Just finished Myth Drannor Heroic, my main happened to be at the right level range and so I hopped in and ran the pack today. These are all based on Heroic only, so if you want to know about legendary specifics then you may want to look somewhere else.
General Impressions
Overall, I really enjoyed the pack. It felt maybe a little underwhelming on difficulty, I'm not sure if that's just past lives or a strong build talking (I don't think this is the best build I've ever run, but as a Dragon Lord build it's reasonably tanky and self sustainable so soloing is easy- I ran the quests on Elite because I was running them blind, and I wish I had tackled them on at least R1, but that's hindsight for you- even champions weren't really a threat). I'd guess running all the content took give or take five hours, which is not bad for an expansion in my opinion. Storyline was good, and didn't need the raid for a satisifying ending- easily some of the more enjoyable world building and storytelling, and it's nice to see it tied up neatly in heroics where you might not have a chance to run the raid.
I have a feeling this pack will slot into my heroic lives pretty frequently in a nice spot between Ravenloft and Sharn. I don't know how approachable it is for newbies- I've made the mistake of underestimating difficulty and then getting destroyed on a first life alt many times before- but the balancing seems to have erred on the side of "Make it easy-ish" so you won't get any weird difficulty spikes. I think I used second wind a couple times but I could have used a healer hireling instead, and while I did bring Rana Leafheart since she's the expansion NPC, she was never in serious danger except maybe a few traps and even a pretty tepid Greater Vigor at most a couple times per quest felt sufficient, so I'd say the difficulty will feel pretty reasonable compared to similar leveled quests, including old DDO quests- you won't need to bring optimized builds to have fun or avoid difficulty spikes.
True seeing seems useful, as does death ward, but the later of which is basically expected whenever facing high level undead anyway. I wouldn't say there were more than one enemy type that was particularly annoying or difficult- there are a few dangerous types with control or special effects, but they're pretty limited and usually feel right at home as optional encounters or bosses and I didn't need to fetch any special gear to deal with anything. Only one enemy type really annoys me, and that's chaos crawlers, and... well, I'll mention them later. They're not dangerous, just annoying.
Wilderness Area
The wilderness area is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's definitely one of the prettier areas in DDO, and I had very few complaints with any issues other than the map being insufficient for finding and tracking quests. One, Seeds of Decay, isn't visible on map (it's a quest giver portal, and since quest givers don't display until you approach them, that means there's no quest entrance to show up on map) which is deeply annoying, and when you do find it it's significantly above ground level so you may end up having to hike around to get up a hill. Thanks to rabidfox for sharing the location, otherwise I was just going to skip that one.
While it doesn't feel as bad as Isle of Dread, get ready for a lot of walking to quest entrances that don't have fast travel options. I don't mean "They need shards" or "You unlock them by doing the quests"- there are four fast travel points, two of which are to specific quests (which may be more than a minute on mount away from your destination) and two are just generic entry points- one of which is actually further from any quests than the actual quest entrance.
Additional pet peeve- chaos crawlers, the carrion crawlers with wild magic style effects, will just straight up dismount you most of the time, so you'll need to deal with that a couple times if you're running to all the quests... which you will do. I don't understand SSG's aversion to reasonable fast travel. Ravenloft has it and it's beautiful, but every wilderness area since then has been increasingly frustrating slogs.
Would be nice to see them add another adventure pack to utilize the east side of the map more, and maybe add more fast travel destinations. But I don't hate it, and other than the walking I have no complaints. If you're going to do all the quests, yeah, get ready to burn a couple minutes on your pots and make sure you clear inventory space for any loot you might find because if you go back to sell stuff you'll be treking out from basically the closest quest to town even with the fast travel unlocked. As for the area itself, it seems fine, density is maybe a little low but I was testing heroic solo which usually feels a bit scant on targets, so I can't really judge, and I've heard some positive impressions from other people.
