When you play all of it at once it definitely is pretty tiring, I think it makes more sense when you think there's 4months between every patch so people who play continually have these little bits of story and have already "forgotten" about the boring bits before that. The post expansion MSQ is also generally just "clean up" until it sets up the next expansion. This expansion they did a whole entire story arc instead, but it had its own issues. Personally I try to play through the MSQ every now and then when they have a free login period to avoid burning out too much on the post expansion stuff, like I'll login for only a couple of hours just to do the MSQ. Even then yeah I get pretty tired of it when I do like 2-3 patches in a row until it gets to the "new" stuff.
For me the no background doesn't work anyway but I block a ton of scripts so maybe it's that. You can mute the tab but not the player and I think that works too(with firefox, don't know about chrome). I always collect my shit in the background. If it doesn't work yeah just have your phone or tablet on the side and cut the volume directly on the device and it should be fine.
That's the big FATE in Ultima Thule, it's already in the game, it's the fate that gives the level checker mount. They listed the 2 big FATEs from ShB(the big snake thing in Tempest and the giant robot in Kholusia) and the 2 in EW(the one on an island off the coast in Thavnair and the one on a floating platform in Ultima Thule) as being changed, and also mentionned the ones from DT will also be changed. Currently they only display when you're very close(or when you see the spam of shouts, or at least that's how it was during release when everyone was trying to do them) but now will be visible from anywhere.
Fool, you lost 10% xp on a crafting class from the desynth challenge log.
