Scenic outdoor zone for a 17 and 20 duo
 

After my partner and I, as a 20 human monk and 17 wood elf druid, fell for every trap in Befallen and spent about 2 hours repeatedly dying, we're looking for somewhere to hunt that is relatively open and easy to navigate.

Looking for quality over quantity: would rather have a nice scenic, open area than a high risk / high reward dungeon. Not worried much about loot, but good EXP is appreciated.

Any recommendations?

Crag Spiders in East Karana. Aviaks in Lake Rathe

befallen is rough like that

unrest is considered outdoors, has a nice open courtyard, easy train out to ZL, etc

and you can find other ppl to team up with

Hmm maybe Stonebrunt mountains? Just trying to think of off the beaten path zones that check the boxes you're lookin for.. Large zone, scenic, outdoor... I think kobalds over there are within your level ranges!

Maybe orc highway in oasis?

You could easily kill aviak egrets/darters and some rooks in south karana and move up the food chain until you're 29 or so and then do tesch mas gnolls up to 35. There's a vendor in zone and worst case scenario NK isn't too far. Gnolls are ok money and they have a good exp quest.

Unrest is also a fun outdoors dungeon. If you don't like it at 25ish you can move to mistmoore, which is another outdoors dungeon but they both are a lot more forgiving than befallen.

Agreed. Oasis or Unrest

Thanks for the recs everybody. I set out on the 17 towards Karana to follow some of the recommendations, and on the way had a long look around.

I didn't end up fighting much, but it turned into the most satisfying P99 session in a very long time.

In years past I'd leveled up a 40 shaman and a handful of other 20ish chars, guided by the ZEM list and advice for grinding. I had never really spent the time to visit all those classic zones outside the major camps and dungeons. Prowling through Kithicor and Highpass felt like real exploring and brought back some of the magic.

Thanks everyone.

+1 for south karana. Massive wide open zone with tons of mobs, low population/competition and a wide variety of level ranges so you have options as you progress.

Go to East Karana and go to the very south east corner by the waterfall.

One of my favorite spots in the game.