Me and my friends always played homebrew campaigns, but now we don't have much time, so we are planning to play some official adventures, if you guys could rank them for it would be very helpful, we care about combat, but lore for us is what make the campaign good

Hey Biluteteia, 

I just finished watching a 25 minute YouTube video from Taking20 that actually ranked the official adventures from worst to best. I can't be bothered recapping the whole video about why some were better than others but the link's above if you want to watch it. It does contain spoilers about the adventures though so make sure that only the DM is watching it. Here is the ranking they gave each official 5e adventure.

1. Curse of Strahd
2. Tomb of Annihilation
3. Storm King's Thunder
4. Waterdeep: Dragonheist
5. Lost Mines of Phandelver
6. Out of the Abyss
7. ToD: Rise of Tiamat
8. Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage (It's a megadungeon though)
9. Tale from the Yawning Portal
10. Princes of the Apocalypse
11. ToD: Hoard of the Dragon Queen

My rankings would be:

1. Tomb of Annihilation: It's difficult to run, but the story and all the individual locales and NPCs are fascinating. The jungle exploration has a lot of potential.

2. Curse of Strahd: Great adventure, but the gothic setting and story isn't to everyone's taste. The relentless darkness can be frustrating as a player and character.

3. Lost Mines of Phandelver: Very well-written introductory adventure, but it doesn't really have the makings of a longer campaign.

4. Waterdeep: Dragon Heist: This is a pretty unusual one, given that it's more oriented toward roleplaying and mystery-solving, but I think it's well-designed.

5. Tales from the Yawning Portal: Lots of fun short adventures. Quality varies considerably.

6. Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage: It's a mega-dungeon. Some of the levels are brilliant, but the story is pretty lackluster.

7. Princes of the Apocalypse: Story is a bit generic and trope-based (elements!). Requires a considerable effort to make it interesting. But there's some potential here.

8. Storm King's Thunder: I'm going against the grain here, it seems, but I played this campaign and couldn't get invested in the story at all. Having read through it later, I don't blame my DM; the adventure seems pretty bland. It has some similarities to the sandbox-style exploration of Tomb of Annihilation, but the locations and NPCs are less interesting. The basic idea of the story (the Ordnung shattering) is good, but the structure needs work. As a player, I also didn't really enjoy the way the final boss battle was handled (relying on NPC allies), and I didn't think Imyrith was built up well enough as a villain.

I'm pretty unfamiliar with the others (Out of the Abyss, Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Rise of Tiamat), so I won't rank those.

Depends on what you want. Low-scale heroic high fantasy? Lost Mines of Phandelver is a clear victor. More horror, somewhat heroic, longer adventure, gothic fantasy? Curse of Strand. Urban adventure mystery? Dragon Heist. Just a dungeon crawl with little to no story (or a story that can develop over time)? Dungeon of the Mad Mage

One of my favorite points of Lost Mines is also that it lends itself great to further adventuring. When I ran it, Nezznar survived. I'm now building him as an overarching villain. Venomfang also survived, so I'm setting it up that he'll attack Phandalin in revenge later, giving Nezznar an opening to steal the Forge of Spell. Nezznar keeps manipulating conflicts throughout Faerûn, culminating in Against the Giants.

My party killed him, but the Thayan necromancer is also a good storyhook

When you seal your ranking

When you steal your ranking

One of my groups is wanting to start playing through several of the official campaigns.  We are about done with Curse of Strahd.  And, I'm thinking about DMing Descent into Avernus for our next adventure.  Still up in the air as I'm sure we have another month or two left of the current campaign.  Still, with some time since this thread originated, I'm wondering if there are updated thoughts on what are the best of the best adventures we should be prioritizing.

wb dragon heist surely u must like that one?

1. Tomb of Annihilation (Nice and complete adventure.Can be placed anywhere.)
2. Curse of Strahd (Takes some work to put the polish on though.  Can be easily bent to what ever flavor of D&D you like though.)
3. Out of the Abyss.  (Only real work is getting the players to know the underdark.)
4. Princes of the Apocalypse (Start at a higher level or use the starter adventures and no real work.)
5. Lost Mines of Phandelver.  (Pretty good depending on how high you want them to advance.  Some have used it as a starter adventure for SKT.)
6. Dragon of Icespire Peak.  (Comes with the essentials kit and is a full campaign. I worked a player up through the adventures that are on DND Beyond with purchase.)
7. Waterdeep: Dragonheist
8. Ghosts of Saltmarsh (Takes work to tie together. Old school Greyhawk though.)
9. Tale from the Yawning Portal (Most are 1 shot dungeons. Using some with GoS above)
10. Storm King's Thunder. (Have to fill in the first few levels with other adventures)
11. ToD: Rise of Tiamat & Hoard of the Dragon Queen (Lot of work to fix some problems with the game.)
12. Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage (It is a megadungeon as said above.  I do not care for those at all.)

1. Curse of Strahd. Best adventure, a nice twist on Ravenloft, and it has a great plot while still being a sandbox adventure.
2. Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. Amazing adventure, great hooks and villains. There are some problems with it, but they're not huge.
3. Tomb of Annihilation. It's a perfect mix of survival, humor, monsters, sandboxing, and railroading. It has a railroaded plot while still taking in account player accountability.
4. Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Great compilation of older adventures, with a great link between all of them, while being open enough to be cut and pasted into nearly any adventure world.
5. Storm King's Thunder. Another great example of mixing sandbox and railroad adventures. The beginning of the adventure is very badly written, but otherwise it is a good adventure.
6. Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus. A fairly well written adventure, certainly an epic-feeling adventure with a great story, but is very railroady, has a very badly written story hook, and basically no motivation to continue on the adventure. It is very linear, is not a sandbox at all, which is unfortunate, and is fairly disappointing.
7. Out of the Abyss. Very exotic adventure with an epic plot. It is railroady, and has nearly no motivation to do the adventure instead of let someone else handle it, but is a nice adventure with interesting NPCs and locations.
8. Princes of the Apocalypse. Very linear adventure with even less of an adventure hook than most others, but it does have some good side quests and stories. It is a lot of dungeon slogging, but is also fairly epic.
9. Tales from the Yawning Portal. Another great old adventure compilation, but not great as an adventure, as it has less link between the consecutive adventures than Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and they are just dungeons with barely any story.
10. Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Barely any adventure hook, very long dungeon slog with many large battles between very similar creatures.
11. Hoard of the Dragon Queen: Very railroady adventure, poor descriptions of important parts of the story, and is overall a terribly written adventure. Any good DM with enough work can make this adventure function, but it can be difficult.
12. Rise of Tiamat. This is the same as Hoard of the Dragon Queen, but even worse.