Loot
As for loot, I don't have any strong opinions yet because nothing I dropped slots into my build. I got pretty lucky with volume of drops, though- I pulled a bunch of the casting longswords (Implement +13, +5 enhancement, proficiency for longswords, type spellpower +87, type lore +13%, Quality Spell Focus Master +1, Insightful Spell Penetration +3), a hand axe (unlucky for a two hander life, but not bad- anarchic blast 3d6 + 3d6 crit, anarchic 3d6, aligned, and keen at +5 enhancement bonus in heroics is reasonable for the level range), Crown of Evening's Rise (Dodge 7%, Insightful Dodge 3%, Exceptional Intelligence Skills +2, Insightful Spell Saves +2 with a sun augment slot), Robe of Sunlight (+5 enhancement, Magical Sheltering +17, Spell Saves +6, Quality Potency +13, Spellsight +15, Sun augment slot) and a small shield (+5 enhancement, 11% bashing, Shield Spikes 3d6, Rough Hide 7, and Legendary Conditioning +10% to max HP). Basically, nothing that slots my current build, but that's fine. Also got a Solar Gem of Spell Penetration (+3 Artifact) and a Lunar Gem of Physical Protection (+10 profane) - both pretty strong bonuses for their types and heroic levels that slot into armor and gear (not weapons, not sure what types of gear accepts it because I pulled swords and more swords but more than just body slot armor) from Myth Drannor in Sun and Moon typed slots- kind of a build your own set bonuses system.
Not a bad system, but it leads to my concern that drops are going to be a major chore- there's no currency or conversion for these, so it's very easy to end up like I did with a bunch of gear that can't be used, and I'm also not sure how the drop tables look- obviously SSG knows more than I do about the specifics, but it seems like I got a lot of casting implements, but very few weapons meant to be used as weapons. I wonder if too many things are sharing places on tables to make any more specific or interesting named gear too rare, but on one run through with ten pulls (technically I did one end chest twice, which will be mentioned in quests in a bit) I'm going to guess at least augments and gear have independent drop chances since heroic *should* have a 33.3% drop rate. Would be nice to see more weapon than the four caster longswords I pulled but that's RNG for you, and that's a larger pet peeve with DDO named loot drops anyway.
Quests
I think quests are the bread and butter of any expansion, and I think Myth Drannor is... mostly good here. Is it perfect? No. But is it of the "New DDO" quality? Yes, it definitely is. There are some reused textures and enemy types, of course, and even some environmental assets (I remember one sarcophagus that's all the way from the Catacombs pack in Stormreach still) that I wish would be updated with a more flavorful and setting appropriate asset, but obviously DDO has an older engine and performance limitations are a thing, and I don't have a lot to critique there. Little bit of bumpiness on experience assignments, with some quests feeling like real hauls and others feeling pretty mediocre, but that's not the end of the world and overall I think I netted about a level and a half of experience with 30% pots and greater learning tomes, which is not bad and will neatly carry you to Sharn if you just wrapped up Ravenloft.
I only encountered a handful of major bugs, and I'll get into them as I go through the quests. No story spoilers, but there will be some impressions that may indicate areas, and I'll mention some enemy types that may be interesting. The story is interesting, and a few of the quests left me very excited- I was grinning at the end of the final quest, so that's a plus. I didn't love every minute, but I can see myself not having any "Nah, I'm taking the VIP skip for the Saga reward" quests except maybe for Seeds of Decay just because it's tedious to get to unless they fix the marker missing... or maybe Portal to Below, also because it's just a tedious walk in the wilderness (and all alone on the east side of the map). I also didn't have good search/spot or lock/trap stuff, though I did bring Froggo to unlock a few things and to my surprise he did (average of like 2.7 attempts for chests/doors) and none of the traps hit alarmingly hard (though, again, tanky build, so if you're playing a 200 HP mage maybe don't push it).
Book Burning - A short quest bestowed by walk up in the south-west of the map. Bit tedious to get to, but I don't want to beat a dead horse. Quest giver is a dragon (always cool), but there's a string table error in the dialogue (boooooooo). Still, quest itself is fine. Fire resist, obviously, lots of fire enemies, not really complicated but does have a skill check (Haggle, Diplomacy, and I think Spellcraft?) for an optional. Reasonably fun, only about three or four times longer than the walk out there, and this is on a melee martial who has to walk up to everything.
Death Hosts This Banquet - Lots of undead, as the name implies, pretty moderate length and part of the storyline quests. Didn't love this one, there was a lot of labyrinthine hallways and the map kept resetting on me which is a bad combination- something about the z-level maps wouldn't persist across switching, and there was a lot of z-level switching. If you had a map on the wiki or knew the layout, I expect that would be less of an issue. Some traps and locked stuff for optionals. Didn't like having to interact with a magical barrier to trigger a flag, I missed it the first time and had to backtrack an extra time because of it, but it wasn't a huge back track. Seems like the flag could have been a little earlier, but whatever, it didn't hardlock the quest when I missed it and it worked out in the end. I wouldn't say it's bad, it just felt like I was running it for the experience points even in my first playthrough, which is suboptimal.
