Various Thoughts

The Last Sarkorians DLC turned out to be fully integrated into the main campaign. It adds a new class (which is sort of a mix between Druid and Fighter, sacrificing spellcasting for a focus on Wildshape) and a new romanceable companion with a full set of sidequests taking place in a new multi-part location.

The companion is decent enough if you spec him toward Charge damage, though he’ll need quite a bit of buffing support. The sidequests meanwhile don’t feel out of place but are a bit unbalanced in some places. Like, why does that Bloodrager have DL37 Cleric/Wizard buffs on him? As long as you’re geared to handle swarms though (and the companion comes specifically with an anti-swarm necklace, with more available in the new area) for the most part the added content doesn’t feel unfair or forced. And more importantly, clearing it won’t unbalance the main campaign’s progression.

Something that cannot be said for the integrated version of The Treasure of the Midnight Isles DLC. That one is not balanced at all.

It immediately starts you out against level 18 enemies as basic encounters (in Chapter III) yet, bizarrely, also starts out with level 5 floor bosses. Over the course of all three quests, things never really level out with the difficulty continuously jumping around all over the place. Sometimes a boss will be a one-round joke, other times it’ll inexplicably be able to cast spells with multiple metamagic effects beyond its level or have 70+ AC or 30+ Saves. It’s just a massive slog in general and doesn’t really offer any rewards worth the effort besides a boatload of (effectively useless) gold and enough XP to get you to level 20 shortly after arriving in Chapter V.

Can’t speak for the stand-alone version yet, but if it’s anything like Kingmaker‘s Beneath the Stolen Lands DLC then it ~may~ be worth picking up if you enjoy playing around with different party compositions.

As an addendum, I also just ran through the content added by the free Love Beyond Death DLC. It’s… okay? While there’s nothing annoying about it, there doesn’t seem to be much point in actually wandering down there unless you happen to have a character specialized in Earth Breakers.

The entire reason I had initially picked up Enderal earlier was because I was in the mood to play some sort of magical melee class of some kind. Yet I ended up, as I usually do in those kind of first-person open world games, playing a stealth sniper/assassin.

Still wanting to play a monk-sorcerer kind of thing after abandoning that playthrough I decided to re-install Wrath of the Righteous rather than try to look for something new. Both because I never did finish my Aeon run and never tried any of the DLC… and also since I’m still annoyed at missing the Sadistic Game Design achievement due to ONE ENEMY (Ashberry Hamlet’s ghost).

But first, because completionism is a disease, I had to run through the two stand-alone campaign DLCs so that I could import them for the rewards.

The first, Through the Ashes, is a low-level adventure (level 1-5) that doesn’t give any XP for killing stuff. Which is a big hint that you’re supposed to avoid combat wherever possible (your first companion being decent enough at stealth is another), and use environmental factors to help eliminate what you can’t avoid. It’s okay. There isn’t really anything annoying about it, but nor is there anything about it that calls for a replay.

The second, The Lord of Nothing (which brings you from 5-11), takes a more mixed stance. It’s much closer in style to the main campaign in both good and bad ways. Direct combat is encouraged a bit more here (although there are a couple ‘avoid fighting’ areas), but said combat is not always the most balanced (I still completed it on Core with a ridiculously sub-par Demon Dancer build though). You get access to a wide variety of items and equipment… but will only have enough money to buy a few of them.

Overall I’d say it’s worth running through them once with a Paladin or Dexterity-focused Tank build of some kind, but the replayability value is pretty low.