Honest Review for Feywild Spoiler Free

[Justicesfury]

The following review is broken into the following categories:

Quests, Slayer Area, New Races, New Crafting/Items and Overall Experience.

I am doing this since I have seen people just give statements good and bad with very little insight on why they feel that way. Hopefully it helps the people on the fence about getting the expansion that are looking for real insight. I bought the pack, I have played it, and here are my findings.

Quests

The good: Playing the quests for the first time as new content was highly enjoyable. Played through them with no sort of guide and had a good time. Nice graphics, use of social skills and option in many situations, different mechanics and puzzles all made for an interesting an new experience. 13 Quests and some quite long definitely gives you your moneys worth in the category. New Monsters were well done as well.

The Bad: I didn't anything that I played or looked at that I found bad. Worst issue for me was that one quest bugged and I wasn't able to finish it the first time I did it. I redid the quest and got through it eventually so playtesting and quality control (a typical SSG issue) was the only real problem.

Overall: Grade is B- These good quests overall and worth playing. Can't give it an A or A+ though. Putting out a product with this many bugs was careless. They also put out this pack without a raid. Even if they say we are getting one, it was just sloppy to put out an expansion pack without having it ready. Who knows when we are getting it.

Slayer Area

The Good: Slayer area looks great and like the new quests has new monsters. Putting random special chest and special encounters is fun and gives the slayer area a reason to be there other than to just kill stuff for XP.

The Bad: Value here is truly lacking. This is a very small slayer area with max 3000 kills. It feels under developed and just thrown together.

Overall: C- I was really considering giving a lower mark here. Value is important to me. The Slayer area is not only small, it just feels thrown together. Looks like recycled footage with some new stuff thrown in. Still though Its nice graphics and it fun to be play in.

New Race

The Good: Nothing was good here. I have only played the shifter but played through 3 lives of it. I decided against getting the bigger pack and went with the base. Spending 130 bucks with all the issues the game is having with bugs and lag was just something I was not going to do. Glad I don't have the iconic version of this.

The bad: Everything is a fail in the category. The Race doesn't match PnP variations, the tree is useless and makes no sense. The appearance of the toon. No class works well with the messy race that was just a throw in to get people who have racial completion to have to spend money.

Overall: F

New Crafting and Items

The Good: 7 items to complete an item set is a bit extreme, but what is interesting here is that you are not required to be wearing the who set to gain set bonuses. The more pieces of a set you wear, the more of a set bonus you get. The augment upgrades were a long time overdue. the new augments are interesting and will give you option on building your suit.

The Bad: Little explanations are giving to what new augments do in game. The items and sets are nice but you will ultimately want to be wearing all 7 pieces of a suit. As a result Variety may suffer. Ingredients to craft new augments are extreme. 3 of the same raid item to make an augment set will be a nightmare. The OP will be the only ones that eventually achieve these augments. Also, the nightmare of the bugs and patches to fix the augments foul ups were awful.

Overall: C

Overall Grade and Experience

While I truly like the new pack, the early frustrations with the roll out and issues put a sour note on it. The good news is though that many of the issues have been resolved and it plays smoother now. At 40 dollars US for the base pack its worth getting.

Overall Grade: C+

I wanted to go higher on this grade but I couldn't do it. I really like the look and feel of all the quests and genuinely liked the slayer, but there just wasn't big enough. The new race is a total fail and there is no raid with the pack so far.

Hope this gives insight for those considering the pack and helps you make a good decision on it.

[DerpDerply]

Honestly, I'd give it a D overall, because the entire mess looks like it was phoned in.

[LeoLionxxx]

I do really wish more time had been taken to properly test and identify issues with the Feywild quests and augment update. I wonder how much of the rush and lack of QA was due to having to work remotely.

The expansion is lots of fun, but I'll agree the scope doesn't feel equivalent to Sharn and Ravenloft; I fail to articulate why though.

When the raid does come out, I hope it's worth the wait!

[fatherpirate]

Well, now you know why it was not tested extensively on the test server.

Kiss that $140 - $40 good bye

[FlavoredSoul]

To be honest I'm pretty similar in my views. I love most* of the quests.

The 3 in the swap are the worst by far: Needle is a boring slog through hordes of mobs for the first 95% of the quest (though the twist of not having a traditional endfight was welcome), it's also the single buggiest quest in the entire expansion, Witch hunt is just too short, you just dogpile the hag out the gate and if you have a decent group you don't need to interact with the actual quest mechanics, lost locket is underwater which meakes fire sorc/alch literally not able to cast a single spell, and Kelpie slow + underwater is absolute suffering for melees, heroic is particularly brutal on a melee.

I really liked Make believe, Endless Revels, Quid pro Quo & Frosty reception. All very solid quests.


The direction of the loot feels a lot healthier than locking people into 3 piece Sharn sets. Though the sets still (especially summer) are too difficult to put together 7 pieces and have everything you need, most people seem to still be using Sharn sets.

