel more like big (or average!) packs rather than expansions. You don't even have to have/run the expansions to tr/etr, you can totally ignore them. You couldn't ignore menace or shadowfail or ravenloft which made the former worse due to their infinite bugs and problems with the systems they introduced and the latter so much better than anything that was available before that. (Remember ravenloft gear was up to +20 at the time!)

Well, I've been here since every expansion release, and my opinion hasn't changed much since then. But I agree that SSG's xpacks feel like big xpacks, and not like expansions, except for RL.

Menace impressed me: it was big, it was well-made, it provided essential basic gear for those starting out after heroic, with the only major drawback being the non-free EDs... EDs should have been free.

But then Shadowfell came along, and I thought: this isn't an expansion, it's too small and doesn't even have a raid.

With RL, I thought that SSG had really put effort into the quests, and that it was once again a worthwhile expansion, even if it was smaller than Menace. The only thing that bothered me was that the extras in the expensive bundles were really poor, except for the two months of VIP.

But then Sharn came along, and it became clear to me that their idea of an expansion was to force-feed us a big pack every year at exorbitant prices with terrible extras. And this has been getting worse year after year. Each year the playable content seems reduced to a bare minimum, and the extras are getting worse and worse. The only year they tried to improve them was with IoD, undoubtedly because the mini-expansion fiasco backfired, and look how cheap they are: with 216 PL per character, now they're saying that putting Otto boxes on IoD was a mistake.

They're greedy. Very greedy.

So my rating above is based on three parameters: whether I feel the content is worthy of an expansion (if the content is so scarce or lacking in raids or wilderness, I'm sorry, that's not an expansion and it goes at the bottom of the list), whether I enjoyed the quests, and whether the xpack doesn't have annoying mechanics/features (like MD, ahem). I left out the bundle extras, although I really think SSG's are awful; they're very cheap for the price they charge for their packs.

 

[Erokir]

For poops and chuckles I ran the post through gemini (up to this point) to try and aggregate the rankings. Take it as you see fit:

Summary Aggregate List (1 to 10)​

If you were to average the community's definitive 1-10 list based on these discussions, it shapes up roughly like this:

1. Mists of Ravenloft
2. Masterminds of Sharn
3. Isle of Dread
4. Fables of the Feywild
5. Menace of the Underdark
6. Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
7. Vecna Unleashed
8. Magic of Myth Drannor
9. Chill of Ravenloft
10. Shadowfell Conspiracy

Very interesting, thanks!

It actually aligns largely with my own taste. I really don't like Chill. It gives me a dreary, miserable kind of feeling. The landscape and atmosphere of the wilderness and the quests is very unpleasant to look at.

And the quests don't add anything interesting to compensate.

 

[Tyrande]

Very interesting, thanks!

It actually aligns largely with my own taste. I really don't like Chill. It gives me a dreary, miserable kind of feeling. The landscape and atmosphere of the wilderness and the quests is very unpleasant to look at.

And the quests don't add anything interesting to compensate.

ditto. I really don't like Chill either. It gave me the same feeling when playing it like your described.

My characters only run it for the Relentless raid b/c everyone else runs it and the opening quest "The Body Snatchers" and skip the rest.
Got it cheap with points with 30% off discount.

The loot isn't interesting either now that we have Terror of Demogorgon loot which is non-rare.

 

[Underflow]

• 1: Mists of Ravenloft (Excellent EXP in a time that it's needed, run it every life, Barovian weapons are amazing for starting off characters, quests are mostly fast or have huge exp)
• 2: Masterminds of Sharn (I actually hate how little competition it has at 17-20, but sure, whatever, it does its job)
• 3: Chill of Ravenloft (Skip the story, I despise The Wish, but the gear is BIS from levels 8-20, it makes casters so much better, exp is good, explorer area isn't too bad. Even with Terror's new gear, Chill's heroic caster items are still better, having higher spell crit damage.)
• 4: Terror of Demogorgon (Still not sure yet. Gear isn't amazing, but the level slot it goes into is. Quests are varied and mechanically interesting, if a bit buggy. The rares are completely irrelevant, meaning that you don't need to farm them. That they're tradable means that they're easier to access too---as well as a dopamine rush when one drops, since you can flip it on the ASAH.)
• 5: Fables of the Feywild (I run this, but it's competing with 3bc and losing. It is more of a legendary pack than a heroic one in my eyes.)
• 6: Myth Drannor (Has a few bad quests like Chill, but with worse gear, less relevance and bigger wilderness.)
• 7: Shadowfell Conspiracy (Mind you, I hate the Stormhorns, but they're fast and amazing exp, and the worst part of Shadowfell is the worst part of Feywild)
• 8: Isle of Dread (I consistently forget that this expansion exists. The gear isn't relevant, being outclassed in both directions, the level range is awful (7 is the most experience-dense part of the game), and the fact that it's level 30+ means that it eternally competes with other, better-designed expansion gear. However, it does still have its own niche and while it's not something I think about often, I never hate doing it.)
• 9: Menace of the Underdark (Bad exp, as much running around pointlessly as Shadowfell's Storm Horns, irrelevant loot, bad quest design, invisible holes in the goddamn floor in C3 that reset you back to the beginning of the dungeon. Completely brainless chain that's only run because there's no decent competition at level)
• 10: Saltmarsh (Outcompeted by other level 3 quests, quests are long, spread out, low exp, and have mediocre loot. I hate Danger at Dunwater and The Final Enemy more than I hate The Wish.)
• 11: Vecna Unleashed (Given the absolute worst possible level ranges, terrible quests, slow, half of the quests are just not enjoyable to do. Step's questline is frustrating in order to unlock a pointless reward.)

My takes are probably a bit wild here. I actually like how dreary and ugly Chill is, because it makes the rest of the game look better in comparison. It makes it feel like a place that's hostile to the player, and somewhere you should not linger for long.

Also, the distance between 7 and 8 is huge: I almost never run Vecna Unleashed or Saltmarsh content without a PUG, just because of how mind-numbing they are. MOTU I'll run once, but with my brain off.

Always Run Twice a Life Tier	Mists, Sharn, Chill, Terror
Always Run 1+ Times a Life Tier	Fables, Myth Drannor
Probably Run 1+ Times a Life Tier	Shadowfell Conspiracy, IOD, MOTU
Maybe Run Once a Life In Legendary Tier	Saltmarsh, Vecna Unleashed

 

[PaleFox]

Ok, what I liked most about the xpacs is that it introduced us to Vecna, from Feywild all the way to the Isle of Dread.
That's some massive story planning.

I also like the themes and color combinations, esp of Mist of Ravenloft, Feywild, Saltmarch.
The Isle of Dread misses both the flattening of a high sun to the colors and the thick deep greens of an actual jungle, I do like the turn over of both ancient south american and north african symbolism and architecture. Well, that is how I recognize them.
Mist of ravenloft and gianthold are too empty, "single" color schemed. I guess I could say that for underdark as well?