Ettercap Incursion - I love it, but it's also the one quest I encountered a truly quest breaking bug. It's a short quest you get in town and immediately portal into (no traipsing to the end of the world to find the entrance) and you get to fight a
dragon
that I really enjoy fighting at the end. I know mechanically the fight gets a little bag-of-hp but it's exciting, don't judge me. But the one thing that I don't like is that you can hardlock the quest. I did it on my first attempt, and almost didn't realize it, because apparently if you hit all three altars to open up the back but never approach the door to the back first, you can mess up flagging orders. And ironically in the run I did to clear it, I didn't even see that objective hit the list, so I have no idea what's going on, though I did see the dialogue trigger I missed. Once the bug is fixed, I'll probably love it, but man it's a bad taste to have to run a quest twice because of a bug. That said I will probably run this as a "daily" if I'm ever parked between Ravenloft and Sharn in heroics and just doing one quest a day, because it's fun.
The House of Gems - A storyline quest granted in town, pretty enjoyable in my opinion. There are a few traps and a variety of enemy types. Feels a little claustrophobic, but hey, Dungeons and Dragons, not vast open spaces and dragons. Thought the environmental design was particularly good on this one, lots of interesting little rooms with gold piles and traps and levers and stuff, but nothing too rough or gotcha trap wise and I didn't feel lost, though I think I missed an optional path.
The Key to the Mythal - The last quest in the part one storyline. I actually don't remember this one super well, it's a mediumish length quest leaning a little on the long side, some really pretty environments, has an "unskippable" 90 second end sequence which is tedious but that's my only big complaint. It's not super exciting, but it's not bad or offensive either. I probably need to run this a few more times to get an opinion on it.
Oghma's Song - A medium length storyline quest, I thought this was conceptually interesting. I'm sure I missed something- there's a door in the entrance chamber I only got 2/3 lights for- but I'll grab it on another playthrough. Not the most immediately straightforward quest, and it does have a bit of guide dang it moments for order because you need to go to one specific room to unlock some doors so you'll be backtracking on your first playthrough. But even with that, I thought this quest was endearing, it just felt good and like a really "immersive" location. Flip side, they did reuse the Simon Says puzzle twice, which feels like a sin, and one of the other puzzles is supposedly really easy but the angles are not as clear a read as I think the developers think they are. Not hard, but both times I disagreed on the solution. Maybe I'm just not very observant. That said, really liked the quest overall and it took, like, fifteen extra seconds so it's not a big deal.
Portal to Below - A shortish (running up on medium) length quest, welcome to the underdark tileset again. It's an okay quest, didn't really leave any impressions, I'm also kind of convinced I may have accidentally done an optional path thinking it was mandatory and so I'm not sure how much of the quest is optional and how much is mandatory, since if that was an entirely optional area, well... uh... look, no one ever accused me of being overly perceptive. IMO the enemy types are a little tired, but it was still reasonably enjoyable and the environment was used well even if the underdark is not a rare tileset.
The Safehold - A medium length quest, though I think part of that is backtracking for an optional. I encountered a graphical bug where the rubble in the hall directly in front of the entrance was transparent, but only from the entrance direction. Not quest breaking or anything, just a pretty major graphical bug. Enjoyable, fights felt good, probably wouldn't backtrack for the optional by the entrance every time, but even then it's actually a neat layout.
Secrets of the Red Wizards - A pretty long quest, I felt like a lot of the middle portion of this quest was an extraneous and twisting mess of hallways. I don't hate it, but it did feel pretty much like I was doing the same thing the whole way through and of all the quests this one felt the most bloated. It's not bad or anything, I wouldn't avoid it, but it is pretty forgettable. There's an interesting enough end fight and a few optionals, but it definitely doesn't really stand out. It reminds me of running through ToEE hallways. Probably the quest I liked the least, mostly because it felt repetitive and overly long for very little reason- even the "secrets" you're finding are clustered one by the entrance and three pretty close to the end, so the middle of the quest might as well not exist. I think there's two routes, and I didn't clear the cellar route, so maybe that one feels better? I'll give it a try next time, though let's be honest I won't remember to update this.
