What you describe is the Maelstrom. The Surge used to be tied to it, but now you just load an altar with essences, pull a lever and it’s raining men, hallelujah.
So the surge is a location-bound lottery machine for getting thralls who would otherwise be unavailable on Siptah.
The Maelstrom is the huge vortex centered on the Tower of Siptah that spawns creatures from other dimensions. It’s fun, and I regularly take my thralls in there for training. It can get pretty intense towards the end if a lot of critters spawn next to your location.
Personally, I love the Isle of Siptah as a Single-Player. Resources are more evenly distributed, there’s lots of room to build, and the scenery is beautiful.
Vaults are decent fun every now and then, although the critters there can be pretty grindy - they never heard of the NPC hitpoint rebalance while locked inside, obviously.
I made a return to the Exiled Lands for the Kurak dungeon, and I may do so again for the Siege. Funcom said they’d want to add the Siege to the Siptah map too, but didn’t have the time or resources to do so yet. So maybe it will get added at a later date, maybe not. The way I’ve heard, it’s not exactly solo-player material anyway.
The thing to note about Siptah: once you get used to the higher-level equipment, the Sigils that power you up, and the abundant resources, when you get back to the Exiled Lands, you will feel like Superman next to some Kryptonite when you no longer have all those superpowers.
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