I haven't even touched shifter it's super ugly and has nothing special as far as mechanics go, shift itself is extremely underwhelming and non-functional with monks, I can't think of any build that shifters would actually excel at. Only mildly interesting thing they have is regenerating rages for barb builds, except then you'd have to give up Horc which isn't going to happen.

The biggest problems are the bugs and the missing raid, The lack of raid in particular makes the issues of it feeling more like two adventure packs taped together than an expansion feel even more apparent, and the lack of a raid also hurts the gearing as there is some interesting gear in the raids there that could help people move past sharn if they had an easier time slotting feywild set bonuses.

[timmy9999]

That's actually a fair reasonable review, also enjoyed the quests. I couldn't get any of the new gear to really fit in. I was hoping I could get some use from the new augment system. However like everyone said when they decided to bring it out. This will take forever to get unless you're in a regular raiding guild and you have 12 players to pass you what you need. The most irritating part about this is they knew this. It was just another way to rehash content without having to develop new content. They would have been better of making 3 quests like slavers with a chance to drop whats required where you're not so reliant on raiding non stop. Because your raids suck, 80% are boring as bat **** to run over an over and over and full of lag. There is nothing enjoyable about raiding and the whole game pauses for 10 sec all the time. Fix it!! As much as we did slavers to death, it was successful and some of us are still using the gear to fill spots. Instead they brought a heap of gear out that's meant to fill the spots but honestly it seems more restrictive than ever. Who disagrees, beside the grind wasn't slavers crafting awesome? Great herioc sets and really good long lasting epic sets and bonus. The shifter, apologies if I offends but it truly is the ugliest thing in ddo, it horrible. I ended up running my racials as a shifter alchemist. I really like the fey illusionist tree, has some great stuff in it, and good to see augment system upgraded. Anyway better luck next time I guess....

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Putting out a product with this many bugs was careless.

I really don't understand this. I had only 1 real bug. Apart from the new augments thing.
I played everything through solo.

Your description sounds as if it had been a bugfest like ... TOEE, for example, the game by Troika.

The only thing which *really* irritated me was the total absence of any crafting station inside of the Expansion ... And no-one telling me that I had to go back into the hut for that ...

That, and the invidsible walls.

Since I don't care for raids, the pack is okay for me, overall. In German school grades, I'd give it a 2 or a 2+. For a 1 it is too small. Imho.

Ravenloft, on the other hand, would get a 2+ from me, because EVERYTHING is so dark, and I really don't like dark settings.
I can see the work put into it, there, though.

Sharn is a solid 1- from me as well, because some quests are simply too long for my taste (same with some quests in Ravenloft for me).

[Justicesfury]

I really don't understand this. I had only 1 real bug. Apart from the new augments thing.
I played everything through solo.

Your description sounds as if it had been a bugfest like ... TOEE, for example, the game by Troika.

The only thing which *really* irritated me was the total absence of any crafting station inside of the Expansion ... And no-one telling me that I had to go back into the hut for that ...

That, and the invidsible walls.

Since I don't care for raids, the pack is okay for me, overall. In German school grades, I'd give it a 2 or a 2+. For a 1 it is too small. Imho.

Ravenloft, on the other hand, would get a 2+ from me, because EVERYTHING is so dark, and I really don't like dark settings.
I can see the work put into it, there, though.

Sharn is a solid 1- from me as well, because some quests are simply too long for my taste (same with some quests in Ravenloft for me).

I didnt want to list the bugs I encountered since they were related to the quests in most cases. I wanted to keep the review spoiler free.

[Aelonwy]

Sharn is a solid 1- from me as well, because some quests are simply too long for my taste (same with some quests in Ravenloft for me).

I tend to prefer the longer quests... just not quite as long as ToEE or Slavers... that's definitely Slogfest zone. But both the Ravenloft castle quests are in my list of favorites, and if it weren't for the flameskulls Amber Temple would be there too, as-is its 2nd tier for me. Sharn wasn't as great for me as Ravenloft but I really liked Reach for the Sky, and Just Business is not bad if you avoid the skysleds for the most part. Is there a way once on them to disembark before the timer runs out? I think that's all they need so that you can use them to get above traps or access skylights or upper floors but don't have to deal with the slow, funky steering for overlong.

Short quests are great for grinding, grinding gear or ingredients or Reaper XP I guess, IDK really; but grinding is something I try to avoid as much as possible. And even a short quest can be really cool with a lot of story or new experiences if its done very well and compact such as Roll Call or Home of Memory but too many short quests with not enough substance and I begin to feel fleeced.

Don't get me wrong, I like Feywild but some of the quests don't feel as well done nor as significant as even the quests in the Lost Gatekeeper Pack, specifically Lost Locket, Witch Hunt, Thornwright, and Combatting Corruption. Knight Who Cried Windmill too but at least it has an absolutely unique experience, however, eventually that will pall. More optionals, more bits and bobs and story tangents to explore would have helped immensely. For whatever reason though, they just didn't give themselves enough time.

It helps me to remember I got Lost Gatekeepers for free and to think of it (for me personally) as a part of the expansion, at least story-wise. And that helps raise the quality of the entire Feywild story experience.