Seeds of Decay - A wilderness walk up quest- the one that the entrance doesn't show for, as mentioned above. Setting aside the annoyance getting there, I actually don't dislike this relatively short quest. Enemies are pretty standard, though there are oozes so bring something for that if you need to. The ambience is good, it's a nice lore nod that isn't directly tied into the storyline, and it's very well designed layout wise. Only problem is the chaos crawlers in the end fight are annoying- not dangerous- because they do a bunch of screen obscuring effects while a bunch of different enemy types appear, including oozes, so if you're bringing melee weapons get ready to deal with acid fog and sleet storm (I think? Not sure how exactly they work, maybe it's only acid ones in here to stick with the theme) while trying to not accidentally break your good weapon on oozes. It's a minor annoyance, but I just generally don't like them.
Times Long Past - A long storyline quest. You know Titanfall 2? That one segment? Think that, but DDO. It's not the first time DDO has tried it, and it's reasonably well executed, but I felt like it was a little too long and self indulgent- there isn't a lot of reactivity between the timelines, and one moment,
watering the tree and it grows a dryad who attacks you,
felt particularly jarring. I generally felt like the middle of the quest was a bit of a slog, but the ending and concept were good. It's a little bit puzzly, so I can see it getting old on too many runs since once you know the route the quest isn't really much to look at, but then again it's not badly executed or anything, it's just a bit long and I wish it had more moments that the engine probably just can't handle with synchronizing the two scenes more aggressively. But the last fight does make me happy (it's another
dragon
), and the writing is solid.
Voices of the Dead - A relatively short storyline quest with a lot of undead. If you're running here from town it will probably be only marginally longer. There's a puzzle at the start that I didn't pay enough attention to but if you mess it up, I don't know how much it actually changes the quest. Pretty standard corridor fights, not a long quest, the Red Wizard necromancers have an annoying damage shield that makes them massive HP bags, not sure what to do about that as a martial (they actually show up in other quests too but they're well represented here) other than don't play a martial build. Some neat new skeletons though. Neat use of Speak with Dead.
The Zulkir's Plan - A medium-long storyline quest that ends part 2 of the storyline. Pretty solid, I got turned around once because of some design language that didn't make it clear whether I was supposed to keep going or head back somewhere else but the quest itself went pretty well. Good final fight for a heroic quest line, really enjoyed the writing here too. I wouldn't say it's *exactly* what I look for in DDO, but it's definitely marking all the right boxes. I don't want to say too much and spoil anything, so I'll leave it there, but it does feel like everything comes together in the end in a way that feels like a good D&D campaign, and that's a nice feeling.
Final Thoughts
Wow, you've really read this whole thing? Eh, whatever, if you watched me ramble this long what's another paragraph or two, so here's some more words. You'll notice I never mentioned wild magic or dead magic areas, and that's because as a martial I didn't notice them. Yeah, occasionally I saw the over head notification on myself or enemies, but like, it didn't really matter. Kind of a shame, would have been neat to have those actually do more, though obviously that could go way heavier into RNG than intended. But they could have played more into storyline stuff- they appear in some quests, but they aren't mechanically utilized, at least in heroics, in a way that makes them matter. Even as a caster, I don't think I would often find myself forced to stand in either zone, and while that might be reassuring it also feels like a narrative miss.
I didn't notice a lot that felt "new" from enemies. I think Imps are new, there's a few new varieties of existing enemies, the Red Wizards are new (and done very well), one of the NPCs is pretty unique, but mostly it feels very samey in combat. That makes it very approachable, but also not super challenging. The only thing monster wise that stood out at all were all those chaos crawlers. Based off of carrion crawlers, but with randomized elemental effects, I really do not like these little guys. They're not hard to kill, or challenging, but they have the unique way to make fights more annoying. I'm not sure how random they are, but after getting dismounted by them multiple times and having to ignore massive effects heavy AoEs to quash a bug, I have decided I don't like these guys. Sorry. Also, a lot of enemies do chip DoTs that really aren't dangerous but do occasionally mean you need to sit and wait to pull a lever or door. I thought we fixed that, but I had it happen four or five times where I did have to wait. Maybe my timing is trashtastic, but it's largely from enemies who just weren't a big deal. Again, I ran on too easy of a difficulty for my build so I never really felt challenged, but I did feel annoyed by those DoTs.
Anyway, thanks for reading, feel free to share your thoughts below or whatever. Overall I would recommend Myth Drannor, just know that some of the annoyances from earlier expansions are still there, particularly in traversing the wilderness area for quests.
